Paula Boelsems July 7, 2010 Christine Lazzaretto, Interviewer City of Santa Monica Beach Stories Initiative Location: Santa Monica

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CL: This is Christine Lazzaretto with Historic Resources Group and I'm here on July 7, 2010 to interview Paula Boelsems. We are in Mrs. Boelsem’s home [redacted] in Santa Monica, California. This interview is part of the City of Santa Monica's Beach Stories Initiative with funding from a Preserve America grant. The goal of the Beach Stories Initiative is to document the people and events that shaped the history and culture of Santa Monica Beach. Paula Boelsems was one of the athletes at Muscle Beach which was originally located in Santa Monica.

PB: Can I object?

CL: Yes!

PB: The original Muscle Beach was the Santa Monica Beach playground just south of the pier not to give anything up on Muscle Beach, you know because as far as those

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people that participated there that was it and they didn’t have acrobatics (indistinct).

CL: That's right. Okay. So let's started with if you could tell me your name?

PB: Hi!

CL: Hi! (both laugh)

PB: I'm Paula Boelsems. My maiden name was Unger. I grew up in Santa Monica from the time I was about seven. My parents brought me here and I've lived in Santa Monica ever since. Well, I lived for a while in LA but that was when I wanted to be single. (lightly laughs)

CL: Can you talk a little bit about growing up in Santa Monica, what it was like when you came here?

PB: 0:02:00.6 It was a different city when I came here. There were a lot of empty lots, large homes, not as many people and definitely not cars because there was only one car per-person, per-family if you had a car at all. The Santa Monica Bay Transit Bus ran around on almost the same—the same routes that they have now. It was privately owned.

CL: Can you talk a little bit about what it was like going to the beach when you were young?

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PB: 0:02:43.4 Well, when I first came here with my parents it was the month of August and they rented a beach apartment for a couple weeks to—before we moved into the permanent apartment in—well, it actually was Los Angeles but the—we—my mother was very protective because my sister had just passed away before we moved to California and so my older sister and I were watched quite closely. But we—so we swam behind the breakwaters by the pier on the north side of the pier and as a rule the family was together but they told my sister, Rosalie, Ella Rosalie that was twelve and I was just seven that we could walk back to the apartment that we had rented down near Pico. And as we walked up across under the pier and came up to the boardwalk we came upon this magical place that changed my life and set my life forever and here were all these fellas doing flyaways off the rings and tumbling and it was just a very unusual place. 0:04:31.5 And there was a man working with some little children and this man was Dr. Cecil Hollingsworth that was the coach at UCLA for the gymnastic team and he was the football coach that was doing—the gymnastic coach came also and he was teaching these little girls how to do this and that and he did a trick that I had done in the city park in Denver, Colorado before we moved out here. And I said “Oh, mister! I know how to do that trick! Will you do it with me?” And so he said, “Sure.” And he said “If you can do that trick you can do this one. If you can to this one, you can do that one!”

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And he kept me going and I was never the same. It took me maybe six months before I could get my mother to take me back down there because I didn’t know where I was! And after that I always went down there.

CL: So after you found it again in six months you started going all the time?

PB: Well, my mother was like I said, was very protective and she would come down and sit and watch. And then they had adult classes for basket-weaving or whatever it was and she joined in on that and she ended up being on the recreation committee for the City of Santa Monica. She helped us get the first platform and the mats and she worked quite hard on that type of thing.

CL: And your sister?

PB: My sister Ella Rosalie. Mm-hmm.

CL: So did your sister go to the beach with you as well?

PB: 0:06:37.7 Well, my sister was the real acrobat. She had taken acrobatic lessons when I was real little and she had a very limber back. If fact she could do what they call “sit on her head” she had such a limber back. And she was very strong and she learned to ground tumble and performed down there at the beach. She was really very good! The sister that passed away was our middle sister in between the two of us so there was five

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years’ difference and the sister who passed away was very limber in the legs. She could do the splits up the door jamb she was so limber. And I came along and I wanted to do acrobatics but I only had a little limber back, not very limber and my legs, I could do side splits but it didn’t keep me from the desire so out of all the acrobats I was the one that really worked at it and got to do it.

CL: Can we talk a little bit about what you were telling me in the intro, exactly where on the beach this was located?

PB: Would you like to know the history?

CL: I would!

PB: Okay.

CL: We're going to get there as well so whichever order you'd like to tell us.

PB: 0:08:11.8 This is the Santa Monica Beach Playground. That's what it was known as and it was started by a woman that took children off the city school grounds in the summertime so that she could have an activity for them because you know going to the playground every day loses its interest and she'd take them to the beach but she wouldn't take them in the water. And there wasn't anything to do at the beach! Just sand! So she—this lady’s name was Barnbrock [sp? phonetic] and she saw to it that the city put in

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some swings and rings and slides and this was the beginning of the Santa Monica Beach Playground! And this is how Muscle Beach started. It got the name “Muscle Beach” because of the people that attended, the men were so strong. Up at the canyon were the college boys and they were just—it was known as the “college.” Then by the Montana Jetty were the volleyball players and so that was—and down by the pier were the musclemen! So that's where the muscle came in. It wasn’t because they grew muscles on the pilings of the piers. There was a big article in the paper one time about that. (lightly laughs)

CL: How did it transform from this sort of after-school activity to the Muscle Beach that we think of?

