Photograph courtesy of Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland and Yehudi Menuhin probably chatted a bit about Los Gatos when both were in the Aleutian Islands visiting hospitalized American troops. She is now working on her family biography in Paris.
World-renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin had a standing order with Dr. Horace Jones that he should be contacted any time the doctor ministered to his parents, Moshe and Marutha Menuhin.
To facilitate this contact, Menuhin kept Jones informed of his phone number and whereabouts wherever he traveled in the world.
The Menuhins came to Los Gatos in 1936, when Yehudi was 20 and well on his way to musical fame. The young Menuhin had been a child prodigy.
When the bombing of Pear Harbor propelled the United States into World War II, Menuhin was living with his parents at their Santa Cruz Mountains' home in nearby Alma.
With fear of a Japanese attack on the loosely defended Pacific Coast, an artillery unit was stationed in Los Gatos to prevent an enemy drive through the mountains from landing sites on Monterey Bay.
As part of a local plan to entertain the military visitors, Yehudi gave a violin concert at the Los Gatos High School auditorium, now called Prentiss Brown Auditorium.
Even before Pearl Harbor, Los Gatos, like most areas of the nation, had a military draft board. Young men were urged to volunteer and complete their one year of mandatory service on the assumption that our country would not enter the European conflict against Hitler's Nazi Germany.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, there was a speedup of the draft process, and druggist W. John Whisenant, a member of the local board, opposed drafting Menuhin. Whisenant's view overcame the prevailing attitude of draft board members who took a "draft everyone" stance.
It was thus that Menuhin, on a morale-building trip to American troops in the Aleutian Islands, met actress Olivia de Havilland, a 1934 Los Gatos High School graduate who commuted from her Saratoga home to school on the old Interurban Railroad line. One can imagine that she and the violinist had much to talk about while visiting hospitalized American GIs.
The life of the senior Menuhins was closely related to the La Cañada building at the northwest corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and Main Street. They were regulars at the Corner Drug Store soda fountain. Clerks observed that Mrs. Menuhin's favorite gift for friends was a cologne, 4711(Forty-Seven, Eleven), which was kept in stock for her frequent purchases.
Mrs. Menuhin followed her husband in death last Nov. 8 at Los Gatos Community Hospital. She would have been 101 this Jan. 7. Lord and Lady Menuhin flew from London to attend his mother's 100th birthday celebration last year.
Menuhin and his two sisters, pianists Hephzibah and Yaltah, and their families flew here from various parts of the world to attend their mother's graveside services at Los Gatos Memorial Park.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 8, 1997.
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