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Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
Part 12, March 21, 1957
Jack Smith sets the scene for South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem's visit to Los Angeles.
"Voodoo Woman" Bad things happen when treasure hunters set foot in voodoo country. Look for Mike "Panic Button" Connors as "Touch Connors." "This story has been done a thousand times instead of just a hundred and frequently much better."
"The Undead" From Roger Corman. Bad things happen with a time-traveling lady of the evening. Look for Billy "Lobster Man From Mars" Barty. "Better than usual horror film."
May 16, 1957
The story appeared in the Mirror-News about a month ago.
Venus Gonzales, 17, read it.
That evening, when her husband, Buddy, 21, came home from work, she showed it to him.
Both of them shuddered at the painful memories the story brought back.
It read:
"A 20-year-old woman filed a $1,000,000 damage suit today on grounds she lost a child in stillbirth because a hospital refused its facilities to her.
"Parkview Hospital, 1021 N. Hoover St., and the attending physician were named as defendants.
"Mrs. Roberta G. Carpenter and her husband, Wendell F. Carpenter, 25, painter of 1243 S. Mariposa Ave., charged the stillbirth occurred while the mother was being transferred from the private hospital to General Hospital.
"The couple claim services were refused them when the father was unable to raise $250 cash in order to cover increased costs of a cesarean operation.
"They stated that they had already paid $125.
"The suit says that diagnosis showed the stillbirth occurred because of an oxygen deficiency due to slow or painful birth."
Two weeks before the article appeared, on March 25, Buddy Gonzales received a call at work from his wife.
"The labor pains have started," she told him.
"It was about 10 a.m. Buddy borrowed a friend's car and rushed home.
He drove his wife immediately to the office of their family doctor--the same doctor who had been retained by Mrs. Carpenter.
After checking the young woman over, the doctor told Buddy to take her to Parkview Hospital for X-rays.
The young couple went to the hospital. The X-rays were taken. Then, they were told to go home and wait.
A few minutes after they left the hospital, Venus complained of more pain and bleeding. They returned to Parkview and she was placed in a bed.
It was about 11:30. Buddy was becoming increasingly nervous. It was his first experience at the difficult business of impending fatherhood.
And to add to his apprehension, Venus, his wife, was a delicate little girl, 3 inches under 5 feet tall--with a normal weight of 98 pounds.
While awaiting the X-ray results, Buddy returned the car he had borrowed.
Back again, he checked with the hospital desk to make sure his $100 deposit--made a month earlier--had been recorded. It had.
By noon, the X-rays had been studied and Buddy was told that a Cesarean section was necessary.
"That means," he was told, "that you'll have to pay the hospital an additional $175."
The young man winced. But he said, "I'll get it. I can get it in a week."
"I'm sorry," was the reply, "but you need cash. Now. Before we can operate."
A hospital employee called the AFL, Buddy's union, to see if he had insurance to cover an additional expense. It took a while for them to check.
Unfortunately, he didn't.
At 1 o'clock, Venus was moved into the operating room. And Buddy was making phone calls to raise $175.
He used the pay booth and called friends and relatives until $3 worth of change had dwindled to 15 cents.
No luck.
Two o'clock had passed. So had 3 o'clock.
And Venus Gonzales was still in the operating room, ready for surgery.
Shortly before 3:30, she heard a man tell the nurse:
"Take her out because they haven't got the money."
She was wheeled out and dressed again, and Buddy was told to rush her to General Hospital.
"If you want an ambulance," he was told, "it'll be $35."
He phoned his brother-in-law to hurry over with a car. Then he went to the desk again, where $75 of his $100 deposit was refunded.
"A $25 charge for X-rays."
The brother-in-law arrived and he and Buddy helped Venus to the car. They sped to General Hospital.
And there, shortly afterward, Connie Lee was born--the first heir of Buddy and Venus Gonzales.
Here, perhaps, the story should end--with the hope that it won't happen again.
But it doesn't end.
