Lights, Camera, Picnic?

I stumbled upon an urban mystery the other day in a very familiar place. My wife and I were southbound on Victory Boulevard approaching the Ventura Freeway when we came upon an outpost of Griffith Park.

We’ve enjoyed this little strip of green along the Los Angeles River for years. My wife and I have always referred to it as the horse park because it abuts the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank.

But this day as we drove past the park, we discovered something we had not noticed before: a sign. Neither of us could remember seeing the sign before, even though it is large and has obviously been there for years. Both of us had looked right through it until the moment when my wife read the words written on it as we drove by at 35 mph: “The Bette Davis Picnic Area.”

Now, if I had thought of it, I would have assumed that the little park with its picnic tables was probably named after someone. But Bette Davis? I would have expected the Bette Davis “All About Eve” Martini Bar. Or perhaps the Bette Davis “Now, Voyager” Smoking Lounge, or the Bette Davis “Dark Victory” hospital wing. Or even the Bette Davis “Jezebel” Center for Sexually Transmitted Diseases. But I would have never put Bette Davis and a picnic area together.

The image of that sophisticated, self-made, self-confident, self-obsessed woman from the 1930s and ‘40s eatin’ fried chicken and brushin’ flies off of her coleslaw just didn’t make sense.

Can you eat caviar at a picnic? Can you pour champaign from a cooler and then sip it from a paper cup? If you can then maybe Bette Davis went on a picnic once. But I doubt it.

She was a city girl, born in Lowell, Mass. She was Broadway and Hollywood and Vine. She was cool and rude and vulgar when it paid to be. This 5-foot-2-inch lady went through four husbands. She once said, “Until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star.”

The Bette Davis picnic area? You might as well have the Rod Serling Center for Logical Explanations. Or the Keanu Reeves Center for Method Acting.

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So I was curious. I called the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and started a minor crisis with my simple question: How did the Bette Davis Picnic Area get its name? Ina Hillebrandt in public relations was very helpful, and Lisa Shinsato in maintenance was very supportive. On Ina’s suggestion, I even called Mike Eberts at Glendale Community College. They were all very nice. But none of them and nobody they knew had the foggiest idea of when or how or why a picnic area had come to be named for Bette Davis.

So it remains a mystery. Someone decided there was logic and justice in naming a lovely little picnic area after one of the stars of the silver screen. But the why and the when have been forgotten because they were not written down.

History, I was reminded, is like the morning newspaper in which only the uncommon events get recorded. The common lives of common people and movie stars alike tend to be invisible because they are too familiar. A garish headline or a single photo may end up representing a person’s entire life for all of future time, not because it is true but because it is what is remembered.

Bette Davis understood that. She once said, “Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.” Those are the words of someone who wanted to be remembered.