Determined not to let the 1920’s Prohibition spoil their fun, a Los Angeles social club dedicated to the uplifting the performing arts, the Uplifters buy a Rustic Canyon ranch. They let their hair down, drank, got naked, cavorted, staged bawdy plays and competed in sporting events.

SYNOPSIS:

http://www.magicalrealism.us/2014/07/04/uplifters/ The Lofty and Exalted Order of Uplifters The Uplifters creed: “To uplift art and promote good fellowship.” Historical Drama Screenplay by Lee A. Miller FILM PREMISE Determined not to let the 1920’s Prohibition spoil their fun, a Los Angeles social club dedicated to the uplifting the performing arts, the Uplifters buy a Rustic Canyon ranch. They let their hair down, drank, got naked, cavorted, staged bawdy plays and competed in sporting events. THE STORY The Uplifters was a men’s social club at the Los Angeles Athletic Club founded by Harry Marston Haldeman in 1913. Its stated purpose was to “uplift art, promote good fellowship and build a closer acquaintance” among its members. The group met for Saturday lunches; their first official dinner was held on 10 December 1913. The majority of the Uplifters were successful businessmen; local actors and artists contributed their talents instead of paying dues. L. Frank Baum supplied materials for Uplifter activities and amateur theatricals, including full stage shows for the group’s annual outings. L. Frank Baum created the group’s name, wrote its anthem, “Haldeman,” and scripted most of their amateur theatricals until his death. Eventually the group moved out of the Los Angeles Athletic Club to avoid the scrutiny of prohibition, ultimately purchasing a ranch in 1920. It began with Harry Haldeman, a big, jovial Chicagoan with a passion for Cuban cigars, hard liquor and good times. In 1913, the grandfather of Watergate figure H.R. (Bob) Haldeman became the driving force behind an influential band of revelers known as the Uplifters Club. For a name, they turned to L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books, who is said to have pounded back a few before coming up with “The Lofty and Exalted Order of Uplifters.” But without Prohibition, the ranch might never have existed. For several years, the Uplifters had held an annual bash, called Hijinx, at such spots as Lake Arrowhead and Del Mar. Away from wives and children, they drank, cavorted, staged ribald plays and engaged in outdoor sports. Tipping the bottle at the ranch was never really a problem during Prohibition, because the leading lights among local law enforcement were part of the merrymaking. The ranch was meant to be a kind of Utopia. ANTICIPATORY SETUP – OPENING SHOT To this day, Uplifters’ character sketches by cartoonist George Herriman, known for his popular daily comic strip “Krazy Kat,” line the walls of the Rustic Canyon Recreation Center, evoking the ghosts of a who’s who of 1920s Los Angeles’ movers and shakers. In the old club tradition, some of the sketches are considered politically incorrect, and one is papered over. An old man walk through the club house in the 1950s. The club has been virtually disbanded and the clubhouse stands abandoned. It is now the haunt of inebriated teenage revelers who skinny-dipped in the pool and are eating a pig that they had stolen from a Santa Monica luau. The old man watches the teenagers. He pushes a secret button on the wall and a compartment opens. He finds a dozen bottles of champagne. The corks have dried out considerably. He gives one to the most sophisticated teenager who remarks, “Sherry?” He leaves the bottles for the teenagers. MAIN CHARACTERS The Uplifters membership included Marco H. Hellman, Sim W. Crabill, Ralph Hamlin, Ernest R. Ball, Byron Gay, Will Rogers, Walt Disney, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Busby Berkeley, Leo Carrillo, Harold Lloyd, Darryl F. Zanuck, Ferde Grofé, Eugene Biscailuz, Hays Rice, Clarence R. Rundel, Louis F. Gottschalk, and L. Frank Baum. The two dozen or so kindred spirits were drawn from the ranks of the rich, the powerful and the notable. Marco Hellman, who owned a string of banks; Sim W. Crabill, an executive of the Times Mirror Co., which publishes the Los Angeles Times; Ralph Hamlin, a bicycle manufacturer, who was reputed to have owned the first motorcycle west of the Rockies; Ernest R. Ball, who joined the group later, author of the tune “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”–although he had never seen Ireland. Aldous Huxley lived at the ranch for a time. Earl Warren spent his summers there. At different times, Meryl Streep and Wilt Chamberlain lived there. They are a generation of flamboyant movers and shakers who, on the political side, were usually conservative to the core. But preserved a peculiar spirit — offbeat, intellectual and very arty. SETTING The Uplifters members bought part of a canyon in Pacific Palisades, christened it Uplifters Ranch and built secluded getaways around an elaborate clubhouse. The ranch was a year-round adult sanctuary, with its grand ballroom, drinking halls and “library” actually a poker parlor. In a corner of Rustic Canyon below where Sunset Boulevard slices past Will Rogers State Historic Park, still stands a long-ago rich man’s getaway still stands. In the sheltered forest in a tucked-away public park, canyon residents pride themselves on maintaining the 1923 Spanish Revival-style Rustic Canyon Recreation Center, which was once the clubhouse for a carousing outfit called the Uplifters Club. Like sentinels of an earlier age, they are both whimsical and mysterious. A few have huge ballrooms. Some are log cabins hauled in from the set of an early silent film. Others sport fanciful card parlors and Prohibition-era “basement bars.” Serene, almost