Long before there were Tiger Moms, many parents stressed discipline and hard work to their school-age children. Boys were often enrolled in military prep schools to learn discipline, rigor and fortitude through both schoolroom work and athletic pursuits.
Several Los Angeles military academies existed in the 1920s, and chief among them was Black-Foxe Military Institute.
Founded in 1929 by Hollywood real estate tycoon C. E. Toberman and headed by former actor Earle Foxe as president and Harry Black as commandant, the school educated day pupils and boarding students at the former Urban Military Academy, established in 1902. Many celebrity children either attended and/or graduated from the institute. The institution itself appeared in a few films.
ALSO BY MARY MALLORY
Franklin Pangborn
Erich von Stroheim’s ‘Paprika’
Einar Petersen, Forgotten Artist
Black-Foxe Military Institute, spread over five acres, opened Sept. 17, 1929, at 637 N. Wilcox Ave. and Melrose Avenue to provide young boys with a fine scholastic education along with disciplined military, recreational and athletic activities in up-to-date and attractive buildings, all offering great opportunities for educational success. Black issued a statement to the Aug. 25, 1929, Los Angeles Times about the institute’s goals and aims. “It is our purpose to provide for Southern California a thoroughly modern school for boys, with facilities and educational advantages second to none in America…. The school provides an education for students from the first to the twelfth grades, both boarding and day pupils.” It was fully accredited by colleges for its rigorous courses.
The institute offered a full curriculum of classic education classes including languages, band, orchestra, music and drama, along with an extensive sports offering: fencing, swimming, baseball, wrestling, football, boxing, tennis, volleyball, cavalry, horsemanship, polo, military science and aviation ground schooling. Black played these up in his statement. “What is of particular interest to both parents and students is the comprehensive program of activities designed to provide a complete and thorough blending of the mental and physical development of our students.”
Such outstanding sports facilities as Wilshire Country Club and the Los Angeles Tennis Club occupied land adjacent to the school, and the school itself straddled Wilcox Avenue, with the drilling field and gymnasium with indoor Olympic-sized pool on the west side of the street, and administration, classrooms, dining hall and dorm on the east side.
Foxe’s name added prestige to the program. Actor Foxe possessed more than 10 years experience on American movie screens, including films directed by John Ford, but the coming of sound offered challenges because of his Irish accent. He claimed however, that one of his longtime ambitions was to open and run a military school.
His name drew colleagues and friends to enter their children in Black-Foxe. Early newspapers and yearbooks show that sons of John Ford, Victor McLaglen, Jean Hersholt, William Powell, Buster Keaton, Joseph von Stroheim, Edward G. Robinson, Sol Wurtzel, B. P. Schulberg enrolled and attended.
Other celebrity fathers included Paul Whiteman, Harry Carey, James Kirkwood, Hobart Bosworth, Alan Ladd and George Marshall.
Many students chafed under the strict discipline; Robinson’s son was dismissed in the early 1930s and many left.
Like the military, daily reveille wakened the students, who dressed and greeted senior officers in their rooms before proceeding to breakfast. They attended classes before heading to the drilling field for exercises. When the whistle blew, the band and assembled cadets marched across the street and into the dining hall while all traffic halted. The school followed a strict schedule of classes, exercise, sports and drills.
The first year’s commencement featured John Steven McGroarty as speaker, and the rental of a summer camp at Lake Elsinore. By 1931, the school leased Camp El Capinero Lodge near Sequoia National Forest for its two-month summer camps.
Outstanding teachers and coaches also lured students to the school. Some had been hired for the Los Angeles Athletic Club and the Ambassador Hotel. George Pilkington, formerly of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, led the outstanding polo team, which played most of its matches against colleges’ junior varsity teams. Late 1930s swim coach Clyde Swendsen had coached the two previous United States Olympic swimming teams. Black Foxe’s football, baseball and basketball teams also played against colleges’ junior varsity teams like USC, UCLA, and Stanford. The football team invited a Hawaii team to come play in 1936, with Black-Foxe reciprocating by playing there in 1937. The Boys Town team accompanied by Father Flanagan traveled to Los Angeles in 1938 to play them.
The school’s strong financial backing led it to assist Los Angeles when it suffered financial difficulties. When the city of Los Angeles skipped summer school classes in 1932 because of empty coffers, Black-Foxe Military Institute opened its summer session at low costs to all students, male and female, to provide them educational opportunities.
