by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with the sharing of some of the early history of the Hebrew Sheltering and Home for the Aged, later the Jewish Home for the Aged, and covering the years 1914-1931, we arrived at the later part of the Roaring Twenties, when the home made tremendous strides from a small cottage in downtown Los Angeles serving three persons, to the Gless residence on Boyle Avenue in Boyle Heights and, then, in the early 1920s to the Boyle/Workman estate of five acres south on Boyle at the northwest corner with Fourth Street.
The latter included the 1858 brick house of Andrew Boyle, who acquired land on what was then known as Paredon Blanco, or White Bluff, because of the color of the material when seen from across the Los Angeles River in the Angel City, and which was heavily remodeled by William H. Workman, Jr. in 1910; a residence of his sister Charlotte; and the 1887 Queen Anne-style dwelling of their parents, Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-uh) Boyle and William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and a mayor and city treasurer of Los Angeles.
Those structures were initially ideal for housing clients and, in the case of the Boyle house, for administration, but officers and directors of the association managing the institution quickly moved to add a new structure with 45 additional rooms, a dining hall and other components to meet the growing demand for assistance as the Angel City grew dramatically during its latest boom. This was realized in summer 1923, the peak year of the boom, with the completion of the structure, while the existing houses continued to be utilized.
The need, of course, continued to increase so, in summer 1926, association President Philip Senegram put out the word, as mentioned in the Jewish newspaper, the B’nai B’rith Messenger, of 16 July, for readers to send a donation to a Building Fund for a hospital ward, so that those residents who were ill and in rooms in the other edifices could be transferred there and received better care, while obviously opening up space for more clients.
A big fundraiser was held that December at the Shrine Auditorium, a new version of which opened the prior spring, and the Los Angeles Record of 6 November ran a feature in which it was noted that, while the association joined the Community Chest, a consortium of charities, after having decline to do so previously, as noted here in part three, it was “unable to secure the quota of funds” from the organization, so it “will present a spectacular benefit ball under the direction of Fanchon and Marco in the Shrine auditorium.”
Fanchon and Marco were the renowned Jewish sibling team that put on very popular theatrical works in local venues during the period and their contribution involved “half a dozen musical revues, and many of Fanchon and Marco’s best vaudeville acts, . . . sandwiched between the dancing” with a stage installed at one end of the venue. Barnett Rosenberg, chair of the committee planning the extravaganza, told the paper that “if every citizen in Los Angeles could visit the Hebrew Sheltering home, and see how well the aged and infirm are taking care of there in spite of great handicaps, the Shrine ballroom on the night of the benefit would not be able to hold them all.”
The Record noted that among the dozens of residents of the Home were women 102 and 104 years old and Rosenberg was quoted for the conclusion of the article as saying,
Old age loses its terrors when it meets with the thoughtful care and consideration which the inmates of this home receive. It is a worthy charity, and we must give this benefit to care for them until we are eligible to receive our share of the Chest funds.
In its summary of the event, the Los Angeles Times of 5 December reported that “the huge auditorium was filled to its capacity with scores of screen and stage celebrities among those present.” The master of ceremonies was actor Herbert Rawlinson, who was a silent star and then a character actor in the talking era, assisted by stage and film actor Raymond Hitchcock “whose drollery added much to the hilarity.”
Former Secretary of the Treasury, in the administration of father-in-law Woodrow Wilson, William Gibbs McAdoo, who had to leave Los Angeles in an emergency instead of appearing at a Home fundraiser, welcomed the guests, while the Notre Dame football team, coached by the legendary Knute Rockne, were the guests of honor, the team having defeated the University of Southern California Trojans, 13-12, in a game played the previous evening and which was the first of a long rivalry between the schools, now verging on a century of gridiron tradition.
Among the film stars among the estimated 5,000 to 8,000 persons who attended were Western star “Buck” Jones, Ruth Roland, Victor McLaglen and the young and largely unknown Joan Crawford. As Rosenberg told the paper, the goal was to raise $200,000 in a drive “which was begun several weeks ago for the maintenance of the home [but which] was abandoned at the time the Community Chest campaign was launched in order not to interfere with the canvass” and at which time almost $20,000 had been received. Assisting in the committee were Benjamin Platt, head of a well-known music company; the brothers Edward and Jack Rosenburg, who owned a mining and pumping machinery firm; Adolph Ramish, owner of the Belasco and other theaters; and siblings Michael and Abraham Gore, partners of Ramish.
The alignment with the Community Chest appears to have given the Sheltering Home a good deal more visibility in the gentile press and a focus was obvious on elderly residents as a way to put a more personal and humanizing touch on the work of the institution. An example was a feature in the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News of 14 July 1927 on Max Berenson, with the paper dramatically observing,
Once he played for the great and mighty.
Grand dukes and duchesses had unbended from their high estate to listed to the magic of his music.
In the shadow of the Kremlin in Moscow he had been carried in triumph on the shoulders of peasants when his songs of victory of tyranny had cheered them on to new endeavor . . .
Gay Paree paused in tribute to him. Beautiful women in Vienna had listened to his melodies of love and he had played the songs of the gay gondoliers who wooed and won on moonlit canals in Venice.
But now— . . .
