Role Model for All Us Young Whipper-Snappers

No fading star: Actress gets roles at 97

By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 30, 10:11 AM ET



SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Hollywood's starmakers always are on the lookout for a fresh new face and they found one in Mae Laborde, albeit of the wrinkled variety. The 97-year-old Laborde is just four years into her acting career and hotter than ever. Standing 4-feet-10, with snow-white hair, rosy-red cheeks and a sweet-as-peaches-and-cream smile, she's becoming TV's ubiquitous grandma.

She was "Wheel of Fortune's" Vanna White (40 years in the future) for a recent episode of "MADtv." She was the stunned fiancee whose boyfriend finally gets around to proposing in a jewelry commercial. She faced down the Grim Reaper himself in a bit about elderly people without health insurance for "Real Time With Bill Maher."

She's also been a cheerleader on ESPN, appeared in a Lexus commercial, had a recurring role on Spike Feresten's "Talkshow" and had a role in a JP Morgan Chase Bank commercial.

"Now that one paid good!" says Laborde, eyes twinkling under knitted brows and behind rhinestone glasses. Then, lowering her voice conspiratorially, she adds, "I mean like a few hundred dollars."

As she speaks, she sits perched on the living room couch of her small Southern California home, just a couple blocks from the beach.

So what's the secret to her late-blooming success? She never had any training and, until four years ago, the closest she came to show business was working as a bookkeeper in the late bandleader Lawrence Welk's office.

"I'm just a natural," she says with a broad smile as she heads to her dining room table to sift through some of her press clippings.

It's not unheard of for actors to work well into their 90s, of course. Think George Burns and Bob Hope or, more recently, Gloria Stuart of "Titanic" fame. But all of them started in the business young, unlike Laborde who didn't earn her Screen Actors Guild card until she was in her mid-90s.

Her acting career was started by a 2002 Los Angeles Times story, when columnist Steve Lopez, her former neighbor, decided to seek her out for some lighthearted driving tips.

In those days she was well known around Santa Monica as the little old lady who barreled up and down her neighborhood's hilly streets and across the freeways in a gigantic 1977 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Laborde, who only stopped driving last year, was so small, and the car so big, Lopez wrote, that behind the wheel she looked like a cricket driving a tank.

His description caught the eye of Sherrie Spillane, the veteran L.A. talent agent and ex-wife of the late crime novelist Mickey Spillane. Spillane decided she had to meet Laborde. The two got together for a tea-leaf reading (Laborde's hobby), and the next thing Spillane knew she had a new client.

"She's got this way about her that's so endearing that everybody falls in love with her," Spillane says. "She's got that cute little face and she's very funny."

Laborde also has nearly a century of experience to draw on when the director yells action.

She arrived in Los Angeles from her hometown of Fresno at the height of the Great Depression, meeting her husband when he was the conductor on L.A.'s fabled old Red Car trolley line that she used to take home from work.

A few years later, her husband and baby daughter in tow, she moved into a tiny, straight-out-of-a-storybook house on a street so narrow that cars traveling in opposite directions can't pass if someone has parked at the curb. It was back in the day when Santa Monica was just a quaint little California town of beach cottages.

Seventy years later, many of those cottages have been razed in favor of multimillion-dollar "McMansions." Laborde's remains unchanged. Even the orchid-colored tile the young mother picked out for her 1930s-era bathroom remains.

As the years passed, Laborde always kept working at one job or another, going on to outlive both her husband, Nicholas, and their only child, Shirley.

A Girl Scout leader for her daughter's troop, she has kept in touch with most of her daughter's friends. Now in their 70s, they'll ask her for secrets to living a long life. She'll tell them to never retire.

When she was 89 Laborde took a police training course just for fun, and she still cooks for herself, paints and raises tomatoes in her garden that she sells to a local restaurant.

But she'll drop whatever she's doing when there's a call for an audition.

Recently she landed a small role in a forthcoming movie opposite Ben Stiller. She'll be the grandmotherly lady sitting in a restaurant near Stiller and his girlfriend as they speculate what their lives will be like at that age.

"I don't know anyone else her age that could keep up with her," says Spillane, who has become both her agent and close friend.

"But then I don't know anyone else her age," Spillane adds with a laugh.

Link courtesy of my friend, David Gordon. Try it, you might like it.

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Promised Training Schedule

Yep, I start working with the trainer tomorrow. With my arm still in a cast, we are a little limited in what we can do, but we will make do. So this month will concentrate mostly on walking with some strength training thrown in. Rest days are not scheduled, but are suggested at 1 day per week. This week, I've been doing 2.5 miles at lunch each day, just to see if I could do it. I'm only a few minutes slower than I was this time last year. I put that up to the added weight of the cast and not being able to swing my left arm.

Hmmm, the inclined treadmill workouts, for the most part are at lower inclines than I'm already doing--I usually do 10%, sometimes 15%. I'm certain the trainer has a reason, and I will be finding out what it is.

The ultimate goal is to be able to handle the Mont Blanc Circuit by August--whether I actually get to go or not.

April's Training Schedule::

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It's a little early to be certain, but if this works out well, I just may continue with this trainer through most of the year.

Oh, and yep, that 1400' rise hike at the end of the month is on the same trail that bit me a couple weeks ago. It will not defeat me again. Ok, so it didn't actually defeat me last time, but it did bruise me. :-)

Good News

at least as far as my elbow is concerned. After one week, it has managed to stay in joint--apparently, there was a concern that surgery would be required. I am actually glad I didn't know that when I made my last post.

