Valentino’s Beach Party : Communities Hollywood Made Famous Still Resist Annexation

Rudolph Valentino posed in Arabian costume among the large dunes outside Oxnard while filming “The Sheik” during the 1920s, and real estate hucksters quickly billed the barren beaches as the next movie oasis.

But the vision proved as fleeting as Valentino himself, and Hollywood hype gave way to shabby vacation shacks and rollicking beer bars which, in turn, are now being replaced by million-dollar homes.

Yet the independent spirit that is the essence of the old-time ocean communities known as Silver Strand, Hollywood-by-the-Sea and Hollywood Beach has survived in every incarnation.

From the 1940s, when military families settled along the oceanfront in Quonset huts to the 1970s, when Los Angeles area residents realized it was one of the last stretches of affordable beachfront property in Southern California, the community has maintained a strong, eclectic identity.

Surrounded by Oxnard and the Port Hueneme naval base, divided by the Channel Islands Harbor, the beaches and their 5,900 residents have managed to remain independent of any city. And the countless battles they have fought to save the beaches from annexation have created a lasting bond between bohemians and retirees, renters and homeowners.

“We’re all individualists, but if some outside influence tries to come in and mess with us, we unite,” said James Bennett, a Hollywood Beach resident for 30 years. “And when we unite, we’re very strong.”

Dozens of attempts by Oxnard and Port Hueneme to take over the beaches--increasingly wealthy due to an influx of Angelenos--have been blocked over the years by savvy residents with help from county officials.

Meanwhile, the elected leaders of the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District, which was created to provide water and remove trash but has ended up doing much more, proclaim that it is the ultimate vehicle of democracy, far more responsive to residents’ needs than the slothful governments of adjacent cities.

With change has come uncertainty, however, and some old-timers wonder whether two recent community improvement projects--mostly paid for by assessing homeowners $7.7 million--were a thinly veiled drive to rid the beach of the remaining middle class.

“I’ve been fighting to keep the beach as it was, but they want to turn it into Newport Beach,” said George Johnson, a resident of Silver Strand for 36 years. “It’s impossible for people of normal means to move here now.”

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Others worry that the mistakes of other nascent beach communities have been forgotten and the character of the area they have lived in for decades has been forever altered.

“This really used to be a different lifestyle here, really bohemian,” said Patrick Forrest, a member of the district’s board of directors. “It’s the Encino lifestyle now.”

And community leaders say that unless rising utility costs are curbed, the growing beach communities may not wish to remain sovereign much longer.

“If we can’t be competitive economically,” asks board President Frank Chiella, “how much are people willing to pay for independence?”

The massive dunes of what was once called Oxnard Beach were desolate until 1921, when Paramount filmmakers placed hundreds of fake palm trees in the sand and shot a passionate romance starring an obscure bit actor named Valentino.

“The Sheik” became the box office sensation of its time, and fans soon started driving from Los Angeles to Oxnard to frolic on the beach and see the natural spring featured as the movie’s oasis.

Developer William Lingenbrink saw a way to make a buck, longtime residents say, by selling tiny beach lots to star-struck Los Angeles area residents seeking to meet their idols.

After making a deal with the McGrath family for the seemingly worthless property, the subdivision named Hollywood Beach was born in June, 1924.

Flyers placed on porches throughout Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley advertised the affordability--$200 a lot--of owning a vacation home where “The Sheik” was shot. By the end of that summer, all 502 lots had been sold, and Lingenbrink had taken in $100,000.

Other prospectors quickly took notice, and the Silver Strand and Hollywood-by-the-Sea subdivisions were created in 1925 and 1926. By 1927, about 110 houses existed on the beach.

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Among the most colorful was “The Driftwood,” a cottage built entirely of scrap lumber, sandstone and floating debris, with a chandelier made from a steering wheel. It still stands today.

At their peak of popularity, up to 2,500 visitors crammed the beaches on weekends while rum runners anchored off the coast at night and shipped 10-gallon booze containers to shore on rafts.

Although many stars of the silent era shot movies, partied and relaxed at the beach--including Carole Lombard, Eleanor Boardman and James Murray--few if any bought homes, and the area never became a movie colony.

And contrary to myth, Valentino, who was always short of money, never bought any property at the beach and probably never went back after “The Sheik,” historians say.

Nevertheless, the “New Hollywood” hype used to launch the beach communities lingered for years, fueled by the occasional movie star sighting, and is still professed by some realtors today.

