Walking Tour: Beach Court and Valentino

ABOVE: The Beach Court, built in 1923, still provides vintage apartments a few blocks from the beach.  Note the beach cat guarding the entrance.  (Photograph, M. Urashima, August 30, 2012) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Haunted by Rudolph Valentino?

    The Los Angeles Times once asked, "where doesn'’t cinema'’s famed “Latin Lover” haunt? Valentino, who died tragically at the age of 31 in 1926, is one restless spirit. His famous Beverly Hills manse on Bella Drive...The beach house that he stayed in in Oxnard while making 1921’'s 'The Sheik'”...Room 210 at the Santa Maria Inn in Santa Maria..." 

   Well, add the Beach Court to that list....maybe.  It is a locally reported (and fun) rumor that the spirit of silent film star Rudolph Valentino haunts the Beach Court now and then.  Since it is a short walk from the beach and on a charming street, who would blame him?
  

Left: Rudolph Valentino, doing his best "blue steel" for the 1924 film, A Sainted Devil.  If the rumor is true, the Italian star would have stayed at the Beach Court between 1923 (the year it opened) and 1926 (the year he died). (Photograph, Wikicommons)
 
Directions to Walking Tour stop:  The Beach Court is located at the corner of 6th Street and Orange Avenue at 323-32 6th Street (parallel to Main Street).  If you're strolling inland up Main Street, just take a left at Olive or Orange Avenue and continue to 6th Street.

ABOVE: The Beach Court is across the street from Walking Tour stop #15, a 1906 Baptist Church, now the Community Bible Church. (Photograph, M. Urashima, August 30, 2012) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   The arched entrance of the Beach Court--along with its tiled roof line--are trademark of the Spanish Colonial Revival style of architecture that hit popularity in Southern California around 1915.  (Just like Rudolph Valentino's famous home, Falcon Lair, in Los Angeles County.)

   The Beach Court was built in 1923 during the early days of the motion picture era, the same year the famous Hollywoodland (now Hollywood) sign was installed in the hills above Los Angeles.  It was still several years before the first Academy Awards in 1929 and before  the late 1920s dawning of the "golden age" of film.

ABOVE: The dawning of the silent film era on Huntington Beach's Main Street, circa 1915. (Photo, University of Southern California Libraries) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   Ahead of its time, seaside Huntington Beach knew the film industry was coming.  

   In 1915, the City board of trustees (city council) enacted its first ordinance requiring city permits for motion pictures theaters and that this trendy new activity could only be "on the first or ground floor...shall front on a public street, and the back, or rear, of such room or one side thereof, shall abut upon a public street or alley. No moving picture exhibition or entertainment shall be held, conducted or carried on, in a building, house, barn shed or structure, the outer surface of which are in whole or in part constructed or built of wood or other combustable (sic) material..." (Huntington Beach Ordinance 152, 1915)  

   When most of your community is wooden structures, it's good to make sure movie moguls don't set you on fire.  The rest of the ordinance is fairly specific about theater safety standards, aisle widths, room capacities, and electrical requirements, with exceptions for showing films in churches or schools.  A century later, much of the ordinance stands up to what would be required today.

LEFT: The tree-lined courtyard once was filled with moneyed beach goers or oil workers. The demand for housing was intense in early 1900s Huntington Beach--with many camping in tents.  By 1923 (three years after the first major oil discovery), the Beach Court was a popular alternative for those who could afford to pay a little extra.  (Photograph, M. Urashima, August 30, 2012)


   But, back to Valentino.  As the Beach Court opened its doors in 1923, Valentino already had hit films, including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and The Sheik.  And, he had yet to make his final film, The Son of the Sheik. 

       Also in 1923, Valentino took some time off from film and published a book of poetry, Day Dreams, which became a best seller (MacFadden Publications, Inc., New York, 1923).  The 1920s popularity of the Ouija board, spiritualism, and the occult coincided.  Valentino and his wife, Natacha Rambova, "dabbled."  After his death in August 1926, Rambova, said she continued to communicate with him in the afterlife.

