Hopper’s Hometown Saw a Bright Future for Him

“Colors,” the movie about L.A. street gangs, is currently the nation’s top box-office hit. It’s directed by Dennis Hopper, who grew up in Lemon Grove and graduated from Helix High School in La Mesa in 1954.

During his senior year, Hopper--by then already a budding actor--was named Most Likely to Succeed. The female classmate with whom he shared the honor was Dianne Kaderli, who for 20 years has taught in Lemon Grove. She now teaches U.S. history to 8th-graders at Lemon Grove Middle School. Two years ago, she was honored as Teacher of the Year.

Hopper, like many of the movies he has starred in or directed (“Easy Rider,” “The Last Movie,” “Blue Velvet” and now “Colors”), often has been controversial. Kaderli, who lives with her husband and two children in Del Cerro, remembers her rowdy friend (who later starred in “Rebel Without a Cause”) as sweet, sensitive and incurably idealistic.

“He was extremely talented even as a junior high school student,” she said. “He always used to do plays or readings in class. Even in the eighth grade, he was doing ‘The Hairy Ape,’ a monologue by William Bendix. He could do Hamlet’s soliloquy, and it was marvelous. This was as an 8th-grader.

“You could tell he was going to be great. He wasn’t as active in high school. Already, he was immersed in the San Diego Junior Theatre, or he was doing parts for the La Jolla Playhouse or pulling the curtain at the Old Globe. He was so wrapped up in drama that he stopped going to class. He was kicked out of a few classes. You could tell where his heart was; it wasn’t in school.”

Hopper played another role that, oddly, has helped Kaderli to be a teacher with an edge.

“He was the classic class clown,” she said. “He was real funny, always making little remarks, being very dramatic, especially at inappropriate times. As a teacher, he’s made me more empathetic with students like that. He was so creative, and so I appreciate students like that, having known Dennis.”

Hopper dropped out of sight for a time in the 1970s and early ‘80s. He credits his phoenix-like rise to his own recovery from drugs and alcohol.

“Most of all, I’m thrilled by that,” Kaderli said. “His tremendous talent has always been evident. It’s great to see him realize the potential that those of us in Lemon Grove always knew he had.”

Mohawks In, Mozart Out

San Diego City College, which recently announced cuts in its music program, thereby provoking a student protest, last week held a seminar on the latest in hair and nail trends. The free show was presented by the cosmetology department, which is having neither its hair nor its nails--nor even its budget--clipped, chipped or otherwise changed.

School officials say the show was a hair-raising success, with styles from the classic to the outrageous going on parade in the cafeteria. About 125 people watched 65 models, who count themselves among the 150 cosmetology majors, strut their stuff.

What does this say about modern education? That Madonna--her look, if not her music--means more than Beethoven? The most striking entry, according to a spokesman, was a woman whose hair evoked the mythological character of Medusa, the Gorgon so ugly that the sight of her turned men to stone.

The spokesman said that cosmetology is one of the school’s most popular departments, suggesting that long hair is in at City College, even if long-haired music is not.

Bowl Beats The Boss

In the pantheon of American pop culture, two items excite ticket sellers like no others can: a concert by Bruce Springsteen and the National Football League championship game, otherwise known as the Super Bowl.

Rick H. Cabados manages Trip Tickets, a small agency based in Clairemont. Trip Tickets is a legal “scalp” operation, in which tickets to major events are hawked at greater than face value.

Cabados is grinning from ear to ear these days, being able to sell Springsteen tickets fast on the heels of a Super Bowl staged in San Diego.

Super Bowl XXII was a scalper’s dream, he said, drawing more business than any other event imaginable. Some tickets went for as much as $2,500.

Tickets behind the stage--facing Springsteen’s back--start at $59 apiece. The better seats, facing the stage, go as high as $850.

Cabados said thousands of San Diegans are driving up, even on weeknights, to see Springsteen at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Cabados has ruminated often on why The Boss is such a draw.

“It’s the type of songs he does, his stage presence. . . . He really sings to an audience,” Cabados said. “He has definite opinions and ideas he relates to people. And he’s extremely charismatic.”

The current “Tunnel of Love” album is not the blinding success that 1985’s “Born in the U.S.A.” was, but The Boss is never No. 2.

Unless, of course, you’re talking football, which according to the ticket man, can’t be matched when the name of the game is Super Bowl.

“That one will never be topped,” Cabados said. “That was San Diego’s biggest event ever. When not even The Boss can match it, hey, you know it’s big.”