Monday, June 20, 1949
Approach of Bowl Season Recalls Dramatic Fight of Artie Mason Carter for Showplace
By CATHARINE MARTIN
Many people have dreams, some few like Mrs. Artie Mason Carter make them come true.
It took six years of her life, left her in poor health and didn’t enrich her pocket by a penny, but Mrs. Carter has her memories and a few kind words written about her, and these, she says, are her life.
She opened a book written by Isabel Morse Jones about the Hollywood Bowl, turned to a photograph of herself, younger and all smiles, and read the caption, “Artie Mason Carter, master-builder and arch-dreamer of Hollywood Bowl.”
“That’s all the credit I could ever want,” she said.
Once Hollywood’s woman-of-the-decade, Mrs. Carter now lives in semi-retirement but with her life filled with friends, music, and memories of the days when she breathed life into Hollywood Bowl and led its first faltering steps until it became established as world-famous in the musical world.
She was full of money raising schemes, and when established men of finance knew she had tried the impossible, the money poured in.
“Once we had Detroit night and parked all the Fords free. Everybody thought I had lost my wits sacrificing all that money the bowl made from parking fees,” she said.
But Mrs. Carter’s mind was hot running in reverse. The next morning she hit Ford dealers for contributions in payment for the free publicity she had given them.
“But I hadn’t surprised them with my visit,” she said. “They laughed and told me they expected me, and had signed checks ready.”
As a matter of fact it was Mrs. Carter who got the surprise, in the form of an unexpected contribution from Ford headquarters in Detroit.
She told her story of a fabulous outdoor gathering place in Hollywood where a quarter of a million people paid 25 cents to hear Symphonies Under the Stars to a major magazine and got the story printed.
Then because she had gotten publicity the county couldn’t have bought for a million dollars, she asked for $100,000 to be spent on improvements – and got it.
But it is not in these big gifts that Mrs. Carter relishes. Most of the financial troubles she took to the people who attended bowl concerts, and she was never disappointed in their response.
“The first $10,000 was raised in pennies,” she said. “And I found that when you ask for pennies from heaven, you sometimes get nickels and dimes, and even a rare check for $1000.”
Mrs. Carter retired in 1926 because of failing health and said that she is now far enough away to look back on her work as history.
But Mrs. Carter is still not far enough away that she can tell the story without alternating between great excitement and occasional tears, not of disappointment but brought on when she remembers some act of unusual kindness.
A master of the dramatic, Mrs. Carter used her natural flair to get what she wanted – for the bowl. She turned her nose up at nothing that would gain her goal.
Mrs. Carter wanted Hollywood bowl for the people, with concerts at a price they could afford, and most of all a great community spirit to push it onward. She was willing to lay down her life for the bowl, and once came frighteningly close to doing it.
The city had plans to resurface Highland Ave. and failed to respond to her pleas that they hold off on the job until the end of the bowl season.
“I went like a lady and asked them all, the Chamber of Commerce, city officials, everyone interested in the project, and like men do they each passed the buck.”
“I knew that if the bowl were closed that season still in debt it would never open again,” she recalled, “and there was only one thing left for me to do – I had to stop the steam rollers myself.”
Nobody, even her late husband, Dr. J. J. Carter, believed her when she said she would go down and tell the workmen that if they started the steam rollers down Highland they would crush her down with the pavement.
So she went alone, pleaded with the men operating the machines and when she was refused, Mrs. Carter took her stand in front of the rollers, watched the driver obey the signal to start the giant machine moving toward her.
Still she stood her ground, but found to her surprise that neighbors looking out the windows, friends who had come to the scene and children playing on the street all decided they would stand or be run down with Mrs. Carter.
“There was nothing the workmen could do in the face of such a crowd of people,” Mrs. Carter said, “but stop the rollers before they hit us.”
She and others were burned by the steam from the engine as it pushed down toward them, but the resurfacing was postponed until the end of the bowl season and Mrs. Carter had won her first victory.
Her second great triumph was the paying of the mortgage.
It was nearly the end of the same season, the second, and Mrs. Carter felt the year must not end with $14,000 still owed on the mortgage.
So in one of her famous intermission talks, Mrs. Carter asked the crowd to contribute the money, less than a dollar a person, and pay the debt.
“The people stood up and offered their contributions, some as much as a hundred dollars, most smaller,” she said. “And before they stopped we had $21,000.”
Counting on such a response, Mrs. Carter had gotten the mortgage from the bank, held it up for the crowd to see, set fire to it, and held the burning paper till her fingers were singed.
That was her night of victory. Mrs. Carter’s dream had come true, and the people owned Hollywood Bowl.
