Sunset Boulevard started in the 1780s as a 600-foot dirt road near the old Pueblo de Los Angeles. In this lecture, explore these stories: the birth of the movie industry; the playground of the stars, mobsters, and rockers on the Sunset Strip; the mansions of the rich and famous in Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, and more.

Sharon Boorstin is a contributing writer for the Los Angeles Times, specializing in lifestyle, food and travel. In 2019 she won Visit California’s Eureka Award for Best Newspaper Travel Article. In the 1970s and ‘80s Boorstin was the Restaurant Critic of the former Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and in the ‘90s she edited the annual Gayot Guidebooks for Los Angeles and other cities. She also wrote for magazines including Bon Appetit, Smithsonian and Town & Country Travel. With her husband Paul, she wrote dozens of screenplays for feature films and television including Angel of Death (ABC) starring Jane Seymour. Her memoir/cookbook, Let Us Eat Cake: Adventures in Food and Friendship (Harper-Collins 2002), was a selection of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club. Raised in Seattle, Washington, Boorstin moved to Los Angeles in 1966 after earning a California Lifetime Teaching credential at University of California, Berkeley. She taught high-school History, English and Social Studies in LA for 11 years.

Fifty and Better was designed to offer university-level courses and lectures (no tests, no homework) taught by experts in the field, and to host social engagement activities for people age 50 and older. All two-hour lectures in the FABulous Summer Lecture Series are open to all ages.

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Register by June 10 by 1 p.m.