Woody and Eddy's should have been an easy job for two old pros just out
of the joint: Sit around and have a drink or two until the place closes
and nearly everybody has cleared out, pull the guns, make them open the
safe and take the money. Rough up anybody who gets brave.
Thomas Lee Barrington, 29, was living at 155 Bimini Place after being paroled from San Quentin seven weeks earlier. Harry B. Hancock, 50, 1414 E. 60th St.,
had been out of Folsom since March after spending 15 of the last 22
years in prison. Maybe they didn't know and maybe they didn't care, but
Barrington and Hancock weren't dealing with the San Marino Police
Department. Instead, the combination restaurant, bar and liquor store
at Huntington and San Gabriel was across the street in Los Angeles
County, under the jurisdiction of the Temple City substation.
Late in the evening, one of them slipped into the business' office and cut the
phone wires. They followed bartender Andrew Gillian and his wife,
Genevieve, into the parking lot, drew their guns and forced the couple
back into the bar to open the safe At that time, nearly everyone was
gone. The restaurant had closed hours earlier and the cooks were back
in the sleeping quarters. Bartender Lawrence McDonald was still inside,
as were waitress Georgia Gould and her mother, Mary, who worked in the
the hatcheck room.
"They were mean and they were tough," Genevieve Gillian said. "They really shoved us around."
In the confusion, one of the women slipped away and called the
Sheriff's Department from a pay phone outside the restaurant. While
Hancock took Andrew Gillian into the office to open the safe,
Barrington followed McDonald, who had tried to escape.
Andrew Gillian said he didn't know the combination and Hancock warned him: "If you don't open the safe, I'll kill you."
At the entrance to the bar, Barrington put his .45 to McDonald's back
and shot him just as the first police car arrived with Deputies Harold
S. Blevins and Charles E. Covington.
Barrington shot Blevins in the head, killing him instantly, and
Covington returned the gunfire, shooting five rounds, The Times said.
Barrington was dead when he hit the ground, but in the gunfight, he
shot Covington in the chest, with the bullet going through him and
coming out his back.
Hancock rushed to a window when he heard the gunfire, and his prisoners
fled. More deputies and the watch commander arrived, sealing off the
streets to capture Hancock. About 75 heavily armed officers surrounded
the restaurant, and on the assumption that Hancock was still inside
holding several hostages, shot teargas into the building.
The gas rousted the cooking staff from their sleeping quarters, but
failed to flush Hancock from the restaurant. He was finally found
hiding in a car parked in front of the liquor store. Deputies had to
restrain Andrew Gillian to keep him from attacking Hancock, the Mirror
said. "Let me at him!" Gillian yelled. "He hasn't got a gun now."
Hancock was sentenced to three life terms after being convicted of
murder, attempted murder, kidnapping for robbery, attempted robbery and
attempted burglary. I can find no further trace of him.
Blevins, who was survived by his wife, Barbara Anne, daughters Brenda
and Heidi, and his parents, was buried at Resurrection Cemetery after
services at All Saints Catholic Church attended by hundreds of police
officers.
"Minutes after her husband's casket was carried into the church, Mrs.
Barbara Anne Blevins, the deputy's widow, collapsed on the sidewalk as
she was being led from a car," The Times said. "A deputy lifted the
sobbing woman into his arms and carried her inside."
McDonald apparently recovered from his wounds. Covington and Blevins
were honored in a 1959 ceremony for LAPD officers and sheriff's
deputies who had been killed or wounded in the line of duty.
Woody and Eddy's, 3007 Huntington Blvd., is now the location of a strip mall that includes a Starbucks and Howe's market.
Burl Ives, who took off more than 40 pounds to play the part of the
viciously righteous father in "Desire Under the Elms,' was putting some
of it back on the other day at Frascati's and between bites took up the
slack on the three years since we last saw each other.
The word from Paramount is that Burl does a masterful job in the Eugene
O'Neill play. "I'm a heck of a villain," he confided with a booming
laugh.
