West Coast Culture Shock: An Englishman in Los Angeles, 1964

If you were to put together a list of diplomatic hardship postings in the early 1960s, some places are candidates. South Yemen wasn’t a lot of fun in that period, nor was the Congo or Laos. But one place that probably isn’t the top of a lot of those lists is Los Angeles.

In August 1964, a new British Consul-General arrived in the City of Angels to head up the consulate there. [The Embassy was in Washington DC under the leadership of Lord Harlech (also known as David Ormsby-Gore).]

“There is certainly an air of “get rich quick”, which leads to the shoddy and the second-rate, as well as to some unneighbourliness.”

His name was Peter Dalton, but he often went by the much more prim moniker of P.G.F. Dalton. He had been appointed to The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, so he could use even more letters–the honorific CMG after his name. Dalton’s predecessor was Frederick Gamble, who was being shipped off to Bolivia to be the British ambassador there.¹

Dalton had started his foreign service career in Beijing, subsequently serving in Bangkok, Montevideo, and Hong Kong. He had also headed the British Foreign Office’s Far Eastern Department from 1956 to 1960, and immediately prior to his posting to the American west coast he had been the British counselor at the British embassy in Warsaw.²

From the get-go, Dalton made it clear he wasn’t shy of speaking his mind. No sooner had he and his wife moved into the official residence in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park neighborhood than he started telling the Americans how to conduct their foreign affairs.³ Responding to the recent developments sparked by the events in the Tonkin Gulf and Congress’s subsequent handing of the Johnson administration a virtual blank check for waging war in Southeast Asia, Dalton called any expansion of hostilities beyond South Vietnam’s borders “an extremely risky business.” Drawing on his considerable expertise in Far Eastern affairs, he drolly pronounced that “the bamboo curtain is rather thicker and standing up to wear and tear better than the iron one.”⁴

He also weighed in on the issue of the recognition of Communist China. [Britain recognized Communist China, while the United States did not.] “Whether you like it or don’t like it,” he said, “it’s by and large more profitable to talk to them than not. . . . It’s a good way, if not better, than ignoring them.”⁵

“The bamboo curtain is rather thicker and standing up to wear and tear better than the iron one.”The Daltons were regular fixtures of the social pages of the Los Angeles Times, their appearance at a cocktail party or soiree considered worthy of mention. They were also on hand to host receptions for visiting British dignitaries and royalty, including Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. It’s safe to say that Dalton was good at keeping up appearances.

But what did Dalton really think of Los Angeles? Not much, to say the least.

About four months after taking up his post in the city, he wrote the British Ambassador in Washington, Lord Harlech (David Ormsby-Gore) a long letter describing his first impressions of the city. He was, let’s say, unimpressed.

“Miles and miles of ‘shanty-town’ of a banality beside which the British ribbon-development of the 1920s and 30s appears almost noble architecture.”
Two things are striking in the letter. One is just how very unimpressed he was. Los Angeles is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, then or now. It was not his. But perhaps striking aspect is how his descriptions of Los Angeles in 1964 might just as well apply to Los Angeles today.

He railed against the urban sprawl: “miles and miles of “shanty-town” of a banality beside which the British ribbon-development of the 1920s and 30s appears almost noble architecture.”

He pointed out that LA’s public transport was woefully inadequate.

The local inhabitations “may be excused for preferring the local bowling-alley to a drive to some distant theatre or concert hall.”But his most cutting criticism came for the “cultural desert” (and the locals’ interior decorating tastes). Given the sprawl and inadequate freeways, he said, the local inhabitants “may be excused for preferring the local bowling-alley to a drive to some distant theatre or concert hall.”

Read the full letter for some choice observations. The only good things he could offer were that the weather was nice (even if blighted by smog) and that it was a very good place to be if you were a scientist. Unsurprisingly, Dalton didn’t stay long at this post.

My Lord,

Having been at this post now for four months, I can no longer, if I am ever to offer any “first impressions” of Los Angeles, postpone the attempt to do so. I have postponed it for so long, since I have found it difficult to form any balanced picture of this extraordinary place and, my first impressions being, on the whole, disagreeable, I was reluctant to put these on record too hastily. They have not, however, been much modified in the course of these few months, and, if they should later be revised, they may not be without interest as those of a newcomer, not only to Southern California, but to the American way of life in general. Many of the characteristics to which I shall refer may, for all I know, be common to the United Stated generally, though some, I suspect, appear here in exaggerated form or may be peculiar to Southern California (at least, I am told by many Californians that they are “different” from the rest of the country). I should also make it clear that these are the first impressions of Los Angeles only, and that I am not attempting in this despatch to deal with other parts of S. California, still less with Arizona.

Before I came to Los Angeles, I was told variously that it was made up of “nineteen suburbs in search of a city”, but that, to compensate for this admitted lack of form it had a wonderful climate (or that, to add to its lack of form, it was now ridden by “smog”), that, having grown up with the automobile and depending entirely on it, the city had been able to design especially for it (or was now being killed) by it, that it was a “cultural desert” (but a paradise for the scientists) and that, because it was a brash new city, its people were more friendly than elsewhere in the United States (or, for the same reason, that it was a case of “devil take the hindmost”). Hollywood got little mention, except, in passing, as the now increasingly abandoned site of an industry which was moving elsewhere.

