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Just who would have the widow Margaret DeLorca been referring to in 1964 California?  Ronald Reagan sorts?
the DataLounge
There's really a myth of "Old California" money in the Los Angeles region that's really not teue--it was mostly created by Johnston McCulley in his Zorro" books in order to set something in Los Angeles and retain "Old World Glamor" for it.

While there was indeed an Alta California region settled by Spaniards, and they did give land grants to settling Spanish families, but by the time the movie industry moved from new Jersey to the Los Angeles area in the 1910s, almost none of those families were extremely wealthy--if they were around, they were mostly known only because they had given their names fifty to seventy years earlier to streets and districts. But because of the continued popularity of Zorro, the myth perpetuated itself into diverse works like "Mildred Pierce" (Monty Barragon's family) and "Dead Ringer" (Margaret de Lorca's in-laws).

Another of my family’s friends who traced back to a Spanish Land Grant family was George Harmon Scott. I can’t remember the Spanish name the family was related to. We lived in Bel-Air. My mother was a gardener and we had a two acre portion of our yard that wasn’t landscaped. My mother wanted to develop it with drought-tolerant plants, especially bulbous plants from the Mediterranean. A nursery that specialized in these bulbs was Burkard’s, located in Pasadena. My mother went there a number of times and became friendly with an employee named “George.” She told him what her project was and he was very interested in helping her. At this point, my mother realized George was George Harmon Scott, who was also the garden editor of the LA Times. She invited him to our house for lunch and to look at the area she wanted to replant. At lunch, Scott sprung another surprise: his family’s ranch was sold and redeveloped as Bel-Air. He grew up on the 600+ acres that became Bel-Air and could describe the area intimately. My brother and I were able to impress him with knowing the location of several mineral springs we had discovered in the area but off our property (in those days, Bel-Air wasn’t fenced and gated the way it is now and there weren’t any security cameras spying on little boys).

Thanks for all the responses.

DeLorca, de Lorca or Lorca are Spanish surnames. Margaret DeLorca and or at least her husband must have been Catholic going by the opening funeral/burial scene (all those nuns and other RC religious in attendance).

It all fits now as to who (or it whom?) Margaret DeLorca was referring to about "old California".

I like this thread. For any of you who have seen the movie Babylon, there’s something really wrong with the opening scene (besides forgetting the hyphen in Bel-Air). Except for the large house where the party/orgy takes place, the land is shown as vacant and barren, almost like a desert. Today’s Bel-Air is lush with imported water, but it originally was fairly dense oak forest. Many native plants die with too much water, but, fortunately, the coastal California oak can tolerate extra water. Babylon should have shown a landscape full of oak trees. One of the things that my brother and I remember well is George Harmon Scott telling us that the relatively rare native California peony was abundant on his family’s ranch. There was a slope near our house where these peonies grew when I was a boy, but they’re now gone. Too much water, I guess. I remember Scott saying that if he were younger, he would attempt to hybridize the California peony with a peony that’s native to Greece.

We only visited the Ortega place once, but I have vivid memories of it - I think I was about six. There were tall earthen jars of olive oil (?) that were as big as I was - and someone gave all of us olives to taste and the adults laughed when we kids spit them out (they were ferociously bitter, at least to me). I also remember seeing the depth of the adobe walls - maybe three feet? But the upper story was of wood and the whole house had been shingled in approximation of an Edwardian colonial revival house.

IIRC, the only thing the family had sent in was fish and grain - everything else they farmed or grew themselves.

There was also an allee of palm trees that had ivy trained up their trunks.

Back in the early days of California statehood, state and local governments were comprised of a mix of Anglo-Americans and non-English speaking Californios, most of whom descended or were related to the wealthy land holding families of old Alta California. Meetings were conducted in English and Spanish, which was the norm for many years AND was written into the State's first constitution.

