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Tag: Seal Beach History

  • October 12th in Seal Beach History

    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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  • October 11 in Seal Beach History

    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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    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

     

  • October 10th in Seal Beach History

    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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  • October 9th in Seal Beach History

    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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    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

     

  • October 8th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1961, International Gifts ran an ad in the Long Beach Independent Press Telegram announcing their new location next to Brock’s Drugstore. That week’s specials were Swedish candlesticks, basketware, imported glassware sets, hats, bags, and international Christmas cards!

    International Gifts was part of the Seal Beach Main Street for most of the sixties. Its first location was at 322 Main Street, and then it moved briefly next to Brock’s Drugstore before finally operating its third and final Seal Beach location at 142 Main Street. There was a shop in Naples that went by the same name, but I haven’t been able to confirm whether or not it was connected to the Seal Beach store.

    The wiser followers of this blog have already ignored these words and examined the ad to discover something fishy about the address 709 Electric Avenue. This address, if it actually existed, would be in a residential area.  The real 1961 address for International Gifts was 907 Electric Avenue, later home to Cape Cod Coiffures and Studio 907. Time travelers, please update (or backdate) your address books accordingly.

    – Michael Dobkins

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    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

     

  • October 7th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1941, the Long Beach Independent reported that Sam’s Seafood at 2501 Pacific Coast Highway had recently opened a new building in the back to handle its overflow crowds of weekend diners. The new 30 by 94 feet addition could accommodate 200 patrons and also featured an orchestra and a floor show. The new addition would be christened The Neptune Room.

    Sam’s Seafood – Now with more room around the back (just half a block from the red car tracks) 

    – Michael Dobkins

    Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?

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    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

     

  • October 6th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1963, the Long Beach Independent Press Telegram’s Women’s section ran a profile of the posh Larsen Hall off-campus women’s dormitory at 1310 Electric Avenue in Seal Beach under the breezy headline, “Larsen Hall — Books ‘n Bathing Caps.”

    Coeds Judy Delulio and Jeannine Merril studying in the library at Larsen Hall

    Larsen Hall was previously seen here in this post covering February 21, 1964 – a scandalous post filled with shame, dishonor, ignominy, and disgrace. (I may be overstating a bit.)

    Ah, but what a difference four months makes! On October 6, 1963, the situation still appears sunny at Larsen Hall, inspiring the unnamed reporter to observe, “Dorm living today is like camping in mink.” The reporter felt that the two-story dormitory, “just a bikini-brief walk from the beach,” had “nearly all the the attributes of a resort hotel.” These attributes included a dining and lounge area, a central pool patio, a sundeck, a separate snack room off the kitchen, a secluded library, an intercom system, and an automated laundry. The entire facility could accommodate 37 students.

    Some of the current students did homework and dangled their feet in the pool the day the reporter visited.  Judy Delulio from Lake Tahoe shared that “You’re never lonely here. We stick together — there’s always something fun going on: a popcorn party, a starfish hunt at the beach, a special excursion. Best of all, we have neat management.”

    Ah, yes. The management. At this stage, there’s nothing but praise for Frank and Joan Silone. Frank drove the “girls back and forth to school in the hall’s private bug of a bus” and did the cooking, “turning out menus that would please a gourmet.” Joan helped with sewing and the evening song fests. 

    Just another poolside day in coed paradise – Sherry Delulio plays catch while Jan Petersen strums a guitar and Terry Suffet tries to read

    But there was trouble (and poorly reproduced from microfilm photos) in the sad future of Larsen Hall.

    – Michael Dobkins

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    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

     

  • October 1st in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1961, the following ad for the Ivory Tower Bookstore ran in the Long Beach Independent. The Ivory Tower has appeared here in posts for May 5th and June 11  because the crackerjack editorial team here at “This Date in Seal Beach History” are fascinated by bookstores.


    The Ivory Tower was opened at 113 Main Street in September 1961 by Jim Scully and Norma Brisson, but Jim Scully was the personality and face of the business.

    Scully grew up in Butte, Montana where he excelled at gymnastics in school. In 1946, while he was studying Japanese in the Army, he took a spill in the gym and broke his neck and became a paraplegic.

    In spite of having only limited use of his hands and arms, he continued to study and write, graduated from UCLA in 1952, and took classes towards his masters at Long Beach State while running The Ivory Tower. He even found time to write a column for California Paralyzed Veteran News Bulletin, called “The Ivory Tower.”

    Late in the sixties, Scully married another paraplegic and even adopted a little girl.

    In a March 3, 1962 profile of Scully and the bookstore in the Long Beach Independent, he noted that Seal Beach had “grown from a sleepy little village into an artistic town. It could become the Carmel of Southern California.” Scully felt that the west side of Main Street (the side where the Ivory Tower operated) was more arty with a coffeehouse (probably the Rouge et Noir) and artistic shops while the east side had more traditional businesses. Scully saw his bookstore as “at the center of a blossoming cultural revolution.”

    The bookstore as described in March 1962, was not only filled with books, but modern art — some of it risque — adorned the walls and offered coffee, conversation and foreign magazines filled with propaganda. Scully also mentioned their bestselling book in 1962 was Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer at 50 copies sold in three days. “I wish we could get more.” 

    (At the time, many felt Tropic of Cancer was smutty and was the subject of many obscenity court cases until the Supreme Court declared it non-obscene in 1964. This explains why Scully had trouble getting more books and why it was such popular reading in 1962)

    It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the Ivory Tower closed its doors for good, but I have faint memories of the store still operating around 1971 or 1972. It did not last much longer than that. It definitely was part of its era, along with the Arts Center, the Rouge et Noir, the Bay Theatre running foreign art films and the plays at the Peppermint Playhouse. (Although both of those businesses were on the east side of Main Street in 1961.)

    – Michael Dobkins

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    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

     

  • September 30th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1971, the following ad ran in the Long Beach Independent for the Ranch House Restaurant.

    The ad offered fine dining and entertainment by Bill Clark, a pianist and organist who sang and played pop hits and Broadway showtunes at various local Long Beach restaurants like The Embers, Alexander’s, Lucy’s, and Hoefly’s.

    The Ranch House Restaurant was once known as the Dovalis 101 Ranch House Cafe, and you can see and learn more about its long history by clicking on this July 20, 1940 post, this December 16, 1941 post on the Dovalis Ranch House Cafe doing its bit for the war effort in the weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack, this May 24, 1963 post about the restaurant’s brief time as The Eddie Bush Mauna Kea, this August 3, 1967 post covering the 101 Ranch House’s Greek period under the Smyrniotis family, and finally this May 6, 1975 post reminding good sons and daughters to make early reservations for Mother’s Day.
    – Michael Dobkins

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    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

  • September 29th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1977, the following ad ran in the Long Beach Independent.

    Before Ruby’s Diner and long after the scintillators were removed, Fisherman’s Wharf Restaurant served food at the end of the Seal Beach Pier, including an enticing Friday choice between a fish dinner or a spaghetti dinner for only $ 2.95 complete.
    More than forty years later, nothing is being served at the end of the Seal Beach pier.  A fire gutted the end of the pier on May 20, 2016, leaving nothing but a depressing view of the charred remains of a once prime dining spot in Seal Beach. Three years later the fire damage had finally been repaired, and the end of the pier officially re-opened on May 24th, 2019. When and if another restaurant will be built there remains an unanswered question.

    – Michael Dobkins

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