All Kinds of Fun

The following article first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of the “Ojai Valley Visitors Guide” on pages 158 through 164. That magazine was published by the “Ojai Valley News”. The article is reprinted here with their permission.

All kinds of Fun

Pop Soper steps up to the bag at his training camp in the 1920s. (Photo courtesy of the Ojai Valley Museum)

Ojai’s past is full of unusual amusements that attracted everyone from gangsters to golfers
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story by Perry Van Houten
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It was long before the invention of the smartphone and the MP3 player and prior to the proliferation of video game consoles, but folks in the Ojai Valley still found plenty of ways to keep themselves amused and entertained.

Of course, hiking, horseback riding, fishing, and tennis were already long-established pastimes for residents and visitors of the Ojai Valley, but as early as the 1930s, entrepreneurs were finding other clever (and, at times, profitable) amusements for the populace.

Pop Soper’s nickelodeons
Prior to World War II, Clarence “Pop” Soper ran a training camp for boxers at the mouth of Matilija Canyon. The most famous boxer to train there was heavyweight Jack Dempsey, in 1927. Another famous visitor was notorious gangster Al Capone.

The camp had a canvas-roofed boxing ring, with benches for spectators, along with entertainment for visitors, such as nickelodeons, including a player piano. Drop five cents into the slot and it would play.

A crowd watches a boxing match at Pop Soper’s Training Camp. (Photo courtesy of the Ojai Valley Museum)

“Around his boxing ring, inside the building, he had all these music players — a self-playing violin, self-playing drums and a big guitar that would play,” explained Dwayne Bower, whose family owned Ojai Van Lines.

“After he died, my dad and I went up there and brought all those to our warehouse in Meiners Oaks, and we stored them there. His brother, Lenny Soper, sold them off one at a time, probably when he needed a little money. I remember delivering one to Hollywood and elsewhere in Los Angeles. They’re very, very, very rare items.”

Bower, an avid car collector, restored Soper’s 1929 Packard, which he purchased in 1957 for $75.

Kiddie land
Tucked into the mountains north of Pop Soper’s was a resort that offered hot mineral springs, indoor and outdoor games and sports. Wheeler Hot Springs changed owners many times, the most notable being radio and TV star Art Linkletter, famous for his program, “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

After Linkletter purchased the resort he added a new attraction called Kiddie Land, with rides and other features designed for children. But the idea never really took off and Linkletter reportedly lost a bundle.

Ojai movie theaters
J.J. Burke opened the Ojai Valley’s first movie theater in 1914. The first film screened at the Isis Theater was Jack London’s “Valley of the Moon.” Admission was 20 cents for adults and 10 cents for children. In addition to showing movies, the theater also hosted vaudeville acts, plays and dances.

The theater changed names and ownership numerous times, becoming the Ojai Theatre in 1926. It got some competition in 1964 when a theater at the “Y” opened its doors. Los Robles Theatre at 1207 Maricopa Highway screened movies until 1972 and advertised “acres of free parking.”

The Ojai Theater is depicted in this 1954 postcard. (Image courtesy of the Ojai Valley Museum)

The Ojai Theatre became the Glasgow Playhouse in 1966, then the Ojai Playhouse in the early ’80s when it was purchased by the Al-Awar family. Sadly, the theater was closed in July 2014 due to a water main break under Ojai Avenue in front of the building. A battle continues after more than two years between the owner, the water company and its insurer over who should pay for the repairs.

Golf
Years before the golf courses at Soule Park and the Ojai Valley Inn opened, golfers were teeing off on a course set up in 1893 by Mary Gally, proprietor of the Gally Cottages at Ojai Avenue and Gridley Road. Charles Nordhoff, for whom the town was originally named, stayed at the cottages each time he visited the valley.

The Cottage course featured putting greens made of sand and a fairway pocked with tree stumps and squirrel holes. Mary Gally’s son, Howard, remembered as a child being held by his ankles, upside-down, and lowered into a hole to retrieve a golf ball lost by a player. An entire day of golf at the six-hole course would set you back a whole 25 cents; a week’s play only a buck. The links were watered by artesian wells on the 40-acre property and the grass cut by a flock of sheep, according to Ojai historian David Mason.

Miniature Golf
In the 1960’s, the Townsend family opened the miniature golf course on East Ojai Avenue at the current location of Ventura County Fire Department Station 21. The course presented players with the usual challenges, such as the hole placed at the apex of a cylindrical cone. “I loved it except for the volcano,” said one golfer. “I hated that hole.”

A miniature golf course once stood at the current site of Fire Station 21 in Ojai’s East End. (The Susan Sawyer Roland Collection)

A woman who played the course told of a natural obstacle she encountered. “I remember seeing a snake on one of the holes. It scared me to death,” she said.

