LA Times Article: "Scoping classic cars at Bob's Big Boy in Burbank"

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Design, Architecture, Gardens, Southern California Living
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Scoping classic cars at Bob's Big Boy in Burbank

Chris Erskine heads to Bob's Big Boy in Burbank on a Friday for the classic car show and meets folks like Chevy Jim.

By Chris Erskine
August 30, 2013, 3:00 p.m.

Remember when engines were measured in cubic inches? Remember when cars had chrome kissers that looked like psycho sharks? And when you flashed your headlights, the gum-popping carhop would come take your order — grudgingly, as if she had better things to do?

I do. Or did I just dream all that?

Well, this dream sequence lives on at Bob's Big Boy in Burbank, near Warner Bros. How to describe this buzzy, retro scene? It goes back forever, or a few years before.

On a recent Friday night, Beach Boy Brian Wilson shows up to take in the weekly car show, full of the little deuce coupes he used to write about.

The stuff of song, this place. Even the Beatles hung out here back in the day, in the big booth in the corner (look for the plaque).

Yep, stars come and stars go at Bob's Big Boy, a living tribute to a SoCal lifestyle of fries and flirting.

"People tell me this is 'American Graffiti' come to life," one of the regulars says. "I tell them I lived 'American Graffiti' right here."

More than half a century ago, high school kids used to swarm this Toluca Lake landmark, arrange street races and take home $100 for the college fund. That doesn't happen so much anymore, but the heaving heavy metal still does. Big-block Chevys. Hot-rod Lincolns. On Friday nights, happy days are here again.

From New England to Seattle, weekly car shows are a slice of Americana, but no place does them like Southern California. Every night, there's one somewhere. Car clubs rally at diners, doughnut shops, any old place that'll have them.

At the top of the sheet metal heap is this Bob's Big Boy rally, 6 to 11 p.m. every Friday since the dawn of time (which, by the way, was right around 1949).

Early afternoon, enthusiasts start lining up for prime spots near the restaurant, where the building's red neon piping will reflect off the hard-candy shells of Studebakers, Kaisers, Cobras and Corvettes.

Vintage cars. Men collect them like Christmas ornaments.

My latest half-baked theory is that everything is always for sale. You just have to find the right price point.

And that's the case with this fleet.

Take this full-competition 427 Cobra, built in 1965 and one of only 21 big-block 427 Cobras ever made. Anthony Boosalis owns it, babies it. What's it worth?

"Probably $2 million," he says.

Some owners restore the cars, then bring them here to flip. Others hold on to them almost forever.

Chevy Jim is one of those, flaunting his beloved 1956 Bel Air convertible in a color you've never seen. Paint was custom-made in a guy's blender, he says: "Harvest Pearl Yosemite Yellow." You'd probably call it gold.

"I'm Gary Cooper's cousin," announces Chevy Jim, also known as Jim Etter, and like Cooper, he's got a cowboy face.

New, his Chevy went for a few grand. Chevy Jim bought it, crusty and without wheels, for $750 when he was still a student at John Burroughs High. He says he's been offered $225,000 for the restored classic but that it's not for sale.

Oh, Jim, everything's for sale.

And sure, the cars are great but the old boys are even better. Most are in their 60s and 70s now, and like Chevy Jim, they stand around in the silky light of 7 p.m. and tell stories about this cartoony diner that still serves almost 2,000 burgers a day.

Back in the '50s, this was the center of the car-crazed universe. Kids from Burroughs brought their roadsters here, they say. The Burbank High kids went to another Bob's in Burbank, up on San Fernando Road.

"You can't even get to the sparkplugs on today's cars," says Edley Rondinone, lamenting the decline in teens' passion for cars.

After all, kids today assemble motherboards and processors, not carburetors and water pumps. At most high schools, shop class has gone the way of Latin.

Teens today don't use their hands, except on each other.

And to eat cheeseburgers.

