On this date in 1949, Seal Beach residents woke to discover that during the night frigid fifty miles per hour winds and rough waves had torn the Super Express fishing boat from its moorings at Seal Beach pier and smashed the boat upon the Seal Beach Naval Ammunition Depot breakwater, leaving a gaping hole in the hull.
As dramatic as this event was to the normally sedate Seal Beach, it was just one of many similar incidents spread across Southern California. Flights at LAX airport had been grounded. Boats had been beached at Santa Monica and Redondo Beach. The Monstad Pier in Redondo Beach had a section torn apart by waves. Several inches of sand had blown on to Pacific Coast Highway, stranding automobiles and buses. Trees were toppled, and some communities went without electricity for a few hours. Daylight brought calmer weather, and repairs and clean-up efforts began.
In Seal Beach, the Super Express was beached, and the hole was repaired with a temporary canvas patch to make the vessel seaworthy enough to be towed to the San Pedro Boat Works. The canvas patch prove too temporary for the entire trip and peeled, and the boat sank in what must have been shallow water. It was re-floated, re-patched, and towed to safely to San Pedro for more substantial repairs.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1957, the Long Beach Independent published the following black and white illustration of the proposed Bank Of Belmont Shore branch to be built in Seal Beach in early 1958.
The footprint of the property the bank would have stood on would have encompassed the lots where Brita’s Old Town Gardens (225 Main Street), The Flipside Beach Boutique (231 Main Street) and the First Team Real Estate (245 Main Street) now do business. It might have also included the land where Nick’s Deli now serves breakfast burritos, but it’s difficult to tell just from the illustration.
Seal Beach history is filled with ambitious proposals that never became a reality, and this is one of stranger ones.
The bank building was scheduled to be opened on the southwest corner of Electric Avenue and Main Street on the inauspicious date of April 1st. Charles L. Green, the member of the bank’s board of directors in charge of planning the new branch told a Los Angeles Times reporter on June 29th that architects’ plans were to be completed in two months. And what plans they were!
The architectural style eschewed the traditional bank design of classical marble columns in favor of a more modern and open look with plate glass walls on two sides and a nautical theme for the interior decor. This was not an unusual aesthetic for the mid-fifties. What took the design on a Mr. Toad’s wild ride into wonkiness was revealed in seven words that were part of the caption for the illustration: Live seals will swim in a pool.
I assume that the smaller structure that runs from inside the bank building out into the landscape in front of the bank is the pool for the seals. It’s hard to tell from the grainy illustration taken from a newspaper page that was poorly scanned for microfilm archives, but there does seem to be at least two seals featured in the architect’s rendering.
LIVE SEALS WILL SWIM IN A POOL
Now, please. I ask you to pause and take a long moment to imagine the entirety implied in the concept of “Live seals will swim in a pool.” Close your eyes if it helps you imagine — but only for a moment. You’re going to have to reopen them to read the next paragraph.
First, think about what it would be like to do your financial business in a building with a pool of seals. Could you go over the details of a home mortgage, a business loan, or a deposit error with a bank officer or teller while playful aquatic mammals splash around and grunt a few yards away? If you were a teller or vault manager, could you concentrate enough to balance out your drawers at the end of the day after listening to that cacophony for eight hours? Who feeds the seals? Where’s the closest veterinarian who can treat sick seals? What does it smell like in the bank? What do you do about all the kids and oddballs who show up just to watch the seals and get in the way of your actual customers? On a practical level, the seals would be cute for about a day, and then they would become a banking nightmare.
I found this news item only a few hours ago, and these questions immediately occurred to me. Who came up with this idea, and why didn’t he reject it for instantly apparent practical reasons?
Did Charles L. Green visit Marineland (which opened in 1954), see a crowd of tourists around the seal tank, and say to himself, “Boy, if only we could get a crowd this size into our bank. We’d make a fortune! Wait a minute, we want to open up a Seal Beach branch! This is genius! I can’t wait to tell the guys!”
This was during the economic and real estate boom brought by the construction of the Long Beach Marina, so maybe this aquatic scheme seemed… on brand?
Whatever sparked the inspiration for this idea and whoever pitched it, Not single member of the Bank of Belmont Shore’s board of directors objected to this lunacy. What I would give to be a fly on the wall when these solid community leaders and supposedly sensible businessmen decided to pass the idea on to an architectural firm.
I don’t blame the architects. If the check clears, crazy people’s money spends just as well as sane folks’s cash.
If I’m flippantly casting aspersions of the sanity of someone’s kindly grandfather or beloved relative nearly two-thirds of a century later, please forgive me. Whatever their finer qualities and life achievements might have been, you have to admit that approving a tank of live seals in a bank was crazier than a soup sandwich.
Or maybe it was all merely an elaborate April Fool’s Day prank The Bank of Belmont Shore was playing on the City of Seal Beach. It was due to be opened on April 1st, after all. Who knows?
