Home for Silver Screen Veterans to Spend Golden Years Expands
Hal Riddle waited seven years before a spot opened up at the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s retirement home. But his efficiency cottage, the place he has called home for five years, was worth the wait.
“No one is thrown out,” said Riddle, 80, who lives alone and has no immediate family. “It’s a feeling of security that goes a long way when you tend to be our age.”
That feeling may spread to more people when the fund completes a $115-million improvement project, including three new buildings--two assisted living “villas” and a new community health center on its 20-acre Wasserman Campus at Mulholland Drive and Calabasas Road.
The Motion Picture Relief Fund was established in 1921 by movie pioneers Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. The fund’s residents have to be at least 65 years old with 20 or more years of employment in the entertainment industry.
Last week, construction workers poured concrete for the villa, where steel columns have been erected. The three-story, 60,000-square-foot building will contain studios and one- and two-bedroom units, said Ed Malinowski, the fund’s administrative director of facilities management.
About 90 residents will live in the villa, which will contain a beauty salon, health spa, greenhouse, indoor and outdoor dining areas and a business center outfitted with computers and a stock market ticker, where residents can monitor their investments, he said.
There also will be a film and television production room, where retirees from the behind-the-scenes end of the business can keep up their skills.
“So people can dabble in their old craft,” Malinowski said. “Our goal is to have them do their own productions.”
The villa is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2001. Officials hope to complete another villa for about 100 residents in about three years if they can raise enough money.
The new community health center will offer outpatient care and include an aquatic center featuring healing therapy and a fitness center. A specialized unit to treat patients suffering from dementia will be renovated and will offer more outpatient care services.
The construction will also include earthquake retrofitting and improvement of portions of Calabasas Road, Mulholland Drive and Valmar Road, with the addition of sidewalks, gutters and trees, officials said. In the meantime, an organic farmer is still growing strawberries and tomatoes on the undeveloped acreage.
Construction at the Woodland Hills campus began in 1941. It has a 256-bed hospital, 62 small cottages for independent living and a 64-bed facility for seniors who need some assistance with daily tasks. About 300 to 400 people stay at the facility at any time, officials said.
Eventually, fund officials hope to develop an additional 20 of the campus’ 40 acres. The campus has a seven-year waiting list, which will not be completely eliminated with construction of the first villa.
Residents are looking forward to the increased capacity for more of their retired colleagues, Riddle said.
“By the time we get here, this is all we want,” Riddle said last week from his bungalow, whose walls are covered with framed, signed photographs of Hollywood stars and movie posters. “I never get tired of my cottage. It’s my little corner of heaven.”
Riddle decided as a 9-year-old boy in Kentucky that he would one day head for Hollywood. He played small roles in about 20 films and numerous TV shows and commercials. In the 1984 film “Johnny Dangerously,” a spoof about 1930s era gangsters starring Michael Keaton, Riddle played a warm, accommodating warden.
In 1957, when he began working in Hollywood, he started donating 1% of his salary to the nonprofit Motion Picture fund, which provides health care to entertainment industry workers. Those savings now help pay for his cottage, which costs $70 a day.
In 1999, 28,000 patients visited the campus’ current health center. The fund, which also operates five health centers and a child-care facility, has an annual budget of about $72 million, officials said.
In the last year, the fund has collected $32 million toward the expansion project. On Tuesday, the fund announced two major donations that will fund the construction.
A foundation funded by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, gave $500,000.
The donation is unprecedented for the Motion Picture fund, said Ken Scherer, the chief executive of the fund’s foundation, because, unlike most of the fund’s major donors, the Gates do not have ties to the entertainment industry.
“It’s really critical to help us achieve our goal,” he said.
The Thomas and Ruth Nagel Jones Trust also gave $500,000 to the fund in memory of Conrad Nagel, an actor and an early founder of the fund.
