The bond that Marilyn Reed and I formed in 1962, was Beat Sublime. This Oakland Boy could not have asked for a better first girlfriend. I though about how jealous my freinds in Oakland would be. One of those friends would betray me, as no one has ever been…..betrayed! I became aware of the betrayal in 1994. I felt it in the core of soul. I wondered if Marilyn – would betray! She was – not the one!
With the discovery Terry Southern worked on a Bond movie, and wrote ‘Youre Too Hip Baby’ the affirmations I sorely need, have arrived!
Above is a photo of Marilyn and her half-sister, Shannah., who married Les McCanns drummer, Ron Jefferson. Shannah co-authored ‘Fela – This Bitch of a Life, that became a musical. Above is Marylyn’s high school graduation pic. Yes……she was a Candy!
John Presco
“You’re Too Hip, Baby” by Terry Southern
I just read this story this morning, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s about a white American living in Paris after WWII, who befriends a recently arrived black jazz musician and his wife and ultimately is rejected by both. Why? Well, that’s sort of the gray area, but it seems to be about race and authenticity. The American, Murray, wants to be part of the cool jazz scene of Paris, and he seems to be trying real hard to befriend the musicians with offers of hash and records to listens to, tips on where to go to eat, where to rent a room. When the piano player Buddy offers his wife, piano lessons and himself to Murray, he doesn’t bite. And then it’s like, “What do you want?” The buildup of the friendship, and then Buddy’s rejection of Murray at the end sort of leaves me with the feeling of getting punched or smacked really suddenly and unexpectedly. The story just knocked the air out of me. I was wondering to myself if this whole thing actually happened to Terry Southern when he was an expat. Read it. It’s in Southern’s collection Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes.
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In the Cool World
By C. D. B. BRYAN
| RED-DIRT MARIJUANA And Other Tastes. By Terry Southern. |
Author of “The Magic Christian and “Flash and Filigree,” co-author (with Mason Hoffenberg) of “Candy” and screenwriter on “Dr. Strangelove” and “The Loved One,” Terry Southern has now published “Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes,” a collection of short stories, satire, interviews and sketches. Mr. Southern displays an ambitious variety of characters: poor whites, poor Negroes, Americans in Paris, teen-gang members in New York, suburban wives, jazz musicians, pedantic academicians, male magazine editors, gutted Spanish matadors and more. And yet, despite the wide range indicated, the short stories share a common concern with drugs, or violence, or acceptance by the cool, or– as in the story, “The Night the Bird Blew for Doctor Warner”– all three.
Dr. Warner, established and distinguished author-critic-guest-symphony-orchestra-conductor-musicians-musician, is researching a “definitive” study of “the whole of Western music, its origin and development to the present day.” Mr. Southern, in his merciless portrayal of an insufferable pedagogue, has Warner so desirous of acceptance by the jazz musicians that he wants to take heroin and says things like, “Now don’t jump salty, daddy-o, I mean like level with me ’cause I’m straight for loot, dig and I got eyes,” etc. Warner gets mugged in an alley. In another excellent story, “You’re Too Hip, Baby,” Murray, a young, white, American, jazz aficionado in Paris is scorned by a Negro jazz musician he had befriended because Murray, like Dr. Warner, wants too obviously to be part of the scene.
There are two other very good stories that explore the relationship between a young white Southern boy and his father’s Negro farm hand. The first of these is the collection’s title story; the second, and the more successful and moving, is “Razor Fight.” Each of these four stories is a crisp, poignant and often telling portrait of a conciliatory relationship. Mr. Southern’s dialogue is not just good. He is both acutely aware of, and the absolute master of the nuances, the ludicrous snobbishness, the deliberate exclusivity of clique vocabulary as practiced by those who still think it is hip to be cool.
The other short stories were disappointingly slick. Despite occasional and rewarding flashes of Mr. Southern’s perception, the stories seemed written long ago, before the author had learned what he wrote best.
Still, my favorite facet of Mr. Southern’s talent is his satire. I am most appreciative of the author when with demoniacal cunning he masquerades as the guardian of taste, of responsibility, of moral decency. (Mr. Southern’s italics, of course.) In “Scandale at the Dumpling Shop” the author takes umbrage at the manufacturers of the Little Cathy Curse Doll– Complete With Teeny Tampons, and speculates in horror what might come next: Little Victor Vomit? Little Katy Ka-Ka? In “The Moon-Shot Scandal” he exposes the loss of five astronauts of the moonship Cutie-Pie II which “was caused to careen off into outer space, beyond the moon itself, when some kind of ‘insane faggot hassle,’ as it has since been described, developed aboard the craft during early flight stage.” There is enough Terry Southern of “The Magic Christian vintage in the sketches (Kafka and his mother exchange apartments with Freud) and Interviews (Terry Southern Interviews a Faggot Male Nurse) to justify the collection’s awesome price.
The collection is marred, however, by irresponsible editing. Pointless bits and pieces so litter the book that one has the impression its editors judged a page count more important than content. Some of the sketches might have been funny had the author worked them out, but others should have been dropped. My major complaint is that there was absolutely no excuse for the inclusion of the last story, “The Blood of a Wig,” which functions solely to provide the author (in opposition to Paul Krassner and The Realist) a way to suggest what was excised from William Manchester’s “The Death of a President.” Come on now, Editors, some things are not funny, no matter how hip the author.
