Hit The Road Jack
by
John Presco
Copyright 2024
Story about a beautiful couple who make a living winning dance contests in Los Angles in 1963. They win an Oscar for their routine in a hit movie, and recount their lives and how they met. They grew up on the wrong side of the track. He is white, and she is a mixture of races. Dancing is what they have in common. They try to change one another in order to find acceptance. He tries to leave her, but can’t. She wont let him. This pushing away, and drawing him back, is the soul of their routine.
Conspiring With La La Land Angels
Posted on March 4, 2017 by Royal Rosamond Press
The great fear of an artist, or anyone, is that someone, some force, has conspired against you, to not only turn your dream into shit, but, put it in the hands of someone who stole it from you. And now, it is their shiny thing, that mocks you wherever you go and ruins you at every turn, every chance you may have to own a new endeavor you can truly call your own, and never, will it be taken from you………again.
Not four seconds into the movie La La Land, is my worst fear realized: for there is my old car, my 1977 Toyota Corolla, that I named ‘The Mustardmobile’.
Damn! My old car is the star of the show! Walt and Hollywood have done this before!
I whipped out my infamous camera, and start shooting. I need this evidence, that Belle and Marilyn, conspired to steal our story – my story! And now it is their story, the tale of The wrathful Muses, The Fallen Angels of my attempt to have it all…….The Past, The Present, and the Future. And to prove I am not deluded, not imaging things, here come the Blue Bicycles – Belle’s Bicycle – that is the symbol of my soaring dream, and my humiliating downfall. Mia and Sebastian come out of a on-lot Deli, and up ride folks on blue Schwinns – just like the one I gave Belle – to model for me! Rub it in! This is not synchronicity! This is pay back!
I make a whimpering sound that got the attention of my Mystery Date, who has gorgeous hair. She won’t let me get a pic of her face, Why! Was I alone? How many screenwriters, and wanna-be writers, knew La La Land was stolen from them. I was just another Sadsack, another chump, now digging thru my old photos and love letters – for the proof!
C’mon people! Between the A and the L. There it is, at the very center of the opening scene, that The Thief wants me to see, and, die inside: for he, or she, or they, have gotten over me – BIG TIME! One critic said La La Land was another example of Hollywood being in love with itself. Are you kidding, They made a movie about a evil car named ‘Christine’. How can anyone respect themselves after working on that monstrosity. I think take-it-up the ass, Cobian, was the stand by hot-wax guy on that one!
After the entrance of the Blue Bicycle, comes that hideous utterance from Sebastian where he accuses Mia of wanting him to fail, wanting him to be a total loser – and he loses her!
What the fuck! Somebody wants me to fail – BIG TIME! Was this always the case? I think it is time to consult an attorney! No one fucks with my Freedom of Expression. Not even Hollywood!
Jon Presco
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The Black Doll Of La La Land
Posted on March 4, 2017 by Royal Rosamond Press
On our second date Marilyn took me to see ‘Black Orpheus’ at the Nuart theater on Santa Monica Blvd. M thinks it was the Tivoli. When I see Mia drive by the Rialto theater, I start to choke. My ‘It Girl’ put her hand on my arm, to comfort me.
“Are you all right?”
“No! I’m having an attack of dejevue!
When we emerged from the theater, M asked me what I thought.
“I think I am a black man trapped in a white man’s body!”
Marilyn looked at me, perturbed. I didn’t know it then that she was setting me up for the greatest White vs. Black Culture Clash – of all time!
“I can dance! Really dance! I stole a LP from Rexall drug store when I was fourteen. I still have it. I used to dance to ‘African Drums’ before I went to school, and after, to relieve the tension. I hate school!”
I am sure Marilyn told Kenny Reed about the black soul lurking inside, me, and that’s why I am the only white man he hates in the Emerald Valley.
Being a Poor White-Black Person, with no money to take M on our first date. Rosemary suggested we go see Wurthering Heights at UCLA, where she went for two years. It was my first date. I tried not to show I was nervous. We did not hold hands, or touch one another inside the movie house. I knew she was waiting for The Kiss. I wanted a really grand kiss! A real movie kiss!
It was nighttime. As we walked the brick path, all of a sudden, I grabbed Marilyn’s hand and, cried!
“Let’s see if we can get to the top of that tower!”
We ran as hard as we could, we bothing laughing! The door was unlocked. There was no one anywhere as we bounded up the stairs! We found the door to the balcony, and looked down on the city lights. We were fifteen and sixteen. I shouted;
“Let’s go to the top of that tower!”