José Cristóbal Aguilar served three terms as Mayor of Los Angeles and served several terms on the LA Common Council, the precursor of the LA City Council. Aguilar was married to Maria Dolores Yorba of the prominent Yorba family, who possessed vast land holdings in the Santa Ana Valley. Aguilar didn't speak a lick of English and lost his last re-election bid in 1872 to J R Toberman, who made an issue of Aguilar's "poor English." This was a sign of things to come, for it would be another 133 years before another Latino would become Mayor of Los Angeles.

R59 Thanks. I have lots of stories and love reminiscing, but DL isn’t the best place for that. My memories come across as name-dropping, especially since my family was in the film business. One Bel-Air related memory involves name-dropping, but not of movie people. My grandfather took Harold Acton and Evelyn Waugh to lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air in the 1940s. Waugh caused a small scene when he said his asparagus wasn’t fresh. Interesting?

When my grandfather was young, he knew William Andrews Clark. Clark wasn’t from an early Los Angeles family, but he settled in LA. He was fabulously wealthy from a Montana copper fortune. Though he married two women, he was gay and had a male lover. I’m not sure, but I think my grandfather said the boy was the son of his chauffeur. My grandfather said he thought Clark wanted to audition him for a role in Clark’s life. That would have been interesting!

Clark formed one of the world’s largest collections of English literary manuscripts. He was a collector rival of J. Paul Getty, Henry Huntington, and Henry Folger. He collected manuscripts dating from the 15th century. His collection is especially strong in the works of John Dryden and Oscar Wilde. Clark bought many of Wilde’s letters directly from Wilde’s son. The most famous painting of Oscar Wilde is a full-length portrait that Clark bought. This entire huge collection is in the Clark Library in Los Angeles. It’s now administered by UCLA. The library building is based on Christopher Wren’s design for Hampton Court. The numerous male nude frescoes inside all have the face of Clark’s boyfriend. Anyone can visit the library with an advance reservation.

Two interesting California rancheros were the Temple brothers, Juan and Francisco, from Reading, Massachusetts.

Juan was born Jonathan Temple in Reading, Mass, in 1796, and migrated to Pueblo San Diego in Mexican Alta California in 1827. While there, he was baptized a Roman Catholic, became a Mexican citizen, and hispanized his name to Juan. He moved to Pueblo de Los Angeles, opened a general store, and married Rafaela Cota from the wealthy Cota-Nieto-Yorba family. He purchased Rancho Los Cerritos from Rafaela's family, went into the cattle ranch business and became one of the largest and wealthiest landowners in Los Angeles County. He also served a term on the LA Common Council. After the Great Flood of 1861-62 and a severe drought in 1862-65 that nearly wiped out the cattle industry, Temple sold Rancho Los Cerritos for $20,000 and moved to San Francisco.

Juan's younger brother Francisco, was born Pliny Fisk Temple in Reading, in 1822. He came out west to meet his brother Juan for the very first time (they were 26 years apart), and took a job as a clerk in Juan's general store. He too was baptized in the Catholic faith and adopted the Christian name of Francisco. He married Antonia Margarita Workman, daughter of William Workman, who gave the couple Rancho La Merced (present day Montebello and Monterey Park), which they turned into lucrative vineyards and fruit gardens. Temple and Workman embarked on many successful real estate, land development, banking, and railroad ventures, but poor financial manangement and the collapse of California's banking industry eventually bankrupted the pair, causing Workman to commit suicide and Temple eventually dying at 58, after a series of strokes. Temple also served as LA City Treasurer and on the LA Board of Supervisors.

R74 Some of the Bandini family members my parents knew had Bandini as their surname, but some had Anglo names. One of the family lived on Woodacres Road in Santa Monica. Their house was on the rim of Santa Monica Canyon and looked out over the Riviera Country Club, which was on former Bandini land. In the early evening, deer came up the canyon and wandered around in their backyard. The deer seemed as tame and used to people as were the deer in our neighborhood.

I remember another family member lived in Rustic Canyon in or near Pacific Palisades.

