Paige Young in Los Angeles1940s (1930s) Los Angeles: Family. Marriage. Hollywood Wedding Chapel. Los Feliz Houses. Mildred Marinell. WW2. P.O.W. Divorce. Updated 11/24/2025.
Posted on April 29, 2020
You were introduced to Diana Cotterell/Paige Young’s parents in an earlier chapter, let’s learn more about them.
Robert M. Cotterell was 23 and Donna V. LaRocca 19, when they were married in 1940.
Donna is listed in the 1940 census as living with her parents at 3834 Evans St., and that she was a “New Worker” in “Dramatics.”
Mildred K. Marinell signature listed on next to last line.
Mildred is the daughter of Joseph LaRocca’s only sister Kathryn LaRocca Marinello, and Donna’s first cousin. Mildred dropped the “o” from her birth name. The family name is recorded as both Marinello and Marinelli; Mildred became Marinell, so it’s been confusing to research.
Below is the Hollywood Wedding Chapel where Robert and Donna were married per the marriage certificate.
The famed Garden of Allah apartment building was across the street.
Much more on Donna’s cousin Mildred coming up. (I suspect she occasionally used the name Penny Pepper in show business.)
This Hollywood Wedding Chapel building was purchased by famous director/writer Preston Sturges in 1940. He transformed it into “Players” restaurant which became a watering hole for the movie business.
Players has its’ own interesting Hollywood history.
Donna and Robert must have been one of the last couples to marry at the chapel before Sturges took over.
Now this location is a Pink Taco restaurant.
**UPDATE** Pink Taco abruptly closed in 2024.
Diana’s father Robert Morgan Cotterell was born around 1917 in Algon, Iowa. He moved to Los Angeles around 1938 to follow his interest in aviation. (According to his son in a facebook message to me.)
From Constance Susan Cotterell’s birth cert. in 1942. Father Robert a Leadman at Douglas Aircraft.
Donna Virginia LaRocca’s parents Ned and Virginia LaRocca were Vaudeville musicians and traveled the Pantages, Orpheum and other Vaudeville circuits for about the first 10 years of Donna’s life. For more, see related chapters.
This location, Shoredale and Gatewood Streets are in the Elysian Valley or maybe “Frog Town” part of Los Angeles. Very close to Elysian Park which was the very first City Park in Los Angeles
They moved to Evans St. near Marshall High School around 1938.
Donna Virginia was born in 1921, in Peoria, Illinois, the hometown of her father: Joseph Ned LaRocca.
Donna V. moved with her parents to Los Angeles around 1934.
Robert M. Cotterell during World War 2:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Wilmington Daily Press Journal July 26, 1944
Robert Cotterell’s daughter Constance is 2 years old, and Diana only 5 months, on the date the POW announcement was published.
Los Angeles Evening Citizen News July 29, 1944 >>>>>>>>
For his part in the war effort, Joseph Ned LaRocca signed up for the “Old Man’s Draft Card.” In 1942, Congress enacted a “law” to show solidarity for the war effort. It provided the Government an idea of the skills the skills “older” men in the US populations. For utilization in the war effort.
The document shows Ned was living at 3834 Evans in 1942.
He was driving to and working as a harpist in the famous NBC and CBS buildings on Sunset & Vine. (More on this in other family chapters.)
From the 1944 birth certificate of Diana Lee Cotterell, later Paige Young. Home residence listed on Evans Ave., located a stone’s throw away from Marshall High School.
1945 Diana’s father Robert Cotterell is liberated from the German Camp. where he spent approx. one year. I have no idea what he experienced but it probably wasn’t great. Robert’s daughter Diana was 1 year old in 1945 and first-born Constance, 3 years.
1947
Donna LaRocca Cotterell files for divorce against Robert Morgan Cotterell.
1947 Only 2 months later, the divorce is granted. This seems unusually quick.
Historic Context:
Robert and Donna Cotterell were one couple out of thousands who made up a nation-wide spike in divorce rates after WW2.
Statistics show that in 1946 one in four US marriages ended in divorce.
A 1946 article published in the New York Times said:
“More than half of America’s 1,500,000 war-wed G.I.s have returned. Already one out of every four of these 800,000 men is entangled in divorce proceedings. Experts are predicting that by 1950, 1,000,000 of these wartime marriages-or two out of three-will end in divorce.”
