Hollywood to Honor Preserver of Its Past

Caricatures of famous entertainers cover the walls of the new Brown Derby at Hollywood and Vine, and there is also an ink drawing, near one of a young actor named Ronald Reagan, of Marian Gibbons.

Marian who?

“I told Walter, ‘No, I can’t be up there. The walls are for movie stars,”’ Gibbons recalled, “but one day, when I came in for lunch, an artist drew me while I was eating.”

And Walter --Walter P. Scharfe, owner of the landmark restaurant that reopened last fall a block away from where it had been for more than half a century--put her likeness on the same wall as Mayor Tom Bradley’s and City Councilman Michael Woo’s.

Scharfe figures all have done a lot for Hollywood, but Gibbons--who will be honored Monday in Sacramento as the state Senate 23rd District’s Woman of the Year--played a special role in the Brown Derby’s story.

When Gibbons heard that the original Brown Derby at Wilshire Boulevard and Alexandria Avenue, which closed in 1980, was to be torn down, she fought through police lines, blocking protesters, to ask the owner to save the hat, which had been the restaurant’s trademark for 54 years.

“You mean all you want is the hat?” the owner asked. “That’s all,” she said. “Lady,” he retorted, “you got yourself a hat.” It was restored and now caps a shopping plaza developed on the Derby’s site.

That was one of Gibbons’ first battles as a preservationist after she began Hollywood Heritage, a nonprofit group, with a few friends on May 5, 1980.

It encapsulates Gibbons’ and the organization’s preservation approach: A building, or part of a building, should be historically or architecturally important to be saved, and preservation should make financial sense.

“Remember,” Gibbons says as if to remind herself, “somebody has to pay the bills.” When it comes to some of Hollywood Heritage’s projects, even she admits that “we never intended to be as hands-on a group as we are.”

It all started when Gibbons, who had moved to North Hollywood from New York for a year in the late ‘40s, returned in the ‘70s after raising her daughter and son and working with her husband as manufacturers’ agents in Milwaukee and Phoenix. March 15 will be her 10th anniversary of moving to Hollywood.

When she returned, she was appalled at the deterioration in Hollywood. She thought she might help and keep herself busy, following her divorce, by joining a historical society, but there wasn’t any in Hollywood.

She met John Anson Ford, known widely as “Mr. Los Angeles” because of his 24 years on the county Board of Supervisors, and he suggested that she start a preservation group.

“I said, ‘I don’t know anything about politics,’ ” she remembered, “but he said, ‘I do.’ And he picked up the phone and called Mayor Bradley, who told me I had his full support. Then we got together with Sen. (David A.) Roberti (D-Los Angeles).”

‘A Lot of Volunteers’

Roberti selected Gibbons for the Woman of the Year honor, but Gibbons, while flattered, isn’t comfortable being singled out or represented, as she often is, as Hollywood Heritage. “Hollywood Heritage is a lot of people, a lot of volunteers,” she said.

She lists architectural historian Christy McAvoy, architect Frances Offenhauser, Susan Petersen St. Francis, Mildred Heredeen and “my precious John, the magic man” (John Anson Ford) as co-founders.

Ford died in 1983, just five weeks after turning 100, but a photo of him sits on her desk at the 81-year-old Wattles Mansion, a 49-acre estate that has been Hollywood Heritage’s headquarters since 1984.

That’s when Gibbons gave a restoration proposal to the city, which owned the Hollywood property, at 1824 N. Curson Ave., and offered one peppercorn a year for rent.

‘Weeds, Broken Glass’

“The weeds had turned to trees, and the house was full of beer cans, water and broken glass, while strips of paint were hanging from the ceilings,” she said, “but Arco supplied some funds, and L.A. Beautiful, UCLA students and a lot of other volunteers pitched in. And look at it now! It’s great!”

Gibbons is critical of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “I told them I found this 49-acre estate and asked if they wanted to help us with it, but we did it! All the Chamber does is raise money to pay their salaries.”

When the Chamber offered but failed to preserve the barn where Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and Cecil B. DeMille made “The Squaw Man” in 1913, Hollywood Heritage acquired the building, moved and restored it, and now operates it as the Hollywood Studio Museum.

Hollywood Heritage also was instrumental in getting the Screen Actors Guild to stay in Hollywood, relocating to a refurbished church on Hollywood Boulevard, and it has played a part in every other construction, reconstruction and planned project--and there are many--in town.

Two Major Projects

Sure, she admits, “we’ve lost a few old buildings.” And sure, “the Hollywood Revitalization Plan is controversial, because we have a lot of little neighborhood groups, each with an agenda for whatever will impact them.”

But she points to two major projects about to get under way: The $200-million, Melvin Simon Associates’ Hollywood Promenade, which will surround and preserve the landmark Mann’s Chinese Theatre (ground breaking is expected next summer), and the $30-million, Kornwasser & Friedman Hollywood Galaxy on the site of the razed Garden Court Apartments at the northeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Sycamore Avenue (work should start in May or June).

A third project, the $150-million to $200-million mixed-use, Hollywood Highland Partners’ development (involving one of the Bass brothers), from Highland Avenue to Las Palmas Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard to Yucca Street, is still in the pre-EIR (Environmental Impact Report) stage.

Gibbons is clearly interested in Hollywood’s future as well as its past. As Roberti’s resolution commending her states:

“Marian’s leadership in Hollywood has made us all realize that we cannot take our community for granted.”