March 20, 1938

Above, an interesting wrinkle in the campaign to recall Mayor Frank Shaw. Below, Lithuania concedes to Poland and the nation's celebration turns to rioting in Warsaw's Jewish ghetto ... On the jump, more than 500 people protest outside the German-Austrian Consulate in Los Angeles, 117 W. 9th St. In Vienna, the Nazis close synagogues. Nazi storm troopers force hundreds of Jewish men, and a few women, into cleanup crews. "The Nazis told them it would do them no harm 'to learn what real manual labor means,' " United Press reported.

Quote of the Day: "The windows of hundreds of Jewish-owned shops were smashed and strong police guards encircled Warsaw's ghetto to prevent large crowds from invading it.... Orators talking about Lithuania hardly could be heard above crowds shouting 'Down with Jews!' and 'To Madagascar with the Jews!' " --Associated Press, via The Times

Email me

The comics

March 20, 1938

Wow! Here's a "Joe Palooka" strip from 1938. All of Ham Fisher's white characters are drawn realistically and the African American is this ghastly caricature who speaks in dialect. Seeing something like this in the daily press on the eve of World War II takes my breath away. And not in the good way. 

 

Home of the week

March 20, 1938

March 20, 1908

A German politician speaking in the Reichstag provokes snide remarks from the press gallery for saying "a Negro also has an immortal soul." Below, an Examiner reporter is jailed in the theft of photos that were published in the Hearst paper. He is the third Examiner newsman to be jailed in the incident, The Times notes ... And Stanford is in a stalemate with students over the dismissal of 12 men who took part in an "anti-faculty parade."   

Email me

Matt Weinstock

March 19, 1958

Books never grow old for me.

Somehow, I rarely find time to read them when they come out but months or years later I find them on the shelves and they are as fresh as if newly published.

If they're good they stay good and it is this permanence and availability in books that will never be replaced by, shall we say, the more transient arts. Furthermore, having a batch of unread books gives a person something to look forward to.

Of course, I am reconciled to never making it with certain books which glare at me daily. Marcel Proust, for instance, in two volumes. Marcel, I've tried, but I don't follow you.

THERE ARE brooding boys and ponderous boys and the obscurity boys and sometimes, as in William Faulkner, it's worth fighting your way through a page-long sentence to find a glittering phrase. But I find I am increasingly impatient with the soul-tortured boys, including Thomas Wolfe, who take too long to say what they have in mind. I prefer the precision guys. And there are plenty of men and women writing today who can say more in a short story than the so-called masters do in a long novel.

Actually, reading is a matter of mood. I can always get a lift from the casual but sharply etched writings of E.B. White, James Thurber and the mad precision of S.J. Perelman. For that matter, I can lose myself for hours in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

For a jolt I turn to Ray Bradbury, J.D. Salinger, Roald Dahl, John Collier, Elizabeth Enright--the list is endless. I always come back to Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Somerset Maugham, Norman Douglas and Henry James. And it's always a satisfaction to turn to books not so well known.

I wonder how many persons who hear Eric Severeid on TV know he wrote an excellent book, "Not So Wild a Dream." Or ever heard of Laurens Van Der Post's "Journey to the Interior" or have read H.L. Davis.

All of which is another reminder that this is national Library Week. A treasure awaits your pleasure.

IT IS CUSTOMARY for persons receiving awards to express deep gratitude to their mothers, wives, fellow actors, producers and discoverers.

On receiving one from TV-Radio Life the other day, Desi Arnaz said, "I would like to thank those guys who started the revolution in Cuba in 1933." Creating in Desi a wild desire to be elsewhere.

Stan Freberg, who received an award, although his KNX show was canceled in mid-satire, said: "We tried to avoid cliches on the program and one of the most successful eliminations was the phrase, 'And now a word from our sponsor.' "

IN CASE YOU hadn't heard, the third stage of the Vanguard which is orbiting along with the satellite is named Toozigoot. Where, you are bound to ask, did it get a name like that?

Well, the YMCA sponsors a Y-Indian Guide program designed to establish closer companionship between fathers and sons between the ages of 6 and 9. Different groups take different Indian names.

Charles E. Bartley, head of Grand Central Rocket Co. of Redlands, which made the Vanguard's third stage, and his son Steve, 7, belong to the Toozigoot tribe which, according to archaeologists, existed in Arizona AD 1000-1400. So there you are.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY -- Listening to a recording of Gertrude Stein (a rose is a you know what) reading her own stuff, writer Lou Huson remarked, "How can you tell when the record gets stuck?"

