(1960-1970) (1950-1960) (1970-1980) Table of Contents
Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Pelican: NY, 1971 (1976), 256 pp., 1976, 1971, 1960s, 1949, 1927, 1905, 1903, 1885, 1870s, 1860s, 1848, See Text
Fred E. Basten Santa Monica Bay: The First 100 Years, A pictorial history of Santa Monica, Venice, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu, Douglas-West Publishers: Los Angeles, CA, 1974, 227 pp., 1973, 1968, 1966, 1964, 1961, 1958, 1935, 1910 See Text
Myrna Oliver Alphonzo Bell Jr., 89: GOP Congressman Often Won Bipartisan Support, Los Angeles Times, 27 April 2004, B11, 1977, 1960s, 1950 See Text
John Cage An Autobiographical Statement, Southwest Review, 1991, 1960s, See Text
J.J. O'Connor and E.F. Robertson George Dantzig* Biographies of Mathematicians http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Dantzig_George.html 2005, 1966, 1960, 1960s, 1952, 1950s, See Text
Francis Frascina Art, politics and dissent: Aspects of the art left in sixties America, Manchester University Press: Manchester and New York, 1999, 248 pp., 1999, 1997, 1965, 1964, 1960s, 1948 See Text
David Gebhard and Robert Winter A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles & Southern California, Peregrine Smith: Santa Barbara, 1977, 728pp, 1977, 1970s, 1966, 1961, See Text
Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987, 1960s See Text
Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt* Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California, G.P. Putnam's Sons: NY, 1977. 603 pp., 1960s See Text
Mark E. Kann Middle Class Radicalism in Santa Monica, Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1986. 322pp., 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, 1940s See Text
Paul J. Karlstrom and Susan Ehrlich Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956, Barry M. Heisler Introduction Santa Barbara Museum of Art 1990, 1960s See Text
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1934, 1926, 1924 See Text
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1960s See Text
Jim Ohlschmidt Liner Notes The Genius of Joe Pass,* Vestapol 13073 Video, 2001, 1960s See Text
Dennis McLellan Marilyn J. Reece, 77; State's First Licensed Female Civil Engineer Los Angeles Times, 21 May 2004, B10, 2004, 1995, 1964, 1963, 1962 See Text
Pacific Ocean Park: The Imaginary World See Link
Martha Roth Goodness, Spinsters Ink: Duluth, MN, 1996, 301pp. See Text
Andrea Schulte-Peevers and David Peevers Los Angeles, Lonely Planet: Oakland, 2nd ed., 1996 (1999), 351pp., 1999, 1996, 1960s, See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1960s See Text
Jeffrey Stanton* Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987, 176 pp., 1960s See Text
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1960s See Text
Documents
Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Pelican: NY, 1971(1976), 256 pp., 1976, 1971, 1960s, 1949, 1927, 1905, 1903, 1885, 1870s, 1860s, 1848,
"The most senior of the beach cities, 'San Mo' has probably the most distinctive civic atmosphere . . . Partly it is the generous planning of the street-widths, partly it is the provision of a very good municipal bus service, but chiefly it is having been on the ground long enough to develop an independent personality. The railway that failed to make it a great port nevertheless got it started as a resort city well before most of the others were even a twinkle in a realtor's eye." p. 46
"South along the beaches, the immediately succeeding cities are much less stylish. Venice, intended to be the most stylish of the lot, was overrun by oil drilling and is now a long uncertain strip of frame houses of varying ages, vacant lots, oil-pumps, and sad gravel scrub. It has the charm of decay, but this will almost certainly disappear in the redevelopments that must follow the creation of the Yacht Harbor inland behind Venice. . . ' p. 47
[Santa Monica Pier photo, p. 53, described as having been rebuilt in 1921, features the Santa Monica Seafood Company]
" . . . The reputations of the piers are understandably functional, rather than architectural, but the whole class of piers must be saluted here as the most characteristic structures in Surfurbia. The beaches are uncommonly well provided with public piers, whether commercially or municipally operated - Malibu, Santa Monica, Pacific Ocean Park, Venice . . ." p. 53
" . . . Santa Monica, by contrast, is rich and complex and blatantly commercial, a little Luna Park, complete with off-shore parking lots, shops, restaurants and a famous enclosed carousel with apartments for rent in it corner turrets, and Charlie Chaplin used to eat at a famous restaurant near the end of the pier in his early Hollywood days. . . And if anyone sought a major monument to the heartbreak that ends the Angeleno dream, there was always Pacific Ocean Park, a recent fantasy in stucco and every known style of architecture and human ecology (including a giant artificial rock at the seaward end), a magnificent set of rides and diversions, now demolished after years of bankruptcy . . ." p. 54
{The p. 55 photo "Dereliction at Pacific Ocean Park."}
" . . . mention of Spanish Colonial Revival fantasies calls to mind two planned communities . . . One is Naples, east of Long Beach, . . . Subdivided by A. M. Parsons in 1903 . . .
"The other is romantically blighted Venice. Decreed by Abbott Kinney in 1905, it created a dream city of gondolas, bridges, and lagoons out of the squaggy sands and marshes south of Santa Monica. The overall layout was the work of Norman and Robert Marsh, who also designed public structures like the ornate canal bridges, and some uninhibited private houses. It must have been a splendid vision-but in 1927 oil was struck there and fantasy had to give way to fact.
"When I first saw it, bridges wrapped in barbed wire (because they were dangerous) spanned a single slimy canal among abandoned oil machinery and nodding pumps that were still at work. Desolation was everywhere, except where a narrow strip of houses still straggled down the ocean beach, and where two or three blocks of the original arcaded shopping street still survived on Windward Avenue. Those arcaded fragments are among the most affecting . . . The district is run-down still, something between a ghetto and a hippie haven . . . pp. 157, 158, 159 and 160.
" . . . "'the basic Los Angeles Dingbat' was probably invented by Francis Ventre during the year he taught at UCLA and lived in a prime example. . . . p.175
"It is normally a two story walk-up apartment-block developed back over the full depth of the site, built of wood and stuccoed over. These are the materials that Rudolf Schindler and others used to build the first modern architecture in Los Angeles, and the dingbat, left to its own devices, often exhibits the basic characteristics of a primitive modern architecture. Round the back, away from the public gaze, they display simple rectangular forms and flush smooth surfaces, skinny steel columns and simple boxed balconies, and extensive overhangs to shelter four or five cars. . . ." p. 175
"The dingbat . . . is the true symptom of Los Angeles . . . trying to cope with the unprecedented appearance of residential densities too high to be subsumed within the illusions of homestead living . . ." p. 177
Fred E. Basten Santa Monica Bay: The First 100 Years, A pictorial history of Santa Monica, Venice, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu, Douglas-West Publishers: Los Angeles, CA, 1974, 227 pp., 1973, 1968, 1966, 1964, 1961, 1958, 1935, 1910
p. 192 "Pacific Ocean Park offered fun and excitement for everyone visiting the Ocean Park Pier. Featured attractions included international restaurants a glittering midway, a sky ride and roller coaster, and underwater diving bell, and a jungle ride through an 'erupting volcano.' 1964.
pp. 192, 193. The Civic Auditorium was built in 1958 and held the Academy Awards from 1961until 1968.
p. 202 Santa Monica freeway Opening Day, 1966.
p. 203 Mural in Ocean Park now lost.
p .208 Santa Monica Municipal Pier, 1973.
"The Pier's Famed Merry-go-round, built about 1910, was brought by Walter Newcomb in 1935 and brought from the east coast to Santa Monica.
Fisherman's Cove, Santa Monica, Calif. Post Card, 1960s
Pacific Ocean Park (Logo Two Seahorses) Fisherman's Cove Santa Monica, Calif.
Myrna Oliver Alphonzo Bell Jr., 89: GOP Congressman Often Won Bipartisan Support, Los Angeles Times, 27 April 2004, B11, 1977, 1960s, 1950
"Alphonzo Bell Jr., who represented Los Angeles' influential Westside in Congress for eight terms and was a scion of the pioneering ranching, oil and development family that give its name to the Southern California communities of Bell, Bell Gardens and Bel-Air, has died. He was 89.
" . . .
"From 1950 to 1977, Bell represented a vast congressional district-the 28th and, after redistricting, the 27th-running along the coast from Malibu to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and encompassing all or part of Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Bel-Air, and West L.A. Then considered a Republican stronghold, the district nevertheless had only 40% GOP voter registration, and bipartisan approval was necessary.
" . . . "
John Cage An Autobiographical Statement, Southwest Review, 1991, 1960s
"In the sixties the publication of both my music and my writings began. Whatever I do in the society is made available for use. . . . Fuller's world map shows that we live on a single island. Global village (McLuhan), Spaceship Earth (Fuller). Make an equation between human needs and world resources (Fuller). I began my Diary: How to Improve the World: You Will Only Make Matters Worse. Mother said, "How dare you!"