I am still in high spirits and determined not to let this little mishap keep me from training, whether I get the privelage of joining my friends on the Mont Blanc Circuit or not this year. I managed to walk 2 miles, with cast in sling, in the heat without losing my balance yesterday. I only stopped because one of my laces came undone--yep, tying my shoes is something I need help with at the moment. So, balance issue under control, my trainer and I will start working late this week to see what we can accomplish.

Bad news--the pretty purple cast came off today. (Nope, that's not the bad news.) A pretty pink cast went on in it's place--longer and a lot snugger, but I have the use of my fingers and thumb again. (That's not the bad news either.) I'll be in the new cast for two weeks, instead of one. (Yep, miner though it is, that's the bad news.) :-)

Why you should never hike alone, part 2

If you remember the mother bear and cubs that my roommate ran into on the trail last year, then you remember part 1 of tis lesson. Get ready for part 2.

So, here it is Sunday morning the day we've chosen for the first hike of the season.We're packed and ready to go. I need an evaluation hike for my trainer to reference. We've chosen Switzer as a good starting point.

Yes, as usual we got a late start. The trail was nice--not too hot, not too cold, very few people and the water was low. We stopped just short of Oakwilde Campground due to time constraints, ate lunch, then headed back up the 1400'we had earlier descended. We had to stop a little more than we would have liked, but all in all the climb and the switchbacks were not as difficult as either of us recalled. With a little more training we would certainly have no difficulty at all.

So when did the problem occur? On the return trip, thankfully, or we would not have found any help. We had just passed a couple taking photos of their two month old son asleep in his back pack carrier on his first hike, and we were fording a stream. I've crossed at this particular point at least a dozen times--it's easy even in high water, but it is also very slippery if you hit it wrong, and the boulders are granite.

Well, you guessed it, I was basically across when the heal of my rear foot came down on the slime, I slipped in the direction of the stream flow and fell to my left. My left arm reached out to stop my fall on a granite boulder, there was a loud cracking noise, like a young limb being broken off a tree, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in ice cold water, unable to get any traction under my boots or find any thing on my right side to lever myself upright with. My left arm was bent at an impossible angle and would not bend. I have no idea how my roommate managed to get me out of the creek, but he succeeded. And the couple we had passed also helped us get through the remaining boulders and creek crossings--I no longer had certain balance, so this was greatly appreciated.

An hour late we arrived at the closest emergency room--Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. 9 hours later after several x-rays, a few doses of morphine, several attempts at finding a vein that was large enough for an IV--someone finally figured out to use the needle they normally use for toddlers--and having been knocked out twice while they tried to reset my very stubborn arm, I got to go home wearing a very large 30 pound temporary splint. I'm not kidding, the thing was a two man lift.

The good news, and much to everyone's surprise, there was not one single break in my arm. Apparently, I have strong bones. I was lucky. It's just a dislocated elbow, which will take a while to heal--I'll be in a cast for two weeks and then have rehab after that--but it won't prevent me from hiking or training for hiking. And my trainer says she can work around the injury.

Of course, my wardrobe has become rather limited, since there isn't much in my closet that will pull over this pretty purple cast that the orthopedic surgeon put on yesterday after even more x-rays.

Here's me, all dopey from anethesia, dirty, propped up against the brick chimney at home and holding on to that hefty splint.

Getting Physically Fit?

Well, we'll see. :-)

At the very least, I should be a little healthier, in better condition, and maybe a little thinner by the time I finish this program.

Here's what I have decided to do.

Starting tomorrow, I will be officially and strictly back on my diet for at least the next 6-8 weeks. I may continue after that, depending on the results.

I will also start back on my conditioning regime, and, hopefully sign up with a trainer this weekend. Now, I can't afford the trainers at my local gym. And, the last time I spoke to them they had no idea how to go about preparing someone for a hike. In fact, I got the feeling that they didn't think of it as much of a goal or a sport for that matter. Ok, I don't think of it as a sport either, at least not involving me. However, I know that there are exercises that are specific to hiking improvement, just as there are exercises that are specific to improvement in track or basketball. And sport specific exercises are an excellent way to improve your body for that activity.

So, I am going to try doing a coaching at a distance program with Body Results. Yes, that's right, the link over there in my sidebar under Hiking Interests. So far everything I have used them for and the advice they have given me for free has given excellent results. So, now I plan to give them a try with their on-line training program. They will taylor specifically to my schedule and my needs. And my schedule is tight, my needs great. Still, I haven't paid yet, and the consultation is looking good. I would not be surprised if I had my first month's schedule by the beginning of next week.

I plan on posting those schedules here on this blog for those who are interested to see what I am being advised on. I also plan on posting my progress. I like these people, they are friendly and knowledgable and practice what they teach. I know they will impress me and hold up their end of the bargain. The difficult part will be for me to hold up mine.

I wonder if they can get me to the point that I can impress anyone with how much I've improved since the trek through the Pyranees. Hmmm, I think I would really like to see that happen. :-)

Starbucks takes their Tunes to the next level

Soon, when you walk into a local Starbucks, you will be able to download that tune that just caught your ear while you sip on your latte. But, yet, there is more--a new music label? Heck, why not? Read the article from BusinessWeek for more info.