So, in that vein, maybe there is hope for American mainstays like Bob's, where the food is hot and the cars are hotter.

Just flash your high beams.

Next week: A burger and a shake with another classic, Angie Dickinson.

chris.erskine@latimes.com
twitter.com/erskinetimes
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-erskine-20130831,0,2134917,full.column

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A SHORT VID ON BOB'S...

Taco Bar @ Bulldogs Luncheon Sept 9, 2013

PLEASE NOTE!
The luncheons are normally on the first Monday of the month, but since the first Monday is Labor Day it will be the following week.

And John Coyle has arranged a taco bar which will make for a fun luncheon.



The location is the Burbank Elks at 2232 N. Hollywood Way.

Time is 11 am and Lunch is $12.

BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

BHS '74 Reunion Sept 6, 2014

If you are a graduate of the Class of 1974, our reunion information can be found at http://jmarks6205.wix.com/bhsclassof74reunion.

Also, come and join us in our Facebook group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/341245542648552/.

Rick Polikowski, BHS '66, Passed Away June, 2013

Richard Francis Polikowski

December 3, 1948 - June 1, 2013

Very sad to receive this email today from Guy Gingell, BHS '66...

Our friend, Rick Polikowski has passed away from cancer. Details are slow in coming as he was in living in So America.
BHS 1966

Back in 2009, Rick emailed me...

Memories

Hi,
I can't believe the website you created! I am the guy in the photo of the ko's! I still have that photo, and I find it amazing that you found it. I will never forget the night that Bobbie Grumbly approached me at Bob's Big Boy in Toluca lake and told me that I was their choice to be their mascot. It probably didn't hurt that Diane Rupprecht was my girlfriend, but what the hell!

Anyway, it is so nice that there are people like you that will take the time and effort to create and save our memories.

Rick Polikowski

Here's the 1965 K.O.s photo (enlargement)


Back: Gayle MacCaskey, Carol McClelland, Nicki Hanson, Terry Murphy, Melanie Dopirak, Sue Stenson, Joyce Miller
Middle: Cathy Overman, Sue Williams, April Carino, Rick Polikowski, Maureen Shapiro, Madelaine Zelenay, Nancy Mitchell
Front: Peggy Melton, Bobbie Grumley, Lynn Shaw. Pam Reimers, Diane Rupprecht, Denise Almlie

Found this cool 1977 pic of Rick (enlargement)



Rick was a Hollywood propmaker - CLICK HERE to see his movies.


Guy also send this video from Rick's past...



UPDATE
Found Rick on Facebook and it says he died in June of this year.

In 2011, he wrote, "I'm living in Costa Rica now. A place named Playas del Coco on the northwest coast." Below are a few FB pics...
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1842338017446&set=p.1842338017446&type=1&theater







Here's a video he liked and shared on Facebook...


Rick also liked and posted the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:


If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943)

Lunch with BHS Class '66 Friends

Thank You, Jennifer Dale Schatz for taking this great photo today!



Another fun lunch at Giamelas with friends from BHS Class of '66. Bill Wright, Mike Hearne, Linda White Silvas, Sandra Richards Keowen, Jordi Raack Daley, Scott Bruckner, Ron Coen, Bruce Keswick, Joe Baldino, and Greg Alaimo. Me??...I'm taking the picture!

Laura Ziskin (1950-2011), BHS '68, Producer of New Movie, "The Butler"

Laura Ziskin was a year younger than me in school but we were in Z Club together. She was smart, pretty and lots of fun!


Laura is standing on far right in this Z Club photo from the 1967 Burbank High School Ceralbus yearbook, Yours truly is in the back row between Diana Ziegler and Sandy Saia.

All of us were proud of her amazing accomplishments over the years and then devastated by her early death in 2011.

What a legacy she left and continues to leave as according to the following article, we learn that Laura was key to bringing forth the new hit movie, "The Butler".

