Golden Years

Reporting from the Sierra Nevada foothills -- It was a dream to retire here — in a quaint little town atop a hillside, among the pines and the quail and the Main Street shops. When Kate Hamon arrived more than a decade ago, she had it all. Now she is on the phone with Kmart, hustling to get a job. "Please, please keep me in mind," she tells the manager. "I can start any time you like. " Work is hard to find around these parts, especially when you're 78 years old. PHOTOS: Lean times in Gold Rush country For many retirees such as Hamon who came to spend their golden years in California's Gold Rush region, life has not turned out the way they'd hoped.

"Getting old is not for sissies. " That's a Bette Davis line, as quoted by a retired singer in Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut, "Quartet," but the world-weary wisecrack serves equally well as subtext for a bittersweet batch of new films that examine something that has been largely missing from the big screen: the aging process. At 82, Christopher Plummer's Oscar-winning turn in 2010's "Beginners" stood as something of an anomaly. This year, the "senior cinema" entries have grown to include two late-spring releases: Clint Eastwood's grumpy-old-man showcase "Trouble With the Curve" and the surprise hit "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," in which Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Bill Nighy appear as British pensioners in chaotic India.

It was happy hour and cocktail glasses were being hoisted in the San Fernando Valley. Retirees at a new senior citizen residence were toasting their good fortune that there wasn't a recliner in sight. "What the hell do you need rocking chairs for?" asked 87-year-old Dody Fertig, taking a sip of wine. "Who doesn't want to live their life out in style?" That's what residents of the $90-million Village at Northridge are paying for, after all. The new five-acre "senior living community" built atop the site of a grapefruit grove-turned-aerospace plant was alive with cocktail chatter and the tinkling of ice as residents relaxed before adjourning to nearby restaurant-style dining rooms for the dinner hour.

Ann Rutherford, an actress whose small role as Scarlett's younger sister Carreen in the 1939 film "Gone With the Wind" was her most enduring, has died. She was 94. Rutherford, who also portrayed Mickey Rooney's teenage girlfriend in the Andy Hardy movies, died Monday evening at her home in Beverly Hills, said her close friend and fellow actress Anne Jeffreys. Rutherford had been in declining health with heart problems. As she became one of the last surviving cast members of "Gone With the Wind," Rutherford made a second career out of attending festivals featuring the beloved Civil War epic.

Leaning on her walker at the Sears elevator, the snowy-haired woman watched me hobble up on my cane. "Whoever named these the golden years," she said, "deserves a punch in the nose. " True, I thought, but I'm not taking aging lying down. Here are accommodations I've made as the years march past. I rarely eat fried entrees, French fries, potato chips or saturated fats, nor waste money on carbonated drinks devoid of nutritional value. With older friends all on different diet restrictions, I now entertain by taking them out to restaurants.

Welcome to the Golden League, home of an ancient civilization. Populating this aging society are the league's football coaches, a group of golden oldies who have more than 100 years of coaching experience between them. Brent Newcomb begins his 20th year as coach and 29th on the staff at Antelope Valley High. Jim Bauer of Littlerock and Lin Parker of Highland are each starting their seventh years at their schools and have long coaching resumes.

In the 80 years since Universal Studios' Carl Laemmle said, "I hope I didn't make a mistake coming out here," the motion picture industry's migration to the Valley has proven successful, growing into the Valley's top industry. Moviemaking's first moguls were lured west in the early 1900s by warm weather and the Valley's vast and varied terrain. Movies came to the Valley to stay when Warner Bros. moved to Burbank in the 1920s.

"KTLA's 50 Golden Years" is a celebration of the Los Angeles station's long and sometimes fascinating history. The first commercially licensed television station west of Chicago, KTLA proves to have had a colorful enough past to merit this type of self-congratulatory tribute. Airing at 8 tonight--although the actual anniversary was Jan. 22--the two-hour documentary is at its most involving when offering images and memories from the station's days as a television pioneer in the '40 and '50s.

One of San Francisco's Nob Hill hotels has begun a program for mature travelers called "Golden Years at San Francisco's Stanford Court." Adjacent to the Mark Hopkins and across the street from the Fairmont Hotel, the Stanford Court is sited at the only cable car crossing in San Francisco where two lines intersect, a further advantage because the regular $2 cable-car fare is a mere 15 cents for seniors.

