Saratoga Stereopticon

Significant events include Olivia as Puck

By Willys Peck

In my last column, I listed the first five of what I consider the 10 most significant dates in Saratoga's last century. Herewith the final five:

1924: Formation of the Saratoga Fire District. This development has particular resonance now with the likelihood of a bond election to finance a long-needed new fire station. Before formation of the district, firefighting was an all-volunteer effort, with a man-pulled, two-wheel cart carrying a hose that could be attached to any of the half-dozen fire hydrants in the Village area. Outside that perimeter, fighting fires called for ingenuity and bucket brigades.

With the formation of a tax-supported district came the purchase of the latest firefighting equipment, in this case a 1925 Model T Ford truck fitted with two soda-and-acid chemical tanks, several hundred feet of hose and a pair of extension ladders. As to personnel, the department remained an all-volunteer operation for decades.

1927: Building of the Sheldon P. Patterson Memorial Library, now occupied by the Friends of the Saratoga Libraries' Book-Go-Round. Here again is an especially timely subject, inasmuch as city voters will be asked to support a bond issue for expansion of the overburdened Saratoga Community Library. As with the formation of the Fire District, the library at Oak Street and Saratoga-Los Gatos Road was the community's response to a need that, in the absence of a municipal government, could only be met by volunteer efforts. In this case it was the raising of a $6,000 fund, later increased to $12,000, to finance construction of the handsome building on a donated site. It was dedicated on Nov. 7, 1927, with title to the property held by the school district. Apropos of the Saratoga Foothill Club's founding as one of the 10 significant dates, it should be noted that the impetus for a new library building in the 1920s came from the leaders of that organization.

1934: Opening production of Dorothea Johnston's Theatre of the Glade. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was the play and Olivia de Havilland played the role of Puck. Olivia had just graduated from Los Gatos High School and a scholarship to Mills College awaited her in the fall. But influential friends in the arts who knew of her dramatic talent had paved the way for a movie career, and she went directly from Saratoga to Hollywood. Her first appearance there was in Max Reinhardt's Hollywood Bowl production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, where she played Hermia, a role she also played in the 1935 movie. A few years later, Olivia's sister, Joan, came to Hollywood, taking the name of her stepfather and achieving fame as Joan Fontaine.

The Theatre of the Glade, situated by the creek in back of the old Saratoga Inn, was the setting for Miss Johnston's plays, mostly Shakespeare, for seven years. She also staged plays in the Foothill Club. She died in 1969 at the age of 77.

Dorothea Johnston's achievements were emblematic of Saratoga's place in the world of performing arts. There's just something about this area that's conducive to this kind of creative effort. It's quite a roster. There were John and Kay Breeden's Saratoga Players; Saratogans Paul and Pat Beaudry's Theater-in-the-Round at the old Hotel Lyndon in Los Gatos; the Saratoga Drama Group, outgrowth of the Federated Drama Group that started under the aegis of the Federated Church; and Ivan and Jaleen Holm's King Dodo Playhouse at Azule Crossing. I also tip my stage-prop hat to the Valley Institute of Theatre Arts, or VITA, launched by my son, Bill, and his high school drama teacher, Judith Lyn Sutton. Even this list is incomplete.

1941: No one who was here at the time could ever forget the "invasion" of Saratoga by a battery of U.S. Army field artillery three days after the Dec. 7 Pearl Harbor attack. The troops were here for almost three months before moving on to a hastily assembled camp near Palo Alto. From there they shipped out to the Aleutians and the Pacific.

1956: Saratoga becomes a city. By a slim, 159-vote margin out of 3,299 ballots cast, Saratogans approved incorporation. There was a potent argument against cityhood: The town was being served adequately by the county and special districts, so why impose another layer of government? An equally potent argument in favor of incorporation was San Jose's annexation binge of the 1950s. Saratoga was just one of several defensive incorporations: Campbell in 1952, Cupertino in 1955, and Saratoga in 1956. Monte Sereno's in 1957 was more of a defense against potential territorial designs of Los Gatos and Saratoga.

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