LEFT: Valentino's Arabian horse from The Son of the Sheik, Jadaan, was from the W.K. Kellogg horse ranch in Pomona, California, now part of California State University - Pomona.  Starlets clamored to be photographed with Jadaan, the last horse ridden by Valentino.  (Image, Willard Library)

   Rambova and Valentino were reported to be spiritualists.  After his death in 1926, the reports of the supernatural continued, furthered by his former wife (Rambova and Valentino divorced in 1925).  Valentino is said to have participated in seances and claimed two spirit guides: Meselope, an ancient Egyptian, and Black Feather, a Native American, per Rambova.  

RIGHT: Natacha Rambova. (Photograph, WikiCommons)

   In the book, RUDY: Intimate Portrait of Rudolph Valentino By His Wife, Natacha Rambova (1926) she claims Valentino was a medium and channeled the spirits of deceased poets, writing his poems while in a trance and using automatic writing. (Editor's note: Dealing in the occult, seances, and automatic writing is above our pay grade.  But, you can see how the rumors surrounding Valentino linger to this day.)
 
   By the time of his passing on August 23, 1926, at age 31, Valentino had been part of the young motion picture industry for only twelve years.  His mark on film, and the persona of the devastatingly handsome silent film star, remain nine decades later.

   Does Valentino haunt the Beach Court?  We'll let you decide.  He is said to have loved collecting "muttiola-ing," or collecting mussels along the beaches to cook up Italian style for dinner.  Valentino and Rambova traveled to Mexico to marry (the first time, illegally, which is another story).  And, part of the silent film The Sheik, was reportedly filmed at sand dunes in Yuma, Arizona.  It's conceivable he might have traveled down Pacific Coast Highway and stopped, if not stayed in Huntington Beach.   We already were a beach destination, once a popular stop on the famous "balloon route" for the Red Car, and a lively oil boom town in the 1920s.

   One thing is for sure: Beach Court definitely is a bit of old California, from a time of silent films and film industry publicity teams that loved a good story.  We encourage you to stop for a moment, get out the camera, and strike a pose that would make Valentino proud.

ABOVE: Holding a pose for the cameras is no big deal when you're a star.  The I'm-ready-for-my-close-up-Mr.-DeMille cat that guards the Beach Court.  (Photograph, M. Urashima, August 30, 2012) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

© All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Huntington Beach blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.   

Historic Walking Tour #18: Huntington Beach's 1908 city hall and jail

Windowless, brick jail cells with weighs-a-ton sliding doors in the alley between Main and 5th Streets (behind 218 and 220 5th Street).  Walk down the alley to take a look.  The Longboard Restaurant and Pub and No Ka Oi patio dining are across the alley.

   The original city hall and jail--built in 1908, one year before Huntington Beach incorporated--is now home to HB Top Nails.  The 5th Street building is on the Historic Resources Board's Walking tour of Historic Downtown Huntington Beach, and is an example of "neo classical commercial architecture."  The small civic complex served as the hub of city activities during the early years and was used as a polling place for the town's first elections.  Later known as the "Pickering building," 218 5th Street housed Fred Pickering's City Cleaners  in the 1940s.

 

 Top HB Nails in the old city hall and jail complex on 5th Street, #18 on the Historic Downtown walking guide.

   What sent you to jail in early 1900s Huntington Beach?  In addition to the usual (horse thievery, murder, allowing your chickens to run wild), it was alcohol (unless you were a licensed pharmacist) and gambling that landed you in the little big house.  If you were caught making, selling, distributing, giving away or drinking alcohol, you might go directly to jail.  If you were caught gambling on cards, checkers, chess, or bagatelle (a billiard-like game), you might go directly to jail.  

   The alcohol and gambling ordinances were among the first enacted by Huntington Beach's board of trustees in 1909 (alcohol made ordinance #6 and gambling #9).  If you were sentenced, you might pay "up to a $300 fine" (a sizable amount back in the day) and stay for "up to three months" in the jail.  Look at those cells again. 