Over the next several decades, more celebrity children attended the institute, including sons of Charlie Chaplin, Sol Wurtzel, Sam Goldwyn, Hunt Stromberg, Frances Marion, Donald Ogden Stewart, Richard Barthelmess, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bette Davis, Bing Crosby, Jane Powell, Guy Williams, Harry Cohn, Dennis O’Keefe, Samuel Fuller, Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Max Factor, and Gregory Peck, with sons of Harold Lloyd, Art Linkletter, Jerry Lewis, Robert Aldrich, Alexander Pantages, Andy Devine, and Irving Cummings actually graduating from the school.
The May 18, 1953, Daily Variety stated that a 7-year-old Gary Lewis was selling autographed photos of his dad, Jerry Lewis, for 10 cents each at the school. In the early 1950s, baseball great Joe DiMaggio proudly visited his son on campus.
In 1935, composers Harry Warren and Gus Kahn wrote and wanted to publish a school song on behalf of their sons attending the school, but competing studio contracts prevented publisher Jack Robbins from printing it.
Young actors Bobby Breen and Scotty Beckett attended the academy, and actress Shirley Temple’s brother George graduated. Actor Robert Wagner attended through the eighth grade, when he was expelled. According to his autobiography, Gene Wilder supposedly suffered harassment because of his Jewish heritage, with his mother quickly pulling him from the school.
Students from all over the world enrolled, from such countries as Japan, England, Egypt, Canada and Mexico, with many sons of leaders of South American countries also attending.
Boys never lacked for female companionship, however, as they held reciprocal dances with Marlborough, Westlake, and Marymount Schools, along with girls of the Wilshire Ebell Club.
Over the years, Black-Foxe appeared in a few films. In 1940, Earle Foxe played a somewhat autobiographical role in the Columbia film “Military Academy,” filmed partly at the school. Foxe served as technical adviser for the 1943 MGM film “Best Foot Forward,” starring Lucille Ball, June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven and Harry James, which filmed on the school’s drilling field. Jerry Lewis employed the gymnasium in his 1961 film “The Ladies Man.” Art Linkletter shot on location for “On the Go” in 1959.
During World War II, several students served in the armed forces, with Lt. Harry Gaver Jr., son of headmaster Harry Gaver, perishing on the Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor. Graduates also served in the Korean conflict.
Ray Rosendahl, the California underwriting manager for Seaboard Surety Co. of New York, whose sons attended Black-Foxe, acquired the school from Toberman in 1959. At the time, 225 day students and 100 residents attended the school. Rosendahl owned and operated the school for three years before passing leadership over to parents, who formed a nonprofit organization. After a few years, financial problems forced their hand, with the rights reverting to Rosendahl. In the late 1960s, students and their families paid $900-$1,400 tuition to attend Black-Foxe.
By the middle of the 1960s, however, changing cultural and social attitudes decreased attendance and financial revenues at all military schools. Relaxing attitudes and increasing opposition to the Vietnam War trumpeted the death knell for Black-Foxe and many similar institutions.
In 1969, Rosendahl demolished all the school buildings to begin condominium construction on the five acres. Workmen simply threw trophies, pennants, photographs, plaques and books in the trash, many luckily plucked from the dumpsters by observant alumni.
Today, most of these treasures reside in the former adjutant-general’s home on Wilcox Avenue. Graduate David Aguirre, a former maitre’d at Yamashiro’s, proudly protects and exhibits the small archive in his lovely restored home, a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. Aguirre and fellow alumni Robert Sides provided me a tour of these precious treasures two weeks ago. Sides later showed me fun Kodachrome and black and white film footage of the school over the decades, including the Northern California camp, football games at the Coliseum, a day in the life of cadets, marching from the drill field to lunch, and graduations.
Alumni still proudly recall their school, gathering for reunions. They have put together the website, www.bfmi.org, which includes yearbook photos of all graduating students. A book is being written on the long history of the institute. Only a memory today, Black-Foxe Military Institute provided rich educations and experiences to lucky and well-off young men, shaping them for lives of service and success.
ladailymirror.com 
Thank You for sharing this interesting piece of L.A.’s history. Where do successful citizens and celebrities send their male children to school these days? Does L.A. have a military academy in the 2000’s?
