Telling the Story of Pacific Palisades From Westerns to White Wine

Every time Randy Young drives around Pacific Palisades, he sees history.

“The Thomas Ince movie studio was right here,” he said, pointing to where the pioneer filmmaker made many early Westerns and comedies in the teens at what is now Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. “The cowboy set was on one hill and the Indian set on another.”

Young wheeled his 1965 orange Mustang around to go back up Sunset. “Now let me show you Will Rogers’ ranch-style home at the state park.”

This is more than just an exercise in civic pride for the 35-year-old commercial advertising photographer. Born and raised in the Palisades, Young believes that the locals should be involved in preserving the area’s history. His present project--in cooperation with TV commercial director John Thiele and the Pacific Palisades Historical Society--is to produce a one-hour historical video on the entire area, something he says has never been done.

“Most history is presented in such a way that people can’t relate to it,” Young said as he drove by Aldersgate Lodge, pointing out the Mission-Revival-style building patterned after the original California Mission design created by the Franciscan fathers in the late 1700s.

“If it wasn’t for local historical societies, many documents might get trashed, and their facts would be gone forever. Fortunately, there are people willing to dig through attics to find material that might otherwise never see the light of day,” he said. The most recent finds came from Martha Wynegar, who has lived in the community since 1925. While going through her attic, she found amateur movie footage of Pacific Palisades shot in the 1930s.

A premium has been put on unearthing quality movie footage, and that has brought a few surprises, including 20 minutes of a 1935 celebrity polo tournament that includes Spencer Tracy on the field, Eddie Cantor announcing and Dolores Del Rio and Constance Bennett in the audience.

Some footage of important events continues to elude them.

“We’re having trouble coming up with film of the 1938 flood,” Young said after looking through the collections of Hearst-Metrotone, UCLA, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “It was a terrible disaster, wiping out a lot of the area, including Rustic and Santa Monica canyons. And then at the end of the year, there was an equally bad fire.”

The idea of a Pacific Palisades video came about when historical society member Martha Brown and Thiele, who made commercials for Honda and Coors, were talking one evening two years ago about the need to preserve local history. “We both said, ‘Let’s do a video,’ ” recalled Brown, who has lived with her husband Chuck in Pacific Palisades for 48 of her 69 years. “John said he’d do it for $1, and when Randy was told about it, he said he’d do it for the same amount. We need a good record, clearly presented, of what has happened here so people understand what preceded them.”

Other society members thought it was a good idea too, including director-producer Phil Leacock, 72, who has been a part of “The Waltons,” “Falcon Crest,” “Bonanza” and “Hawaii 5-0.” As the project unfolds, he plans to assist by giving technical advice on the production, including cinematography.

“A historical video can be very effective,” Leacock said. “And I don’t think anyone has tried to make an entertaining film about the pros and cons of the Palisades.”

Research associate Frank Gargani, 37, and Young have looked through public and private photo collections ranging from the local newspaper morgues, including the Palisadian-Post, to that of Ernie Marquez, a member of a local land grant family that traces its local roots back to 1825.

From the Hearst-Metrotone News Archives, a trove of movie news shorts from the 1920s through 1940s, they unearthed the polo match as well as another reel with golf pro Ben Hogan playing in the 1948 U. S. Open. In the UCLA archives was a 1948 Warner Bros. film on Will Rogers, and another on a 1932 Olympic bicycle race that had its finish line at Porto Marina Way and Pacific Coast Highway.

Plans call for a trip to Washington in April by Young and Gargani to visit the Library of Congress, where they hope to locate films from the 1910s by the Thomas Ince Studios and films starring William S. Hart.

And there are more libraries to go. One is Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Collection, where Young and Gargani hope to find a late 1950s publicity movie made by General Electric of the then-actor’s all-electric home in Pacific Palisades. Even though the Reagan library is not yet open to the public, the society will be allowed to comb the files. “It’s sort of Sherlock Holmesing it, sleuthing around trying to find these nebulous collections,” Young said.

The donation by Zola Clearwater of her husband Clifford’s photo collection was another great find. From 1930 to 1960, he ran the Palisadian, a community newspaper that continues today as the Palisadian-Post, and the Clearwaters saved every photograph that appeared in the paper.

“It’s an unbelievable collection, more than 6,000 photographs and negatives that go back to the turn of the century,” Young said.

Another important find included the silent films of the Old Keystone Film Co.--remembered for the Keystone Kops--which used Pacific Palisades as a backdrop in the 1910s.

A total of 1,400 man-hours have been spent on the project so far. The research is done, and shooting--new footage that will wrap around historical material--is set to begin the first week in January. The completed film is expected to be made up of 80% old and 20% new photography.

The new footage will include the business and commercial area, the Will Rogers Ranch, the garage at the home where actress Thelma Todd was murdered in 1935, the Bernheimer Gardens and the Murphy ranch in Rustic Canyon, which was heavily fortified in the late 1930s by American Nazis and raided by the FBI the day after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

A number of well-known actors who reside in Pacific Palisades have been approached to narrate the video, but no one yet has been selected. Original music already has been pledged by Palisades resident Thomas Newman, son of composer Alfred Newman, whose credits include “The Lost Boys” and “Desperately Seeking Susan.”

The video is scheduled for completion in April and will be released to local high schools. Young estimates the final cost of the yet-to-be-titled project at about $30,000. The 17-year-old historical society plans to sell the video for about $20 in local bookstores and at its fund-raising events.

“Making films is not easy, particularly when you don’t have the financial resources that most of us are used to,” Leacock said. “After all, our budget might be equivalent to half an hour of third-rate TV shows.”

Young said there are other considerations as well, such as deciding in what medium the new footage is to be shot. While video is easier and less expensive, he and Thiele haven’t ruled out shooting in film and then transferring it to video--making the new scenes match the historical ones--which Young says could increase the budget by 30% but might enhance the finished product.

This is not Young’s first project for the society, but it is his first attempt at video. He and his mother, Betty, have published a number of local history books, including “Pacific Palisades--Where the Mountains Meet the Sea,” “A History of the Pacific Palisades” published in 1973, “Rustic Canyon” in 1975 and the just-released “Street Names of Pacific Palisades and Other Tales.”

One misconception that Young hopes the video will dispel is that the 25,000 or so acres that make up Pacific Palisades have always been a place for the financially well-heeled.

“It was a real cheap place to buy land, and you couldn’t give away the lots in the 1930s,” he said. “The ‘40s were middle-income blue-collar and servicemen. Then in the 1950s, you got a lot of engineers from RAND and professors from UCLA. It was the early 1970s when prices really began to rise dramatically. The whole character of the community went from being a mix of blue- and white-collar to very white-collar, a lot of lawyers and doctors, the only people who can afford today’s million-dollar fixer-uppers.

“The community has really turned around from being the bastion of religion and temperance in the 1920s to a white wine and quiche set today,” he added.