June 10, 1938

There are times when the old newspapers absolutely leave me speechless--and not in the good way. Yes, I realize this is a comic strip ("Tarzan") and yes, I realize it's 1938 and not 2008. But good grief, I still find it shocking that something like this could be syndicated in the mainstream media. And to think that the comic books of the 1950s were persecuted because they supposedly warped young minds. "Reprints of Rex Maxon's Tarzan strips in the USA have been a rarity." --Dale Broadhurst.
	e have a very newsy day in Los Angeles. At left, the Shriners convention winds up with floats and Hollywood stars in the Motion Picture Electrical Pageant.  This kind of writing is hard to duplicate: "The West's largest arena--Memorial Coliseum--was transformed for the night into a gargantuan jeweled brooch such as Cellini might have been proud to have fashioned.... The electrical giants on the Colorado River groaned and whined as switches were thrown, hurtling the entire load of one high-power line direct from the dam power houses to the Coliseum." The host is Jack Benny and the parade features Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Boris Karloff, Mickey Rooney, some starlet named "Movita.," My favorite moment? Leo Carrillo on a "white neon-lighted horse."  Of course there are elephants... and Eastern potentates ... and Nubian slaves... Franklin Pierce McCall is arrested in the kidnapping and death of 5-year-old Jimmy Cash. McCall's mother says: "The boy has been in no trouble before in his life." And Luise Rainer and Clifford Odets are splitsville.
Photograph by the Los Angeles Times People line up to get into the trial of Police Capt. Earle Kynette in the Harry Raymond bombing.
	n the case of the Harry Raymond bombing, defense attorney George Rochester attacks witnesses' credibility, especially George Sakalis, who is getting $100 a month from the district attorney, Rochester says.  Rochester also charges that John Fisher, who said Police Capt. Earle Kynette tried to buy pipe that would shatter easily (presumably for a pipe bomb), was once a member of the KKK and might be prejudiced against Kynette, a Catholic. Also, 178 girls from the Los Angeles Orphan Asylum get a day at the beach ... Britain is buying 400 airplanes from Southern California's manufacturers: 200 bombers from Lockheed and 200 trainers from North American Aviation ...  Eleanor Holm, who was suspended from the Olympic swim team for drinking, and bandleader Art Jarrett are splitsville. No, I've never heard of them either. And you can get this hairdo at the Broadway. Email me

Comments

[Carol Gwenn]

Surprised you'd never heard of Eleanor Holm. She was indeed an Olympic swimmer, married to bandleader Art Jarrett (hey - there were LOTS of big bands!) After Holm's removal from the Olympian ranks, she was swept up by impresario Billy Rose who starred Holm in his famous Aquacade at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Aquacade was Busby Berkeley underwater, getting the drop on all those Esther Williams movies by several years.

P.S. Eleanor Holm , a statuesque, all-American beauty, ended up married to the dimunitive Billy Rose.

[Vincent]

Also, the actress you referred to is Luise Rainer, not "Louise" -- and she's still with us, residing in Switzerland. She's the only back-to-back winner of the Best Actress Oscar, for "The Great Ziegfeld" in 1936 (beating out Carole Lombard in "My Man Godfrey," among others) and for "The Good Earth" in 1937.