Growing up in the West Los Angeles subdivision known as
Beverlywood, I developed a certain perspective on Beverly Hills. (For the record, I was called Beverly long
before I moved into the area, though I’m sure my parents were not ignorant of
the name’s associations with ritzy SoCal enclaves.) As an L.A. girl who lived just a few short
blocks from the Beverly Hills border, I developed mixed emotions about the
little city to the north. Yes, it was fun to stroll up Beverwil Drive and find
myself among charming cafes and chic boutiques. I remember star-sightings over
lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet and yummy ice cream cones at Wil Wright’s.
On the other hand, kids like me had to deal with the
snobbery of our north-of-the-border peers. They told us in no uncertain terms
that their public schools were much better than ours. I was informed that the
A’s I earned at LA.’s Canfield Elementary School would be mere B’s and C’s in
Beverly Hills, since their standards were so much higher. Those memories have
shaped my feelings about Beverly Hills ever since.
Still, I liked seeing Donald O’Connor pushing his cart in
the supermarket, Zsa Zsa Gabor nibbling on pastry at Blum’s, and Sammy Davis
Jr. driving his Excalibur through the tree-lined streets of Beverly Hills. And
I remember the day in 1960 the city celebrated the installation of an odd
little sculpture at the intersection of Olympic Blvd. and Beverly Drive. This
so-called Celluloid Monument honors Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph
Valentino, Will Rogers, and other Hollywood personalities who fought to preserve the autonomy of Beverly Hills
when it was on the brink of being swallowed up by the city of Los Angeles.
One big issue at the time was the allocation of drinking
water, always a major concern in dusty, drought-prone Southern California.
Another, of course, was power politics. Nancie Clare’s engaging The Battle for Beverly Hills lays it all
out for us, making clear why the survival of one small California city has
lessons for us today. Her subtitle, “A City’s Independence and the Birth of
Celebrity Politics,” points to the impact of Hollywood stardom—something
brand-new when the annexation vote was taken back in 1923—on the general public.
Clare’s book told me a lot about the evolution of Southern California as a
result of the burgeoning film industry. In particular, it clued me in to the
power wielded by Mary Pickford, a woman determined to make her own way, both
artistically and financially. Pickford fought hard to preserve the new little
city as a garden spot populated by the wealthy and the famous. It was she who
enlisted noteworthy actor and director friends to go door to door, appealing to
Beverly Hills residents to vote against being annexed by Los Angeles. (The
nearby city of Hollywood had knuckled under to its much-bigger neighbor back in
1910.)
Pickford’s posse—which
also included cowboy star Tom Mix, funny-man Harold Lloyd, and Fred Niblo, director
of the original Ben-Hur—liked the
privacy that living in Beverly Hills afforded. Clare explains that matinee idol
Conrad Nagel, another of Pickford’s eight campaigners, would one day even “head up a movement to
build a wall around Beverly Hills to keep the outer world at bay.” This talk of
a wall can’t fail to remind us of other public figures with showbiz roots who
have used their fame as a political stepping stone. There’s Ronald Reagan, of
course, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a certain reality-show host who has
parlayed his celebrity all the way to the White House.
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