"I don't know when it began. But at Edwin Denby's loft on 21st Street, not at the time but about the place, I wrote my first mesostic. It was a regular paragraph with the letters of his name capitalized. Since then I have written them as poems, the capitals going down the middle, to celebrate whatever, to support whatever, to fulfill requests, to initiate my thinking or my nonthinking (Themes and Variations is the first of a series of mesostic works: to find a way of writing that, though coming from ideas, is not about them but produces them). I have found a variety of ways of writing mesostics: Writings through a source: Rengas (a mix of a plurality of source mesostics), autokus, mesostics limited to the words of the mesostic itself, and "globally," letting the words come from here and there through chance operations in a source text."
J.J. O'Connor and E.F. Robertson George Dantzig* Biographies of Mathematicians http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Dantzig_George.html 2005, 1966, 1960, 1960s, 1952
"However, feeling that the RAND Corporation was not providing him with a source of fresh ideas, he took up an appointment as professor at Berkeley in 1960 and he was appointed Chairman of the Operations Research Center. While there he wrote Linear programming and extensions (1963). A reviewer wrote:-
"An impressive book, the work is very complete, its scientific level high, and its reading pleasant."
"In 1966 he was appointed Professor of Operations Research and Computer Science at Stanford University where he remained for the rest of his career."
Francis Frascina Art, politics and dissent: Aspects of the art left in sixties America, Manchester University Press: Manchester and New York, 1999, 248 pp., 1999, 1997, 1965, 1964, 1960s, 1948
. . . With a major influence on stategic military planning since the Second World War and particularly during the sixties, the RAND Corporation's role in the escalation of United States action in Southeast Asia led artists to picket the Corporation's building in 1964 . . . In Los Angeles the institutions of "culture" have long been connected to those other institutions in southern California that, in various ways, serve the industrial militiary complex of the United States.
" . . .
"With the John Paul Getty Museum we have intimate relatiohnships between corporate capital, the oil business, the power of family dynasties in the United States, possessive individualism and obsessive accumulation. This . . . is . . . not many miles away from . . . the district of Watts, a heartland of economic deprivation and racist oppression in central Los Angeles. In August 1965, a few years before the Getty re-creation was begun, Watts was in flames, in protest; an urban parallel to the rural centers of 'Civil Rights campaigns in the South. This was less than two months after the Artists' Protest Committee in Los Angeles had targeted the RAND Corporation, the recently opened Los Angeles County Art Museum and "art gallery row" on North La Cienega Boulevard, in a series of portraits primarily against United States military action in Vietnam.
" . . .
Chapter: 'We Dissent': the Artists' Protest Committee and representation in/of Los Angeles
Introduction
The mythical status of Los Angeles has been in constant production and transformation. For many it is Lotusland, LaLaLand, a city which the visual arts are governed by a "sunshine muse", a pursuit of hedonistic indifference to politics and social injustice. Reliance on the urban freeway and monadic insularity of the all-consuming and polluting car has, further, led writers to refer to the city as the "ecology of evil". In 1972 Peter Plagens used this latter phrase to characterise the substance of the city often conventionally represented by the images of succulent palm trees and glistening chrome. His incisive article in the pages of Artforum, based in New York since June 1967 but first published in the San Francisco in 1962 and then in Los Angeles from October 1965 provided a necessary corrective to the image of Los Angeles as the unproblematic product of a 1960s boom; an image of a consumerist dream come true, in which artists, art patrons and new museums constructed the elements of a rival center to New York-a centre of "pop-chic"and technological bravura.
Plagen's Ecology of Evil was an important landmark, with arguments and analyses which were further developed by Mike Davis in his City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, published in 1990. However, two years after his socio-cultural critique of Los Angeles and representations of it, Plagens published Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast, which is a more conventional history of the visual culture of that city. Although Plagens, a Los-Angeles-based critic in the 1960s, provides a first hand account of art and artists, Sunshine Muse is devoid of the perspectives and methodology that characterize his earlier artlcle. Not only are examples of events and works produced by, for instance, the Artist's Protest Committee in 1965 and 1966 absent, but also the politics of both recent and contemproary counter-culture and the activist side of Los Angeles visual culture are neglected. The difference between Plagens' article and his book is not an unexpected paradox. It is, rather, a significant characteristic of transformations and developments in intellectual activity in the United States since the Second World [p. 16] War. A parallel on the East Coast . . . Both in Los Angeles and New York, artists and intellectuals engaged wtih relationships between art, culture and politics in paradoxical, if not, contradictory ways.
" . . .
. . . In 1965, in the midst of the Johnson administration's first hundred days, legislation for the progressive reforms of the "Great Society" was being passed at home while abroad there was a major escalation of the war in Vietnam and United States interventions variously pursued in the Dominican Republic and Indonesia. Consumerist expectations, increasing affluence for some groups and support for progressive legislation was matched by a growing collective dissent, most intensely focused on U.S. foreign policy and interventions. The year 1965 was also a major one for Civil Rights in which the interconnections between racisn, economic oppression and social inequalities produced struggles and protests with one urban irruption in the heart of Los Angeles itself: the "Watts Riots" in the August of that year. The range of critical responses to these contemporary events demonstrate the difficulties and problems of articulating political consciousness within a post-McCarthyite culture hostile to such utterances. Artists and intellectuals were, like many other groups, caught up in the dilemmas of these situations and in finding ways of combining a broad historical understanding of postwar developments with effective responses to new developments with which they disagreed. Their dissent was manifest both through the "non-compliance" of members of a burgeoning counter culture at odds with the moral, social, sexual and political norms of Cold War America and through organized interventions by artists, writers, and intellecutals who called for Americans "to end your silence." It is an example of the latter which I want to examine as a specific instance the work of the Artist's Protest Committee, a large collective formed in 1965 and active throughout that year in a variety of projects, the most spectacular completed in eary 1966.
" . . .
In 1966, Hopps was struggling with the Pasadena trustees' discomfort with his radical reputation first forged as founder of the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1957 and then as a curator of innovative exhibitions at the [Pasadena Art] Museum. In 1965, too, he had been embroiled in the complications of the activities of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in promoting United States values through the exhibition of the work of national artists at the VIII Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil. Hopps selected and organized the United States exhibition for the Pasadena Museum chosen to represent the country . . .
The history of the production and the reception of the Tower is significant not least because of its status as a collective work, as a "monument" and as an interventionist "event." However, in dominent accounts and institutions of "modern art" such aspects make the Tower of marginal interest: it no longer exists to be curated, conserved and exhibited; it was prompted by political protest, even "tendency;" its collective production remainders pradigmatic issues of authenticity and authorship; its first context was a "counter-culture" which was critical of those institutions dedicated to the preservation of official and consensual cultural values. In 1966, it was these very areas of "marginal interest" that provided the bases of alternative, even oppositional possibilities. Then, measures of the sign value of the Tower included the relative effectiveness, the appropriateness, the creative power of the "work" as a representation of artists' and intellectuals' response to currently pressing social and political issues. Importantly, in the early Cold War it was the first and, on this scale, only time when artists in Los Angeles realized the power of political co-operation in the production of art. Prior to 1965, the various strands of artistic activity in southern California were apolitical with respect to the conventional institutions and traditions of political activity. There did exist a small, highly influential social and cultural nexus of artists and poets in Los Angeles and San Francisco, in the 1950s and early 1960s, whose politics were rooted in the legacies of bohemia and [p. 19] the avant-garde of Dada and Surrealism and transformed by a specific counter-cultural formation. These artists are often associated with what has been called "Beat Culture." Recent historical and political recovery of such artists' work can be signalled, initially, by citing the title of a publication, from 1992, Wallace Berman: Suppot the Revolution, which is part of a larger body of recent literature on the period. Some of the "Beat Culture" artists, including Berman, participated in the Tower partly because for them the "dissent" it represented was not determined by institutional or careerist interests. This was important for such artists, who regarded this manner of collective dissent as crucial both to the anti-war movement and to a critique of the capitalist fascination with the cult of artistic persona characteristic of the gallery and the museum system.
" . . .
Two groups, with major roots in New York, had been formed more or less at the same time, in early 1965, to discuss the possibilities of collective protest against the war in Vietnam. . . . [They] sponsored a large-format protest statement in The New York Times entitled End Your Silence, and signed by 407 writers and artists . . . The prime movers were writers linked to The Nation, in particular Denise Levertov and the novelist Mitchell Goodman . . . A group of painters, including Rudolf Baranik, [p. 23], Elaine de Kooning, Ad Reinhardt and Anthony Toney, who were also preparing their own statement, joined the protest. End Your Silence was placed by The New York Times below a report on The C.I.A. and How It Grew, detailing some of the Agency's covert activities. Two pages later . . . 16,916 Protestant Clergymen Say- Initiate Negotiations Now . . . the front page of the same edition of the New York Times, Johnson Refuses to Halt Bombings; Again Asks Talks, . . . on the base of the page 15,000 White House Pickets Denounce Vietnam War, . . . reporting a picket of the White House on 17 April, organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and including Women Strike for Peace, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and several Civil Rights organizations . . . two reasons for the second protest letter so soon after the first . . . the United States' invasion of the Dominiican Republic and signals of an impending escalation of action in Vietnam . . .
