THE VERDICT

Robert Gardner

Balboa’s Rendezvous Ballroom was huge. It was a block long, running

from Palm Street to Washington Street and from the boardwalk to the

alley. This was the swing era. The Rendezvous featured great swing bands

and played to packed crowds -- thousands. There was no public parking.

People parked from West Newport to the end of the peninsula to dance at

the Rendezvous. It was one of the most popular ballrooms in Southern

California.

However, for some unexplained reason, the Rendezvous died when Labor Day

came along. Other Southern California ballrooms went on all winter long.

Not the Rendezvous.

That first year the management tried to keep the place open with a full

orchestra and almost went bankrupt playing to a mere handful of dancers.

I guess the history of Balboa as a summer resort was too hard to break.

And so the management came up with one of the worst ideas in local

history -- the one-man band. Well, it wasn’t really a one-man band. It

was one man, a musician, one boy, me, and a jukebox.

When the Rendezvous first opened, I was a gate boy. That meant I was one

of seven young men who manned the gates through which the dancers

proceeded to the dance floor. Dances were a nickel, and we saw to it that

each couple deposited a nickel ticket in a box before they went out on

the dance floor. After each dance, we gate boys went out on the dance

floor with long ropes connected to the gates and pulled the dancers off

the floor in time for the next dance.

After that first summer, I graduated to the position of sound man. The

sound man played records over the PA system from the time the ballroom

opened until the band started playing. He also dimmed the lights for

waltzes and let down from the ceiling the round ball that turned slowly,

sending out shafts of lights from the little mirrors embedded in it. Very

romantic.

The sound man also had to go up on the bandstand whenever the microphone

went nuts and emitted a shrill squeal. He had to hit the mike with a soft

hammer which, for some reason, stopped the squeal.

As you can see, the position of sound man involved great

responsibilities. The strain was so great that after one year as sound

man, I quit and went to work at the Corona del Mar bath house.

With that labored explanation I go on with the story of the one-man

band.

After we couldn’t attract enough of a crowd to pay for a full band, the

management tried out the one-man band. The man was a trombone player from

one of the Hollywood studios. The procedure was that I, the sound man,

would play a number on the juke box, attach the juke box to the PA

system, then the trombone player would play along with the record. Pretty

snazzy, huh?

After a couple of weeks of that priceless entertainment, we were no

longer playing to small crowds. We were playing to no crowds at all. So

the trombone player went back to Hollywood, the jukebox went back to Gus

Tamplis, who had a bar across the alley from the Rendezvous, and I went

back to school, deprived of a hoped-for winter’s income.

And that is the story of Balboa’s one-man, or to be more accurate,

one-man, one-boy-and-a-jukebox band. I think the story must be told as an

essential part of any definitive history of Balboa.

JUDGE GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and former judge. His column

runs Tuesdays.