Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph courtesy of Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland was one of several LGHS graduates who went into the entertainment business. Here she's seen during WWII with another Los Gatan Yehudi Menuhin.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

Women of LGHS made a mark on entertainment

Two Los Gatos High School girls once received public attention by appearing with their clothes off.

First to do so was class of 1957 graduate Judy Brockhaus, who went professional with her snake-dance act in San Francisco's North Beach nightclubs and at the Brass Rail in San Jose.

Some 34 years later, Carrie Jean Yazel, class of 1988, was the centerfold model in the May 1991 issue of Playboy magazine. In her data sheet she writes, "I can't wait until the boys I had crushes on in high school--the ones who didn't know I existed--see me now. See what you guys missed out on?" Before entering LGHS, she attended C. T. English Middle School.

Three local girls who performed in Hollywood movies fully clad were Olivia de Havilland, her sister, Joan Fontaine, and Audrey Long. More about them later.

Thanks to Bonnie Knoph and her Internet access at the high school: She punched up information that Brockhaus married a drummer and retired from dancing; the couple later became evangelists. Brockhaus is a regular at her class reunions.

Yazel married and settled in her native Southern California.

Audrey Long, born in Florida in 1924, lived with her parents on Bruce Avenue and graduated from LGHS in 1940. Her father, an Episcopal cleric, substituted at times for the Rev. David Todd Gillmor of the local church.

Long joined the (John and Kay) Breeden Players of Saratoga, studied speech with Dorthea Johnston and acted in her Theater of the Glade behind the Saratoga Inn.

Playing a "stage mother," Long's father took his daughter to Hollywood, where her beauty and diction landed her leads and supporting roles in 17 films of the 1940s and '50s. Not long after her final film, Indian Uprising in 1952, she returned to Florida and reportedly married.

Five years after graduating from LGHS in 1934, de Havilland played the part of Melanie in America's film classic Gone With the Wind. In 1946 she won an Academy Award for her performance in To Each His Own and won another Best Actress Oscar in 1949 for The Heiress.

Today she resides in Paris and is working on a biography of her English ancestors, including the inventor of the de Havilland airplane. Her earlier book is Every Frenchman Has One (not a mistress, a liver).

Fontaine, back from living with her divorced and remarried father in Japan, skipped high school and started a film career in 1935. As Joan Burfield, she made one film, then took the name of her stepfather to become Joan Fontaine. In 1940, she was nominated for an Oscar for Rebecca and in 1943 for The Constant Nymph. She won the Academy Award, as well as the New York Film Critics Award, for her performance in 1941's Suspicion. Her busy career continued in films until her final appearance in 1966.

She is also a licensed pilot, a balloonist and golfer who in 1978 wrote her autobiography, No Bed of Roses. She lives on the Monterey peninsula.

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