Through the Lens – Aviation Meet

Los Angeles Times file photo Jan. 12, 1910, Louis Paulhan sets an altitude record. Los Angeles Times file photo

Jan. 12, 1910: Many photos from the Aviation Meet show a balloon advertising the Los Angeles Examiner. Someone at The Times retouched this image to remove the competitor’s name.

Matt Weinstock, Feb. 8, 1960

Economics and Justice     Eunice Carlisle happened to be in the courthouse on another matter a few days ago when Dr. R. Bernard Finch told all and she was unavoidably caught in the crush and excitement.  She also was appalled by the violent eagerness of people waiting in line to see the show.     Later she read of the tremendous cost of the long trial and a nagging idea gripped her.  Why not hold such spectacles in the Sports Arena and charge administration and use the proceeds to ease the burden on beleaguered taxpayers?     After all, she reasoned  people pay high prices to see events not half as exciting or suspenseful.  Furthermore, this is the real thing, not the rehearsed, contrived courtroom drama one sees on television. In fact, TV could be another source of revenue.  A sponsor would pay a fortune for such a spectacle as the Finch trial.     It may seem unorthodox for the city and the county to go into the entertainment business but, things being what they are, she sees it as a move toward economic sanity.      You think Eunice is kidding?  She is, but on the square. ::     THAT FAVORITE subject of old-time residents, missed real estate opportunities, came up again the other day and George Watkins, who used to sell papers at Pico Blvd. and Georgia St.  in 1920 and is now a retired Motor Vehicle Department employee, recalled his father's near miss.     When they came here in 1918 his father bought the southwest corner of Slauson and Western for $2,200 as an investment.  Three months later his father's brother advised him to get rid of it.   It was too far out, he said, and besides L.A. would always be a tourist town.  So George's father unloaded it, taking a $100 loss.     George, by the way, is buying a desert lot. ::     PAYING HOBBIES One is making mosaic, Another molds a base for     lamps. Most of us find these     prosaic- We're collecting grocery     stamps.     JOSEPH P. KRENGEL ::     THE BIG up-the-sleeve laugh in the television business continues to be the ridiculous insistence by the moguls on purity and honesty, to the point that even those who have committed no sin are getting guilt complexes.     "Any day now," a TV performer remarked, "we expect to be told that announcers who are not wearing their own hair and models who have artificial support must say so." ::     A LADY WHO doesn't approve of undue tampering with the language was distressed to find an ad for a  Hyperion Ave. market offering "4-legged fryers 49c lb."  She knew, of course, that no such freakishness was intended, that each fryer had its own two legs and two extra legs were included for customers who liked dark meat.  Nevertheless, she felt the word "legged" implied that all four were attached and this bothered her.  She phoned the public library and her opinion was supported.  So she called the butcher at the store and informed him that the ad was maligning his fryers.     He said he had nothing to do with it but she noticed that the following week the ad still offered 4-legged fryers but in small print were the words "cut up." ::     ASKED TO NAME the continents on a geography test, Pamela Spain, 9, of Sepulveda, wrote North America, South America, Asia and the rest -- but also "Los Angeles."  And you know what?  The teacher marked it wrong. ::     AT RANDOM -- Fascinating fragment of conversation, one man to another, overheard by a  lady named Rosemary in the state museum in Exposition Park:  "That skirt fits like  a sweater!" . . . The way J.V. Ryan hears it, the monsoon in Rangoon is much worse in the afternoon.  My information is that this is true only when observed from the noon balloon to Rangoon . . . Inquiry by Fred Fox:  What do Hawaiians say now that this country is no longer "stateside?"  Let's call ourselves mainlanders.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Feb. 8, 1960

