On this date in 1935, the Santa Ana Register reported that the Seal Beach Elementary School was planning to have a radio set up in each classroom.
This effort to modernize Seal Beach classrooms with access to cutting edge media technology was spearheaded by the Seal Beach P.T.A. and made possible with donations from the Seal Beach Volunteer Fire Department, the Seal Beach American Legion post, the local auxiliary of the American Legion, the Woman’s Club of Seal Beach, and the Seal Beach Council.
The report ran with a photo of the first three radios with representatives of the organizations involved, including D. W. Collier, Mary Zoeter, Mrs. Dagmar Schmidt, Anna Collier, J. H. McGaugh, C.E. Thompson, W. S. (Sperry) Knighton, Mrs. Ruby Mayes, and Mrs. Jessie Reed.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1963, Seal Beach Police Officer Fred Rogers shot burglary suspect Odell Chester Scott in the right hand when he failed to halt as ordered.
Scott had been observed by a tenant at the apartment building at 120 Sixth Street entering another apartment in the building. When confronted by the police, he fled, yelling, “Go ahead and shoot!” He continue running after the injury to his hand, but was finally captured when he doubled back to his car.
The next day, Scott was reported as being in good condition at the Orange County Hospital prison ward.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1953 at 8:30 pm, The Bell Sisters gave a forty-minute stage show at the 2,038 seat West Coast Theater at 333 East Ocean Avenue in downtown Long Beach to their new film, “Those Redheads from Seattle.”
Kay and Cynthia Strother – The Bell Sisters!
The Bell Sisters were local girls from Seal Beach, Kay and Cynthia Strother, who sang under their mother’s maiden name of Bell. In 1951, they grabbed the public’s attention with the hit song, “Bermuda” and made eleven records and countless radio and television appearances in the early fifties. Their nephew, Rex Strother, maintains a Bell Sisters Facebook page and is currently revamping the official Bell Sisters website.
Their popularity as singers and engaging personalities lead to their being cast in singing roles in two 1953 films, “Cruisin’ Down The River” and the aforementioned “Those Redheads from Seattle.”
Cynthia left the duo in the mid-fifties, and Kay continued a solo singing career into the sixties.
– Michael Dobkins
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Thomas Duncan was probably down there working in his shop.
On this date in 1934, Seal Beach tailor Thomas W. Duncan shot himself his shop at 137 Main Street where he also lived.
Owner of the Seal Beach Drug Company next door, Lee Benno heard a shot in the night and called the police. All the doors to Duncan’s shop were locked, and the police forced the rear door open and found Duncan in his living quarters in the back of the shop. He died before a doctor could be summoned.
According to the California Death Index Duncan was 57 at the time of his suicide, Duncan had been ill for sometime and was divorced from his wife who purportedly lived in Salem, Oregon with their two sons. He had left Oregon seven years earlier and opened the tailor shop in 1930 — not the best year for launching a new business. The country was reeling from the 1929 stock market crash and sliding downward through the Great Depression.
Duncan was a Spanish-American War veteran and member of the Anaheim Bay American Legion. He also served in the Canadian military before switching to the American armed forces and serving as a private in Company K of the 32nd Michigan Infantry when the U.S. entered World War I.
He was give a conduct funeral on October 30 at the Soldier’s Home in Sawtelle and buried in the cemetery there, now known as the Los Angeles National Cemetery.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1986, this following ad ran in the Los Angeles Times for the Bayou St. restaurant at 320 Main Street.
John and Carolyn Fagot brought recipes to Seal Beach from their native Louisiana in 1984 and served flavorful creole and cajun food there for nearly two decades. (Alligator was once offered on the menu.)
320 Main now occupies the Bayou St. John spot on Main Street.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1970, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial was formally dedicated on what would have been his eightieth birthday in the park at the base of the Seal Beach pier after a short parade down Main Street to the dedication site.
The former president had passed away the previous year on March 28th, and park itself also served as a memorial for the thirty-fourth president by being named “Eisenhower Park” by unanimous vote by the Seal Beach city council on August 4, 1969.
Mrs. Frank Clinton, president of the Seal Beach Republican Women’s Club, the organization that sponsored the memorial, acted as master of ceremonies to a crowd of over a thousand people that overflowed beyond the capacity of the temporary grandstand erected on Ocean Avenue.
