Actor Eddie Albert, an engaged resident of Pacific Palisades who served as the town’s 22nd honorary mayor from 1996 to 1998, passed away on May 27 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 99. Albert, who had an entertainment career that spanned radio, stage, movies and television, was an icon of the Palisades, having lived for over 60 years in a home on Amalfi Drive that he purchased from silent film star Billie Dove. He is perhaps best known for his starring role in television’s ‘Green Acres’ and for his Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor in ‘Roman Holiday’ and ‘The Heartbreak Kid.’ Eddie Albert was born Eddie Albert Heimberger in Rock Island, Illinois on April 22, 1906. His father was involved in real estate business, causing the family to move to Minneapolis. Albert attended the University of Minnesota until his junior year, when he decided to get a full-time job managing movie theaters, in which he performed magic tricks before each show. He continued to work in entertainment, forming a singing trio that found success performing on the radio. The group played at stations in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago and New York, until finally breaking up. After the breakup, Albert moved to New York and sang in clubs around New York City for $3 a night, while living above a speakeasy on 48th St. He and Grace Bradt then formed a singing duet and went on NBC Radio for a year as ‘The Honeymooners’Grace and Eddie.’ Acting scouts discovered Albert soon after, and signed him for a Broadway show, ‘Room Service,’ and the movie version of ‘Brother Rat,’ and then the Rodgers and Hart musical ‘The Boys of Syracuse.’ When World War II broke out, Albert joined the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant, junior grade, and fought in the Pacific at Tarawa and other islands. In 1994 he was awarded the Navy’s Distinguished Public Service Award for dedication and heroic efforts on board the U.S.S. Sheridan during the battle of Tarawa in 1943. Albert married Margo ne’ Maria Margarita Guadelupe Teresa Estella Bolado Castilla y O’Donnell in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York in 1945. They had two children. His son Edward Albert, born in 1951, became an actor, married and has a daughter, Thais. His daughter Maria, born in 1954, is also married and has a daughter, Mia. Margo passed away in 1985. Eddie Albert served in a number of noble endeavors in his lifetime. In 1972, he was invited to act as a consultant to Maurice Strong, the Secretary General of the U.S. Conference on Environment, which was held in Stockholm, Sweden. He also met with national and local officials in an effort to reduce pollution to the environment, and went on NBC Television speaking out against the pesticide DDT. Although he was attacked for his stance on DDT, he stood firm, and was recognized as being correct when scientific studies confirmed that DDT was in fact highly dangerous to the environment. In the 1970’s, Albert spoke at more than 50 universities, businesses, industrial groups and citizen gatherings in which he raised awareness about the pollution of the world’s ecology and steps that could be taken to reduce it. On Earth Day in 1970, he was one of the keynote speakers at a major environmental rally at Stanford University. Albert was also very involved in organic farming and gardening, as evidenced by the crops that could be found at his Amalfi home in the front and back yards. Depending on the season, he grew tomatoes, radishes, beets, carrots, chives, rosemary, and even tall rows of corn. Albert took his farming skills to the inner-city in the 1970’s, establishing City Children’s Farms in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and many other cities. Eddie Albert once said of growing older that ‘The problem with the men is you have to defrost them from believing that at age 65 you’re finished.’ Indeed, Albert kept going in his later years, working in his garden, and serving the town that had been his home for so long. Whether through his films and television shows, his garden and environmental work, or his years of service, the Palisades will always remember Eddie Albert as one of the pillars of the town, and as a friend to the community. ‘I’m absolutely in love with the Palisades,’ he said in 1999 at a birthday party for all residents 90 years and older. ‘It’s so pleasant here’the flowers, the people. I’ve been in a lot of places in the world and I’ve never been in one where the people are so warm and so comfortable with themselves. It’s wonderful that you can come together like this, and I’m honored to be part of it.’ Albert, who was 93 at the time, added: ‘I’m still trying to do my part to help people. So use the telephone, if you have time, and come and have a sandwich.’