   By 1916, the City enacted Ordinance 181 to regulate the sale of "second hand" merchandise, such as "motorcycles...bicycles, junk, diamonds...clothing, tools, harness, robes, whips, garden hose, firearms, junk, watches or musical instruments..."  Reading between the lines, we might have had a little problem with stolen goods.

   A couple years later in 1918, the city board of trustees enacted Ordinance 188 regulating the sale of bread, which dictated all loaves of bread "shall weigh, unwrapped, twelve hours after baking, sixteen ounces avoirdupois..."  The penalty for violating the bread ordinance was "not less than ten, nor more than five hundred dollars" and/or by "imprisonment not more than one hundred days."  In other words, if you didn't have enough dough...you get the idea.      

The crime fighting spirit lives on

   On a lazy weekend afternoon a couple years ago, the pedicure chairs of HB Top Nails were filled with locals and visitors.  In rushed a man, who immediately sat down in the waiting area with shopping bag in hand, speaking to no one.  David Nguyen--owner of the salon with wife, Michelle--asked "can I help you?"

   "Yes," said the man, dressed in baggy track clothes.  "How much is a pedicure?"

  David answered and told the man it would be about five minutes and they would seat him.  David turned back to work on my manicure.  I noticed the man pulled off his track pants, revealing shorts underneath.  Normal in a beach town, except that the shorts had a store tag on them.

  I turned to the woman next to me and mouthed, "do you see the tag?"  She looked and I saw her eyes widen.  I found out later, she recognized the tag was from the store where she had just sent her teenage son.  The man pulled off his shorts, revealing another pair of shorts,  also with a tag still on them.  He kept pulling off more clothes.

   The woman next to me started quietly texting her son.  I leaned down and whispered to David who was working on my manicure, "that man has been taking off his clothes and there are tags on them."

 David and Michelle Nguyen, the owners of HB Top Nails in the 1908 city hall and jail building (and crime fighters on the side).

  David--always cool--looked directly at me and nodded.  "Can you excuse me for a minute?" he asked.  From my line of sight, I watched as David discretely strolled out the back door into the alley (next to the 1908 jail cells).  Of course, he was calling the police.  A minute or two later, he walked back in.

   "We can help you now," David told the man.  "Come on back here and we'll start your pedicure."  David helped the man settle into the oh-so-comfortable massaging pedicure chair, sliding his feet in the warm water.  The man relaxed into the chair.

   Within a few minutes, a couple of Huntington Beach's finest walked in the front door and looked questioningly at us.  We nodded toward the pedicure chair in the back of the salon.

   "Sir, can you please step outside with us?"  said the policemen, escorting the man out of the salon in his bare, wet feet.  Just then, a wide-eyed clothing store owner ran in the front door, alerted by the teenage son of the lady next to me.  The clothing in the shopping bag had been stolen from his store.  Busted.

  

    David, returned to continue my manicure.  "Everything is OK," he said, responding to our stares, "It's all OK."  We watched the police officers---two more had arrived---as they questioned the man outside.

   About five minutes later, one of the officers walked in with a twenty dollar bill and handed it to the manicurist who had started the shoplifter's pedicure.  It was David's wife, Michelle.  Confused, she protested, saying she hadn't really done anything.

   "Oh no," said the officer, "this man really wants to pay for his pedicure."  The officers were having a hard time keeping a straight face.  They were wrapping their head around the idea the man thought he could hide out in a salon, and it was probably one of the rare arrests prompted by a pedicure.

    Law-abiding citizens from all over come to HB Top Nails for the friendly atmosphere and distinct airbrush designs.  The bonus is a living piece of Huntington Beach's 100-year-plus history.  HB Top Nails, 220 5th Street, 714-374-4040.  "Walk ins" welcome.  Shoplifters, not so much.

All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Huntington Beach blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.