Ann Dvorak’s Los Angeles Pt. 5 – Page School For Girls, 4511 N. Pasadena (Figueroa) Ave.
Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 247
Ann Dvorak may have started her Los Angeles education at the Elliott School, but she ultimately ended up at the Page School For Girls in the Highland Park neighborhood. This is from where she graduated around 1927 or 1928. After Ann became a known actress, she visited her alma mater on at least one occasion.
1920 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
Like the Elliot School, Page was a converted Victorian home that served as a boarding school. Â The school, who advertised it would prepare its students for “useful womanhood” was started by sisters Emma & Della Page. Della later broke off to start the companion Page Military Academy which served the young male population. There are still Page private schools in existence which are offshoots of the military academy and operated by the descendants of Della Page. Unfortunately, they do not have any records from the girls school.
I have never been able to find a photo of the Page School, which drives me nuts. The above photo, taken by one-time Disney engineer Herman Schultheis is especially maddening. While taking this shot, he was standing at the lower lefthand corner of the above map. Had he just turned around he could have gotten some photos of the school! This image is in the photo archive I oversee, so Herman definitely did not turn his camera behind him.
While this stretch of Pasadena Ave (actually, it’s now Figueroa) maintains many remnants of its long history, the site Page School For Girls is now a rather unsightly shopping center.
Clicked on the “Herman Schultheis” link.
What a fascinating story. Got so absorbed in reading it and looking at the photo offerings, that I didn’t, at first, even notice who wrote the piece for the Huff Post.
The discovery of the Schultheis “treasure trove” sounds like it was akin to the later discovery of a certain “honeymoon scrapbook” a few years later?
Just curious, wasn’t Figueroa Avenue the location of the Rodney King beating of 20, or so, years ago?
The Schultheis collection is beyond anything you could imagine. In addition to the 6,000 SoCal images, we have 28 archival boxes from his world travels. Cuba, eastern U.S., Egypt, Mediterranean – all pre-World War II. If you happen to own the Fantasia blu-ray, there’s a 14 minute mini-doc on him. There’s also going to be a book coming out next year. Long overdue due for dear Herman.
King was actually pulled over on Foothill Blvd in the San Fernando Valley. What’s funny about Figueroa is that it’s labeled a “Street” even though it’s a major thoroughfare spanning 30 or so miles. Although us locals just call it “Fig.”
I’m looking through the Schultheis collection on LA Public Library link you provided in the Huff Post article.
602 pages! But truly wonderful in every sense. Thank you for posting it and making me aware of it.
Are the captions alongside the various photos in the collection provided by someone on the staff there? Or were they provided by the Schultheis’s?
You have no idea how happy it makes me when someone discovers a new appreciation for Herman Schultheis.
The captions themselves were written by staff members. We received grant funding last year to digitize the bulk of the collection, so a gal named Charlene was hired to write the descriptive records. Indexer Kim has also written many of the captions.
When we got the collection in the early 1990s (waaaay before my time), the envelopes the negatives came in listed broad identifications of locations. I spent months going through each image to identify specific addresses, pouring over maps, city directories, digitized newspapers, etc. In other words, putting my Ann Dvorak research skills to good use.
If you interested, Photo Friends who support the LAPL Photo Collection, put together this print on demand book which features around 120 of his images. The text is a reprint of the Huff Post piece. All proceeds go to Photo Friends.
www.amazon.com/How-We-Worked-Played-Schultheis/dp/1483949281/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378430759&sr=8-2&keywords=herman+schultheis
Great, great job!
And I had thought that the AD book was your first labor of love!
Two thoughts while looking through the collection … first, with Schultheis’s LA street scenes photos, you can close your eyes and almost imagine Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston and the cast of “Chinatown” inhabiting them.
Second, seeing the genuine affection and closeness that you pick up on between HS and his wife that shines through so many of the photos, it’s kind of making me sad knowing Ethel was going to spend the last 35 years of her life alone.
To any of our regulars who are looking at this, do yourself a favor and use the link to check this out for yourself.
Thanks Scott. The Schultheis book is basically all photos was more of a brief catalog to accompany an exhibit we had at the library. It didn’t take too much effort to put together, esp. compared to Ann, who has gotten much blood, sweat, and tears out of me!
Yeah, Ethel is heartbreaking. The Schultheis biographers came to the library last year and they had spoken to some of the neighbors. They said Ethel pretty much kept to herself and they sensed that she never really believed he was gone and always expected him to walk through the door. She usually accompanied him on his expeditions but right before this particular trip, she was called back to New Jersey because of a sick relative. So incredibly sad.
Their home in Los Feliz was designed by Herman and apparently had a bunch of crazy mechanical devices, ala Doc Brown. He was such a fascinating man.