Berenson, shown in an accompanying photo, played for fellow residents of the Home and, the account continued, “the tired old Music Master brushes away the tears which flow at memories of other years” and the a smile came when playing a work by Franz Liszt. HIs audience also remembered and “are young again, in the springtime of life, and the world of love and hope lies before them.” The account noted that he was one of 92 residents at the institution and concluded by stating that “in his day, Berenson gave beauty to the world through his music. He is old now, and alone, save for the kind hearts who shelter him . . . But for the Community Chest he would be homeless in helpless old age.”
The Times of 27 May 1929 reported “the song of Max Berenson, 79 years of age, is ended” but it was noted that his will left $350 and some scores he’d composed to the Home. Berenson, a vocal teacher while in Europe, died after a month in the hospital, but while there he “believed to the last that he some day would realize his youthful ambition, and become a great singer,” telling people, “when I get well my voice will return.” Then, the article continued, the strains of the “Dream Song” from Manon were heard in the corridors, awaking patients as Berenson “was singing in a voice that would never have been suspected as coming from one as his age,” but, “when the song was finished, Berenson sank back in his pillow, and died,” an example of the last burst of energy a person experiences before death.
The 29 August 1927 edition of the Venice Vanguard featured another resident, 90-year old Morris Tolsky (actually, Talsky), with the nonagenarian depicted in a dapper top hat and three piece suit. Here, too, an appeal to the heart was made as the piece observed, “life may have dealt him many a blow, but it has no conquered him . . . even enthralling age has not laid him low at ninety” and it was added that “the proud old man of the Hebrew Sheltering and Home for the Aged . . . feels that he can still ‘make good,’ that his straitened circumstances are only temporary embarrassment.” It was recorded that he’d once had a “little fortune,” but “unforeseen difficulties” came and family and friends went so that he was “alone until the big heart of a kindly city took him under its protection.”
An unidentified Community Chest worker commented,
Caring for the aged poor is no longer considered charity but the obligation of the stronger to help the weak. They have given of their time and talents in the march of progress. Now, when misfortune overtakes them in their declining years, it is an act of brotherly love and understanding to take them by the hand and lead them over the rough way at the end of life.
A third example was that of Max Herman Pacully, subject of a lengthy feature in the Record of 26 May 1928 and who was introduced to readers as “ninety-two years old and penniless, yet a rebel at the edge of the grave.” He talked to the reporter “on one side of the sun-warmed, tree-shaded lawns” of the Home and, when the journalist quoted to the facility’s superintendent, Max Goldstein, a line from a poem, “blessed be God who made the old man’s sunlight,” Pacully scoffed, “God! Bah!” The journalist uttered the line while watching residents and knowing their religious observances at the Orthodox institution, but Pacully was having none of it.
“I don’t believe in all this stuff here . . . I say, when you’re dead, you’re dead. They can’t fool me. Do you know what’s back of everything in this world? Well, I’ll tell you. Graft! . . . I’ve got a good mind to thrash someone about this. And I could do it even if every bone in my blankety-blank (censored) body is already broken,” Pacully spat out. He continued that he was born in Louisville, was of Polish Jewish descent and one of 22 children, was a Confederate Army captain during the Civil War and bore the scars from that conflict, and that he had 14 children with a wife who left him with the brood.
While little could be located about Talsky, who died in early December 1928, but was apparently born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1842 and had a wife and four children, a bit of searching revealed that the stories of Berenson and Pacully were not as reported. The 13 June 1928 edition of the Express, for example, concerned a claim from three years prior that Berenson taught singing to Nicholas II, the last of the Russian czars, and his family.
Proudly, he retorted that “I do not need such ridiculous exaggerations. I am the best singing teacher in the world today. No one in Europe or America knows how to teach singing as I do.” He claimed to have told the head of the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, who did not believe his claim of greatness, that teachers there were nothing less than “a pack of fools.” Clutching the score to a Beethoven piece, Berenson welled up as he related how a severe cold ruined five years of study in Paris and he lamented that “I had a beautiful voice” but “I am here today because I never did anything for money,” though he repeated, “I am the very best singing teacher in the world.” The article ended with his plea: “put it in your paper that I did not teach the Romanoffs.”
As for Pacully, it turns out that he was a good two decades younger than he claimed (the accompanying photo seems to show that), was born in Bremen, Germany, as he noted in his naturalization application, and arrived in the United States on the last day of May, 1875, a decade after the end of the Civil War. His claims of being a runaway at nine years of age, working a jockey, delivering payrolls in the Midwest and trading with Indians—all appeared to be untrue. His feature mentioned his facility in drawing and, sure enough, in 1883 at Lawrenceville, Kansas, his skill was mentioned.
By 1886, he was in Los Angeles (he told the paper he moved to Ventura three years prior to that) and was arrested and tried on a robbery charge, though it appears he was not convicted. He stated in his interview that he worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, and Chief John Glass did employ him, apparently as a special officer, in the gambling dens of Chinatown. During a raid, it was reported, Pacully was seriously wounded (perhaps these were his “Civil War injuries”?) and unable to work.
The feature for the Home recorded that Pacully, a five-year resident, “helped to lay out the lawns and plant shrubs and flowers” and, from 1890 onward, that was his profession, working as a gardener, nursery employee and florist, including for Japanese nursery owner Kojiro Kamada in his business in south Los Angeles, east of Exposition Park. It was after 1921 that Pacully ended up at the Home, though he was about 67, not around 85, as he claimed. Pacully died in September 1932, clearly one of the most colorful characters (who knows what cognitive issues were at play with those discussed here?) affiliated with the institution.
We’ll return tomorrow with part five, so please check back then for the continuation of some of the history of the Home.