The Pacific Palisades Couple Married in 1949

William and Lia Schallert’s ‘celebrity’ marriage of 58 years is a testament to the fact that Hollywood relationships can last if there is love, respect and commitment. ‘We’re lucky,’ says Lia during a recent interview. ‘We were in it for the long haul.’ This meant having a philosophy of ‘live and let live,’ Bill says. ‘She has been very tolerant of me.’ Their early years together were not easy, because Bill’s acting career did not take off financially until he was in his early 30s, and the couple struggled. ‘But Lia never gave up on me,’ Bill says. Lia grew up in Virginia and worked in an army hospital during World War II (an experience she later chronicled in her 2005 novel, ‘Mary Lou’s War’). After the war, she moved to Hollywood to study acting, which is where she met Bill. A native of Los Angeles, he attended a Catholic seminary and was contemplating the priesthood–‘There was something appealing about the theatrical aspect of being in front of a congregation’–but he abandoned that career path to pursue acting classes at UCLA, before entering the army in 1943. After the war, he joined a group of actors who founded the Circle Theater, the first professional theater-in-the-round in the U.S. Lia and Bill met at that theater in June 1948 during a production of ‘Rain,’ directed by Charlie Chaplin. One Monday, when Bill was in the box office, Lia came in to work on reservations. ‘She had on a blue top and blue plaid pants,’ he recalls, ‘and she crawled on the files and laid there.’ ‘There was no place to sit,’ Lia says. That night they went to a silent movie on Fairfax with two other friends, and their relationship blossomed from there. Although Bill didn’t own a car, his parents were both writers and had three cars, so he borrowed one. (Edwin Schallert was the Los Angeles Times drama editor and his wife Elsa wrote for magazines like ‘Photoplay’ and ‘Modern Screen.’) Bill and Lia were married at the Santa Barbara Mission on February 26, 1949. Bill was in a play, but he took Saturday night off and the theater was dark on Sunday and Monday, enabling them to drive up the coast past Santa Maria for a three-day honeymoon. They moved into their first apartment on Fountain Avenue with a table, a hotplate, two chairs and a $25 bed. Their neighbors wondered when they would move in the rest of their stuff, ‘but we didn’t have anything else,’ Bill remembers. ‘We ate a lot with my parents that first year.’ Lia soon became pregnant with Joe, the first of their four boys. ‘Oona O’Neil Chaplin (Charlie’s wife) gave me all my maternity clothes,’ she says. Another friend, Marjorie Steele, who was married to Huntington Hartford, heir to the A & P grocery chain fortune, sent the Schallerts 10 cardboard trunks filled with baby clothes and paid for their doctor for a year. Lia was soon pregnant again, but acting didn’t start paying the bills until 1951, when Schallert began his long film and TV career with a role in ‘The Man From Planet X,’ followed by other science-fiction classics such as ‘Gog’ (1954), ‘Them!’ (1954), ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ (1957) and ‘The Monolith Monsters’ (1959). In 1952, Bill received a Fulbright Fellowship to study British repertory theater in Great Britain, and Lia and the two boys joined him. They were in London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. When they returned to the U.S., they stayed with Lia’s parents until they could cobble together enough money for a house’way out in Pacific Palisades. In 1955, the Schallerts moved into a drafty home off Bienveneda, before finding a place they wanted in the Huntington. There were two problems: (l) the $3,000 down payment and (2) another couple had already said they wanted it and would be back in 15 minutes with the money. Even though Bill didn’t have steady employment, Lia asked, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ They told the owner, ‘We’ll take it.’ Bill’s next question was, ‘When will the check clear?’ Lia’s parents sold their home to help the Schallerts buy their new one, and both families lived together the first couple of years. At one point, in that era before credit cards, the Schallerts took out a loan to buy a toy poodle. A week later he died. They both laugh now about how they had to continue to pay for a dead dog. ‘We weren’t too practical about money,’ Lia says. In 1963, the Schallerts rented their home to actor Cliff Robertson and moved to New York, where Bill played Patty Lane’s ever-patient father in ‘The Patty Duke Show’ for three seasons. ‘For the first time in our lives, we lived like tourists,’ Lia says. ‘We had a full-time housekeeper and we ate at all the best restaurants and went to all the best shows.’ Bill worked steadily after that as a regular on such series as ‘Dobie Gillis’ (playing literature teacher Mr. Pomfrit), ‘Get Smart,’ ‘The Nancy Drew Mysteries,’ ‘The New Gidget’ and even the soap opera ‘Santa Barbara.’ At age 85, he still goes out for auditions, and he recently played Vanna White’s father in a commercial. ‘If you believe you’re going to work–and Lia believed in me–it all works out,’ Bill says. ‘You have to have the right attitude and get lucky.’ The Schallerts have four boys. Joe, who received his master’s degree from Yale in the classics and a Ph.D. in Slavic languages at Berkeley, is a professor at Toronto University. Edwin, who graduated from Stanford and Harvard Law School and was a clerk for Thurgood Marshall, is currently in private practice. Mark graduated from Stanford, earned his law degree from Hastings, practiced, retired and is now a freelance writer. Brendon, who received his master’s degree from NYU, teaches English at Roosevelt High and is working on a book.

