Countdown to 2000: Personalities

Alex Coolman

It used to cost a dime to get a cup of coffee at Dick Richard’s Market in

Newport Beach, and that was where folks like James Cagney and actor Andy

Devine would hang around in the late 1950s -- just regular Newport-Mesa

residents, whiling away the morning.

The ‘50s were a decade when actors roamed the streets of Newport Beach,

many of them clustering around the Balboa Bay Club. Humphrey Bogart,

Lauren Bacall, Jack Benny, William Holden and Greta Garbo all hung around

at the club, while Richard’s Market, which had been built in the ‘40s,

attracted its share of celebrities to its “Goofoffers’ Club.”

The personalities of the Costa Mesa scene were, for the most part, a

little less glamorous: the city’s first Old Timer’s Picnic was held in

1956, with chairman Lucille Pinkley presiding, but there is no record of

any superstars having made an appearance.

On the other hand, a superstar-to-be, a certain senatorial candidate from

Whittier, came to Costa Mesa in 1950 to deliver one of his

characteristically virulent anti-Communist campaign speeches. Richard

Nixon would not become president for another 19 years, but even so, his

appearance must have been thrilling.

The area had its own set of local celebrities as well. A 1950 photo from

the Newport Harbor Yacht Club captures an early meeting of the “Amigos

Viejos” club, an organization that included publisher and bank director

Samuel Meyer, Port Captain Al Rousselle, City Engineer Pat Patterson and

a handful of other pleased-looking men. These were individuals who

possessed considerably less cultural cache than the movie stars that

passed through the area. But they had power, and -- in the photo, anyway

-- that simple fact makes them look fairly content.

Sources:

“Newport Beach: The First Century, 1888-1988,” James P. Felton; “Dick and

Jennie Richard, Interviewed by Robyn S. Malthy”; Cal State Fullerton’s

Oral History Program.