And down the stairs we ran! We conquered both towers! We owned La La Land!
We had people to run from. My best friend, Mark Owen, said this to me;
“I’m going to destroy you. I’m going to take Marilyn from you!”
Mark became Marilyn’s best friend’s lover.
Then, there was Jeff Pasternak, the movie producer’s son, who approached us at school. There was a dark jealousy deep inside. He had a crush on M before I came along. He did not respond to any the e-mails you have read in this blog. He was rich. M and her family were so poor. I was poor. We began to fret over money so we could fund our True Romance. M’s mother was really on my case! Mia’s phone call with her mother – ruined them, ruined the…………
‘The Greatest Love Story Ever Told!’
We never considering cashing in, because our story kept getting bigger and better. M’s half-brother took us to see Dizzy Gillespie at the Lighthouse in Hermosa beach. We would never be the same!
If La La Land resembles any movie, it is Black Orpheus, who was the greatest musician of all time. He was a married man. Mia and Sebastian, did not get married – yet!
Orpheus did not take his lyre into Hades to retrieve his beautiful wife, who had been captured by Death, and his minion of the underworld!
Do you see what Marilyn is holding in her hand? It looks like a Black Oscar. It is the black doll her sister, Shauna gave her. S married Ron Jeffers, Les MaCann’s drummer. She told me she would stay at her sister’s house in Watts. S & M would walk down the street together, in this Black Ghetto. No one fucked with them. M told me they walked past the Watts Towers on the way to Jazz clubs no white man ever entered. When I saw the Watts towers in La La Land, I knew it was A RIP!
Before M married Kenny, she told me not to anyone J.J. Johns kiss her on the couch after he made dinner for her in his apartment in Watts. He wanted to go all they way.
“I’m only fifteen!” she said. But, I think she lied.
What M is holding in her hand, is the Oscar not offered to all the Black Jazz Artists, who created a scene that was the Soul of the City of Angels. It is something else. It is M’s Oscar for the Best Love Story – of all time!
I begged my daughter, and my beautiful muses, to not give up on The Story………
“For all is well, that ends well!”
Everyone thought I was mad when I told them there is so much Illusion and Fakery, that I am compelled to give all I have – for free! For I have seen a Greater Reality. I have beheld, the Great Art. And, this is what we fought over, M and I. I told my love I was corrupting my Creative Soul – by even dwelling in La La Land! I’m sixteen years old having these incredible esoteric conversation up at the Mormon Temple, where we looked down on the city lights. It was our constant stage!
Mia booked out of there after her little stage, with the painted Eifel Tower, failed her. She was destined for The Real Thing!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2017
https://rosamondpress.com/2016/08/23/the-black-doll-revisited
“Vivien Leigh was my heroine,” Elizabeth once said. “She was innocence on the verge of decadence, always there to be saved.”
On our first date, Marilyn Godfrey and I went to see ‘Withering Heights’ in an auditorium on the grounds of the University of California at Los Angeles. Not having any money, and our mothers being poor, this love story was chosen because it being shown for free. Our father’s were absent from the home. We got no help from them in launching our fifty-five year friendship that began with the deep consideration as to how this agreement between two teenagers was going to go. Would I make it to first base, or, will we make excuses as to why we have to hurry home?
“My mother just got another calling from God. I feel it in my bones. I must rush home to be by her side.”
“My mother has just finished off a gallon of Pisano and his pulling my sister;s hair out by the root. I can feel her pain. I must rush home to protect her. See ya sometime!”
I was fifteen. I had never been on a date, and thus did not know what a bad date looked or felt like. I was at the mercy of Marilyn who had gone on several dates. She had kissed – how many of them? I kissed my childhood friend Nancy when we were both twelve. I assumed she was a good kisser. I had not kissed a girl hence. This kiss was waiting in the wing, as Heathcliffe made his famous haunted pledge. I include most of his commitment to love, because, at the end of our long bond, I receive a death threat from Marilyn’s black husband, and, a Cease and Desist from the black Director of the Gospel Choir Marilyn is the President of. For the moment, we are studying how White Folks love, in Merry Ol England made famous for this tale of woe.
‘May she wake in torment!‘ he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot die without my soul!’
Wow! So this is – love! You can’t even share anything that resembles this in a AA meeting without being accused of being selfish, and on a dry drunk. But, at fifteen Marilyn and I would give it a go. However, this was not our only blue print. M had a master plan that I still have not seen the whole of! Women are Secret Lovers. They play their cards very close to their vest, to their most Secret Heart. So, on our second date she took me to see Black Orpheus. She paid our way. From that day on, I was her puppet on a string.
