Hollywood Stars Night & Musings on My Time in La La Land
This photo of George and Kramer has haunted me for years. I had so many questions… what episode of Seinfeld was this image from? And why haven’t I ever seen it? I went back and rewatched Episodes one and two of Season 4, when Jerry, Kramer, and George head to LA, but nope, no scenes at Dodger Stadium. And then, eureka! It turns out that Kramer and George are real life people outside of the show!
So it isn’t from a fictional TV show… suddenly, even more questions arose. Where did they get those incredible Dodgers uniforms, and what are they doing on the field at Dodger Stadium, glove in hand, ready to play ball?!
And as I dug, I found out some good news, and some bad news. I really wanted one of those jerseys and the bad news is, they weren’t official Dodgers uniforms, so I’ll probably never get my hands on one (another White Whale in my sartorial search). The good news is, I stumbled upon a lovely event that the Dodgers used to hold: Hollywood Stars Night!
The Event’s Origins
The event actually predated the Dodgers' arrival in Los Angeles and started with one of the city’s minor league baseball teams, the Hollywood Stars (what a fun name!). The head of promotions for the Stars, Danny Goodman, thought it would be great publicity to tie the baseball club even more directly to the movie industry of LA. Goodman proposed playing a celebrity exhibition game before the professional game, and so the tradition began!
The Dodgers’ arrival from Brooklyn in 1958 spelled the end of the Stars in LA (a “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us” type situation sadly) as the Stars moved to Salt Lake City that same year and changed their name to the Bees. But Goodman was brought on to the Dodgers’ staff, and the idea of the exhibition game came along with him. In many ways, Hollywood and the Dodgers were a match made in heaven. A storied franchise coming off four pennants and their first World Series championship in just the last decade, playing in those classic, crisp home whites, seemed tailor-made for the sunshine and glamour of La La Land
And while the move to LA left wounds in New York that still haven’t even fully healed, the team was quickly embraced by Angelenos, buoyed by the Dodgers’ instant success in their new home. They won the World Series in just their second full season in LA (‘59) followed by three more pennants and two more titles (‘63 & ‘65).
And with the Dodgers’ exploding popularity, Hollywood Stars Night attracted some of the biggest stars of the 1960s, such as Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Jack Lemmon, and more. Given the time period and machismo of sports, it was mostly men who played in these games, but some prominent women participated as well, including Lucille Ball and Shirley Jones.
Now these games were a mix of showmanship and actual gameplay. Dean Martin, for instance, would roll up to home plate in a limousine accompanied by a waitress carrying a martini on a silver tray - just in case he needed a little pick-me-up in between pitches.
Still, by many accounts, Martin was a great athlete, who took pride in his play. Of course, none of the stars were new to the limelight, but playing in front of 45,000 fans under the bright lights of Dodger Stadium was a different kind of attention and it made them play hard. Acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner (This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally) was one who was happy to admit as much.
While the 1960s was the high watermark for the event, it kept its glow through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, wooing stars from later generations to the ballpark.
But come the new millennium, the event started to show signs of wear. The wattage of the “stars” faded. Now don’t get me wrong, James Van Der Beek anchoredVarsity Blues (1999) admirably- a classic teen football drama before it was cool. But Jack Lemmon he is not. Mardy Fish… not quite the athlete as Kareem.
The last Hollywood Stars night took place in 2015. It has now been nine years since the last one. Is it truly dead and buried, or merely in hibernation?
What Happened?
Why did this fun event, filled with glitz and glamour, lose its luster? Was it simply poor coordination on the part of the Dodgers? Was there no one with Goodman’s energy and imagination to wrangle the next generation of stars? Or were there larger cultural forces at work?
The first and most glaring trend that occurred from the ‘70s through the start of the 21st century, is baseball’s slow decline in popularity. This can be seen all across the pop cultural landscape - in movies, TV, and music. Today you’re much more likely to see other sports highlighted, especially football and basketball, even soccer.
If you’re more persuaded by hard facts, take the World Series TV ratings over the years: viewership reached its zenith in 1978 when over 44 million people tuned in to watch the Yankees beat the Dodgers in six games. This most recent World Series between the Rangers and Diamondbacks? 9 million. Also take into consideration that the US population was about 220 million in 1978, and is now about 330 million. That means about 20% of all Americans watched the World Series in 1978, compared to just 2.7% in 2023…Ouch.
If average Americans are less interested in baseball, why would we expect our A-listers to be any different? But maybe another part of the story has to do with the broader value of sports in our society. Perhaps showcasing one’s athleticism, or feats of strength (I couldn’t resist at least one Seinfeld reference), is no longer seen as a positive or necessary attribute for today’s celebrities.
Back in the ‘60s, you had household names like Walter Matthau and Nat King Cole huffing and puffing around the base paths, trying to best each other on the diamond. Something about that Greatest Generation, who battled Depression at home and wars abroad, just screamed hyper-masculinity; a generation of men who felt that you weren’t truly a man unless you could hit a home run, or strike out the side. And if you weren’t truly a man, why would you expect anyone to buy your record, or a ticket to your movie? Maybe baseball was a sign of being American in a way that no longer holds.
