NO STALGIA LIKE OLD STALGIA

Mural of The Seven Arts (Prismacolor reproduction on mat board) approximately 9' x 9’

In the summer of 1940, an artist named Belle Baranceanu created a WPA mural (shown in its original form below) on the proscenium arch at La Jolla High School’s theatre. It had been the original La Jolla Playhouse, begun by Gregory Peck and other famous theatrical community members before it became the auditorium at the high school.

It was a wonderful theatre, a real theatre with flies, real lighting, elegant banked seating, a balcony, and the signatures of many performers, famous and not, all over the backstage brick walls. A magical, dark, wondrous place. We reveled in it.

In 1975, it was torn down without warning, and therefore without fanfare or protest. Deemed unsafe in earthquakes. So many structures were retrofitted for earthquakes, I have always wondered what the real reason was. Insurance? In any case, a terrible loss.

This year, when it came time for a big-decade reunion of my class, I felt that this venerable and universally loved memory deserved an homage. Given the proportions of the hall where the party was–as compared to the proportions of the theatre proscenium–I had to do a lot of jiggetying and editing. Sadly, the orchestra got all but cut out. Did what I could. Mine is merely Prismacolor on mat board, a flimsy tribute to a huge fresco that should have lasted many generations. But it did indeed bring back memories.

Time marches on. Good memories need a nudge sometimes.

The arch, standing forlornly right before it was demolished, in 1975.