Carl Reiner Explains All About Klutzery

Braven Dyer writes about the death of W.L. "Pop" Guthrie, a Warner Bros. location manager and USC fan who had adopted the football team in 1926 and had been sitting on the Trojan bench for many years. Guthrie had a fatal heart attack at his desk at the studio, The Times said. He was 77.

Nov. 14, 1959: Carl Reiner calls himself a “wractor,” a “writing actor” … And mince pie ice cream. I don’t think Baskin-Robbins has had it in a while.

School Board Sells Downtown Property

Clare Briggs on the day after Halloween.

Nov. 14, 1919: Here’s one of the problems of research – a story about the sale of Mercantile Place, which is so well known that the reporter doesn’t say where it is.  June 12, 1904: Aha! It was between Broadway and Spring Street, and 5th and 6th streets. Sept. 3, 1906: The Board of Education closes the Broadway and Spring Street entrances to Mercantile Place.   Feb. 15. 1924: The remodeled Mercantile Place opens as the Mercantile Arcade Building—an indoor shopping center. View Larger Map   Voila! The Broadway Arcade via Google maps’ street view.

Nude Man Prances on Bunker Hill

Nov. 14, 1909: The problem with identifying the man gamboling about the top of Angel Flight* without clothing is that none of the women who complain to police have taken a good look at him. And Eddie Foy offers advice to aspiring actors: “When you next visit a theater, note how few real actors there are in the company. With some, every word spoken is distinct, every action suits the word and the audience clearly understands, not only what the actor is doing and saying, but why he is doing and saying it. On the other hand, note the indistinctness and the mealy-mouthedness of the majority.” *At least that’s how it appears in this story.

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 13, 1959

“Artists Always Seem More Sensitive.” The End Is in Sight     Bravely ignoring the tear-inducing smog which was seeping in through the woodwork, the gentlemen of the copy desk yesterday, between, editions, went into their daily seminar titled "Whither Drifteth?"  Their despondent conclusion, delivered to my desk, is as follows:     "Meteorological trends indicate it will never rain again in Los Angeles.  If this becomes fact, it is safe to predict that by 1975 there will be no one left except perhaps a few standby guards.  Their job will be to keep an eye on public buildings to see if they dry up and blow away or disintegrate in the smog.  their reports will be of value, of course, when examined in some future era by scientists seeking to determine wha hoppen.  You are welcome to this information free."     Now, maybe that'll bring rain and chase away the nasty olefins. ::     SPEAKING OF EYE IRRITATION, a friendly gentleman phoned the APCD yesterday and inquired about the smog.  Explaining he had arrived recently from the Midwest, he said, "This isn't as bad as it was in Chicago and if it doesn't get any worse we'll stay in Hollywood."  Some days, he went on, his eyes burned but his wife's didn't.  Other days his wife's eyes burned but his didn't.     The APCD man congratulated him, saying, "Seems to me you have the perfect smog marriage." ::         THOUGHT       FOR PROBERS We've heard the toppers     of TV Insist on purest honesty- But, wouldn't you call it     controversial Whether there's truth in     each commercial?     --F. MENDELSOHN JR. ::     ONLY IN L.A. -- Dorothy Odin of Pacific Palisades reported to police the other day that someone had stolen her car.  "I can't understand why," she said.  "It's a 1948 Dodge with 102,000 miles on it."  A few hours later she had it back.  Two young men had been observed acting suspiciously at a westside market center.  When police gave chase the pair grabbed Old Ironsides, of all things, as a getaway car.  They didn't get away. ::     EYEBROWS RAISED knowingly here and there when George Hunter White, West Coast federal narcotics agent, testifying before the U.S. Senate subcommittee, criticized the LAPD.      "The police here are missing the boat," he said.  "They shouldn't close a case simply with the arrest of a peddler.  When a peddler is arrested, the game is just beginning.  We're after the original source."     White, former L.A. newspaperman who has achieved world-wide note for tough dealing in narcotics enforcement, isn't afraid of anybody. ::     TV TALK programs flourish in New York as well as here and recently Louis Untermeyer, noted anthologist, wit and author of "Lives of the Poets," appeared on Henry Morgan's show.     Morgan, renowned bad boy of broadcasting, asked, "How old are you?" Untermeyer looked at his watch and said he was 74.     "You don't look it," Morgan said, "My father is 74 and he looks 96."     "If I were your father," Untermeyer said, "I'd look 96, too." ::    AT RANDOM -- A group of Water and Power employees will leave today on a four-day, 1,100-mile tour of the department's widespread reservoirs, power plants and transmission lines.  They'll travel on a chartered bus at their own expense.  There's dedication to duty . . . A youngster in Joe Hecht's store said he was learning about the history of Texas at school and knew the names of two cities -- "Sam Houston and Sam Antonio" . . . There's a sequence in "The Last Angry Man" in which a man producing a TV show about Paul Muni, a physician of great integrity, exults, "I'll make television history!"  The sponsor says quietly, "A good show will suffice" . . . Leo Katcher's solution to the cranberry mess:  Put filters on them . . . Grace Garrett's answer to the dilemma, in a word, is applesauce.  She means it.  Of course, Grace is the noted baby sitter who confided to Groucho Marx recently that she put catsup on raspberry pie.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 13, 1959