. . . Irving Petlin, like Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, had lived in Paris in the late 1950s and 1960s when intellectuals needed to find ways to circumvent institutional failures to protest effectively against French colonialism. Petlin had, for example, witnessed the drafting in the back of a Parisian art gallery, of the Manifesto of 121 signed by French intellectuals in 1960 advocating "insubordination" to France's colonial war in Algeria. In 1965, Petlin, then teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), attempted to mobilize artists in protest against what he, and others, regarded as the early stages of an immoral, dirty and shameful United States parallel to French activity in Algeria and, prior to 1954, Indochina. Los Angeles had traditionally been a city without organized political activity, at least not in comparison to European cities and not even to that which characterized New York. San Francisco was marginally different, wtih protests against the Un-American Activities Committee of the United States Congress, but it was, arguably, the small bohemian community of California that fostered values of liberty and dissent taken up by the New Left in the 1960s. On the other hand, there was a politicized character to the postwar economy of southern California which was military and [p. 26] scienced-based. California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in Pasadena provided a focus that produced the Los Angeles aerospace industry. As Mike Davis (City of Quartz)argues:
"Nowhere else in the country did there develop such a seamless continuum between the corporation, laboratory and classroom as in Los Angeles, where Cal Tech via continuous cloning and spinoff become the hub of a vast wheel of public-private research and development that eventually included the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hughes Aircraft (the world center of airborne electronics), the Air Force's Space Technology Laboratory, Aerojet General (a spinoff of the latter), TRW, the Rand Institute and so on."
Ferus and the politics of the Los Angeles art community
Two major observations loomed large in Petlin's conversations with like-minded artists, poets, playwrights and intellectuals about protests against United States involvement in Vietnam in the heartland of military and profit-driven southern California. First, there was no institutional support for protest or for the use and display of visual culture in a critical and political way. Second, high culture was an important activity, process and pleasure for its participants and collectors, many of whom were in the military and science-based corporations and institutes. Could artists subject this high culture to a shudder, or even more fundamentally remove it from its lovers? Petlin was aware that one way of finding out whether Los Angeles artists were prepared to engage in such debate and potential action was to test the attitudes of those who had been associated with the Ferus Gallery. Opened by Ed Kienholz and Walter Hopps in 1957 on La Cienega Boulevard, it was regarded in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the avant-garde artists' gallery of the West Coast. Within a year and a half of opening, Hopps found a new partner, Irving Blum, with commercial experience, and moved the gallery to "a perfectly designed Beverly Hills setting, "across the street." In 1962 Hopps became curator and soon acting director of the small Pasadena Museum of Art, where he held DuChamp's first museum retrospective in October 1963. Hopps had cultivated the Arensbergs, collectors of Cubist, Dadaist and Surrealist works and major patrons of Duchamp, who had a home in the Hollywood Hills. With the Ferus Gallery he provided a base for the mix of such commercial and collecting interests with the work and social networks of Beat Culture, particularly the circle around Wallace Berman. The Ferus Gallery provided Berman's public debut, in 1957, resulting in his conviction and fine for obscenity. In July 1962, it had given Warhol his first major exhibition. The artists around the Ferus Gallery, who were committed to a variety of modernist traditions and subcultures (ranging from Beat to hot rod, motorcycle and deer hunting), included John Altoon, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, [p. 27] Craig Kauffman, Allen Lynch, John Mason, Ed Moses, Ken Price, Ed Ruscha and Peter Voulkos. For those linked to the Beat movement, around Wallace Berman, an open, interracial anhd sexually libertarian culture was advocated. This was distinct from the community who saw themselves more self-consciously as professional artists and, therefore, as part of a "Ferus group." These arts were described by the poet David Meltzer, who knew both circles well, as "lumberjacks" because of their shirts and personas:
"They were much more the professional artists . . . Male display and male competition. They would be the contingency in the lumberjack shirts, and then you'd have the Berman contingency, the ethereal, exotic creatures . . .There was a great giving of work to each other in the [Berman] group. There was much more cross-pollination than in the lumberjack camps-they rubbed shoulders but they were into cars, talking paint-clean some brushes, get back to work."
Blum, too, recalls the effects of the macho artists obsessed by motorcycling and surfing. By mid-1965, Los Angeles artists from the Ferus Gallery singled out for promotion were Bell, Bengston and Irwin. They, along with Judd, Newman, Poons, and Stella, had been chosen by Hopps for the USIA exhibition at the VIII Bienal de Sao Paulo . . . Kienholz showed in both the Ferus and Dwan Galleries. Petlin recalls that, in conversation with Craig Kauffman, in spring 1965, it was decided to call a meeting of artists to discuss the war in Vietnam. The venue was to be the Dwan Gallery, which had opened in Westwood in 1960 with John Weber joining it in 1962. Although there were no way of predicting who would turn up, it was thought that the views of two of the various types of Los-Angeles-based artists, connected to the Ferus Gallery and with links to the Dwan Gallery network, would be a good indication: Ed Kienholz and Larry Bell. The former was regarded as a potential supporter because of the apparently politicised nature of his work. In 1963 (June-July), the Dwan Gallery included in its Kienholz exhitbition The Illegal Operation (1962), on the subject of back-street abortion, and National Banjo on the Knee Week (1963), with ambiguous national references including the United States flag. In 1964 (September-October), the Dwan Gallery showed his Three Tableaux (The Birthday, While Visions of Sugar Plums Danced in their Heads, and Back Seat Dodge-'38, all 1964, with strong sexual and social signifiers. [p. 28] Kienholz was also known as a ferocious and strong-minded character-one of the Ferus group "Lumberjacks." Larry Bell, on the other hand, produced abstract scuptures that became associated with emphases on materials, shapes, and structure in early Minimalist and systems work. He was also regarded as a more "ethereal" personality whose career had developed rapidly in the previous year. Petlin phoned both to test the potential response to the call for a meeting of artists. Kienholz was adamantly negative and pro-war, mainly as a solidarity with blue-collar Marines; it was not until later in the 1960s with for example The Portable War Memorial and The Eleventh Hour Final (both 1968) that Kienholz's view of the war changed. Although this was something of a surprise to Petlin, as Walter Hopps recalls: "Kienholz . . . was a kind of libertarian anarchist: he wasn't in any sense leftwing, and he was totally sceptical of any political party. Irving Blum recalls Kienholz's works as having "an excessively moral edge and overtone" and his personality as 'a kind of fascist temperament influenced by his frontier and hunting background, leading him to have "a complete arsenal wherever he has lived. He's had rifles, shotguns, pistols, hand grenades, one thing or another." Kienholz has talked about his Republican backgrtound, his love for his country, and claimed that "I'm propbably apolitical because I think that politics stink."
He also recalls not talking about politics much in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Los Angeles. Larry Bell, on the other hand, was very positive and supportive of the proposals.
" . . .
[p. 29] La Cienega Boulevard provided a particular street culture; in the late 1950s and early 1960s the area was a tenderloin district full of prostitutes, gay bars and the signifiers of a Los Angeles art boom with galleries for both tyro and experienced collectors and spectators. The art boom was an emergent phenomena that could be targeted. What if this high-culture presence could be taken away as a vivid protest? Could the denial of cultural pleasure draw attention to the realities of political and military behaviour?
" . . .
[p. 31] . . . Cultural managers in Lo Angeles were fancying that the city was capable of challenging New York as a polar alternative art centre on the West Coast. The Monday night art walk with the galleries lit and open to the hundreds and thousands of visitors was an important signifier of the city's cultural aspirations, which were signalled also by the recent opening of the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with the then largest gallery floor space in the country . . . This weekend, like earlier ones, also saw othe major protests in Los Angeles, mostly "Teach-Ins" and "Teachouts" at colleges and universities.
As the Los Angeles Free Press reported, the threefold event was "an unprecedented protest of the Los Angeles community with "more than a thousand artists and their friends participating. . . . People and the Free Press were surprised by the lack of main stream media coverage. Felix Landau and David Stuart Galleries, among others, [p. 32] covered art work in white paper, and "Stop Escalation" symbols added.] . . . Not all artists supported the event. For example, Billy Al Bengston was opposed to the Ferus Gallery participating, saying that with the war going on all the people in Orange County had money to buy his art. Orange County was a conservative area with people making money from military-related industries in southern California.
