Strauss and LA

Eric's final recital at the Colburn School of Performing Arts was Monday the 25th. The recital was a fitting conclusion to Eric's two years in residency at Colburn.

I got started on the Strauss research after the recital. Ted Baldwin's friend at the LA Times, Peter Johnson, supplied me with an obituary. It told that Strauss' residence when he died in 1938 was on Wilshire Blvd. It named the chapel where services were held and the mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (largest in the U.S. I believe) where Strauss was laid to rest. I was able to take pictures at Forest Lawn of the chapel and mausoleum.

The obituary named Ernest Holmes, founder of the Institute of Religious Science, as the person to preside at the services. Since Strauss had a Jewish heritage, I thought this curious. But secondhand stories tell that Strauss met with family disfavor when in 1895 he married a Cincinnati girl who was not Jewish. Perhaps he strayed from his heritage. During the 1920s Ernest Holmes was developing as a religious speaker. In 1926 he spoke Sundays at the Ambassador Hotel, the very hotel where Strauss stayed in 1933 when he "disappeared" for a while. That is also the year he supposedly remarried. In 1934 Holmes moved to the Wiltern Theatre on Wilshire Blvd, not far from Strauss' final residence. I would love to learn more about the connection between Strauss and Holmes, if any.