Furthermore, it appears he'll be doing considerably more acting. He has been offered three important roles.
Despite his switch of emphasis from folk music to acting, Burl remains
the same hearty, uninhibited gentleman who gets a great kick out of
life.
His private passion is still boats. When he's in the East he lives
aboard the one that was reported this week as having gone aground in
New Jersey. "There was a 70-mile wind," he said, "but the men aboard
were all blue-water sailors." He can't figure what happened, not having
yet received a full account.
Since coming to Hollywood, Burl has acquired a shiny black 1934 Packard
phaeton Straight 8, a beautifully restored job with white leather
upholstery, red trim and pinstriping. You can't hardly get them like
that any more. I was curious about the name "Fosdick" neatly painted on
one door. Just a whim, he explained, then added, "Harry Emerson--not
Fearless."
What about folk music? It's as big as ever, he said, but in a different
way. It's no longer the sort of intellectual cult it used to be. It's
now accepted by people in all categories of society: businessmen,
professional men, housewives as well as devotees of pure Americana. In
a recent concert in Texas, he said, he broke the attendance record.
What's his feeling about being a big actor? It's nice work if you can
get it, he said, but it hasn't changed his way of life. He's still a
troubadour. For instance, he likes to go out at night and do a little
singing with friendly strangers.
And this is our thought for today--bearded Burl Ives, all 300 pounds of
him, guitar in hand, lumbering along the elegant Sunset Strip, where he
lives, looking in one bistro after another for convivial folk who might
like to join him in "Blue Tail Fly," "Barbara Allen" or "Jimmy Cracked
Corn"--and finding them.
KID STUFF -- Timmy
Deans, 3, is fascinated by all policemen. While his mother waited for a
signal to change, a motorcycle officer stopped alongside and Timmy,
enchanted, called out, "Hey, police, my mommy drive too fast. Give her
a tick!" The officer frowned fiercely, then smiled... A woman with two
little girls got on a bus on Catalina Island and the driver asked,
"Are they under 6?" The woman retorted menacingly, "Did you ask if my
girls are undersexed?"
THE PERIPATETIC
publicists are with us today. Al Hix, en route to Tripoli to do the
movie "No Time to Die," postcards from the island of Malta that he
asked for a Malta milk and the barmaid had to be dissuaded from taking
a poke at him... Jack Hirshberg writes from Munich, where Kirk Douglas
is making "The Vikings," that he forgot to put his pfennigs in a
parking meter and found a ticket under the windshield wiper. Seemed
like old times in Beverly Hills. But when he asked a nearby policeman
what to do about it, the officer wrote out a receipt, Jack handed him 2
marks--about 50 cents--and that was that.
ONLY IN L.A. -- A
man named Scotty gives his Pekingese half a Miltown when it has nervous
fits. Brings the Peke right out of it, he says... Civic Center cynics
were saying yesterday that it was very inconsiderate of Columbus to
have his birthday come this year on Saturday, already a holiday from
work.
FOOTNOTES -- An
attorney delivering an eloquent oration in an accident case in court
the other day had a distressing interruption. The bailiff fell asleep
and loudly snored... Agnes Moorehead, who created the classic role 14
years ago, will be doing "Sorry, Wrong Number" for the seventh time on
CBS radio's "Suspense" tomorrow... George T. Oussen, supervising the
smooth inaugural of Flying Tiger's nonstop freight service with a
43,000 payload, recalled the time in 1931 when another line started a
cargo service in Chicago and a live, crated pig got loose during the
loading and speaking ceremony, creating havoc, as the saying goes...
Mickey Grayson, maitre d' at the Park Wilshire Hotel, has a piece of a
$7 pool on which day of the week Sputnik will sputter out and
disappear.
Hey there, men, feeling blue because you can't get a date? You might
try the Clifford Earl Burton method: You don't have to be tall (he was
5-5), highly educated (he could barely read or sign his name) or
particularly handsome (see photo). You don't even have to be a sharp dresser (what is that thing on his head?)