" . . .
[p. 33] The phrase "ladder of escalation" had a particular currency at the time. Although "escalation," using the metaphor of the escalator, had been used in the late 1950s to mean the "controlled exchange of ever larger weapons in war, leading to the destruction of civilization," the "ladder of escalation" was first coined in 1962 by Herman Kahn in Thinking the Unthinkable. He used it to convey a process of conflict between two powers:
"Each side may take certain positive steps either to bring the other to the bargaining table or to apply pressure during the negotiations. Sometimes these pressures tend to decrease with time or with a temporary solution to the problem at hand. At other times there is a tendency for each side to counter the other pressure with a somewhat stronger one of its own. This increasing pressure step by step is called "escalation."
William Kauffmann, writing in The McNamara Strategy (1964), indicates that the phrase had become current usage in the strategic studies community, including at the RAND Corporation. The highly influential military strategist Bernard Brodie had already analyzed the concept of "escalation" in a RAND Working Paper (September 1962), and went on to publish an important work, in 1966, with "escalation" in its title, as Herman Kahn (also a RAND analyst) had done in 1965. Kahn proposed a careful graduation from rung one to rung 44, which had a "powerful impact upon decision-makers and strategists alike." The artist's use of the "ladder of escalation," in their three-fold demonstration, was a specific reference to the dangers of a change from a limited to a general war and one in which nuclear capabilities might eventually figure. They also saw that the phrase was being used to [p. 34] mean stategic escalation of war fighting by a technologically superior nation on a technologically inferior country . . .
RAND: Artist Protest
This action was continued in 1965 in parallel to the statements by the Artists' Protest Committee in The New York Times with a demonstration at the RAND Corporation. The latter was one site of concern because of the contractual links between the State Department and the RAND Corporation and the latter's involvement in American foreign policy in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. In an article in 1963 Saul Friedman described the RAND Corporation as
"The paramilitary academy of United States strategic thinking . . . [which] does the basic thinking behind the weapons systems, the procurement policies, and the global strategy of the United States. Unlike any strategic research organization anywhere else in the world, the RAND Corporation has become internationally famous and controversial, for bring a new mode of thought to problems of cold war strategy."
Its origins, though, are rooted in the military and ideological concerns of the early Cold War. In late 1945, without Congressional approval and without taking bids, General H.H. "Hap." Arnold, Commanding General of the Army Air Forces, signed a contract for the creation of an experimental institution linking the Douglas Aircraft Company and the Air Force. Known as "Project RAND," it was set up as a department of Douglas under an initial $10 million contract with the Air Force, which was one of the most unusual and long-term contracts between the government and a private institution. It allowed RAND extensive freedom to initiate research and eventually to extend its clients to various elements of the Pentagon, the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA. In 1948 RAND became a Corporation, independent of Douglas, with the help of various sources of funding including a grant of $1 million from the nascent Ford Foundation.
Two of the RAND Corporation's major objectives were to advance techniques of intercontinental warfare and to combat Communism, particularly in an atmosphere of Cold War partisanship. Although it was a research haven, all scholars within it had to relate their work to military applications and warfare with the knowledge that views and publications [p. 35] could end up in the White House or Pentagon. RAND's output was huge-thousands of books and reports as well as memoranda, briefings and communications, with about half of its annual work labeled secret. It maintained enormous security and secrecy, with all of its analysts required to have top-secret security clearances. Such an institution drew differing views. To those who viewed it positively RAND enabled the United States military to maintain a sophisticated, efficient and technological superpower status. To sceptics, mostly in the early 1960s on the political left, RAND was regarded as "a vital brain centre for the military-industrial complex, inspiring costly new weapons, mapping out counter-insurgency plans and computing kill ratios and "magadeaths." RAND strategists invented the words "overkill" and "megadeaths" in their massive reliance on computer predictions in assessing ICBM (Intercontinental Continental Ballistic Missile) programmes.
Through sources in the RAND Corporation, information on its theoretical proposals for action in Vietnam were made known. For example : proposals for a programme of systematic uprooting of communities and of hamlet relocation; the diversion of rivers to dry up deltas; the drying up of the sea to locate fish in strategically enclosed and guarded villages; stategies of ethnic or population cleansing; the use of concentration camps. The overall RAND-derived policy was to make the country a "freefire" zone to unleash the full effects of American technological warfare on the "Vietcong." It was decided to picket the RAND Corporation to publicise its secret "think tank" proposals. Its base, built in 1953 with assistance from the Ford Foundation, was a two storey, two-million dollar, palm-studded building overlooking the beach at the end of Santa Monica Pier. A five-story building, providing more office space, was added in 1961. By 1962, RAND was earning about $3.5 million a year and its two subsidiaries Analytic Services (ANSER) and Systems Development Corporation (SDC) earning $1 million and $20 million a year respectively. All were non-profit organizations reinvesting resources for research and equipment. Staff in 1963 amounted to 1100, of whom about 730 were researchers, mostly post-doctoral, recruited through a scouting system from the science and university centers of the West Coast and Northeast. Members of the Corporation had established a community of intellectuals in the city, especially in Santa Monica, many of them young art collectors and patrons of galleries, with a public reputation for progressive research.
. . . The spring and summer of 1965 was a time when the Johnson administration was very nervous about and sensitive to protests, wishing both to pacify, by sending out speakers, to university campuses and the like, and to secure more information about the opposition. RAND was also heavily involved in Southeast Asia and provided a large number of the elite group brought in by McNamara to run the Pentagon.[Footnote 87]
[p. 54, Footnote 87] One of them was Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, who was a national security expert and "hawk" at RAND from 1959 to 1964. He was one of the RAND members drafted by McNamara to work in the Department of Defense where he worked until 1967 when he returned to RAND and worked on McNamara's History of U.S. Decision Making Process on Vietnam Policy (later known as the "Pentagon Papers."] The total number of RAND analysts working on this forty-seven-volume report was second only to the number of government employees in the team of thirty-five military and civilian analysts. Ellsberg's views on the war began to change after his visits to Vietnam [1964-1967] and before leaving to join MIT in 1970 he smuggled out a copy of the Pentagon Papers [of the four legitimate copies of the report permitted outside of government, two were given to RAND for reference). On of his supporters was Anthony J. Russo, another ex-RAND analyst.
[p. 37] With the "McNamara revolution" in the Pentagon, which began at the start of the Kennedy administration, it was claimed by J.R. Goldstein (RAND Vice-president and with the corporation since its inception.) that "McNamara's techniques were RAND's techniques," Their extensive influence was felt in the Bureau of Budget, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and elsewhere. RAND employees were also used on commissions, committees, task forces and planning groups.: "The 1966 RAND Annual Report, for example, stated that some ninety staff members were holding down 269 advisory posts, with groups serving such entities as the White House, Department of Defense, Commerce Department, and the National Science Foundation. In February 1967 Sol Stern published an incisive essay in Ramparts on the "McNamara revolution," which he argued was born of changes in the technology and economics of modern warfare and by America's emergence as a self-appointed policeman for the world. The revolution was brought about by those professional defense intellectuals"-many of them RAND alumni . . . a revolution carried through by the most unlikely of revolutionaries: a business executive named Robert Strange McNamara. Stern, quoting the new president of RAND Corporation, demonstrates that McNamara's "hired intellectuals"-regarded the war in Vietnam "as merely a "problem" instead of recognizing it as a crisis in American ideology and values-a crisis which demands that some questions be asked because decent values demand them, and that some solutions be rejected not because they are invalid but because they are wrong."
For McNamara, the roles of intellectuals within, and as outside critics of, government were historically in transformation. RAND provided him with a great resource of "defense intellectuals", one of the new intellectual elites in the United States. Many ideas and philosophies, for example, about nuclear weapons and their use, theories of deterrence and limited [p. 38] war were generated by civilians, by intellectuals, working independently from the military. Crucially, too, as Kolkowicz argues, these new intellectual elites became "managers of the defense establishment, of vast budgetary resources, and of scientific-military establishments. Theodore H. White, the eminent historian of the American establishment, wroted in Life magazine, in 1967, that there is a "new power system in American life, a new priesthood unique to this country and this time, of American action-intellectuals. In the past decade, this brotherhood of scholars has become the most provocative and propelling influence on all American government and politics, and their ideas are shaping our defense and guiding our foreign policy. He went on the single out RAND as one of the "best investments" made by the United States government and "if Rand did not exist today there would be a most compelling reason for creating it."
. . .
