Diamond in the Rough

This charming little corner of the San Fernando Valley, home to 30,000 people, straddling both Burbank and Los Angeles, where Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields and sundry other luminaries spent idyllic off hours, celebrates its 75th anniversary Saturday.

A big parade is planned. Bob Hope and his wife, Dolores, will be the honorary grand marshals. Just one day after Hope turns 95, his beloved Toluca Lake turns 75.

As they do for every civic event, townsfolk are expected to turn out en masse to celebrate the founding of their unincorporated and often overlooked little piece of Eden.

In 1923, Toluca Lake was a flourishing ranch, known for its peaches, walnuts and apples. Soon, however, after a few developers and a syndicate of Hollywood financiers began buying tracts, houses began to sprout where crops once flourished. Under the name Toluca Lake Park, the community steadily grew, with houses larger and larger filling in the grassy, sometimes boggy ground.

Eventually, the community dropped park from its name and, despite never incorporating, began to establish an identity as a quiet, homey neighbor of Hollywood and the studios scattered around Toluca Lake.

While the original developers and business interests soon left the area to pursue other ventures, a local real estate man named M.A. “Andy” Vargo, a.k.a. Mr. Toluca Lake, opened an office and proceeded to bring more houses and homeowners to the area. His legacy continues, largely due to an active Chamber of Commerce and Tolucan acolytes who never tire of praising their community.

This is a place where the annual Fourth of July parade brings nearly everyone out to stroll the streets, where neighbors actually know each other by name.

Few Angelenos even know about Toluca Lake, much less that there’s really a lake there, and that’s just fine with the locals.

“I think it’s great people don’t even know there’s a lake,” said Rhoda Minger, a business leader and owner of a packaging store on Riverside Drive. “They don’t really bother to check it out. But that lake--man, is it guarded. . . . I remember when Fritz tried to do his weather report from the lake and couldn’t. No one would let him.”

Fritz is Fritz Coleman, the weatherman for KNBC-TV Channel 4, who, although not a resident, has been Toluca Lake’s honorary mayor for a few years now.

“It began sort of as a joke,” Coleman said. “I was looking for a place to do a local weather report a couple years ago, and I thought about the lake there. But the people who live on it, who own it, wouldn’t let me do it. Finally, one man said I could use his backyard if I promised not to reveal his name.”

The weather report was taped elsewhere, Coleman said, laughing about the mini-controversy that is still talked about.

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While the lake is real, though a guarded secret, an oft-repeated bit of Toluca lore is that the community is rapidly aging. The residents are older, people say, pointing to many of the resident stars, like Hope and Jonathan Winters, as anecdotal proof.

“But that’s really just a perception,” said Natalie Bloxham, Toluca Chamber of Commerce president. “New families are moving in with their children all the time. The thing is once people move here, they don’t leave. So people just assume it’s an aging community. It’s really regenerating all the time.”

Some younger celebrities include Andy Garcia, Denzel Washington and Markie Post. Members of the Disney family have been here for a generation, or two or three, Minger said.

But the presence of the country’s oldest operating Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, with its carhops on the weekends, the slow pace of pedestrians and the use of golf carts by some people to putt around the neighborhood only burnish the community’s image as a graying place.

“It isn’t,” Bloxham said. “It’s just quaint here. There’s people with families and who get involved in the community. It just makes some people believe the place is a little old.”

The community’s history is interwoven with show business, and not just because of its celebrity residents. Toluca Lake is also the home of the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s health center because of its proximity to the studios--Universal City to the south, Studio City to the west and Burbank and North Hollywood to the east and north.

“We didn’t locate here because this place is full of old industry people,” said Randi Fine, director of the Toluca Lake Health Center, which caters to all movie and television employees, from grips and gaffers to cameramen and actors. “We tend to treat young people more often than old anyway. Toluca is simply a nice place, not an old place.”

However, Fine did not know that Toluca has a lake.

“Where is it?” she asked. “Is there one? There must be, I guess. It’s a nice place, why not a little lake?”

Although Toluca Lake is a mixture of the same ingredients as tony communities to the south--movie stars, wealth and prime real estate--it is the wholesome underbelly of Hollywood, according to many residents.

There are five square miles of shops, restaurants and homes that range from the single-family white-picket-fence numbers to the multimillion-dollar estates tucked deep in Toluca--an Indian name for beautiful or fertile valley.

There’s also Lakeside Country Club, which shares a shore of the lake with some of the residents nearby. Legend has it that Howard Hughes, then a member of the posh and quiet community founded in 1924, wrote a $1-million check during a high-stakes card game, dropped it on the floor and announced: “It’s good. I’m Howard Hughes.”

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According to another tale, lakeside resident Johnny Weismuller, swimming hero and “Tarzan” star, would take late-night swims in the artificial, asphalt-bottomed pond not far from the club and then climb a trellis to his balcony. There, in little more than loincloth, he would give his “Ahhhhhh-yeeee” Tarzan yell.

Yet another yarn tells of famed amateur golfer John Montague, who once won a tournament at Lakeside without picking up a single golf club. Instead, he used a shovel, a rake and other lawn tools.

Today, the club remains a quiet but elegant oddity positioned near the juncture of two busy freeways--the Ventura and the Hollywood--the Los Angeles River and Universal Studios, where the roar of amusement rides, such as Jurassic Park, can be heard by some Toluca residents.

“When the weather’s right, or wrong, I should say, we can hear it roaring in our backyard,” said Susie Sekuler, a nine-year Toluca Lake resident who lives near the club’s golf course. “But that’s really the only problem here. There’s little crime, our children can play out in the neighborhood without fear. It’s a great place, aside from the occasional growls from Jurassic.”

Nancy Reeves, the senior Los Angeles Police Department officer in Toluca Lake, agrees.

“It is a safe place, with people who know each other and can warn us when something’s wrong. They know if their neighbors go on vacation and look out for them. It’s a lovely place.”

The 75th anniversary celebration begins with a parade at 10 a.m. Saturday along Riverside Drive. A dance is planned later that evening. The diamond anniversary is being touted as “Friends Making Friends Day.”

Why not?