AROUND TOWN -- No matter what anyone else says, Mrs. Evangeline Benitez of East L.A. received a letter from Lupe Gutierrez in Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico, addressed to "Los Angeles 22, Calif. Heaven" ... Attorney Pat Cooney received a check the other day from James Termini of Hollywood. On St. Patrick's Day 10 years ago, he recalled, Termini was arrested for selling shamrocks downtown without a license. Cooney took the case and got an acquittal ... Doreen Jakubowski's favorite Mrs. Malaprop was an elderly Cockney housemaid who always explained an absence with, "Couldn't come yesterday, ma'am, it's me 'ardening of me artilleries."

       

Emmett Kelly--Dodger

Los Angeles Times file photo
Emmett Kelly, right, in an undated photo, with a mystery guest. The picture was apparently a publicity photo for the Jan. 21, 1962, television program "Project 20," which featured the Clyde Beatty Circus.

By Keith Thursby
Times Staff Writer

It was an unlikely sports story—a clown announcing the end of his connection with the Dodgers.

Emmett Kelly said the Dodgers had failed to renew his contract for the 1958 season. Kelly, a longtime performer with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, was no mere clown act. He had performed on Broadway and in movies and had taken off the 1956 season to serve as the Dodgers’ mascot in Brooklyn. (You can still find Dodger pennants from that era with Kelly’s portrait.)

The Associated Press story noted that Kelly’s "glum face had been a source of laughter to millions of children."

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times

Emmett Kelly cleans his plate--in this case home plate--during a Dodgers-Braves game on April 15, 1962, for Senior Citizens Day at Dodger Stadium. 

He blamed the Dodgers’ selection of the Coliseum for the decision. He said the team’s first home in Los Angeles was "too big for one clown."

The story said Kelly was returning to his first love, the circus. He died in 1979.

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times
Emmett Kelly jokes with an umpire at Wrigley Field in a photo published June 30, 1957. [No, it wasn't "photoshopped." The print was so big that I had to scan it in two sections and paste it together.--lrh]


Los Angeles Times file photo

Emmett Kelly, possibly in Vero Beach, Fla., in a photo dated June 27, 1957.

March 19, 1958

Above, a look at the making of "The Defiant Ones." Below, we drop the masthead to run a terrific horizontal shot as a test pilot who bailed out of an F-4D  Skyray is rescued from the ocean  ... President Eisenhower tries to pull the U.S. out of a recession ... The Fed cuts its rate by half a point ... The "moving mountain" in Elysian Park is once again threatening the Pasadena Freeway ... And Chrysler and Ford sales are up.

Email me

March 19, 1938

Above, a feature on Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Strode, athlete and actor, who starred in "Sergeant Rutledge." Below, Poland prepares for war with Lithuania ...  The forces of Generalissimo Francisco Franco bomb Barcelona while loyalist forces sink one of Franco's cruisers ... And former President Hoover, on a tour of Europe, says there won't be a major war in the near future.  On the jump, prominent Austrian Jews commit suicide as the Nazification of the nation's Jewish businesses proceeds ... Anthony H.G. Fokker, who built German warplanes in World War I, predicts devastating attacks by hundreds of planes carrying 3,000 pounds of bombs in "the next war."

Quote of the Day: "There is a general realization everywhere, I think, that civilization as we know it cannot survive another great war." --Former President Herbert Hoover, on his tour of Europe

 Email me

March 19, 1908

Above, development spreads across Southern California. And of course, once people move to Chino they will need some sort of transportation ... Below, a clever fraud by a clever, affable insurance man who fakes a death ... At an African American dance in Redlands, local prizefighter Harry Beal is stabbed when he tries to stop a fight between two men over a woman. During the fight, one of the two suitors drew a gun and fired three shots, wounding another woman. One man fled from the party while the other was jailed, only to dig his way out "with the aid of some 50 other Negroes," The Times says ... And Roland McDonald is in jail after promenading around the city with his new--and loaded--Luger pistol in his pocket.

Email me

Paul Coates

March 18, 1958

Yesterday I told about a man sent out by this office to visit a few of the hundreds of persons in Southern California who represent themselves as "income tax experts."

