Culture Takes Wings

Many of Hollywood's college movies are filmed on the 27-acre, ivy-walled campus of Los Angeles City College. Even when cameras are not focused on it, L.A.C.C. often seems like a movie. L.A.C.C. has begun a new one-year course in air-hostessing,* adding to its boasted "streamlined" curriculum which trains salesmen, policemen and undertakers, bestows upon them an A.A. ("Associate in Arts") degree.

Director of the air-hostessing course is bright-eyed, fluttery, fortyish Margaret M. Preininger, head of L.A.C.C.'s Cultural Arts department, author of Japanese Flower Arrangement for Modern Homes. Miss Preininger's classroom is a mellow harmony of overstuffed chairs, heavy draperies, floor lamps, vases of flowers. She wangled the expenses from the Los Angeles Board of Education after giving each member a copy of John Cowper Powys' The Meaning of Culture.

Sample "Cultural Arts" course required of air hostesses: "C.A. 69. Practical esthetics. A course for young women who expect to do office work . . . emphasizing the importance of personal grooming, correct speech (voice and diction), and also flower arrangement as an integral part of the office setting."

Typical chrysalid hostess is short, black-haired Gloria Gooze, 20, refugee from movie ambitions. Said she last week, as she reclined on a green plush L.A.C.C. sofa: "I am interested in the Pan-American relations phase of this course."

* The University of Southern California has a similar course, taught by Eleanore King, who writes a daily column ("Glorify Yourself") for the Hearst Los Angeles Examiner.

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