The actor Beau Bridges was in town last week ostensibly to shoot a movie—“A Christmas Mystery” with Petaluma filmmaker Ali Afshar— but while on location he found himself inexplicably drawn to local history, specifically that of his father, the legendary film and TV actor from Petaluma, Lloyd Bridges.
Accompanied by his wife Wendy and French bulldog Buster, Beau began his inquiry leafing through old yearbooks at Petaluma High School, from which his father graduated in 1930. They then set out to find the house his father grew up in, which they believed to be somewhere on the hillside behind the high school.
Driving along Hill Boulevard, Beau spotted an old schoolmate of mine, Harry Lewis, standing outside his house, and randomly pulled over to ask his help. Harry contacted me, and I agreed to do some quick research and meet with the Bridges the next day at Volpi’s Restaurant, where Harry tends bar on the weekends.
What unfolded in Volpi’s historic back barroom the next day was a Petaluma version of the popular TV show, “Finding Your Roots.” A curious and congenial raconteur, Beau made it clear he wasn’t looking for the dry facts of genealogy—a family member had already undertaken that task—he wanted to hear the stories.
That included stories about Volpi’s, which, during his father’s teen years in the 1920s, was an Italian grocery with a backroom speakeasy. He was also eager to hear about the Phoenix Theater across the street, where he understood his grandfather, Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., had worked as a movie projectionist in the ’20s when it was the California Theater. His father used to watch screenings of the same film over and over when he was young to study acting techniques. [1]
Harry and I were more than happy to oblige his request. Growing up in Petaluma in the 1960s, we were both big fans of “Sea Hunt,” the adventure TV series Lloyd Bridges starred in, as well as his many films, including the classic western “High Noon” and the madcap comedy “Airplane.” After sharing local tales and initiating Beau in the Volpi’s tradition of signing a dollar bill and affixing it to the bar’s ceiling, we got down to discussing his family roots.
Lloyd Bridges, Jr.—“Bud” as he was known in Petaluma—moved to town when he was 10, along with his mother Hattie and older sister Belle. His parents had divorced a decade earlier, a year after Bud was born, with Hattie citing her husband’s relentless “amusement” with prize fights, baseball games and automobile rides, while Lloyd Bridges, Sr. complained of her monotony. [2]
Lloyd Sr. remained in San Francisco, where ran a hotel and boarding house, while Hattie moved with the children to San Rafael initially, and then to Petaluma in 1923, purchasing a home near the high school at 11 Spring Street, named for a natural spring on the site. [3]
Petaluma was in the midst of its heady reign as “The Egg Basket of the World.” Bud quickly distinguished himself as a gifted singer—performing at Sunday services in the Congregational Church at Fifth and B streets—and a talented performer in plays and musicals staged at the high school and at the California Theater. Local critics noted he had “a natural talent for the stage, a flair for comedy, and knack for serious acting as well.” [4]
His best friend was Art Parent, who would later go on to serve as Petaluma’s mayor and owner of Parent Funeral Parlor. Art noted that Bud was always the star in their plays together, because unlike Art, he could improvise. One night while they were performing at the California Theater, Bud fell coming up the back stage steps and knocked himself out, leaving Art to recite his lines over and over until Bud finally came to. [5]
“Oddly,” said Beau, “what my dad talked most about growing up in Petaluma was playing basketball.”
A fierce competitor, Bud lettered in four sports and served as captain of the basketball team. After finishing high school, he took a brief job at the local Bank of America, before enrolling in UCLA to pursue a political science degree. He spent much of his time however on the basketball court and the stage. [6]
While Bud was in high school, his mother got remarried to Clarence Breuillot, a state contractor. In the late 1930s, Breuillot was appointed foreman of the newly constructed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the couple left Petaluma for Berkeley. [7]
After UCLA, Bud spent five years working in New York theater, before being signed as a stock actor with Columbia Pictures in 1941. The same year, he and his wife welcomed their first child, Lloyd Vernet Bridges III, whom they nicknamed “Beau” after a character in “Gone with the Wind.” Beau’s first visit to Petaluma came three years later, when his parents visited Art Parent. [8]
A dogged performer, Bud appeared in more than seven dozen films, most of them potboilers and B-movies, before finally getting his big breakthrough in a film called “Home of the Brave,” in 1949. That same year, his second son, Jeff Bridges, was born. He would go on to become an Academy Award-winning actor.
In 1951, a budding young Petaluma newspaper columnist named Bill Soberanes arranged to stage the West Coast premiere of Bud’s latest movie, “The Whistle Stop at Eaton Hills,” at Petaluma’s Mystic Theater (then called the State Theater).
Soberanes arranged for a police escort from the city limits to bring Bud into town and to the Hotel Petaluma, where a banquet with 75 of his old friends and former teachers from Petaluma High awaited him. Art Parent served as master of ceremonies, and the city’s mayor read a proclamation declaring it Lloyd Bridges Day. Bud was then publicly sworn in as a member of the National Good Egg Club, taking an oath to “give due respect to the egg.” [9]
“I feel like I’m in high school all over again,” beamed Bud. He then lauded his music teacher, Agnes Bravo, for helping him learn his first operetta. [10]
Art remained Bud’s Petaluma connection over the years, as did Soberanes, who later enlisted him in helping to promote the World Wristwrestling Championship Tournaments. [11] When a TV show came to Petaluma in 1985 to film Bud’s early beginnings, Art filled in for Bud, who was on location as usual, taking the film crew on a tour to the Bridges home, the Phoenix Theater, and Fundas’ Candy Store beside the Mystic, where Bud and Art competed in high school for the attention of Dorothy Beidleman—a contest Art won, eventually convincing her to marrying him. [12]
After Harry and I concluded our roots presentation with Beau, we escorted him, Wendy and Buster across the street to meet Phoenix Theater manager Tom Gaffey, who started working at the theater when he, Harry and I were in high school together.
