He Sees Our Past Clearly

Since 1998, Charles Phoenix has made a modest living demonstrating a seemingly impossible proposition: Pictures of other people’s vacations are not boring.

On Saturday, his one-man show “God Bless Americana” resumed a limited run at the Egyptian Theatre. During the 1 1/2-hour “histo-tainment” lesson, Phoenix clicks through a deftly organized array of castoff color slides portraying ordinary Americans during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Many are now dead and most have no names, although Phoenix may anoint one “Smiley” or christen another “Miss Yellow Hat.” Yet these anonymous characters, peering earnestly from the backyards and amusement parks of mid-century America, have become Phoenix’s unwitting co-stars in a theatrical experience that has hit home among nostalgic Angelenos.

Living-room slide shows have been known to induce narcolepsy among viewers not actually featured in the pictures. But at the “Americana” shows, not only are audience members staying awake, they’re paying for the privilege and returning for more after intermission. “The stigma is gone!” Phoenix booms, as he relaxes with an iced tea in the living room of his Silver Lake apartment. “I’m showing people something they’re not able to get anywhere else.”

Slide show chic? Stranger things have happened.

Phoenix says a whole era’s worth of artifacts has morphed from trash to treasure simply through the passage of time. “There used to be a stigma with vintage cars too,” he says. “They used to be thought of as low class. It took a while to age. In the ‘70s, the everyday stuff was [regarded as] junk. It was common. And now, mid-century vintage has a positive spin.”

Phoenix certainly favors the mid-century look in his home. A box of Borax, circa 1947, sits on the stove. Walls are decorated with thrift shop paintings and three of Phoenix’s turquoise-and-yellow portraits of Southern California coffee shops showcasing the quirky space-age architectural style known as Googie. A chest of drawers salvaged from downtown L.A.’s old Bullock’s department store holds vintage travel brochures, wrapping paper, matchbooks, swizzle sticks, paint chips and hood ornaments. String dolls, toy cars and puppets of mysterious provenance crowd a nearby knick-knack shelf. Even the estate sale notebook Phoenix uses to scribble ideas for his show looks like it was exhumed from some long-since-demolished office building. And the chairs in the corner?

They once belonged to Howard Hughes. “I have to keep flushing through,” Phoenix says. “I’m always trading up.”

The secret to “Americana’s” success can be found in what the 39-year-old collector calls “the Room.” Here, crammed inside cartons and paper bags, are snapshots salvaged from thrift stores and flea markets, or given to Phoenix by fans of the show, friends of friends and anybody else who’s heard about the guy who collects old slides. “To sort, edit, categorize and catalog all this is completely overwhelming,” Phoenix admits. “I’m so devastated because I just lost a slide--I cannot figure out what happened to Jayne Mansfield at a dog show, 1959--it was unbelievable!”

With roughly 100,000 more slides on hand, Phoenix will no doubt recover.

“But I could have 10 bazillion slides,” he says, “and 99% of them will be of mountains and dirt. Believe me, most collections are pretty mediocre. It’s really about quality rather than quantity.”

Stooped over an opaque, plexiglass-topped table, Phoenix quickly edits the latest arrivals. Like a blackjack dealer whiffing through a deck of cards, he divvies up 100 slides according to the film brand information printed on their cardboard mounts. Then he eyes each picture through a loupe. The first 12 flunk. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no .... This is a dud collection unfortunately,” he says.

“Looking through these little windows into the past, it’s so interesting to see how it all shook out,” he muses. “A hairstyle, a building, a car, a mood even--how do we look at it now? How does the image play today?”

Phoenix holds up a photo of a family posed on the shoulder of a road. “I can tell you right now, this image doesn’t play too well--it’s not something we really care about. We want to see the unique and the extraordinary and the ordinary all at the same time. When I find something that’s really unusual, my spirit soars. I have so many slots in that carousel to fill, and you’d better make sure that every one of those slides is a humdinger.”

Phoenix became smitten with retro at age 14. Growing up in Ontario, he’d been cast in a community theater production of “Oklahoma!”

He needed a cowboy costume and walked into a thrift shop, where he found chaps, spurs and a lifelong vocation. He’s been looking back, fondly, ever since. “I think that history entertains people, and if you have a passion for something from the past, it nourishes you. I could step outside this minute and see where we’re at now. It’s where we’ve been--that’s what I find fascinating.”

After high school, Phoenix moved to Los Angeles, studied at the Fashion Institute of Design and briefly created retro-flavored clothing. By the late ‘80s, he was earning his living as a vintage-automobile dealer. In 1993, during a routine thrift store visit, Phoenix happened across a blue box labeled “Trip across United States--1957.” Instantly taken with the color slides inside, Phoenix bought a projector and presented an impromptu show in his living room. “I just called some friends and said, ‘Here’s a few of the things I found today.’ They were completely transfixed by these images, and I realized ‘OK, it’s not only me. Other people can tune in too.’ ”

Phoenix went public with his show in 1998 at the California Map and Travel Center in West Los Angeles. Loosely organized as a narrative about a cross-country trip around America, the program had unexpected impact. “I thought it would be completely dead serious,” Phoenix says. “I had no clue there was going to be humor involved. I went through the first seven or eight shots and there was no laughter. Then I came to this slide of a 1947 Chrysler crossing a river, and as soon as I showed that, the whole audience started laughing And I thought, ‘If they want to laugh, OK, we can laugh.’ ”

More gigs followed at bookstores, museums and performance spaces. Then Phoenix compiled “Part 2,” focusing on Southern California from the late ‘40s through the early ‘60s. With his new partner, Dutch-born nightclub promoter D.J. Haanraadts, handling the business, Phoenix opened “God Bless Americana, Part 2: The Retro Slide Tour of Southern California” at the Egyptian Theatre last November.

