Thursday, March 14, 2013

Living the Good Life in Shaker Heights

In March, 1963, Cosmopolitan Magazine - and this is the Cosmos before Helen Gurley Brown - did a feature story on Shaker Heights called "Living the Good Life in Shaker Heights."  I actually had to go to eBay and buy a copy.  Having read the article, I am aghast at some of the statements and how they made me howl with laughter:

"....North Park Boulevard and South Park Boulevard are the two poshest streets, however if you live on South Woodland Road or Shaker Boulevard you needn't feel ashamed..."

Having spent 1968 through 1972 on South Woodland, I can tell you that I felt no shame at all.  And I didn't need Cosmo to free me from that tsoris of not living in those huge house on North or South Park, either.  And let me tell you, most of the houses on Shaker Boulevard were nothing to sneeze at, either. Many of the big old Tudors came with third floor ballrooms, or elevators.

And the country club life style?  Please, only if you were WASP.  Neither Canterbury County Club nor Shaker Country allowed Jews to be members, and even when 25% of the population was Jewish, if you wanted to invite a Jew into your golfing fore-some you had to let the club know in advance.  If George Szell wanted to join a country club, he went to Oakmont in neighboring Cleveland Heights where the members were (whispering, and looking around to make sure that I am not overheard) "Jewish".

Looking at the article today, it reads like pure bullshit, but in fact, this was the world that I came from, albeit a bit more from the modest corners of town.

Said a friend from the old neighborhood on South Woodland Road "The day after the article was published and the magazine released, Ritchie Berger shows up at the bus stop wearing a ascot!  Our indoor pool was referred to the bathub."

Anyhow, enjoy - it really is a hoot.












9 comments:

  1. come on, you must admit to the teensiest bit of shame. South Woodland Road sounds so, well you know!

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    1. OK, I have shame. We only had a two car attached garage when the better homes had a three car. But our house could (and did) hold two hundred people without ever feeling it. Parties and family shivas were us.

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  2. Having grown up just off the very best street in a city not far away, it all hits home - a vanished world. The spring of 1963 seems in retrospect a rather pretty time, and quite impossible that it was fifty years ago.

    But the burning question, I think, is what exactly was Joan Crawford's take on Our Runaway Americans? Did she intend on adopting them?

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    1. Oh, Joan's article? She complains, and rightly so about the career destroying movies that Hollywood actors make when they move to Europe permanently. She has special contempt for Italian made "Spectacles" that had weak scripts, bad special effects and even worse voice dubbing. In defference to Joan, though I shall not mention her European movies like Berserk. Nope, not a word about that movie that was shot in England.

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  3. Our Runaway Americans Who Will Not Give Me a Fucking Oscar was the original title, but they couldn't fit it on the cover.

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  4. the last page has a picture of my aunt and uncle! I LOVE THIS!!!!

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  5. I have kept an original copy.

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