Cars didn't have seat belts back in the 1940s -- but then, nobody was thinking too hard about safety when Charla Janacek and her pals from Glendale's Hoover High showed up for volunteer usher duty at the Hollywood Bowl with six to eight kids piled into one vehicle.
As Janacek describes it, the scene was less traditional carpool than clown car. “Some of us were in the seats, some of us were on the floor," she recalls with a loud laugh. “We were stacked, woven, like the lattice top on an apple pie. The security police would come and help us out of the car."
Sometimes it was a student driving the family car; other times, Janacek's dad played chauffeur in his Pontiac. But no matter who drove, the goal was the same: to spend as much time as possible at the Bowl.
Janacek's first year as a Bowl usher was 1941; she was 16. Today at 84, Janacek still jumps at the chance to take in a concert under the stars in Cahuenga Pass -- although she may not jump quite as high as she used to.
While the Bowl serves as one of the city's most popular tourist draws, to many who have grown up here, the summer venue for the Los Angeles Philharmonic is less an attraction to visit than a place to call home.
In advance of the Bowl's summer concert series, which gets underway Tuesday, three of those longtime Bowl-goers shared their decades of memories with The Times. (We were not able to locate anyone who was seated on the benches when the Bowl first opened in 1922.) All three are passing on the tradition to their children and grandchildren -- and even sometimes to perfect strangers when they have an extra ticket to spare.
Janacek started her lifetime at the Bowl in the back rows; although she and her friends were not paid for their usher duties, they got to keep a penny for every 10-cent program they sold. “By the time they got up to the back rows, nobody wanted a program," Janacek recalls. While her friends were pulling down $2 and $3 a night closer to the stage, her average take was 9 cents.
“After the concerts, we'd all go out for a hamburger at Bob's in Burbank, and I only made enough money one night to pay for the hamburger," she laments. “My poor mother had to subsidize my social life."
Alyce de Roulet Williamson, 78, got a slightly different view -- from a box that has been in her family for more than 50 years. The Pasadena socialite and philanthropist has occupied a garden box with her husband, retired investment banker Warren “Spud" Williamson, since they were married in 1954.
The Williamsons inherited the box from Alyce's parents, Henry and “Dawnie" de Roulet. Warren Williamson is the grandson of the late Harry Chandler, former publisher of The Times; he is chairman of the Chandler Trust and a member of the L.A. Phil's board of directors.
“I can't bear the thought of giving up the box," says Williamson, who attended this year's opening night concert, featuring opera star Kiri Te Kanawa and pop sensation Josh Groban on June 19 with family and friends; for this concert, they sat not in the longtime family box but in a Pool Circle box, so called because they occupy an area once taken up by a reflecting pool. “It used to be when I would go to the Bowl, I knew everybody there, it was big time. And everybody dressed up."