It is a continuing policy, not only of Parkview but of most private hospitals in this area.
And tomorrow we'll take a closer look at mercy--Southern California style.
May 16, 1957
Los Angeles
While L. Ewing Scott uses every possible ploy to delay his extradition from Michigan, the district attorney's office has appointed top prosecutor J. Miller Leavy to handle the case. Leavy has just finished the Edward S. Wein trial and has previously won convictions against "red light bandit" Caryl Chessman and Barbara "I Want to Live!" Graham.
Leavy is a tough, hard-working prosecutor who prepares his cases meticulously. The Scott case, however, will be one of his biggest challenges: There's no body. And so he must prove that alleged victim Evelyn Scott's well-established patterns of behavior suddenly ceased.
In Detroit's Wayne County Jail, Scott has been refusing to eat, complaining of health problems and refusing to answer reporters' questions. In a jailhouse interview, the Mirror only got two responses:
"How are you?"
"Terrible."
"If you go back to Los Angeles will you ask for a change of trial location?"
"Whoever my lawyer is out there will have to determine that."
Although Scott seemed fine during conversations with attorney Gabriel Cohn, he complained that he was desperately ill, prompting an examination at a nearby hospital, where he was found to be in perfect health. Sheriff's officials announced that Detective Chief J. Gordon Bowers and Detective Sgt. Ward Hallinen will be flying to Detroit to bring Scott back to Los Angeles as he plans to stop fighting extradition.
To be continued....
Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
Part 11, March 20, 1957
"Frigidaire Finale," 1957
Bad things happen when a choreographer is turned loose with two dancers and a bunch of appliances.
May 15, 1957
Los Angeles
The papers called her an actress, but she was never in anything but trouble and her only talent was for raising hell. Even the gossip magazines quit working with her because they didn't trust her. She was only famous for being infamous.
Her name was Ronnie Quillan. At least that was the one she used in court to testify about feeding stories to Confidential magazine. The police had a dozen names for her: Mary Wolfe, Ronnie Blair, Cynthia Ainsley and all sorts of variations on them. Even her death records list two names: Veronica Ainsley and Mary Quillan, as if nobody could make up their mind what to call her.
The other little boxes on her death records are vacant: The year, month and day she was born or even where. All we have are what might be her mother's name--Zwebels--and when she died: Oct. 5, 1962.
She was married at least twice. Her first marriage, to Joe Quillan, who worked on the script for "Son of Paleface," was in Greenwich, Conn., in 1939. The second, to 21-year-old Daniel E. O'Reilly, was in Tijuana in 1956 and annulled a year later.
She brawled with her husbands and her boyfriends. One of the worst fights was in 1949, when she and French singer Roland Gerbeau slashed each other with razor blades and her right ear was nearly severed. The next year, she slashed singer Billy Daniels' face with a butcher knife and it took 35 stitches to close the wound. He told police she had been taking pills all evening.
In early 1957, she used a 2-by-4 to smash a picture window at her
former mother-in-law's home in a fight over a TV set. Two days after
she got out of jail for that rampage, a cabdriver picked up her at 6
a.m. while she was wandering in front of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel,
wearing pajamas and a coat. She was carrying a stuffed dog named Bowie
and a stolen .38-caliber Colt. She said she wanted to go to a pawnshop--but he got one look at the gun and took her to the police.
It's not clear exactly when she turned to prostitution. Her only documented arrest was in April 1955. In August of that year, Whisper magazine ran a story calling her "Hollywood's No. 1 Madam."
About the same time, she began feeding stories to Confidential magazine, receiving $1,500 (10,747.93 USD 2006). One of them, which appeared in the January 1955 issue, concerned an encounter she supposedly had with Desi Arnaz in Palm Springs during World War II. She was also the source for information on a story about Billy Daniels in the July 1955 issue. She may have also contributed to stories about Ava Gardner and Herb Jeffries.
