Toasting 107 Years of a Life Well Lived

Anna May Dunbar has spent most of this century entertaining.

She dined with Winston Churchill and Howard Hughes, and met Thomas Edison at a theater opening. Clark Gable came to her cocktail parties. And Lana Turner sunbathed by her pool.

Dunbar, who turns 107 today, is still giving parties. She gathered with friends and family at her Costa Mesa home on Sunday and, over lemon cake and champagne, revealed the secrets of longevity: a throng of friends, a stiff drink now and then, faith in God and a sense of humor.

“I guess I should stand up to show them I can walk,” she quipped.

In truth, she is as healthy as she is humorous. She does not take medication and is active enough to dine at South Coast Plaza, visit with neighbors and sing from time to time.

“She always says, ‘I don’t have an ache or a pain,’ and God bless her, I hope she never does,” said nephew Richard Moss of San Clemente.

Said next-door neighbor Glenn Johnson: “I think she’s remarkable--her attitude, her spirit and everything.”

Dunbar does not follow a strict diet, favoring “wholesome foods” like steak and potatoes, steamed mussels, chicken cordon bleu and scallops. She never smoked but enjoys spirits.

“I have my martini every night, maybe one and a half, depending on how I feel,” she said.

When Dunbar was born in Dalton, Mass. in 1890, Benjamin Harrison was president of the United States. The movie business that became so integral to her life didn’t exist yet, but live theater did, and in her youth, she sang, acted and danced in plays in her hometown.

She met first husband Harold B. Franklin, a producer, in Dalton. He took her to New York and later Hollywood when he became an executive in the fledgling motion picture industry. The stars of the day often came to the couple’s parties in Beverly Hills.

“The house was a country club for starlets,” Elbert Franklin, Dunbar’s only son, said in a 1992 interview with The Times. He died last year at 82.

Of the movie stars, Dunbar said, “The greater the person, the nicer they are.”

Harold Franklin died in 1941. His widow remarried in the late 1950s to Ret. Adm. Frank Dunbar. The couple retired to Costa Mesa in 1967, moving into the house in which Dunbar still lives.

“Admiral,” as he was known in the community, served on the Orange County Grand Jury until he died 17 years ago.

Diana Robinson, 36, of Petaluma grew up down the street in the Mesa Verde neighborhood and recalls Dunbar teaching her the social graces.

“She told us the proper way to dress and the proper way to hold a tea cup,” Robinson said. “It’s a lifetime of memories.”

The loss of two husbands and a son was difficult, Dunbar said, but she knows “they are in good hands.” She is not lonely, she said, because her many relatives and friends always are checking in.

“That’s what keeps me going, my wonderful friends,” she said.