After the mini-golf course closed and was torn down, some locals turned it into a BMX track for a short time before they built the fire station.

Bowling
The popularity of bowling exploded in the U.S. in the 1950s, and folks in Ojai soon caught the fever. The valley’s first bowling alley was a single lane affair on Ojai Avenue, across from the Arcade. A second bowling alley, Topa Lanes, opened in 1960 at Ojai and Golden West Avenues.

The 16-lane facility also featured arcade games, birthday bowling parties and organized league play. “We actually had our senior all-night party there, and that was a big, big deal,” recalled Bower. “The lanes were brand new, so we stayed there all night and partied.”

A girl who had her eighth birthday party at the lanes remembered a mishap involving a relative. “My grandma broke her shoulder ’cause she decided not to wear her bowling shoes and flew down the lane head-first,” she said.

Ojai resident Drew Mashburn bowled at the former bowling alley, played the pinball machines and ate at the restaurant there. “My buddies and I probably drove all the restaurant patrons crazy by playing ‘Loco-motion’ over and over again on the jukebox.”

John Sawyer of Ojai bowled a perfect 300 game at Topa Lanes in January 1963, the first ever at the facility. He was 21 at the time. He later appeared on a Los Angeles TV bowling show to talk about his game.

The lanes, last known as Ojai Valley Bowl, closed in the late 1990’s and the building sat vacant for many years. In 2016, a new owner of the property unveiled plans to build a craft brewery, pub and eventually a boutique hotel on the site.

The bowling lanes inside the Ojai Valley Bowl advertise that winter leagues were forming. (Photo courtesy of the Ojai Valley Museum)

A Downtown Carnival

Carnival workers drive stakes for a carnival tent in downtown Ojai.
Curious boys try to sneak a peek at a snake exhibit at one of the carnivals that frequented the Ojai Valley.

In the 1950s, when a carnival came to town, it would set up at the present location of the Westridge Midtown Market on Ojai Avenue. Mashburn remembers riding an attraction called “The Octopus” when he was 6.

“What in tarnation was I thinking?” Mashburn asked. “Each bucket of The Octopus was on the end of a long arm. The whole apparatus went in a circle and each arm went up and down. To make matters worse, each bucket rapidly spun in a circle. I felt like I was in a food blender. I got down on the floor on all fours and prayed for the monster machine to stop. Mom yelled at the operator to stop it each time it passed him. I think he must have thought Mom was yelling, ‘Speed it up!’ I’ve never been on one since.”

One year, Mashburn’s mother, Arlou, ran a booth where carnival-goers lobbed darts at balloons. “Mom was up near the balloons and bent down with her back to the dart-throwers. Yep, a dart hit her squarely in the butt! She said she thought the person did it on purpose.”

Ya think?

Meet Milton Charles, organist of silent movies

The following article first appeared in the Wednesday, February 15, 1978 edition of the “Ojai Valley News” on Page A-9. It is reprinted here with their permission.

Meet Milton Charles, organist of silent movies
by
Brenda Loree


“Critics consider him one of the greatest organists in America,” says Arthur Eddy of his friend Milton Charles, who is now retired in Ojai.

Charles was born in San Jose “a long time ago,” and reminisced recently about what it was like playing the organ in the silent movie days of the 20’s among other things.

Milton was taking piano lessons by the time he was seven — he was part of a musical family — and considers that his first lucky break was when well-known San Francisco teacher Benjamin Moore accepted him as an organ student at no fee.

His first paid job was at age 13, when he “got my first church” at $25 a month. He continued with his lessons, too, until he heard that they were using organists in movie theaters. At age 15 he was earning $50 a week playing San Francisco movie theaters, very big money at that time. And no longer took lessons because his teacher highly disapproved of his new job.

MILTON SAYS the musical accompaniment he provided for the silents was strictly improvisation. He never played the same thing twice, although he would occasionally keep using the same musical theme if he hit on one he liked.

He was still a teenager when he got his first “big time” break. “I got a call from Sid Grauman (of Grauman’s Chinese Theater) one night. He offered me a job at the Million Dollar Theater in L.A. at $85 a week.”

Milton took the job and began a friendship with Grauman which ended up spanning decades, many hirings, firings and hirings again, and Milton’s introduction to such Hollywood notables as Gloria Swanson and Charlie Chaplin, both of whom became big fans of his music.

Milton told of being second organist at the Million Dollar Theater, taking turns playing with the lead organist, C Sharp Minor, from 11 in the morning until midnight.

MR. MINOR would occasionally just disappear,” smiles Milton, “and I’d be left playing straight through from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. We always did a concert in those days before the silent movie started. They’d send out to the Owl Drugstore nearby for sandwiches and milk for me. Afterwards, I’d often get a call from Sid Grauman to come over to his house and play for a few of his friends out from New York. Gloria Swanson would sit on the bench with me a lot and sing along. She had a beautiful voice.

