MALIBU Metamorphosis : Is Hollywood’s Haven Growing Into Just Another Miami Beach?

Its embattled mayor makes headlines. Its brand-new Jaguars and vintage Mustangs clog the streets. Its mini-malls blight the landscape with yet more porcelain nail clinics. And, of course, its most anticipated restaurant is Wolfgang Puck’s.

This must be Los Angeles?

Wrong. Welcome to Malibu and its not-so-mellow metamorphosis.

For more than a century, people ranging from film stars to just plain folks have sought out this laid-back sun and surf refuge in hopes of getting away from it all.

Now the “all” is coming to Malibu in the form of auto congestion, expensive sewer systems, big bucks hotel-condo complexes, status eateries and a referendum on cityhood, not to mention honorary mayor Martin Sheen’s open invitation to the homeless. And the question is whether the so-called Malibu life style made famous by movies, miniseries and, yes, even creme de menthes (“Malibu” is a popular after-dinner drink) can survive as this once bucolic paradise becomes a hotbed of controversy and construction, trendiness and just plain turmoil.

It’s also wondering, if and when Malibu goes the way of Miami Beach with high-rises and hotels covering every inch of shoreline as many residents fear, whether celebrities will stay put and fight the changes or just find some other heavenly haven to inhabit.

When Burgess Meredith, a Malibu Colony resident for more than a decade, tries to explain what’s happening to his beloved community, he recalls the time a sheriff came to warn him and his houseguest, the late director John Huston, that a tidal wave was heading their way.

“I turned to John and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll take it to higher ground.’ ”

The tidal wave, says Meredith, eventually headed in another direction. “However, that would have been a pleasure when compared to the tidal wave that’s coming the other way now.”

Other longtime residents are just as fearful for Malibu’s future. “I’m not a political animal, and I have nothing against Malibu growing,” concedes Rod Steiger, a 32-year Malibu homesteader. “But what’s most worrying is the idea of growth without a responsibility to preserve the natural beauty that the gods have given us for all the people--the 20,000 who live here and the millions who come here to visit every summer.”

To Ali MacGraw, Malibu’s ex-Her Honor who grudgingly moved to Pacific Palisades in July when she couldn’t find any ocean-view housing she could afford, Malibu is “at a critical crossroads in its history. Either we’re going to galvanize the community, or it will be the end of Malibu.

“But you know,” she confides, dispiritedly, “three people living on the same street in Malibu can’t get together to decide on a speed bump. So I’m not too optimistic about the bigger issues.”

Of course, some people can’t help wondering what all the fuss is about in the first place.

It’s true that, like the oft-heard complaint about Los Angeles, there is no “there” there.

After all, Malibu is little more than a blueprint for a town whose planner obviously went mad, with its countrified collection of garage fronts, ramshackle stores and sushi bars, and the occasional frozen yogurt franchise dotting 27 miles of Pacific Coast Highway.

But if this resort only 35 miles from downtown L.A. still seems the playground of the rich and rarely employed--though only one-fifth of the population probably works in the entertainment industry--then obviously the myth of Malibu is alive and well.

The reason is because there really is something to that “Way of Life” which Malibu’s citizenry proudly proclaim on their license plates: a trading in of life’s punishments for life’s pleasures, forsaking Spago for unsmogged sunsets, swapping suits for sweats, forgetting wheeling and dealing for marinading, taking a break from dailies to watch dolphins.

Of course, it’s impossible to define the definitive Malibu life style when its residents are so diverse. At any given moment, they range from retirees on fixed incomes, to ranchers raising Arabians, to the latest personality on the cover of People magazine.

It’s where the cops take cappucino breaks, Sean Penn hitchhikes and the Kiwanis Club holds a chili cook-off every Labor Day and raffles off--what else?--a Porsche. Naturally, programming for the public-access cable channel, KBU, consists of babes in bikinis, surfing contests and bulletins about the activities of the county Board of Supervisors.

Most of all, it’s finding some small-town atmosphere within the vast Los Angeles County region that perhaps has grown too big for its own good. For longtime resident Carol Rapf, “it’s being on a first-name basis with the homeless person who’s set up camp next to my house. This morning, when I went for a walk, he waved to me and said, ‘Hi, Carol.’ ”

As for the homeless someday outnumbering the homeowners, even Martin Sheen admits he didn’t anticipate the media maelstrom that erupted, much less the jokes by Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” suggesting that Malibu celebrities were offering to pay for valet parking and free sunblock for those homeless who took Sheen up on his offer of sanctuary.

“Eventually, it seemed the majority of the community supported me,” maintains Sheen, who has stood by his social concern even though a “Dump Martin for Mayor” campaign was mounted by the nonplussed chamber of commerce.

Actually, the hypnotic combination of cash and controversy goes back to Malibu’s roots. First, there were its earliest settlers, the Chumash Indians who named it Humaliwa (“the surf that sounds loud”). Then came Massachusetts millionaires Frederick and Rhoda Rindge, who bought the land parcel in 1891 for $10 an acre and kept the Southern Pacific Railway and government highway interests from developing their domain, even hiring armed guards, until the courts stepped in.