David Gebhard and Robert Winter A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles & Southern California, Peregrine Smith: Santa Barbara, 1977,728pp, 1977, 1970s, 1966, 1961,
". . . By the seventies when the building tapered off due to the economy and a growing skepticism, almost everyone in Los Angeles was less than four miles from a freeway, the goal of the transportation experts." p. 27
"Santa Monica Freeway 1961-1966" p. 30
"37. Santa Monica Fwy. 1961-66; Lammers, Reed & Reece, engineers.
"It begins with a swoop through a tunnel just before you get to the pier and stretches across the county to West Covina. One of the most spectacular interchanges in the word, best observed from the surface streets, is where it intersects the San Diego Fwy, just outside Santa Monica.
(At some date the name Christopher Coumbus Transcontinental Hwy. was added and it stretched across the country, replacing Rte. 66.)
Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987, 1960s
Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt* Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California, G.P. Putnam's Sons: NY, 1977. 603 pp., 1960s
2. A "Dangerous" Pen
"While Times editorials during the Johnson years maintained a consistent proadministration position on the war in Vietnam, the attitude of the new Times cartoonist Paul Conrad* changed from muted hawk to trenchant antiwar critic."
"Sam Yorty was another Conrad* target . . .
"By the early 1960s, Paul Conrad*, the cartoonist for the Denver Post, had secured a national reputation for his striking characterizations and critical perception of politicians. In 1964 he won the Pulitzer Prize. That year [Nick] Williams [the Los Angeles Times Editor] convinced Conrad to come to the Times.
" . . . In 1967 a disclaimer was put on the masthead that dissociated the cartoons from the management's official pont of view. Conrad called it the "Regan disclaimer," since Reagan, a frequent Conrad target, took office just before the disclaimer was instituted . . . " p. 387
Mark E. Kann Middle Class Radicalism in Santa Monica, Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1986. 322pp., 1983, 1980s, 1970s, 1968, 1967, 1962, 1960s, 1940s,
"For Santa Monica, the fallout from this corporate maneuvering was the construction of the Santa Monica Freeway in the mid-1960s . . .
" . . . Santa Monica experienced the extraordinary demand [for housing] that invited rent gouging, arbitrary evictions, condominium conversions, demolition of low and moderate housing to be replaced by luxury developments, the constant selling and buying of real estate, and skyrocketing prices for land and single-family homes. Santa Monica's growth machine rushed to the party, as did outside investors, developers, and speculators, who saw a chance for quick and easy profits. During a five-year period in the early 1970s, apartment vacancies fell below 5 percent for the first time while speculation in residential income properties increased more than 1,000 percent. The anarchy of the real estate market rippled throughout local life.
"First, major shifts in Santa Monica's population base occurred. Beginning in the early 1940s, the city attracted more and more middle class professionals and managers who worked in nearby high growth, high technology industries. For these migrants, Santa Monica was a beach-front resort town with all the amenities of an autonomous community: a pleasing small town environment, good schools, parks, entertainment, the beaches, and so forth. Santa Monica's magnetic appeal grew, particularly when the Santa Monica Freeway provided easy access throughout the region and when rapid industrialization, congestion, pollution, and crime provided good reasons for leaving Los Angeles proper. The fact that Santa Monica real estate prices were higher than elsewhere was no deterrent to this affluent middle class population. Professionals and managers had incomes that outpaced inflation and the could even afford to profit from inflation by purchasing land, housing, and income property. Thus, in 1983, a remarkable 11 percent of residents in the city's more affluent neighborhoods owned rental property in the city. By the 1970s . . . Santa Monica was undergoing gentrification, that affluent newcomers were replacing less prosperous oldtimers.
"Santa Monica's population stabilized in the 80,000s during the 1960s. Consequently, the continuous influx of professionals and managers necessarily meant the loss of older, more stable residents. The Santa Monica Freeway, for example, cut through the city's lower income neighborhoods, eliminating considerable numbers of minority residences. The retired people in the Ocean Park neighborhood, whose numbers had been augmented by the growth of a countercultural enclave, suffered a major redevelopment project that replaced older affordable housing with luxury oceanfront condominiums. Even the more affluent people in Santa Monica's central neighborhoods faced escalating property taxes and rents that pressured them to move elsewhere. In the 1970s alone, Santa Monica lost 3,187 households, "most of them with low, very low, and moderate incomes."
" . . . the 1960s witnessed the onset of a twenty-year battle between growth machine diehards, . . . and homeowners. . . .
"Simultaneously, the growth machine's economic might was diminishing. Boosters who invested in growth became more dependent on outside interests. Local entrepreneurs were pressured to sell out to corporate developers with regional, national, or international interests. The local entrepreneurs might feed at the corporate troughs but it was the corporations that planned, designed, financed, constructed, and operated the new apartment, condominium, retail, and office complexes that appeared in Santa Monica in the 1960s and 1970s. . . . Santa Monica's leading employers as General Telephone (communications), St. John's Hospital (health care), Systems Development Corporation (computer software), . . . Rand Corporation (research and policy think tank), . . .
"Finally postwar Santa Monica evidenced the first traces of a shift in political attitudes. These new middle class professionals and managers who had migrated to the city were more liberal than the small businessmen who ran it. Their liberal attitudes were first manifest in the 1972 presidential election, when they helped to provide a municipal majority for George McGovern. . .
- p. 41, 42, 43, 44
3 Liking Middle America
". . .
From Port Huron
"In 1962, a student named Tom Hayden* drafted a statement of principles for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at its convention in Port Huron, Michigan. Hayden's draft became the basis for the Port Huron Statement that guided SDS through the mid-1960s and provided a political identity for the early new left student movement. The SDS document was an appeal to the aspirations and frustrations of white middle class youth in America.
""We are the people of this generation," it began, "bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we will inherit." . . . "Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people - these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men." . . . "
""Men have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity." . . . "
"The SDS document legitmated a new experiment in social change because the older methods had failed or at least not succeeded. . .
" . . . "the serious poet burns for a place, any place to work; the once-serious and never serious poets work at the advertising agencies."
"The imprecision of the Port Huron Statement bothered Tom Hayden* very little. He came to Port Huron, states SDS historian Kirkpatrick Sale, "more convinced thatn before of the need to set out a broad definition of common values rather than a lot of narrow statements about this or that economic policy." SDS, Vintage: NY, 1973, p.45 ". . . Hayden has been criticized as too utopian but it was his call to an "ad hoc" sort of radicalism that legitimated the renewal of political dialogue and an openness to untried possibilities that captured the imagination of the first wave of middle class students who valued intelligence and experimentation enough to found the new left student movement. . . . " p. 62
". . .
"But the support did not persist when "large numbers of young people pushed professional mangerial class radicalism to its own limits and found themselves, ultimately, at odds with their own class." After 1967 or 1968, student politics changed. Those who once looked to the university as a source of leftwing promise began to mobilize against the university as an accomplice in warfare. . . . For student organizations such as SDS, these shifts were wrenching. Participatory democracy gave way to factional control by highly organized sects . . . " p. 63
" . . . Suffering internal fragmentation and an erosian of its middle class base, the new left soon withered away. What persisted, however, was a generation of middle class activists who had graduated from college and were now entering the workforce as well as a disenchanted American middle class now entering a decade of economic instability." p. 64
Paul J. Karlstrom and Susan Ehrlich Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920 - 1956, Barry M. Heisler Introduction Santa Barbara Museum of Art 1990, 1960s
Paul J. Karlstrom Modernism in Southern California, 1920 -1956, Reflections on the Art and the Times
"This has certainly been the case since 1960, and in the work of some of the best earlier artists - among them those in this exhibition - it seems to be equally true. Frank Gehry*, Robert Irwin*, Ed Moses, Larry Bell, Ed Ruscha-none of these well-known artists developed in a creative vacuum."
June Wayne (b. 1918), 1990, 1960s
"Raised in Chicago by her single, working mother and her grandmother, Wayne displayed as a child precocious talents in art and a passionate love of learning. With characteristic self-reliance, she taught herself to paint and in 1935 made her artistic debut at Chicago's Boulevard Gallery. Two years later, at nineteen, she was managing Marshall Field's art galleries and by 1938 was working as an easel painter on the Federal Art Project.
"In 1939 Wayne moved to New York City, lured by a post in the fashion industry as a jewelry designer. After the outbreak of World War II, she travelled to Southern California where she studied technical drawing at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. This training, which led to a certificate in production illustration, sparked her interest in optics which she explored in her paintings and prints of the postwar years.
"After her California sojourn Wayne worked as a writer for a radio station in Chicago and then returned to Los Angeles in 1946. She soon became a prominent figure within the art community. Gravitating toward the circle of artists, writers and designers around Arts and Architecture magazine she counted among her friends Charles and Ray Eames*, John Entenza, Rico Lebrun, Jules Engel, Peter Krasnow, Lorser Feitelson, and Jules Langsner.
