Icons, Idols and Idiots of Hollywood - My Adventures in America’s First Boy Band

By Bruce Belland

The son of fundamentalist preacher sings his first solo in front of an audience at age four. The congregation's enthusiastic response inspires his dream of becoming a singer. That dream comes true as front man of America's first "Boy Band", Capitol Records vocal group The Four Preps, whose classic hit "26 Miles (Santa Catalina)" lands them in the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. One bandmate will later create TV's Knight Rider and another the rock classic "Tainted Love." This is their story too.

Set against the backdrop of vintage Hollywood in the Fab 50's, "ICONS, IDOLS and IDIOTS of Hollywood" recounts adventures with greats from Ozzie and Harriet to Elvis, Sinatra to the Beatles, Bob Hope to the Beach Boys, as four pals from Hollywood High get dropped into the fast lane of Pop music stardom while still in their teens. Riveting tales one reviewer called ". . .wild, ribald, at times poignant and always hugely entertaining."

"The song '26 Miles' put Catalina on the map and made the Four Preps household name."

NBC Today Show

"'26 Miles', it was California, the ocean and girls—hell it was everything I wanted to be or do."

Jimmy Buffet

"You could call it the first surfer hit."

Dick Clark

• Language: English
• Publisher: BearManor Media
• Release date: Aug 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223920267

Book preview

Prologue

The year is 1940.

I’m about to sing my first solo in front of an audience.

I am four years old.

My father is a fundamentalist minister with a small congregation on the Northwest side of Chicago.

In a morning worship service, he stands me up on a stool so I can reach the microphone, my mother plays the piano introduction the way we’ve rehearsed it for weeks and I launch into my solo for the adoring congregation. When I finish my rendition of God Bless America, they erupt in applause, cheers and shouts of Amen!

My father rushes over, wraps me in a bear hug and growls in my ear: You are terrific!

Mom sits at the piano smiling at me—eyes brimming with pride.

I love the way it’s making me feel.

And with that, I’m hooked, and my dream is born—I want to be a singer.

Not a fireman. Not a fighter pilot.

Not even shortstop for my beloved Chicago Cubs.

A singer.

This is the story of how my dream came true.

June, 1962.

I’m standing backstage at the majestic Orpheum Theater in downtown Seattle, listening to the excited buzz of a sold-out audience.

The Four Preps are about to perform our final show of an historic tour with George Burns and Broadway legend Carol Channing. It began with a smash opening in Las Vegas and is now about to conclude a standing-room-only week at the spectacular Seattle World’s Fair.

Last night we were feted with a magnificent VIP dinner atop the Space Needle, capping off a week in which our audience included Bobby Kennedy and his family, Jonas Salk, Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, John Wayne, Lyndon Johnson, Carol Burnett, Fred Astaire, Walt Disney, Mitzi Gaynor—even a dog named Lassie.

Burns steps to the mic and the crowd hushes.

And now, here are four young men I know you’re going to love. They steal the show every night, but I don’t mind ‘cause now and then they let me sing with ‘em . . . .

A knowing chuckle from the audience

"You’ve seen ‘em on all the top TV shows . . . Ed Sullivan and Dick Clark and in their big hit movie Gidget. And you’ve heard their wonderful hit records all over the radio. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the musical stars of our show . . . ."

I stand listening and marvel at how in the hell I got here and how serendipitous, ironic and just plain lucky my journey has been.

I’m often asked about the Four Preps influence on Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.

To answer that, here’s an excerpt from his best-selling biography, The Nearest Far Away Place:

Hawthorne High was graced with a touch of West Coast pop’s seaside glamour when the Four Preps, came to sing at a school assembly.

Formed in 1956 [sic] at Hollywood High, the Preps (lead tenor Bruce Belland, high tenor Marv Ingram, baritone Glen Larson and bass Ed Cobb) had seven Billboard chart successes to their credit, most notably million sellers 26 Miles (Santa Catalina) in 1958 and Big Man later the same year. The group also made a half-dozen appearances acting and singing on Ozzie and Harriet, toured with Ricky Nelson and sang Cinderella onscreen in Gidget.

Dressed in dark blazers, tan slacks and white bucks, they gave a witty, off handed show which lent a charge of inspiration to the material that Brian was developing.

