Paige Young in Los Angeles.1940s (1930s) Los Angeles: Family. Marriage. Hollywood Wedding Chapel. Los Feliz Houses. WW2. P.O.W. Divorce. Updated 3/16/2023.
Posted on April 29, 2020
Diana Cotterell/Paige Young’s parents: 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.”)
Below is the Hollywood Wedding Chapel where Robert and Donna were married as stated on the marriage certificate.
The location is on the Sunset Strip, about one block from the infamous and historic Chateau Marmont hotel.
The famed Garden of Allah apartment building was across the street.
This Hollywood Wedding Chapel building was purchased by famous director/writer Preston Sturges in 1940; he transformed it into “Players” restaurant, a movie business watering hole.
Players has its’ own interesting Hollywood and LA history.
Donna and Robert must have been one of the last couples to marry at the chapel before Sturges took over.
Currently this location is a Pink Taco restaurant. Building is the same.
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.
From Constance Susan Cotterell’s birth cert. in 1942. Father Robert a Leadman at Douglas Aircraft.
Donna’s parents Ned and Virginia LaRocca, were musical vaudevillians who travelled the Pantages, Orpheum and other vaudeville circuits for about the first 10 years of her life. (For more see Family History Chapters)
Diana’s mother Donna Virginia LaRocca was born in 1921, in Peoria, Illinois, hometown of her father.
Donna V. moved with her parents to Los Angeles around 1934.
Recently found article: Robert Cotterell goes from MIA to POW.
(Robert Cotterell is listed with the Evans address on his daughter Diana Lee’s birth certificate.)
1944 Second Lieutenant Army Air Diana and her sister’s father was Corps Heavy Bomber Robert M. Cotterell, he was captured on May 27th and imprisoned in a German POW camp.
Robert Cotterell’s daughter Constance is 2 years old, and Diana only 5 months, on the date the POW announcement was published.
For his part in the war effort, Joseph Ned LaRocca signed up for the “Old Man’s Draft Card” enacted by Congress to show solidarity for the war effort. 1942, living in Los Feliz and driving to and working as a harpist in the NBC building on Sunset & Vine.
From the 1944 birth certificate of Diana Cotterell.
1945 Robert Cotterell is liberated from the German Camp.
1947
Donna LaRocca Cotterell files for divorce against Robert Morgan Cotterell.
1947 The Cotterell’s divorce is finalized.
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 written on the subject 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 then 51.
He had a job after the war working for Douglas Aircraft. The job took his family all over the San Fernando Valley and Laguna Beach.
I would imagine Robert paid alimony to Donna, common at the time, as well as child support for Constance and Diana.
Virginia LaRocca is named owner of a “double” house at 3710/12 Arbolada Rd. on an LA building permit. This house is only one mile from the home on Evans St.
Donna has a voter registration record with this address in 1944 below.
Joseph LaRocca is listed in the LA telephone directory with this address in 1948.
Arbolada Rd. is a dead end street. It’s high on a hill with an incredible panoramic view of the area. It’s close to their Evans St. home and still near Griffith Park.
Joseph and Virgina La Rocca listed above at the Arbolada address.
Virginia’s listing leaves off “Christian Science” and just says her employment is “practitioner.” You can also see the names of the the parents of Leno LaBianca, unfortunate victim of the Manson family: Antonio and Corina. They purchased the house on Waverly Dr. in 1940.
Their son Leno along with his wife Rosemary, would tragically be murdered in the same house in 1969. As I imagine everyone reading this knows already.
So 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.
Diana/Paige mother was very close to her first cousin Kathryn Marinello who lived close to Donna in Peoria, Ill., with her in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, and lived two doors from each other in Sherman Oaks in the 1950s.
The Marinellos and LaRoccas will live almost next door to each other in Sherman Oaks for several years in the 1950s. Diana and her sister would have grown up with her children.
Virginia LaRocca had been a full time Christian Science Practitioner by the 1940s and a Christian Science Reader at some point. Her income from this is unknown. She had her own phone per listing in LA phone books for many years for this purpose.
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 always existed in LA.
This fact caused me to wonder as to how the LaRoccas could afford the 2 houses, or one right after the other, in the 1940s.
Virginia LaRocca had been a full time Christian Science Practitioner by the 1940s and a Christian Science Reader at some point. Her income from this is unknown. She had her own phone per listing in LA phone books for many years for this purpose.
The city of Los Angeles experienced a housing shortage during the post-war years. More so than the usual housing shortage.
This fact caused me to wonder as to how the LaRoccas could afford the 2 houses, or one right after the other, or possibly simultaneously in the 1940s.
I didn’t find an exact answer but the next several chapters may shed some light on the upwardly mobile family.
Virginia’s sister Josephine Harker, her sometimes singing/dancing partner back in the days of vaudeville, was listed in a directory at the Evans house around 1940.
And of course their daughter Donna, their son-in-law Robert, and granddaughters Constance and Diana Cotterell.
All these names, excluding Diana and Constance, were linked to the Evans address from 1938 through around 1944, per records I have shown or seen.
It’s easy to imagine that Evans house was way too small to fit all those family members comfortably. I have seen city documents of the original house plan.
Donna and Robert’s divorce was final in 1947.
View from Arbolada Drive is spectacular as is the original building itself.
The LaRocca Arbolada Road house, where the family lived some portion of the 1940s, is very close to, (or behind) the LaBianca “Manson murder house,” on Waverly Drive. However, between the 2 houses is a large plot of undeveloped (!) land, so one has to travel a circuitous route between the two. Perhaps this prevented the two Italian men from meeting each other.
1944. Birth. Los Feliz Address on Birth Certificate. Family Members.
Posted on April 27, 2020
The woman who most of us recognize as Paige Young, Playboy Playmate of November 1968, was born Diana Lee Cotterell on March 16, 1944, at the Griffith Park Maternity Home, located at 1933 Griffith Park Boulevard and her home residence as nearby 3834 Evans St.
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.
According to newspaper articles at the time, the birthing center was well established by 1931 and continued in that capacity for decades.
It became a senior center in the 50s or 60s and was being demolished in 2016 the day I visited.
By 1938 Ned LaRocca and his wife Virginia, Diana’s grandparents, were living at 3834 Evans, along with their daughter and Diana’s mother, Donna Virginia LaRocca.
Written on a City document about 3834 Evans.
3834 Evans has a steep driveway and large sloped front yard.
Neighborhood
Disney Hyperion Studios in the foreground of this 1931 photo. Marshall High in the background. Ned and Virginia LaRocca would be living right around the corner from the High School by 1938. findingwalt.com
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 is still the location of Disney to this day.
Walt and his brother/partner Roy Disney lived in the Los Feliz neighborhood for several years in the days when they first moved to Los Angeles.
A Ralph’s Market now stands at the old Hyperion studio..
City of LA building permit for garage 1938 Mr. LaRocca listed as owner of 3834 Evans St.
View at Los Feliz Blvd and Rowena looking east. 1930s. Close to 3834 Evans St, the LaRocca’s home from about the late 1930s to the mid-40s. Found on the internet.
This 1942 registration card of Joseph Ned LaRocca’s was nicknamed the “Old Man’s Draft Card.” It was required by a Selective Service Act (after Pearl Harbor) and used to acquire information. It was likened to a “snapshot of American males age 45-64 years old.“
The document shows us that Joseph Ned LaRocca lived at 3834 Evans St and that he worked at NBC and CBS on Radio Row, Sunset and Vine. (See corresponding chapters for much more information.)
Paige Young in Los Angeles. 