We gave him the name of Victor Romano. Occupation, insurance salesman. Wife, Mary. Her occupation: beauty operator.

Romano left my office armed with a set of facts and figures pertaining to his family's 1957 earnings and expenses plus some mock W-2 forms to support them.

He visited many "experts" --finally settling on four to fill out his 1040 form and determine the government's bite on the $7,635.25 combined income of himself and his wife.

Two of the tax "specialists" he picked at random. The third was an official accountant for the Internal Revenue Service. And the fourth was a member of a recognized accounting firm.

The results: No. 1 stated that--in addition to the $874.40 income withheld--he owed Uncle Sam $98.07. No. 2 said he deserved a refund of $101.93. The Internal Revenue Department figured his refund at $112.69, while the recognized accounting firm came up with a refund of $302.66.

The discrepancy of more than $400 was pretty frightening. It was $400 in or out of taxpayer Romano's pocket.

But the figure wasn't half so frightening as some of the miscalculations and omissions by Experts No. 1 and No. 2.

It's pretty obvious that neither knew what he was doing. Both made mathematical errors. Both cheated Romano out of money. And yet both made him liable for cheating the government.

The mythical Mr. Romano's wife earned $2,400 working in a beauty salon. Yet both Experts No. 1 and No. 2 ignored the fact that beauty operators receive tips for their work.

Therefore, the Romanos' tax form would never have been approved by a government auditor.

Other errors which might have been caught included:

1--An illegal $400 deduction, claimed because Mrs. Romano bought some beauty parlor equipment which Expert No. 2 labeled as a "loss" when she abandoned her small home beauty salon business.

2--$30 overestimate on her uniform cleaning bills.

3--A miscalculation in the number of miles Romano drove his car. Romano stated he drove his car 1,200 miles a month, yet Expert no. 2 multiplied that by 12 months and arrived at the figured 18,000.

 

But, if you'll note their final figures, you'll see that they cheated the Romanos more than they did Uncle Sam.

Expert No. 1 didn't even bother to ask Romano if he used his new car in his business. Neither No. 1 nor No. 2 figured in any depreciation for the car.

These omissions alone cost Romano a lot of his own money.

Other deductions completely overlooked by Nos. 1 and/or 2 (and legally listed by the government and accounting firm men) included various auto upkeep expenses, cost of utilities in operating home beauty parlor, purchase of briefcase for business, use of home phone for business and depreciation of typewriter.

Victor Romano paid out $21 to one man, $16 to another for professional service. In return, he got a jumble of practically meaningless figures.

Either through incompetence, ignorance or a greed to get on to the next sucker's tax forms, they gouged him good.

Yet one of them, through sheer luck and miscalculation, came within $11 of the Internal Revenue Service auditor's final figures--while the established accountant disagreed with Uncle Sam's agent by $189.97.

I showed the latter two forms to two independent certified public accountants.

Both forms--they told me--were errorless. Human nature accounted for the wide variance, with the government man favoring his uncle and the public accountant favoring the taxpayer.

One disagreement came in tips received by Mrs. Romano, with the department man setting an arbitrary figure of $250 (25% or her net income) and the PA setting it at $100 (10%).

Romano stated $100 when asked, but acquiesced when the federal auditor told him $250 was a more "realistic" figure.

Other major disagreements came in use of auto in business (90% against 50%), parking ($5 a week against $2.50 a week) and depreciation of car (where the PA used depreciation scale more favorable to taxpayer).

The independent CPAs who studied the two forms both said they felt the PA's totals were more "realistic" than the government man's.

And the accountant who arrived at the $302.66 refund figure said he'd be willing to fight Uncle Sam about it tomorrow.

"If the government auditor was reasonable--not arbitrary--we'd win right away," he said. "If the first one wasn't reasonable, we'd eventually get high enough up to find a man who was."

Usually, this type of dispute would end in a compromise.

Arthur C. Clarke

Nov. 1, 2001

Celebrity Setup: Evolution of a Sci-Fi Master
  * '2001' author Arthur C. Clarke has long been fascinated with electronics.

By David Colker
Times Staff Writer

Arthur C. Clarke, author of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and numerous other science-fiction hallmarks, rarely does interviews. But he owed us.