Though a familiar attraction at local high schools, the Preps were perceived as a hip college act and the college-bound Brian envied the reputation their concerts enjoyed on Southern California campuses.

Brian soon took his vocal talents public, his tapings of Four Preps approximations and family covers (with Carl on guitar) of Cole Porter’s Night and Day quickly leading to high school assemblies."

I’ve waited a long time to hear that. Naturally, I’m proud that we had something to do with inspiring Brian’s genius.

Okay, I’ve dealt with the Beach Boys thing.

Now, my story.

1

My Family

In the late 1920s, my father is a young, dedicated seminary student at Chicago’s bastion of evangelical fervor, Moody Bible Institute, named after the venerable 19th Century, fire-and-brimstone evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

Moody’s hidebound brand of born-again theology inspires Dad as a young man and he soon drops out of Northwestern, where he’s studying electrical engineering, to follow his calling and train for the ministry. In his senior year, he’s the host of the seminary’s weekly gospel radio program and falls in love with my free-spirited mother, the lead singer in the girl’s trio on the show.

Her boundless joie de vie and puckish sense of humor soon captivate him and they marry after Dad’s graduation.

Dynamic, up-and-coming young Preacher marries Miss Dynamite Can Do Everything.

They go on a quick, low-budget honeymoon, then return to Chicago, two dirt poor do-gooders. My crusading father founds a small, storefront church. When a well-meaning relative expresses sympathy about his paltry paycheck, Dad simply says:

We do it for the outcome not the income.

Under his dynamic leadership, the congregation grows and finally erects its own house of worship, which still stands, in all its 1940’s architectural banality at the busy intersection of Foster and Milwaukee Avenues in Jefferson Park, a northwest suburb of Chicago.

My brother Stanton is born in 1931 and I come along five years later.

Our animated family banters nightly at the dinner table. My father is strict, but never stuffy. He’s an impressive, charismatic man and—thanks to Mom—defies the stereotype of a stuffed-shirt Preacher. He was valedictorian of his seminary class and a powerful orator whose sermons are robust and fiery. I admire him a lot—and fear him a little. After all, he’s in direct touch with God!

Dad has a razor-sharp sense of humor. He loves wordplay, puns and shaggy dog stories and is witty in a highly literate way. The learned Rev. S.G. Belland does the Sunday crossword puzzle with a fountain pen—in about five minutes. He loves conversation—our whole family does—and he speaks eloquently, using phrases like I shan’t forget and "neither (pronounced nyther) he nor I. And esoteric words like vicissitude," perhaps to compensate for his rural, semi-educated upbringing on a remote farm in a Wisconsin town of 400.

He’s well-versed on a variety of subjects from religion—having earned a Doctor of Divinity degree—to astronomy which he’ll later lecture on at UCLA.

And Mom can wield good-natured sarcasm better than Groucho Marx, so conversation at the dinner table is always stimulating.

My Mother’s story is the epitome of the American immigrant’s dream—and nightmare. She was born in Riga, Latvia and came to America at age three with her parents and three siblings to escape the Communist menace. Her father was an up-and-coming builder in Chicago—and an alcoholic who, one drunken night in a high-stakes poker game, gambles away every penny he has and then doubles down and loses ownership of the elegant new Edgewater Beach Hotel which he’d just finished building. He drinks himself to death and my feisty maternal grandmother raises my mother, her sister and two brothers as a seamstress who folks said could make a party dress out of a gunny sack. She passes her can-do attitude on to Mom who handles the million tasks of a Minister’s wife with spirit and enthusiasm.

Preacher’s wife and Church Hostess. Choir Director. Church secretary. Sunday school superintendent. Wedding coordinator. Voice teacher. Homemaker. And Mother of two high voltage sons. Hertha Jewel Wilhelmina Lasse Belland is a 5’2" force of Nature. A diminutive blonde dynamo who fills our home with music every day and imbues me with a love of singing from the moment I utter my first syllable.

She has a barbed wit and a great awareness of life’s absurdities.

A plaque on her kitchen wall reads: Laughter is the weapon of the angels.

She often expresses herself with sarcastic drollery, laughs easily, works hard and is one of my first heroes. Always available and approachable—unlike Dad, who is perpetually preoccupied doing the Lord’s work.

And she constantly lavishes me with love, approval and encouragement.