PB: 0:09:59.7 There were a couple of wrestlers, professional wrestlers that came down to the beach and there were some—when the coach from UCLA was hired, at that time there was the WPA which was the Workers Project Administration from the big Depression, and he was hired in the summertime to take care and supervise the rings and the bars and the different activities and he wanted his gymnasts to come down there because he wanted them to learn a lot and be a good team at competing. So his name was Cecil Hollingsworth and he's the one that really was responsible for the fact that the fellas worked out on the horizontal bars and the rings. And then they started to do some of the hand-balancing that professional people would stop and teach and it just grew from that! I was going to tell you the name of this woman that was—oh, how could I forget her name. I'll think of it.

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CL: That's okay.

PB: She ran the beach playground for a couple of years.

CL: So even though it was a lot of UCLA students and people that were training there were also people like yourself that just came and participated as well.

PB: That's right and I remember that—in fact there's a picture around here somewhere and I'm standing in the background just green with envy because these two girls are doing a lift, and oh! I wanted to do it so badly. (lightly laughs)

CL: Can you talk a little bit about some of the other people that were there in the early days?

PB: 0:12:09.6 Well, the gymnastic team of UCLA came and there were two captains of the team, George—oh, I've gotten to that age! Terrible! Anyhow George was lost during the Battle of the Philippines in World War II, and Les Stockton, that was a very prominent name in physical culture from way back, was on the UCLA team. He worked with a man by the name of Les—Wes—excuse me—Don Brown and also with Bruce Conners [Conner] and they formed an act called the Four Aces. They were so good they were even on the cover of Pic magazine at one time.

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0:13:16.6 And Les had a girlfriend by the name of Abigail [Abbye Eville] Stockton, Abigail. Well, that was her name after she married Les. Well, anyhow Pudgy, and he brought her down to the beach because she was pudgy (lightly laughs) and needed the exercise and Pudgy became a very famous person in the field of physical culture for women and she had one of the first gyms that had women for physical cultural exercise. They weren't dance classes. They were exercises for getting your body trim. 0:14:05.1 And that was the reason why acts came down there because they started exchanging information and it made people come. Professionals came. A nightclub act by the name of the Knight Sisters I remember real well. Well, you know being—being really young I was just on the sidelines but I remember that there was Bruce Conner from UCLA that talked me into going into physical education which I did later on in my life. I went to college and became a PE teacher.

CL: Can you talk a little bit more about how you said you were always watching on the sidelines and wanted to participate. How did you eventually become part of it all?

PB: 0:15:06.4 Well, I think I told you, didn’t I about I said “Mister, will you do that trick with me?” And that's all it took because then the fellas were excited about it. I evidently had the right type of body for it and I was easy to work with because I didn’t weigh that much and the fellas would try a trick with me and then go try it with the girlfriend. (laughs) They could hold me easier. But I didn’t care who it was! I just wanted to do the tricks.

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CL: So even at that young age you were—?

PB: The body was right for it. I evidently held myself in good position so that they could just toss me around. (lightly laughs)

CL: Could you talk a little bit more about the equipment that was there and the platform and the significance of finally getting a platform?

PB: Well, when I first went there there was nothing but a canvas piece of material that they put down and they also—there was a wrestling mat which was rubber and you couldn't work on that in the summertime, the sun would make it so hot and they discarded that after a while and the canvas piece of material was fine to keep you up out of the sand but it didn’t give you a footing. And they kept talking about what could they do to make it better foot—you know, footing for it. So finally a couple of the fellas decided that they needed to put in some kind of platform and they put in a platform that was about thishigh and we all brought carpeting to cover it with and it ran perpendicular to the boardwalk right next to the shed for equipment, ping pong equipment, basketball equipment and football they had down in it because this was a beach playground and they moved the equipment around several times while I was down there always thinking they had a better way for it. The carpeting was sufficient because they nailed it down and all that but it wasn’t as good as a mat. 0:18:00.3 And like I said my mother became a—on the recreation committee for Santa Monica and so she started working toward a mat and they got a mat! And they got

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a larger platform, one that was wide enough to hold everybody. And then they moved it from perpendicular to horizontally run along the same way as the boardwalk because people would sit on the benches and watch and be entertained and enjoy it.

CL: At that time the performances that you were doing were more sort of spontaneous I guess? I don't know if that's the right word but not really a planned thing but people would just come and watch as you were training?