Chazelle wrote the screenplay in 2010 but did not find a studio willing to finance the production without changes to his design. Following the success of his 2014 film Whiplash, the project was picked up by Summit Entertainment. La La Land premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2016, and was released in the United States on December 9, 2016. It has grossed $370 million worldwide on a production budget of $30 million.[6]
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Into The Sawtelle
Posted on December 11, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
Into The Sawtelle
by
Vincent Rosamond Rice
I cried as I watched Spielberg’s West Side Story – a good deal! When this new version finally got going – there was no escaping – the pain! I knew what was coming. I knew my Shakespeare. This story is – gripping. Maria was perfectly cast. Her large eyes were two lenses into two worlds. Natalie Woods had those big eyes.
I hope we hear all the casting details – someday – and the argument Steven had with the Art Director. There had to be many – heated discussions – because I could not tell the temperature of New York – seconds into this very good movie! In the original, you knew it is summertime from way up in the helicopter. Then – smack – you are thrown on the street. NEVER put signs and words to read at the beginning of a movie. We don’t go to the movies to get a lesson. Our tears – are full of lessons. We go to this movie – to cry!
When my family first moved to West Los Angeles, I did the painting of our street, Midvale. We lived a hundred yards from Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a hundred degrees for several days straight. I deduced Rosemary moved her four children – to hell!
I was the best dancer at Oakland High. About fifty students formed a circle around me as I did my choregraphed version of The Pony. I danced for a half-hour before school, and when I got home. At sixteen, I danced the Bolero for Marilyn on her sixteenth Birthday. I took my shirt off, because I knew I was going to sweat allot. My love had stolen my large painting of Jesus walking across the hot desert. I was a great walker. I seldom had money for the bus. I would put myself in a trance – and create! I wrote poems, and philosophized. I was always in a movie.
Vincent Rosamond Rice
Play both videos at the same time.
Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel’s most famous musical composition.[1]
Before Boléro, Ravel had composed large-scale ballets (such as Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the Ballets Russes 1909–1912), suites for the ballet (e.g. the second orchestral version of Ma mère l’oye, 1912), and one-movement dance pieces (for example La valse, 1906–1920). Apart from these compositions intended for a staged dance performance, Ravel had demonstrated an interest in composing re-styled dances, from his earliest successes—the 1895 Menuet and the 1899 Pavane—to his more mature works such as Le Tombeau de Couperin, which takes the format of a dance suite.
Boléro epitomizes Ravel’s preoccupation with restyling and reinventing dance movements. It was also one of the last pieces he composed before illness forced him into retirement. The two piano concertos and the song cycle Don Quichotte à Dulcinée were the only completed compositions that followed Boléro.
Two Sawtelle Marilyns
Posted on June 18, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
Two hours ago I got a call from Marilyn Reed. She invited me to our friend Caroline Quinn’s art show. I told her I had just posted on Churchill and Marilyn Monroe, and told her I believed she lived near her in Santa Monica, and, I would google her to get an address. What I found out, has blown me away! Here is the synchronicity that I already applied to the Sawtelle, and the chapter – if not book – I plan to write about this neighbor – both Marilyn’s grew up in! They lived three and a half blocks from each other. Marilyn Godfrey Reed lived on Iowa, on the corner of Colby, next to the actor, John Lupton, who is in her family tree.
Here’s where we enter The Twilight Zone, Marilyn’s crypt is located on Glendon Avenue, about ten blocks from where my family lived on Glendon, two houses from La Grange, and about thirteen blocks from the Marilyns. Marilyn is forever residing on Glendon, as is my kindred, Francis Linn Taylor, who married Elizabeth Mary Rosemond, who Liz was named after. Francis was a art collector who owned several galleries.
For over a year I have been blogging on the Sawtelle. Marilyn looked a lot like Marilyn. We spent much time at each others homes. We were deeply in love. Our homes, and our hood, played such a big part of our growing up. identities are hard to come by in such a sprawling city. When the Prescos first moved to LA in August of 62, it was very hot. Here is a painting I did of the apartment we lived in on Midvale that I believe was once located in the Sawtelle.
