Ethel, Bob and Peter - Easter Sunday

Ethel McCann emigrated to the USA for a career in the movies. Ethel's first husband was Leo White (originally Leo Weiss). She went under the stage name of Blanche White. These pictures show Ethel, her son Peter and Bob/Bobo, who I presume is her second husband. (Her other son John does not feature here, presumably as he was on army service at the time.) I have no pictures of Leo in my archive, but have found a few of him on the web. John and Peter show a family resemblance to Leo, so I presume they are his sons. If we assume Ethel was in her mid to late forties, then these pictures were taken in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Arnaz Drive is partially visible in some pictures. That would place them in what is now Beverly Hills 90211. Captions to other photos give some other street names. With luck and some help from Google maps, I hope to get a fix on where exactly they lived. Whilst Ethel and Bob may not have been "A" list stars, they certainly seem to have been earning a good living from what they did; they are very well dressed and living in a quite affluent area. She mentions Bob was letting his hari grow for a picture he was working on, which indicates that he is a movie actor.

[Update. 1930 census data for Ethel's family reveals that Peter was actually Leo H. I have therefore indexed him as "Leo H White II" in this and subsequent posts.]
[Further update. Bob/Bobo was George Lewis Cooke White. See More About Ethel 3 for further details. Ethel makes the comment 'Old Captain Cooke must have been like his grandson. It is a bit of a stretch to imagine that Bob/George is the grandson of British explorer Captain Cook (usually spelt without a final ‘e’ and died in 1779), but I think the use of ‘Cooke’ here is significant as it was one of George’s middle names and his mother’s maiden name. It provides further evidence that Bob/Bobo is George White.]

Ethel mentions "Bostal Heath" - this is a wooded area in Abbey Wood, not too far from Woolwich, where the McCanns had lived in England. She also describes Bob as looking like a hopper in Kent. Back then (and I can even remember it in the 1960s) some less affluent Londoners would take working holidays hop picking in Kent. Jack (presumably brother John Frederick) is addressing Peter as an "exemptee" - maybe that is a reference to him being exempt from army service.