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Earle Foxe was hardly a retired actor in 1929, he continued making screen appearances, often in substantial roles, until 1946. Nor did he have an Irish accent, his voice had a flat midwestern tone befitting his Ohio birthplace.
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He made virtually few appearances after 1929, obviously stepping in to head the school because he was getting few roles and needed a steady job, so that is virtually retired. If he was acting full time, he wouldn’t have been here.
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Black-Foxe also provided another, unwritten service to the city of Los Angeles. Its large patch of greenery purified and cooled the air on Melrose Avenue so much that it seemed an oasis even in the turbulent 1960s. Though I had little respect for the military mild, I loved what it did for the city.
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I attended Black-Foxe Military Institute (the title on my report card) during their 1955 summer school session. I had two classes; English and Geometry. During the summer the school did not engage in military drills or exercises. The classes were structured much like my public school classes at Van Nuys High prior to that, but much more formal than my classes at Mar-Ken School after that for my senior high school year. I was not aware of any celebrity kids there, but I would have been oblivious to them having grown up with celebrities all around me. There were many foreign students in attendance that summer. One was an amateur boxing champion from a Latin American country I can no longer remember. I offered to spar with him, and all went well until he aggressively switched from sparring to a more combative stance taking me by surprise. That was the only time I was knocked out. He later apologized. Outside of the headache, I enjoyed my summer at Black-Foxe and got a sense of pride in the school that the regular students and the faculty expressed. I also did well in my classes and thought they were taught well. Thanks for the nice review of the school’s existence. There were a number of military schools in the Los Angeles area at the time. Now, all a distant memory.
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I’ve made two mistakes regarding David Aguirre. He never graduated from the school, he just lives in the adjutant general’s house and wants to see the school’s history preserved, and he was the maitre’d at the Magic Castle, not Yamashiro’s.
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I AM GARY FOX……NO RELATION,JUST A STUDENT FROM SEPTEMBER 1956 TO
JUNE 1960[6–9 GRADES] .I WAS FORTUNATE TO HAVE GONE THERE AT THAT TIME IN
MY LIFE.GREAT MEMORIES OF BILL ALDRICH,MIKE INGALLS,SID SUTTON ,GARY LEWIS
STEVE LINDSTRUM AND MANY, MANY OTHERS.KEPT IN TOUCH WITH SOME AFTER
GOING TO JOHN MARSHALL AND PLAYING A SHORT YEAR OF PRO BASEBALL.I HAVE RUN ACROSS PEOPLE WHO KNEW OR HEARD OF BFMI.IT WAS A REAL PRIVILEGE TO
BE A CADET.I WAS AT THE REUNION AT DAVID AGUIRRE’S IN THE EARLY 2000’S.THANKS
TO JIM O’KEFFE.
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My ex husband was a boarding student there as a child. He told me so much of this place.(He and I were married about 20 years and had four kids and now have five grandchildren. When we divorced I gave him his year books etc(and have been unable to locate any information on Black-Foxe to show the kids…don’t know what he did with the keepsakes I gave back). All this matches what I remember him sharing with me….Some he mentioned are as follows:
….(mainly I remember Jerry Lewis’ son(later of Gary Lewis and The Playboys) and Alan Ladd’s son or Cheryl Ladd’s ex husband(David Ladd)…..My ex’s name is Gary Ledford Shumaker..he was born in 1946….but went back to the Anaheim, Ca area before graduation….(His sister went to Chadwick during the same time frame)..I grew up here in the town of Bryan / College Station, TX and can proudly say that I am a graduate of Texas A&M University Class of 1969…Bryan,TX also had a great military school…the oldest in Texas….It was known as Allen Military Academy. It started as a school for boarding boys only…By the time I was old enough it was open for grades 6 through first two years of Junior College…(I have an AA degree from AMA)….It is still in business from I think K through 12th grades but no longer a military school or boarding school. Thanks for posting this article so I can show our children..My ex lives near me in Texas but has not been to any reunions.. I will save this page for the kids to add to their family’s history….Thanks Sandra Kay Bowen Shumaker (now Mrs John R French) jrf818@suddenlink.net…..Incidentally, to Gary Fox,it appears my ex Gary Ledford Shumaker would have been there for sure when you were if your posting is correct….Thanks Mary Mallory for posting. Sandra Kay (Sandy) Bowen Shumaker French(aka now as Mrs John R French) from the Twin Cities of Bryan/College Station, TX aka Aggieland
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My dad had a short stint as a teacher there. He often spoke of the magnitude of the fathers of his students. Pops recently passed and I found some memrobilia, attesting to his fondness for the academy.
