Blog 113: The Hollywood’s Largest ToyShop

Before I get back to death cleaning, I found a photograph online that set free so many early memories. I won’t repost the image here as I don’t have the photo rights, but you can easily find the image. It’s a Hollywood street scene, and we see a woman on the ground in the middle of the boulevard in front of The Hollywood’s Largest Toyshop. She’s being helped by a man and woman, a crowd has gathered on the sidewalk in front of the toy store, a police officer takes notes on a note pad a few feet away. Why she fell in the street is unclear.

I found the photo on the writer Martin Turnbull’s website with no photo credit, but someone in the comments suggested that the actor Dennis Hopper was the photographer. On Turnbull’s site, look for the page that reads “Drama Outside Hollywood’s Largest Toyshop” at 6560 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood Circa Mid-1960s.”

I contacted another writer, Mark Rozzo, who wrote a book called “Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960’s Los Angeles.”

I asked him about the photo, and Mark kindly messaged me and said, “Hi Stacya–– Definitely Dennis. In fact, he took that photo the same day he took his famous “Double Standard” photo, which was sometime between the fall of 1963 and the late summer of 1964. (“Double Standard” is typically dated to 1961, which is incorrect.)”

You can find "Double Standard" by Dennis Hopper on the MOMA dot org page.

I love a good fact check, (thank you, Mark Rozzo!) and now I want to read his book on that era. Martin Turnbull’s books on Hollywood seem like great reads, too. Turnbull's are fictionalized but loaded with interesting Hollywood history.

I’m captivated by this photo and wish I had the guts to post it (you can get fined and such for posting photos without permission, so no thank you) because the Hollywood’s Largest Toyshop was my front yard until I was around eight or nine. We lived less than a five minute walk from there on the corner of Cassil Place and Selma, and when we moved, (evicted, perhaps?) we could still walk to the area. We were so broke, we’d go there to “window shop” which meant looking and wishing, but no buying, although occasionally my mom would sell a painting and she’d buy something, and once, she surprised me with a “Madam Alexander” doll. Mine was ballerina with a pink tutu and long dark hair like my mother’s. The doll was my treasure until my pet rabbit chewed her fingers off.

One of my earliest childhood memories from that time is a specific walk we took to that store. A creepy guy (my mother describes him as a stalker and child molester) followed us down the boulevard for a long while, saying horrible things to my mother, to me and my sister. I must’ve been four years old, my sister was eight or nine, so the date was late in 1968 or 69, after the Hopper photo was taken, but the area was the same.

My mother darted into the store with us, told the toy shop owner that we were being hounded by a creep. He quickly hid us in a storage closet.

What’s strange is that when I texted my mother the Hopper photo yesterday, and I asked her about the incident, she said “yes, I do remember. That creep was following us for a while. It was good of the toy store owner to let us hide in his store.” And she added, “I was just thinking about that incident last week.”

Strange. I was also thinking of that incident, which happened FIFTY-SEVEN years ago!!!

After we hid in the storage area, I asked my mother what happened.

“He [the stalker] asked the store owner if we had come in there, and the owner said we went out the back door,” she said, although we were hiding in the side room of the store.

Later, the toyshop owner asked my mother if she would paint him.

“He wanted me to paint him naked, which I declined,” she texted me, adding, “Kinda pervy.”

Kinda. But we were surrounded by people like that. I'm not comparing someone who wants to be painted naked to the other abusers, do your thing! But it seems my mother picked up on a weird vibe.

Hollywood wasn’t a great place to be a kid, especially an unsupervised kid, so I have these strange memories of being followed, harassed, sexualized from a young age, and my sister and I got “flashed” as they used to call it when men exposed themselves. We were riding bikes in a parking lot when it happened, I think it was the Ralph's. "We saw a flasher," my sister told our parents. But we'd both experienced worse.

One more thing. There are guys (and women, too, like Ghislaine Maxwell) like that in every neighborhood. There are creepers and abusers in every level of our society, and there’s the biggest creep of all time in the White House. People knew that the first time around… and still voted for him. Imagine that.

Ok, back to death cleaning.

Here's something I'm tossing, Dad's old address book. I edited out the Social Security number for "Cooper, Riley" as that was one of my father's "other" names with another Social Security number. I think Milton Cox was another one of the names he used, but I'm not sure. If you're wondering how many names he used, there's a blog about that here somewhere, earlier on. I listed them all.

To be clear, I’ve had my father's boxes of papers, books, and personal items since around 2019 or 2020, even though my father died in 2009. The people storing my father’s personal belongings truly believed his stuff was valuable... in dollar amounts…hard to comprehend, but they really did believe that. They believed that the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum or the Buck Owens Museum in California would want my father’s stuff, although I told them that wasn’t likely.

I said, "he wasn't that famous. Can you just send me the personal items?"

Finally, thanks to a guy named Larry Bastian, I was given dozens of boxes, which I've narrowed down to six or so, but it took ten years.

Here’s what I’m tossing out today: ASCAP statements (the non for profit organization for music rights—American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers), a note from  “Meals on Wheels” that a meal couldn’t be delivered because no one was home. I wondered if that missed delivery was when he fell and was literally on the floor for three days. I should look that timeline up, but it’s too distressing.

Those things are easier. Now for the harder part. My father listed every single song he wrote or co-wrote, I’m guessing as a way to keep track of what he had with ASCAP and BMI. Does anyone see any reason why I should keep those? Ughhhh. It’s so confusing. These are probably songs that didn’t gain traction.

Here are some more wacky items I’m going through:

A card with his other names...stage names? Pen names? (see blog number 19) When he died, I found a bunch of Social security cards with different names and numbers. This card is handmade, like a "note to self"? I don't know. Maybe he had trouble keeping track of all the identities, stage names, and pen names. I didn't edited out these numbers as David, my husband, said it didn't matter...so here it is.

An old pamphlet about how to change your name, and how important it is not to have more than one Social Security number and other educational advice regarding social security cards.

An old Greyhound bus song book.

I think I'll save the song book. Why? I don't know. The fake Social Security card, too.

Thanks to those who contacted me with their own “piles” of papers from grandparents and parents. It’s a lonely chore, and it's good to know other people are dealing with it, too. I'm making a dent in the piles!