....© 2000, Kimit A. Muston
Bette Davis - Take Two
I suppose even the person who writes "Slippery When Wet" finds his work misinterpreted once in awhile. It is a writer's task to communicate information entertainingly without confusion. But struggle as you might with the words, sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail and sometimes you do both.
A few weeks ago I wrote a column on a picnic area next to the Griffith Park Equestrian Center named after Bette Davis. I tried to chronicle my frustration at not being able to find why the park had come to be named after the actress. And I intended the column to say said Ms. Davis deserved an answer. Unfortunately some readers thought I was being disrespectful of Ms. Davis. That was not my intent but I take full responsibility for the confusion.
Other folks thought I hadn't done enough research. Well, you can always do more research but I only have about 750 words to use in a column and since all of the answers I got were the same, (i.e. "I don't know why the park was named after Bette Davis") I listed only some of the sources I queried. And even then a paragraph thanking some of the people for their help had to be cut to fit the space available.
Besides, the column was research in itself, and it paid off. The answer so helpfully provided by the readers was that during the 1930's Bette Davis, already a star at the Warner Brother's studio, lived across Rancho street from the park with her mother, her sister and niece. Her property extended east from the Equestrian Center stables to Victory Blvd. and north all the way to the corner of Western and Victory, and included not only a striking Tudor home but also a stables filled with Arabian horses, and a swimming pool.
Lousia Carder, who grew up in the area, told me that as "a mere tot" she remembered seeing Ms. Davis riding her horses in the park. Anita Landis, who grew up next door to the star, described Ms. Davis as "never friendly".
Perhaps this was because Bette Davis only used the house on Rancho when she was working and spent her free time in New Hampshire on her farm she fondly called "Butternut". It was in New Hampshire that she met Arthur Farnsworth, who became her second husband in late December of 1940.
Ms. Landis wrote that her father often rode in the park with Arthur Farnsworth and she remembers him as "a big, athletic fellow. Very friendly." It must have been a great shock when, without warning in August of 1943, Arthur collapsed on the pavement on Hollywood Blvd. and died two days later of a probable cerebral hemorrhage. Ms. Davis stayed by his side the whole time but he never woke up.
The star would marry again in late November of 1945 to another big athletic friendly fellow she had only known for only a month; William Sherry. The house on Rancho was sold and, according to Ms. Landis, the property was subdivided and subdivided again. The stables are gone now, and the pool is too. Only the house remains. As a side note, Ms. Davis didn't sell her home in New Hampshire until 1961.
I intend to donate the letters I got to the Glendale Historical Society. And I hope others who remember L.A. when it was younger will write down their memories and donate them so they can be saved. But for me and the Bette Davis Picnic area, this is the end.
If I had the time I might call Parks and Recreation again and check the records of the last renovation of the park. That might have been when the sign went up. If I had the time I might track down the Davis estate and ask if she donated any money to maintain the park. If I had the time I might try to contact her family and see if Bette Davis ever spoke in her later life of Arthur Farnsworth.
But I'm afraid there must remain some mystery about the park and about Bette Davis herself because I have a deadline to submit this story to my editor and he has his own deadlines to meet. This is why life is so full of mysteries; deadlines and sloppy writing and misinterpretations and the limits of space and time. It's a wonder we really know anything at all.
Democracy of the Dunces
I have come to the conclusion that Americans should not be allowed to vote. Now, I know there is an election coming up and I'm sure all of you are looking forward to taking part in a process that millions of men and women have given their lives to preserve - and by "all of you" I mean the twenty or thirty percent who can spare the fifteen minutes it takes to show up at a polling place and either pull a lever or poke a card with a sharp stick. But judging by the minority who do vote, and the choices they have been making, I'm afraid the citizens of this great democracy have shown they are simply not qualified to participate in government anymore.
Consider the long record of national electoral mistakes. Jesse Helms...Case closed.
And our local record is no better. It was we California voters who elected Chuck Quackenbush as Insurance Commissioner. That was like hiring Lizzy Borden as a night nurse in a retirement home. He may go to jail, yet - fat chance - but what about the fools who hired him? Shouldn't they, that is we, bare some punishment as well? We were Chuck's accomplices. Listen, if we were an eighteen year old black kid who drove the getaway car in a $500 robbery we'd be on our way to jail right now. Instead we helped a white guy steal several hundred million dollars and we're getting off scot free. But I digress.
The voters of North America have elected enough crooks, buffoons and con men in our history to staff an HMO. The politicians keep dangling the same carrots in front of our face and we keep thinking they are buying us dinner. You would think after two hundred and some odd years of the same pick-up lines the American voters would start playing hard to get. But every November our I.Q.'s drop out our ears. All it takes is some handsome guy in a good suit, a couple of fancy TV commercials and he can get anything he wants from us. Face it, we are electoral tramps.
You think I'm exaggerating? If I told you that you could buy a Rolls Royce for half price would you be suspicious? Of course you would. But did you ever vote for a politician who promised low taxes and more police, low taxes and smarter kids and low taxes and better roads? Yeah, me too. I'm telling you if gullibility were a crime the whole country would be in jail.