“Sid was an eccentric guy,” remembers Milton. Often Grauman would have all of those people wanting to break into show business come to his house to audition in the evening, with Milton accompanying. Some of them were good, says Milton, but he remembers some nights being so bad as to remind him of today’s Gong Show.

As one of only three or four professional organists in the country in the 20’s, Milton came to be in big demand, playing the Tivoli Theater in Chicago — by this time jus solo numbers — and back to the Metropolitan and then Paramount Theaters in L.A. again.

MILTON remembers when the Paramount Theater was about to go up at 6th and Hill in L.A. “They’d just started excavating, and it was just one big hole in the ground. Sid Grauman came around for me and took me to the site. ‘Okay, Milton, you stand here and yell at me when I get to the other side,’ instructed Grauman. ‘Hello, Mr. Grauman,’ I yelled. ‘Okay, kid, I just wanted to check the acoustics,’ Grauman yelled back.”

Milton was, to his knowledge, the first performer to use a microphone (carbon mike) in his act. He came up with the idea accidentally, while trying to solve an acoustics problem in a theater, and just stayed with it.

By this time Milton was touring Europe and the Eastern United States, playing the Mastbaum Theater in Philadelphia with a 200 orchestra. Milton remembers going to Paris to begin an engagement at a theater and having such a good time he never showed up at the theater.

By 1930, sound movies were in, and Milton appeared, playing and singing, in the movies for a while. He then began a long stint playing background music and lead-in music for CBS Radio in Chicago, finally rising to Music Director of CBS. But before he was named director he remembers mad days of playing for five soap operas a day.

THERE WOULD be a sound stage for every show, and I would race — I had 20 seconds — from one studio and organ across the hall to another studio, organ, and another soap,” he said. Milton adds that he would usually get a copy of the story line an hour before going on the air, and he would score the shows as much as he could in that time. Ma Perkins, Road of Life and Amos and Andy Shows were some of the ones he did.

Missing California, he signed on with CBS Radio in L.A. as a staff musician and played the background music for both the Roy Rogers an Gene Autry radio shows, besides playing with the CBS Orchestra for many years, when he lived in Toluca Lake.

As he approached retirement age, he took on another career. He began playing at a plush new restaurant in L.A., the Kings Arms, as a sideline career, and ended up staying there almost 20 years.

“I really loved doing that, and you have to, since most of the people around you in a lounge like that are feeling their oats,” Milton smiles.

MILTON STARTED coming to the Ojai Valley Inn occasionally in the early 70’s and fell in love with the valley.

He moved to Ojai permanently some five years ago and thinks he has the best of all worlds — 1 1/2 hours from Los Angeles, 45 minutes from Santa Barbara, while living in one of the “most beautiful places in the world.”


MILTON CHARLES scores the wedding march he’s writing for his granddaughter’s upcoming marriage. (Seba photo)

“DEATH VALLEY DODGE” AT THE ISIS

This article first appeared on the front page of the Friday, February 4, 1916 edition of THE OJAI. THE OJAI is now the Ojai Valley News. The article is reprinted here with the permission of the Ojai Valley News. The author is unknown.  The photos have been added by the Ojai Valley Museum.  

“DEATH VALLEY DODGE” AT THE ISIS

Through an arrangement made by S. D. Nill, it is now possible to see in Nordhoff, the nationally celebrated “Death Valley Dodge”. This unusual car has battled its way through every noted desert of the Southwest, has climbed inconceivably steep mountains and holds the unique double record of having been driven from below sea level to the highest point ever reached by an automobile on the Pacific Coast. It has conquered all sorts of obstructions, defying the laws of equilibrium and gravitation.

1915: Death Valley Dodge car at unknown location during 1,000 mile drive around the California desert including Death Valley.

In the motion pictures you will see a car actually turning corners on two wheels with passengers in its tonneau, racing the “Owl” a mile a minute, tearing up 35 percent grades with ease and speed, fighting its way through an inconceivably rough country where there are no roads, and climbing down rocky bluffs so steep and rough that a mountain goat would find difficulty in doing what “Death Valley Dodge” actually does before your eyes. It flashes its way through grease-wood, cactus and yucca growing to twice the height of the car, conclusively showing to what extreme limits of strength the master builders of this latest motor product have been able to install into a motor car.

These unusual pictures will be shown at the Isis Theatre of this city on Monday, Feb. 7th, from 2 to 10 p. m.

You can get free tickets by calling on S. D. Nill, the local Dodge Brothers dealer.

This ad was on the front page of THE OJAI in its Friday, February 4, 1916 edition.