“I’ve heard a lot of fanciful tales,” Bennett said, laughing. “A lot of the movie people came out here and partied, but I think the majority of it is concocted. One gal--she’s dead now--swore that the ghost of Robert Taylor walked in her home.”

With the arrival of the Depression, the beaches’ golden era faded almost as quickly as it had begun. Lots were sold or abandoned, businesses moved elsewhere, and the shifting sands began to cover up the streets on Ocean Drive, the coastal road linking the three communities.

During World War II, military personnel from the Port Hueneme naval base came to the area with their families. Many of the sailors stayed at the beach after the war or came back on summer vacations, and a strip of beer bars with names like the Hop Inn, the Sea Shell and Eli’s Dunes attracted party-goers.

“Ocean Drive was lined with these little beer joints, and that’s where everyone went,” said Wanda Pirkle, who moved to Oxnard in 1946, married a sailor and moved to Silver Strand. “You would start at one end, make your way across to the other end and make your way back. It was a lot of fun.”

The bar-hopping jaunts ended about 1956, however, when longstanding plans for a small-craft harbor in the swampy area behind the beaches gained momentum, reshaping the communities forever.

Residents and businesses in the harbor’s path were bought out or condemned before the Army Corps of Engineers began digging the waterway in 1960, and Hollywood by-the-Sea and the bar strip along Ocean Drive were cut in half.

The Channel Islands Harbor, opened in 1965, brought a new surge of boaters and visitors to the area. As Los Angeles suburbanites began to rediscover the beaches, the makeup began to change, creating a conflict between community-minded residents and freewheeling party-goers.

The new wave of professionals claimed they were only trying to clean up the area’s image, but the more bohemian older residents said they really sought to homogenize the beaches.

“It was a live-and-let-live kind of place,” said Ruth Johnson, who moved from Pennsylvania to Silver Strand in 1958 with her husband, George. “Then a group of people moved in who wanted every blade of grass to go in the same direction.”

Real estate prices skyrocketed during the 1970s, as Angelenos bought vacation homes at the beach with aplomb. Many later retired to the ocean, turning the beaches into a wealthy enclave.

“You could buy a beachfront cottage for $20,000 to $30,000 in the early 1970s,” said Ralph Ennis of Ennis and Ennis Realty in Hollywood Beach. “The beachfront has become so expensive now that it’s probably limited to doctors, lawyers and corporate heads.”

The dispute between old-timers and new arrivals over the changing communities was put aside in 1979, however, when Oxnard threatened to annex the beaches.

Faced with the possible loss of their independence, residents banded together and blocked the takeover in 1980 with the help of Supervisor John K. Flynn at the Local Agency Formation Commission, the state agency that presides over annexations.

Unhappy with their unincorporated status but loath to join Oxnard or Port Hueneme, beach residents became interested in forming a community services district, and Flynn agreed to facilitate the process.

The Channel Islands Beach Community Services District--the first such governing body in Ventura County--was born in 1982, when 58% of the community’s residents approved its formation.

After interviewing 80 candidates, the five elected board members chose Gerard Kapuscik, a brainy young Flynn aide, as the district’s general manager.

Government insiders said Kapuscik was too qualified for the position, which puts him in charge of the provision of utilities and removal of rubbish.

But residents said he had the connections the district needed to be a player in regional politics.

“He knew where all the skeletons were buried in all the closets throughout the county,” Bennett said. “He knows how to get things done. He’s a real jewel.”

Kapuscik and the board soon found themselves in an imbroglio over a plan in 1985 to resurface eroding streets, place unsightly utility wires underground and construct storm drains to reduce rampant flooding.

The seemingly innocuous project proved to be the most controversial episode in the district’s history, dividing residents over its Gargantuan costs and leading to a bizarre recall episode in 1988.

County, state and federal agencies agreed to contribute $4.5 million for the improvements, but the remaining $5.5 million needed to come from residents through an assessment district.

After a separate $2.2-million assessment district for water service improvements was also proposed in 1988, some old-timers questioned the board’s true motives.

“The assessment districts were just a tool to remove the poorer people,” said George Johnson, who organized a drive to recall all five board members. “They just want the peasants off the beach.”

Shortly before the recall election, board members William J. Higgins and Kathy Silveri changed their minds and decided to oppose the assessments, shocking their colleagues.

Higgins and Silveri did not get the response they had expected, however.