In my musical I have Marilyn going to France, and coming back to the Sawtelle with Brigette Bardot’s blue bicycle. Bardot is France’s Monroe! How uncanny! This is part of the Synchronicity Art Movement I discovered. I may be kin to Sarah Churchhill. Rena was born in Nebraska and lived with her grandmother. There are many books written about the Sacred Feminine. The artist Rosamond, rendered beautiful women, and was inspired to take up art when she was twenty-four after seeing a photo of the large canvas I did of Rena. Christine was also inspired by the relataionship I had, and still have, with my muse.
When you look at this map you see that Marilyn came home again. She rests in our hood. Below is a photograph of the Rosamond Women taken on Glendon Avenue. That’s me on a skateboard. Marilyn and I just broke up after her mother forbade me to see her anymore because I did not go down and be SAVED. She saw Monroe as a Jezebel and Hussy. My mother and aunt Lillian dated Errol Flynn.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2016
Norma Jeane’s first appartment rented on her own downstairs from Ana Lower.
11348 Nebraska Avenue
11348 Nebraska Ave. Sawtelle, CA 1945-46
After Marilyn left the Los Angeles Orphans Home she bounced back and forth between different foster homes.
In 1937, 11-year-old Monroe found a home with Ana Lower, a relative of Marilyn’s guardian Grace McKee. Marilyn and Aunt Ana lived at 11348 Nebraska Avenue. It was the most stable home environment that Marilyn had known and she lived here until Lower developed health problems. Subsequently, McKee arranged a marriage between 16-year-old Marilyn and 21-year-old Jim Dougherty.
Monroe and Dougherty were married on June 19, 1942.
Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson, June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962) was an American actress and model. Famous for playing “dumb blonde” characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s, emblematic of the era’s attitudes towards sexuality. Although she was a top-billed actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million by the time of her unexpected death in 1962.[1] She continues to be considered a major popular culture icon.[2]
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage and married for the first time at the age of sixteen. While working in a factory as part of the war effort in 1944, she met a photographer and began a successful pin-up modeling career.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe
Westwood Cemetery
1218 Glendon Avenue
No Marilyn tour would be complete without a visit to her crypt at Westwood. This small cemetery is hidden between tall buildings in a downtown area and is hard to find unless you know exactly where it is.
At the corner of Wilshire Blvd and Glendon Ave, there is a tall office building on the Southeast corner. Going south on Glendon, just past the office building there is a narrow driveway on the left. Turn in there, and go up the short hill. Where the driveway branches, go to the right, and you are there. The driveway circles around the cemetery. The chapel is near the Southwest corner. Marilyn’s crypt is near the Northeast corner. (Marked in the picture below)”
Here I am in 1963 on Glendon Avenue with my brother and Uncle Vinnie who gave me my first car, that 1957 Ford Fairlane in the background. The camera is point towards Marilyn’s crypt about twelve blocks away.
The Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery is a cemetery in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, California. It is located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in Westwood, with an entrance from Wilshire Boulevard.
Larry Sidle of the Sawtelle Sychornicity
Posted on December 10, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
Around 3:30 P.M. my ex-brother-in-law called me up on my computer. We talked for almost an hour. The last time we exchanged words, was in 1967. We are fathers, who sired two daughters. Larry Sidle told me for the last twenty years he was living near University High School. I told him I am writing about Marilyn Reed and the Sawtelle.
“She lived on Iowa, near Colby.”
“I live near Colby!”
“I’m getting chills. I have blogged on Synchronicity.”
Two hours later I look at my Sawtelle blogs, and found this one posted December 9, 2015, a year ago – exactly! There are springs blocks from Larry’s house. There is a Eternal Return. Thanks to the ‘Boy Next Door’ I have become unstuck in the telling of my story about OUR family! We can go home again, and tell the truth, which will…..set us free.
In the photo above, Christine Rosamond Presco, is pregnant with Shannon Sidle. Why isn’t our story included in the Strange Tales of Rosamond?
Jon Presco
Copyright 2016
Synchromism was founded by Stanton MacDonald Wright (Fig. 1) and Morgan Russell, while they were in Paris during 1912. Together they created the first official works, produced anywhere, which were considered ‘nonrepresentational’. Simply put, Synchromism was a method of painting that set itself apart by using fractured forms and rich colors ; based on using the color theories of Tudor Hart along with the sculptural qualities of Michelangelo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
Synchronicity is a concept first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related.[1] During his career, Jung furnished several slightly different definitions of it.[2]
Jung variously defined synchronicity as an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, and “acausal parallelism.” He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.[3]
Benton initially met Wright in the winter of 1909, and immersed himself in the Synchromistic methods. Unfortunately, the only way we can now examine the influence of this time period had on his work is by drawing conclusions from his later work, as much of the work created from 1914-1917 was destroyed in a fire at his home in Neosho Missouri in 1917.
