As everyone knew, judging the success of yesterday’s second half of Culver City’s 90th birthday party would be trickier than the first half.
With hundreds crowding into and around The Culver Hotel last Thursday night the bottom line was an obvious as a lopsided election.
What Barometer?
But what do you say about an all-afternoon rotation of Laurel and Hardy films, with a Tom and Jerry cartoon tossed in, capped by an evening outdoors showing of “An American in Paris”?
A shoulder shrug is the response.
If it was not precisely measurable, there were touch-stones that served as guides.
On one of those sun-splashed Southern California Sunday afternoons in autumn, the classic kind that caused news of the Southland’s image to be beamed around the world, the temperature was a pluperfect 76 degrees.
Cloud-Counting
The nearly spotless sky featured only 37 clouds of varying configurations.
Before the starting time of 1 o’clock people poured into City Hall because they knew the next day and the next day, the ideal weather would be the same.
But Laurel and Hardy would not be there on celluloid to entertain them.
Sizing up the Crowd
Inside, the darkened Council Chambers had room for 200. It was largely filled — with young people and especially with laughter. First Stan Laurel, then Oliver Hardy took turns entertaining the audience with antics as funny as they were 80 years ago when the film was shot.
Hearing the howling of the audience spawned a question for Susan Obrow, City Hall’s queen of cultural affairs:
Being that this is the Heart of Screenland, is there a future or ongoing promotion embedded in the Sunday celebration?
Her Answer
Ms. Obrow speaks as softly as a tennis ball landing on a pillow. She responded as if she had been standing in the City Hall lobby all day hoping someone would bring up the subject.
Like a true promoter, she answered:
“Sometimes birthdays or anniversaries give you an opportunity to pilot an idea. Today we have an opportunity to see how an audience would respond to an idea.”
To learn exactly what Ms. Obrow meant, she promised elucidation later.
Culver City resident Jerry Brown passed along the following note on why he joined the three-quarters-filled City Hall Courtyard crowd for the after-dark screening of “An American in Paris.”
“Mainly, he begins, “I went out of nostalgia. I saw the movie back in 1951 while in the Army, probably at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. For more info on the film, I found this on the Web. Though before the time of most people, perhaps you will find it interesting:
The notes say it was made in ‘Hollywood.’ But it actually was, like many films credited to Hollywood, made right here in Culver City.
Last Thursday, the city's actual birthday, had a display of antique cars, all with plaques for the local Model-A Ford club, which I cast in my foundry.
One of the animators for the Academy Award-wining Cat Concerto, the Tom and Jerry cartoon, was Martha Sigall. She was present to speak about her work on this cartoon.
Since it came out in 1946, she has to be well into her 80s. But you would not have known it from her well-spoken presentation.
The Laurel and Hardy films were produced at the old Hal Roach Studios about a block from my house. The studios used t be known as ‘the laugh factory to the world.’ One film has an hilarious sequence of an automobile careening through city streets, driven by a half-asleep Stan Laurel. He narrowly misses streetcars, and finally he gets crushed between two of them.
As the theater organist Gaylord Carter once remarked, “Isn't it great that anything made so long ago can still be so much fun?”