Seal Beach Mayor Pro Tem Harold Holden, standing in for absent Mayor Mort Baum, formally proclaimed the date as “Dwight D. Eisenhower Day.”
The Eisenhower family was represented by David Eisenhower, the former president’s 22-year grandson and son-in-law of current president, Richard Nixon.
“The Eisenhower family is grateful for the dedication of this memorial, and I personally am grateful,” he told the audience. “This dedication has taught me that I was very fortunate in having known this man, and I am glad that so many others have known him.”
The president’s grandson was not the only speaker with a personal connection to Dwight Eisenhower.
The invocation and benediction was given by Dr. Dean Miller, pastor of the church the Eisenhower family had attended in Palm Desert.
California State Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest spoke of her time serving as U.S. Treasurer in the Eisenhower Administration.
“His administrative genius, the great devotion to duty and his ability to keep people working together is well known, but his humanness, his personal warmth, and his love of all people were qualities I was privileged to know to a greater degree than most.”
Rear Admiral Robert Salazar described Eisenhower’s military career for the crowd.
Rounding off the program was the J.H. McGaugh Intermediate School band providing music with vocals by the Marina High School Mariners.
The highlight of the event was the unveiling of the memorial itself by the current Miss Seal Beach, Jill Shelton and Jack Olsteen, director of parks. The memorial was a sand painting portrait of President Eisenhower created by artist David Villasenor (1913-1987) with sands from each state in the United States.
Born in Guadalajara, Villasenor came to the U.S. when he was sixteen and lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he learned the physical craft and spiritual symbolism of sand painting from local Navajos. Sand painting was usually a temporary creation done on the ground and usually lasting barely a day.
(I had the personal privilege to witness Villasenor create a sand painting by this method using only natural colors from materials like sulphur and garnet on a school field trip in 1978. It was enthralling to watch.)
Villasenor discovered a method to mount and preserve his sand painting, and his works have been displayed in the Southwest Museum, the Plaza de la Raza, and the Los Angeles County of Natural History. He also taught and wrote books on sand painting and Indian symbols.
A visit to Eisenhower Park today will reveal no sand painting memorial to Dwight Eisenhower. In the one single instance of sand erosion in Seal Beach not due to high tides, the moist sea air and outdoor elements weakened the lacquer preserving the sand portrait of Eisenhower and it began to crumble. At some point a second portrait by another artist was substituted, but now even that is gone.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1975, the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram ran this advertisement announcing the grand opening of the Old Ranch Townhomes and promising “A return to a life of style and grace.” – Michael Dobkins
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On this day in 1929, the Seal Beach city council accepted the new city hall in a business session. At a cost of $37,355, the new building would house all the city departments and had an auditorium on the second floor. Furniture would be installed over the next ten days, allowing the city workers a couple weeks to settle in before the public reception on October 28th.
The “new’ city hall — nearly 33 years later.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1938, the Santa Ana Register breathlessly announced that “Wayne Penn, the blonde bombshell from Seal Beach” had graduated to the second half of the main event at that night’s boxing event at the Orange County Athletic Club. Penn, whom the Register reporter also called “The Seal Beach kid,” had earned his spot on the main event by winning his previous two fights by knockouts. Penn was warned that this match wouldn’t be as easy as the earlier matches because he was going up against Frankie Garcia who “had more ring experience and is rated an excellent ring general.”
Wayne Penn’s career as a boxing representative from Seal Beach only last until November 1938 when he disappears from the paper. He seemed to be a bit of rambling rover because in August 1938 the Santa Ana Register had dubbed him “the blonde bombshell from Long Beach,” but Penn apparently moved to Seal Beach by September and his epithet was revised to match his new location. After Seal Beach, he seems to have settled long-term in Texas where he competed in Golden Gloves tournaments on a Fort Worth team as late as 1944.
Publicity still of Wayne Penn in 1944 (University of Texas digital archives)
Oh, and that October 3rd bout with Frankie Garcia? No knockout this time, but Wayne Penn did win by decision.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1916, The Santa Ana Register ran an advertisement for Clune’s Theatre’s Tuesday night bill which included a live fashion show featuring gowns worn by Santa Ana young ladies and dancing by beautiful ladies. The main attraction was “Diana of the Follies,” a fashion-themed film starring Lillian Gish as a gold digger.
