Bee Canterbury Lavery--The Greatest Party Ever--That Night at Romanoffs

    If there was a golden age for Los Angeles, it happened about the time Bee Lavery grew up as a young girl in Whittier.
    Born into a Quaker family around 1926, she remembers sitting in her high school social studies class as teacher Pat Nixon, a future First Lady of America, expounded on her daily lesson plan.
    As a child, she said, “we didn’t lock our door, and I could play in the park alone.”
    When a reporter came into her high school class to talk about journalism, she fantasized about being a, “Brenda Starr” and traveling around the world.
    When I met Bee, in the first Bradley for Mayor campaign in 1969, she was already a class act.
After she graduated USC, just after WWII, she got a break.
    “I was given the job as publicist for the new and growing television division of NBC.  It was considered a throw-away job, because radio was still considered king, at the time.”  She was the only woman in the press department.
    Bee showed me a Saint Christopher’s medallion hanging from her key chain, the other day.  There was an inscription which read, “To Bee, gratefully, Red Skelton 1952.”  It was a Christmas present from the comedian. She was doing publicity for him, Robert Young, Ralph Edwards, Frank Sinatra, Ed Wynn, Jimmy Durante, and Dinah Shore, among others.
    She said that, “Red (Skelton) was considered a wild man and known for his antics. While living on Bellagio Road in Bel- Air, he ran out onto the front lawn chasing his wife with a gun and started shooting.”  Bee said he was married again, after that incident, and his widowed-wife is now living in Palm Springs (without bullet holes, I presume.)
    Robert Young, she said, presented different problems: “He was an alcoholic and would periodically go on binges.  Usually, he would check into the Beverly Hills hotel until he slept it off.”
    Pat Weaver was the President of NBC.  Bee, sitting across from me at Barney’s hamburger in Brentwood, said,  “His father had a major roofing business in Los Angeles, and his sister was the society editor for the Herald Examiner,”
    For a while she worked in the New York City headquarters for NBC, and that is where she met Fred Wile and was married to him.
    Fred, later on, was put in charge of production and programming for NBC west coast and that is when Bee was hostess to one of the great parties ever held during the golden age of television.
    Romanoffs
    The television coaxial cable was laid, like the early railroad, where east met west in 1952, and as a result television shows were broadcast nationally, according to Bee.
    Romanoffs restaurant in Beverly Hills was the place for the party hosted by Bee and Fred Wile for boss Pat Weaver, whose daughter is Sigourney Weaver.  Bee said, “Her real name is Susan.”
    As one entered the restaurant, Bee remembers, there was a platform and 3 stairs to walk down.  It was in this area, “that Frank Sinatra would hold court, before he sat down.”
    At the party, “Jimmy Durante played the piano the entire night,” and Bee said, “During his live performances he would tear up his piano at the end.  He would start with the top and tear it off and throw it.  Since this was a party, he didn’t do it that night.”
    There are 3 photos. Two of them are from the 1954 party at Romanoffs.  The 3rd is a photo of Bee Lavery (the blond) sitting with Bruce Landsbury’s wife at a dinner at the Cannes Film festival during the 1960s. Bruce was the brother of Angela Landsbury.
    The first photo: Standing: Sammy Cahn, Groucho Marx, Leo Durocher.  Seated: Sid Caesar, Art Linkletter, Milton Berle, and of course the great Jimmy Durante playing the piano.
    The other party photo, taken by NBC photographer Frank Carroll, is of George Montgomery, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher (holding pipe.)
    Others at the party included Robert Mitchum and Doodles Weaver, Lola Albright, Diana Shore, George Gobel and Willard Waterman (“The Great Gildersleve.”), among others, who Bee is still trying to remember.
    Bee Lavery was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley as the Protocol Officer for the City of Los Angeles in 1973, and served in that position, greeting Kings and Queens and other foreign dignitaries, for 18 years.  She helped make Los Angeles a classy international city.
    Bee also said that Jimmy Durante would hire a part time photographer to bring with him to the various events he attended.
    He was a young man from UCLA, who had a track scholarship, but needed extra money, like a lot of college kids, to make ends meet.  The college photographer was Tom Bradley!
    Thanks for reading:
    Bob Kholos       

Comments

[yldcjtfwg tibp]

xdnfytuz fthmb wxfo iykevwpcn cwiufxey khdan lajb