Please forgive this self-indulgent digression. Sometimes the ideal of objective history telling must set aside for a good “What were they — nuts?” rant.
——————-
Luckily for whatever unsuspecting seals might have ended up in such unpleasant captivity, the branch was never built, but the reason remains elusive. According to city council minutes, the City of Seal Beach did business with the Bank of Belmont Shore between 1955 and 1958, but there is no mention of a potential bank branch in the city. The likely reason for plans for the proposed branch being abandoned had less to do with impractical building designs and more to do with internal issues within The Bank of Belmont Shore that become public in December 1957.
The Bank of Belmont Shore always had a troubled history. The original Belmont Shore branch building still exists at 5354 East Second Street and is a familiar landmark to anyone who visits Belmont Shore regularly. The building was built in 1929 and spent the good part of two decades as a location for a variety of short-lived restaurants. In 1950, Pasadena investors bought the building and commissioned Francis Gentry to design and remodel a state-of-the-art banking facility tucked stylishly inside a distinctive Spanish Colonial Revival exterior with drive-thru teller windows. That remodel was completed in 1951.
Then the $200,000 building remained unoccupied for more than a year and a half. The venture was originally to be funded by a half a million dollar stock offering to local investors, but only $35,000 was raised. Soon, the Pasadena investors were beset by liens against the building by Gentry, the Herman Safe Co., and speedboat race champion Richard Loynes, owner of the land leased to the investors. When the bank finally did open on December 14, 1953, none of those original Pasadena investors was listed among the names of new bank’s leaders and officers.
For the next few years, news articles about the bank were favorable, mostly highlighting community involvement or meetings held in the bank’s popular community room. The bank was even a sponsor of The Miss Universe contest and often hosted appearances of individual contestants.
This image of civic virtue came crashing down when it was revealed that the bank’s president and vice-president had embezzled from the bank numerous times to a staggering total of $305,000, starting a mere month after the bank’s grand opening. The two bank officers were forced to resign to face an indictment with seventy counts of embezzlement, conspiracy, misapplications of funds, and making false entries. They were also forced to sell their shares in the bank, giving more honest investors control of the bank.
By all accounts, the new management ran The Bank of Belmont Shore honestly and well, and the institution’s prosperity grew year-by-year. Unfortunately, at the same time the two resigned officers were in and out of court for their crimes from 1958 to 1960, constantly tainting The Bank of Belmont Shore’s reputation with news stories of fraud, embezzlement, and dishonesty. In May 1960, The Bank of Belmont Shore was renamed Coast Bank the day before the former bank president was sentenced.
That’s not really Seal Beach history, but it does explain why none of us will ever ask on social media if anyone else remembers the bank on Main and Electric that had a tank of seals.
– 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 1976, The Rossmoor Shopping Center celebrated its fifteenth anniversary with a dance contest featuring a variety of dance styles like the jitterbug, the rumba, the shag, the Charleston, the Cha Cha Cha, the fox trot, the Bosanova, the Balboa, and the Balboa.(We’re partial to the Stingray Shuffle here at the “This Date in Seal Beach History” dance academy.)Prizes were provided the mall’s merchants, and the music was provided by Tracy Wells And That Big Band, an eighteen-piece orchestra specializing in music from the Glen Miller era. Tracy Wells was a Long Beach musician and one time Seal Beach resident who came into local prominence in the seventies playing gigs at venues like the Golden Sails Inn, The Lakewood Center, the Edgewater Hyatt House.Wells continue leading Big Band orchestras and bands well into the Twenty-First Century as evidenced in this 2012 Long Beach Press-Telegram interview by Tim Grobaty. He even recorded two albums, “The Tracy Wells Big Band, Featuring Karen Aldridge” (1982) and Tracy Wells and his Big Swing Band’s “Swing is Here!” (2006). You can listen to “Swing is Here!” on this YouTube playlist.
Tracy Wells retired from performing with a New Year’s Eve Grand Finale Party in 2015 at the Long Beach Marriott.If the mood strikes you, you can still dance at The Rossmoor Shopping Center today (earphones recommended), but most of the stores have changed, and the center has been remodeled and rebranded as The Shops at Rossmoor in 2007.
– 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 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan made a speech at a closed-to-the-public campaign stop at Seal Beach Leisure World.
Ronald Reagan greets enthusiastic supporters at Leisure World
Speaking to a crowd of approximately 2,500, Reagan affirmed his support of the Social Security program, promised to tighten Medicare so the elderly could get more benefits from it, and received great applause when he criticized earnings limitations on people drawing Social Security.
This was not Reagan’s first visit to Leisure World. He gave a speech there in 1966 while campaigning for governor.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1958, the Long Beach Independent Press Telegram ran a profile of Seal Beach resident Clark Pettingill of 205 Fifth Street and what he called “The Pettingill Apple Tree.”