WATCH THE TRAILER



READ THE LA TIMES ARTICLE

For 'The Butler,' a cast of 37 producers

Backstage Hollywood: Hollywood had little faith in a drama with a black lead, but its supporters never gave up. 

"The Butler" chronicles a black White House staffer who served under eight different presidents. (Anne Marie Fox / The Weinstein Co. / August 13, 2012)

By John Horn and Steven Zeitchik

August 14, 2013, 5:20 p.m.

If it takes a village to raise a child, it took a principality to bring "Lee Daniels' 'The Butler' " to the screen.

A five-year odyssey of false starts, studio abandonment and piecemeal financing, "The Butler" arrives in theaters Friday with 37 different people credited as producers — among them retired NBA player Michael Finley and "Spider-Man" maker Laura Ziskin, who died more than two years ago.

Ziskin left money in her will to help bankroll the $30-million picture, inspired by the true story of a black White House staffer who served under eight different presidents at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The saga began in November 2008, when Wil Haygood's profile of White House butler Eugene Allen was published in the Washington Post. Quickly, Hollywood came calling.

The tale Haygood chronicled, titled "A Butler Well Served by This Election," was irresistible and unique. Allen, then 89, had worked at the White House from Eisenhower to Reagan. A fly-on-the-wall witness to history, he had come to Washington at a time when segregated bathrooms were still mandatory, lived through the civil rights revolution and in his twilight saw Barack Obama elected president. (Allen died in 2010 at age 90.)

Among those impressed by Haygood's feature was Amy Pascal, the head of Sony Pictures. She brought the article to the attention of Ziskin, who at that point had produced the first three "Spider-Man" blockbusters for the studio. Ziskin and her partner, Pam Williams, traveled to Washington to pitch Haygood on their take.

"Laura responded to the human story — what pulled us in was the humanity of the butler, the humility of the butler, and the poignancy of his relationship with his wife," Williams said. "She saw it as a personal story, not a history story."

Given the subject matter — a serious drama starring an African American with no action scenes — it was never going to be an easy movie to get financed. "The obstacles were really great," Williams said. But by early 2009, actor-writer Danny Strong ("Game Change") was hired to adapt the newspaper article, and Denzel Washington was rumored to star. Daniels, who had just released his gritty drama, "Precious," was hired to direct.

"We had an amazing script, an amazing director — we were ready to go," Williams said.

Made for $10 million, "Precious" had won two Oscars and grossed a respectable $47.6 million in domestic release, but Sony executives began to worry that "The Butler" would not be commercially viable. It looked as though the very elements that had impressed Ziskin and Williams — a period drama about politics and race with a black character at its center — ultimately torpedoed the project.

"All of those things worked against us in the studio system," Williams said. By the end of 2010, Sony had lost faith in the movie and abandoned it. "It was pretty devastating for all of us," Williams said.

Ziskin, who at that point was being treated for breast cancer and had co-founded the research organization Stand Up to Cancer, became even more determined to bring "The Butler" to the screen. "Laura said, 'OK. No problem. We will just keep going,'" Williams recalled. 

Ziskin decided the best way to make "The Butler" was to enlist wealthy African Americans in its financing, and in early 2011 she met with Sheila Johnson, who with her former husband, Robert Johnson, had founded the entertainment network BET. She would become the movie's savior.

Johnson, a philanthropist, had served as a producer on some documentaries but had never invested anywhere near the amount of money Ziskin needed to help make "The Butler."

Johnson ultimately put $2.75 million into the film and promised Ziskin that she would ask other rich African Americans to join the cause. "I knew I had to make an investment myself if I was going to ask others to do the same," Johnson said. "I met with a lot of celebrities and talked to some rappers. And the only thing they said was, 'Cool.'"

Daniels was running into the same walls. "Hollywood would not allow me to make a black drama," he said last week in an interview in Manhattan, where he primarily lives. "I couldn't get this movie off the ground even after 'Precious' made $100 million around the world. So I had to go to anyone who would finance it."

