Beverly Hills goes on wartime footing
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Oct. 21, 1940: Rumors swirled that a certain ordinarily safe city was preparing for wartime attacks, The Times reported:
“Beverly Hills, people said, was digging itself underground. Making air-raid shelters. Surveying swimming pools as possible fixed-gun emplacements. You know -- just in case.”
Initially, city officials couldn’t be reached. The mayor was duck hunting in the Imperial Valley. The police chief was “week-ending on his Saugus ranch.”
Finally, an engineer aide to the head of the city’s building commission commented.
“Yes, Army engineers did ask us to make a tally on Beverly Hills pools. We have about 200 of ‘em. But the Army wanted to know about their water-storage capacity,” Frederick Forbes said.
Forbes “pooh-poohed the notion that a tiled swimming pool would make a satisfactory gun-mounting station. Too sloping, he said, and too embedded down among the mansions for which they serve as recreation centers.”
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