This ran here on October 6, 2012…
As I've mentioned, my mother (Dorothy Evanier) worked for several years at Jurgensen's Market, a Beverly Hills establishment that sold mostly-imported foods at prices that would send Mitt Romney scurrying to Food4Less. We used to joke that each week, she could either take home her paycheck or a can of olives.
She ran the gift-wrapping department in the back and over the years, trained dozens if not hundreds of young women in that fine art. My mother could take decorative paper and ribbons and wrap a turd so you'd be thrilled to receive it. When the most important of the Really, Really Rich people ordered gifts sent from Jurgensen's, the order-taker would often write "Dorothy Wrap" on the little order-routing slip. That meant that my mother was to handle that present herself.
The teen-age (mostly) girls who worked for her loved her and twice, she picked out ones she thought I'd get along with and extolled the wonders of perhaps dating her son, the TV writer. Her efforts led to two awkward, not-to-be-repeated dinners. One of the women was really only interested in seeing if I could hurriedly arrange for my profession to also be her profession without, of course, her having to do anything. The other lost interest in me when she found out that I not only didn't like to get high but that I'd never done it and never would. Still, I appreciated my mother's advocacy and that she wasn't trying to find me a wife; just someone I'd enjoy being with.
She and the girls worked in a back room at Jurgensen's where every day, celebrities shopped. They all, my mother included, wanted to see the celebrities so a code system was instituted. In the main part of the store, there were clerks and salespersons and the folks who manned the meat counter and bakery. If a real big star was on the premises, one of the employees there would get on the P.A. system and say, "Dorothy, would you bring out a J-19?"
There was no such thing as a J-19. There were no items numbered in that form at all. "J-19" was code for "Celebrity shopping in the store." The females in the back room would hear that and everyone would peek out and ogle the star of the moment. Then it was back to the wrap session.
One time, the butcher announced, "Dorothy, would you bring out a J-20?" That code had not been arranged in advance but they all figured that it was his way of saying, "Superstar shopping in the store." Everyone spied…and sure enough, there was Barbra Streisand looking at cucumbers or squeezing cantaloupes or something.
Thereafter, there would be other J-20s along with the J-19s. Every so often, a brief argument would ensue as to whether, say, Carol Burnett was a J-19 or a J-20. The wanna-be TV writer I went out with was outraged when Burt Reynolds was identified as a J-20 because, she said, his last two pictures hadn't done much business. It's a cruel town.
Then one day, one of the wine stewards took to the public address system to ask, "Dorothy, would you bring out a J-21?"
All package-wrapping abruptly ceased. My mother and her charges all knew that meant Super-superstar on the premises…but who might that be? If Barbra Streisand was a J-20, who could possibly top her fame to be worthy of the designation of J-21? My mother told me, "We spent so much time debating who it could be that we almost missed looking to see who it was." When they did, what they saw was not a star but an overweight derelict. A homeless person — perhaps the only one in Beverly Hills — was wandering the aisles. Beverly Hills is the kind of city that would have overweight homeless people.
My mother went up to the steward and said, "Ha-ha, very funny joke." The steward asked, "What do you mean?" She said, "Playing a joke on us, telling us that hobo was a J-21." The steward suggested she take a closer look at that hobo. And just then, he walked right past them so she could. That was when my mother recognized it was Marlon Brando.
That evening, she told me the story. I asked her if everyone in the store agreed that Marlon Brando was a J-21. She said, "The older ones did. But the younger employees…I don't think any of them ever saw A Streetcar Named Desire."