(To never hear a stern word of disapproval from your mother?! I’m lucky I didn’t turn into a serial killer.)

Mom calls the girl’s Gospel trio she sang with on Dad’s radio show, the born-again Andrews Sisters. She’s a talented alto and has been my constant champion and voice coach since I sang that first solo at age four.

I sit next to her at the piano every day singing my lungs out.

My father, always a man with a plan, passes through the room with a proud smile and begins to envision a career for me as a gospel singer. And the seed is planted for a conflict between the two of us that will eventually bring heartbreak and test the strength of our relationship.

Mom’s wit is a mixture of Dorothy Parker and Gracie Allen, so I grow up listening to my parents express themselves with soft-spoken and clever repartee. Case in point: Dad won’t even look at a piece of meat with any pink in it—it has to be well done (not uncommon for a farm kid).

One hectic night, Mom sets her own medium rare piece in front of him by mistake. He takes one look at it and sniffs, "Hertha . . . with a little care this could live!"

On one occasion, I overhear him and Mom discussing the recent death of a wealthy man in the community. Of course, Dad groans, now all the vultures will ask me how much he left.

Mom says, Just tell them he left it all.

Rev. B. responds to the slogan for Chesterfield cigarettes, They satisfy!, by asking: If they satisfy, why do you have to keep smoking them?!

Mom can match him with edgy witticisms.

One evening at dinner, Dad is agonizing about how to handle an awkward situation with a beloved but obstreperous older woman in the congregation. Finally, he puts down his fork and sighs, "I’m just going to have to tell her the truth."

Oh my God! shudders Mom. "Has it come to that?"

My parents, my older brother Stanton and I live a few blocks from the church on the ground floor of a modest little two-story bungalow on Lovejoy Avenue (Love that street name!). My paternal grandparents live upstairs. They came to America from Norway as a young couple. Grandpa Gunder—a loveable little Scandinavian scamp—is a failed Wisconsin farmer who now lovingly maintains Dad’s church as its Custodian—he hates being called a janitor. I love his lilting Norwegian accent. Gee willikers! comes out yee-woolikurs! and during the war he curses the evil Yaps and particularly the Yermans when they invade his beloved homeland. His stoic wife, my Grandma Sarah, has a woeful way about her and reminds me of the woman in Grant Wood’s classic painting American Gothic.

My brother claims he never saw her smile.

I did. Once . . . the time I sang Happy Birthday to her when I was five.

Dad’s salary is meager, so our home is tiny. Not more than 1,200 square feet and pretty sparse. But for me, the rowdy good times I enjoy with the scrappy kids in our close-knit, blue-collar neighborhood make up for its spartan drabness and the dull, coal-dusted pallor of the homes on our street.

2

Hooked

One day when I’m four, Dad summons me next door to his office in the sanctuary—which is a really big deal for me.

He waves me in, closes the door and motions me to a chair. Then he sits down behind his massive desk, leans forward and proposes the two of us negotiate an agreement.

Now remember, I’m only four, but Dad talks it over with me in absolutely serious adult terms—never any condescending baby talk from him. He looks me squarely in the eye and issues a challenge: If I can sing Irving Berlin’s new song God Bless America straight through without a single mistake at next Sunday’s worship service, he’ll reward me with—tah-dah!—my very own stick of chewing gum.

Mom always tears a stick in half and gives a measly little piece to Stanton and me, so I’m motivated—not just by the gum, but the chance to show this man I hold in awe, what I can do.

I’m already a ham by now and accept his challenge without hesitation.

He stands up, reaches across the desk to shake my hand and seal the deal. He has the firm grip of a man who grew up on a farm and here in his cloistered inner sanctum, I’m overwhelmed by his powerful presence.

And I can’t wait to meet his challenge.

As I turn to leave, I chirp: I can do it!

He smiles. "Oh . . . I know you can."

I hurry back to the parsonage bursting with determination. Right away, I enlist Mom (who loves the idea and I suspect may have hatched the entire plot with Dad) to help me and she and I practice nonstop throughout the next week.

I’m crazy about the whole rehearsal process, sitting next to her on the piano bench, my feet not even reaching the floor and raising the roof with my enthusiasm. To be raised in that atmosphere—see what I mean by lucky?

By Friday, I’m ready.

Boy, am I ready.

I mean come on—we’re talking a whole stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint here!

