Saratoga News

Photograph courtesy of Life Magazine

Donna Reed enjoys an ice cream cone during her visit to the sleepy little town of Saratoga, California.

Saratoga Stereopticon

WILLYS PECK

Life's ambition: To qualify as a town character

When one has surpassed the biblical span of threescore years and 10 by a comfortable margin--Bob Dole shades me by only a month--there would seem no further necessity to nurture a life's ambition. Unless, of course, one is running for president.

Nevertheless, I confess to a life's ambition for these twilight years, and it's simply this: to qualify as what the old Life magazine would have described as a town character. Some explanation is necessary.

Fifty years ago, in the issue of June 10, 1946, to be exact, Life did a spread on the visit of actress Donna Reed to Saratoga to be "reindocrinated" with small-town atmosphere. This was in preparation for her role in It's a Wonderful Life.

Miss Reed, described in the Life article as having been raised on an Iowa farm, was dispatched by the studio "on a weekend visit to sleepy little Saratoga, Calif. (pop. 2,645), a farming community near the Santa Cruz Mountains. The town's farmers and friendly yokelry greatly enjoyed her visit." Stop right there.

Yokelry? Look it up. Yokelry: "The mob of stupid, unsophisticated countryfolk." Are we talking Saratoga, or what?

Then there were the picture captions. "Meditatively lapping a vanilla cone on the main street of little Saratoga, Calif., Donna Reed rests between visits to town characters." Hey, that's me; I want to be a town character. Give me a park bench, maybe a cigar, and I'll dispense rustic wisdom to anyone who comes along, especially a beautiful actress. There was also a picture of her with the Saratoga Garage proprietor, Constable Carl Taylor, in which Miss Reed was seated in "the pride of Saratoga, its only fire engine." Wrong. The "pride," a 1937 International, if memory serves, was housed in the garage--now the Saratoga Fire Station--along with a 1928 Ford Model A fire truck that was still doing service with the volunteer department. There was also a picture of Miss Reed looking at magazines at the soda fountain of the Saratoga Drug Store, enjoying "the small-town privilege of a free look at the magazines" with clerk Dollie Nardie looking on.

Perhaps most provacative by today's standards was a full-length picture of Miss Reed, her skirt raised daintily, wading across Saratoga Creek, "local fisherman's paradise." As one who started fishing Saratoga Creek a good 60 years ago, I'd question the "paradise" status as recently as 1946. Upstream, maybe, but not close into town, where today we hear of the stream mostly in reference to pollution.

Whatever the motivation for Miss Reed's visit, a lot of people, including me, thought the whole thing was pretty funny. But a lot of people didn't. There were some pretty acerbic letters fired off to the magazine. I think they were missing the point. Take it from a certified town character: Money can't buy that kind of ink.