PB: You're right! That's it! (lightly laughs) If you got the idea that you were going to stand on your head, you stood on your head in the middle of the platform no matter what people were doing. However I do have to say that the wrestlers were down by a pier called Crystal Pier which ran off of Bay Street approximately and just south of the Del Mar Club and they used to work out down there for their wrestling and there were a couple of other people there that came just to keep physically fit and when they saw what was happening up at the beach playground they moved up there and that helped the performance and people that knew what they were doing. 0:19:50.8 And there was a man by the name of Timmy O’Shea that I don't think I'll ever forget. He came from Crystal Pier and up there and it wasn’t that he—he worked. He insisted that he had been around for performers for so many years and he just kept us going and he would say “Oh, you should try this.” He didn’t really know how to do it but he knew the positions that he'd seen acts do. And then there was a man by the name of Johnny Collins and very, very strong and I'm not sure where Johnny came from but he had traveled with a show like a fair

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show or a carnival show and he learned—learned to do good adagio. He knew it from somewhere because he was absolutely one of our best teachers. He did stunt work in the movies and that helped bring the stunt group down there.

CL: Can you talk a little bit more about the adagio that you mentioned and what that means?

PB: Okay! Adagio is when a person lifts another person up in a position. It was— adagio is not normally for the—a man and a woman. There were sisters, the Knight sisters that came down there that I remember their name and they were very influential. They had come out from the East Coast and they were working at a nightclub up on the Sunset Strip called the Trocadaro when I first met them and they were really very good. The adagio comes from the term used in music and it was a ballet term and it was when a man lifted a woman up and that became adagio but I'm afraid at the beach they took it a little bit further! They'd take us like a ball and throw us to another person! (lightly laughs) I'll have to show you a picture of when I was real young. One of the Hollywood still photographers came down and took a series of pictures and his caption for my picture was “Doesn’t she look like your radiator cap hood ornament?” (laughs)

CL: Things really developed and became more elaborate the more you all started influencing your acts with each other?

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PB: 0:23:17.1 Yes! That's right. You know you can't keep doing the same thing. You have to make a little modification and a little bit different and “I don't want to do what they're doing. I want to do my own thing!” And so they make it a little bit different but basically there are certain tricks that everybody does.

CL: Can you describe those a little bit?

PB: Well, a hand-to-hand is just like people say. They hold on in a hand grip and the top person does the handstand and the other person either presses them up or if they're not very strong they hold ’em here and if they're really good they hold ’em one-hand to oneand or some people hold two hands to one for the strength if you build pyramids which the Moroccans did for years before we did them on the beach. We got some really unusual pyramids. 0:24:28.1 And of course the most famous pyramid of them all was the one in which Harold Zinkin was doing a backbend and DeForrest Most, who became the playground director when he got older, was the next person. Jack LaLanne was on his shoulders and then the top person was Gene [Miller]—I don't know. He was from somewhere up in the Imperial Valley. He'd come down to—come all the way to work at the beach, work out at the beach. It was a very famous place. And that picture has gone all over the world and later on I'll tell you a story about that, too! (laughs)

CL: Do you want to save that for later or do you want to tell us?

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PB: Well, we started to talk about the sports acrobatics.

CL: Okay.

PB: I'll tell you about them.

CL: I did want to talk a little bit about how—what you were doing at the beach sort of started the physical fitness movement in the United States. If you could talk a little bit about how—what you were doing influenced that.

PB: How did that really get started? I don't know but we had people there like Marcy [Walter Marcyan]. His first name was Walter I think, Marcy and he made weights, equipment. People don't realize there were no barbells at that time. Les Stockton made his own to have something, to lift weights. There was a man by the name of—how can I forget these names? He was a—from across the United States. He was well known because he published physical fitness magazines. Everybody thought he was a nut because he talked about eating correctly and exercise and all that and he helped push some of these people that came down there. 0:26:57.1 And maybe they didn't stay in the—in the business but they were quite prominent in starting it because you take Vic Tanny’s brother-in-law, Bert Goodrich, learned to do hand-balancing and then he opened up the American Health Studio. He was one of the first physical culture workout type of gym up in Hollywood and of course people don't even know who I'm talking about when I say “Vic Tanny” but he had a

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whole string of gyms across the United States starting from one and he was the first person that put other things to do besides lifting weights. He added ice-skating rings and swimming pools and other things that did do physical culture. And it was a membership type thing all across. And his brother Armand came out from New York before he did and came to Muscle Beach because Armand knew the gymnastic team people and they came and he was well known in the physical fitness and bodybuilding contests.

CL: What was it like to be a female athlete at that time?

PB: Well, there weren't many and the only place that a girl could get gymnastics besides acrobatically at the beach would be to go to the Tiburon which was in LA, Los Angeles, downtown Los Angeles at the Tiburon. And this was before World War II that I'm talking about in the thirties and there was a lot of animosity about the German Tiburon so that was the only place that girls could get gymnastics that I'd ever heard of. A couple of the dance teachers could teach good acrobatics and tumbling but not gymnastics.

CL: You were one of the very few women. I know there were several other famous women that came out of Muscle Beach but in the early days there were only a few of you?