Robert Cotterell remarried in approximately 1949 to Patricia Frick and the couple had two children, in 1950 and 1951.
He got a job after the war working for Douglas Aircraft. The job took his family all over the San Fernando Valley. One stop was Laguna Beach.
I would imagine Robert paid alimony to Donna, normal at the time. He also would have paid child support for his daughters Constance and Diana. I have not been able to learn what kind of relationship the sisters had with their father.
Virginia LaRocca, Donna’s mother, Diana and Constance’s grandmother, was named owner of a double house at 3710 & 3712 Arbolada.
This house is only one mile from the home on Evans St.
Close up
Donna has a voter registration record with this address way back in 1944 below and in Robert Cotterell’s POW announcements in the newspapers.
Joseph LaRocca is listed in the LA telephone directory with this Arbolada address in 1948.
Arbolada Rd. is a dead end street.
The homes are located high on a hill with an incredible panoramic view of the area. It’s minutes away from the Evans St. home, so still near Griffith Park.
The homes have a steep step climb.
Document from ancestry lost. Apologies. It was a Voter’s registration showing the following information.
Joseph and Virgina La Rocca listed above at the Arbolada address. Antonio and Corina La Bianca are at 3301 Waverly Dr.
Virginia’s listing leaves off “Christian Science” and just says her employment is “practitioner.” She now has an R by her name!
Antonio and Corina La Bianca purchased the house on Waverly Dr., sometime in the 30s or 40s but will confirm.
Unfortunately, the world knows the story of their son Leno.
The LaRocca Arbolada Road house is close to the LaBianca residence on Waverly Drive. Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were victims of the Manson family at this location. However, between the 2 houses is a large plot of undeveloped (!) land, so one has to travel a circuitous route between the two homes, as a friend did for me one time that I visited. There is no direct path between the two houses.
The 2 Italian families (Joseph’s wife Virginia was not Italian but Mormon with English ancestry) lived a 5 minute car drive from each other at one point, even if they never met.
Mildred Marinell
Diana/Paige’s mother Donna was very close to her first cousin “Mildred Marinell.”
Mildred lived close to Donna in Peoria, Ill., with her in Los Feliz section of LA at 3834 Evans St. And a few doors down from each other in Sherman Oaks, San Fernando Valley, in the 1950s. This is seen in census records mainly.
Seen below: Port Angeles, Washington Sept. 21, 1937. Mildred dropped the i/o (I’ve seen it both ways) from her name
Mildred Marinell and her mother Kathryn living at 3834 Evans. 1936
Mildred ended up marrying Clayton Bartlett and having children with him and living in the San Fernando Valley.
The city of Los Angeles experienced a housing shortage during the post-war years. More so than the usual housing shortage that seems to have almost always existed in LA.
This fact caused me to wonder how the LaRoccas were able afford the 2 houses. They bought one right after the other, or overlapping, in the 1940s. Evans St and Arbolada Rd. houses.
Documents and articles show both addresses were used beginning in 1944 up until about 1948.
Mildred would name her daughter “Donna Lee,” (Lee was Diana/Paige’s middle name) Bartlett,” born in the early 1950s. I’ve tried and can’t reach her.
I didn’t find an exact answer but the next several chapters may shed some light on this “upwardly mobile” family.
Virginia LaRocca had been a full time Christian Science Practitioner sometime in the 1940s, as best as I can tell now.
She had her own phone listing in LA phone books for many years for the purpose for her work as a Practitioner or CSP.
“Gin” became a Christian Science Reader at some point. Her income from this is unknown. It is a high position in the Church of Christ Science.
Virginia’s sister Josephine Harker was listed in a directory at the Evans house around 1940. Harker was her sister’s sometimes singing/dancing partner back in the days of Vaudeville (see related chapters).
It’s easy to imagine that the Evans house was entirely too small to fit all these family members comfortably.
And of course there was daughter Donna and granddaughters Constance and Diana Cotterell born in 1942 and 44.
Father Robert was serving overseas most of this time, his name was connected with both addresses as articles show.
I’m not sure where exactly Robert moved soon after he was liberated and returned from a German POW camp.
His son Robert Cotterell JR. wrote me that his father told him he received a “Dear John” letter from wife Donna, when he was overseas.
I imagine POWs weren’t allowed any mail.