All these views contain an element of truth. For sheer size, there are, indeed, few cities to compare with this. Its Metropolitan area, comprising Los Angeles and Orange Counties, covers 4,880 square miles. The population of Los Angeles city is now estimated at 2,700,000 and that of the County at 6,800,000 (one third of the population of the State of California, itself now the most populous State of the Union). The rate of population growth in the State’s 14 southern counties since the war has been more than 2 1/2 times the national average, with migration into the area accounting for about 60% of this; the “median age” of new arrivals in the last few years being 22. With nearly 90% of the population concentrated in the “urban areas”, it is evidence that Los Angeles, both City and County, has expanded at a pace which has virtually defied control. The old “downtown” Los Angeles has ceased to be a focal point for most of the population, whose business, shopping and entertainment are spread through a plethora of suburban “cities”, and there is no “centre” in the sense that the West End might be considered the centre of London or the Bull Ring of Birmingham. There has been little planning in this growth (land in S. California is easy to come by) and, although, there are a few boulevards or individual buildings of character, the general impression is one of hastily thrown-up, mostly one-storied buildings, of car lots and junk yards and trailing wires–miles and miles of “shanty-town” of a banality beside which the British ribbon-development of the 1920s and 30s appears almost noble architecture. It is true that voices are now being raised against this sprawl, demands for “planning” are being heard and schemes are under discussion for the modernisation and beautification of the downtown area to establish it as the centre of a great city. But these things are not yet.

The attraction for many of the new immigrants, both industrial and private, was, of course, the climate–the clear air and almost perpetual sunshine. To some extent these still obtain, but the air is not as clean as it was and the sun is increasingly obscured by the now notorious “smog”, a man-made pall caused partly by the fumes of industry and partly by those of the millions of automobiles which, because of the geographical and atmospheric conditions of the area, become trapped between the mountains and the sea, irritating the eyes and doing little good to the lungs. As the city spreads, so does the smog and areas quite far out and hitherto free are now becoming affected.

If the automobile, by its fumes, may be responsible in part for suffocating the city, it may, if things go on as they are, strangle it too. In all this vast place there is virtually no public transport. To all intents and purposes the automobile is the only means of communication. To provide for its passage, great “freeways” have been built, six or eight- lane highways, criss-crossing the city and running far out into what is rapidly ceasing to be the countryside. They are marvels of engineering, capable of carrying a vast amount of traffic at relatively high speeds, but cars still have to be parked when they get to their destination and even now some of the freeways built at such cost only a few years ago are proving inadequate for the traffic. In the long run it is no answer just to go on pouring concrete across the landscape and, here again, voices are being raised against further indiscriminate freeway-building and for some form of rapid public transport system. But, again, these things are not yet.

In such circumstances, it would be surprising if much of the scene was not a “cultural desert”. Little thought is given to trees or parks, much of the coastline has already been spoiled and the inhabitants of the new suburbs, 30 or so miles out, may be excused for preferring the local bowling-alley to a drive to some distant theatre or concert hall. (They may also be more excused than the rich for the dreary sameness of their interior decoration.) Nor can one be greatly optimistic over the changes of “culture-absorption” by students on a university campus of some 25,000 people. For those with the time and inclination, there is, however, culture to be found: in the new “Music Center” just opened in downtown Los Angeles and intended to be part of the modernisation of that area referred to above, in the numerous semi-voluntary symphony orchestras in various districts, in the Huntington Library, in a small, but not un-representative, handful of theatres and in the numerous concerts, art exhibitions, etc. sponsored by the universities and artistic organisations. The limiting factors, however, are, all too often, distance and time.

That it is a paradise for the scientists, however, cannot be denied. Astronomy, oceanography, physics, engineering and, of course, every aspect of aviation and space research may be studied and worked on in a freedom of environment, both physical and intellectual, which it would be hard to parallel elsewhere and must be immensely exciting for the young explorers of the new scientific age.

Whether people are more or less friendly or helpful than elsewhere, I find it difficult to say. There is certainly an air of “get rich quick”, which leads to the shoddy and the second-rate, as well as to some unneighbourliness. But it is not, by and large, the young or the “average” citizen whom I have found difficult (though their much-vaunted informality often borders on chaos). It is, I fear, rather their rich elders and social betters, whose wealth is matched by their arrogance and who, perhaps, represent a cultural desert in the most hopeless sense.

There is no sign of the expansion in this area ceasing and it is estimated that, at its expected rate of growth, it will consist, by 1980, of a solid contribution, stretching from Santa Barbara in the north to San Diego in the south (about 200 miles), of twenty million people. It is an awe-inspiring prospect. Its possibilities as a market are evidence and I hope to revert to this aspect in a subsequent despatch. In this one I am thinking more of the sociological implications. If things continue as they are, the result may, indeed, be appalling. I have, however, indicated that voices are being raised to point the dangers and propose action. There is a wealth of vitality, not to mention money, and, as a social and civic conscience grows, much that is now shoddy may be swept away and replaced by more responsible development. At least, let us hope so.

I am sending copies of this despatch to H.M. Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and to H.M. Consul-General at San Francisco.

I have the honour to be, with the highest respect,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s obedient Servant,
P.G.F. Dalton.

http://cdn.jfk14thday.com/documents/pro/FO 371-179558/19641219-Dalton-First-Impressions-LA-watermark.pdf

Postscript

To visualize LA at the time, here’s some footage of the Sunset Strip in 1964 about the time Dalton was there.

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Source: FO 371/179558, The National Archives, United Kingdom.