PB: 0:29:51.6 Oh, I don't—I'm not sure how many. Girls came and went because those were men that were interested in girls! And they were good-looking! And that was a little bit above my age. They always had—were picking up the girls even when I got

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older and realized that—that the girls came and went. But they would do tricks with them when they had no idea what they were doing! It was just the way to meet the girls. (lightly laughs) Some of the girls stayed and did very well. There was a person by the name of Beverly Jocher that grew up but this was post-war World War II and she lived in a big apartment house down at the beach and she had a—really was capable of doing acrobatics and bending and whatnot and she was very strong and she started working out with the muscleman and she—she really was well known. 0:31:05.9 And so you know, it took all kinds. Relna McRae, Relna Brewer McRae’s brother, Paul Brewer was one of the first people to start getting the beach playground going. He knew hand-balancing and he started it more or less there. We had some real good people on the rings and they had flying rings that they didn’t have other places. They were about twenty-feet tall and they were very different.

CL: Did any of the travel shows happen before World War II or was that more—later when you and others would travel around doing acrobatics?

PB: Well, my first show that I did with the people that were the stunt people, they needed somebody to throw around and they took me on this job where we did acrobatics on horses. This man’s name was Mark Smith and he was well known in the film industry and—but you can't say that I was a horsewoman at that time! I was just doing acrobatics and the horse was there for us to sit on and build a pyramid or stand or something like that or go in and out of their legs.

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0:32:47.0 There were—there were always fewer women than there were men but there was a good group. I'm sorry! I can't remember people’s names at this rate. There was a woman by the name of Evelyn Smith that was able to do backbends and we stood on her stomach and built pyramids and she was very, very strong. She did some wrestling which was unusual for women then and she did stunt work; real—very strong person. There were some wrestlers that left wrestling to do acrobatics and then as the men met some of the girls they fell in love and got married and did acts and traveled with different shows and we—there were people like Glenn [Marlin] Sundby who partnered with [George] Wayne Long and they traveled with a lot of shows and they went back east and then they came back to Hollywood and they—well, they were in Star and Garter with Gypsy Rose Lee doing a hand-balancing act and whatnot and then started working with Spike Jones’ band and they went to Australia and they—and they learned from down there at the beach. 0:34:44.3 And then they decided that they needed to add a little sexy something or other to their beautiful hand-balancing act and Glenn’s sister joined them and she really added that female touch they needed and they worked for years. And of course that's how I got started back being a professional because Dolores Sundby very conveniently got the mumps when she was working up in Santa Barbara with the fiesta and Glenn asked me to substitute for her which I did.

CL: That's how you started traveling?

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PB: Well, that was after I was married and had a child and it bit me, that old show bug, really bit me and I returned to show business then.

CL: So you had stopped for a while when you got married and started a family?

PB: Yes. Mm-hmm.

CL: You were teaching then?

PB: I was a physical education teacher with the Los Angeles City Schools and I taught dance. Mm-hmm.

CL: Did you also work as a stunt person?

PB: 0:36:08.6 Yes. I'm a charter member of the Hollywood Stuntwomen’s Association and that was formed in the ’60s and I don't remember the exact year. I think it was ’67.

CL: Can you talk a little bit more about what that was like?

PB: Being a stunt person?

CL: Mm-hmm.

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PB: 0:36:35.4 Well, you know most of my stunt work was being thrown from here to there and my first job was when I was thirteen or fourteen and you could only work three hours so you didn’t come by jobs very often doing stuntwork that way. And I had to sit and listen to the fellas getting a job that I auditioned with them for and the dance director says “That's the girl I want! I don't want these others!” (laughs) It was just like a— something out of the movies that he did that. His name was Nick Lucas, a well-known dance director. But I couldn't work because the producer wouldn't go for that little—few hours so the fellas had to rush and get another girl! (lightly laughs) I gave the job to my sister because she was old enough to work but she wasn’t a member of the union so she didn’t get to work. Oh, goodness. Let's go back to Muscle Beach! (laughs)

CL: Okay. I actually wanted to go back to Muscle Beach during World War II. I know a number of the men enlisted but also there's this physical fitness aspect having been tacked on helping people recover from injuries and that kind of thing. So if you could just talk a little bit about the connection of people at Muscle Beach during the war.

PB: 0:38:25.7 We lost the people at the beach, you know just like everything, every place else. They went off one by one or a couple of them went as a group. Ted DeWayne who was a very good person for acrobatic acts and he was a person that did Risley which you probably don't even know. It's the type of act named after an Englishman and he—it means they set on his feet and he'd kick where they would do somersaults. I'm sure you’ve seen the acts but didn’t know the name of it. And he came to the beach and I'll show you a picture of him in the early days. There's probably a

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picture of him on me, behind me! (lightly laughs) And he took his act to the Coast Guard and they traveled with Rudy Vallee’s orchestra because they had those—that entertainment for the men in uniform and they had to have something for them and so they got to stay in their acrobatic—you know, and they went to Catalina at the Merchant Marine School there and they took training there and they went with Rudy Vallee.

