As we entered New York Harbor and saw the Statue of Liberty, we couldn’t have been more moved and relieved. It was a wonderful birthday present for Mom, October 15th, 1939.
Then the launches came alongside with the officials to check everyone’s passports. That was when I learned I would not be returning to England because they confiscated all passports, due to the war.
We stayed in New York about two weeks and enjoyed seeing Leon and his family.
Pop did some scouting around, meeting agents and theatre managers. We went to Radio City Music Hall and saw the fabulous “Rockettes” and a new movie, “Intermezzo,” with Ingrid Bergman and Leslie Howard.
We were all looking forward to reaching California. So Pop bought a car, an elongated Cadillac limousine, the kind that had the little flower vases in the back and small fold-down seats for the extra passengers. Then he hired a chauffeur, a young black man, and we were off to California!
We had not gone very far, I think to West Virginia, when we had a flat tire. The tire had to be ordered and Pop, never doing anything on a small scale, ordered four new tires!
The trip took ten days and was an interesting and unusual trip for us all. We had never stayed at “motels” before.
We visited some special places like the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert. My parents loved the Western atmosphere and bought themselves ten-gallon hats.
Arriving in California, we found ourselves in Eagle Rock [northeast Los Angeles] and registered at another motel. We called Al and Ruth and they asked, “What are you doing in Eagle Rock?” We had no idea where we were but it was some distance from San Fernando Valley, they lived in North Hollywood. My parents wasted no time looking for a place to buy.
They soon found a typical California ranch style house in Reseda. It seemed ideal, a large rambling house with buildings in back that could be converted into workshops etc. We also inherited a beautiful St. Bernard. What we didn’t know was that we were three blocks from the Runnymede chicken farms and since the road in front of our house was unpaved, we had two big problems. Flies in the summer and mud so bad in the rainy season we couldn’t leave the house.
Pop began buying properties for investment, ten in all. One of them was a very nice house in Northridge, with a tennis court and room for a pool, it was on twenty acres. Pop decided to put in a pool (Olympic size!) overseeing the construction himself. He then planned to rent this place.