Silent movie actress Anna Q. Nilsson in 1928 was the first celebrity to build a summer home in the sandy crescent just north of Malibu Creek that quickly became known as the Malibu Motion Picture Colony. The studios immediately promoted the area as a close-to-the-city refuge for stars such as Clara Bow, Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Colman and Dolores Del Rio, who normally would have ventured further afield to build their $3,500 beach bungalows.

During the Depression and World War II, the area lost some pizazz, though the Malibu Inn became a well-known gambling oasis and watering hole for those stars who stayed. In the postwar boom years, Malibu was home to middle-class families in search of suburban tranquillity as well as surfing disciples of the Big Kahuna himself, Duke Kahanamoku.

It wasn’t until the 1960s--when there were still empty lots in Malibu Colony and Lana Turner its lone celebrity resident in 1964--that Annette, Frankie and the Beach Boys started having fun under the sun and Malibu housing prices soared into the ozone.

By 1969, the year Rex Reed published his infamous magazine article about Malibu being the birthplace of the “cesspool of L.A. culture,” marijuana smoke combined with midsummer mists to create an almost permanent haze over the sand dunes. Over the next decade, Jerry Brown courted Linda Ronstadt inside the Colony, Primal Scream fanatics like Dyan Cannon found private places to shout, and endless parties, group sex and real estate hustling were reputed to be widespread among residents and renters--or maybe it was just fashionable to say so.

There also was the requisite cult-leader-in-residence--in this case Guru Maharaj Ji, who made his followers toil at menial jobs so he could build a lavish hilltop estate atop Trancas Canyon in the late 1970s complete with helicopter pad. And a chopper is exactly what many commuters wished they had in 1979 after PCH was closed behind two state-installed chain-link fences for a month when rockslides sent chunks of crumbling bluff onto the road.

But the shared experience of weathering Malibu’s many natural disasters is what continues to preserve the community’s “us against them” camaraderie, whether it’s watching Cicely Tyson shovel the sand out of her swimming pool after a legendary storm or Rachel Ward escape an uncontrolled brush fire that scorched 80,000 acres and destroyed homes.

Even when forced to evacuate, Malibuites tend to react differently in a crisis than other people, like the movie producer who grabbed his dog, a toothbrush and two scripts before his house was about to burn. And MacGraw remembers one winter when mudslides seemed certain after days and nights of rain. “I figured that the locust plagues were next. So I packed my son Josh in the car with a friend and drove to Santa Fe.”

“The thing I have infinite faith in is what I glibly describe as the inherent forces of nature,” explains Ann Soble, editor of the Malibu Surfside News. “Malibu shifts, slides, twists and turns. Maybe we need some more healthy rumbles out here or maybe a couple of good storms to scare people and keep things in perspective.”

The 1980s will be remembered as the decade when Malibuites moved into the mainstream in terms of modern conveniences, no matter if there’s still only one movie theater, a single highway going in and out of the community which forces residents to plan their movements with the precision of a Pentagon invasion, and old-fashioned septic tanks which occasionally overflow but get credit for keeping development to a minimum.

Now, after a decade of putting up with less-than-gourmet grocery stores and just two truly fine restaurants, Malibu La Scala and Splash, a new era has dawned. At least that’s how residents describe the new shopping center in back of the Malibu Colony with a 24-hour Hughes Supermarket and the imminent arrival of Granita, the $2-million Mediterranean bistro that Wolfgang Puck hopes to have ready by next summer.

For Larry Hagman, a 23-year veteran of Malibu Colony with his wife, Maj, zipping down to the new shopping center for fresh croissants and brioches on his Yamaha motor scooter is the “best thing ever,” he gushes. Even so, a vocal group of neighborhood residents including Burgess Meredith tried to thwart even these meager efforts at trendiness.

“I can understand that they would be concerned about any new business going on. If I had a house there, I would, too,” sympathizes Puck’s wife and partner, Barbara Lazaroff. “But the majority of people in Malibu are really excited about the restaurant. After all, they are customers at Spago and Chinois anyway.”

Saturday night dinner reservations at La Scala are so hard to get in summer, for instance, that holiday weekends can be booked as much as a year in advance. “There’s probably more business transacted at La Scala on a Saturday night than in most of Hollywood during the summer time,” says publisher Arnold York.

That is, if you can be heard. One-time producer Jerry Weintraub was dining at La Scala’s old location (the restaurant moved to new quarters in June) when he received a call from a good friend in Washington. Weintraub had to take the telephone into a walk-in refrigerator in the restaurant’s kitchen because the dining room was so noisy he couldn’t hear a word.

“George, you wouldn’t believe where I am,” Weintraub told then Vice President George Bush.

In fact, Malibu enters the 1990s as more of an entertainment community enclave than ever. This summer, by all accounts, has seen more movie, television and music stars and executives buying and renting in the resort.

