Dave Sweet, circa 1949, became an influential surfboard shaper. Photo by Joe Quigg.
By Pablo Capra
I
s r e f r u S y l Ear
Archivist for the Topanga Historical Society
n 2005, former Topanga Messenger editor Susan Chasen and I interviewed the Rusts’ daughter Thais (b.1925) about growing up in Lower Topanga. Thais’ memories, many of which we published in the newspaper and re-published in The Topanga Story, presented a vision of our hometown so unfamiliar that it astonished us. One of Thais’ earliest memories was watching the enormous German Graf Zeppelin fly by Topanga Beach on its 1929 trip around the world. A few years later, the zeppelin would become a symbol of Nazi propaganda and carry the swastika. Thais also remembered the gambling ships of the 1930s, which would sometimes anchor off Topanga. They had to stay three miles from the coast to avoid US laws. Holiday fun was had at the annual “Webster Christmas Party for the Children of Malibu,” a 20-year tradition at John L. Webster’s Malibu Courthouse that started in 1932, and drew hundreds. A simpler ritual was collecting honey with painter Laura Way Mathiesen 34
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(1876-1966), who kept her bees in a side canyon that doubled as a shooting range for the police. Thais’ favorite memories were of spending whole summers on the beach with her cousin Marilyn Kays (19242002) and neighbors Dick Carhart and Ida Lee Carrillo (1924-1948). We were at the beach probably from eight or nine in the morning till five or six at night. It didn’t matter how large the waves were; we just had fun…. One day, Marilyn and I went with Ida Lee and her dad to the beach. The three of us got out beyond the waves, not knowing that there was a strong riptide. When we couldn’t get back to shore, Ottie called the Santa Monica lifeguards to rescue us. We were picked up just before Sunset Blvd. We were having a great time, but Ida Lee’s dad was frantic. Ida Lee was the daughter of Octavio “Ottie” (1889-1980) and Bessie Carrillo (1889-1980), the niece of actor Leo Carrillo (1880-1961), and a descendant of one of California’s oldest Spanish families.
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Other swimming options were the bathhouse of Alfred T. Stewart, rebuilt after the 1926 fire and nicknamed The Plunge, and the private swimming pool of actor/Olympian Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) at Las Tunas Beach, where the neighborhood kids liked to jump in from the balcony. Weissmuller was probably a vacation renter of actress Natalie Talmadge (1896-1969), who lived there with her sons Joseph “James” (1922-2007) and Robert “Bob” (1924-2009). She legally changed their surnames to Talmadge to avoid being reminded of her famous ex-husband Buster Keaton (1895-1966). In the early 1940s, actors David Niven (1910-1983) and Errol Flynn (1909-1959) took over the house, with Bing Crosby (1903-1977) and Paulette Goddard (1910-1990) living on either side. In the mid-1940s, it became the Las Tunas Isle Motel. Today it’s a private residence again. After high school, Thais became engaged to Bob Talmadge, but they broke up before the wedding. During World War II, she spent Friday nights scanning the sky for enemy planes
from a lookout tower that was across the street from today’s Getty Villa. In the early 1950s, she was briefly married to a second beach resident, Dave Sykes (1926-2009). However, a third man from the beach was destined to become her life partner, and surprisingly it was Dave’s younger brother, John “Jack” Sykes (1935-2017), whom she married in 1956. Jack, Dave, and their sister Beverly (1930-2001) were the children of Sherman (1895-1986) and Gladys Sykes (1897-1987), who owned a bar called The Glen in Beverly Glen. It had a reputation for being tough, and Sherman carried a gun that he would sometimes leave out on the family table. Their house had a gangplank that led onto the sand. When it was pulled up, it covered the door to keep big waves from splashing in. Chasen and I interviewed Jack simultaneously, and he shared vivid memories of what Topanga Beach was like during World War II. By then, the gambling ships had been outlawed, but the Air Force kept an abandoned one-off Topanga for