(It will not be the last time the name Wrigley impacts my life.)

Sunday finally rolls around and backstage I’m all jitters as Mom tries to straighten my little necktie.

Finally, the worship service begins with me sitting up on the stage in one of the deacon’s enormous, high-backed, burgundy velvet chairs, dangling my legs and fidgeting while the organ solemnly underscores the opening prayer and reading of the scripture.

And then, it’s time for my debut.

Dad introduces Master Bruce Gerald Belland! in a mockingly grand manner, lifts me up on a stool so I can reach the microphone and for the first time, I’m standing in the spotlight.

After taking a pause to heighten the drama (as I said, I’m already a ham), I nod to my mother at the piano and she launches into the introduction exactly as we rehearsed it so many times.

I take a deep breath, open my mouth and proceed to ar-tic-u-late each and every word with ex-ag-ger-at-ed clar-i-ty and pre-ci-sion.

"When . . . the . . . storm . . . clouds . . . ga-ther . . . far . . . a . . . cross . . . the . . . sea . . . ."

The audience is leaning on every word.

Each syllable is perfect until I get to the final line and lisp:

" . . .God bleth America, my home thweet home

WHERE’S MY GUM?!

The congregation erupts in laughter, breaks into applause and shouted Amens and then stands—a rare occurrence in a worship service.

Because I’m still up on the stool, for the first time in my little life I’m as tall as my father. He rushes over, wraps me in a bear hug and growls in my ear: "You are terrific! I knew you could do it!"

Mom sits at the piano smiling over at me, her eyes brimming with pride and approval.

The applause continues and boy—do I ever love the way it’s making me feel!

And it gets better.

In the lobby after the service, I’m showered with praise, affectionate hugs and loving pats on the head. Even a smack on the lips from ancient Miss Atkinson with her dragon breath (she was a closet chain smoker in her eighties). And so, I utter my first ad lib, get my first laugh and my first taste of applause.

It’s also, my first paid performance. I get my very own stick of chewing gum.

And I’ll say it one more time . . . .

With that, my fate is sealed.

I’m hooked.

I’m determined to become a singer.

And I never look back.

3

The Last Good War—First Lure of Showbiz

But how do you make that dream come true in Jefferson Park, Illinois?

Jeff is strictly a Midwestern working class community of small, unpretentious houses clustered together with trim tar-papered roofs, all plain and unadorned except for the ubiquitous American flags. Their palette is predominately a dull, coal dust gray, or grim, workmanlike brown brick. Everyone is friendly. Doors are left unlocked so neighbors can drop in and we all draw even closer as the war rages overseas and finally engulfs every aspect of life in America.

Most men in our neighborhood are soon serving abroad.

But Dad is 36 by now, the father of two kids and, most significantly, a member of the clergy, which means he’s automatically deferred (don’t get me started on that policy). My playmates are a bunch of high-spirited, rough-and-tumble kids who never run out of mischievous ways to pass the time and drive the adults crazy.

In the evening, we all sit pinned to the radio and revel in the colorful world it brings into our living rooms.

My favorite shows—Jimmy Durante, Fibber McGee and Molly, Allen’s Alley and Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy—fire my imaginations and provide a welcome escape from the real world.

Every show ends with a fervent pitch to Buy war bonds!

We all comply as often as we can afford to, which isn’t as often as we’d like.

The war wears on. We kids chant sing-song war slogans:

Whistle while you work, Whistle while you work,

Mussolini is a weenie . . . Hitler is a jerk! . . . .

The radio plays wartime love songs: I’ll Walk Alone, the Mills Brothers Till Then and catchy novelties like Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, Mairzy Doats, G.I. Jive and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

I memorize all their lyrics and sing along for hours with the enormous console radio in our living room. Stanton, already a go- getter, learns about my singing ambition and exploits it to the limit. He loads a small, wind-up phonograph into his wagon and takes me down to the corner where he has me sing along with Nick Lucas’s recording of Tiptoe Through the Tulips while he collects pennies from amused passersby.

When Dad finds out, he’s furious and puts a quick halt to our panhandling. Mom thinks it’s hilarious.

Every double feature at our local movie house—The Gateway Theater—is preceded by newsreel footage, first showing the Cubs during freezing cold April in Chicago, tossing the ball around in short-sleeved shirts with palm trees swaying in the background on a sunny tropical island called—

Catalina.