Weeks of traveling the country yielded zero new investors, and less than two months after Johnson met Ziskin, the producer died. "On her deathbed, this was her last request: 'Get this movie made,'" Johnson said.

Ziskin's death galvanized Williams and Johnson. "As long as I kept the movie going forward, Laura remained very much alive," Williams said.

Despite the countless rejections, Johnson for months kept phoning friends and cold-calling strangers. "I was the only one hanging out there for a long time," she said.

She finally was able to land major investments from entrepreneur Earl Stafford and retired NBA player Finley (both of whom are credited as executive producers). By April 2012, most of the funds were in place. The tally of 37 producers in the film's press notes is largely made up of people who invested in, or helped bring investors to, the movie.

"The Butler" started filming last summer with Forest Whitaker playing the butler and Oprah Winfrey cast as his wife. Daniels said he was reluctant to ask the media mogul to help bankroll the production. "Because I wouldn't have been able to direct her," the director said. "I'm sure she would have given it to me. But she would have been like the boss. She was the employee, not the boss."

Johnson and some of the film's cast are hopeful that the film's doubters will be proved wrong.

"Hollywood's not in a hurry to tell these stories, unfortunately," said actor David Oyelowo, who plays one of the butler's sons. "But thankfully and hopefully, the audience response is going to encourage them to take a second look."

Johnson said she believes that of the film's many producers, one would be more thrilled than all the others that "The Butler" is finally coming to theaters: Ziskin.

"I know that she knows," Johnson said, "that this movie has come to fruition."

john.horn@latimes.com
steve.zeitchik@latimes.com
Times staff writer Amy Kaufman contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-backstage-butler-20130815,0,2239569,full.story


LEARN MORE ABOUT LAURA

Speaking from the Grave (2013)
http://burbankhigh1968.net/2013/08/16/speaking-from-the-grave/

Laura Ziskin (BHS '68) 1950 - 2011 (2011)
http://bhsclass67.blogspot.com/2011/06/laura-ziskin-bhs-68-1950-2011.html

BHS '68 Alumni Laura Ziskin Awarded... Again (2010)
http://bhsclass67.blogspot.com/2010/11/bhs-68-alumni-laura-ziskin-awarded.html

Laura Ziskin '68 (2008)
http://bhsclass67.blogspot.com/2008/10/laura-ziskin-68.html

Juanita (Morton) Sullivan, BHS W'51, Passed Away July 22, 2013

Received this today...

Am writing you to let you know the class of W'51 has lost a classmate, Juanita (Morton) Sullivan passed away on July 22 just 6 days before her 80th birthday in her sleep.

Her death was attributed to bronchitis and dementia.

She was proceeded in passing by her sister Marie Morton, Arthur Morton, Beverly Morton and Susie Morton. She was the next to the oldest.

She will be missed as we stayed friends for all these years and when possible saw each other and spent time with my children together.

Sincerely,
Patsy (Cooley) Hamilton

No photo of Juanita, so here is a Burbank photo taken in 1951


Photo shows how main street--San Fernando Boulevard--of Burbank looked May 3, 1951.
View is looking north from Verdugo Avenue.

Madelyn Miluso, BHS '65, Passed Away Today, Aug 10, 2013

Sad news for the Class of 1965...

It is with a very heavy heart I have to let you know that Madelyn Miluso passed away this morning from a heart attack. She was living in Florida, near her daughter, Capella, who was with her when she started having trouble breathing. Capella called 911, but she was gone in route to the hospital. No services are planned, but you may send cards to her daughter and family at Capella & Mike Flaherty, 2570 Sawyer Terrace, Wellington, FL 33414. She is also survived by her son, Joey, and his family, plus Al Miluso BHS 63, Joe (Jay) Miluso BHS 68 and their families.

My condolences to all who loved her as much as I did.

Trudie Lombard Hentze
BHS 65 Class Rep