R94 Hi Westlake Girl - Thank you for the link to Historic Aerials. I actually knew about the site and have used it often to see how various areas of LA have changed. My childhood home is on the western portion of Bellagio, not too far inside the West Gate. George Harmon Scott, whose family’s ranch was redeveloped as Bel-Air, said their house was at the eastern end, near what is now Beverly Glen Boulevard. Our house was leased to an Iranian-Jewish couple for a little over 23 years. They’ve now moved to a smaller place and my brother and I moved back into the house in the past year. I’m gay and single and he’s straight and newly divorced. In a sense, we’re regressing to our childhood. However, the way Bel-Air has changed, with all the tall hedges and security devices, things won’t be the same as in our youth.

[quote]I hate to say it, but the elder Karkrashians also went to Marymount.

Mariska Oleeebia Hargitay and Steve Garvey's eldest daughters (with first wife Cyndy) went to Marymount.

A friend of mine coached volleyball for one of Marymount's rivals while Garvey's daughters were there. One or both of them (I can't recall now) played volleyball. It was after the divorce from Cyndy, when his life was a very public hot-mess because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants (or at least use a condom). She told me that Steve would come to the volleyball matches & cheer for his girls, like any proud Dad...but they wouldn't even look at him or speak to him, when he approached them after the matches. They'd just turn & walk away, leaving him looking around awkwardly (because of course EVERYONE recognized him).

While it was a mess of his own making (and who knows what else was going on), she couldn't help but feel a little bit sorry for the guy...or just found it all very sad. He was trying, but they wanted NOTHING to do with him.

One of my mother’s gardening friends was a descendant of Jessie Benton Fremont, whose father was Senator Thomas Hart Benton (of “manifest destiny” fame). Her husband was John C. Fremont, who signed the Treaty of Cahuenga in 1847, which eventually led to California becoming a US state. The location of the signing of the treaty was in an area north of today’s Hollywood.

The family later developed the high-end Fremont Place, just south of Hancock Park. Fremont Place may be the first gated community in Los Angeles.

The Fremont family’s history doesn’t go quite as far back as the Spanish Land Grant families, but it’s old enough.

Cool, Dickie/R95! My grandparents lived on the western edge of Bel Air -- Casiano Road, overlooking the Sepulveda Pass. (they watched the construction of the 405 from their backyard). Their house survived the Bel Air fire, barely. The fire's southern progression stopped about 6-7 houses up Casiano Road from them. When my grandparents evacuated, they were convinced the house was a goner -- and so was their cat, Sam (they couldn't find him before leaving). When they were allowed back into the neighborhood, they were shocked to find their house still standing. And Sam was waiting for them on the front doorstep, yowling up a storm!

R105 Great that Sam the Cat survived the fire in Bel-Air and that your grandparents’ house also did. I was born just a few months before the fire occurred, so I obviously have no memory of it. But I certainly have memories of hearing about it. Our house also survived. My family spent the night of the fire with my grandparents, who lived just a bit to the east on Delfern Drive. That’s in Holmby Hills, so they really weren’t that far away from the fire area.

R106 This is the kind of thread that I also like. While a lot of the bitchy comments on DL can be funny, I get a bit tired of reading them. I love reminiscing about things I remember from my youth, but as I said previously, a lot of the memories come across as mere name-dropping since my family was in the film business, including me. So I lay off with that kind of comments.

I previously asked if there was any interest in discussing the murder of Ned Doheny. I’m not going to start a thread on that since I think there’s not much to add to such an old scandal.

Something else I’m considering is starting a thread on reminiscences from earlier decades in Los Angeles. Such as memories of the late, lamented Wil Wright’s ice cream! Or Jurgensen’s grocery store. Or Chasen’s, or Perino’s, or the original La Scala. Plus Kavkaz, the Aware Inn, or Joan Blondel’s drive-in hamburger joint on Wilshire……

R110, r111 I think I was around 10 years old when Wil Wright’s closed. One of their ice cream flavors was called Nesselrode Bula. My brother and I thought that was a funny-sounding name. We finally ordered it once and didn’t care for it. It was full of candied chestnuts and fruit. The founder of the business, Wil Wright, was found beaten to death in his Hollywood Hills home. It was thought that he was killed by a hustler he picked up.