"In 1947 Wayne delved into the field of lithography, a medium which she would rapidly earn international fame. Collaborating with printmaker Lynton Kistler, she produced a distinguished body of work . . .
" . . . figures . . . mix references to brain cells and optical fibers with a trumpet, a fortress, a mole, and a scale of justice {all} inspired by Franz Kafka's books. Strung next to one another, they form a serpentine chain of allusions. In obliging the eye to follow their sinuous trail, they challenge the mind to decipher the meaning of their arcane codes.
" . . .
"The Dark One [1950] . . . alludes to the "human predicament" via its titular figure which personifies the atom bomb. Incarnating the new technology. the Dark One stands half human being, half steely machine . . .
"The sixties opened with Wayne winning a Ford Foundation grant and becoming the founding director of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. Legendary in its own time, Tamarind garnered world renown for its superb craftsmanship. . . .
"In 1970 Wayne formed the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. . . . designed tapestries, wrote and hosted a television show (1972), and produced the . . . film Four Stones for Kanemitsu, which was nominated for an Academy Award. . . .
" . . . Wayne has played a prominent role in the art community. Beginning in 1951, when she appeared at City Hall to oppose the Red-baiting of artists shown in the All-City Municipal Festival in Grffith Park, she has actively championed artist's rights."
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1934, 1926, 1924
Santa Monica Pier-Arcadia Terrace
"12. Sea Castle Apartments, 1725 The Promenade. Originally constructed as the Breakers Beach Club in 1926, it soon became the Grand Hotel. It was subsequently known as the Chase and Monica Hotels befoe being converted to apartments in the early '60s, and renamed the Sea Castle. The name "Breakers" can still be made out on the marquee over the entrance, even though the concrete letters have been partially chiseled away. One of the brightest moments in the life of the Grand Hotel occurred in 1934 during a reopening attended by film stars Jean Harlow, Anita Page, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino, Alan Mowbray, and Maureen O'Sullivan."
Ocean Park
"1. Pritikin Longevity Center, 1910 The Promenade. The former Casa Del Mar Beach Club, at the foot of Pico and The Promenade, the five-story club, built in 1924, was the largest of the several beach clubs along the ocean front. It remained in use until the '60s, when it became the headquarters of the Synanon Foundation and, more recently, the Pritikin Longevity Center."
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1960s
"The Aragon again fell into disrepair. It was reopened in the late 1960s as a rock music hall known as the Cheetah. Jim Morrison, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge and The Seeds were booked into the large hall, now psychedelically refurbished. The house band, called The Gnads was later to gain fame under the name Alice Cooper."
" . . ."
Art
"The Venice area was attracting another element . . . Artists, lured by the availability of low-rent studio space and good light, began to move into the older commercial buildings. In many cases they had national or international reputations. Their ranks included Billy Al Bengston, Claire Falkenstein, Charles and Ray Eames, Ron Cooper, Larry Bell, Chuck Arnoldi, Guy and Laddie Dill, Alexis Smith, Chris Burden, Ann McCoy, Peter Alexander, Linda Benglis, DeWain Valentine, Robert Irwin, Eric Orr, Loren Madsen, Chris Georgesco, Tom Wudl, Martha Alf, Gloria Kisch, and John McCracken.
"The artists of the 60s and 70s were not united by any pronounced exterior philosophy or life-style as the earlier "beats" were. Although there was social and professional contact between them, the Venice artists worked individually and resisted the easy application of geographic or regional labels. Except for the wall murals created by artists such as Terry Schoonhoven and the L.A. Fine Arts Squad, these artists left very little outward manifestation in Venice of their work.
"And yet their presence was soon recognized and commercialized when property owners began offering new specially-designed and expensive artist's studios on the real estate market. The low costs that had originally enticed the creative personalities to the beach area wer fast disappearing and many of the artists found themselves displaced to areas away from Venice.
Jim Ohlschmidt Liner Notes The Genius of Joe Pass*, Vestapol 13073 Video, 2001, 1960s
"Although Pass coaxed a remarkably warm, fat tone from the Fender Jaguar he played in those days, a fan noticed that it wasn't the best instrument for Joe's style.
"Back in my Synanon days, I didn't have a guitar of my own; all I had was a solid body rock and roll guitar that belonged to Synonon," Pass told Sievert in 1976. "I was playing a gig at a local club with it when this guy named Mike Peak came in and saw me playing jazz with a rock guitar. A few months later, on my birthday, I came home and there was this brand new (Gibson) ES-I75 that he had bought for me. He was in the construction business and played a little guitar himself and just felt that I should have the proper kind of instrument. It's the only electric I've used since then.
" . . .
"His studio work during this time also included such lucrative jobs as playing for several television series such as the Woody Woodbury Show, Good Morning America, and the Donald O'Connor Show. Although his work as an anonymous studio musician gave Pass a level of financial security most jazz musicians only dreamed of, it was a realm he apparently was not entirely comfortable with. As Pass told Lee Underwood in Downbeat, "You have to have your regular guitar, a 12-string guitar, a banjo, a mandolin, a wah-wah pedal-all the tools of the trade. When they call you, they expect you to be able to do everything that's contemporary. 'Can you remember what so-and-so did on such-and-such a hit record> Well, we want that.' And if you can't play that, they don't call you again."
(Back to Sources)
Dennis McLellan Marilyn J. Reece, 77; State's First Licensed Female Civil Engineer Los Angeles Times, 21 May 2004, B10, 2004, 1995, 1964, 1963, 1962
"Marilyn Jorgenson Reece, the first woman in California to be registered as a civil engineer and the designer of the San Diego-Santa Monica freeway interchange in Los Angeles, has died. She was 77.
" . . .
"In 1962, she received the Governor's Design Excellence Award from Gov. Pat Brown for the San Diego-Santa Monica freeeway interchange.
" . . .
"The three-level San Diego-Santa Monica freeway interchange, which opened in 1964, was the first interchange designed in California by a woman engineer.
"Urban critic Reyner Banham, author of Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, admired the "wide-swinging curved ramps" connecting the two freeways.
""It is more customary to praise the famous four-level [interchange in downtown Los Angeles]," he wrote, but the I-10 and 405 interchange "is a work of art, both as a pattern on the map, as a monument against the sky, and as a kinetic experience as one sweeps through it."
"Reece told The Times in 1995 that she put her "heart and soul into it" and that she designed the interchange with aesthetics in mind.
""It is very airy. It isn't a cluttered, loopy thing," she said, adding that specifications to keep traffic moving at high speeds necessitated the long, sweeping curves. "That was so you didn't have to slam on the brakes, like you do on some interchanges."
"Reece's daughter said she has a 1962 picture of her mother standing on top of a graded hill with construction of the freeway interchange in the background.
""It's amazing that all that was happening and she was pregnant with her second child," said Bartolotti, who was born in April 1963. "With both my sister and me, when she came back from maternity leave, everyone was surprised because at that particular time as a woman in the work force, once you started having kids your career was over and you stayed home."
"While growing up, Bartolotti recalled, "It wasn't uncommon for my sister and me to talk about what our mom did for a profession, and people wouldn't even believe us. Back in those days, if you were a woman in the work force you were a nurse or a teacher or something along those lines and you certainly weren't a civil engineer."
"In a 1963 story on "lady engineers" in a California Highways and Public Works publication, Reece said she felt that women had an advantage in the field of engineering and "if there's any prejudice toward women, I've not encountered it. Men have always been very helpful; and being a woman has never hampered me in my career."
" . . .
"Stahl recalled that as a child, "we sat around the table and listened to all the conversations. All my toys were engineer-related - Lego bricks, Lincoln Logs and Tonka trucks. We'd go to the beach and I'd build dams and roads and 'public work' sandcastles. So that's what we were exposed to."
" . . ."
Martha Roth Goodness, Spinsters Ink: Duluth, MN, 1996, 301pp.
An interesting exploration of character, formed in the fervor and ferment of the 1960s Peace Movement and Feminism. [KR 2007]
Andrea Schulte-Peevers and David Peevers Los Angeles, Lonely Planet: Oakland, 2nd ed., 1996(1999), 351pp., 1999, 1996, 1960s,
"The trend continued through the '60s when LA experienced a major art boom with a slew of new galleries and museums opening and painters migrating to the city from all over the world. Among them flourished a gaggle of avant-garde artists including Edward Kienholz, Robert Irwin* and John Mason, whose works were pioneered by the Ferus Gallery. Other major artists were David Hockney, who had come here from England, Richard Diebenkorn* and Ed Ruscha. "
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1960s
Santa Monica Pier on the Skids (1941-1974)
" . . . City Manager George Bundy, . . .
" . . .
"While the Chamber of Commerce supported the oil petition, Mayor Barnard spoke out against it.
" . . . Santa Monica Comittee for Harbor Development [led by Dr. Cyril Gail] obtained signatures on its petition . . .