Hucksters of Horror Tell How to Succeed     I listened in on a trilogy of success stories this week.     They were about three local-boys-who-made-good.  Their ages averaged 25.  Each was married, with two to four children.  None had any special educational advantages.  In fact, two never finished high school.     Yet, today, they're earning between $25,000 and $50,000 a year apiece.  Tax free.     They live in good neighborhoods, drive good cars, wear good clothes.  Their neighbors respect them, and apparently the police do, too.  Because none of them has so much as one arrest to mar his record.     This, to them, is vital.    Because if they were picked up, booked or even known, it would probably mean the end of their very flourishing businesses.     They are, by trade, heroin dealers.  They're the dope racket's middlemen.     They buy a few ounces of H at a time, cut it, and sell it to pushers at a fantastic profit.     Strangely, I'm told that the men don't even know each other.       Less strange is the fact that none of them has ever taken a fix.  They -- like most dealers -- are in the game strictly for the big dollar.  Yet they all admitted, in the fantastic interviews which I heard, that in the table of organization of their trade they were strictly lower income bracket salesmen.     How I heard the interviews, or who conducted them, I can't say.  Obviously and unfortunately, the interviewees didn't risk jeopardizing their freedom.  They would never have opened their mouths unless they were positive that what they said couldn't be used against them.     The stories, if true -- and, under the circumstances, I have every reason to believe them -- serve as a fantastic indictment against the system we have of policing narcotics out of our society.       The fact that each has been operating for so long (from 2 1/2 to 5 years each) without once being molested by a law enforcement agency;  the fact that they are men of not especially high intelligence or cunning;  the fact that each just kind of "stumbled" into the business;  and the very fact that they're so cocky that they  would permit the interviews -- it all totals up to one helluva shocking commentary on the efficiency, or the sincerity, of society's so-called  drive to rid itself of a major evil.     I wonder out loud how these men can possibly still be operating today.     Most of the strikingly similar stories they told dealt with the facility of their operations, and the minimum risks involved in buying and selling their product.  Getting it here or just across the border was equally simple, they said.     And even if they were caught, they added, they'd only get three or four years in prison under existing law.  After all, they'd be first offenders.     The ratio between profit and penalty made the risk worth taking, easily.     "I'd still get out of the joint a young man -- and a rich one," one dealer explained.     All talked about "retirement."  None lived too ostentatiously.  That wouldn't be smart.  Each had a front "occupation," although none worked.  Each mentioned that probably, some day, he'd take his fat bundle of savings and go into some legitimate business.     One said:  "If they'd passed the Dills' Bill (a bill killed in committee by the state legislature this which would have stiffened narcotics penalties considerably), I think I'd have gotten out right then."     But he added that the "void" left by him would be filled quickly -- high jail penalties or not -- so long as there was so much money to be made so easily. One Must Be Ethical    Pulling out, all agreed, would be easy, just so long as they played it level with their business connections when they left.  Just so long as there was no heat immediately afterwards -- anything to point the finger at them  as informers.     In my days of reporting, I've talked to a lot of addicts and peddlers.  They were small men, emotional, confused, hating themselves for what heroin made them do.     But never before had I heard the cold businessman, who shrugs off his participation in the most vicious of all rackets with the rationalization, "If I wasn't dealing it out, somebody else would be."     It was a lesson.

