Everybody Has a Story: Boy frankly didn’t give a damn about Tara, until …

I was lucky enough to grow up in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world. I rubbed elbows with some big-name stars and some not-so-big-name stars, but the lesser-known ones were by far the nicest, most approachable and most likable of the bunch.

I was 9 years old in the fall of 1955, living in Culver City. My church, St. Augustine Catholic Church, was across the street from the front gate to RKO Studios (later Desilu, then Sony). That was only a few blocks from my house, and the MGM back lot was a short bike ride the other way. It was just a dirt road off one of the streets in Culver City. There was no fence, and never any kind of a guard.

My buddies and I would ride our bikes there all the time, never wanting to do anything except watch them film all kinds of things. One time, we watched a car come down a hill, very fast, then spin out. We saw a man run out with a megaphone, yelling, “More action, more dust, more speed!” We got bored with that after a few runs.

Across the street from me lived a man who had lost his arm in World War II, and for a young kid, that in itself fascinated me. Chuck lived with his mother, who usually had milk and cookies for us neighborhood kids after school and for sure on Saturdays. Because of Chuck’s injuries, he’d been offered a job at RKO as a security guard, most of the time on the front gate.

One afternoon, while we were eating some scrumptious cookies with milk at their house, Chuck asked if any of us wanted to go see the studio. A week later, it happened. We brought bagged lunches. I was so excited. Chuck promised us a glimpse into Old West sets and that we’d see things that nobody else had.

We drove over in Chuck’s car. A guard said “hi” to Chuck and waved us through the front gate. We saw the wardrobe department, a huge warehouse with racks and racks of clothes from every era imaginable. We saw a huge cache of weapons, swords, shields and crossbows as well as modern pistols and rifles, but not one was functional. We went through one of the sound studios and saw a set from a John Wayne movie that had just finished shooting. It was interiors of the Edwards and Jorgensen houses, as I later saw in “The Searchers.”

Chuck took us up to a big house on a hill, very old and run-down looking, and I can still remember seeing the blue sky through empty windows, with no glass and no screen and what was left of a curtain blowing in the wind. How strange, I thought. We sat on the front porch and listened to Chuck regale us with stories of this huge motion picture that had been made there a few years earlier, how famous it was and that we should appreciate it. All I was thinking about was going to the Western town Chuck had promised.

We finished our lunch, and saw what I wanted to see: the Western town with phony facades and empty or one-way windows. I was happy!

‘Another day!’

A few years later, when I was about 14, my mom asked if I’d like to go see an old movie that had been rereleased. I agreed half-heartedly, but it was a movie with popcorn and a soda. I was on board.

After the opening credits, I saw a young lady sitting on the front porch of a huge old southern mansion, talking about war, but she wanted to go to the “bar-be-cue at the Wilkeses’!” As the camera pulled back I actually jumped up, in the crowded theater, and yelled out, “Mom, that’s where I was!” She looked at me with her finger over her lips.

“But Mom, you don’t understand,” I blurted out, “I was there, on that porch!”

Everyone turned to me with fingers across their lips: “Shhhh!”

How could I explain or contain my excitement? I had actually been there, on the porch of Tara.

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