People and Events

The Malibu Colony Coffee Shop went out with a rush Thursday, serving its final meals before shutting to make way for a new mall. By early afternoon, estimated Natalie Brown, who has operated the popular diner with husband Herb for the last 10 of its 31 years, between 2,000 and 3,000 people had shown up.

The place seats 44.

“We’re just swamped,” she said tearfully.

People, she added, were waiting patiently to get in or leaving notes “all over the windows, telling us how much they love us and how much they are going to miss us.” Long-ago patrons were coming from as far away as Santa Barbara.

Malibu residents--the likes of Joni Mitchell, Robert Altman, Rod Steiger, Burgess Meredith and Pia Zadora--had campaigned futilely to save the coffee shop.

The Browns invited all Malibuites to come in for a final party Thursday evening.

For that, she said, they would open up the patio.

In reporting that 102-year-old Edwina Barry was so excited by a scheduled salute to her as the oldest living ex-vaudevillian that she fell and injured her head, it was noted here Thursday that Actors Fund officials assigned second place in the longevity standings to George Burns, a mere 92.

Not so, according to friends of Allan Cross, who will be 94 on July 13. Cross played the Keith-Orpheum Circuit as far back as 1920 and, he says, toured “most of the big theaters of the country.” For most of that time, he was half of the Cross and Dunn parody singing duo.

Cross, who lives in North Hollywood and still plays an occasional round of golf, says Henry Dunn would sing one of the popular songs of the day, “then I would come in with a parody.”

In “Benny’s From Heaven,” for instance, a wife explained a new baby to the husband who had been away for two years.

Cross says he broke into vaudeville with the famed Blossom Seeley and worked with two or three partners during his career. He left the stage in 1965 and became a regional representative for a distillery--but “I retired, because I wasn’t much of a drunk.”

Cross has been married to the same woman, Rose, for 62 years and says he is having a medal made for her because “I was a pretty wild guy and she always understood me.”

It was, of course, a less dangerous age when John Greenleaf Whittier could see a youth with a stick in his hand and rhapsodize:

Blessings on thee, little man, barefoot boy with cheek of tan . . .

The city of Whittier, named for the poet, places stock in such solid old American values and recently dedicated a bronze “Barefoot Boy” statue implanted outside City Hall as a gift from the local centennial committee.

Someone has now broken off the bronze stick in the statue’s hand.

In fairness, Whittier parks director Dana Vaughn believes it was an accident rather than vandalism. Youngsters enjoy climbing around the statue and splashing in the pond at its base. He supposes one of them slipped and grabbed the stick for support.

Whittier is waiting for sculptor Tita Hupp to return from Europe and fix it.

When sixth-grade teacher Dawn Lawrence of 20th Street Elementary School was at the airport in Paris a year ago, she recognized an old grad: Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. (Not, one hastens to add, that she was teaching when he went to school there about 63 years ago.)

She approached him and invited him to speak at this year’s sixth-grade culmination ceremony.

On Thursday, he showed up to tell nearly 100 graduating youngsters, “And here I am.”

The mayor noted that things have changed since he arrived from Texas and enrolled in the school at the age of 7. For one thing, the old wooden buildings have been replaced. So has the student body. Predominantly black then, it’s 92% Latino now.

Bradley told the children of his own poor background and advised them to set goals for themselves. “If you don’t,” he said, “you’re not going to accomplish anything.”

There were, said a Transamerica Life Cos. spokeswoman, 105 employees who climbed 30 flights of stairs at the company building in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday to raise money for the homeless by getting pledges from fellow workers and matching funds from the boss.

“We think everybody made it,” said Laurie Bayless. No one, as far as she knew, collapsed or had to take the rest of the day off.

Eddie Tong of the actuarial department climbed it six times--for a total of . . . whatever. The elevators were undergoing maintenance work anyway.