By Mary O’KEEFE

Tales of the golden age of Hollywood will be told by an actress from those days on Monday, April 19 at the next meeting of the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley.
Pauline Wagner McCourtney was a contract actress with MGM in Hollywood in the ‘30s and ‘40s. She danced with Fred Astaire, flirted with James Cagney, blew off a date with Cary Grant and learned how to knit from Joan Crawford. She served as a stand-in for Fay Wray and was picked up by King Kong’s giant hand in the 1933 version of “King Kong.”
A long career as a background glamour girl gave her a familiarity with such stars as Katherine Hepburn, Marion Davies, Joel McCrea, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart, and a working knowledge of the big studios of the time
Polly, as her friends call her, is a longtime Glendale resident who is nearly 100 years old. A sharp and lively, storyteller, she is the featured speaker on Monday.
The Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley meeting with Polly is at 7:00 p.m. at the Center For Spiritual Living (formerly known as the La Crescenta Church of Religious Science) 4845 Dunsmore Ave., La Crescenta.