MEMORIES 1960-1962 by Sylvia Clay Stoddard '62
Hollywood Professional School was located at 5400 Hollywood Blvd., at Serrano, just east of Western Ave. When I started there, in January of 1960, tuition was $300 a year. This was a lot, but compared to the high-toned private schools at the time, it was cheap. Marlborough (on Rossmore Ave.) was $1,500 a year at the time. Of course, we didn't have a splendid campus either, just a tired old building. The school day was from 8:45 am to 12:45 pm. There was "afternoon school" for a few students who couldn't attend in the morning, and correspondence courses for those out of town for periods of time.
I remember hearing that the school was founded in about 1926 by several women who set it up as a non-elective school which just taught the "solids" - math, foreign languages, English, history and science. There were classes in typing and drama, but no physical education or shop or homemaking. The reason it was founded was at that time, the film and TV studios had no tutors or schools on the lots. Children were only allowed to work half-days and thus they could go to HPS in the morning or afternoon, and still work. The correspondence courses were always a part of it, when a film went on location.
Other than the drama class (taught by the excellent Queenie Smith), there was no professional entertainment training at the school, unlike the New York School of Performing Arts, though many people thought that's what HPS was - a west coast version of the famous NY school.
I entered in January, since I was a victim of the strange California mid-year school system. Those born after April 1 of any year were shoved into mid-year status. I made up the half-year at HPS summer school and graduated in 1962.
The first person you met was Bertha Keller Mann, the executive director. Her husband, Maurice, played little part in the running of the school by the time I got there. Their adopted son, Joel, was in my class (he was listed as being in the class of 1961, but he was there my whole senior year and wrote in my annual that he wished he was graduating with us). "Big Bertha," as she was sometimes known, strode the halls of the school like a battleship, her blue knit dresses straining at the bust and her Spring-o-lator pumps clattering on the linoleum. Her right hand was principal Mary Anderssen. We may have joked about Miss Anderssen over the years, but she was a darned fine English teacher. The nicest woman on the staff was Harriet Cadish, who wore a lot of administrative hats and was related to Mrs. Mann.
Mary Anderssen, English teacher and principal, was outstanding at drilling grammar into our heads and every Friday was "creative writing day." During our senior year, we each submitted a topic for a "senior thesis" which she approved, we worked on them all year, turned them it, had them graded, and then had them bound at Engleman's Bookbinding down the street, and we carried them down the aisle at graduation. This intensive writing experience served me extremely well in college and graduate school. I was never afraid of any term paper after Miss Anderssen's training. She also administered the PSATs, the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Tests, and I credit a good score on the SAT to her training.
Daisy Humphrey Doss taught all the fields of mathematics, and was an excellent teacher despite her inability to write on the blackboard due to what I assume was Parkinson's disease. Bert O. Corbin taught math in summer school. Jesse Snell taught foreign languages (German, Spanish, French and Latin) but her passion was art and she even ordered pizza for us a few times. Edna Gray was a less-than-adequate history teacher. Her classes consisted of our sitting there writing summaries of our textbooks. Ella Mae Clarke taught typing, and Queenie Smith drama, in a funny room that was below grade in one corner of the building. Kind of a semi-cellar. M. Blair Scherich taught science in a lab on the second floor. We had to flee down the stairs after any chemical reaction because the room's windows were screwed shut. I always heard that the second floor had been condemned years before. That's also where the auditorium was-home of the famous aud calls.
Many alumni, especially the famous ones, would come back and they'd always stop by Miss Anderssen's class. If we were lucky, they'd perform at an aud call too. I have a vague memory of a radio disc jockey coming by one day, and he had Miss Anderssen wrapped around his little finger, tossing her compliments until she blushed. I could swear his name was Wally George. Anyone know if it was the one-and-only right-wing shock jock? I read every line of his obituaries but they never mentioned where he went to school.
In general, school was a blast. The kids were great, and if you had a free period, you could go to the coffee shop at the motel next door and kill an hour. I also remember being a "student helper" with the younger kids, including one who was memorable, Barry Gordon, star of A Thousand Clowns and beloved SAG president for some years.
Senior year seemed like one long party. There was the Senior Bruncheon at the Star-On-The-Roof restaurant atop the Beverly Hilton Hotel in April. Mr. and Mrs. Mann hosted the Senior Dinner at their cool home in Beechwood Canyon in May, The prom was held at the Beverly Hills Hotel's Persian Room, and graduation was at the exclusive Riviera Country Club. The Annual Dinner, which everyone in the school came to, was in June and was where the yearbooks were handed out. No small, rather strange school like HPS could have events at such stellar locations today. I don't know how we ever got to have graduations at the Riviera CC. Some connection of Mr. and Mrs. Mann's no doubt.