Testifying in the 1957 criminal libel trial against Confidential, Quillan said Confidential Publisher Robert Harrison was after dirt on Hollywood figures. Her face etched with lines of hard living, The Times said, she testified: "He told me he wanted stories primarily dealing with ... activities of people in the Hollywood movie colony, and the more lewd and lascivious, the more colorful the magazine." But after a few stories, former Confidential editor Howard Rushmore fired her because he thought she was too unreliable.
During the Confidential magazine trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. William L. Ritzi asked: "What was your occupation?"
"I was engaged in prostitution," she said.
The next year, she tried to kill herself. Then she dropped from sight.
In 1962, Paul Coates found a letter in one of his files that she had written from jail:
"All the scandal magazines and newspaper characters should be very happy," she said. "They prophesied that I'd wind up in the gutter and here I am. They really ought to have some sort of organization for ex-Hollywood glamour girls, because I'm petrified with fear. I've never been so friendless in my life. When I got out of Norwalk after recovering from a nervous breakdown, I thought maybe I could change my life. But here I am back in County Jail. I guess it can't get any worse than this for me."
And sometime on Oct. 5, 1962, she stumbled into a doctor's office after receiving a vicious beating. She died before she could say what happened. Veronica Ainsley/Mary Quillan was 44. Maybe.
A google map of Ronnie Quillan's life.
Bonus fact: On Jan. 3, 1958, in New York City, Confidential editor Howard Rushmore killed his wife and committed suicide after he forced his way into the taxicab in which she was riding. He once testified: "Some of the stories are true and some have nothing to back them up at all. Harrison many times overruled his libel attorneys and went ahead on something."
Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
Part 10, March 19, 1957
My friend Mary McCoy from the 1947project and L.A. Public Library hit upon an interesting endeavor while wandering the closed stacks: Revisiting the bestsellers of the past. Not just any bestsellers, mind you; they have to be forgotten and obscure.
She explains: This summer's blockbuster hit is next year's $5.98 remainder at Barnes & Noble, so I wonder, what happened to the smash beach read from 1938 that currently languishes in your grandmother's attic? Is there some unsung classic waiting to be sold by the pound at your neighbor's yard sale?
This summer, I plan to slog my way through the forgotten books of the twentieth century, and you are cordially invited to join me in the Zombie Summer Reading Program. Email your most ghastly, obscure finds to zombiesummerreading@gmail.com, and I'll post your blurbs.
Here are her rules:
1. It must be over 40 years old, and ideally, have a whiff of mold or neglect about it.
2. It must not be written by anyone you've ever heard of.
May 14, 1957
They are reluctant to say so publicly, but many men of science are
extremely apprehensive about the continued testing of atomic bombs.
As scientists, they know what it means that a single present-day bomb has several hundred times the explosive power of the peanut we set off at Hiroshima. Furthermore, they know what it would do to great masses of people, even if laymen cannot comprehend such destruction.
But these learned men realize the free nations are committed to a policy of muscle flexing to impress Russia and, officially at least, the tests are considered necessary. Meanwhile, Russia keeps setting off its brand to impress us.
However, in private they talk and at a gathering a few nights ago a group of them got around to the statement of Dr. Linus Pauling that if the tests are continued 1,000 persons who wouldn't otherwise be affected will die of leukemia--and the rebuttal of a member of the Atomic Energy Commission that any increase in leukemia from radioactive fallout would be negligible.
One man at the gathering mused:
"If a nation announced it had perfected a new machine gun and would test it by lining 1,000 persons against a wall and shooting them down, the world would be horrified. yet there isn't much difference."
LITERARY PEOPLE are talking about J.D. Salinger's long story "Zooey" in the May 4 New Yorker--an overwhelmingly brilliant job.
Zooey is a former radio quiz kid who has the gift of seeing through things, separating sincerity from phoniness, detecting truth and discounting sham. He is also capable of wildly playful irrelevance.
Those who've read it agree that "Zooey" will kick up a fuss comparable to that of Shirley Jackson's controversial short story, "The Lottery."
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