Macdonald-Wright was one of the first of many muralists working in the 1930’s to slant his historical presentation to local achievements. He set noted Santa Monicans, actors Gloria Stuart (b. 1910) and Leo Carrillo (1880-1961), before a backdrop that is a glorious panorama of Santa Monica Bay. Motion pictures not only represented a hometown industry to Macdonald-Wright but also related to his life-long experiments with film and color. Other autobiographical elements appear in other panels. The lariat thrower is his friend, artist Thomas Hart Benton; the dog in the prologue is his own; and the painter at an easel is his father, to whom the mural is dedicated.
Sawtelle
Posted on December 9, 2015by Royal Rosamond Press
“Latino activist Oscar de la Torre declared war on the 74-year-old art work last week and vowed to launch a campaign to “take this mural down”
Calling it “the Santa Monica confederate flag,” De la Torre said the mural is an insult to Native Americans because it shows them “bowing down to the Spaniards who came and oppressed and murdered and committed genocide in the Americas.”
Two days ago I told Marilyn that I am committed to publishing my first book in one month. I told her it would be titled ‘Sawtelle’. Yesterday, Donald Trump said he would not allow Muslims into this country if he were President. Yesterday, was December 7th. and many American people paid respects to those who lost their life when Japan attacked Pear Harbor. This attack has been compared to 911. After this “sneak attack” University High School lost 20% percent of their graduating class due to the United States Government rounding up these students, along with their parents, and putting them in internment camps. Today, Trump defended his statements by referring to FDR’s action.
The mural was painted by a good friend of my kindred, Thomas Hart Benton, the cousin of the muralist, Garth Benton, the late father of my artistic niece, Drew Benton. Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Thomas lived in Paris, and it was from Stanton that Benton got his style. Senator Thomas Hart Benton authored ‘Manifest Destiny’. I, my family, and my autobiography are at the epicenter of a cultural maelstrom. Consider Alley Valkyrie and her demands for Ken Kesey Square. Look at the Kesey murals and the destiny I beheld.
https://stories.californiasunday.com/2014-12-07/pynchon-inherent-vice-los-angeles
“The mural, painted by Wright, a Santa Monica native, when the historic structure was built in 1938-39, became a symbol of racism at last week’s demonstration to secure funding for PYFC. The demonstration was joined by members of the Indian American Movement’s L.A. Chapter, organizers said.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump defended his call to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the United States by comparing it to former President Roosevelt’s 1942 executive order that authorized the internment of 110,000 American citizens of Japanese descent.
“This is a president highly respected by all, he did the same thing,” Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday. “If you look at what he was doing, it was far worse.”
“We are now at war,” he added. “We have a president that doesn’t want to say that, but we are now at war.”
He shied away from the analogy during an earlier interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when host Joe Scarborough asked whether the internment camps violated American values.
“I am not proposing that,” Trump said. “This is a whole different thing.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-defends-muslim-plan-by-comparing-himself-to-fdr/
“The springs shown in the mural still exist today, said Lehrer, “a sacred place restored and tended by descendants of Tongva/Gabrieleno Native Americans on the grounds of University High School.”
The Tongva indigenous American People could make a powerful case letting the white man come into their country – was a huge mistake!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongva_people
When I was fifteen my art teacher told me there was nothing he could teach me, and gave me a key to a gate that guarded these springs. He gave me a Artist’s Sanctuary that I could use whenever I attended his class. He took off his wristwatch and handed it to me so I could tell when his class was over. I fought back tears as I headed to these springs with a drawing board and paper. Years later Marilyn told me she used to climb the tall chain-link fence when she was thirteen, and swim in these sacred waters. She is part Meti.
Sawtelle used to be a city. After it was incorporated into the City of Los Angeles, a high school was built that was going to be named Sawtelle. Recently Sawtelle was renamed ‘Japantown’. A boundary line was drawn that stops short of the Sawtelle Veterans Home, where World War Two Veterans lived after being wounded in the War of the Pacific. Most of those Vets have died of old age. How many would object to the Sawtelle being named after Japan, whose conservative imperial war machine committed hideous atrocities. Indeed, if you are looking for a historic role model for ISIS, look to the Japanese military, who installed a systematic rape of young girls taken as sex slaves.