Then comes horrifically graphic footage of combat, carnage and death.

I watch as a seven and eight-year-old and pray I’ll never have to wear a uniform.

Then I go home, don my Army helmet, grab my toy rifle and go out in the back yard and shoot Japs.

We kids are fairly sheltered from the angst and anguish of the war and play soldier in the empty lot up the block. But any historian will tell you, wartime inspires grand creativity and art. Some of the songs and films of those war years will prove to be time- less, legendary and again, ironically-significant in my life and career.

I sit enthralled at the Gateway, watching classic war films and escaping into all of them: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Winged Victory, They Were Expendable. Starring guys like Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Van Johnson (more about Van later).

And best of all, so many great film musicals happen to me at that time, Vincente Minelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis, Charles Vidor’s Cover Girl, featuring my first screen crush, Rita Hayworth.

Like every boy my age, I start to develop a hormone-fueled imagination.

I’m convinced that the scene in Cover Girl where Rita Hayworth whirls around with such abandon that her skirt flairs out to expose the bottom of her leotards (panties?!) has escaped the censor’s notice and it provides me my first . . . never mind.

And above all, there’s Going My Way with my new vocal idol—no, make that hero—Bing Crosby.

In 1944 when I’m eight, I experience a WW II movie called A Guy Named Joe, starring my film favorite Spencer Tracy and my new (minor) crush, Irene Dunne. I’m crazy about a wistful 1928 love song from the soundtrack called I’ll Get By. Mom buys me the sheet music, which costs her a sizeable chunk of that week’s housekeeping allowance. Dad is not pleased and reminds her that our church hymnal provides the kind of songs I should be learning.

But I am over the moon.

Who needs baseball cards?!

I’ve got our big old radio/record player, a real, genuine copy of sheet music and a mom who plays piano for hours while supper burns on the stove. Despite Dad’s disapproval, Mom devours movie magazines she hides under their bed. I sometimes steal away there and scan them voraciously: Photoplay, Silver Screen, Modern Screen featuring columnists like Louella Parsons and her arch rival, Hedda Hopper. I soon discover that all the movie and recording stars I idolize—like Bing Crosby, Mickey Rooney and L-L-Lana Turner—live in a place called Hollywood—wherever that is.

And so, my love affair with show business begins to blossom.

Finally, D-Day arrives and the war slowly grinds to a close.

One by one, husbands and sons in our neighborhood return home, with a couple of heart-breaking exceptions:

The Kordeckis—who own our corner grocery store—have lost their son in the South Pacific. A gold star now hangs in the store window.

My best friend Tommy Stringer’s dad comes home next door, but only in body. His mind is forever fixed at Corregidor, his eyes hollow and haunted. Once he returns from combat, I never again hear him utter a word.

Life will never be the same for any of us, but at least . . . at last . . . it’s Peace.

And I have a lifetime ahead of me that even I, with my fertile imagination, could never have envisioned.

4

We’re moving—to HOLLYWOOD!

It’s now 1946.

I’m not quite ten.

And here we are, certainly a long way from upper class, but life is cozy and comfortably predictable. And hardly a day goes by that Mom and I don’t spend some time at the piano making music.

Around this time, she starts coaching me on all the heroic tenor classics: Ah Sweet Mystery of Life and, of course, Nelson Eddy’s Stout Hearted Men.

Dad chides her for not teaching me more evangelical songs and she finally agrees to teach me one religious number for each pop tune I learn. Soon my repertoire includes The Old Rugged Cross and Shrimp Boats is A-Comin.

Already the pull of popular music is drawing me away from everything else.

I can’t get enough and begin to monopolize our record player, singing along for hours with the Mills Brothers, Nelson Eddy, Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and, of course Bing. I love to imagine hearing my own voice on the radio.

One evening, we finish our dinner and Dad rushes back to the church for a board meeting. A minute later my brother Stanton, who is now 15, marches into our tiny, bunk-bedded room and announces that "we’re moving to some place in California called West Hollywood."

He has my attention. I sit up. Did he just say "West Hollywood?"

He did.

It seems the dedicated Reverend has accepted the challenge of moving out West and attempting to rejuvenate a dispirited congregation that is badly in need of new leadership, smack dab in the middle of Tinseltown.

The best news of all Stanton adds: We’re each going to have our own room.