Then what was his secret weapon that drove women wild? How did Clifford
Earl Burton manage to get at least nine wives (that's according to
police; he lost count) and 10 children (three of them born within a
month in 1953)?
He knew how to WELD! (Great pickup line: "Want to come over to my place and see my acetylene?")
OK, enough fun with Mr. Burton. He broke a lot of women's hearts and
made many children grow up without a father. There isn't much humor in
that.
How did he do it? Mostly he picked on girls in their teens (the oldest
was 20 and the youngest was 15) whom he met by hanging around high
school football games, police said. One of his wives was the
babysitter. He moved around the country: Van Nuys; Lancaster; Tulsa,
Okla.; Carson City, Nev.; and Muncie, Ind.
Burton married for the first time in 1941, when he was 16. He married
again in 1944, three times in 1946, once in 1950 and 1952 and twice
more in 1953, police said. Some of the marriages may have been annulled
and he might have gotten divorced, but Burton was vague about the
matter. He said he had been married "several times but I can't recall
dates or details."
Police got involved in the case in 1954 when a Lancaster woman, the
mother of Wife No. 4, saw a TV show describing his three previous
wives.
Burton was given five years' probation after being arrested in Jackson, Miss., and extradited to Los Angeles on bigamy charges.
I was out with a group of deep thinkers the other night and they got to discussing the pressures of present-day living.
They deplored particularly the fact that hardly anyone has time any
more to do the things he wants or to see his friends as often as he'd
like.
They brought out the stress of holding a job and the strain of driving
great distances in traffic and the nerve-racking assaults on what
little privacy they have.
They talked of the fierce, insistent competition for people's attention
by salesmen, both the blunderbuss variety and the more subtle
enticements of soft music, jokes or pretty girls.
And then one fellow came up with a sadistic thought.
"If we aren't careful," he said, "we're going to reach a saturation
point. Just imagine if a few thousand people around L.A. decided all at
once that they'd had it, that they wanted out of the rat race. And
suppose they went down to the beach in a body and meditated upon the
beautiful sunset or the elusive grunion and decided they just weren't
going to pay attention to anything that commanded their attention."
This beautiful dream of peace and serenity was quickly destroyed.
"They'd never make it," said a cynic. "The traffic tie-up would be awful."
THE EXPRESSION "living
it up" means different things to different people. Matt Rivera, 6,
swaggered up to his father, Bill, the other day and announced, "When I
grow up, I'm going to nightclubs, I'm going to drink beer and I might
even go to a Tupperware party or two!"
A COUPLE Herman
Sisk knows have been speculating heavily on the stock market,
concentrating on wheat. Recently the wife said they ought to sell but
the husband disagreed and bought several thousand dollars worth more.
Within a week the price dropped and the blow to his bankroll and ego
was such that Herman hasn't mustered the courage to tell him he
shouldn't have gone against the grain.
IT SEEMS Louis
Armstrong is addicted to elevator irrelevance, too. During a break from
rehearsal for next Monday's Edsel show at CBS TV City, he rode up to
the third floor in silence. As the door opened and he headed out he
remarked to the only other passenger, a solemn-faced stranger:
"If what you say is true, Daddy-O, that satellite is due over any minute!"
SPEAKING OF which, Cy Bloomer, the desert philosopher, muses from Barstow:
"Now that the Russians have built an artificial moon maybe they'll get
so overwhelmed with themselves they'll build an artificial earth and
get on it. That would do it."
MISCELLANY--A
woman in a Wilshire Boulevard stationery store asked for some "vanilla"
envelopes--instead of Manila. Happens all the time, the clerk reports...
Jerry Hoffman believes he had the fastest rejection of a manuscript on
record. He mailed a short story to a new York magazine on Tuesday and
got it back Wednesday. (He'd put it in the self-addressed stamped
envelope and enclosed the one addressed to the magazine--instead of
vice versa).