Male: Go back and repeat that last sentence or two just so we have it.

PB: Okay. About Ted DeWayne?

Male: Right.

PB: He had been in a professional act and he met these young boys at the beach and he—he couldn't get any of the older fellas to go in an act with him and he took these young fellas that were still teenagers and they joined the Merchant Marines and the— they traveled with Rudy Vallee’s Coast Guard orchestra entertaining the troops. 0:40:49.0 And so—but they weren't the only ones off the beach that did that. A couple of other people did that and they'd come down to the beach on their leaves. They couldn't wait to get back down there but it did make a difference on the—on the attendance down there. And a couple of the fellas were stationed in Long Beach and they'd come up and work out like there was no war! (lightly laughs) So it added to the people's entertainment because naturally just the general public loved it because they

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could come and sit on the benches and get these different acts. They'd see things that they wouldn't see on a stage.

CL: And then can you talk a little bit about after the war? Did things start changing after that?

PB: 0:42:02.2 Well, we lost a few of the fellas, one being George—he was the head of the—he was the captain of the UCLA team. He was lost in the Philippines. There were new people that came because they used to bring the Naval ships into Santa Monica and the crew would come in and see the show that they'd have there and they'd come back and it was just an acrobatic platform at that time. But in about 19—well, right before the war started I would say is when Les Stockton and Marcy, Walter Marcy and a couple of fellas brought their weights down themselves and of course there was a man by the name of Hoffman back east that knew about Muscle Beach and he made the equipment for weight-lifting and they built a little square platform to go—I'll show you—on the side of the regular platform where the fellas could stand and lift their weights. (lightly laughs)

CL: Is that around the time that Mr. America contest started? Am I calling it the wrong thing?

PB: 0:43:40.2 No. You're not. That's—you know the beach is where it started. I can't tell you exactly. I went away to college and—in the forties. It was wartime and I don't really know how some of the things got started or I don't remember! (laughs)

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CL: That's okay. So after the war you mentioned you started seeing more weightlifters but was it the same kind of attraction as it had been in the thirties with people coming to watch?

PB: Well, people still came to watch! They didn't use umbrellas in those days and so there weren't so many umbrellas out around on the beach. The Ocean Park Pier was bought by CBS and Santa Anita and they made an amusement park down there even though there had been rides on the pier for years. And it made a difference down there. They wanted the—didn’t want anything else on the beach. They wanted just their Pacific Ocean Park and they had—(laughs)—they had Pacific Ocean Park! And they did the— they did a little bit of campaigning to make a parking lot from one pier to the other and of course they got up there by the Monica Hotel. They couldn't put a parking lot there. The Del Mar kept them from making the lot there. And the Jonathan, well, it was the original Jonathan Beach Club next to the Del Mar. 0:45:55.1 But during the war—oh! I left that out completely! During the war the Del Mar and the Jonathan Beach Club on Pico that's now the Shutters, it was the rehabilitation area for soldiers and especially airmen and they would (laughs)—can't you see her?

Male: No, I can't. [Side conversation/laughter]

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PB: 0:46:52.8 I was telling you about the thing for rehabilitation for the soldiers. So it meant soldiers, men and some women, there weren't that many women in those days, they became acquainted with Muscle Beach. It was a beach playground. They could go there, work out if they were interested in acrobatics and they came back! Or they settled here they liked it so much. And of course they were closed. The Del Mar stayed open because the different organizations bought it and kept it open but it never was the private beach club that it was before. And the Jonathan was torn down after and it had been—the early Jonathan hadn't been anything that I know of for several years and then they tore that down. But the Monica Hotel became the Chase Hotel and then the homeless burnt it down (lightly laughs) but they finally got it rebuilt to some nice apartments. 0:48:29.3 If people became acquainted with this place it was so much fun. Everybody was so friendly. They didn’t care where you were from, anything like that! Just if you were interested you could do the trick and that's what was so good about some of the fellas that were prominent on the platform. They'd say “Hey, come up here! I need someone to stand right here.” Or “I need some girl to help hold this.” And they didn’t realize that they were just being snookered into doing a trick and do you know that they'd come back. They'd come back because they enjoyed it so much. And of course a lot of romances went on.

CL: I read in the book that a lot of people felt like it was family. You know that the people you met down at the beach became part of your family.

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PB: 0:49:34.7 That's right. It was a very friendly place. There wasn’t any—any fights. Oh, sure, once in awhile a guy took his girlfriend from this one or that and they would argue but no, not—not like they have these days.

CL: You had started telling us before about Pacific Ocean Park trying to develop a parking lot down on the beach.

PB: Oh, they wanted from-pier-to-pier parking lots and they had a lot of money invested and they were trying to run against Disney but they wanted the platform moved down to the Ocean Park Pier. That’s why we got such a large platform not long before they took the equipment out and that was because they brought the platform that was never used by Pacific Ocean Park up to the Santa Monica. (lightly laughs)

CL: Then in the 1950s the city continued to wonder if they should leave Muscle Beach where it was. I know there was some discussion about crowds and those kinds of things.