Mr. Bryan, author of the novel “P. S. Wilkinson,” is currently teaching at the University of Iowa.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Ron Jefferson (February 13, 1926, in New York City[1] – May 7, 2007, in Richmond, Virginia[2]) was a jazz drummer.
Considered a disciple of Max Roach, in the 1950s, he worked with Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Oscar Pettiford, and Lester Young, among others.[1]
A founding member of Les McCann‘s trio, with whom he played from 1960 to 1964, he also recorded with “Groove” Holmes,[2] as well as with Joe Pass for Pacific Jazz Records in 1963/1964.
After leaving the West Coast, he went to live in Paris, and from there to Barcelona, backing Ruth Brown as part of a trio with pianist Stuart de Silva.[3]
He led his own line-ups comprising Bobby Hutcherson, among others.
He was an uncle of drummer Al Foster.[1]
He died in Richmond at the age of 81 after being hospitalized with an illness.[2]
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
“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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The Black Doll of Sawtell
Posted on June 22, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Race Relations is difficult study, but it is our study.
Two Sawtelle Marilyns
Posted on June 18, 2016by 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.
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.
Although it is the resting place of some of the entertainment industry‘s greatest names, it also contains the graves of many uncelebrated people. For example, when Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, Joe DiMaggio, responsible for Monroe’s arrangements, chose Westwood not because of its celebrities but because it was the resting place of Monroe’s mother’s friend, Grace Goddard, and Goddard’s aunt, Ana Lower, both of whom had cared for Monroe as a child.[1]
Francis Lenn Taylor (December 28, 1897 – November 20, 1968) was an American art dealer and father of the actressElizabeth Taylor.
Life and career[edit]
He was born in Springfield, Illinois, the son of Elizabeth Mary (née Rosemond; 1869–1937) and Francis Marion Taylor (1860–1946). The family later moved to Arkansas City, Kansas.
Francis began dealing in art in New York City for a wealthy in-law, Howard Young.[citation needed]
Taylor married stage actress Sara Sothern (whose real name was Sara Viola Warmbrodt and who was also from Arkansas City) in 1926 in New York.[citation needed]
They were the parents of Howard Taylor (born 1929) and of Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011), the world-famous stage andscreen actress.
Within a few years of his marriage, Taylor was transferred to Young’s art gallery in London, England, where he and Sara lived for several years, and where their children were born. In April 1939, five months before the outbreak of World War IIin Europe, they returned to the United States.
Taylor later ran an art gallery in Beverly Hills, California.[citation needed]
He died at age 70 in Los Angeles, California. He is interred beside his widow in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Westwood, Los Angeles.[1]
http://www.cursumperficio.net/FicheAH18.html
11348 Nebraska Ave. Sawtelle, CA 1938-41
6707 Odessa Ave. Van Nuys, CA 1941-42
11348 Nebraska Ave. Sawtelle, CA 1942
4524 Vista Del Monte St. Sherman Oaks, CA 1942
14747 Archwood St. Van Nuys, CA 1943
Yesterday I talked to Marilyn Reed about the Sawtelle, and her neighbor, John Lupton. Marilyn’s brother, Stanley, was married John’s wife’s sister, I believe. I was supposed to interview M at the Eugene Art Walk last night, but it was moved to next week due to New Years. She is a gold mine and there is no end to the information I capture, with patience, because Marilyn is a humble soul, and not a name dropper like me. I brought up John Lupton. She used to baby-sit his son, and I would come over to neck with my first girlfriend on the couch. I was impressed. M had already introduced me to Les McCann who played and sang a tune for us.
I asked M how this actor felt living in the Sawtelle, and how he got there. What I have been trying to do is establish the Sawtelle as a haven for the Beats, Folk Artists, and early Hippies. Our friend, Bryan MacLean played at a coffee house Marilyn and I found in 1962, when we were fifteen and sixteen. It was a tea house. After school we would sit by the fire and I would draw M. An hour ago I discovered John played a Beat Writer in the movie ‘The Rebel Set’. I struck the Mother Load, and arrived at the archetypal hub.
I told Marilyn we have been having the same conversation for forty-five years, we very interested in Beats and Bohemians. To discover that John played a Beatnik writer is “far out and floating”. Gloria Moreland plays a Bali Dancer. M’s daughter, Nisha, lived in Bali and studied Gamalin music. Nisha read Rena’s poem while her step-father played drums at the Granary poetry reading. In this movie a guy checks out Gloria’s ass, which she was famous for. When M was babysitting for Kathy down the street, Arnold Palmer checked out M’s sixteen year old ass as she walked out of the room. I caught him and gave him a hard stare. Kathy was dating his good friend who MCed a golf show. This was the start of our break-up. Kathy was a jet-setter who knew everyone in LA. She lived in the Sawtelle. Marilyn was also a Whiteaker Pioneer.