magical, the ranch is said to be the last place in town where one can find a creek that hasn’t been filled, lined with concrete or funneled into drainage pipes. Rarer still is a small grove of 70-year-old redwoods. Many of the homes reflect the Uplifters’ determination not to let Prohibition spoil their fun. One, on Latimer Road, has a German beer hall downstairs, complete with kegs built into the wall. Another house, razed in the ’50s, had a bar hidden behind a push-button door. Angela Lansbury, who once lived there, is said to have used it as a projection booth. A club edict specified that they remain rustic and be painted either brown, green or gray. Rare is the neighborhood veteran who hasn’t turned up a stash of Uplifter liquor. REMEMBERABLE SCENES The Uplifters begins as a men’s social club at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. A young girl sees her first movie, a silent version of “The Wizard of Oz,” that is projected against a bedsheet in L. Frank Baum’s garage. She can’t be more than 3 years old, because she toddles up to the screen and tries to grab the little dog, Toto. After the federal ban on booze took effect in 1919, however, the group establishes a retreat in Rustic Canyon, below where future member Will Rogers would soon buy a sprawling estate. The group bought 120 acres and built a Spanish Colonial-style clubhouse with tennis courts, a swimming pool, trapshooting range, amphitheater and dormitories. L. Frank Baum, who named the club, said that “nothing has been found more elevating of the arts than a cocktail, except perhaps several drinks.” Baum dies in May 1919, one month before Prohibition began to suck the country dry. Club member Hays Rice wrote a poem for an all-day celebration: The rye was once upon the bar. Now the bar is on the rye. Oh, how will we wet our whistles, boys, When the world goes dry. In December 1922 the clubhouse burned down. The only lives lost were those of a bunch of caged turkeys being fattened up for a New Year’s celebration. The following year, a bigger and better headquarters, this time with a red-tile fire-resistant roof, rose on the same spot. Soon a polo field and half-mile racetrack were added. Cinematographer Charles Rosher was one member who leased land and built a fairy-tale bungalow, filling a room with Oriental antiques for his lover, actress Anna May Wong. Marco H. Hellman, the banker, bought three log cabins from the set of the 1923 film “The Courtship of Miles Standish” and had them moved to the site. In 1928, Haldeman, who had led the club in the art of high jinks, satirizing high society in songs, plays and revelry, resigned amid strained relationships. He was under indictment in the celebrated Julian Petroleum Scandal. He was acquitted, but in 1930 he suffered a fatal heart attack while testifying in a trial unrelated to the Julian case. He was 58 years old. Wrong Again, a 1929 two-reel comedy silent film starring Laurel and Hardy, is filmed at the posh Los Angeles sports complex, polo field and ranch in Rustic Canyon. There is the reaction of one of the (Uplifters’) wives in ’32 when FDR defeated Hoover. She just sighed and said, “Well, maybe someone will shoot him.” These people are conservative but artists to the core. After a young boys grandfather dies, he moves to a house on the ranch. He plays at the stables, flies kites on the polo field, explores the creek. And in the afternoons he lolled around the clubhouse pool, where Johnny Weismuller, a.k.a. Tarzan lived across the street. He receives an urgent call from his father to come there right away. Entering a room filled with men, the boy found his father talking to a cherubic figure seated on a bar stool. Father says, “Son, I want you to meet Babe Ruth.” Once a year, in their Hijinx gala, members staged circus extravaganzas and chariot races, and bet on the competitors. In 1925, one toga-clad driver and his two-burro team stopped dead on the home-stretch turn. “One flea too many caused [him] to lose by a scratch,” the judges declared. In the early 1930s, neighborhood kids sneaked onto the polo grounds just yards from a tangle of thundering hooves and flying mallets, close enough to cheer on pro polo champions such as Eric Pedley and Carleton Burke and to hear humorist Rogers shout “yippie-ki-yay!” from his own horse. In 1931, Santa Barbara polo pro Jim W. Colt was killed during a match. Club sports director Reginald “Snowy” Baker took the kids under his wing, salvaging broken polo mallets for them and letting them exercise the horses for him. Olympic gold medalists Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller used the pool in the 1940s. Wimbledon champion May Sutton Bundy shared the tennis court with three sisters for a Childrens Hospital benefit in 1947. In the late 1940s and early ’50s, one would later serve as the summer retreat for Earl Warren, the California governor who became chief justice of the United States. In 1953, oil company heiress Mabell Machris saved the day, buying what was left of the place and donating it to the city as a park. SPECIAL NOTE – Celebrities and others of prominence have formerly or currently have residences in this neighborhood, including Debra Winger, Randy Newman, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Brandon Tartikoff, Meryl Streep, John Travolta, Michael G. Fisher, Ed Zwick, Marc Norman, Steven Zaillian, Lee Marvin, Bradley Cooper, Renée Zellweger, James Arness, Paul Fix, James Whitmore, John Payne, Jerry Buss, and composer Alfred Newman. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver formerly owned a home across Rustic Creek from Will Rogers State Historic Park.

THE UPLIFTERS

http://www.magicalrealism.us/2014/07/04/uplifters/