On the Road – Los Angeles 2024, Day 2

My second day in the LA area started with a visit to The Record Collector on Melrose Ave. in East Hollywood, but the Norton Simon Museum and the Pasadena Playhouse, both in Pasadena, were my main aims on day two. We headed north from the record store in my son’s rented car. The Saturday morning traffic was light. We arrived in less than half an hour.

As we walked from the car to the entrance of the museum, one of several guards in the parking lot (stationed to ensure no one parks and then leaves a car without entering the museum) greeted us and, hearing that we were first-time visitors, enthusiastically recommended a plan to make the most of our time. The Norton Simon Museum building is in the shape of an H, he told us, with the permanent condition consisting mostly of Western painting on the ground floor and Asian sculpture on the floor below. The guard recommended seeing the ground floor paintings in chronological order, which requires starting at the lower-right arm of the H, where pre-renaissance works are housed, going straight to the end of the upper-right arm, going back through the middle of the museum – along the crossbar of the H – to the lower-left arm and then going straight to the end of the upper-left arm to see the most recent works. I immediately thought of driving a four-speed stick shift; essentially, he was saying “start in fourth gear, downshift into third, slide through neutral over and down into second, and then downshift into first." We took his advice. 

I had no idea that the famous Adam and Eve pair by Lucas Cranach the Elder is at the Norton Simon. It would have been worth the trip just to see these, but the collection includes choice pieces from every period through the Post-Impressionists and beyond. I’ve included images here of some of my favorites. Tired after viewing the ground floor art, we looked only briefly at the Asian sculpture collection on the lower floor. It was extensive and clearly top-notch, a collection I’ll look forward to seeing in detail on another visit. Again, a few images are included here. 

Art museums generally close too early for an evening meal to begin, so there’s always dead time between the end of a day looking at art and sitting down to food and drink. After finishing at the Norton Simon, we had about two hours before our dinner reservation. 

My son wanted to visit Yoshan Tea, in Arcadia, about 20 minutes east of Pasadena, a purveyor of fine oolong teas from Taiwan. We had time for a quick visit. The place didn’t look like much from the outside. We entered from the back door, which opens onto a strip mall parking lot. Inside, however, I was reminded of shops like Fortnum and Mason in London and Fauchon in Paris. The teas were beautifully packaged and beautifully displayed, some costing as much as $200–$300 for a small tin. My son bought a very small tin of one of the less fancy offerings. I got a couple of $4 sampler packs. It was a nice diversion.

We then headed back into downtown Pasadena to take a look at the Spanish revival Pasadena Playhouse, which has been the California State Theater since 1937. The place was closed ahead of the evening’s performance with only an occasional staff member slipping in or out from the main entrance doors. Two ticket sellers seated behind glass panels off to one side of the main doors refused to let me even peek into the lobby while preparations were under way. Neither could answer my few questions about the place. The host at the bar housed in a section of the Playhouse complex on the opposite side of the main entrance was equally clueless. I can’t understand working in an historic building and having no curiosity about its past.

Denied entry, we wandered around outside and discovered along a passageway a wall of mounted bricks with names fired into them – hundreds of these bricks. I went back and asked about their purpose, wanting to know whether they were the names of men and women who had studied or performed at the Playhouse, wondering if my father’s name might be among them, but the ticket sellers didn’t know. We examined all the bricks and failed to find my father’s name. We did, however, discover an inconspicuous brick that seemed to indicate that these were the names of deceased alumni. It was then puzzling to find Kevin Costner’s name on a brick and the names of a few other actors not yet dead. Among the dead of note was Groucho Marx, but mostly the names were unfamiliar. Just as we were leaving, I asked a staff member going in if I could have a look inside, explaining that my father had performed there. He kindly let us take a quick look at the lobby but he wouldn’t let us see inside the theater itself. 

We left. We looked around a couple of used record stores – one an inviting hole in the wall called Sibylline Records, another larger and fairly nondescript. Heading back to the car, we noticed a line of bollards that looked very much like lingams we had seen earlier in the day at the Norton Simon Museum (a lingam is a Hindu phallic pillar that represents Shiva and the generative force. These usually have a square base topped by an octagonal section topped by a rounded section. Often the rounded section clearly resembles the head of a penis, sometimes it’s more abstract. The bollards in Pasadena were abstract, but they made us laugh).

By this time, it was time for our dinner reservation at Celestino, which turned out to be something of a disappointment; the service was poorly coordinated, we felt rushed. We did, however, enjoy an excellent 2018 Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino. 

The Pasadena Playhouse was on our way back from dinner again and, as we headed for the car, we passed the front steps just as intermission was beginning. The front doors were flung open. A crowd emerged. We took the opportunity to slip in. I was happy to finally get at least a brief look at the interior of the theater. It has high, curved ceilings with carved beams. There are faux balconies in white plaster on the side walls. The stage appears more modern than the rest of the interior. The seats, too, looked newer. I tried to imagine my father on the stage. He had worked there with Leonard Nimoy, Charles Bronson, and many others.

Outside again, we chatted with a woman who appeared connected with the Playhouse at a more senior level than the others we had briefly spoken with. She wore a name badge with a title, but I didn’t catch her name. She was very interested to hear about my father. On my phone, I pulled up an obituary I wrote for him shortly after he died largely based on old résumés I found among his papers. One of these résumés mentioned the various actors and actresses he had worked with. When I said that he had worked with Victor Jory, the woman lit up and said “you must come see the bell!” The bell had just been rung to alert the crowd to the end of intermission. “That’s the Victor Jory Bell!” she said excitedly. She led us to a small bell across from the main doors that we hadn’t noticed on our earlier visit and directed our attention to a plaque behind it explaining that Jory had given it to the theater for the purpose of alerting patrons to the start of performances and the end of intermissions – the purpose that it serves to this day. The serendipitous timing of our passing by the theater again was responsible for a satisfying end to the day.