If you’re wondering to yourself what all this has to do with Seal Beach, take a look at the ad copy for “Vampire Ambrose,” a “Keystone Comedy taken at Seal Beach and Anaheim Landing.” The sad news is that “Vampire Ambrose” is a lost film, so we’re left only to wonder what 1916 Seal Beach and Anaheim Landing locations served as a background for all the inevitable Keystone Comedy cavorting and pratfalls. Was Main Street featured in the action? Did Pacific Electric red cars pass through a shot? Was Anaheim Landing used primarily as a beach location or did the film use the bungalows, boardwalk, and other buildings? Keystone Comedy’s production crews and actors loved beachside amusement park settings in their films, so it seems unlikely that “Vampire Ambrose” avoided the roller coaster, the Joy Zone attractions, and the pier while filming. Unless some reels of “Vampire Ambrose” show up in an obscure film archive somewhere (highly unlikely since the Library of Congress estimates that 75% of all silent films are lost forever), we’ll never know for certain.
What we do know is a few details about the film and more about the film’s star, Mack Swain (1876-1935). Swain was a successful vaudeville actor before becoming a featured player at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Films. Tall and heavyset, Swain made the perfect antagonist or foil when cast against a young, plucky, and diminutive stage comedian who also started his film career at Keystone. The two would continue to work together after they moved on from Keystone, and if Swain is remembered at all today it is for his appearance in one of the most famous sequences in silent film comedy made by that same young, plucky, and diminutive comedian.
Yes, Mack Swain played The Tramp’s mining partner, Big Jim McKay, in “The Gold Rush,” where they shared a memorable Thanksgiving dinner of boiled shoe leather.
Swain’s career and range as a film actor went beyond his work with Charlie Chaplin. He appeared in the original silent film version of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” a Rudolph Valentino thriller, “The Eagle,” and John Barrymore’s swashbuckler, “The Beloved Rogue,” among many other films well into the mid-thirties talkies era. Not too shabby a career for someone who started out in film as a Keystone Cop.
At Keystone, Swain headlined his own series of films, sometimes, but not always, teamed with another Keystone comic, Chester Conklin, nicknamed “The Walrus.” Swain’s screen character Ambrose was usually an oafish henpecked husband type with a wandering eye and an appreciation for young beauties. The Ambrose character proved so popular that Swain took it with him when he left Keystone.
Chester Conklin, Gloria Swanson, and Mack Swan
“Vampire Ambrose” was not a comedy about a supernatural bloodsucker like Dracula, but instead was a lampoon of what was known in the teens as “vampire pictures.” These films starred actresses like Theda Bara and Louise Glaum as seductresses with such overwhelming powerful sexual appeal that they drove men crazy with self-destructive desire. Today we call actresses who play these roles “screen vamps,” but when “Vampire Ambrose,” they were just known as “vampires.”
“Vampire Ambrose,” inverted the formula by making a man the “vampire” being pursued by women yearning for his embraces and abandoning dignity for desire when caught in his intense gaze. The comedy of this is made all the more ridiculous by 300-pound Mack Swain playing the male “vampire.”
“Vampire Ambrose” stayed in release for a whopping five years, usually filling out the bill with more serious and arty feature length films. The ad descriptions of “Vampire Ambrose’ are stilted hyperbolic delights to read. “It’s a comedy, a corking one too with 300 laughs to 30 minutes of film this picture is sure to delight you. Not for a moment are you allowed to be serious. Sometimes the merriment is so fast you can hardly keep up with it. But if you really want to enjoy yourself don’t miss this picture.” “A burlesque on the many so called vampire pictures, a regular scream from beginning to end. A comedy with a punch in every foot of film.” “The rollicking Keystone farce, “Vampire Ambrose” — he lures you into the realms of laughter — and holds you in a merry mood for full 30 minutes.”
Damn. Now I really want to see “Vampire Ambrose.” Check those unmarked film cans, movie archivists!
While we’re waiting for the “Vampire Ambrose” to be rediscovered, you can still visit Clune’s Theatre in Santa Ana. It’s now known as the Yost Theater and you can find out more about it here.
As an added bonus, here’s a chance to see Mack Swain not getting laughs by bullying Charlie Chaplin, but by showing off his comedic charms as a vain, attention seeking movie star in, um, “A Movie Star.” Enjoy!
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– Michael Dobkins