Ok, so maybe the demise of Stars Night isn’t all about some gloomy societal decline, it may have some silver linings as well. It’s a good thing that one’s social stature isn’t tied to athletic prowess (though celebs still get major points in my book if they nail their first pitch, and inversely if they bungle it), and now, you can be assessed more on your character and talents (MOST of the time).
But then I think about it some more… and another element pops into my head. Maybe the issue isn’t that celebs don’t feel like playing sports per se, but more about the baggage of sports in our modern world where everything is hyper-scrutinized with social media and iPhone cameras.
It struck me just how often athletes fail in front of millions of eyeballs, compared to other famous folk. If you’re a A-list actor, or platinum-selling musician, you live an incredibly manicured, choreographed life. Sneeze when you’re filming a movie scene? Cut! Run it again! Voice cracks during a recording session? Delete. Even during live performances, you can rehearse scenes or dance moves over and over again until you get pretty dang close to perfection.
A baseball player? They strike out, they make errors, they blow saves. That’s just part of the job. And maybe back in the day, all the way up until George and Kramer stepped up to the plate, it wasn’t such a big deal if you screwed up in some lighthearted exhibition game. Who’s really watching anyways? A few thousand fans who showed up early to the game? But nowadays? I can just picture Timothée Chalamet or Olivia Rodrigo tossing and turning at night after a ground ball went in between their legs - scared to death of becoming a laughing stock of the internet. Just look at poor Raygun, the Australian break dancer who will live on in infamy for her cringe worthy performance at the Olympic Games this summer in Paris.
AND THEN, if you’ll bear with me, my brain went deeper into the rabbit hole of the extremely weighty and important question of WHY the Stars Night has disappeared.
Last At Bats
What if the stars simply stopped caring about the Dodgers? Not so much baseball itself. Not sports. But the LA Dodgers.
You get the sense that some of the old timers like Lemmon (who, based on my research, was at the most Stars Nights) bled Dodger blue, jumping for joy when Kirk Gibson hit his famous hobbled home run in the 1988 World Series. Maybe the stars of today just don’t feel as strong a connection to the Dodgers.
Maybe it's not about baseball’s much discussed decline in American culture. Nowadays with streaming, you can watch whatever team you want, wherever you are on the globe. Even after I moved from Massachusetts to California, I still ended up watching a ton more of the Red Sox than the Dodgers in LA. And I doubt I’m the only one. By the looks of it, other famous LA transplants are holding onto their hometown teams more and more. I think about Justin Bieber repping his snakebitten Maple Leafs, or Boston’s own superstar, super fan trio of Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Mark Wahlberg, who continue to make cameo appearances at the Garden and Fenway. If you’re actually serious about sports these days, it seems much more likely that you keep track of your hometown teams than it used to be.
Think about Jack Nicholson and his famous support of the Lakers. Are we sure he wouldn’t just stick with the teams of his Tristate roots if he was born into the digital age? Or even my dad, who grew up in Chicago - watching the White Sox, Cubs, and Bears on TV. None of that stuck when he moved to Boston in the late 80s. Beyond a little box score in the sports section, there was no sign of them. Instead, you had the local teams on the television. It was Roger Clemens and the Sox, and Drew Bledsoe and the Pats (imagine if I had to root for the White Sox and Bears these last 30 years… really dodged a bullet).
I’m sure this conflict has always existed for people who move to a far away land. But in our current age of interconnectedness, it's easier to stay in touch to an old home and harder to give yourself over to a new one. Gone are the days of the Oregon Trail, when you packed your bags, hopped on a wagon heading out West, and never looked back. Now, you’re constantly bombarded with reminders of the life you left behind. Old friends hanging out at your favorite old haunts, your old life carrying on in earnest, as if nothing had changed.
And so, when I think about my own relationship with the Dodgers, it’s representative of my relationship with the city of Los Angeles in general. It’s both surprising and unsurprising that we never quite fell in love. On the one hand, it seemed like an ideal franchise to adopt. After all, the Dodgers are steeped in history, with arguably the best uniforms in sports, playing in one of the crown jewels of ballparks. Oh, and the winningest team of the past decade!
As for LA - a city filled with art and culture, amazing food from all around the world, sunshine twelve months a year, beaches and mountains right at your fingertips - what’s not to like? Yet, I never fully jumped on the bandwagon.
It just wasn’t my home team. Or my home. I just couldn’t quit the Red Sox! And despite the challenging winters, the cramped cities - there’s something about the hardness, the oldness, the realness of the East that I just can’t quite quit.
And maybe the truth of the matter is that I never really wanted to.
LA is famously a city of dreams, where you can remake yourself into whatever you want to be. And if you’re lucky (and a little crazy), you can even be a star - on the silver screen, on the stage, and even on the field every so often for a Stars Night. It’s a place where Dino Crocetti can become Dean “The King of Cool” Martin and Joseph Levitch can become Jerry “The King of Comedy” Lewis.
But what if you don’t want to start all over? My high school yearbook quote was from American Graffiti, “You know, it doesn't make sense to leave home to look for home, to give up a life to find a new life, to say goodbye to friends you love just to find new friends.”
So maybe I’ve always had an eye for the past… The weathered East rather than the fresh-faced West. And maybe my SoCal chapter was always going to be just that, a chapter rather than an ending.
Now, it’s time for the next chapter.
Farewell LA! The Golden State with the Golden Light!
