Flappers, Fires and Frankenstein
From Chumash to M*A*S*H, Frederick and May Rindge to Frankie and Annette, flappers to Frankenstein and a fair few fires, all of this and more are captured in Images of America: Malibu, one of thousands of local history books published by Arcadia Publishing. According to Wikipedia, “Arcadia Publishing’s formula … is to use local writers or historians to write about their community using 180 to 240 black-and-white photographs with captions and introductory paragraphs in a 128-page book. The Images of America series is the company’s largest product line. It has a catalog of more than 5,000 titles in print and hundreds of new titles released every year.”
Arcadia had never found anyone willing to write the Malibu book until local writer Ben Marcus pitched the idea. The images in the book come from Marc Wanamaker of Bison Archives in Los Angeles. The nephew of famous moviemaker and Shakespeare-ophile Sam Wanamaker, Marc Wanamaker’s Bison Archives is a repository for hundreds of thousands of images from Hollywood and Southern California, past and present.
Wanamaker has researched and provided photos for a number of Arcadia Books, and when he went digging through his archive for Malibu-centric images, he hit the jackpot — even for people who thought they’d seen it all.
Ben Marcus did some serious Googling to help him write this book but also relied on people with local knowledge, like Brian Rooney, Morgan Runyon, Lou Busch Jr., Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner, Glen Howell, Marshall Coben, Kelsey Lee Ann Martin, Mike Malone, Curtis Beck, Bob Feigel, George Trafton, Jim Fitzpatrick, Josh Morgan and Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman for inside scoops on Malibu of the past and present.
The following are some excerpts from Images of America: Malibu, which will be available Nov. 14. The author is planning a book signing in Malibu the first two weeks of November.
MALIBU COLONY GATE 1934
According to Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood’s Lady Crook by Lynn Kear and James King: “In order to keep their sanctuary private, a gateman was hired to keep out stray cars and tourists. ‘Seven patrolmen are on duty night and day. Protecting the homes from gate crashers that may have gotten past the gateman, souvenir seekers, over-eager fans and yes, gangsters.’”
MALIBU POTTERIES 1926
From the 1800s into the 1900s, attempts to mine gold and drill for oil on the Malibu netted bupkes. But the irony of all that digging and drilling is the real mineral wealth was as common as clay. On June 13, 1926, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mrs. Rindge’s first $250,000 of a million-dollar investment was paying off with “a long-cherished vision,” as the first tiles came out of Malibu Potteries: “The first commercial orders of vari-colored glazed decorative tile are in the process of baking in the three great master kilns of the plant. …” Two weeks later, Mrs. Rindge invited “Prominent Los Angeles architects, engineers and builders to inspect the Malibu Potteries,” and she was quoted in the Los Angeles Times of June 27 as saying, “It has always been my desire to utilize the natural nonmetallic minerals that occur in such large deposits on the property, before it would be opened for subdivision.” The decorative tiles produced by Malibu Potteries were used in some of the most lavish houses built during the Roaring ’20s.
ATTACK OF THE BIKINI WOMAN 1970
A common scene along the beaches of Malibu from the 1960s into the 1970s: liberated, lust-crazed women wearing next to nothing, attacking defenseless men in broad daylight on beaches from Topanga to Broad Beach. Well, sometimes that happened. This is a scene from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a hallmark in the “racksploitation” genre, written by Roger Ebert. The movie received an X rating and is Hollywood legend. The woman in this photo is Edy Williams, who played Ashley St. Ives in the movie — and who went on to marry director Russ Meyer shortly after it was released. Her helpless victim is … aw, who cares?
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