By Patricia Leigh Brown
BURBANK, Calif. — As hairdresser to the stars, Connie Nichols, an 86-year-old retiree (Apt. 225), has been on intimate terms with Olivia de Havilland’s hair, Ethel Merman’s hair, Doris Day’s hair and Natalie Wood’s hair, which she spritzed for her wedding to Robert Wagner.
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
From left, Mel Ehrenhalt, Betty Vincent and Buck Page entertaining residents in the courtyard last month, shortly before Mr. Page died.
Ms. Nichols’s latest leading lady is her downstairs neighbor, Helen Miller (Apt. 125), who is starring, at 81, in “Bandida,” a new comedy about an old woman who robs a convenience store. The movie was written by Suzanne Knode (Apt. 406), who was inspired to take up screenwriting at 63 after moving into the Burbank Senior Artists Colony, the country’s first apartment community for creative older people — a sort of “Golden Girls” meets Yaddo.
“To expose myself artistically was terrifying, especially at my age” said Ms. Knode, whose past credits include raising two children as a single mother in Boston. “But it was safe here. It was gentle. I wasn’t scared.”
In a city that worships youth, the colony is the latest spin on late-life living. With the understanding that not everyone wants the old-school model of golf course retirement, the colony offers artful self-expression: a digital film editing laboratory, a theater, drama classes and studios open for inspiration 24 hours a day.
This is a place where amateurs discovering their inner Picassos in retirement can commune with working pros like Charlie Schridde, a painter in his 70’s from the “cowboy impressionist” school who resembles the grizzled trappers of his canvases.
His neighbors include Janice Lishon, 90, a former chorus girl, and Betty Vincent, 76, a self-described “piano broad” who is still playing jazz.
“It helps you stay out of trouble,” said Ms. Miller, who before “Bandida” had never been in a movie or held a gun, let alone had her hair styled by the creator of Doris Day’s French twist in “Pillow Talk.”
The colony, which was recognized as a model for creative aging by the National Endowment for the Arts, represents a profound shift in thinking about aging. In 2001, a study co-sponsored by George Washington University and the N.E.A. found that people 65 and older who were regularly involved in participatory arts programs reported fewer doctors’ visits and less need for medication and were less prone to depression.
“We’re thinking beyond the problems of aging to its potential,” said Dr. Gene D. Cohen, the director of the Center on Aging, Health and Humanities at the George Washington University Medical Center. “What’s emerging is a very talented group of people who are an under-recognized national resource.”
This is Hollywood, baby. The making of Ms. Knode’s first movie was filmed by Ira Glass, whose radio program, “This American Life,” will soon also be a television series. An agent recently paid a visit to the colony’s acting class, scouting for talent for “spice of life” television commercials aimed at their growing demographic. Residents appear frequently as guests on “Experience Talks,” a weekly radio program on KPFK that is produced by More Than Shelter for Seniors, the nonprofit organization that conceptualized the colony.
The show, which reaches 250,000 listeners, features interviews with celebrities like Andrew Weil, the alternative health guru, and Studs Terkel-like celebrations of the residents themselves, the most recent a tribute to Buck Page, one of the country’s last singing cowboys, who released a CD not long before his death a few weeks ago, at an effervescent 84.
The colony was one of 15 programs cited by the N.E.A. Among the others were the National Center for Creative Aging in Brooklyn, which places older artists as mentors in public schools; the acclaimed Levine School of Music’s Senior Chorale in Washington; and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Md., a Washington suburb, where the virtuosity of youth is balanced by dancers staving off arthritis. To Marc Freedman, the founder and president of Civic Ventures, a nonprofit group that promotes meaningful second careers for older people, the colony represents the next frontier of a movement that began in the 1970’s, when leisure retirement typified by golf and shuffleboard gave way to the lifelong learning exemplified by the Elderhostel program.
The colony, Mr. Freedman said, “is a new hybrid that moves beyond that to actual creativity, to growth.” He added: “It’s not just writing memoirs and harvesting the past. It’s about producing new insights and work that is not only personally interesting but enriches the lives of neighbors.”
The new Burbank colonists include Gene Schklair, a retired dental surgeon from Chicago who is now sculpting full time. Before moving to the colony, Mr. Schklair and his wife, Glorya, both 75, spent a year backpacking around the world after he contracted a serious illness, from which he has recovered. “You see them come in with dead eyes,” he said of new arrivals, some of whom are art appreciators rather than artists. “Then, the life comes back.”
The colony is the brainchild of Tim Carpenter, the founder of More Than Shelter for Seniors, who grew up near Yaddo, the New York artists’ community. Mr. Carpenter recruited an advisory board sprinkled with actors to hone the concept and drew an initial core of tenants, ages 55 and older, through local arts organizations. No tryouts or portfolios are required, but the artistic ambitions of residents transcend the flutophone or macaroni-glitter-and-glue crowd.
The colony is a block from downtown Burbank. Seventy percent of the 141 apartments rent at market rate, from $1,430 to $2,125. Thirty percent are reserved for low-income residents, renting from $500 to $650, with 2,000 people on a waiting list.
The complex was built by a private developer and financed in part through federal low-income tax credits and a $3.25 million low-interest loan from the city. The colony provides no assisted-living services, but its arts programs are free, provided by More Than Shelter. Mr. Carpenter and John Huskey, the president of Meta Housing, the developer, plan to take the concept to other cities.
A typical week finds a blues singer performing at the Tuesday barbecue, a novelist offering a manuscript for dissection in a writer’s workshop, and a buff 72-year-old coach teaching how to prevent falls. “The same neurons fire whether you’re writing a short story that may or may not be great or whether you are writing ‘Ulysses,’ ” Mr. Carpenter said.
In Barbara Beneville’s acting class on a recent day, students practiced inflection to prepare for auditions for the Radio Cavalcade, a 1940’s-style show and benefit for More Than Shelter that will be performed at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Residents will star alongside actors like George Segal and Len Lesser, who, as the eccentric Uncle Leo on “Seinfeld” might have fit right in at the colony.
The colony itself can sometimes sound like a sitcom. “What’s a ‘tuchis’?” a student asked, puzzling over the script’s Yiddish slang.
“Booty,” Ms. Beneville replied.
Artistic temperaments do not necessarily mellow with age. Even as residents toast at wine and cheese openings, they jockey to have their art displayed. The preponderance of one artist’s work caused another to mutter, “That’s cartoon art!”
“There are a lot of insecurities about not being good enough,” said Bobbee Zeno, the program director. “But even dissension becomes an art.”
But when Mr. Page died, a shared sense of loss hung in the hallways. He performed frequently at Thursday jams with the brassy Ms. Vincent, bringing a level of musicianship to the colony “that made everybody bring their game up,” Mr. Zeno said. Mr. Page was a singing cowboy with Audie Murphy and others in scores of films, but he often got the most memorable line: “They went thataway.”
At a recent show at Whisky A Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard, Ms. Vincent said, “there were babes behind him with cowboy hats and fishnets and not much else.”
Melva Unter (Apt. 124) grew up with Mr. Page’s music. An accomplished commercial artist in earlier days, she drives a battered gold Volvo, the dents artistically concealed with black flames. Ms. Unter, 79 and widowed, had been living in Century City and had started selling her art supplies. “At this period, I had written myself off,” she said.
Her daughter heard about the arts colony, and Ms. Unter eventually moved in. An easel displays a painting in progress, a woman kneading dough, a coal oven in the background infusing the canvas with light.
Like a challenging painting, life at the arts colony has become an exercise in perspective. “You meet yourself,” she said. “You find out who you really are.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/us/10senior.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
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