Eva Schroeder, a resident of Sunrise Senior Living who died last October at age 90, bequeathed $30,000 for the library at Palisades Charter Elementary. The history of how the legacy came to the elementary school started with a young girl growing up in Poland in the 1930s. When Eva was a teenager, it was forbidden to be in the company of Jews, but she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see her friends and would sneak over to their homes on her bike, play and then bike home, already showing an independent nature that was to guide her throughout her life. Among her aunt’s many books and belongings at Sunrise, Palisadian Barbara Schroeder found a well-worn lyric sheet for an old German anti-Hitler song called ‘Your Thoughts Are Free.’ When World War II came, Eva’s father was pressed into service by the Russians and then killed when he tried to get water to drink because they thought he was deserting. Eva immigrated to Burlington, Vermont in 1950, leaving her mother and two brothers behind in Germany. Although she had studied some English, she perfected the language by watching soap operas. Once she felt that she could speak perfectly, she found a job in a small library in Geneseo, New York. Her next job was at the New York Public Library in New York City, where she eventually became department head. Eva sponsored Barbara’s parents to immigrate to America from Germany in 1952. They moved to Tiffin, Ohio, and when she was in her 40s Eva followed them and worked at the Heidelberg College library for a few years. From there she moved to a library in Pacific Grove, California. ‘She was the last of the old-maid librarians,’ Schroeder said lovingly of Eva. ‘My aunt was very matter-of-fact and practical and always did the right thing,’ she said. ‘At 65 she checked into a senior apartment and gave up her keys to her car, saying ‘I can walk and take the bus’.’ About a year ago, Barbara received a call from the senior center in Santa Cruz because they were concerned about her aunt, that she was having trouble with memory because of the onset of dementia. While Barbara worried about moving her aunt to a new environment in Pacific Palisades, she knew she could visit her every day. As part of Eva’s mental exercises, Barbara would ask her, ‘How old are you?’ ‘You ask me that question every day,’ Eva replied. ‘It changes every year, why bother remembering?’ Her aunt loved dark chocolate, so one day Barbara brought her candy from Intemperantia (a store located on Antioch). ‘This is good chocolate,’ Eva told her. ‘You can bring this every day.’ Eva reflected for a minute and then said, ‘I can’t eat this every day; it’s not good for my figure.’ Barbara reminded her, ‘You’re 90.’ Eva thought again, agreed and ate chocolate every day’along with an apple because she was convinced that fruit was the secret to her longevity. Residents of Sunrise can go to the rooftop to enjoy the sunshine and view the mountains and ocean. On July 4, the residents go up to see the fireworks, which are launched from high school football field. ‘That was the first time my aunt had seen fireworks in 40 years,’ Barbara said. ‘It was the highlight of her year.’ Sitting on the rooftop one day, Eva decided to leave money for the public school library where her greatniece Glenn and greatnephew Gage had gone to school. Although the two kids are now in a private high school, Barbara agreed with her aunt’s choice. ‘It’s important to support public schools because they are such an important part of the neighborhood,’ she told the Palisadian-Post. ‘I was so happy with the education my children received at Palisades Elementary.’ Barbara went on to have her own career as a reporter and television anchor. She moved to Los Angeles in 1992, where she was immediately put in the anchor seat for Fox during the riots following the Rodney King verdict. She has won several Emmys as well as co-authoring ‘The Diet For Teenagers Only.’ She is currently producing short films. ‘She was a great role model for a young career woman because she had a job, a car and great clothes,’ Barbara said of her aunt. ‘I think she found a lot of comfort in books,’ Barbara continued. ‘She’d be really happy to know that she’s keeping reading alive.’ ‘The gift was so generous,’ Palisades principal Tami Weiser said. ‘It’s breathed new life into the library. It has always been a great structure, but now we can take it to the next level.’ ‘We’re going to upgrade the library and put in new wood chairs and tables,’ librarian Genie Merchant said. ‘We’ll make a comfortable reading area for the kids, with a window seat and beanbag chairs.’ A portion of the money will also be allotted for new books, as well as a new carpet, six additional computers and an accelerated reading program.

Cari Marie Felson and Scott Anderson Waterbury exchanged wedding vows on December 16 in a sunset ceremony and reception at the Pacific Palisades home of Jena and Michael King, the bride’s sister and brother-in-law. Teddy and Audrey King, the bride’s nephew and niece, were their attendants. The bride, daughter of Mr. and Mr. Jack Felson of Pacific Palisades, graduated from the College of Marin and the San Francisco Academy of Art, majoring in television and cinema. She is the stage manager for the Dr. Phil Show. The bridegroom, son of Lt. Col. and Mrs. Mark Henry Waterbury III U.S.M.C. (ret.), of Dallas, Texas, graduated from Oklahoma State University, where he majored in business and played varsity football. He is the national sales manager of King Architectural Metals in Dallas. The couple honeymooned in Paris and make their home in Dallas.