The Colony, as usual, gets more than its fair share of the famous because of its guarded security entrance, even though the houses are so close together that when residents get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, they may wind up at their neighbor’s. Still, some think it’s worth the steep price of admission--houses $2 million and up--to see longtime resident Don Rickles standing on his deck like Caesar and screaming, “How does it feel to live in paradise? “ or stalwart Larry Hagman playing beach Frisbee beyond the seawall, or occasional renter Robert Redford offering to throw a football to his neighbor, Beverly Hills developer and L.A. Clippers owner Donald T. Sterling.

“If Robert Redford wants to send you a pass, you go,” laughs Sterling, who since moving to the Colony in the mid-1970s has stayed unabashedly star-struck. “I pull out my car, and the Million-Dollar Man--Lee Majors--invites me to watch a game on television. And, the other day, Pia Zadora announces that her little girl wants to have lunch with my son.”

Carbon Beach, better known as “Deal Beach” because of all the entertainment industry honchos who have houses there, lays claim to Warners president Terry Semel, Disney Studios president Jeffrey Katzenberg, former Fox president Leonard Goldberg, Columbia Television Chairman Gary Lieberthal, and producers David Geffen, Freddie Fields, Jerry Bruckheimer, Bob Chartoff, Fred Silverman and Alan Landsburg.

Meanwhile, industry insiders in-the-know are buying near Broad Beach, where Disney Chairman Frank Wells, Creative Artists Agency founder Michael Ovitz, producer Grant Tinker and directors Steven Spielberg and Walter Hill live alongside Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Gless, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

In addition, some celebrities have created Malibu compounds so humongous they comprise their own locations, including Johnny Carson, Dick Clark, Jerry Weintraub, Barbra Streisand (who’s trying to sell hers) and Michael Landon, whose new home is under construction.

And while Malibu is mainly filled with doctors, lawyers, realtors and retirees, along with the proverbial house-rich, cash-poor writers and producers who haven’t sold a script or idea in years, “celebrities remain very much part of the ambiance,” explains Arnold York, the publisher of the weekly Malibu Times. “But the thing that’s characteristic of most Malibu people, whether famous or not, is they really want to be left alone.”

“It’s a town,” notes Ali MacGraw, “where it makes no difference whether you are highly recognizable, or a guy who works for the phone company. Nobody is interested in anything except what kind of neighbor you are.”

But Malibu’s definition of good neighborliness is now under scrutiny.

Surprising as it is given their penchant for national political activism, many Malibu celebrities for the most part have not taken an active role in deciding their community’s future. “They’ll write a check or get involved in motherhood issues like saving the mountain lion or banning fruit pesticides. But some have told me they don’t want to get involved in knock-down, drag-out political fights here because they think that’s not good for business,” says one Malibu publisher.

Some celebrities, however, are getting deeply embroiled in the current debate. Rod Steiger, for instance, has joined with his wife, Paula, who is active in the community’s slow-growth campaign, and has appeared at several government meetings in connection with a large condominium complex near his home that he is fighting.

“There are some celebrities who are longtime residents like Olivia Newton-John, Dick Clark, Michael Landon, Rich Little, Cheech Marin and others who are there for every single solitary thing that we need, either money or emotional support,” MacGraw points out. “But there’s an awful lot of people out there with a ton of money who don’t really give a damn about the place they live. When I was helping to raise money for the Malibu Emergency Room and called some people I know, I just couldn’t believe when they said no. Because where are they going to go when their kids fall off the skateboard? Right now, they just want to make sure that they’ve got parking for 16.”

Beverly Hills realtor Stan Herman, for instance, stays studiously uninvolved. Wanting to share in Malibu’s sun and sand over 20 years ago, he chose--in typical Malibu fashion--a weekend home on Carbon Beach that’s elbow-to-elbow with others. While he knows the community is changing--”obviously the traffic has increased substantially”--he’s content to stay put more or less permanently.

“Once I drive through my gates and walk through my doors, nothing has changed about Malibu for me. The sand is the same. The ocean is the same. And that’s why I love it.”

It is this “drawbridge mentality,” as some activists describe it, that angers those residents willing to put themselves on the line for the benefit of their community. They say part-timers who don’t have as much of a stake in the community are creating a Bel Air-by-the-Sea--now that having a second or third home in Malibu is once again a “status symbol” among the entertainment industry set.

“Suddenly, everybody you’ve ever heard of has bought a home out here. But there’s no conscience about community from the new arrivals. And it’s devastating. Really devastating. I feel the change,” MacGraw complains. “I hope that all those people get bored and discover Laguna.”

That may happen.

Says Hagman: “Sure, Malibu will look like Newport someday with those huge complexes and new houses. That’s one of the reasons I’ve bought a place in Ojai.”

He’s not alone. “A celebrity told me once they were not really concerned what happens to Malibu. And I said, ‘Tell me why,’ ” recalls Ann Soble, editor of the Malibu Surfside News.

“And they took another sip of wine and said, ‘If Malibu is no longer a place that I want to be, I’ll go somewhere else.’ ”