The Pacific Palisades Historical Society will host a free talk by Eric Dugdale about the history of the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 23 at Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. His talk will begin with the Indians and walk listeners through the Marquez Rancho days, the Inceville film studio, developer Alphonzo Bell and the SRF, located on Sunset about a half-mile north of Pacific Coast Highway. Inceville Studio was located on the property, but burned down around 1924. Developer Alphonzo Bell, who hoped to create a residential community in Santa Ynez Canyon like the one he had established in Bel Air, hydro-blasted the site to ready it for construction in 1927. The work inadvertently created a large mud hole, later transformed as Lake Santa Ynez. But Bell’s plans never came to fruition and H. Everett ‘Big Mac’ McElroy, the assistant superintendent of set construction for 20th Century Fox Pictures, took over the property in 1940 to build his future residence. Dugdale, a real estate broker whose passion is local history, will tell the details of those stories and how a later plan by a Texas oilman to build a resort in the canyon was altered by a dream of ‘a church of all religions’ and the various benefactors who made that dream come true. He will also share photographs of the property and maps of the old Rancho land grant. Dugdale’s personal experience with Lake Shrine began in the early 1950s when his family joined the SRF, and the property is well entwined with his own personal history. His father was a builder and, as a boy, Dugdale tagged along when he did some remodeling on a small two-story house which later became the SRF Sunday school and now houses the SRF museum and gift shop. In 1956, the SRF monthly magazine ran a photo of Dugdale as a five-year-old, sitting in full lotus position, meditating.
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