By Mike Glyer: Fifty years ago on October 25, 1973 the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society met for the first time in its very own clubhouse. Founded in 1934 in a member’s garage, over the decades the club led a nomadic existence, at better times meeting in Clifton’s Cafeteria, or the former beauty shop it rented on Bixel Street, or a room at the Palms Park Playground, and even a Unitarian Church parish hall. But sooner or later the LASFS always had to move on.

In the Sixties treasurer Paul Turner helped members catch the vision of buying their own clubhouse. They incorporated LASFS as a non-profit educational organization and started a Building Fund.  When Bruce Pelz took over as treasurer a few years later fundraising really intensified. Every bit helped – I remember at the 1970 Directors Dinner where Harlan Ellison was guest speaker, Len Moffatt and others auctioned off their desserts for the fund. By 1973 there was over $26,000 in the fund.  

Although the club had always met in central Los Angeles, due to property prices the directors started looking in the San Fernando Valley. They found a building that was about the right size and price in the Studio City area, a former single-family residence which had been remodeled for use as a small shop on one of the Valley’s busiest streets. In August the club voted to buy the property at 11360 Ventura Boulevard in the Studio City neighborhood for $32,000.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of the LASFS Milt Stevens did the time-consuming work of getting all inspections and preparatory financial arrangements made. Fans spread the word that the first meeting would be held on October 25. Members chipped in to buy large numbers of folding chairs – with the inducement that each chair would have a little stick-on plaque with the donor’s name.   

And on that night a famous society reporter captured all the important details of the celebration:

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BY TALLULAH FUGGHEAD. Christmas season came early to Tinsel Town as the members of the nation’s oldest science fiction club gathered to unwrap their new toy, the Clubhouse. Announcements had been sent to the roster of former attendees and to several pros in the area inviting them to attend. 108 people showed up to vibrate and soak up the gemutlichheit. Pros included Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, George Clayton Johnson, Ted Sturgeon, Mitchell Harding, Ron Cobb and who else but Forry Ackerman.

Despite the crunch, the meeting went extremely smoothly and even started on time. Pournelle, as President of the SFWA, read a congratulatory speech and relayed a very warm and egoboosting phonecall from Robert Heinlein.

From the Science Fiction Writers of America. Science fiction clubs and SF fandom are a nearly unique phenomenon. Few other literary genre enjoy this kind of enthusiastic support from their readers. Not long ago, the Los Angeles Shakespeare Society lost its clubhouse — and here is LASFS, moving into its own. We’re the wave of the future, all right. We presume that within a few years you will install a Dean Drive or Daleth Effect engines or some other means of locomotion for a tour of the solar system. We trust that we’ll be invited for the second cruise. On behalf of all the members of the SFWA, congratulations to LASFS, Inc. on the realization of a dream. /signed/ Jerry Pournelle

From Robert A. Heinlein. To the Officers and Members of LASFS: At last a home of our own!! I joined the LASFS in December of 1938, or possibly January 1939. It was at a meeting of the Hollywood chapter at which Forrest J. announced that a new magazine — UNKNOWN WORLDS — would be on the stands in February 1939: so that makes me a junior member, as the club was established five years earlier. I met Russ Hodgkins that night, and other old timers. Morojo, Forrest J., Doc Daugherty, and others — then started attending meetings at Clifton’s Cafeteria and met Hank Kuttner, Jack Williamson, Julie Schwartz, Bob Olson, Frank Brady, Ray Bradbury, Bruce Yerke, Pogo and many others. I remained active until after Pearl Harbor, then settled in Colorado after the war — and have never joined any other SF club, and thought of myself as still a member. In fact I was told so several years running. What is your lifetime non-resident fee for an old crock whose life expectancy is now 13 years, if they don’t lynch him first? I’ll pay it. Again, congratulations to us all on achieving a dream that started almost 40 years ago — and seemed as fantastic then as atomic bombs, nuclear power, men on the moon, and other such nonsense — nonsense to all practical, clearthinking, sober citizens who wouldn’t be caught dead reading one of those silly magazines with space ships on the cover. Warmest greetings to my fellow dreamers, /signed/ Robert A. Heinlein.

There were also good wishes from another cherished sff author.

From Theodore Sturgeon. Dear and valued LASFS. Without readers a writer would be somewhat less than nothing. Without the SF reader, the most passionate and talented SF writer would have nowhere to go. Without the SF fan, who is the most ardent and the most articulate of all readers, I would have been without the notice and encouragement which has been so valuable to me all my writing life. LASFS is the archetype of fandom, and as I celebrate this occasion with you, I welcome the chance to express my gratitude. Thank you. /signed/ Theodore Sturgeon

Ackerman talked about the club’s origins, and read a list of the loved departed, like Ron Ellik. The program was a slide show of the history of LASFS meeting places, including a Polaroid slide of Forry taken minutes before at THE Clubhouse, which LASFS may even decide to formally name “Evans-Freehafer Hall,” to honor a lapsed Tradition.

Traditionally, this type of program would evacuate the meeting more than the usual program, but interest held up. LASFS, of course, is an excuse to talk; some quiet types listen, instead, but they aren’t really faaaans, now are they? So the “meeting” exists on three levels: The Formal Meeting cum Program, the groupings that talk to each other outside the meeting. And the APA L collation and attendant talking. Praise Herbie and pass the insulation.

The attendees were too impressed by the actual B*U*I*L*D*I*N*G and the Population Density (as dense as usual) to infight, though Bjo suffered from Crowdstrophobia. The one anticipated issue, smoking, turned out to be no problem due to the evening breeze and the ceiling fans. Physically, the modest bungalow (fire marshal rated at 80 people max) has a meeting room the size of two living room cubicles (and thus half is paneled, half is painted an orcish yellow, with no trace of the knocked-down wall that separated them). The den is also paneled, but will soon be LASFS Library book-lined. Kitchen is painted green, service room blue, and the corridor reddish-purple, color-coordinated by Shirley Scrounge.

$25 grand paid down, with the remaining $7,000 handled by personal bank loans, which will have to be repaid. The chairs were personally paid for so swiftly, with plaques (“endowed” as the term goes) that a couple of paid-for hoaxes have to be combined with others, or something. LASFS may have some deadbeat members, but two hoaxes have dues paid scrupulously by their perpetrators.

Fan Historians are alerted that the first person to utilize the LASFS Toilet during a meeting was Ray Bradbury.

A hundred copies of a 65-page APA L were collated and distributed in amongst the program and talking, and eventually the meeting dispersed to check out nearby restaurants for the after-meeting discussions. About ten years to the day before this meeting, the Building Fund was started, and behold, we have the first Pandemonium. Well, Talu has to cover the Fatty Arbuckle scandal now, so goodbye until tomorrow.

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(Rumors abound that Tallulah was a fan whose writing style would be instantly recognizable to those who had been active some years in the past. I’m pretty sure it was Jack Harness.)

Here is the top page of the sign-in sheet from the first meeting. My name is scrawled in the third column twelve lines down, right after Nancy Kidd and before Craig Miller.

And most of the pros on hand were assembled for a photo in the paneled back room where eventually the club’s library would be squeezed.

Bruce Pelz confirmed the rumor Sandy Cohen circulated that night that the club would be starting a new Building Fund immediately to buy a bigger building. Surprisingly, that didn’t take very long, either. In 1977 the LASFS replaced it with a larger clubhouse at 11513 Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood, where meetings attracted as many as 150 fans a week.