Rave’s Autobiography, Part II, Beverly Hills High School in the 1930s
I won’t give the exact year, to keep Rave’s identity a secret, but she spoke and wrote often about her beloved Beverly Hills High School. She attended within a decade after it first opened. She loved to say catty things about Betty White who was a year or two away from her, and it amused me no end because the rest of the world worshiped White so much. Rave didn’t see what all the fuss was about. She could also be a bit pissy about Shirley Temple, who didn’t go there but was educated privately on the set. Typically she was nice about everyone, but those two made her narrow her eyes. To her credit she never said exactly what the problem was, but instead she’d recite, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” People she absolutely loved were Marilyn Monroe, Edith Head, Mae West, Will Rogers and his oldest son Will Rogers Jr., etc.
She mentions two key themes here that will repeat: A friendship from late childhood with Rosemary Pickford that had earlier meant an invitation to Pickfair for a birthday party, and the laxness of academic standards at the school. This is just the beginning of a long piece that will go into several parts.
It was 193_, and I stood starting at the gorgeous white school building — enormous, on a slight hill — truly a memorable sight — and large — taking up so much choice space and facing 20th Century Fox Studios, right next door, actually. The name? Beverly Hills High School. Already famous for its clientele: kids who all had relatives working at MGM Studios and Paramount and 20th Century Fox. Janet Gaynor was the #1 star that year. And there was a Depression, but it hadn’t affected Beverly Hills — it wouldn’t dare!
Will Rogers’ son Jimmy was a friend of mine and Rosemary (later Gwynne) Pickford, Mary’s niece, all enrolled together — bring your own lunch. I never ate in the cafeteria — it didn’t look that tasty anyway, and my grandmother made the best sandwiches and potato salad in the universe, so I bagged it five days a week. Very few of us had cars as yet — I was 14 1/2 years old — so all of us were delivered to 8:30 a.m. classes by autos. I do remember one Ferrari (speeding) driven by Ernst Lubitsch’s son. Ernst wrote and directed “Grand Hotel” with Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo. Classes in the school numbered around 20 — and there were a dozen recesses (I exaggerate), but little or no homework.
The living in the school was easy. We taunted the teachers, however. Some of them came to work all the way from Long Beach — which is still a trip and a half from the Hills of Beverly. All of them were underpaid and poorly dressed. There was a depression, after all, and a teacher’s salary was never high, so I remember taking history, French, and creative writing. And I [worked on] the school newspaper for a year. I was also popular because I had passes to all the movie theaters, and would go to Saturday matinees at two movie theaters. And take a friend. Will there ever come a time quite like those years? I doubt it.