That’s not the best news for me . . . he said, West HOLLYWOOD!

I fall asleep that night, my mind whirling with countless questions—and endless possibilities.

In the ensuing weeks, it slowly starts to sink in. I’m leaving all my friends and my amiable Chicago neighborhood for a distant place I’ve only heard about in Mom’s movie magazines and in the newsreels. As the days pass, I gradually adjust to this cosmic turn of events. And then, after a few more movies at the Gateway and more of Mom’s fan mags, that resignation starts to turn into excitement—and anticipation.

After a slew of awkward, heartfelt goodbyes to my playmates and friends, departure day dawns and the four of us pile into the 1936 gun-metal gray, Ford four-door sedan Grandpa Gunder left us when he died earlier that year. Ahead lies America’s coronary artery: the fabled Route 66. And 2,300 miles beyond, a place that will bring me adventures with people named Durante and Burns, Ozzie and Harriet, Crosby and Sinatra, Presley and Willie Nelson—and eventually, even the Beatles.

After ten horrendous days of cross country driving with no air conditioning and a handful of mechanical breakdowns (after all, it is a 10-year-old car), we near the end of our life-changing journey.

Dad has a wonderful sense of theatrics—as all great orators do—and has orchestrated our entrance into Los Angeles with an ingeniously dramatic format:

Each night on our drive Westward, we stop at a mom and pop motel (no Holiday Inns yet) and check in. Then Dad calls us aside, one by one and rehearses our lines for the upcoming entrance into our new hometown.

I practically hyperventilate every time I think about where we’re headed.

Finally, after more than two thousand miles, Route 66 shepherds us off the highway and there it is straight ahead—Hollywood Boulevard!

We spot the street sign and fall into stunned silence.

Dad, who’s carefully plotted what route he’ll take, turns left, heads west and after a minute:

Say, Stanton. Can you tell us where we are right now?

Sure Dad. This is the world-famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine!

Mom gasps and, after a second of disbelief, we all erupt in wild cheering and applause. I look up in the hills to our right and spot huge, white letters four stories high, that spell out HOLLYWOODLAND (it would be shortened to HOLLYWOOD in 1949).

And the surprises are just beginning.

We drop down to Sunset Boulevard, hang a right and continue west. After a few blocks, Dad cues again:

Bruce, can you tell us what those beautiful white buildings are on the right?

Well Dad, that’s’ Hollywood High where Stanton will be enrolled in the Fall! My big brother, who’s fast becoming another hero of mine, simply stares in wonder at the sleek, alabaster buildings with glass brick walls surrounded by lush, sloping green lawns.

Then comes the capper. Dad who has good-naturedly decided to indulge Mom’s love of movies drives two blocks North, pulls over and stops. Mother, can you tell us where we are now?

She tries to get it out but can’t. Finally, in a tone of wonderment worthy of the Grand Canyon:

This is . . . Grau-man’s Chi-nese Thea-ter!

We cheer wildly as she jumps out and practically skips into the courtyard which is dotted with celebrity footprints.

And my shoes . . . she gasps, "are smaller than Clara Bow’s!"

We roar with laughter as she jumps back in the car and we head off. We’re experiencing pure, unadulterated joy—something we haven’t felt for a long time. The wheezing old Ford continues down Sunset which now turns into the famous Strip.

At this point, the essence of the town that is Hollywood begins to materialize even more. We chug past opulent, world-renowned nightclubs on every other block: Moulin Rouge. Ciro’s, Mocambo, Trocadero, Interlude, Ben Pollack’s. Glittering, very chic gift shops, elegant salons alongside late hour bistros with sidewalk tables offering outdoor dining—all year round!

The Sunset strip in 1946 is sophisticated and stylish. Lovejoy Avenue might as well be on the moon.

New wonders appear with each block.

We stop at a crosswalk for a pedestrian. (Dad explains that’s the law here in California.) And then, just like in the movies, a gorgeous blonde in short shorts and high heels crosses in front of us walking a toy poodle.

We are definitely not in Jefferson Park anymore.

We chug along the Strip looking like a forerunner to the Beverly Hillbillies.

By now, we’re google-eyed as Dad turns south off Sunset and heads slowly down Doheny Drive, the dividing line between celebrity-rich Beverly Hills on our right and blue-collar West Hollywood on our left.

