brunobham.jpgAs part of the promotion for the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie Bruno, GQ magazine runs photos of Cohen-as-Bruno cavorting on the field with the football team at Birmingham High School in the Valley. He's wearing very little, and the movie is R-rated and offensive to some gays, so there's controversy from, among others, LAUSD Supt. Ramon Cortines. Heck, they could just chalk it up to Birimgham's long Hollywood association. It was the high school for Encino when Valleywood kids — such as Sally Field, in her Gidget era — actually went to public school. The football field was, I believe, built with a major fundraising push from Dick Van Dyke. If you want to go way back, before it was a high school Birmingham was a World War II Army hospital where Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz and other stars performed for the wounded. In Marlon Brando's first starring screen role, a year before "Streetcar Named Desire," he played a paralyzed vet who (angrily, of course) rolled his wheelchair around Birmingham. Jack Webb also starred in The Men.

Mark Seliger / GQ.com

© 2003-2009   •  About LA Observed  •  Email the editor
LA Biz Observed
4:03 PM Fri | CBS and ABC have far bigger fish to fry - namely whether their stations can get back the auto and retail advertising that fell off a cliff in 2009.
Native Intelligence
Phil Wallace | Searching for answers after a third loss this year.
Deanne Stillman | Jihad and cash offers meet American soldiers during the Gulf War, and beyond.
Iris Schneider | After a tough year financially, the Museum of Contemporary Art put on a gala party to celebrate with 1,000 of its closest friends.
Bill Boyarsky
One of the last of Doug Ring’s many good deeds was a visit to the Los Angeles Times editorial board with members of Housing LA, an organization advocating affordable housing for the thousands of residents being forced out of the city by high rents.
Jenny Burman
Thinking more about buying less.
Here in Malibu
The close-up.
Sponsors
Jewish Journal logo
The California Wellness Foundation
Playa Vista ad
Blogads

Blogads Los Angeles network

Get RSS Feeds
of LA Observed
LA Observed publishes several Real Simple Syndication feeds for easy scanning of headlines. If you wish to subscribe to a feed, most popular RSS readers will do it for you. You can also enter the web address from the XML button below or click on a specific feed. For more help with RSS, try here or here.




Add to Google