"The Evening Outlook newspaper exposed the group as being financed by the John M. Stahl Oil Company . . .
" . . . the voters . . . rejected the oil drilling measure by a 2-1 margin. . . "
" . . .
"Santa Monica Harbor officials in May spruced up the pier with a new coat of paint for the 1962 summer season. They were expecting two million visitors. the pier's attractions included twelve restaurants and snack bars, merry-go-round, shootiing gallery, two arcades, a roller rink, two fish markets, novelty store, two bait and tackle shops and room for one thousand fishermen.
"In July, Mrs. Enid Newcomb Winslow permanently closed the La Monica Ballroom . . ." p. 129
". . .
"The Chamber of Commerce revived Santa Monica's traditional summer sport's festival on the pier, . . . including a Malibu to Santa Monica outrigger canoe race, the National Lifeguard Championships, a Junior Fishing Derby, a surfboard ballet, and an aquacade at Santa Monica College. The festivals would continue until the early 1970s.
" . . . Nov. 1963 causeway controversy . . ." p.131
" . . . Assemblyman Robert S. Stevens and State Senator Thomas Rees . . . March 1965 . . . p. 132
" . . . State controller Alan Cranston, . . . Governor Brown vetoed
" . . . [Santa Monica] mayor Rex Minter . . .
"In December, City Manager Perry Scott . . ." p. 133
" . . .
"Assemblyman Paul Priolo, . . .
" . . . signed by Governor Ronald Reagan on August 31, 1967.
" . . ." p. 134
"The fate of the Pacific Coast Freeway that would link with the Santa Monica Freeway and extend north through Malibu and south to Los Angeles' airport was decided several years later. Enormous public pressure, first in Venice and later in Santa Monica and Malibu . . . Alan Sieroty's bill deleting the southern portion of the freeway was passed in 1971. . .
"The defeat of the Harbor Bond Measure in the April 1967 election only postponed the city's desire . . . Mayor Herb Spurgin advocated purchasing the Newcomb Pier . . . Councilman Virgil Kingsley favored waiting . . .
"Ironically, while the general public in the mid to late 1960s were becoming disinterested in Santa Monica's Newcomb and Pacific Ocean Park piers, many of Los Angeles' avant-garde artists and musicians were becoming fond of the dilapidated Newcomb Pier, particularly the pier's carousel. The seven unheated apartments above the carousel, since the early 1950's, were rented by writers, actors and ordinary people. By the mid 1960's it was home to people like James Elliot*, chief curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Art, graphic artist Clare DeLand*, Coleen Creedon*, Herb Alpert's secretary at A & M Records, Jan Butterfield*, public relations director for L.A. County, and artist Robert Irwin*. Music people like Joan Baez*, who lived nearby in Santa Monica often dropped by to visit Coleen Creedon*.
" . . .
"It became fashionable in the late 1960's to attend weekend parties hosted by James Elliot*. Many upcoming artists would gather at the carousel and then venture off for an organized picnic at the beach . . ."
Pacific Ocean Park Skyway, 1960s
Pacific Ocean Park Aerial View, 1960s
Jeffrey Stanton* Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987, 176 pp., 1960s
Chapter 7: Dismantling of Venice (1946-1972)
". . .
" . . . the Beats were soon followed by a new generation of 'flower children.'
" . . . Many art-educated upcoming artists gravitated to Venice in the early 60's because studio space was cheap. The first wave, who settled along Market and Main streets, included Peter Alexander, Billy Al Bengston, Ron Cooper, John Altoon and Dewain Valentine. They were soon joined in the late 60's by Chuck Arnoldi, Laddie Dill, Ann McCoy, Tom Wudl and Tony Berlant. . . . . " p. 143
" . . .
Chapter 8: Pacific Ocean Park (1958 -1967)
[page 147 photo Neptune's Courtyard entrance to POP]
"In 1956 CBS and the Los Angeles Turf Club [who also developed Lake Arrowhead} were granted the lease on the Ocean Park Pier and they proposed to build a $10,000,000 nautical theme park to compete with Disneyland. They closed the [Ocean Park] pier after Labor Day, hired the best amusement park designers and Hollywood special effects experts they could find and began to design innovative new attractions for the theme park. In all 80 special effects men, scenic designers and artists worked for more than a year on the project. They like Disney, found corporate sponsors to share the expenses of some of the exhibitions. To save money they renovated existing buildings and incorporated six of the old attractions into the layout; the merry-go-round, roller coaster, Toonerville Fun House, Glass House, twin diving bells and Strat-O-Liner ride. They called the new park Pacific Ocean Park.
"The 28 acre park was decorated throughout in a sea-green and white moderne look, an evocation of the ocean itself. Its entrance set amidst fountains, sculptures and large sea horse and clam shell decorated frieze, set the mood of the wonders within. The ticket booth in Neptune's Courtyard was set under a six-legged concrete starfish canopy; plastic bubbles and sea horses adorned its top. All day admission was ninety cents for adults, less for children. This included access to the park, Neptune's Kingdom, the Sea Circus and the Westinghouse Enchanted Forest exhibit. Other rides and attractions were at additional costs.
"Opening day on Saturday July 28, 1958 drew 20,000 curious people and dozens of Hollywood celebrities. Sunday's 37,262 paying customers brought traffic jams to the area. During its first six days it out performed Disneyland in attracting customers.
"Visitors entered the park through Neptune's Kingdom where they took a submarine elevator down to the suboceanic corridors below. Water filling the elevator's clear central tube gave the illusion of descending beneath the sea. Across from the elevator was an enormous sea tank set in the corridor wall. It was partitioned so that it appeared the shark and prey cohabited the same tank. Beyond and covering one entire wall along the corridor was a large diorama filled . . . " p. 147
[p.148 schematic of POP-1959; p.149 aerial view of POP, 1963]
[p.150 Ocean Skyway bubble cars; p. 151 Local beauty queen]
"with creatures that couldn't live in captivity. Motorized artificial turtles, manta rays, sawfish, and sharks glided by over coral reef and hanging seaweed. In the distance, barely visible in the glimmering light was Neptune with his scepter in hand sitting on his throne. The display was a masterpiece of special effects, a convincing illusion of waterless liquid space presented by your Coca Cola bottler.
"Next door was Westinghouse's free Enchanted Forest and Nautilus Submarine exhibit. They had a 150 foot model, atomic reactor section of the famous atomic sub. Nearby was a room full of electronic appliances and gadgets for the House of Tomorrow. A modular house was put together by machinery as part of the show.
"The main feature of the Sea Circus area was the performing seal and dolphin shows. Two thousand people could watch the shows several times daily in the large amphitheater. Afterwards they could feed the seals in the Seal Pool.
"The twin Diving Bells nearby offered excursions beneath the surface of a large salt water tank. As one of the bells was loaded with passengers, the other was slowly pulled below the surface by hydraulic pistons. Those inside peered out of the small portholes in search of fish. Water seeping through the bell's riveted metal seams reminded one of the tremendous pressure outside., Then there was a sudden rush upwards, and the ride was over as the diving bell popped explosively to the surface. The two long lines of people, nervously awaiting their turn, were splashed by the sudden surge of water.
"The Ocean Skyway entrance was but a few steps away. Here passengers could board bubble gondolas for a six minute, half mile ride that would take them 75 feet above the Pacific. It offered panoramic views of the bay, Santa Monica Mountains, and the park. As it reached its turn-around point near the Mystery Island's volcanic peak, it offered a tantalizing preview of the Banana Train ride.
"Union 76's miniature Ocean Highway gave drivers a choice of futuristic styled model cars. The long, nearly oval course was built like a causeway directly over the ocean. Other rides in that section of the park included a Ferris wheel and a tilted aerial stye ride called the Paratrooper. Its two passenger seats suspended from parachute canopies swung outwards as the ride gained speed.
"On the other side of Neptune's Kingdom was a unique attraction called Flight to Mars. The inside lobby was decorated with a mural featuring a barren Martian . . . " p.151
{p. 152 photo Union 76 Ocean Highway}
{p. 153 POP's main midway}
" . . . landscape. Space travelers entered a round tiered spaceship-like theater with a column bank of television screen set in the floor's center. The door sealed and the seats reclined back as the ship prepared for flight. The whole theater and the individual seats shook during takeoff, while views of Earth receding in the distance were projected on the television monitors. A few minutes later the ship approached Mars and passengers prepared for a landing and were made to feel like they were slowly descending. The whole theater was built like an elevator so when passengers exited they stood before a vast diorama of the red planet and its green alien creatures. Visitors were magically returned to Earth by entering a mirrored black-light teleport chamber at the exit door.
