I LOVE L.A.

Gee, I love Los Angeles. I ask myself what person typifies the city. Walt Disney? Charlie Chaplin? Jack Warner? Howard Hughes? Raymond Chandler? Ray Bradbury? Architect Cliff May? All those names, surely, and dozens of others, but for me the name that sticks out is simply...Jayne Mansfield.

I don't know what her personal life was like but her public image was one of frivolity and lightness, of driving along Malibu beach with the wind in her face in a brand new convertible. I can't imagine someone like her coming out of a gritty city like Chicago.

Can you get a good, classical education here? No, possibly not, but that's a problem the world over.

For me Los Angeles was a utopian dream the world had. We're a fantasy conjured up between beatings by some prisoner in a dictator's dungeon.

Even now, years after the golden age, there's still electricity in the air.

Even when you're not on the beach, you're on the beach...'know what I mean? There's a delightful lightness here.

The city does have a culture. We're all just too busy to notice it.

Don't worry about it. Just have a hot dog.

Some really dopey ideas originated here, and we'll no doubt pay the price, but history will marvel at what happened here...what all us Okies and misfits managed to pull off in the Southern California desert.

When I'm forced to leave they'll have to pry my fingers off the city limit sign.

GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

It pains me more than I can say but I might be moving out of LA in 6 months or so. It especially hurts because I love this city like no other. It's a city that in its modern incarnation was built by people like me, for people like me. Here you can make a living doing outrageous things that you'd be tarred and feathered for anywhere else. I exaggerate, of course, but its wonderful to live in a place that invites that. 

Most of all I'll miss my friends. Some are in the Warners group caricature (above) that Bruce did. They're generous, enthusiastic, exciting people who I care about immensely. This city is a magnet for talented people from all over the world, and its amazing how wonderful many of them turn out to be. 

On top of that, I love the city itself. With all its urban problems there's still a sense in which everything is new and being tried for the first time. Even now there's still what Bob Clampett called a "Gold Rush" feeling in the air.

I'll miss the audacity that abounds here. Readers who live here will know what I mean when I say that I'll miss the Angelyne billboards. San Francisco used to be home to a beloved eccentric who called himself "The Emperor of San Francisco." Everyone in the city loved the guy and when he turned up at official ceremonies his visit was regarded as bringing good luck. That's what Angelyne used to be for LA.

I'll also miss the ubiquitous Cliff May-type ranch houses. I won't see many of those where I'm going. Cheerful, playful houses like this (above) only make sense in a fun place like LA. 

Where am I going? [Sigh!] To...to the farm belt. I certainly admire the people there and if I'm lucky they might regard me as a tolerable oddity...but I don't think I'll ever be accepted as a member of the pack.



Good old L.A.! How many people realize how great you are?