PB: 0:51:04.0 It was all due to Pacific Ocean Park. (lightly laughs) Sorry! The man that had the—when they did take the equipment out they—the man that was to dump sand on the—you know they hadn't even gone through city council for making parking lots but that was the city manager’s idea and they dumped the sand on the street that goes down from the Surfrider. I'm sorry. I don't know the name of the little street and we helped stop it with the help of a city councilman, Ralph [S.] Frantz because nothing had gone through about closing this place and it all had to do with politics and money and I

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want you to know that the man that dumped the sand free for making the parking lot got the bid to take the sand off the street and dump it on the other side of the pier so they could make the parking lot. (lightly laughs) He got paid for that.

CL: That worked out well for him.

PB: Yeah.

CL: But they did eventually in the late 1950s close that variation of Muscle Beach.

PB: 0:52:41.4 Well, I'm talking about when they were doing that when all this—you know it was all connected and it had—it had the—a couple of people on the city council wanted to close the beach. It had no reason really other than they didn’t like weightlifting and bodybuilding. And I don't know. It gets into politics and I have my own opinion about it and I was there but I want you to know nobody was sent to jail. Nobody was in court. It was—big stories in the newspapers.

CL: So what did you do after that?

PB: 0:53:41.8 Oh, we continued working out! There was a piece of grass by the lifeguard station and so we just took over the grass as our platform and kept working. Of course there were rings and bars put—replaced. They weren't as good as what had been there originally but they were replaced.

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CL: Was this when you did a traveling show with Russ [Russell M.] Saunders?

PB: The first day I met Russ Saunders he came to a show I was doing with a fella by the name of Louie Eddleson [sp? phonetic] that I met at the beach and we were doing a little act that we—because every so many Sundays they would have a show down there and so we would do this act. And we were doing a carnival, a Girl Scout carnival at Madison grade school, a Halloween carnival and it was a PTA-type thing and the—this Bruce Conners and Pudgy Stockton were doing an act also and they met this character from Canada that came wandering on Muscle Beach because he wanted to see these acrobats he'd heard about and he was the champion gymnast from Canada, Winnipeg, Canada and also their diving champion. 0:55:35.3 And he made friends with Bruce and Pudgy and they—he came to see the show and he came to the afternoon show and that afternoon after the afternoon show Bruce, the fella I was working with, Louie, and this character from Canada and myself went down to the beach and we worked out a quartet adagio and came back and did it in the night show. So the first time I met him I did a show with him. (lightly laughs) And Pudgy had to go home. She didn’t go to the beach with us. I remember that. I've forgotten what she had to do but she couldn't go to the beach with us.

CL: And Russ stayed your partner for a long time, you were with him for a long time?

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PB: 0:56:29.4 That was in 1940 and he had go to war in the next year. I guess that was just about a year. Oh, no! It was about—the carnival was in February and he had to go to war in November and when he came back, yes, we did work but my parents weren't real happy about my doing professional work so that's another story, too, (lightly laughs) when I finally got old enough and said “Hey, I'm gonna do this.”

CL: So did they encourage you to go to college instead? Were they trying to steer you away from being a professional acrobat?

PB: By the time the war was over I had completed the first two years of college and gotten my AA from Stevens College in Columbia, Missouri and I transferred to USC where Charlie Graves was the gymnastic coach and quite a number of the fellas from USC were participants at the beach so I felt at home there. I got my BS from SC and went to work for the Los Angeles City schools.

CL: Can you talk a little bit about the Sports Acrobatic Association?

PB: 0:58:19.0 I had spoken earlier about a fella by the name of Glenn Sundby and when he was back in New York working in Gypsy Rose Lee’s Star and Garter he decided to start writing a little book on—a little magazine on acrobatics and he did everything himself! The writing, the printing, the whole blow and he didn’t care whether it came out monthly or every two or three months, just so he got it done. And he'd go around to different gyms and talk to people and get information and show them his little magazine

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and from that he developed the gymnast international gymnastic magazine [International Gymnast] which was the official publication of the U.S. Gymnastics Federation and so it grew! It grew to a very important thing. He also opened the first Hall of Fame for gymnastics and it has a section of the sports acrobatics. And he asked me because he knew my background. By that time I wasn’t performing—I was substituting but I didn’t have to go to work every day and he asked me if I'd be interested in going to find out what this international sports acrobatics was all about. They were just at that time forming the international organization and it was based in Bulgaria. 1:00:23.6 But the meeting, the first meeting I went to was in Germany and I— and Russ went also and we became the first judges for the United States at that particular course of study and I stayed on as the U.S. representative on the judges’ committee. We started the international—I mean the U.S. Sports Acrobatics Federation with the help of George Nissen of Nissen Trampolines and several people that were well known in gymnastics in the United States.

