Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [64]
10
Hurray for Hollywood!1950–1981
A few chapters back, I wrote that Dorothy Jo and I came to California by way of Palm Beach, Florida. Actually our sense of direction was not that bad. We had enjoyed Florida so much when I was in the navy that we decided to try it as civilians. I was twenty-five years old when I auditioned for a job at WWPG, a lovely little station on the beach in Palm Beach, and I was hired. The manager of the station, Charlie Davis, also helped Dorothy Jo get a job teaching biology at West Palm Beach High School.
We lived in Florida from the summer of 1949 to the summer of 1950. The highlight of the year for me professionally was my performance as Santa Claus during the Christmas season. I claim, and the claim has never been disputed, that I was the best Santa Claus that Palm Beach ever had—or probably will ever have. Santa Claus was sponsored by a couple of tire stores in Palm Beach. He would appear at one store and then the other every other day—well, actually every other evening. You see, Santa was on the radio during the cocktail hour—a huge advantage when it came to ratings.
I speak of Santa Claus in the third person because when I stepped out of my Palm Beach sandals, slacks, and sport shirt and into my authentic-in-every-detail Santa suit, I became Santa. Even the chap who owned the tire stores said the transformation was phenomenal. He agreed that I became Santa. I shall always cherish the Santa experience. The awe and wonder in the eyes of some of the tots brought a lump to my throat, and I dealt with them with all the respect and tenderness that I could muster.
But there were the older kids, too. One kid, about nine years old going on nineteen, said, “What would you do if I reached up there and pulled that phony beard right off your face?”
Santa replied, “If you even touch Santa’s beard, you might not live long enough to grow a beard yourself.”
Being heard during the cocktail hour, Santa received bags of mail not only from children but from adults as well. One lovely lady wrote, “Dear Santa, my husband and I listen to you every evening. The more martinis we have, the more we love Santa.” It was a merry Christmas, but Santa was canceled on December 26, so he and Mrs. Claus decided to go to California as soon as the school year ended.
• • •
While we were in Florida, Dorothy Jo and I did some modeling for Nelson Morris, a New York photographer who came down to Palm Beach to shoot photos for a gasoline company. Hers was the face that launched a thousand ships—presumably with cargoes of gasoline. I was a smiling gas station attendant. For years in Florida, our faces peeked out at you from ads on road maps.
During one of our photo sessions, I told Nelson that we were heading west, and he kindly suggested that I meet a colleague of his in Hollywood who might have some work for me as a model until I could land employment in radio. He gave me his colleague’s card, for which I thanked him (more on that later).
Dorothy Jo and I arrived in Hollywood on August 13, 1950. I had no job, no agent, no contacts of any kind. We were candidates ripe for starving. I remember we were up on Los Feliz where it turns left and comes down to Franklin, on the eastern edge of Griffith Park. We looked out over the city, and it was a blanket of smog. Dorothy Jo turned to me and said, “Barker, what have you gotten me into?” But in a very short time, she came to love Hollywood, and she loved it until the day she died. How could we not love Hollywood? It has been so good to us.
Upon our arrival in the entertainment capital of the world, the first item on the agenda was an apartment, which Dorothy Jo promptly found on Las Palmas, just south of Hollywood Boulevard, and only two blocks from the offices of Ralph Edwards Productions, where I would sign a contract six years later.
It was a large two-story apartment house with Mediterranean-type architecture built around an attractive courtyard. We