and the fervent Democrat surely exercised her franchise once she established residence in California, opposing Harding’s “Back to Normalcy” campaign. 5
In her autobiography Myrna reports that when the family moved, they resettled in Culver City, not the Palms section of Los Angeles. Her geographic confusion isn’t surprising, since Delmas Terrace, the street on which they now lived, extended into Culver City and is named for a cofounder of that enclave. Della, after the move, quickly became active in the Culver City Women’s Club, where she presided even after Myrna became well known and the family had moved to Beverly Hills. The transplanted Williams family, evidently unaware of just where the borderline between Los Angeles and Culver City fell, considered themselves Culver City-ites.
Their new neighborhood in California had been a farming and ranching area in the days before the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened and, in 1919, when the family arrived, had a small-town, bucolic, Edenic ambience. There were stretches of open bean fields, walnut orchards, orange groves, vineyards, and dirt roads, which in rainy season turned to rivers of mud. Horses with buggies were still in use by some auto-challenged families and local businesses, and Main Street in Culver City—which had been laid out in the middle of a barley field—maintained watering troughs for horses. Initially, according to the 1920 census, there were only twelve single-family houses on their block, with a Presbyterian church on the corner, where Myrna briefly taught Sunday school until she flubbed the answer to some biblical question and the minister, a Reverend O’Connell, who lived down the street, “breathed fire and brimstone all over” her ( BB , 25). That ended that. Teaching Sunday school was as close as Myrna ever came to fulfilling her girlhood ambition to become a nun, although she held on to her ideal of service to a higher cause. Instead of offering selfless devotion to God or a religion, Myrna became an acolyte in the temple of art. 6
Della worried that the Reverend O’Connell, the judgmental minister down the block, would catch a glimpse of Myrna dancing barefoot in a flowing Grecian tunic between the twin palms in front of their house and breathe more thunder. All bluenoses didn’t live in Helena, after all, and they did not all have Williams as a surname. Plenty of stern finger-pointers could be found right here in California.
From the house at 7137 Delmas Terrace (which would now, since remapping, be number 3729) it was an easy streetcar ride on the Venice Short Line to Venice or Ocean Beach, where Myrna’s special friend Lou Bamberger lived. Lou had become one of Della’s piano students, and through Lou Myrna met another lifelong friend, Betty Berger (later Betty Black), who came from an Orthodox Jewish family. Della invited both girls to stay overnight at the Williams home, and a tight three-way friendship took hold. Betty remembered playing word games and spinning phonograph records in the Williams home. She recalled that Myrna in those days wrote poetry and plays; she’d sew the costumes for the plays herself, putting those deft hands to work. Myrna definitely had a practical side. She read and wrote poetry, true, but if the vacuum cleaner broke, she could take it apart and fix it. 7
Downtown was also within easy reach on the streetcar. There Myrna took her weekly ballet lessons in the Majestic Building, and after class she would stop in at the Los Angeles Public Library, loading up with as many books as her arms could carry. She devoured them on the ride home and during the following week, replacing them with a new set on each return visit.
The streetcar also carried the book-laden Myrna to an elite private girls’ high school, Westlake School for Girls, on Westmoreland. Wealthy acquaintances of Della’s from Montana had sent their daughters there and recommended it to Della, who somehow managed to scrape together the tuition.
In her autobiography Myrna reports that when the family moved, they resettled in Culver City, not the Palms section of Los Angeles. Her geographic confusion isn’t surprising, since Delmas Terrace, the street on which they now lived, extended into Culver City and is named for a cofounder of that enclave. Della, after the move, quickly became active in the Culver City Women’s Club, where she presided even after Myrna became well known and the family had moved to Beverly Hills. The transplanted Williams family, evidently unaware of just where the borderline between Los Angeles and Culver City fell, considered themselves Culver City-ites.
Their new neighborhood in California had been a farming and ranching area in the days before the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened and, in 1919, when the family arrived, had a small-town, bucolic, Edenic ambience. There were stretches of open bean fields, walnut orchards, orange groves, vineyards, and dirt roads, which in rainy season turned to rivers of mud. Horses with buggies were still in use by some auto-challenged families and local businesses, and Main Street in Culver City—which had been laid out in the middle of a barley field—maintained watering troughs for horses. Initially, according to the 1920 census, there were only twelve single-family houses on their block, with a Presbyterian church on the corner, where Myrna briefly taught Sunday school until she flubbed the answer to some biblical question and the minister, a Reverend O’Connell, who lived down the street, “breathed fire and brimstone all over” her ( BB , 25). That ended that. Teaching Sunday school was as close as Myrna ever came to fulfilling her girlhood ambition to become a nun, although she held on to her ideal of service to a higher cause. Instead of offering selfless devotion to God or a religion, Myrna became an acolyte in the temple of art. 6
Della worried that the Reverend O’Connell, the judgmental minister down the block, would catch a glimpse of Myrna dancing barefoot in a flowing Grecian tunic between the twin palms in front of their house and breathe more thunder. All bluenoses didn’t live in Helena, after all, and they did not all have Williams as a surname. Plenty of stern finger-pointers could be found right here in California.
From the house at 7137 Delmas Terrace (which would now, since remapping, be number 3729) it was an easy streetcar ride on the Venice Short Line to Venice or Ocean Beach, where Myrna’s special friend Lou Bamberger lived. Lou had become one of Della’s piano students, and through Lou Myrna met another lifelong friend, Betty Berger (later Betty Black), who came from an Orthodox Jewish family. Della invited both girls to stay overnight at the Williams home, and a tight three-way friendship took hold. Betty remembered playing word games and spinning phonograph records in the Williams home. She recalled that Myrna in those days wrote poetry and plays; she’d sew the costumes for the plays herself, putting those deft hands to work. Myrna definitely had a practical side. She read and wrote poetry, true, but if the vacuum cleaner broke, she could take it apart and fix it. 7
Downtown was also within easy reach on the streetcar. There Myrna took her weekly ballet lessons in the Majestic Building, and after class she would stop in at the Los Angeles Public Library, loading up with as many books as her arms could carry. She devoured them on the ride home and during the following week, replacing them with a new set on each return visit.
The streetcar also carried the book-laden Myrna to an elite private girls’ high school, Westlake School for Girls, on Westmoreland. Wealthy acquaintances of Della’s from Montana had sent their daughters there and recommended it to Della, who somehow managed to scrape together the tuition.
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