“This town is not like Boston or Chicago,” says Phoenix, who wrote his first book, “Southern California in the ‘50s,” three years ago, and has since produced “Cruising the Pomona Valley 1930-1970” and a book version of “God Bless Americana” published last spring. “The reason why it’s not like those places, and the reason why L.A.’s history is so grossly misunderstood, is that our history is so short. Therefore it’s dismissed as being unimportant.

“What I’m seeing in these slides from the ‘40s and ‘50s,” he continues, “is what places looked like then. What did Sunset Boulevard look like in 1948? The Brown Derby? We get to look through that peephole into the past. You have to make the history as entertaining as possible.”

Patrons of “Americana’s” Southern California show will learn, for example, that L.A. traffic lights used to be red or green only--no yellow; that Bing Crosby tried to compete with Walt Disney by opening a Santa Monica attraction called Pacific Ocean Park in 1959; that Joan Crawford personally inspected the premises of the Hot Dog Show in San Bernardino before ordering red hot and fries for her children; and that fishermen used to catch trout in the San Gabriel River.

Also documented are now-quaint pastimes including the Whittier Soap Box Derby, the jalopy races in Culver City, and, of course, Disneyland, back when Tomorrowland was promoted as “the World of 1987” and offered flying saucer rides. Individual portraits emblemize the period with startling clarity. An Azusa playboy outfitted in beret, sunglasses and bathrobe sits poolside surrounded by immaculately arranged bongos, black dial-up phone and fifth of bourbon. A boy forced to leave his pet monkey at home stands stiffly at attention while attending a camp in Big Bear named “Tomorrow’s Men Today.” Four little girls in Tarzana smile at the camera, identically outfitted by their mother in homemade dresses.

“The ‘50s and ‘60s was an underrated period in our history,” Phoenix says. “It was a time of mass consumerism, mass productivity, happy leisure lives for a lot of people. And there’s one big giant difference between now and then--we were dreaming of the future. Tomorrow was going to be a better day, and that is what we don’t have now in our culture--we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Back then, everything’s going to be just fine and dandy. They were selling the futurelike the cars with the big tail fins. Of course, they’re not going to take you to the moon, but you can at least have a vehicle that makes it look like you’re going there. I love the optimism more than anything.”

“Americana” is staged in a theater, but the show has few elements associated with a conventional theatrical production. There’s no director. Except for roller-rink organ music played during intermission, there’s no musical accompaniment or sound effects. The show has a beginning, middle and end, but no real dramatic conflict. And while Phoenix has a mellifluous, radio announcer-like voice, he’s never studied acting or gotten around to writing a formal script.

When narrating his show, Phoenix often wrings humor from an image by gently mocking the characters’ seemingly bizarre choices in cars, weaponry or bathing suits. But his commentary is grounded in documented fact. Phoenix, it turns out, is nearly as obsessive in his research as he is in collecting.

“Vintage slides come to me in many different ways,” he says. “Some are shipped in a bag and meticulously documented. A lot of times the slides are a complete jumble. I then have to play detective when I look at a collection.”

Phoenix conducts research on the Internet, but he also gets information from old brochures, postcards, magazines and books.

“You can tell if I make up a name--Miss Bobby Sox or whatever--but I tell the truth about the people,” he says. “I couldn’t honor these people by making things up about them. Even though I don’t have their permission, because they’re probably dead, I try to honor that person in the picture, so I might laugh with somebody but never at somebody.”

Phoenix plans more “Americana.” He talks about curating a holiday-themed show but would also like to explore edgier fare. “I’d love to do ‘The Dark Show,’ ” he says. “You know, people in coffins, and I have slides from an airplane crash in Whittier in 1957. I want to do dark stuff, but people don’t want to see that. They only want to see light, which is fine.”

Whatever shape his next show takes, Phoenix can be certain of one thing: The slides just keep coming. “Tonight,” Phoenix says, “I’ve got a guy coming over here who told me his parents took pictures of Walt Disney taking tickets on the Monorail in 1961. I’m dying to see that.”

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“GOD BLESS AMERICANA,” Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Dates: “Part 1: The Retro Slide Show Vacation Tour of the U.S.A.,” Saturdays through Aug. 24, 7 p.m. “Part 2: The Retro Slide Tour of Southern California,” Sundays through Aug. 25, 7 p.m. Price: $20. Phone: (866) 754-3374.

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Hugh Hart is a regular contributor to Calendar.