Clark Pettingill and his famous front yard apple tree
Seal Beach is not famed for its fruit-producing trees, but this tree was special. The Pettingill Apple Tree produced such phenomenal apples, that the tree had been patented with grafts being distributed by Armstrong Nurseries.
Twenty-five to thirty years earlier, Clark separated two apple trees that had started growing in his front yard. Clark believed the two trees probably came from the same apple core. The second tree was replanted in the backyard, but only produced fair apples.
The Pettingill Apple Tree in the front yard, however, produced a large crop of big red apples, ranging from 10 to 12 ounces. Clark shared that he once picked a 22-ounce apple.
We close with a cautionary note for modern-day apple poachers. While a tree does grow today in the front yard at 205 Fifth Street, that tree is not The Pettingill Apple Tree. It, like Clark Pettingill (1884-1964), is gone, but continues to leave a legacy as this Google search will attest.
Birthplace of the Pettingill Apple
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1948, the Long Beach Independent ran a human interest story under the attention-grabbing headline of “Free Blood Keeps Her Alive.”
Helen Black, Mrs. Arilla Phillips and Red Cross volunteer, Edna Lipman
The story was about 52 year-old Seal Beach widow Mrs. Arilla Phillips of 1305 Electric Avenue. In November 1947, she had been diagnosed as suffering from aplastic anemia –the first case of this rare condition in Long Beach and the vicinity, according to Dr. H.E. Bicknell of Seaside Hospital. Mrs. Phillips had a rare blood type only found in one out of 80 people, which made the blood transfusions she needed to stay alive too expensive.
Lucky for Mrs. Phillips, blood donors for the Long Beach chapter of the Red Cross were able to provide what she needed free of charge. “As long as I can get free blood through the Red Cross I get along fine. I could never have purchased the blood I need at commercial rates totaling $1725 up to this time.” The previous week, she had received her 69th transfusion.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1942, The Danville Morning News ran chapter one of a prose adaptation of the MGM movie, “Maisie Gets Her Man,” starring Ann Southern and Red Skelton. It was once common practice for newspapers to run serialized novels in their pages over the course of a few days, and, if the novel was based on a popular movie, the added interest from movie fans would increase the newspaper’s circulation while also increasing the audience for the movie’s local release. Today we’d call that marketing synergy.
“Maisie Gets Her Man” chapter one runs in the 10/10/42 Danville Morning News…
… the movie opens one week later at the Capitol Theater in Danville, PA
“Maisie Gets Her Man” was the sixth in a series of ten films (plus a radio show spin-off) that starred Ann Southern as Mary Anastasia O’Connor, stage name Maisie Ravier, a plucky showgirl with a big heart who would get caught up in all sorts of shenanigans and hijinks while pursuing a show-biz career. This time out Maisie’s involved with a goofy comedian played by Red Skelton.
What does this have to do with Seal Beach history? I’ll admit the Seal Beach connection is tenuous and trivial, but too much fun to just slip by without noting it. In chapter one of the adaptation in The Danville Morning News, Maisie is once again seeking show biz work, but is having no luck at a theatrical office. On her way out, she bumps into the office building’s manager, and the two of them have encountered each other before under unusual circumstances — in a place called Seal Beach.
I checked the scene in the actual film, and the dialogue is similar in both the book and the film — complete with the reference to an incident in Seal Beach. The scene isn’t available online, so I present the dialogue between Maisie and Pappy Goodring, played by veteran character actor, Allen Jenkins, below:
Screen actors and screenwriters from this era would know Seal Beach because the best route down to Newport Beach (where many Hollywood types kept their yachts) went through Seal Beach. Local legends say that Humphrey Bogart regularly stopped by Art’s Drive-In (the same spot on PCH where Subway now operates) on Fridays after the week’s filming ended.
It’s not a large leap of logic that one of the screenwriters had taken this trip to Newport Beach once or twice and maybe even popped into one of the revues that used to run in the restaurants on Pacific Coast Highway. When she needed the name of a place for where Maisie would be doing a hula number, “Seal Beach” probably just popped into his head. (Maybe she did it in Sam’s Seafood’s new addition.)
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date on the 1936, Chief Sperry Knighton and the Seal Beach fire department used the city’s hook and ladder truck to rescue a cat from a palm tree in front of 124 11th Street.
124 11th Street – Over 80 years after the emergency. The address remains, but the perilous palm tree is long gone.
The reason why this event was significant enough to warrant a story in the Santa Ana Register is that, after 15 months without a fire call within the city, this emergency call from residents concerned by the mewling of the trapped cat finally broke the department’s dry spell of no emergencies.
Not the actual rescued cat (or even a cat that actually needs rescuing.) Also, not an actual palm tree. The only thing actual here is our pandering to the internet by posting a cute cat pic.
This is exactly the sort of thing a cat leash law would prevent.
– Michael Dobkins
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