Graduation always featured speeches by class members, the singing of "Estrellita" or the national anthem by "Prima Donna" Alma Pedroza ("Ambassadress of Voice to the Pan Americas"), mother of students Cecilia, Inez, Carlos, Adelina, and a drunken commencement speech by the doddering Dr. Frederic P. Woellner, Professor of Education, Emeritus, from UCLA (in what year?? - I did find a paper he wrote while on the faculty in 1937). His mortarboard would slip to a point on the back of his head during the speech and we all would wait in breathless anticipation for it to fall off, but it never did. Any members of the senior class who could sing or play a musical instrument always performed. Several people did dramatic readings and there was always a "Tribute to the Fathers" and one to the Mothers.
The HPS yearbook was called "New Horizons" and was unique among all school annuals. First, most high school annuals were hard bound, and ours was comb bound. But it's remarkable we had one at all, considering the school only had some 500 students. The cover looks like it was first done in the 1940s, extrapolating on the (much more mundane) grillwork over the school's front door.
Anyone in show business was allowed to have a "professional page" on which they displayed head shots, credits and the like. Our individual portraits were taken by Amos Carr, whose studio was in the middle of Hollywood, I think. Mrs. Mann was the taste arbiter, and she ruthlessly drew "lace" squiggles over any exposed décolletage she judged inappropriate. She would also do this in person. If you arrived at school wearing too much make-up, she'd drag you down to the girl's restroom and wash it off. If your clothing was too short, too low or revealing, she'd either find something to cover you up or send you home.
Photos were arranged in the yearbook in an unknown order. They may have been added as they came in from Amos Carr's, since you had all year to go down there and have them taken, but they seem to be suspiciously arranged according to fame, those holding class office and popularity. They certainly weren't alphabetical! All the foreign students (and what was that all about?) were always at the end of the senior photos, and most were never seen in the building.
I was one of a whole bunch of ice skaters who attended HPS. Since our rink (Polar Palace, on Van Ness and Melrose) didn't open until 2 pm, we'd usually pile into someone's car and go to either Bob's in Tolucca Lake or Tiny Naylor's at Sunset and La Brea. The latter was a big HPS hangout after school, and the waitresses didn't like us one bit. They wouldn't let you get out of your car, though we'd sneak from car to car anyway, and one St. Patrick's Day when a bunch of us strung green crepe paper from car to car, they tossed us out. If we didn't have to skate or it was a sunny day, we'd go all the way to Westwood and go to Truman's drive-in on the southeast corner of Wilshire and Westwood. This was the first drive-in with two-way speakers which had horrid sound quality. However, Truman's had the first curly french fries I ever had and they were fabulous.
Since the 20th Century-Fox television lot was just a couple of blocks down at Western and Sunset, we'd often meet classmates at a coffee shop on that corner while they were filming The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. There was also a taco stand and donut shop just above Hollywood on Western that were popular for snacks.
I really missed sports and went to all the Hollywood High football games with a friend who went there. They had the coolest school song on the planet. Our HPS "song" was a gag song, and not very nice. The bit I remember was (to the tune of the Notre Dame Fight Song):
Cheer, cheer for Hollywood Pro
You'll get an "A" if you've got the dough
This was not true, and heaven knows when it was written. What Mrs. Mann valued was intelligence, not for its own sake, but if you went on to college and graduated, the school was accredited for another four years and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Oh, the Aud Calls. I was lucky enough to be at HPS during the years of the ex-Mouseketeers, the Steiner Brothers, and the Addrisi Brothers, who all kept us well entertained. Debra Paget came once in a very low cut dress, but Mrs. Mann didn't bat an eye.
During my senior year, comedienne Joan Davis' daughter Beverly Wills (valedictorian of the class of 1951) enrolled her two sons, Guy and Larry, in the school. Tragically, Beverly and her sons were killed in a house fire the next year.
The skaters at HPS had a tragic year in 1961. The entire U.S. world figure skating team, including skaters, coaches and judges, was killed when their airliner crashed en route to the championships. Mrs. Mann kindly let us all off for the day and then for a week soon afterward to attend the funerals of the seven local skaters killed (none were HPS students, but we all knew them).
Not too long after graduation, Mr. and Mrs. Mann's son, Joey ('61), was killed in a car crash. He was the light of their lives and it's amazing they kept the school going as long after that as they did.
It was hard to keep in touch after graduation because unlike a normal school, none of us lived in the same neighborhood, nor did we really run in the same social circles as did other private school students. You could always come back for the annual dinners, and many did. But mostly we followed our more famous classmates' careers with interest, and put high school behind us for college, career or marriage.
According to news articles from 1962, stars who attended HPS included Betty Grable, Donald O'Connor, Cyd Charisse, Piper Laurie, Jill St. John, Connie Stevens, Yvette Mimeaux and Bobby Driscoll.