(210) HOLLYWOOD REALLY WAS FULL OF STARS !

When I moved to Los Angeles - Hollywood - one of the first things that I noticed that's different today - fifty years later - is that Hollywood really was full of stars. Not only were movies being made locally but the stars took it upon themselves to dine out and shop and be seen right there along Hollywood Boulevard where the Hollywood Walk of Fame is now. The photographers prowled and it seemed everyone was dressed, made-up, ready, willing, available for a "photo op."

I had met the actress Christine White in Hollywood as a tourist, before I was discovered in Akron, Ohio in 1957, and when I moved to Los Angeles Hollywood became my scene. I went to restaurants and clubs where business and pleasure were conducted. The area around Capitol Records which had the famous circular building that looked like a stack of albums - if you stretched your imagination a bit - seemed to be the epicenter of my scene.

When Johnny Rivers, Johnny Burnette, and I would motorcycle around town, we'd park our bikes across from the Brown Derby restaurant where there was a hot dog stand we liked near the Huntington-Hartford theatre. From there we watched the girls.