The eternal "Dodo," a 5-foot 3-inch dynamo looks up at you with those bluer-than-blue eyes, and says, "Well, I guess it was 77 years ago." She is thinking back to the first of her innumerable tennis championships. "I was 10, and I won the 12-and-under singles championship held at the Midwick Country Club in Pasadena. I've still got the trophy. About this big." She held two fingers three inches apart.

"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"is an affectionately told comedy about a bunch of English retirees who trade a bleak British future for an elegant retirement hotel in the middle of India, one that promises to make those final years truly golden - and for a fraction of the price at home. Sounds like a dream, or a scheme, and in truth it's a bit of both as neither life nor the "Marigold Hotel" turn out exactly as one might wish. But when the bags are packed with pride, prejudice, problems and prospects by some of Britain'sbest - including Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith - it makes the trip worth taking.

For the last 40 years or so, many baby boomers have saved and invested diligently for their retirement. Now they may face a much different challenge: finding buyers for the mutual funds, individual stocks and other assets they'll need to sell to pay for their golden years. The demographic bulge of the 70-million-some boomers has driven U.S. economic and market trends in each decade since World War II. They powered the housing market for much of that period, inspired an explosion of brand-name consumer goods and, in the 1980s and '90s, helped stoke the greatest stock bull move of all time.

If raising the retirement age can save Social Security, the nation owes huge thanks to Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan. They raised it a generation ago, and retiring at 65 with full benefits is now history. The rise to age 66, where it is today — and a scheduled change to 67 — were buried in plain sight in the Social Security overhaul of 1983. President Reagan had set up a commission — chaired by Greenspan, before he became a household name as head of the Federal Reserve — to put the system on sound fiscal footing.

Reporting from the Sierra Nevada foothills -- It was a dream to retire here — in a quaint little town atop a hillside, among the pines and the quail and the Main Street shops. When Kate Hamon arrived more than a decade ago, she had it all. Now she is on the phone with Kmart, hustling to get a job. "Please, please keep me in mind," she tells the manager. "I can start any time you like. " Work is hard to find around these parts, especially when you're 78 years old. PHOTOS: Lean times in Gold Rush country For many retirees such as Hamon who came to spend their golden years in California's Gold Rush region, life has not turned out the way they'd hoped.

Leaning on her walker at the Sears elevator, the snowy-haired woman watched me hobble up on my cane. "Whoever named these the golden years," she said, "deserves a punch in the nose. " True, I thought, but I'm not taking aging lying down. Here are accommodations I've made as the years march past. I rarely eat fried entrees, French fries, potato chips or saturated fats, nor waste money on carbonated drinks devoid of nutritional value. With older friends all on different diet restrictions, I now entertain by taking them out to restaurants.

Rue McClanahan, an actress best known for her Emmy-winning role as the sassy, man-crazy Southern belle Blanche Devereaux on the hit TV series "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 76. McClanahan died early Thursday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital of a brain hemorrhage, according to her manager, Barbara Lawrence. FOR THE RECORD: Rue McClanahan: The headline with the news obituary of actress Rue McClanahan in Friday's LATExtra section gave her year of birth as 1933. As the article noted, she was born in 1934.

It was happy hour and cocktail glasses were being hoisted in the San Fernando Valley. Retirees at a new senior citizen residence were toasting their good fortune that there wasn't a recliner in sight. "What the hell do you need rocking chairs for?" asked 87-year-old Dody Fertig, taking a sip of wine. "Who doesn't want to live their life out in style?" That's what residents of the $90-million Village at Northridge are paying for, after all. The new five-acre "senior living community" built atop the site of a grapefruit grove-turned-aerospace plant was alive with cocktail chatter and the tinkling of ice as residents relaxed before adjourning to nearby restaurant-style dining rooms for the dinner hour.

After my mom died, I temporarily moved back in with my 81-year-old dad. My parents had been married more than 50 years; the last five had been difficult. Mom had a host of serious problems, including dementia. Taking care of her had left my father with his own health problems. I wanted to see how he'd do on his own. Every day when I left for work, dad walked me out to the car and said, "Anything you want done today?" I rarely had any tasks for him. As I drove away, I could see him in my rearview mirror bleakly watching my car disappear.