Who Does He Think He Is — Grandpa?       Traditionally -- or, at least, since the advent of the comic strip -- the most maligned member of the American family unit is the mother-in-law.     It is ritual in our native humor to caricature her as a huge-busted troublemaker with a built-in sneer who is meddlesome, argumentative and overprotective of her own offspring.     To make her and her bustle the butt of such angry comedy is not only unfair, it isn't even accurate.     Take my own mother-in-law, for instance.  (As a matter of fact, you wouldn't, would you?)     Anyway, she has never said a word against me, to my face.  I've heard that she knocks me pretty good behind my back, but I attribute that to neighborhood gossip.  How, for example, could a man in my position believe the rumors that his own mother-in-law is telling people on the block that he'd still be a bum, if it wasn't that her daughter had nagged him on to greater things?      And then I offer you another woman who legally qualifies as a mother-in-law.  My own, dear, sweet, white-haired, Clairol-tinted mother.     Of course, I don't actually "offer" her to you.  This is no Spring Clearance Sale, buddy.  It's just a figure of speech.     Years ago, my mother told me: "No sensible woman would ever come between her son and his wife."     Then, cradling my head in her arms, she assured me:  "No matter what she does to you, I'll stay out of it."     This made me immediately leery of what my wife was planning to do to me.  But I'll say one thing for mother, she never interfered.     All she ever did was write letters that she caught me on TV, that I looked wan, and that she wondered if I was being systematically starved to death.  And, you know?  It makes you think.  I carry quite a bit of insurance.     But that isn't why I asked you all to be here.  Today, I want to take up the little discussion problem of father-in-laws.  Or, fathers-in-law.  Or, to simplify things, my father-in-law.     He, without running the risk of ever becoming a cartoon character, manages to be just as insidious as a mother-in-law.     If the kids hit me for a half dollar to go to the movies, he clucks sadly, and murmurs: "When I was a youngster, I was glad to get a nickel for a picture show."     If I let them stay up past bedtime to watch such educational television as Jack Paar, he shakes his head and warns that I am spoiling them rotten.  If they don't hang up their clothes or make their beds (and they don't), he mutters about the dangers of today's inadequate parental supervision. Ingratiates Himself      Oddly enough, the kids have the delusion that they like him.  He has a reputation for being "handy."  He can attach a remote control box to  a set of electric trains, put together a kite, blow up a football and mend a broken spoke in the wheel of a bike.  As you know,  I have more important things on my mind.     Consequently, he has sneakily replaced me as a father image to my own, fickle children.  And it's gone right to his head.     He is clearly convinced that my interference in their upbringing is bound to turn them into latter-day Dalton Boys.     And while I wouldn't mention it to him, I'll tell you.  I'd like to know what he's got to be proud about.     I mean, a man who raised a daughter so emotionally mixed-up that she would try to systematically starve her husband to death.

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Movie Columnist

Feb. 8, 1946: Hedda Hopper writes, "Twentieth is readying 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir' for Rex Harrison's next."

UCLA’s Larry Brown

Feb. 8, 1980:  Mike Littwin writes,  “On a scale of 1 to 10 for unpredictability, Larry Brown's brief tenure as UCLA basketball coach already rates a Bo Derek. "For two reasons. First, although UCLA assumed its usual high profile in the preseason polls, Brown's Bruins have lost with unusual, almost unprecedented, regularity. Second, and more surprising, Brown is not only surviving but thriving.” The next year, Brown left UCLA for the Nets and was replaced by Larry Farmer, "a product of the John Wooden championship years and a survivor of three head coaching changes," The Times said.

Movie Star Mystery Photo

Los Angeles Times file photo   Just a reminder on how this works: I post the mystery photo on Monday and reveal the answer on Friday ... or on Saturday if I have a hard time picking only five pictures; sometimes it's difficult to choose. To keep the mystery photo from getting lost in the other entries, I move it from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday, etc., adding a photo every day. I have to approve all comments, so if your guess is posted immediately, that means you're wrong. (And if a wrong guess has already been submitted by someone else, there's no point in submitting it again). If you're right, you will have to wait until Friday. There's no need to submit your guess five times. Once is enough. The only reward is bragging rights.  The answer to last week's mystery star: Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields.

Dared to Shoot Herself, Wife Kills Husband

Feb. 8, 1960: Frank D. Brill's last words, "Use your gun. I haven't any use for you. You haven't guts enough to shoot."

Los Angeles Speedway to Open

View Larger Map  A gas station occupies the spot where the track's gateway used to be.

Feb. 8, 1920: The Los Angeles Speedway is about to open at Pico Boulevard and Beverly Drive. The property was sold in 1923 to be subdivided after the February 1924 races. Another Los Angeles Speedway was active in the 1930s next to the municipal airport, and a still another opened at 182nd Street and Vernon Avenue in 1957.

Skeletal Remains Partially Identified

David Dougherty and Frances Young are arrested in Bloomington, Ill, on charges of defying the orders of a Nebraska court by living as man and wife, even though they are uncle and niece.

Feb. 8, 1910: A skeleton found on Mt. Tamalpais may be a young woman known as “Dutch” who had been a student in a hair salon.

Jim Murray on the Olympics

Feb. 7, 1980: Jim Murray writes, “The International Olympic Committee is a body of men made up largely of dukes and earls and lords and millionaires who look at the world through monocles, probably because they do not want to see more than they can justify. Their greatest talent is keeping a straight face.”