All these names, excluding Diana and Constance, were linked to the Evans or Arbolada address from 1938 through around 1947. These dates are per records I have shown or seen.
Donna and Robert were officially divorced in 1947 per notice in the LAT.
View of the surrounding area is spectacular as is the building itself. It’s one of those house you see in Los Angeles that look precariously balanced on a steep hill.
Perhaps Virginia and Ned sold this spectacular double house to finance their home in the San Fernando Valley?
A 1944 Birth. Birth Certificate. Intro to Family Members. Neighborhood. Walt Disney & Hollywood Connection. Griffith Park Maternity Center. 10-20-2025
Posted on April 27, 2020
The woman who many might recognize as Paige Young, a Playboy Magazine Playmate in November 1968, was born Diana Lee Cotterell, March 16, 1944 in Los Angeles.
She was born at the Griffith Park Maternity Home, located at 1933 Griffith Park Boulevard.
Diana’s older sister Constance Susan Cotterell was born at the same maternity center in 1942. It was designed as a “birthing center” for mothers of the Christian Science religion aka Church of Christ Science.
The Griffith Park Maternity Center:
was well established by 1931, it continued in that capacity for decades. Later, it was a senior residence for several decades until the facility was demolished.
Aug. 38, 1938.
Notice the location of the home, 3834 Evans St., is listed as “Hollywood.” Today this location would be be considered Los Feliz or East Hollywood.
I read several posts on an “ex-Christian Science” message board forum. ADr. Schoenfeld was mentioned several times along with the Griffith Park Maternity Home. These “ex-members” knew that this Dr. Schoenfeld helped deliver them. Several wrote that they remember when siblings were born there and Schoenfeld helped to deliver them too.
At the Home and others like it, mothers were allowed to labor and give birth “drug free.” Which was against the norm of the times.
When asked about drugs given in labor in hospitals from1 940-1945 , Google AI says
Chloroform: Widely used as an anesthetic to induce unconsciousness and alleviate pain during labor.
Opium: Used for its pain-relieving and sedative effects.
Barbiturates: These sedative medications were sometimes used to induce a “twilight sleep,” aiming to provide a relaxing, dreamy state during labor and potentially cause the parturient to forget the pain and fear associated with childbirth.
Above is a shot I took the day I visited in 2016. Ugly multi-unit housing has been built there since as seen on Google Maps.
By 1938 Ned LaRocca and his wife Virginia, Diana’s grandparents, were living at 3834 Evans. The couple lived there with their daughter, Diana’s mother, Donna Virginia LaRocca.
Neighborhood
3834
3834 Evans street showing the rather steep driveway. Located close to Marshall High School.
This studio is where Snow White, the first full-length animated feature, was produced. Its’ success made Walt Disney enough money to build a larger studio in Burbank, which was up and running by January of 1940. The Burbank Disney studio the location of Disney to this day.
A Ralph’s Market now stands at the old Hyperion studio.
Marshall High is on Tracy St.
Marshall High School has been seen in many films and TV shows.
The iconic building and its grounds have appeared in several films and shows. These include Grease, Pretty in Pink, Grosse Pointe Blank, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Boy Meets World, i-Carly, Lucas Tanner, and Highway to Heaven.
To mention only a fraction of titles.
3834 Evans St. is also close to a Los Feliz and Franklin Hills landmark: The Shakespeare Bridge.
Shakespeare Bridge in Franklin Hills, close to the LaRocca home on Evans.
From Evans walk to St. George and turn left. Walking southwest you will pass a Walt Disney home on your left.
Keep going until you see Franklin Ave. and turn right. The Shakespeare Bridge will be .3 miles ahead.
Evans St. between Hyperion Ave. and St. George.
On the back of the document:
The map below shows location of 3834 Evans St.
View at Los Feliz Blvd and Rowena looking east in 1933 by Anton Wagner, photographer. Close to 3834 Evans St., the LaRocca’s home from about 1938 to the mid-40s.
This 1942 registration card of Joseph Ned LaRocca’s, was required by a Selective Service Act after Pearl Harbor.
The directive of the “Old Man’s Draft” was to inventory information. It focused on the skill set of “older” American men aged 45 to 64 years.
In case these skills were needed for the war effort.
It was compared to a “snapshot of American males age 45-64 years old.” AI
Paige Young in Los Angeles 