My Birthplace

1958 Oldsmobile/SJG Birthing Suite

Yes, here it is again, the story of how the SJG entered the galaxy on this very day. Way back in the sweet, innocent late '50s, when my sweet mom was in her last trimester with baby me, she got chicken pox, courtesy of the brothers. Complications ensued. She became so sick with double pneumonia, that her gynecologist – “that man who almost killed me three times,” as she decribed him – kept her out of the hospital so she shouldn't spread germs.

Drama queen from the git-go, I hand-picked the middle of the night for my Hollywood debut. My sweet daddy loaded Mom into the Oldsmobile and took off down Sunset Boulevard for County General, the only hospital that would admit a pregnant gal with an infectious disease. He had never been to County General and had only a vague idea that it was somewhere downtown.

He deliberately ran every red light on Sunset to try to get arrested. But there’s never a cop around when you need one. So he stopped another car, asked for directions, and the driver said, right out a B movie, “Follow me!” By the time he pulled into the parking lot, the SJG, a touch claustrophobic, wanted out. As in, right now.

Handsome doctors ran out and delivered me in the back seat of the car. My mom and I were immediately separated, which no doubt made me very, very nervous out the gate. "Where's the nice lady?" I asked. "Where'd she go? Are you bringing her back?" They put her in quarantine and saved her life with a new medicine called Cortisone.


Meanwhile, I handed over a list of demands and got upgraded to Cedars (the first one, not the ritzy one where famous people go to die). Within a day, I had chicken pox too. They booted my baby butt out of there, and I went home, feeling like a displaced citizen. Naturally, I took the whole thing personally, as I tend to do. My new mommy had to slum it over at County General for two weeks before they let her come home to meet the miracle that is the SJG. And that, my friends, is the story of mine humble beginnings.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a 1958 Oldsmobile commercial that forgets to mention how comfy the backseat is for emergency birthing situations.