My Star-Crossed Life

As a granddaughter of Hollywood, I took it for granted that everyone bumped into movie stars. My grandmother lived on Berendo Street just north of Hollywood Boulevard and south of Los Feliz. When we came to visit her from Pasadena for one of our regular outings, it seemed natural to spot celebrities while downing a burger at the Brown Derby or listening to a record in the booth at Wallach’s Music City. I learned later that I was different--not everyone saw stars.

Was it in the genes? My mother told me how, as she was strolling my older brother down Rodeo Drive during World War II, Glenn Ford approached in uniform. Wick pointed and said, “Daddy!” How during one lunch hour from Wright MacMahon Secretarial School she was seated next to Clark Gable in a Brighton Way coffee shop. Gable engaged her in “quite pleasant conversation,” then years later, they resumed their tete-a-tete during a game at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. In a Corona del Mar restaurant she turned to find Humphrey Bogart perched on the barstool beside her. “We laughed and talked for an hour,” she said. “It might’ve been the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” And when I asked whether their paths ever crossed again, her gaze drifted off. “No, but we’ll always have the Five Crowns.”

I know now that we were struck by some star bolt that predestined random encounters with the Hollywood galaxy of fame. I scoffed at maps to stars’ homes, didn’t bother with premieres. From the nucleus of an ordinary Pasadena childhood, there emanated some uncanny force that drew the celebrity orbit to me. I was the ponytailed, freckle-faced girl next door who was a movie-star magnet.

My mother didn’t teach me how to select cantaloupe at the Farmers Market; it was Danny Kaye. I didn’t cross the street with the help of a flashing “walk” signal at the corner of Rodeo Drive and Wilshire Boulevard; it was Michael Caine who took my arm as we stepped off the curb. At our summer-rental house near the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, I learned double solitaire from Dick Dale while he ogled my beautiful cousin Barbara. I won passage on the “Last Train to Clarksville”--a train ride with the Monkees before a performance in Del Mar. Desi Arnaz Jr. rescued me from a serious loser by cutting in at a Loyola High School dance. A knock on our front door revealed Jerry Van Dyke looking for a telephone.

My uncle got passes to Paramount Studios for a girlfriend and me. When I spotted Michael Landon outside the “Bonanza” set, he asked if I would hold his olive-green jacket while the cameras rolled. My brush with Little Joe boosted my confidence in my ability to lure the illustrious, and I sauntered away to await the next blessed event.

One day my mother arrived at my high school to spring me to “get a shot.” In fact, we rushed home to watch the “Batman” TV show being filmed down the street at the house they called Wayne Manor. That summer I offered Triscuits to Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, who graced my street with several episodes of “Mission Impossible.” I also was asked to step into a cameo spot for a cereal commercial being filmed on a driveway three doors down. Was this my meteoric beginning? What alignment of planets had caused my practical parents to buy a home on that glorious street?

But we all peak. People say it happened to me during the filming of “Change of Habit” at my convent school during a pathetic attempt to orchestrate an introduction to Mary Tyler Moore. I had just completed my piano lesson in the convent living room when co-star Elvis Presley plopped down on the piano bench. A kiss on the cheek, a gasp from the ever-vigilant nuns, and he was off to do a scene, as cordoned-off hungry teenage girls screeched and wept. You see, Elvis was easy because I didn’t want him; Mary remained elusive, the constellation I was stretching too far to reach.

After that, the well grew dry. The lure of fantasy waned, and I fell for real guys nobody knew. Over the years I listened to disillusioned stargazers who requested autographs only to be shunned, or who struck up a conversation only to be abandoned. So when my daughter recently entered her star-struck phase, I encouraged her to go with it, but not to try too hard. They would discover her when she least expected it, like a young girl plucked from a soda-fountain stool for the silver screen. But what daughter believes her mother? She wrote letters that were never answered, and even left one, with a stamped return envelope, at the Sky Bar on Sunset Boulevard, hoping Leonardo DiCaprio would respond.

It’s harder now, what with roving glam. Films are shot on location instead of suburban avenues or studios. The odds against a brief encounter are far higher when the stars are in Canada or Europe. But there was no discouraging her when she was invited to watch the stars arrive at the Golden Globes. “Please, mom--get me out of school!” she pleaded.

I considered the cyclical beauty of this scenario, and let her go, but only after school. But I knew nothing fruitful could come of it. It was too much anticipation, and too little accident.