Gaffey told us Soberanes was the source of the story that Beau’s grandfather had been the projectionist at the California Theater when Bud was growing up. To Beau’s disappointment, I had to dispel that lore.
Lloyd Sr. had owned a movie theater in San Leandro, where Bud was born in 1913. [13] But the next year he returned to the family hotel business in San Francisco. Shortly after Bud graduated high school, Lloyd Sr. took over the legendary Vance Hotel in Eureka, and lived out his days as a local hotelier and real estate mogul. [14]
As a consolation, Gaffey informed Beau—a three-time Emmy, two-time Golden Globe, and one-time Grammy Award winner—that as a legacy performer at the theater, he was entitled to make free use of the Phoenix for theatrical or musical productions. Beau appeared to give the offer serious consideration, expressing his love of serendipitous opportunities.
Before Beau and Wendy left to view the Bridges family home, Beau shared how he and his father bonded over playing tennis and one-on-one basketball together. In his father’s footsteps, Beau attended UCLA, where he joined the basketball team coached by the legendary John Wooden.
“My dad was always extremely competitive. But as he grew close to my age now—I’m 80—I realized I could handily beat him anytime I wanted. So to make it even, I started tanking balls into the net, but carefully, so he wouldn’t know what I was doing. One day, after three sets of tennis on a hot summer day, I looked at him sitting tired and slumped over on the bench, and I was overcome with a wave of melancholy.
“Dad,” I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
There was a long pause. “What makes you think I’m going to go first?” he said. There was a little piece of a smile on his face, but he was dead serious.
Petaluman Lloyd Bridges died in 1998 at the age of 85, after starring in dozens of TV series and more than 150 feature films. [15]
******
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 24, 2022.
RESPONSES FROM LOCALS
Beau Bridges’s search the local roots of his father, the actor Lloyd Bridges, prompted an outpouring of reminiscences from locals. Many people with family members who went to school with Lloyd dug out the old yearbooks they still keep from that era.
A number of people shared that their mother, grandmother, or aunt laid claim to being Lloyd’s date at the 1930 Petaluma High senior prom. Yvonne (Armour) Cornilson, who appeared in school musicals with Lloyd, appears to be the most likely candidate.
Tammie Tower-Snider said her grandmother told stories about riding to school on the handlebars of Lloyd’s bike when they were young. As the school was only a half a block away from his house on Spring Street, it must have been a short ride.
Marion Johnson said her mother recounted how Lloyd carried her books home from school for her. Lauri Carlson’s grandmother taught at Petaluma High in the 1920s, and had Lloyd for study hall.
Linda Parker shared that A Tale of Two Cities was required reading when Lloyd was in high school. You had to write your name on a list pasted in the back. When she was a student 30 years later, they were still using the same old copies. She got the one with Lloyd’s signature in it, and never gave it back.
Betty Prior remembered Lloyd’s return to Petaluma in 1951 for the West Coast premiere of a movie he was starring in, and visiting her and other students at Petaluma High.
Melissa Musso James shared the menu from her parents’ Little Hill restaurant on Main Street, where Lloyd Bridges was feted following the West Coast premiere of his 1951 film The Whistle at Eaton Fall at the State Theater.
Some people shared that their fathers and uncles telling stories about attending school with Lloyd. Melinda Webb Zerrenner said her father, longtime Petaluma judge Rollie Webb, was a schoolmate of Lloyd’s, and took the family to see him whenever they visited Los Angeles.
Gig Schuster Jones said her grandfather Cap Schuster was Lloyd’s high school physical education teacher. When the family sat around watching Lloyd in his hit TV series Sea Hunt, her grandfather often boasted that he was the one who taught Lloyd to snorkel.
FOOTNOTES:
- “TV and Film Actor Lloyd Bridges Dies,” Washington Post, March 11, 1998.
- “Prize Fight Cause of Rout of Cupid,” Oakland Tribune, September 13, 1914.
- “Will Move Here from San Rafael,” Petaluma Argus, January 18, 1923; “Sold 7th Street Property,” Petaluma Courier, September 18, 1926; Katie Watts, “Names of Streets and Places,” Petaluma Argus Courier, March 26, 2008.
- “Lloyd Bridges Stars in High School Play,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 5, 1929.
- Bill Soberanes, “Art Parent: A Petaluma Legend,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 20, 1991.
- “Lloyd Bridges in Film at ‘Cal’,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 20, 1936; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Bridges
- “Local Couple Are Wedded,” Petaluma Courier, July 26, 1927; “Daughter Arrives for Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Stout,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 16, 1933; “Fire Damages 11 Spring Street,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, December 2, 1938 “Real Estate Deals Closed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 21, 1941; “Clarence Breuillot Obituary,” Los Gatos Times, October 23, 1970.
- “Recent Guests at Arthur Parent Home,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 25, 1944.
- “Wonderful to be Back,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1951.
- “Wonderful to be Back,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1951.
- Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1981; “Petaluma Memories of the Late Lloyd Bridges,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 24, 1998.
- Bill Soberanes column, “Lloyd Bridges TV Special,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 26, 1985.
- “Motion Picture News: Best Theater, San Leandro,” Oakland Tribune, November 22, 1913.
- “Lloyd Bridges Sr. Dies,” Humboldt Standard, May 1, 1962.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Bridges
