Things that aren’t here anymore…

As time passes, my list of things that aren’t here anymore grows exponentially. Recently I visited an old friend in Beverly Hills. We toured downtown and relished remembering the things that weren’t here anymore. Baillie’s, Walters, Amelia Gray, Carl's Market, Harrgatay's, Café Swiss, The Saloon, Dan's Snip-n-Curl barber shop, Dorso, Mr. Guy, Eric Ross, Jurgensen's, La Chaumiere, La Bella Fontana, The Bistro, et al., all gone baby, gone. Edelweiss Chocolates was still here.

I ask the current owner, if the old chocolate factory is still at the back of the shop. She said yes, and would we like to come and see. We did.

A tidbit, Lucille Ball a faithful Edelweiss Chocolates customer actually used the chocolate conveyor belt that’s part of the Edelweiss’ factory as the inspiration for an “I Love Lucy” episode and I’m sure you know which one.

 

We enjoyed that, but it made me feel one hundred years old. Time to go. As we drove home, we passed one of my favorite “memorial sites”. 1021 North Roxbury Drive.

The house where George Gershwin and his brother Ira wrote some of the most important American songs ever composed and where Rosemary Clooney lived for over five decades was reduced to a pile of rubble.

The City's action, taken without public hearing, or any notification to community members who had launched a campaign of letters and pleas to the Beverly Hills Mayor and the Beverly Hills City Council, cleared the way for another “Persian Palace”.

It was here that George came bounding down the stairs of the living room to the piano saying jubilantly, "Hey Ira, it can't be A Foggy Day in London. It's got to be "A Foggy Day in London Town!" The house became a social center for Hollywood's (and New York's) most creative forces of the 1930's - including Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, Harold Arlen, and Oscar Levant.

 

The Gershwin-Clooney house was one of the last remaining historic houses on the legendary street of North Roxbury Drive that once boasted the likes of Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, and Jimmy Stewart. Nick Clooney, brother of Rosemary, remembered, "I once sat on the floor leaning against the back of a chair where Bing Crosby was sitting as he sang White Christmas for an audience of seven."

 

Gary Shea’s road case in the pool house

Los Angeles has a transcendent feeling even amidst the pace that has kept it on the cutting edge of trend. There is a tenuous tie to the past. While so many of the legendary people are gone, the houses that remain can still bring back memories and inspire fantasies.

But with no preservation ordinance to protect its history, the cultural and historic legacies are left to the whims of homebuyers with cash. These historic houses are razed with the ease of dismantling yesterday's movie set. They don't have granite kitchens or a marble entries, but they have soul and history. There is no Take Two. No digital fix. When it's dead, it really is dead. Gone. Next.