And that’s when I spot them for the first time—pastel houses. They’re yellow and pale blue—even a pink one. Not a coal-dusted bungalow in sight.

As we turn left on Cynthia and back into West Hollywood, I notice that the street sign on the Beverly Hills side spells it Cinthia but on the West Hollywood side it’s Cynthia. La dee dah—my first graphic example of the subtle difference between the two side-by-side communities and cultures.

Once we turn left, we’re just a few blocks from our new home. That’s when we spot another spectacular sight: front yards chockablock with orange and lemon trees sagging with fruit and others bearing exotic things called avocados.

I’m now looking around for Munchkins.

We pull in the driveway and scramble out to survey our new home. This will be one of the last moments the four of us share as a family unit—just Dad, Mom, Stanton and me, celebrating this new life we’re starting. Dad takes us on a tour of the parsonage—a tiny, white, wood frame bungalow of about 1,400 square feet adjacent to the main church building.

He walks me back to my room, a tiny add-on at the rear of the house. It has a green linoleum floor that I think is the coolest thing ever and to me, it’s a palace fit for a prince.

We even have a fair-sized backyard with a tree full of avocados.

This whole new world is mind-boggling to me and it slowly begins to sink in . . . I’m now going to live in a place very different from Jefferson Park, Illinois. Not in the terms of its citizenry, which is also made up of tightly-knit, working class families, trolley car conductors, plumbers, house painters, barbers, carpenters, gardeners, stonemasons—all there to service all the highend west side communities of Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Bel Air.

The difference, of course, is our unique location. We’re just blocks from the glamorous Strip above us and the sublime mansions of Beverly Hills where even their garages are twice the size of our homes.

We settle in and in the next few weeks I begin to absorb all I can about this amazing new community I’m now part of.

What’s so amazing? Well, for a ten-year-old kid from hardscrabble Chicago, plenty.

One day around noon, I hear the distant tinkling of what sounds like a giant music box playing, Pop Goes the Weasel. As it gets closer, I realize it’s the Good Humor ice cream truck gliding slowly through narrow, tree-lined streets. In Chicago, a disgruntled, unshaven old Polish gentleman shuffled though our neighborhood pushing a tiny, paint-peeling, two-wheeled cart filled with dry ice and popsicles. He occasionally rang a forlorn little bell dangling from the rusty handlebars.

Then, I meet a fellow called The Helms Man. He drives a gleaming, buttercup yellow panel truck for Helms Bakery and toots a boatswain’s whistle as he approaches. We kids pour out onto the street as he parks, walks around to the back, swings open the double doors and slides out an enormous tray filled with the most amazing array of bakery goods I’ve ever seen—or smelled. Moms come out in housedresses and aprons and chat with the driver, who everyone knows as Orville. And then—with plenty of prompting from us kids—select the goodies we’ll enjoy in the week ahead.

One day shortly after we arrive, Orville is in a particularly chatty mood and wants to impress his new audience. So he engages Mom and me in an animated conversation, welcoming us to the neighborhood. Orville considers himself the local historian and fills us in on the history of West Hollywood—which was originally called Sherman—wedged right up against one of the wealthiest and most famous places in the world. I’m all ears and silently thank Dad one more time for bringing me here.

I’m enrolled in West Hollywood Elementary, a block up the hill about midway between our house and the Sunset strip. It’s here, at age ten, I first meet a classmate named Glen Larson, who will later become an integral part of my life and career.

It’s commonplace for movie stars to stroll along Sunset, particularly in the Sunset Plaza area, or cruise by in gorgeous, open convertibles. My new world is filled with more surprises every day. And there, in the middle of it all, is little old West Hollywood—our plucky, unpretentious oasis of conventional, working-class modesty, social restraint and cautious, traditional lifestyles—not only maintaining itself, but thriving in its own modest way, right next door to the staggering excess of Beverly Hills and the sin and worldliness up on the Strip. OMG how WeHo has evolved!

All of which, of course, makes me even more curious about what goes on in both places.

5

Sunday—Socializing and Harmonizing

By the time I hit twelve, I’m developing a persuasive gift of gab.

