Since childhood, 91-year-old Corrine Casserly and her 95-year-old sister Ruth Sorney have been the closest of friends. As young women coming into their own in Hollywood in the late 1940s, they’d put on their little black dresses most Saturday nights and pretend to be rich by treating themselves to chicken a la king at Tom Breneman’s restaurant by Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street.

They’d celebrate their Italian American heritage later in life at “Club Italiano” socials at St. John Eudes Catholic Church near their homes in the San Fernando Valley. There were hair appointments every Friday at 10 a.m. at a salon in Woodland Hills, and twice a year the sisters would take the shuttle with their church’s senior club to a casino in San Bernardino, always splitting their winnings 50-50.