Bob & P-Nuts Nolan
(The Calin Coburn Collections ©2004)
Bob married for the second and last time on June 11, 1942, this time to Clara Estelle Brown, a lady so small she was nicknamed "P-Nuts". P-Nuts was 31 and Bob was 34. This was a second marriage for both of them and it lasted 38 years - until Bob died in 1980. P-Nuts had come to Hollywood to find stardom but found work instead at the soda fountain in the Columbia Drugstore on Sunset and Gower near the Columbia Studio lot. Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers dropped in frequently for lunch or coffee. Bob reportedly worked on his song lyrics there, too, using any piece of paper handy. They bought a house on a double lot and settled down at 4213 Gentry Avenue, Studio City, California, close to the Republic lot.
P-Nuts told Bill and Barbara Bowen that Bob Nolan was a regular "Pied Piper" when the Pioneers were on tour. Young fans would wait for their hero to leave New York's Madison Square Garden and follow him back to the Nolan's hotel room. While Bob rested between performances at the Rodeo, the youngsters would pass the time till his return by quietly trying on his boots, hat and gun holster while P-Nuts patiently supervised. If playing "Bob Nolan" caused too much noise in the room while Bob napped, P-Nuts would take them to the hotel soda fountain for refreshments until Bob was ready to rejoin the Sons of the Pioneers. The children would follow him back to Madison Square Garden.
Early in 1953 Bob and P-Nuts (and P-Nuts' parents) took that long-awaited cruise to Hawaii. Intending to remain for only a few weeks, they found people there so friendly and hospitable that they stayed for two months. One after another, people they met would ask them to spend a "just another" few days with them. From this Hawaiian trip came Bob's South Seas love songs: Far Enchanted Isle, Heaven is My Island, The Other Side of Somewhere, Pali Wind, Stray Wind, Three Friends Have I, Wandering and who knows how many others that were destroyed.
Dick Goodman and his wife, Dixie, became good friends with Bob and P-Nuts over the years and it is from Dick that we get to know Bob's second wife a little better. She waited table at a little restaurant and boat shop at Gray's landing in 1958.
"P-Nuts had a great sense of humor. We became good friends years later and always kept in touch, even after Bob passed away. P-Nuts gave me and my boys each one of Bob’s fishing poles. Mine has his name engraved on the reel, something I will always cherish.
"Clara had been a waitress when she and Bob first met in the ‘40s and Bob gave her the nickname “P-Nuts” because she was so tiny. Bob once told me her waist size was the same as his hat size when they first met. The two of them spent many summers together up there in Big Bear but, for health reasons, P-Nuts declined to make the trip to that altitude for lengthy stays in later years. Towards the end, Bob would spend most of the summer up there alone.
"Bob’s home in Studio City was very modest. I would say it only covered about 1300 square feet and it was built on a double lot. Back in the early ‘40s he’d bought two city lots side by side just a couple of blocks from Republic Studios when there was nothing much else around that area. He had the house built on one lot and the other served as a huge side yard. He fenced it in for privacy, planted a lawn, and constructed a very nice outdoor barbeque area. He said many a gathering was held there with the Pioneers and families and friends down through the years.... Prior to that, he and P-Nuts had lived in an apartment. He told me, 'As the war progressed I was afraid maybe I might have to go and I wanted a real home to come back to instead of just some little apartment.'
"It was very convenient for him, too, because it was in walking distance of the studio. P-Nuts said there were times when he’d come home for lunch with two or three young fans tagging along behind! Bob would come in the house and, most times, he wouldn’t eat any lunch. He’d just go back in the bedroom and take a nap and she’d feed the kids! Pretty soon it would be time for him to return so he and the kids would all traipse back to the studio lot together. I’ll bet there are some grownups around today with some great memories of those moments spent with Bob!"
No one now knows much about P-Nuts other than that she was from New Mexico and that she was "a feisty little lady". P-Nuts died in 1994 of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. She was 83 years old. Because of the working association of their husbands, P-Nuts was friendly with most of the wives of the Sons of the Pioneers but Lloyd Perryman's wife, Buddie, was her particular friend.
