“504 North Beverly Glen” (excerpted from Designated Daughter, a memoir)

504 North Beverly Glen: where I spent seven of the happiest years of my life. When we moved there in 1952, I was the youngest of three kids. The day of the foreclosure, I was the middle child in a family of five kids, and a few months shy of my eighth birthday. We had a cook named Juanita and a housekeeper named Ruby. They wore white uniforms and shared a bedroom.

After my bath, I’d snuggle with Juanita on her bed and she’d read to me while Ruby did her nails or read a magazine. After a while, Ruby would clear her throat. That was her signal for Juanita take me upstairs and put me to bed. The Franks and their three kids, Lizzy, Andy and Jimmy lived next door. Lizzy was my sister Suzi’s best friend. Andy and Jimmy Frank and my brother Randy were the three amigos – always getting in boy trouble. Once in a blue moon, Suzi and Lizzy, who were five years older, would play with me. That was heaven and rare. Most of the time, I was on my own.

The house was a French Normandy two-story built in 1941, designed by the famous L.A. architect, Paul Williams. It was big with high ceilings and a mahogany banister that was perfect for sliding-down. As spacious as it was, a house with five kids is a noisy house. Our back yard was as big as a park with a huge oval pool in the corner, protecting us with not-a-bit pretty cyclone fence. Twenty-foot hedges encircled the yard. On hot summer nights our whole family went skinny-dipping.

My father was from Texas and in the oil business. He was a war hero – had served as a Captain in the Air Force; a bombardier – he won a lot of medals. While he was on leave in Houston in 1942, he met my mother on a blind date and they got married six weeks later. They moved West, with two kids and no money when my mother was pregnant with me, and before I was a year old, Daddy struck oil and we were rich. They bought the house on Beverly Glen, fully furnished. It had an “Oriental” motif that was popular in post war Los Angeles. The living room was grey and pale green. The dining room, coral. My parents’ enormous bedroom was pink and olive green. The chairs in the breakfast room were high back yellow leather.

I’d wear my tutu and watch the black and white t.v. in Daddy’s library, curled-up on the dark green couch. The Mickey Mouse Club was required viewing. I loved Spin & Marty and had a crush on Tim Considine. But my favorite show of all was Betty Boop – who I believed was a real person and hoped I’d get to meet her one day. What talent! We went to Disneyland the year it opened – the same year we got a set of The World Book Encyclopedias. I used to think – I have The Best Life, ever! Thanks to Juanita, Suzi and my grandma, I could read at age four. I loved books and the encyclopedia, and memorized the names of all the presidents – the current one was Eisenhower.

My mother was busy getting pregnant and having babies. I rarely saw her. I spent most of my time reading, watching tv, on the swings, or in the kitchen with Juanita.

In 1956, my parents hosted a fundraiser for Temple Isaiah. Ours was one of its founding families. It was a fancy party with dozens of tables and chairs set-up on the grass in the yard. I’d never seen more flowers and balloons in one place. The theme was Around the World in 80 Days. The movie had just come out and was a box office hit. I watched my house turn into a Fairyland. They strung a cable high across the pool and hung a hot air balloon over the water with mannequins of Phineas Fogg and Passapartout. I wandered around holding a Shirley Temple in a Champagne glass, showing guests to the powder room, and running back and forth to the kitchen to give Ruby and Juanita party updates. I dreamed about the party for months. One Sunday morning, in religious school at Temple Isaiah, our teacher told us about a girl named Anne Frank who died in a concentration camp. I raised my hand, “No she didn’t! She’s my next door neighbor.” The Franks were “Mel and Anne Frank.” Apparently, Mel’s wife Anne was a different Anne Frank. When I found-out that Mel Frank was Melvin Frank, of Panama & Frank, my head almost blew-up.

Grandma had taken me to see The Court Jester. I overheard Lizzy tell Suzi that her dad wrote the script. What was a script? I thought writers wrote books and encyclopedias. Madeline, Eloise and A Little Princess were my favorite books. Suzi would later point-out to me that my favorite stories were about little girls without mothers. I ran next door to the Franks to find out from Mel exactly what it was he did for a living. I was seven. Anne and I chatted until Mel got home. He explained to me how Danny Kaye did not make-up the things he said in The Court Jester – he and his writing partner, Norman, wrote everything he said; every line, the whole movie. He was nice, and funny like my dad and they were the same age. He showed me a script. This was the most incredible thing I’d ever heard of in my life and I’d been alive for seven years!

But a cloud of doom was gathering over 504 North Beverly Glen. Jenni was an adorable toddler on that horrible night Daddy came home from work. It started out like a normal night. I ran to the door to kiss him, like I always did. I watched him empty his pockets: keys, billfold, change, Chesterfields, his silver lighter, pocket knife – like he did every night after work. He headed for the bar in the den and poured himself a shot of whiskey. He made the funny-grimacing face he always made after he had a drink. And, as usual, I laughed. O,
my God. I loved him so much. He went to look for my mother, and I went outside to play before dinner. It was getting dark.

Somebody left the gate to the pool unlatched and Jenni had wandered to the edge of the pool near the deep end and fell in. I heard the splash and saw her in the water when I screamed, “Daddy! Come quick! Jenni’s in the pool!” Daddy flew out of the house and dove in, fully dressed, and saved her. I ran to my room, the bedroom I shared with Jenni, and sobbed; traumatized that my baby sister had almost drowned. I told my grandma that I thought our family was cursed. I became an anxious child. I had nightmares. I was afraid of the dark. I felt better after Grandma took me to see Gigi. It was the most gorgeous movie I’d ever seen. I told my grandma that I knew what I wanted to be when I grew-up. Thanks to ballet, books, and Mel – I wanted to be a ballerina, an actress or a writer.

Before I was eight, Daddy hit a dry well and we lost everything – including our home on Beverly Glen. We lost Juanita and Ruby, too. My mother was shellshocked; furious with my father. She never forgave him and would never be the same. Until her death a few weeks ago, at almost 97 years old, she would grow more taciturn, angry and bitter about the life she felt was taken from her. Suzi and Randy took it very hard. Jenni and Josh have no memory of living there. I was young enough to feel no shame, and old enough to treasure my memories. I coped by being cheerful and optimistic, like Sara Crewe, my favorite heroine in A Little Princess.

Maybe because I was a quirky little girl; maybe because my fabulous grandma took me to see Gigi; maybe because living in the house on Beverly Glen felt like being in a movie and movies don’t last forever, I bounced-back from that set-back. Seven years later, I lost my phenomenal father to cancer and learned, at fifteen, the wretched pain of real loss.

That house was just a building, but for a chunk of my life, it was my address.

In 1988 I went to Mel Frank’s memorial service at the WGA Theater. Andy, or it could have been Jimmy Frank, told great stories about their dad. What a shock it was to me when he mentioned “the crazy, Jewish family — that lived next door to us on Beverly Glen.” Later, in the lobby, I went-up to the Frank boys and introduced myself. They couldn’t believe it was me and that I was there. I said, “I’m sorry about your dad. I know how hard it is to lose your dad. He inspired me to be a comedy writer. And I never had the chance to tell you this before we moved away (and because I was seven and you knuckleheads and your pal Randy never gave me the time of day) — I was so happy when I found out that your mom didn’t die in Auschwitz.”

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