“In an ironic twist of fate, their strategy backfired and those two were recalled,” Kapuscik said. “Most people supported the improvements.”

Nevertheless, the projects once again brought out the old differences between generations of residents about the future of their communities, and the tension surrounding the incident lingers today.

“Many of the people who opposed the project now call me and say it was a good thing, but it was not unanimous by any means,” Flynn said. “There was a lot of protests, and some people are still upset about it.”

Marcia Marcus, a native of West Los Angeles, bought a vacation home on Hollywood Beach in 1979 and later moved to the area with her husband. She said she pushed for the improvements not to drive poorer people from the beaches but because they were necessary.

“I think there are a lot of people who are frightened of the future,” said Marcus, who was appointed to the board last year and is now seeking election. “They don’t want anything to change. But if you don’t move forward, you fall back.”

Today, the beaches face many of the challenges of the past, including annexation threats and the rising costs of water and trash services.

Kapuscik’s backers say he always has an eye on the future of the district, and is moves ahead of Oxnard and Port Hueneme when it comes to annexation attempts.

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But some critics have charged that he uses the district as a springboard for his liberal ideology, spending money fighting issues that have little to do with the beaches.

Kapuscik defends his record, pointing to the 1992 Ventura County grand jury report and a recent letter by the Ventura County Alliance of Taxpayers, both of which praised the district’s management. He also cited his decision last year to voluntarily take a $6,000 pay cut, reducing his salary to $56,000.

And he argued that everything he has crusaded against had dealt directly with improving services and cutting costs, using the district’s legal battle with the Bailard Landfill as an example.

“The local landfill saw its rates increase by 100% every year for the past 10 years,” Kapuscik said. “That gave us the red flag we needed, and guess what? We found a better way to skin the cat.”

The district has been hauling residents’ trash to the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Los Angeles County since 1991. And the community’s recycling program is the only such effort in the county to turn a profit, he said.

Yet despite the district’s record, leaders in surrounding cities say the beaches would benefit from being included in their jurisdiction.

Oxnard Councilman Michael A. Plisky asked his city’s staff in 1992 to study annexing the beaches. The plan makes sense for the future of the region, Plisky said, but he charged that Flynn has opposed the idea because he wants to ensure that Kapuscik does not lose his job.

Flynn admitted that his championing of the beaches is due in part to his friendship with Kapuscik, but stressed that the main reason is his belief that the district is better off independent.

“There’s certainly a lot of truth to that,” Flynn said, “but it’s a community that works. It’s probably democracy working at its best.”

The tiny district is beginning to have problems providing utilities and removing trash at a competitive price, however, and some residents worry that annexation may become a more attractive option if the trend continues.

A June comparison of trash, water and sewer rates in 14 local governments, including Oxnard and Port Hueneme, found that the district was fairly competitive, billing residents an average of $53.05 a month, or 99 cents more than the average for all the agencies combined.

But the district recently raised its water rates by $4. The money, board members say, will be used to pay for a joint project with Port Hueneme and the Navy to supply cheaper, better water to the area --a necessary sacrifice for the future.

The beaches are already ahead of nearby cities when it comes to preventing crime. In 1993, only 355 crimes were reported in the communities, 12% less than the average for 1988 through 1992, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Of those, only one led to a felony arrest.

But many residents are worried that a massive $170-million development plan for the Channel Islands Harbor--which would include a major aquarium, condominiums and two hotels--would turn their placid community into a congested tourist trap.

“We’re in a peninsula here,” Bennett said. “Hundreds of thousands of people are going to come down here. Where are you going to put them?”

Flynn and other backers of the aquarium say that unless traffic can be diverted away from the beaches’ notoriously narrow streets, the facility will not be built.

“We don’t want to destroy the ambience of the harbor in search for a buck, but it does need improvements,” said Forrest, who added that he supports a marine facility as long as it is educational.

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Yet despite the hubbub over the communities’ problems, many residents say the pristine white sands of Silver Strand, Hollywood and Hollywood by-the-Sea beat just about anything.

Alan Fordney and his wife moved to Hollywood Beach in 1970 after his Malibu home burned down in a wildfire. He paid $50,000 for his two-story oceanfront home. It is worth $1 million today.

“I always tell people who don’t like it here to drive into Downtown Los Angeles, call me when they get home and then tell me there’s something wrong with Hollywood Beach,” said the former radio broadcaster, now 75. “It’s a real panacea.”