Aaron Spelling; South Dallas Street Cred?

Far too often, rich Hollywood types make too much of their so-called tough, humble beginnings. Worse, they'll lay claim to some street cred they never earned, like so much Robert Van "Vanilla Ice" Winkle who famously lied that he'd been raised tough on the streets of Miami when he really grew up in white bread Carrollton, Texas.

So I was curious when reading the obit for Aaron Spelling, the television mogul who used to say he grew up poor in a very tough section of Dallas. He told the Dallas Morning News in an old interview that he took his third wife Candy on a tour of his old neighborhood shortly after they were married in 1968. His family lived at 1905 Browder Street, where he was born in 1923.

"I took her to where I used to live. And she finally believed all the horror stories I told her," Spelling said. "The thing I remember most about Browder Street is my mother and a humpbacked whore named Bessie. She lived next door to me."

Spelling lived in an area just south of downtown Dallas called "The Cedars" which is being redeveloped as we speak. It's where the new Dallas Police Station is --- a convenient location as The Cedars is still considered by some to be a crime-infested hell hole. But it's now seeing a resurgence in night life and redevelopment as Poor David's Pub, The Southside Lofts and Billy Bob's have all opened their doors there within the last five years. My favorite bar Lee Harvey's is in an old house in The Cedars, about three blocks from where Spelling's house used to be. The Spelling residence at 1905 Browder was torn down in the 1960's to make way for a super shady, cinder block low rent hotel that's still there the last time I checked. While the Cedars is coming back, there are still tons of homeless people in that area as several shelters are located there. So even today, the scenery in The Cedars is more than most suburbanites can stomach.

For those who are obsessed with Dallas history, here's a little primer on Spellings old neighborhood.

Around the turn of the century, the Cedars was largely a residential area which was populated mostly by working class Jewish families. There were some really nice elaborate Victorian houses in The Cedars --- a few of them are still standing --- but most of the homes in the Cedars were small two bedroom homes like the one Spelling grew up in.

By the 1920's, many of the families who had the means fled The Cedars because it becoming an industrial area. Dallas didn't have strong zoning laws back then, so warehouses began crowding their way into the neighborhood. Lots of the homes were torn down to make way for bottling factories, metal shops and the like. And because the place became a less than desirable place to raise a family, it became a great place to do crime.

In the early 1930's, the Cedars went into a crime statistic free fall. For example, in 1933, a street a few blocks north of the Spelling residence was the best place in Dallas to score heroin. Dallas police conducted numerous heroin raids on Powhattan Street back then. They even investigated a capital murder on the corner of Powhattan and Akard in the mid-1930's. I believe a game warden, or some other low level law enforcement official, was shot and killed during a holdup at a corner shop. Spelling would have been a school age kid then. So while in knee pants, the young Spelling likely dodged needles and bullets on his way to elementary school over on Corinth Street.

So Spelling wasn't just positioning himself when he claimed the tough neighborhood pedigree. Take that Robert Van Winkle.