"Across the main midway was the Flying Carpet ride, a fantasy excursion into the Tales of the Arabian Nights. Passengers boarded vehicles resembling large flying carpets that were suspended from above on tracks. The cars soared high into the air above the city lights below, past lofty mountains painted in the walls, and far away to the Sinbad's Bagdad where Arabian palace spires soared skyward. Below was a giant genie coming out of Ali Baba's lamp, and other characters from the old tales and legends. To attract customers they hired a giant 7'4" tall man whose Arabian Nights costume and large turban made him look gigantic.
"The Mirror Maze in the next building was a standard Fun House style attraction. The building's transparent facade revealed dozens of reflected images of each of the people inside the labyrinth. One had to first find a path through a glass maze to get to the area where the floors moved. Barrels turned, and rooms slanted, daring one to stand up straight. Then it was back into another maze of glass and mirrors to find a way out.
"Davy Jones Locker further along the midway was a much more interesting Fun House with a nautical theme. The revamped Toonerville Fun House was a walk thru with tunnels decorated with fake underwater paraphernalia including divers in old helmets. It had a crooked room, two slides with a bump in the center and dozens of distorted mirrors. Customers had to squeeze through giant upright padded rollers to exit. Teenagers liked the attraction because it was mostly dark, inside.
"Almost across from it was the Flying Dutchman, a 'dark' ride on tracks. Treasure chest styled cars passed through the hull of an old Spanish galleon where it narrowly missed upsetting a stack of rum barrels. Inside behind bars were prisoners crying to get out, and further on skeletons of those who were imprisoned far . . . " p. 152
[p. 154 Diving Bells]
[p. 155 Space Wheels, twin double Ferris wheels]
"too long. Threatening pirates gathered in one cabin to argue over their treasure. The overflowing treasure chest nearby had gold doubloons and jewels spilling out.
"The Deepest Deep was a smaller 'dark' ride that gave the illusion of exploring the sea in a two-man submersible. People would ride in a tracked car with a plastic bubble dome past fake looking underwater scenes. A hydraulic piston raised, lowered and turned the cars as they passed different scenes like mermaids and treasure chests. The ride was cheaply done and had endless mechanical problems that kept it closed much of the time.
"Round the World in 80 Turns took one for a tour of France, England, Germany, Turkey, China and Japan. The tub-like cars would whip sharply to the left and right to change scenes. Due to constant complaints of nausea and neck pains it was closed midway through the second season.
"Fun seekers could try hunting for big game on the Safari Ride. Tracked jeeps equipped with electronic rifles wound its way through African jungle. Lion prides fought over a recent kill and an occasional rhino would charge the jeep. The man-made plywood cutout animals were slightly animated.
"There were plenty of old fashined thrill rides along the Ports o' POP midway. Foremost was the Sea Serpent roller coaster. It was from the old pier but was now painted in an array of gaudy colors. The Whirl Pool was a huge centrifuge that pinned customers to the wall, then the floor dropped out. Another centrifuge ride called the Shell Spin slowly tilted until riders were being spun vertically. The old Stat-o-liner ride was now called Mr. Dolphin, and the Flying fish was merely a 'wild mouse' coaster with cars decorated to look like fish. Nearby were Octopus and Mrs. Squid rides. The latter was a flat 'Scrambler' style ride whose cars would swing back and forth across the platform. They spun and appeared to narrowly miss each other as they crossed each other.
"The park's best ride was the Mystery Island Banana Train Ride at the end of the pier. Eight giant totem poles and two outrigger canoes formed the entrance to the area. Explorers crossed a suspension bridge above a 9000 gallon per minute waterfall to an authentic Polynesian stilt house where they boarded the U.S. Rubber train. The train, like those of tropical banana plantation trains, was pushed by the locomotive.
"The excursion carried one through a tropical paradise of palms, bamboo, and banana trees, past coconut throwing monkeys and into two back to back counter- . . . " p. 154
{p. 156 The Sea Serpent}
{p.157 Safari and mirrors}
{p. 158 The Sea Tub}
{p. 159 POP main midway]
{p. 160 Whirl Pool and Shell Spin}
{p. 161 Mr. Dolphin}
"rotating tunnels that simulated an earthquake. The tunnels led to inside the heart of an erupting volcano where the train circled the bubbling volcanic crater. Once the passengers passed through the spider caves, the train's precarious tracks suddenly emerged on a suspension bridge over real ocean surf below. Before the startled passengers realized it, the train just as suddenly reentered the mountain into a large room where geysers erupted. Finally it passed through a tropical rain storm complete with lightning and through the jungle to the passenger loading station. Then as the ride came to an end a friendly gooney bird shrieked, "Hope you enjoyed your trip!"
"The park had two dining and shopping areas. Inside the park was a recreation of a New England harbor called Fisherman's Cove. Outside along Ocean Front Walk was the International Promenade offering superb cuisine in authentic foreign restaurants, as well as exotic souvenirs, gifts and imports in the various shops.
"Apparently many people enjoyed Pacific Ocean Park, for by the time it closed for construction and remodeling on January 5, 1959, it had attracted 1,190,000 visitors. Management decided to add four new attractions at a cost of nearly $2,000,000.
"Fun Forest located near the Sea Circus was primarily for children. It had helicopter, boat and covered wagon rides. It also had a picturesque tree maze with slides and other surprises. They purchased a 96 passenger ride called Space Wheels for $225,000 and placed it between the whale tank and Ocean Skyway ride. It was comprised of four ferris wheels, stacked two high, which rotated at the ends of four giant arms. Each wheel in turn spun in its own orbit as the arms revolved.
"The company planned to add an ornate bandstand area for entertainment and 8700 square feet of space on the south end of the pier for Zooland. This area adjacent to Fisherman's Cove would feature baby polar bears, penguins, otters flamingos, and other aquatic animals. Neither of these two attractions were completed.
"The second season's attendance wasn't nearly as good as the first. The owners decided to close it in October for the winter, then announced a month later that they sold the park to John Morehard for $10,000,000.
"It was obvious to the new owner that the park needed a one price admission policy to attract more customers. He set a price for the following spring of $1.50 for adults and $1.00 for children. He did, however, expect to raise prices for the busy summer tourist season. The Sea Serpent roller coaster was still an extra twenty five cents per ride since it was the one ride not owned by the park." p. 161
[p. 162 Entrance to Mystery Island]
[p. 163 Mystery Island]
[pp. 164 & 165 three photos of Mystery Island ride]
"Morehard's goal was to run the park as a small family amusement park business not as competition to Disneyland. He hoped to attract teens and family repeat business from people who lived within 30 to 40 miles.
"Unfortunately the park continued to lose customers. The trouble was that Pacific Ocean Park was in a run down, seedy part of town and the area attracted the wrong element. The nearby streets were littered with bums and winos who accosted customers for money. Local teenagers. aware that their parents frowned on them going to the park on weekend evenings, often told them they were going to a movie and then sneaked down to P.O.P.
"Local kids had a knack for sneaking into the park for nothing. They often used a catwalk beneath the pier to reach a trapdoor near the shooting gallery. Sometimes it was unlocked, but if that failed they would climb over the high exit turnstile.
"The park, too, was having trouble maintaining its own operation. It offered a large number of rides and attractions for the price, but with such a high overhead it had to skimp on maintenance. Rides were often broken and everything deteriorated against the rough ocean elements. In short, the park with its peeling paint looked run down It did, however, attract 1,216,000 paid customers in 1963."
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1960s
" . . . In the sixties the [Canyon School] PTA Cultural Arts Committee purchased and framed fifty prints by famous artists to be displayed in the classsrooms, with volunteer mothers acting as docents . . . The last Art Show was held in the 1950s, but the traditional Fiesta remained . . ."
"537 West Rustic . . . Built high on the hillside in 1924 by John and Grace Fraser as a one-room house. Living with them was Grace's mother, Mrs. Westover, a pioneer who came to the West in a covered wagon. The house was purchased in the mid-1930s by photographer Brett Weston, whose father, Edward Weston, lived nearby. Brett installed a darkroom, where his brother Cole learned photography under Brett's tutelage. The house was sold in 1960 to Brett's friend, cabinentmaker Gerald McCabe, and his wife, Vicki, who enlarged and improved it in 1965 . . . " p. 142
"334 Amalfi . . . The house was purchased by Neal and Jean Oxenhandler in 1962 [He a French professor at UCLA, and she an artist] . . .
"Artist Richard Diebenkorn moved to this house in the canyon from Berkeley in 1966 and rented Sam Francis*'s studio in Ocean Park. His previous style, which had been termed representational, returned to the abstract in his Ocean Park paintings. He used the experience of driving down the hill and along the Pacific Coast Highway each morning as a source of inspiration-bright parallel bands of color suggested by the sunlit stripes of path, beach, ocean, sky and grass he saw along the way. In 1988 he left and moved to Healdsburg.
" . . . "