Los Angeles, California, 1986
It makes me grin as I think about those elegant if sometimes rowdy dinners in Sydney and how much more relaxed and perhaps quiet are the dinners we give in our condo apartment in Venice, California. After I returned from Australia it was hard to find a job in Hollywood again. I was often told by the men that ran Hollywood that I should never have left and I understand now why it is so hard for women to return to their careers after an absence. I have known many women since those days that left to have a child or care for a sick parent, only to find re-entry into the work force extremely difficult or, in some cases, impossible. You are never forgiven for taking a break in a career although I had been in the entertainment industry running a film company in Australia and visited colleagues in Los Angeles several times a year. I never considered it time off but it was certainly seen that way in the world I came back to.
Upon my return from Sydney I made the rounds of the studios and networks to see men who only two years ago would have returned my call the same day, and they made it clear I was history as far as getting another job in Hollywood. The President of the Mary Tyler Moore Company who was a friend explained that in thirty years in show business he had never taken a vacation. “You can never leave” he said to me.
In the months that followed I was called constantly for advice from people needing my experience as they climbed the Hollywood ladder. If I chose to I could have spent all day on the telephone helping people trying to make a living in television. It was tiring and I decided if I charged money for my advice and experience, all the calls would go away and I could figure out what to do next. But the calls continued and my life coaching practice was born. I sold my experience to my new, younger clients and helped them to prepare for their show biz careers.
Now, in the condo in Venice, the round table in Sydney has been replaced with a twelve foot long dining table edged with benches to sit on, and John, my English husband of fifteen years, and I happily entertain friends as often as possible.
Today I am carrying my canvas bag up the street towards our two local markets that are within walking distance. Whole Foods and the 99ct store are the only two stores in the shopping mall with a single wall between them. This is about as concise a description of our neighborhood as anyone could manage. Venice houses the poor and the very rich and some of everyone in between. Part of the neighborhood relies on the 99ct store for fresh food while the newly rich eat organic fruit and hormone free meat from Whole Foods, known also as Whole Paycheck.
Venice was once a working class neighborhood built to house the people who serviced the visions of Abbott Kinney when he built his first theme park here in California. It was the last part of the coast line to feel the breeze of the housing bubble. Small cottages belonging to families who have lived here for generations are next to newly designed glass and shiny steel homes of movie stars and the condos of wealthy people from all over the world.
Venice used to be home to artists of all stripes and persuasions until it became too expensive. No longer are there old warehouses to rent or modest apartments to crash in while you paint your heart out or write the great American novel. Now it is a place of high rents and fast cars bumping up against the working class families that have lived here for seventy years or more. And early in the morning, when some of the neighbors drive their old trucks slowly through the streets on their way to work, young men on bicycles sell drugs and drop their wares into the windows of the Beemer’s and Porsches that barely seem to stop. Life is faster here today and, of course, far more expensive. There are days when I wonder if we fit here anymore.