CL: 1:01:17.1 Let's hold it there. [pause in recording] So I was thinking maybe you could tell us the story about Salvador Dali that you were telling us off camera (both laugh) if you don't mind?

PB: Well, my partner Russ Saunders was a stuntman and really a very good one. He doubled for people like Gene Kelly and Alan Ladd and Jack Palance and Richard Widmark. He was a big star and he worked with a lot of the big stars like when Burt

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Lancaster was supposed to be an acrobat, Russ was doing the act with him. He had that personality that would draw you in a magical type of way. So when he was working at Warner Brothers and Salvador Dali was living in Los Angeles and working in Hollywood he had an idea for a painting and he told Jack Warner that he wanted somebody with a good build to be his model for this new painting he had in mind. And so at Warner Brothers Studio in the office Russ was called in and he went in and he didn’t think anything about it. They wanted him to take his shirt off and he just figured it was another pirate (lightly laughs) movie or something like that. He didn’t know who this guy was with the long mustache and all that. He had no idea who he was! 1:03:32.0 And it ended up that he was the winner, the one that Dali wanted for his model. So Saint John of the Cross is where you're looking down on Jesus and on the cross and they set it up for Dali where he was looking horizontally at the—at Russ being tied on and hanging from the cross. And I don't remember what year that was that he did that but it was in the—like 1950, something like that. And when we were in Spain Russ had written to Dali’s manager, personal manager and said that we were going to be in Spain and that we would like to call on him and whatnot so they knew we were coming. And I—we just had so much fun. It was such an unusual thing for me to be included in because I didn’t know him. I had not seen him or met him and we went to his house when he was entertaining some guests and they lived at a place called Portlligat and it's up—it's near Figueres, Spain. Russ called when he got into the hotel and by the way we were there for sports acrobatics. We had just come from a meeting in Yugoslavia I think it was and had gone around the coast to Spain

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and we were asked to come on over, that they were having this gathering of people in the evening and so we did. 1:05:51.6 And we were met at the door by a servant who took up into a little parlor and Gala, Dali’s wife came in and started speaking French to us and we were in this little room and I had to keep mouth shut there! (lightly laughs) And Russ being a Canadian could speak some French because they teach it in the schools there. And they were speaking in French and I didn’t know what was going on and it turned out that we realized that Dali could understand English so it was much easier. And after she had interviewed Russ more or less to be sure that it was the right person then we got to go in where the other people were but it—it was a very fast evening. The next day we met him at his museum in Figueres and he said that he wanted to take us on a tour of his museum but he had these other people that he had to be with so that he would meet us in the town square afterward. So when we went through the museum with his friend and photographer, a man by the name of “Dejuene” [?]—I don't know if that's the right French pronunciation or not, but a really nice person—and then we went to the village square afterwards and Dali came up to Russ and said “Oh, I had such different vision last night. I want to say that I got to do this other painting and you're the one that gave me this vision seeing you again.” And we didn't think much about it but he was talking about the picture rising up and this and that and very—he was very fascinating man and he didn’t think like other people. He just was so creative 1:08:24.9 And it turned out that many years afterwards I was in the art gallery in Hawaii and there was this painting and you had to look through a little eyepiece but the picture—it was a double picture and the figure of Christ rose up and went into one! And

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it's called the Christ and (indistinct). Christ, I think, something like that and it's privately owned. For a while they showed it at Saint Petersburg Museum of Dali but I don't think it's there permanently. But I got to see it just by accident by going into the art gallery in Hawaii and that was what he was talking about! How Christ was going to raise up into the air and go into one! It was really very, very interesting and I felt very fortunate to meet this man that was more than creative. He just was such an original.

CL: Thanks. After that you traveled all over the world?

PB: Pretty much so, and I—because I had to pay my own way. U.S. Sports didn’t have the money to send me and I was fortunate enough to be able to. And the first trip that I took was the judge’s course in Germany and then from there Bulgaria was involved and Poland was involved and, too, France was involved. And we—and Spain and Portugal got involved. But I would pay my own way to go to the meet or to the meeting for the judges international committee and maybe it would be back to a different—different city in the same country but I always saw to it that I went somewhere when I was there. 1:11:08.6 The funniest one was in the Soviet Union. I was in Moscow and I didn’t want—I had a ticket on the plane to fly to Saint Petersburg because I wanted to see the area up there and then I was going on to Finland and Sweden. And I want you to know that I got back to Moscow after the little town went to for the meeting and meet and we're sitting at the dining room table and they weren't gonna let me fly to Saint Petersburg! I had to get out of the country but I wasn’t gonna get to fly to Saint Petersburg and you know the U.S. head person did a little bit of fussing and I did, too,

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because it wasn’t right and they kept saying “Oh, we can't get you reservations at the hotel.” That was their excuse but it turned out that it ended up that I did ride the train (lightly laughs) to Saint Petersburg and I got to see Saint Petersburg and then fly on out to Helsinki. (lightly laughs)

CL: Were you competing then?