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Movie Columnist

Nov. 13, 1950: Ginger Rogers has friends over to watch three hours of dance excerpts from her movies with Fred Astaire.

Movie Star Mystery Photo

Los Angeles Times file photo Update: This week’s mystery star is Jane Frazee, above, in “Kansas City Kitty,” June 19, 1945.  Sept.8, 1985: The Times reports the death of Jane Frazee at the age of 67. 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: Lili Gentle! Los Angeles Times file photo Update: “Introducing Mr. Timmy – more formally known as Timothy Glenn Tryon, son of Republic’s beautifully young star, Jane Frazee, and Glenn Tryon.”  Here’s another photo of our mystery guest with what I believe is a first for the Daily Mirror – a mystery baby! Please congratulate Don Danard, Jeff Hanna, Carmen and John C. Marshall for identifying her. Los Angeles Times file photo Update: “Marjorie Montgomery makes a cholo coat of Guatemalan cotton, worn by Jane Frazee, at the left. Vera Ralston models a Western Fashions casual,” Jan. 2, 1947. Here's another photo of our mystery woman with a mystery companion (how about those shoes?). Please congratulate Kylie for identifying her! Please congratulate Jeff Hanna, Carmen, Mary Mallory and Mike Hawks for recognizing Ralston. Los Angeles Times file photo Update: Jane Frazee in “Gay Ranchero.” Presumably that’s Roy Rogers under all the paint.  I think just about everybody recognized him! Here’s our mystery gal with a mystery companion. Please congratulate Nick Santa Maria for identifying her and Jeff Hanna, Carmen and Dewey Webb for identifying yesterday’s mystery companion. Los Angeles Times file photo Jane Frazee in a 1975 handout photo. Please congratulate Megan, Lee and Thom; Brent Walker, Mike Hawks,

Reporters Walk Out on Rockefeller

 

New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s plan for separate news conferences for print and broadcast reporters backfires when the TV and radio crews in Los Angeles walk out on him.   Louie Malle’s New Wave film “Lovers” is just plain immoral, Philip K. Scheuer says. “Bruins Tiff Wolfpack?” Keith, can you translate that for me?

Nov. 13, 1959: Smog clouds the view on Broadway, looking south from 1st Street ... And a temporary employee with the U.S. Forest Services admits setting the Angeles Crest fire that burned 14,000 acres and killed two firefighters.

Hard Cider Is a Soft Drink

Someone had fun writing this story. But “Remember the Mane"? Cider, even hard cider, is a soft drink.

Nov. 13, 1919: Pastry was flying at the Lewis Bakery, 448 S. Hill St., after Thomas H. Whitfield complained that he was being charged too much for three doughnuts. He says a "ferocious woman" hit him with six cupcakes and a plate, but that he couldn’t escape because his face was covered with sticky pastry.

Few Killers Are Executed, Reports Show

Nov. 13, 1909: More than 100 murders were committed in the 30 years since the capital punishment law was passed, but only five killers from Los Angeles County have been executed, The Times says. A convicted killer has a 1-in-20 chance of being executed, statistics show. A severed thumb is the key evidence in the trial of Burt Thornburg on charges of trying to burglarize the store of Yee Sam, 515 N. Main St. … And a judge drops charges against a motorcyclist accused of going more than 30 mph. (He said his motorcycle wouldn’t do 20 mph).