Sunset Boulevard started off in the 1780s as a 600-foot dirt road near the old Pueblo de Los Angeles. Today, Los Angeles' iconic thoroughfare stretches 22 miles from Figueroa Street downtown to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way it passes through some of the most historic and fascinating parts of our city - places with stories to tell. In this lecture, we explore those 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 Sharon was the Restaurant Critic of the (late) 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, Sharon moved to Los Angeles in 1966 after earning a California Lifetime Teaching credential at U.C. Berkeley. She taught high-school History, English and Social Studies in L.A. 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 individuals age 50 and older.