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July 23, 2009
Sue Pascoe , Staff Writer
Until he retired in June, Palisadian Darryl Stolper taught eighth-grade history at Paul Revere Middle School, but not many students nor their parents realized that in Stolper's 'other life' this soft-spoken man taught actress Sally Field to surf, starred in commercials, hunted and sold rattlesnakes, and amassed a collection of classic 45 records and 'Old West' artifacts.
Stolper's family moved from the Los Feliz area to Pacific Palisades in 1950, and the beach quickly became a way of life for the youth, who began surfing at State Beach in Santa Monica Canyon. He graduated from Paul Revere Junior High School in 1956, (the year it opened), along with future actor Ryan O'Neal. He then attended University High because Palisades High hadn't yet been built'it was still All Hollows Farm, where Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher lived.
After high school, Stolper spent countless hours surfing, and attending Santa Monica College. 'I took every class that looked interesting,' he says, adding the price was right: just $2.50 a semester.
In order to earn money, he ventured into local mountains and desserts to catch rattlesnakes for zoos. 'I would catch the snakes with a hook and drop them in a flour sack,' Stolper says. He also sold snakes to Hermosa Reptile for $5 and $10, until 1962, when a rattler bit him on the left forearm.
As the L.A. Times later reported ('Fang Victim Frees Rattler He Caught,' September 19, 1963): 'Stolper last summer suffered the worst rattlesnake bite which anybody is known to have survived. At UCLA Medical Center Stolper was given 35 blood transfusions, 26 plasma transfusions and 29 vials of anti-venom to keep him alive.'
Returning to Santa Monica College, Stolper received a call from the school reminding him it was a two-year school (he had accumulated 134 hours units) and it was time to move on. After earning a degree in physical anthropology from Cal State Northridge, he was accepted to a doctorate program in Durham, England in that field. When he and his wife, Lynda, arrived, she got sick almost immediately from the air'black with coal dust'and Stolper dropped out of the program. For the next five months the couple traveled around Europe.
Coming back to California in 1968, Stolper got a job as a record salesman. 'Best job I have ever had,' he said because it started his lifelong love of rhythm-and-blues music. 'I went around the city in hard-to-sell areas.' He also began a vinyl record collection that has grown to about 15,000, mostly 45's and includes blues, rockabilly, R & B and early country'some are vintage Hank Williams. Wearing a T-shirt with the words 'I buy old records,' Stolper still spends weekends at garage sales looking for the rare ones he doesn't have.
For a day, he was the program director for the Johnny Otis weekly FM radio show. Stolper played the blues record 'Shave'em Dry,' sung by Lucille Bogan. 'It was recorded in the 1930s and she was probably quite drunk; the song had a lot of four-letter words in it,' Stolper recalls, adding that FM didn't have language restrictions at that time.
Unfortunately, that was the first night the Otis show was piped into Bullock's and Robinson's men's shops. The radio station callboard lit up, with every caller wanting to know where they could buy the record. The station manager, who didn't share that interest, fired Stolper on the spot.
Stolper started writing liner notes for albums by B.B. King, Gus Jenkins, Jericho Alley and Jimmy Reed. He also tracked down old blues singers and wrote articles about them. He likes the blues because there are so many double entendres in these songs, and favors rhythm-and-blues songs because they tell a story.
'We all listened to R & B and black music, in the 50s,' Stolper says. 'I can listen to a song and know when I heard it and why it was important.'
In 1964, Stolper was hired to teach Sally Field how to surf for the television sitcom 'Gidget,' after an acquaintance and legendary surfer, Mickey Dora, gave ABC executives Stolper's name. A TV Guide article later contained the following vignette: 'When the Screen Gems people signed Sally Field for a new series about the surf set, 'Gidget,' they were in for a bit of a surprise: Sally couldn't surf! To remedy this somewhat serious shortcoming, they assigned surfing expert Darryl Stolper to teach her, and luckily, she proved an apt pupil. 'Her coordination is amazing,' Stolper says. 'She was standing up by her second lesson.''
With his classic surfer look, Stolper segued into commercials, landing the lead in 7-Up, Canadian Dry and beer commercials. With the advent of the 'Godfather' movies in the early 1970s, the blond, blue-eyed Southern California look was replaced with more ethnic-type actors. 'I went from three or four auditions a week to three or four a month,' Stolper says. 'And I wasn't getting those jobs either.'
When Stolper wasn't in college classrooms, he spent days surfing on State Beach, which was also a hangout spot for people from Hollywood. 'We'd hear about the parties and we started to go to them,' Stolper says, admitting that half of the fun of the parties was figuring out how to get in. At one Santa Monica party he crashed in 1964, he met the Beatles, and at a subsequent Hollywood party he nabbed three of their autographs.
In a recent issue of Record Collector News, Stolper wrote about a 1960s party at the house of Cass Elliot of The Mamas and the Papas: 'Cass was living in a tiny house in West Hollywood. The first thing I noticed was that every wall was covered with S&H Green Stamps. I found myself speaking with a heavyset lady in a muumuu. She asked my name and who I knew at the party. I needed a quick response, 'I know everybody, but I don't know you.' 'I'm Cass and this is my house. Enjoy yourself!'
'About 11 p.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriffs pulled up outside and began writing parking violations, some for crimes that may not have been crimes. ('You have too much air in your tires,' or 'The tread has worn off the sides of your tires').'
For the next 10 years, Stolper surfed, picked up a few commercials and worked as an optician fitting glasses for his father, Al, an optometrist. He and Lynda also bought a house in the Alphabet Streets in 1971. Finally using the credential he earned from Northridge in 1965, Stolper began teaching history at Webster Middle School in 1978. He transferred to Audubon, then Revere in 1981. After he retired in June, Stolper told the Palisadian-Post: 'I've seen some changes'some are for the better, others not,' he said, noting that schools used to do a better job of tracking students. 'We're not all the same, not everybody is college material, nor do they have to be,' Stolper says, adding that ending tracking was not advantageous to students. 'We're not like a stagecoach, where the fastest you can go is as fast as the slowest horse.'
He also thinks that standardized testing is a waste of time. 'Teachers teach to the test'which they get in advance,' he says. 'The mark of a good teacher is love of the topic. I was constantly reading to find things to make my class interesting.' Stolper required his eighth grade students to read outside books that corresponded with different periods of U.S. history, such as 'The Octopus' by Frank Norris, 'The Red Badge of Courage' by Stephen Crane and 'Roughing It' by Mark Twain.
'No one wants to carry on the tradition of reading history,' he laments. 'What am I going to do with 25 copies of 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee?''
He taught his sons, Kevin (now an instructor at UCLA in clothing design) and Sean (an attorney at Sony Music) in eighth grade. 'They worked harder than everyone.' His daughter Tammi, whom he did not have as a student, works with his wife in her patient recall business'calling doctors' and dentists' patients to remind them they are due for an appointment.
Now that he's retired, Stolper hopes to use his vast knowledge of blues and R & B to work in the movie industry, helping to place the right music in the right scenes. He worked with G. Marq Roswell on the 2007 film 'The Great Debaters,' set in the 1930s, to ensure that the music was era-appropriate.
Even as he starts another chapter in his life, Stolper says, 'I tell myself I won't miss teaching, but I will.'
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