“The Los Angeles City Council recently unanimously approved a community petition to name the area Sawtelle Japantown. It’s also traditionally known as Sawtelle, West Los Angeles and, to some, Little Osaka.”
I point this out, because the American people have forgiven Japan for its war crimes. However, Donald Trump has picked a fight with Japan. How about Germany? Donald wants to round up Mexicans and put them back in Mexico. Trump’s has infuriated our neighbors while his rabid supporters egg him on. History has proven this kind of talk leads to war, and thus, young men going to war. Our soldiers will die. Many will be wounded and scarred for life. How many white followers understand there will be bloodshed as Trump makes America great again? Japan’s warrior class set out to make Japan “great again”.
This quest for greatness usually entails seeing others as less than human, and thus it us permitted to treat people who are not like you as sub-humans, even like vermon and bugs. The greatness of Germany and Japan did not end by the a consensus of its leaders who committed War Crimes. They did not say; “We must change our evil ways!” Japan and Germany was changed by American, British, and Russian soldiers. They had no choice. We beat them into submission.
Today, Japan’s leaders continue to ignore the bulk of Japans war crimes. Is there some kind od dual citizenship? Women have sued the nation of Japan because these superior men put their seed in them after they were beaten, tortured, and humiliated. Juan Cabrillo and his soldiers did the same thing to the Native Americans of the Sawtelle, who showed them a spring where they could draw water. They quenched the thirst of men who came to conquer them.
One reason why Stanton depicted this scene, was his use of Leo Carillo in the murals at the Santa Monica Library. They could have been friends. Stanton put Leo next to the actress Gloria Stuart who played Rose in the movie ‘The Titanic’. Leo is kin to conquistadors the Tongva people befriended. Then, they were betrayed.
Today, a Veterans group is suing the Department of Veteran’s Affairs to get back the Sawtelle Veterans Refuge and use it for warriors who suffer from mental illness due to the battles they have been in.
At the edge of the Sawtelle there was a Tea House Marilyn and I found, and where I brought my drawing pad. We were fifteen and sixteen. I did her portrait by a table near the crackling fire. I was in love for the first time in my life. Together we constituted an anti-war movement. It was 1962.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2015
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-strategy-seeks-to-avoid-isis-prophecy/ar-AAg9gDg?li=BBnb7Kz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Carrillo
Although he played many different ethnicities in his acting career, Leo Carrillo was Castillian Spanish and traced his ancestry in Spain to the year 1260.[1] His great-great grandfather José Raimundo Carrillo[3] (1749–1809), was a soldier in the Spanish Portolá expedition colonization of Las Californias, arriving in San Diego on July 1, 1769. Franciscan Friar Junípero Serra performed the marriage ceremony for Don Jose Raimundo and Tomasa Ignacia Lugo in 1781.[4][5] His great-grandfather Carlos Antonio Carrillo[3][6] (1783–1852) was Governor of Alta California[7] (1837–38). His great-uncle, José Antonio Carrillo, was a three-time mayor of Los Angeles and twice married to sisters of Governor Pío Pico.[8] His paternal grandfather, Pedro Carrillo, who was educated in Boston,[9] was a writer.
RUTH DE JONG, ART DIRECTOR: The Gaspar de Portolá painting in Pynchon’s book is just a small piece in a hallway. But we decided it would serve well as a backdrop to a scene in which the mysteries of Los Angeles unfold. We liked the idea of having Doc look completely out of place in a private club. When we didn’t find an existing location, we re-dressed the lower lobby of the Los Angeles Theatre in downtown L.A. The room had a combination of wood and plaster paneling, and we added the booths, tables, chairs, and drapes.
DAVID CRANK, PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Paul really wanted to include the painting described in the book. He liked the idea of magnifying this explorer who led an 18th-century expedition through what is now Los Angeles. We found a mural of Portolá at the Compton post office. It matched the book’s description, down to the vegetable crates. I went to the post office one day and hoisted up a ladder to photograph the thing. I reworked the center portion of the mural and had it reproduced on canvas.
By Hector Gonzalez
Staff Writer
June 30, 2015 — A local activist who attacked a mural at City Hall as a depiction of conquered Native Americans is misinterpreting what artist Stanton MacDonald-Wright meant by the scene, said a Santa Monica Conservancy official.
Pico Youth and Family Center (PYFC) founder and local Latino activist Oscar de la Torre declared war on the 74-year-old art work last week and vowed to launch a campaign to “take this mural down” during a rally protesting a funding cut for PYFC.
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