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I attended Black-Foxe from 1950-1959, graduated class of 1959. I was very sadden to hear many years ago about the closing of the school. I recently was sent a book titled “Hollywood Cadets” and did enjoy reading about the era 1929 to 1949, however I did read many discrepancies during the time frame I attended and did contact the author and received an arrogant and somewhat narcissistic reply. I will let my record and those of others which have been properly documented in the Adjutant the yearly school book for those years I attended to speak for itself.
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I attended Black Fox Military School, Hollywood, CA as a 4th and 5 grader, at he end of WW11, in My 1944 WW 11 was almost over. I was friends with Mary Pickford / Buddy Rogers son Ronnie Rogers, I was in the boarding group and only got to go home on week ends. which was not very often since I was mostly walking off demerits with a real 1903 Spring field 306.cal rifle . I ecamexpert with the 22 rifle team. . I liked the sports and that was about all. teachers were mostly retired Military Officers working part time. I left in 1946 to attend Army & Navy Academy, Carlsbad CA, Retired from the Army, Nam Vet. So the military likes my background, as I was so good at short arms drill . I won the excellence in rifle rapid fire on the Army rifle& pistol team .l. . . MY best Friend, Gary Toberman went to BF just before it closed, there yeas later 1n 1953 he was the big swimming teams diving star, later Won 1st place gold in High tower diving in US Olympics. 1961, Greg Stoner US Army Retired.
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I attended Black-Foxe from 1965 to 1968 and now live in Lexington Kentucky. I have met several others here who either attended or who’s fathers attended. In fact, I sold a house to Joe Jr’s dorm mate pictured in the first picture of your article. Several friends still in LA have said they have never met anyone who they previously did not know but here in “the heart of the bluegrass” I have met 3 who I did not know. I have only fond memories of my time at Black Foxe and feel that I have lived up to the school motto “to be-not to seem”
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Great stories to read and relive. I attended BFMI for nine years, starting boarding school in the first grade. It was different but I learned a great deal that sticks with me. Mostly, I met a great many super guys from all walks of life. Today I still see many of them and think how blessed we were to have had the experience of a lifetime. Way too much to write here but happy memories of a bygone era. Best to all who are still alive.
Lee “Spanky” Danielson
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Lee, you and I played on the Black-Foxe baseball team. You played first base, and I played third base. Coach Bob Valenta changed my position to catcher. Jimmy Burnett played third base as a sophomore. You are right, “way too much to write here”!
Lee Thomas Ashjian
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I worked with a man who attended the academy. James Pollock.
He told me that Wernher von Braun had been a guest speaker and told them of how he and his brother, a U-boat Commander, had developed and successfully tested a submarine launched missile but it was turned down by the German High command, preferring to focus on aircraft.
James was rather mercurial and could finish LA Times crossword puzzle during a single 15 minute break.
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I attended Black-Foxe School from fall of 1964 through spring of 1967, grades 6 – 8. The following year, ’67 – ’68, would be the last for the school. There were some great teachers there, Mr. Scharff, Mrs. Sheridan, Mr MacAtee, Sr. Price, Mr. Whitmore, Mr. Marmaduke.. also great coaches. And Harry the tailor! It was a great time, for sure.
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Thanks for this post. It helped confirm a missing filming location from the original “Miracle on 34th Street,” which used the exterior of a Black-Foxe building to double for a Long Island old age home. Do you know how many buildings were on the military property along Wilcox?
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I recall that there were 4 buildings on the west side of Wilcox: a small building by the corner with Melrose at the end of the parade ground that housed the marching band, the main administration building which also housed high school classrooms and the library, the indoor pool, and the building that housed the K – 4 classrooms. there were other buildings on the west side of the street (the armory and some other classrooms) but they did not front on the street. On the east side of the street was the other main building which housed the dining hall, the gymnasium and dormitories. The other building on that side of the street housed the grades 5 – 8 classrooms.
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