Who says Frederick’s of Hollywood is trashy?Certainly...
Who says Frederick’s of Hollywood is trashy?
Certainly not the state Integrated Waste Management Board. The agency recently gave the famous undergarment maker its WRAP award--WRAP, in this case, meaning Waste Reduction Awards Program. In the last four years, Frederick’s has recycled about 600,000 pounds of paper and cardboard as well as 100,000 pounds of clothes hangers.
And the castoff lingerie? “We give them to charity,” a spokeswoman said.
A nice gesture--even if the undergarments wouldn’t keep anyone very warm.
DRIVING MR. BUGSY’S: We quoted a California Restaurant Assn. list that said Lawry’s became the first restaurant in the state to offer valet parking in 1946.
Bill Dawson of Long Beach begs to differ. He was parking cars at such Sunset Strip nightspots as the Mocambo, Ciro’s and the Trocadero from 1942 to 1944. He started when he was 15.
“Most of the guys parking cars were child actors,” he said. “The money we got from acting went to our families. But the tips from parking, we kept.”
Dawson recalls the celebrity customers as an amiable lot. Errol Flynn even held his temper the night one of Dawson’s co-workers forgot to set the hand brake on the actor’s shiny new Packard Darrin, which promptly crashed into a line of cars.
Another evening, actress Betty Grable came upon Dawson eating dinner in her luxurious Chrysler--”it had a great radio,” he noted. Her reaction? “She just said, ‘Oh, excuse me. I didn’t mean to bother you. I forgot my purse,’ ” Dawson recalled.
Then there was mobster Bugsy Siegel, who not only would tip Dawson a dollar--25 cents was the standard tip then--but would bring out a Coke from the Mocambo bar for the youngster.
“There was room enough to park one car in front of the Mocambo,” Dawson said. “When Bugsy showed up, he would get the place.”
DIAL M FOR MERVYN’S:
Roger Reel of Culver City points out that the M’s on the Mervyn’s store doors in Westchester have had their ups and downs. “When the building first opened in the late ‘40s, the M’s stood for Miliron’s department store,” he wrote. “When it became the Broadway department store, they were inverted to W for Westchester. Now’s it’s a Mervyn’s, and they have been inverted back to M.”
Adds Reel: “Just wait until it becomes a Wal-Mart!”
PULP FACT: While in Bulgaria on a four-month teaching grant, Times writer Larry Gordon saw the movie “Kriminales.” You might know the film by its English name--”Pulp Fiction.” Anyway, Gordon, a Silver Lake resident, recognized the shabby dwelling where the Bruce Willis character hides in the film--the River Glen Motel on Riverside Drive, close to Griffith Park. “That’s near where we live,” he told his companions, semi-proudly.
Upon returning to L.A., Gordon found that the motel had been bulldozed. It’s an empty lot now. Another great L.A. landmark disappears.
miscelLAny Angelenos who feel left out of the Super Bowl excitement can always rent “Two-Minute Warning,” a 1976 film about a sniper at a championship game at the L.A. Coliseum. The two teams in the movie are Los Angeles and Baltimore (each now bereft of NFL franchises). Who cares if the game footage in the movie appears to show USC and Stanford playing?