No doubt, my constant socializing with hundreds of people in Dad’s congregation has honed my verbal skills. Every Sunday night after the evening service, 15 or 20 people cram into our tiny living room, sipping coffee, loudly socializing, laughing and jabbering away. These are lively, joyful, upbeat people and the aroma of coffee and the decibel level is a real turn on as I wander about the room. It’s a terrifically energizing atmosphere for a kid who loves interacting with people.

I mix with the grownups and try my best to charm them with clever chatter.

And I watch my magnetic father greet people with a firm handshake—or often, a vigorous hug—and then chat them up. He’s an impressive figure and adored by everyone, especially the women who flutter around him like starstruck teenagers. Without fail, at some point in the evening Mom heads to the piano and a rousing song breaks out . . . then another and then more, late into the evening.

All the adults I associate with in these rousing get togethers are good singers, some of them even gifted. I love to listen to 80-year-old Brother Johnson’s rumbling bass on Church in the Wildwood. And especially the soaring contralto of Katherine Hilgenberg which will eventually take her to a stellar career in Grand Opera.

Stanton is a fine bass himself, but not the least bit interested in performing. He’d rather pursue a Law Degree at UCLA while encouraging his little brother. He and I sometimes sit hunched over his little portable Victrola while he explains the intricacies of some particularly inventive lyric from a new song he’s discovered, or plays the latest release by Benny Goodman or a guy named Mel Tormé.

Big bands. Jazz. Swing.

Be bop.

It’s all a long way from Nelson Eddy or The Old Rugged Cross and thankfully, with Stan’s guidance, I begin to expand my musical awareness. I now constantly find myself schmoozing with highly social, very verbal adults and holding my own. And the gift of gab I’m beginning to develop is what lands me my first one-on-one encounter with a legend.

I convince Ray Hersh, the hard-driving circulation manager of The Hollywood Citizen News, the showbiz community’s favorite local paper, that I’m just the guy to entrust with their most coveted delivery route. On streets like Roxbury, Rodeo, Beverly, Canon and Crescent Drive—Stars Row in the heart of Beverly Hills. I tell him I live on the other side of the tracks in West Hollywood," but assure him I’ve scoped out the plush neighborhood and know it like the back of my hand. (Actually, I had and did.)

He buys my pitch and gives me the job. I’m 14 and about to enter the world of very famous, very wealthy people. Through the service entrance I admit, but I will suddenly be allowed behind-the-scenes access to what Beverly Hills and show business stardom look like close up.

I quickly adapt to the routine on these broad, peaceful streets lined with towering, artfully-manicured trees that shade mansions like I’ve only seen in the movies.

The Hollywood Citizen News is the company town newspaper. Everyone in show business loves its breezy, easy-to-read style. And it carries a hugely popular gossip column by a colorful gadfly named Sydney Skolsky who is as prominent in Hollywood as Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Skolsky is credited with coining the term Oscar for the Academy Awards, originating the expression beef-cake for male pin ups and (his greatest scam) promulgating the myth that Lana Turner was discovered at a soda fountain in Schwab’s Drug Store (whose owner is a crony of his) and not a couple of miles east on Sunset at the Top Hat Café where it actually happened. (For years, gullible tourists flock to Schwab’s to get a glance at that fabled stool—which of course, is total baloney.)

After an entire column covering the antics and foibles of our town, Skolsky ends with: "But don’t get me wrong, I love Hollywood" and the show business community eats it up.

So here I am, pedaling along, delivering The Hollywood Citizen News to rich people in elegant homes. Huge mansions. Big stars.

Big tips—well, at least at Christmas time. A subscription costs 95¢ per month. Of course, I’m always handed a dollar bill and grandly told to keep the change.

Hey—it works for me.

A nickel a customer for 50 subscribers—$2.50 plus my token salary.

I print up business cards—

BRUCE BELLAND

HOLLYWOOD CITIZEN NEWS Carrier/Subscriber Services

Ph: Crestview 5-8367

—and take hours planting one in every mailbox on my route. And then, the glamour of my ridiculously good fortune quadruples the first time I bring home my subscriber billing book which lists everyone I deliver to. Mom, who by now is a diehard movie fan despite Dad’s annoyance sits down at the kitchen table and begins to read the names aloud:

"Jimmy Stewart. Lucille Ball. Rosalind Russell. Danny Kaye. Harpo Marx. Z ‘Cuddles’ Sakal. Jean Hersholt . . . .

Hersholt is Dr. Christian and