PB: No, no! I was a judge and I was the U.S. representative on the international committee for judges and it was when they first started as an international sport. They had the sport in about three countries; Poland and Germany and someplace else but the countries hadn't joined in yet.

CL: So was this sort of the start of international gymnastics?

PB: 1:13:14.7 Oh, no. Gymnastics was already going on but they didn’t have acrobatics and I want you to know that they—now our dream came true. Not only was the international sports acrobatics a separate sport but it is now part of the gymnastic federation all, you know, like there's artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics and acrobatic gymnastics. (lightly laughs)

CL: I want to switch back to Muscle Beach. Unfortunately we're running low on time so I want to make sure if you have particular stories you want to tell us, please.

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PB: 1:14:09.6 Well, I did want to tell you since we were just talking about sports acrobatics when I was in the Soviet Union at a different time and I don't remember whether it—what city it was. Oh, terrible, but we were talking about it was such a good sports acrobatics gym that they had formed and the man was so anxious to show me his men’s 4 because you see, the women worked in threes and pairs and the men worked in fours and pairs and then there's a mixed pair as well as at that time there was just straight tumbling. And he wanted to show me the men’s 4 because in the big hall, the acrobatic training gym was underneath the bleachers and that was how they had it formed and they had a lot of good equipment in there. 1:15:28.0 And they also had this case of trophies on display that he wanted me to see and there was a picture from the Gymnast magazine from Muscle Beach of Harold Zinkin doing his backbend and Moe or DeForrest Most, the director, the playground director, Jack LaLanne and Gene whatever-his-name-was standing in the 4-high and so for the men’s 4 that would be a pyramid that the men could do. And the Russian man told me how many months and years they'd been working on that pyramid that they were gonna do it in their exercise. Well, about two years later or three years later I was in—I was at the competition in Rennes, France and the Soviet Union men’s 4 won the first place with that pyramid. (lightly laughs) But he was so proud to tell me (lightly laughs) and I was so proud of the fact that it was the U.S. gymnastic magazine there.

CL: Yeah, that it was something that started at Muscle Beach.

PB: Yeah. Mm-hmm. It was taken at Muscle Beach.

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CL: Can you talk a little bit what you like people to remember about Muscle Beach? How would you like us to think about Muscle Beach?

PB: 1:17:24.6 I think that people don't realize how many young people were taught their first gymnastic trick, their first acrobatic trick, the inspirations that were given the young people because if you came you had to be a part of it and there were so many people that maybe did just one trick and it added so much to their life. It definitely was a friendly family affair down there and they—even after they took the equipment, the platform away we kept teaching young people on the grass and I still have people coming to me, up to me today and say “I don't know if you remember me or not but I met you at Muscle Beach and you taught me to do this and that and this is my child and oh, I sure wish that she could learn or he could learn.” 1:18:40.3 And it was free! And that was wonderful for children to be active, doing something themselves, challenged by it and they had to be depend on other people to do their part as well as they had to do their part in order—and it came where they felt responsibility for other people and they felt a belonging. They felt that they needed to be friends with all these people. It came naturally and they got up off their rusty-dusty and did something! And they were so proud of it that they could do it! They were excited and they didn’t just sit and play with their phone! (lightly laughs) And just imagine what it would do now with the iPhone and what. And there still are classes down there for gymnastics. They give free classes down there from the city but they don't have the

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people coming down to work out. They have some but they're not the people that used to come. They don't have the knowledge and the real go-get-’em attitude.

CL: Is there anything else you want to tell us about what Muscle Beach meant to you or maybe how your family felt about you becoming this acrobat or anything else we haven't touched on that you really want to make sure?

PB: Well, as I get older I realize how Muscle Beach gave me so much out of my life that it definitely was a place that gave me a lot more confidence than I would've had. I loved acrobatics. I wasn’t a glamour girl so I was ahead of myself in school. It took me a long time before I grew up and I had so much fun down there! And I still communicate with people if they're still with us, you know, because there's fewer and fewer people. The Venice Muscle Beach is weightlifting and bodybuilding but it has none of the feel of family and the enjoyment that we got from the beach. And I got to be a performer, a teacher. My son entered in some of it down there. It just—my grandchildren when they were real young I used to—they'd come stay with me and I'd take them down there and they'd climb around on the equipment. 1:22:15.2 And it just—it gave me so much enjoyment in my own life. It led to my position in sports acrobatics and internationally I have friends all over the world. I just got a Chinese book. I can't read a word in it! It's about sports acrobatics and there's a couple pictures of me but I don't know what it says! (lightly laughs) And it just—it really added a lot. I did my stuntwork because I met the stunt people down there and I was fortunate, very fortunate to have been there at that time.

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CL: I'm sorry to say we can't stay all day or all week. I think if it's okay with you this seems like a good place to stop. Okay.

[1:23:19.4 digital recording ends, End of Interview]

[Transcribed by Mary Hunger, July 14-15, 2010]

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