The Steven and Didi Carr Reuben home is not only a visual delight, but a respite for the soul as well. With a personality larger than life, the effervescent Didi ushered me into their condominium which is just a short walk from the village. The rooms are alive with color, vibrancy and interesting angles. Didi simply says, ‘This whole house is my husband and me.’ One level into the living room, the deep green ceiling circled with small black-and-white tiles, the lavender walls, the blue fading to a white stucco around the fireplace, the printed red sofa delight your eyes. The room is full of curios from their world travels. ‘It’s really a visual travel journal of the last 20 years,’ Didi remarks. ‘The gifts of travel are that our eyes are opened to the world,’ says Steven, the rabbi at Kehillat Israel. ‘There’s a certain humility to it. It’s easy to think of our community as the center of the world. The humility comes from the recognition that we are all one’interconnected.’ He points out that they had traveled to the part of India that was hit last December by the tsunami. When he and Didi heard about it, there was a visceral sense of connection to place and the people. The Carr Reubens feel lucky to be in Pacific Palisades. When Steve joined K.I. 19 years ago, the synagogue leaders decided that they wanted their rabbi to live in the community. They loaned a down payment that the Carr Reubens used to buy a condo on Via de la Paz. They settled into the community, and Didi started a Jazz Night at Mort’s Oak Room the first Monday of every month. The informal setting gives her a chance to showcase her sultry voice and her expansive, fun personality. Her husband, who was principal percussionist with the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra for three years, plays in the band. Ten years ago, they moved to their current residence on Haverford. Didi worked with the architect and contractor to reshape the space. Originally it had a loft that was part of a ‘master suite.’ They closed off the loft to make a third-floor bedroom that includes a small office for Didi. The lower level of the ‘master suite’ became an expanded bathroom with a large walk-in closet and small exercise room. The bedroom is a deep salmon color, although as Steve jokingly points out, ‘Didi doesn’t even like fish.’ Didi explains, ‘That’s why I call the color a deep coral.’ The fireplace in the bedroom is tiled and inset with ‘coral’ grout. The sofa is purple, but the wood floor is a shade of green that surprisingly ties the whole scheme together. The floor also has a tint which gives it the feel of a clean smooth surface that blends into the surroundings. Didi confesses that when they were in the middle of the construction process, ‘The contractor, the architect and the painter didn’t like any of my choices. I had absolutely no support for the colors.’ Undaunted, she went ahead anyway. ‘I like to be controversial.’ Above the master bed, four small square spaces are constructed in the wall.When Didi asked the architect what was supposed to go in the spaces, the architect said, ‘You’ll figure out what goes up there.’ During the couple’s travels, they looked for various objects that might work, like masks or carvings, but neither of them could agree. Then, on a trip in New Zealand off the beaten path, they discovered an art gallery called ‘Bits of David’. They went inside and instantly both knew that it was bits of David (blue mini-sculptures of a noise, an ear, a mouth, and an eye) that had to go in the spaces. Asked how he feels about the color scheme, Steven replies sweetly, ‘I love it, because I love her.’ Didi adds, ‘I knew he loved me, but if I didn’t know before decorating, I knew it then.’ The rabbi’s job is a 24-hour-a-day job, seven days a week. His office is open from 9 to 5, and in the evenings he has meetings, teaches, counsels, and is on call for his congregants. He comments, ‘The synagogue is full of wonderful people. They are so good to us. It’s a privilege to be part of their lives.’ The Carr Reubens go away a month every year on a mini-sabbatical. ‘The congregation recognizes that when I’m here, I give myself 100 percent and that I need time off to think and recharge my batteries,’ Steve says. He and Didi travel extensively during that time and agree that one of their best choices was the William Ricketts sanctuary in Pmara Kutata, outside Melbourne, Australia. A white artist’s tribute to the plight of the aborigines, ‘it’s one of the most powerfully spiritual places in the world,’ says Didi. ‘The sculptures emerge out of the trees.’ Steven adds, ‘The sanctuary is so in touch with the essence of life. It reminds us that more unites us than divides us. As we’ve traveled, we realize kids’ smiles are the same everywhere, laughter is the same. Adults’ desire for their kids to be safe is the same everywhere in the world.’ When they’re in town, the Carr Reubens meet every night around 11 in their ‘chill room’ for a date. It’s a room with no telephone, no windows, a sofa and two chairs. Neutral with color accents, it’s an intimate and cozy place where both can unwind at the end of a day. Rabbi Reuben has written several books, including ‘Children of Character,’ and is currently completing ‘How to Answer Your Children’s Most Difficult Questions.’ Didi, in addition to her duties as the rabbi’s wife, has several other concurrent projects. She has put together ‘Didi’s Sleepaway Camp for the Terminally Vain,’ a 15-day trip to Costa Rica which can include plastic surgery or dentistry. Last year she recorded a CD entitled ‘My Romance,’ featuring her favorite love songs. Her husband adds, ‘I wanted to hear her voice when she wasn’t with me.’ Their daughter Gable is currently filming a movie ‘National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze 2: Semester at Sea.’ Twenty-one years ago, the children from the preschool where Steven was a rabbi decorated the canopy under which the Carr Reubens were married with designs and the children’s names. A fabric artist filled in some of the cloth, making it three-dimensional. The canopy hangs in their hallway. In the center of the frame are the vows they recited that day: ‘This ring symbolizes the love of our home, the home of our love and the spiritual sanctuary they create together.’ Regretting that my time in Didi and Steven’s ‘spiritual sanctuary’ was ending, I kept up our conversation as we parted in the driveway. As a mother, I steered our conversation to children and spirituality. Didi urged her husband to tell me the story of a child in his Sunday School class. Steve asked the little girl what she was doing. She replied, ‘I’m drawing a picture of God.’ Steve told her, ‘No one knows what he looks like.’ The girl replied, ‘Of course not, because I haven’t finished my picture yet.’