Bobby Hogston was enchanted by an ad in a Woodland Hills paper:
"Wanted: Guest Heater." Apparently it should have been "gas"--but then
again maybe it shouldn't.
Whenever there's smog in the air the phones go berserk at the Air
Pollution Control District. The other day John W. Mann, who helps
handle them, exclaimed, "You know what we need around here to answer
these phones?--an octopus on roller skates!"
A car on Beverly Boulevard had a printed sign, "Made in Las Vegas from old slot machine parts."
It's long been said that the funniest clowns are the saddest, and the saddest are the funniest.
So I guess there's a pretty good chance that it's true.
Yesterday, a very funny clown came to my office. It wasn't the first time he'd come. But it was the first time in quite a while.
His real name is Bert Whitson.
But all his friends in Pershing Square refer to him as "Popeye."
He was smiling.
"Been riding my bike all over town looking for you," he told me.
We shook hands like old friends and he sat down.
"I'm in the hole right now at four eating places," he started. "I owe maybe a hundred dollars."
He
opened his cavernous, toothless mouth and laughed. "But don't get me
wrong," he said. "What I want is a good job. That's all. And you know
what I've decided?" I said I didn't.
"The entertainment field. That's where I belong. I know you don't just go busting into it, so I'm prepared to do it gradual.
"Start out, maybe, by getting into the studios as a maintenance man. Be good experience. I'll get used to the crowds that way."
He laughed again. The sound was like something you'd expect to hear from a rather frantic chicken.
He went on:
"I
got a tuxedo and a clown suit. I had a hula skirt out of French silk,
but it got burned up on me. I got a stovepipe hat and my red, white and
blue shoes. Painted them myself."
Popeye tucked his lips into
his mouth until his nose touched his chin. He removed his pith helmet
and scratched vigorously at the top of his bald, veined head.
"I
got more gab than Gabby Hayes," he continued, "but what I really need
is a sailor suit. Then I'll get a golf ball and cut it in half and
stick it in my cheek to puff it out.
"Just like Popeye."
From his jacket pocket, Popeye removed a tiny package, dressed in a Frito-chip wrapper and guarded tightly by a rubber band.
He placed it on the desk.
"What is it, Popeye?" I asked.
He opened it.
It was a harmonica.
"Only cost 85 cents," he explained. "I used to have a good one--a $21 one, but it got stolen by some Irishman.
"I know who it was, too.
"Back
in the old Pershing Square before they redid it over, I used to sing
and dance and play my harmonica. There was this Negro fellow with a
guitar and we used to have a regular show.
"Lots of people really enjoyed it."
Popeye smiled at the memory.
"We don't have the freedom there now that we did before. Different class of people, too.
"Right
after the war, it was a pretty fine crowd. But now there's a bunch of
night hoodlums. Daytime people are nice, but I don't like the night
people. Hoodlums," he repeated.
He leaned forward, whispering hoarsely:
"Why, one had the nerve to try and sell me dope. Imagine that?"
Popeye was tapping his harmonica in the palm of his hand.
I asked him: "Why don't you play a tune?"
He smiled. "Be glad to," he said.
He did. He played "Lamplight in the Window."
When he finished, he said, "That's an old one, isn't it?"
"I liked it, Popeye," I answered.
"A real nice song," he agreed. "I know a lot of them old ones.
"But I suppose," he added sadly, "if I really want to make a go of it, I should start learning some of them new ones."
Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.
Keith Thursby. Keith has been an editor at The Times in news, sports and design since 1986. The Rams moved to St. Louis on his first day as assistant sports editor of the paper's Orange County edition. He grew up in Norwalk and lives in Irvine.
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Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.
Keith Thursby. Keith has been an editor at The Times in news, sports and design since 1986. The Rams moved to St. Louis on his first day as assistant sports editor of the paper's Orange County edition. He grew up in Norwalk and lives in Irvine.