As a profound coincidence I was telling M about my FB friend, Ben Toney, and the movie Expresso Bongo also made in 1959 at the height of the Beatnik Craze. I have found my alter-ego, King Invader, a poet who reads in The Rebel Set.
Marilyn is still a good friend of Jazz great, Les McCann. After we broke up she went with Jeff Pasternak to France on a ocean liner. Here she is having dinner with Jeff onboard. Jeff founded a rock group ‘The Mustard Greens’ that played at the Whiskey A Go-Go, where he met ‘The Doors’ that he tried to get in his father’s movie.
“Bryan started playing guitar in 1963/64. He got a job at the Balladeer before it changed its name to the Troubadour Club, playing back-up blues guitar. It was here he met the pre Byrds Jet Set while dating Jackie De Shannon and he became ‘fast friends’ with David Crosby. He moved away from home and by early 1965 he became road manager for the Byrds on their first Californian tour with the Rolling Stones.”
Bryan was a roadie for the Byrds when he was seventeen. We were both on the brink of dropping out of high school that we had outgrown. Bryan told me he was going to got on tour with the Byrds in Europe, but because he was underage, then did not take him. Bryan went to live with the Beat Artist, Vito Paulekas
In 1966 I went with my friend Nancy Van Brasch to see ‘Love’ at the Filmore. Nancy and I lived in a famous commune in SF, and she dated Stanley Augustus Owsely. Christine Rosamond came to live with us, and she went on a date with Nick Sands. I later got to know members of ‘The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’ who bought me art supplies. I was the Artist in Residence when I lived with ‘The Loading Zone’.
I had my first art show at the New Balladeer that is on the corner of Massachusetts and Sawtelle. Bryan’s Beatnik friend slept in a cot in the store room, and was later murdered by my second girlfriend’s father. Bryan was invited to Sharon Tate’s home the night she was murdered by the Manson family, but, he had a previous engagement. Consider Tyler Shields and the Eastwoods.
Why are Beatniks getting involved in a bank heist? The star of Zabriskie Point was a Mel Lyman devotee. Mark Frechette held up a bank with another Lyman Family member after he made his movie. He had real-life interests. Mel Lyman is my kindred who created a network of Miscans, Actors, and Artists. He is in my family tree. He married Jessie Benton, a cousin of my ex-brother-in-law, muralist Garth Benton, who starred in movies, as did his first wife, Alli McBride.
Ray Miller might be the first Beat Writer depicted in a film. What was Ken Kesey up to in 1959? Was Jack Kerouac ever in a movie? My fictional author Don The Juan’ Roscoe is on his way to becoming a Beat Writer after Ray ‘The Bank’ Miller.
Rena Easton, the dancer, is foreseen in the Bali Dancer, played by Moreland. This is the blueprint…..the far-out groovy blues-print that has been floating around in Bohemian Lore waiting to come home to………….The Sawtelle!
Gloria Stuart was an Artist and Bonzai Master. She lived in the Bohemian Community of Carmel where my late sister, Christina Rosamond Benton, had two galleries. She married Blair Gordon Newell, a sculptor who helped Ralph Stackpole with his creative projects. Ralph was a good friend of the muralist Diego Rivera and his artistic wife. Ralph knew George Sterling who co-founded the Carmel Bohemian community, and the Bohemian Club. Gloria was friends with the Weston family of photographers of Carmel. Gloria’s offspring are making a documentary titled ‘The Secret Life of Old Rose’.
Gloria went to Santa Monica High School, and my kindred, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, went to University High in the Sawtelle where sprang a Creative Beat Musical scene at a Tea House located at 11271 Massachusetts Ave, Los Angeles. Here I drew my High School sweetheart, Marilyn Reed. We were fifteen and sixteen, and considered ourselves, Beats. My friend, Bryan McLean of ‘Love’ played here, as did David Cosby. Bryan was in love with my sister, who became the world famous artist ‘Rosamond’. Liz and Gloria were involved in the Arts. The muralist, Stanton McDonald Wright, placed Gloria next to the actor Leo Carrillo overlooking Santa Monica Bay. That is Gloria’s husband with his sculpture near Rocky Point. Stanton was a good friend of the artist and muralist, Thomas Hart Benton.
America needs a Peace Center where people can gather and look for ways to be peaceful. I am looking at the Sawtelle Asylum for Wounded Veterans where Ralph’s statue of Pacifica can be rebuilt. Unto this sanctuary all Seekers of Peace would be welcome.
Come! Put on your tapping shoes, and help make America great again!
I just talked to Marilyn and she told me she used to hop the fence and swim in the Tongva Springs all the time, starting when she was eight. She lived on Armacost near Brockton Elementary school located a few blocks from Uni High. Gloria and M look like the French Actress, Madeleine Sologne, who starred in Cocteau’s movie ‘L’Éternel Retour’ The movie ‘The Titanic’ returned to the theme of Eternal Love. Artists are immortalized. I have found a stellar group of creative souls that sprang from mural in Santa Monica where Marilyn and I went to swim in the sea. These are…………my people!
Jon Presco
http://www.thisismarilyn.com/young-marilyn-monroe-with-ana-lower-43399.photo
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’.
Rosamond Press 
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