Nine Parties for Sybil

It was an L.A. kind of night, with Nick Edenetti, the town’s quintessential saloon singer, serenading Sybil Brand, the town’s quintessential social reformer, in an Italian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard.

He was singing Sinatra’s old favorite, “The Summer Wind,” leaning into the mike toward Sybil and moving one hand in a sort of wavy motion, the way saloon singers do.

But this wasn’t just the case of an entertainer picking some giddy old doll out of the audience to sing to, like he was in Vegas or some other center of western culture.

This was Nick singing to a friend, which makes their pairing even more remarkable, the saloon guy in an endless hustle for work gaining the friendship of a teetotaler who has done more for out-of-luck women in this town than anyone else alive.

They’ve been pals for 20 years, and I’ve followed Nick’s fortunes long enough to know the music he was giving her was from the heart, or very close to it.

All eyes were focused on Sybil as the tune laced through the crowd at Grappa Ristorante, and why not? It was her 91st birthday and Nick had arranged a surprise party with a lot of her old friends, like yesterday’s sweetheart Virginia Mayo, and Rosemarie from that musty classic, “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The mayor of Beverly Hills was there, Max Salter, and the comic Herb Eden, and a lot of people you don’t know. Freddie Stewart and Lorraine Barry? Them too.

It was, as the birthday girl would remark around midnight, one hell of a party.

*

You know Sybil. She’s the feistiest, liveliest, most beloved nonagenarian south of Bakersfield. She’ll tell you you’re bound to become beloved if you live long enough, and while the comment’s got merit, it isn’t true in her case.

As an individual, a philanthropist and a fund-raiser, she’s been working for the down-and-out most of her life. When she was a kid, she tried to give the kitchen stove to a hungry bum, and has been giving ever since.

Her main recognition comes as a result of a task she assumed more than 30 years ago as a member of the county’s Public Welfare Commission. Brand took on the job no one else wanted, that of overseeing the women’s jail.

What she saw were conditions that appalled her, and in 1960 led a bond measure campaign that resulted not only in a new women’s jail, but also a new men’s jail and several juvenile camps. The women’s jail was named in her honor.

You’d think that would be enough to rest on, but not for Sybil. As chairman of the County Institutional Inspection Commission, she still visits the women’s jail once every three weeks.

The inmates shout “Hi, Miss Sybil” as she walks the solemn corridors of detention, and she does what she can for them. But the self-proclaimed old lady of L.A. (she’s lived here since she was 2) isn’t happy at what the jail has become.

The pristine Sybil Brand Institute, eroded by overcrowding and budget cuts, is just another slammer now. But, oh, you should have seen it once, Sybil says. “People used to come from all over just to visit the honor dorms.”

*

Nick Edenetti likes her because she treats him with respect. The way he says it lets you know it isn’t often a saloon singer is treated with respect, especially by a living legend. She makes him feel like Frank Sinatra.

They met in the early ‘70s when Sybil showed up at a club in town where Nick was performing. They talked a little and she invited him to sing at one of her fund-raisers. Nick agreed, and she’s been dropping in to hear him sing ever since.

Sybil had nine birthday parties over the weekend, one for each decade of her life, but it was Nick’s party where she cried. She told him later she’d never had a surprise party before.

Sybil is wry and quiet, and Nick is bombastic and perennially on, if you know what I mean. They’re an odd couple. He gave her a birthday cake at Grappa that said, “God’s Favorite Brand of Lady.”

“That’s one damned big cake,” she said to no one in particular when the waiters brought it over. It was that, all right, but not as big as the cake she got on her 85th birthday. “Dear God,” she said then, “I thought it was a casket.”

There were a little over a hundred people at the Grappa affair. Red, circular lapel pins were distributed that said “Sybil’s 91st,” and she managed a brief, kind of swaying boogie when the music called for it.

I left the party about midnight, which is late for me, but this one was special. You’ve got to spend a moment when a saloon singer honors a legend.

I kissed Miss Sybil on the cheek when I left. As I walked away, she smiled and patted me on the behind. Nick sang, “Fly Me to the Moon.”