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 1923, the Santa Ana Register ran a short profile of Ilah Claudine Whitely under the headline, “Seal Beach Whistler Learned To Warble At An Early Age She Doesn’t Believe Old Saw.”
The kindest version of the old saw referenced in the headline and the profile is “Whistling girls and crowing hens will always come to some bad ends.” This definitely did not apply to Ilah, who was performing publicly at age nine.
She was the first child whistler to perform on radio station KHJ (which had its first broadcast in April 1922, so Ilah was part of early Southern California radio history) and received billing on local community programs.
Ilah was born in Santa Ana and became a pupil of Elizabeth Worthley when her family moved to Whittier. Elizabeth Worthley was a professional whistler who was well-known for whistling at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, but she took a job to teach high school science in 1917 (while teaching music and whistling on the side, it seems). Ilah’s performance on KHJ came about from her connection with Elizabeth Worthley, who brought her to the station for two whistling solos in a musical comedy revue in early 1923.
Ilah’s musical pursuits were also encouraged by her father and mother.
By the time her family moved to Seal Beach, Ilah was an accomplished whistler and pianist. She was on the program for the opening of the opening of the new location for Seal Beach’s Methodist Church at Tenth Street and Central Avenue on July 28th, 1923 (so this is a double “This Date in Seal Beach History” post.) Her performance was mentioned in a later Santa Ana Register article as having “won hearty appreciation from the Long Beach representatives as well as Seal Beach.” Ilah was also a guest at Miss Elizabeth’s Epworth League gathering on Eighth Street a few weeks later. Music and games were planned, so it’s likely Ilah contributed to the evening’s activities.
Her family then moved to Redondo Beach where Ilah attended Redondo Beach Union High School, where she was a member of the Ettiquette Club and took Organ class (the high school had a three manual organ installed back in 1915.) After Ilah graduated, she attended UCLA and was a member of the musical sorority Mu Phi Epsilon.
Ilah Claudine Whitely’s 1938 Bruins yearbook photo on the MU Epsilon Pi page.
After college, Ilah became a teacher, inspired no doubt by Elizabeth Worthley. She married Milford Montgomery in 1940, and had three children. And I’m happy to share, she did not abandon music.
As her daughter Rita Montgomery shared in an e-mail:
As to my mother’s history in music, she may best be referred to as a Choral Director. She put together a group of women which she directed and trained to be performing singers. As a matter of fact, a record (45 Record) was made.
This was between 1953 and 1954. I know for sure because I was 5 ½ years old. This 45 Record was actually made at the Capitol Record Building where the day and night it was made, was right next door to Frank Sinatra, also recording at the time a record.
The 45 Record that was produced, was the following: ONE SIDE included me as the solo singer (5 ½ years old) and my mother’s choral group in the background. The other side of the record was my mother’s choral group only and so the songs were the following: I Believe in Santa Claus (my solo performance with coral group in the background) and the other side, only the coral group which sang in excellent harmony, Many, Many Xmas’s ago.
The 45 record she recorded was Liberty Records #55049 (1957) Rita Montgomery – “I Believe in Santa Claus/Many, Many Christmases Ago.” I can’t find an image of the 45 or a copy for sale online, so I’m assuming sales were limited.
Another tidbit that Rita shared about Ilah:
As to her whistling history, I recall her telling me (not sure if this is true) that she was trained on whistling which included bird whistling by the local circus that came through her town where she lived. My mother’s mother asked the whistler in the circus to please help train my mother with whistling because my mother’s whistling was so piercing at home. Apparently my mother took some lessons from this circus person on whistling but my sister does not recall being told this.
I’m not sure this story wasn’t a bit of a colorful exaggeration, especially since the 1923 profile mentioned that Ilah’s mother had musical ambitions in her early life. Maybe circus performer sounded more fun than local high school science teacher.
Ilah Claudine Whitley passed away in 2007 in Laguna Niguel.
I want to thank Rita Montgomery and Ilah’s granddaughter, Maggie Mae Montgomery for being so generous and sharing with family information.
– Michael Dobkins
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On this date in 1924, the city of Seal Beach was to launch the summer season with a weekend celebration starting with a Friday night Grunion Dance, according to May 28 reports in both the Santa Ana Register and the Los Angeles Times. The night of June 6 was pinpointed by an almanac mentioned in both stories that predicted high tides and the arrival of a grunion run.
It didn’t happen that night.
