Photo credit: Courtesy of Stephen Schochet
It’s a typical Hollywood story: Stephen Schochet, like every other aspiring Hollywood player, had to make a living while trying to be a writer. At 27, he took a job as a limo driver and then moved into being a tour guide tooling around the famous homes of Beverly Hills. Now he’s the author of Hollywood Stories.
Hollywood on the Potomac chatted with the Stephen about his experiences. We wanted to know who were the nicest kids on the block so to speak.
“My two favorite celebrities were Sammy Davis, Jr. and George Burns. Sammie Davis, Jr. I drove in a limousine and he was just so nice. I’ll tell you the story of what happened. I was a little bit nervous waiting for him at his house. I was talking to the security guard. I said, “Is Sammy a nice guy?” The security guard told me he had six celebrity clients and he had broken his leg. He didn’t know where his next paycheck was coming from. He got out of the hospital and he went to the mailbox. Sammy Davis, Jr. was the only one of the clients who kept paying him. He just kept sending checks, never said a word about it and just did it out of the goodness of his heart. I said, “That’s so nice.” He said, “Yes, and I only work for him now.” I saw there was a plaque by the front door and it said, “This house welcomes anyone with peace and love and brotherhood in their heart.” I said, “That’s very nice.” The security guard said, “Well, confidentially, if anybody climbs over this fence with peace, love and brotherhood in their hearts, I’m going to shoot them dead.”
“James Stewart, Lucille Ball and George Burns were waving all the time but I don’t think that was because of me. I think they were just generally nice, friendly people and didn’t seem to mind too much.”
“I met the caretaker of Lucille Ball’s house and I was asking him about a story that I had read about Lucy being the one who got rid of the big buses in Beverly Hills. There was diesel engine smoke coming out of the buses and, even the very rich people would open up their windows during the hot summertime, and they didn’t like that. It was kind of ironic because there was one episode of “I Love Lucy” where Lucy made fun of that and she and Ethel were on a tour bus and they got out, they ran on the lawn, and they climbed over the fence and they stole a grapefruit from Richard Widmark’s house, which was …actually Lucy’s house.”
“This never happened to me but a lot of tour guides told me that Aaron Spelling used to come out of that house and talk to the tour buses and ask, “I am producing such-and-such show. Would you watch it?” and use the tour buses as a testing ground for his television shows.”
There are far to many tales to tell, so just get the book.
In the meantime, we will end with Hollywood then and Hollywood now – what is the difference we asked?
“I think the biggest difference is the gossip. In the old days, I think the gossip columnists like Hedda Hopper for the most part they really … from what I understand … wanted to protect the stars.
Today, I think, like if Winona Ryder gets busted for shoplifting it’s immediate knowledge where in the old days they could kind of cover that up. I think that is probably the biggest difference and I think, obviously, more stars have been able to get behind the camera and get involved with production and basically do that to survive.
I think that not being protected by the studio and having more creative input generally … I also think that right now, and it could be temporary, movie stars are less important to the studios. I saw an interview with Ari Emanuel who was the basis for the character, Ari Gold, on Entourage. He didn’t mention stars at all. He mentioned people like Seth MacFarlane, like Larry David, like Susan Collins, the writer of “The Hunger Games”. I think people like Joss Whedon … I think the content providers are becoming bigger and bigger and the stars are becoming less and less.