Hugh Plunkett and Ned Doheny where murdered, but whether suicide was involved remains a mystery to us all.

LE were not summoned to the mansion until three hours after shot were fired. Both bodies appeared to have been moved. One was still holding a lit cigarette in his fingers, the other holding a gun that was surprisingly still quite warm (many suspect it was placed in an oven).

Bottom line is by time LE arrived much of the murder scene had been tampered with either intentionally or not. Given period of time when things occurred money, social status and power coupled with often healthy doses of police (and or district attorney) corruption and negligence meant there never was going to be the promised "full investigation".

Hugh Plunkett's family didn't make a stink. Ned Doheny's relict remarried rather quicker than was right to a close friend of family, life went on. Old man Doheny was spared the scandal of Teapot Dome scandal sending his son or himself to prison, that's something I suppose. But Old Man Doheny was never the same afterwards so perhaps there is some sort of just rewards.

Main telling thing is Ned Doheny, Jr. wasn't buried in family grave, but over at Calvary. Why?

We mainly went to the Wil Wright’s in Sunset Plaza, since that was close to home. We also went to the South Beverly Drive location because my mother often had errands in that area. I have a vague memory of another location on Santa Monica Blvd. in WeHo.

R117 Perhaps I’m misreading what you wrote, but Ned Doheny wasn’t buried at Calvary Cemetery. That’s a Catholic cemetery where most of the Doheny family are buried. Ned was buried at Forest Lawn, which is non-sectarian. Hugh Plunkett is also buried there. I haven’t seen the graves, but I think I read they’re buried next to each other.

R118

Got it backwards, thanks for correcting.

Unless deemed insane (thus not in right mind when committing a mortal sin), normally suicides aren't interred on or in RC consecrated ground. But lord knows many have been given passes on that and other scores over many years. Otherwise interring Hugh Plunkett at Forest Lawn (non-sectarian) makes sense as a murderer and (supposed) suicide. But that does not explain why Ned Doheny, Jr. wasn't buried with his family, he was the victim.

It is the interring of both men so close that feeds rumors there was some sort of vice in their relationship. This though most who knew the men swear up and down not.

R119 Yes, it always puzzled me that Ned Doheny wasn’t buried in the family plot. The Doheny family was so concerned with their image and seemed to do anything to avoid scandal that you’d think they would have buried Ned at Calvary Cemetery. Banishing him to another location would only increase rumors about his sexuality and death. It’s conceivable that whoever was in charge in the family was so genuinely religious that they couldn’t be hypocritical and have a fully Roman Catholic burial.

Another thing that’s always puzzled me is that when growing up in Los Angeles, I was aware of the Doheny family’s wealth and prominence, but I never remember any particular family member having a public role in anything. It was as if the Dohenys didn’t exist. The only Doheny I knew of was mentioned a number of times in a local gardening newsletter my mother read. This Doheny lived in San Marino or Pasadena and occasionally provided comments on her garden..

R112 My brother and I are sitting at home and watching Vincente Minelli’s Two Weeks In Another Town. We’ve paused the movie so I could make this comment. In the film, Kirk Douglas isn’t satisfied with a dubbing actress’s emotion. He tells her to think of something wonderful, such as having a Wil Wright’s banana split on the Sunset Strip. That works and improves her delivery.

Earlier, my brother remembered that after Wil Wright’s was sold, the new owners tried to expand its appeal by creating a character called Captain Wright. They had an extremely old, extremely scrawny man dressed in a Superman-type costume representing Captain Wright. This was very ill-judged and condescending to elderly people. It’s no wonder the new owners weren’t successful.

I visited the Old Plaza today, which is near the site of the original founding of Los Angeles. There’s a statue of Felipe de Neve, the first governor of New Spain. He looks kind of hunky and sexy. There’s also a statue of King Carlos III of Spain, looking rather foppish. There used to be a statue of Junipero Serra, but it was pulled down by protesters a few years ago because of his part in the oppression of the indigenous people in the area.