As announced in those May 28 reports, Seal Beach’s Boosters’ Club planned to hire a brass band to arrival of grunions on the shore. Bonfires would would be lit, free marshmallows would be distributed, and a fun Friday night would be had by all but the grunions captured by beachgoers to be cooked and eaten.
Grunions are two species of fish found off the California coast from Baja to Point Conception. They are slender, tiny fish with silver sides and bellies. From March through August, grunions spawn for a few hours on nights after a full or new moon by swimming as far as possible on high tide waves up on the sandy shores of California beaches. Without getting into the specific details, male and female grunions mate, leaving eggs buried in the sand before returning to the water minutes later. This is known as a grunion run.
Consider a grunion run for a moment from a grunion’s point of view. You’re about to have the time of your life and fulfill your biological destiny when suddenly large creatures grab you and you get eaten. The human equivalent would be if a couple who had just paired up in a singles bar was grabbed and devoured by a great white shark in the parking lot on their way home to get lucky.
So one cannot really blame grunions for not being punctual.
In 1924, a predicted grunion in May run didn’t happen. Thousands of people with sacks showed up on Southern California beaches, but the grunions stayed in the water, perhaps exchanging the fishy equivalent of abstinence rings.
Come early June, the predicted June 6 grunion run was adjusted for one date earlier at 10:30 pm on Thursday, June 5th.
According to the June 7 Santa Ana Register, early in the evening, a mock wedding party left the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce and made its way to Seal Beach. At the border, the party was met by the Seal Beach Mayor and city council and escorted to a raised platform at Central Avenue and Main Street where Miss Sealette Beach and Mr. L. Beach were married by Judge G. R. Morrison. This was a purely symbolic act commemorating the good will and co-operation between the two cities.
The bride, played by Miss Elsie McClellan, “wore a lovely gown of orange and black, with an elaborate veil of lemon chiffon, pinned by orange blossoms symbolic of Orange County.” The groom, played by W. E. Mellinger, wore black.
The best man was J. A. Armitage of Huntington Beach, and the matron of honor was Mrs. Walter Hilliker of Seal Beach. Flower girls were Seal Beach pupils and members of Miss Doris Greenwald’s dance class. Mr. and Mrs. A. W. Armstrong played the father and mother of the bride, and representatives from various beach cities were the maids of honor.
After the ceremony, the wedding party moved down to the pier where three minute talks were given by local and visiting officials. Then the amusement zone boardwalk was transformed into a dance floor with Glenda Boston Smith’s orchestra providing music at one end of the boardwalk and an unnamed boys band at the other.
Thousands of free marshmallows were handed out by a committee of Seal Beach women. Thousands of grunions also showed up in what was described as “one of the best runs of the season.” Reportedly hundreds of Seal Beach visitors left with bags of fish, and one assumes that a larger percentage of romantic and randy grunions successfully made woo and then escaped with their lives.
So Thursday’s celebrations probably continued into the early morning of June 6th, and the participants probably spent the rest of the day resting and recovering from the event, no doubt to be ready for the upcoming weekend.
– Michael Dobkins
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If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
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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.
Main Street in Seal Beach has been a favorite subject for photographers throughout its 95 years of history. Every Monday between now and the end of the Seal Beach Founders Celebration, we’ll be posting a different image of Main Street.
This is Main Street 48 years ago, not last year’s Seal Beach Car Show.
On the right, Marina Cleaners occupies the current location of Seal Beach Music. On the side of the building where Endless Summer operates today, a painted advertisement tells us, “Bathers Welcome,” apparently to come inside and enjoy “cold drinks” and “malts” and “sundaes” made from delicious “Mountain View ice cream.” Next door is Seal Beach Music, followed by the Edgewater Pre-School.
Further down, you can visit a rock shop, Vinzant’s Variety, and John’s Food King. In the distance, we see Brock’s Drugs (better known to many of us later as the Corner Drug) and further down, the Bay Theater.
On the left, it’s a little harder to make out the details. The Irisher Cafe now occupies the Bob And Chet’s Cafe and Cocktail Lounge location at 121 Main Street, Further down a Rexall drugs store occupies a familiar spot, but it’s probably a few years before it becomes Bob’s Rexall. The Walt’s Wharf building hosts the long gone Marina Market, and a cafe sign hangs in front of what was once the Green Pepper Mexican restaurant (and then BJ’s Pizza and now Woody’s Diner).
Be sure to check back each week for more historical photos and stories of Seal Beach.
– Michael Dobkins
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