My father told me the truth about elections forty years ago. He said, "You can tell a politician is lying when his lips are moving. And you can tell when he is about to pick your pocket because his lips are moving and he's telling you what you want to hear." Could we do worse by tossing a coin every November? I don't think so. But since the treasury department wants to get rid of coins we may soon lose that option. Still, I think I've come up with a simple solution.
On Halloween night every registered voter would be tracked down, arrested and locked up. Then on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November every non-registered slacker over the age of 18 would be driven at bayonet point to the polls and forced to vote for somebody. Anybody.
Those lazy non-voters are just as responsible for all the public mistakes made in the last two hundred years as the people who do vote. And the slackers can't take any credit for the few lucky guesses that have been elected. So let's stick it to them for a change.
I'm sick of hearing people whine that they can't vote because they don't understand the issues. Nobody understands the issues! You think the candidates understand the issues? Listen, if politicians were that smart they'd get a real job. You don't really understand the state lottery rules, do you? Does that stop you from buying tickets? Voting is the same thing.
Get yourself a system. Vote alphabetically; it worked so well for that idiot doctor on Survivor. Can't you just wait to be one of his patients? "I think today you have come down with, is this Tuesday?.....Meningitis." But I digress, yet, again.
Okay, maybe not alphabetically - but vote, for crying out loud! Vote like it was your last chance. Because I promise you, you screw up this time and I may have to take action.
Erroring Arianna
I felt sad for Arianna Huffington on Sunday. She put together a delightful opening for her circus in Philadelphia, her Shadow Convention, intended as a counter-point to the Republican gathering. She drew a nice crowd. She had acrobats, jugglers and a man shooting his mouth out of a cannon - that would be Mr.Campbell, from San Jose. And then an elephant showed up and ruined the entire show.
Still, it was predictable. Arianna is an intellectual, a lady of high ideals and a one big character flaw: she believes what politicians tell her. She believed Newt Gingrich when he told her he was interested in education. But Newt doesn't want anybody smarter than he is, which means if he ever gets back into power we may have to close every university in the country. And a few high schools, too. Arianna doesn't like Newt anymore, but she helped to get the Republican congress elected in 1994 and that was all that Newt wanted from her.
The same thing happened again on Sunday. But this time the betrayer was Senator John McCain (R-Arizona). He was supposed to talk about campaign finance reform, an issue that darn near made him the Republican presidential candidate and one of the three big issues Arianna's Shadow Convention is addressing. The other two are reform of the national drug policy and the growing gap between rich and want-to-be rich, or as the convention refers to them, "the poor."
The Senator did talk reform but then he told the room full of laid back pseudo-cynical pseudo-revolutionaries that "Mr. Establishment" from Texas, George Walker Bush, was "Mr. Reform" in disguise. (Clark Kent should look so good on Halloween.) It gagged the audience. Loud booing burst forth and shouts of "Get him off!" rang through the arena. It's a good thing that most of the Shadow folks are in favor of gun control or somebody might have taken a shot at the Senator.
Arianna had to grab the microphone and chastise her followers. They sat in disrespectful silence until McCain finished but it was sad to see Arianna defending John McCain's right to disrespect her in front of her supporters.
But this guy was a Naval Officer, remember; the son and grandson of naval officers. A revolutionary, in Navy terms, is a guy who files a complaint. Complain twice and you are an anarchist, three times and your a civilian. And once you get your orders, you follow them. Well, the Republican string pullers said John had to praise G. W. and John did as he was told.
I'm sure Senator McCain is going to be swallowing his pride a lot this week but that is the price of a job in a Bush administration. But Arianna, poor trusting Arianna was expecting more from him.
She was also expecting media coverage of her "convention of ideas". All she got was ten seconds on the evening news shows of McCain being booed. What the national media did on Sunday was interview Dick Cheney and take turns asking each other what they thought about him. This is what passes for electronic news in the early twenty-first century; reporters interviewing each other - how informative. On the Fox News Channel, of course, they spent most of Sunday doing what they do every day, discussing what a bad nasty man Bill Clinton is.
If I could speak with Arianna I would say, "Listen, girlfriend, you've got to stop believing what every John, Newt and Harry tells you. Politicians are all alike. They just want to get their hands on your ideas. And the minute they do, all they can think about is the ideas on the next girl." Would she listen to me? Probably not. But then Arianna Huffington without a fatal flaw wouldn't be half as interesting.
And now to Mr. Campbell. He's a Republican and in case you haven't heard (and many haven't) he's running against Dianne Feinstein for Senator. He has almost as much chance of winning the race as a limping gazelle delivering pizza to a pride of lions. His strategy consists of swallowing gasoline, soaking himself in hot wax, holding a lighted match to his lips and belching.
He announced to the convention on Sunday that he is in favor of shorter sentences and more treatment programs for drug users. This is fiscally responsible, logical and moral and it is possible he actually believes in it. It thus stands no chance of every being discussed rationally. And if the Democratic lioness doesn't completely destroy Mr. Campbell in the election, Republican vultures will finish him off afterwards.
Kimit A.Muston is a writer living in North Hollywood. He may be contacted at www.inditer.com.
His work may be also be read in the Los Angeles Daily News