Paley Center for Media
Beverly Hills
December 20, 2014
We went with Margaret to the Paley Center in Beverly Hills primarily to see a special exhibit, the Jay Ward Legacy. We had read about that exhibit in the Los Angeles Times. The exhibit featured original art from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and the various related cartoons, such as Dudley Do Right, Mr. Peabody, and Fractured Fairytales. The lobby of the center was dominated by the Rocky and Bullwinkle statue commissioned for the special Sunset Boulevard block party Jay Ward staged in 1961 to promote the Rocky and Bullwinkle show when it moved to prime time.
A special treat we were not expecting also awaited us in the lobby: a Santa Claus was seated there entertaining the children who visited. Margaret was quite taken with him, and we waited our turn to visit with Santa.
After seeing the Jay Ward exhibit and visiting Santa, we went up to the second floor for another special exhibition, the Soboroff Typewriter Collection. Dozens of typewriters which had belonged to famous people were on display there, along with memorabilia such as vintage Time and Life magazines featuring the owners. We saw typewriters belonging to Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, George Bernard Shaw, Truman Capote, Ray Bradbury, and various other writers. The typewriter on which Orson Welles wrote Citizen Kane was on display, near the typewriter Jerry Siegel used for Superman and his other work. The Unabomber’s typewriter was on display. It was missing its cover; the docent explained that he had used it to make one of his bombs!
The docent encouraged us to visit the media library. This is a permanent feature of the center. There are a number of workstations, each with a large flat screen monitor and headphones. The visitor can search the center’s large media archive for television and radio shows and commercials. Inspired by the exhibit downstairs, we selected a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, and the three of us watched it together at a station reserved for parties of 3 or 4 people.
There is a theater on the ground floor which we did not go into. It was showing a continuous loop of vintage Christmas cartoons when we were there. The same shows were running on video monitors in the lobby with the sound muted.
Admission to the Paley Center is free, as is parking. Donations are encouraged. The center is located on the southwest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and North Beverly Drive. Parking can only be accessed from Santa Monica Boulevard. The center was fully accessible by wheelchair.
There are no café facilities at the Paley Center, so we had planned ahead to eat at a nearby restaurant, Walter’s Café. Our youngest daughter and her boyfriend joined us. Meredith first ate at Walter’s with that daughter, on a visit to L.A. several months ago. They found it through Yelp. The food and service were excellent on both visits. It is a family-run restaurant which has operated in Beverly Hills since 1949. The restaurant is small and casual, with an extensive sandwich and salad menu as well as various other offerings.
At the end of the day we met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen at a Starbucks in the Valley. Margaret ordered her old favorite, regular coffee with cream and LOTS of sugar. We gave Margaret the Christmas presents we had for her, as did Kathleen.
Margaret’s energy level varied a bit today. She struggled with most of the transfers between wheelchair and car, except for the final one when we left Starbucks. We joked with her that it must be all the sugar that gave her the energy to climb into the car; she smiled and agreed. She struggled a little with aphasia while at Paley, pointing at items and not saying anything, although she seemed interested and curious. She did answer Santa’s questions, telling him she was from Maine, which is true because she grew up there, but we think she left him with the misleading impression she had just now come from Maine to L.A. for a visit. She was much more verbal at Walter’s and at Starbucks, telling us without prompting what items she wanted to order.