   On Feb. 3, 1946, The Times ran the first newspaper story about his proposal for communications satellites to bounce radio and TV signals around the world. Although at the time he was almost unknown as a writer and had gained his knowledge of electronics mostly through his work with radar during a stint with the Royal Air Force, his prediction came true with an uncanny degree of accuracy in 1962 with the launch of Telstar. The major flaw in his proposal was that he thought the communications satellites would be space stations with full crews.

   "I wrote it before the microchip revolution and the invention of the transistor, when we were still working with bulky equipment and vacuum tubes," said Clarke, 83, speaking from his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka. "I couldn't imagine it could become so compact and reliable.

   "I've often said that the invention of the transistor was a disaster to space travel. Without it, we would be up there by the hundreds."

   The English-born Clarke gave the world one of the most gripping and frightening portrayals of a computer, HAL, an electronic character with a haunting voice that played a key role in the 1968 film adaptation of "2001." His other works include "Childhood's End," "Rendezvous With Rama," "3001: The Final Odyssey" and the short-story collection "The Nine Billion Names of God."

   COMPUTER: In the 1930s, I was fascinated when I saw [Charles] Babbage's computer at the Science Museum in London. It was wonderfully exciting.

   In the 1960s, I was doing an interview and mentioned that I had just heard about the Hewlett-Packard 9100A, a calculator that had a keyboard like a small typewriter and a three-line display. It was really the forerunner of what we now think of as the desktop computer. Soon after the story appeared I got a letter from Barney Oliver, the famous vice president of engineering at HP, who said, "Arthur, there is a Father Christmas." A 9100A was on its way to me.

   I suppose that's what I was thinking of when I came up with the HAL 9000 computer. And for 30 years I have been trying to set the story straight about the name HAL coming from IBM with one letter added to each. That was pure coincidence. HAL stands for Heuristic Algorithmic computer.

   I think IBM rather liked the idea, though. They later gave me a nice ThinkPad. I wrote "3001" on it.

   I've since defected to Compaq. I use their LTE 5300 laptop, which is several years old but works fine. I also have a desktop that was assembled locally.

   Q: You use both for writing?

  A: I don't much use the laptop except when I get away from Colombo. I have a villa by the sea about 100 kilometers south of here, but I only get there twice a year. It's difficult for me to get around. [He mostly uses a wheelchair because of post-polio syndrome.]

   In any case, I do no writing now. E-mail takes up practically all my time.

   Q: You get that much e-mail in a day?

  A: Usually about 30 e-mails that I answer. I correspond with a lot of people--after the attacks on New York I was writing to many friends there. My agent saw people jumping out of the building. I think it was a defining moment in history, much like the sinking of the Titanic. In both cases you have a stable, maybe complacent civilization suddenly hit by disasters. There are a lot of parallels, I think.

   I wrote this in an e-mail to my friend director Jim Cameron, who happened to be at the Titanic, making dives down to the wreck. He communicated from the Russian ship they were using.

   Q: E-mail is an important link for you.

   A: I think future historians will wonder how the human race spent its time, before e-mail was invented, during the long, empty ages when there was only television.

   HAND-HELD: No, I never got a Palm or any of those. I don't move around enough for that.

   BOOKMARKED SITES: I hardly ever surf on the Web. There are hundreds of Arthur C. Clarke sites, and I never look at them.

   GADGETS: I have a glass sphere from Edmund Scientific [http://www.edsci.cohttp://m] that gives out light in all directions like lightning. You put your hand on it and the light goes to it.

   Q: That's an old science fair favorite.

   A: I also just ordered a globe of the Earth 10 inches in diameter that floats in midair through magnets. These things amuse the children and visitors, and myself for that matter.

   I have a DVD player at the house. The other day, Dan Richtor, who played the ape with the bone in "2001," was here and I posed him beside the TV set showing that image. [Richtor now does payroll work for entertainment companies]. I labeled the picture: "From ape to L.A. executive in one lifetime. Is this progress?"

   Q: Other gadgets?

   A: I have one of those stereoscope viewers to view 3-D pictures.

   Q: Like a Viewmaster?

  A: Yes.

   Q: That's as low-tech as you can go.

   A: Very. Nevertheless, you can't beat the high-quality imagery and colors.

   Q: You have a good time.

   A: You can quote my epitaph: "He never grew up, but he never stopped growing."

Feb. 3, 1946

Above, William S. Barton takes a look at Arthur C. Clarke's proposal for geosynchronous satellites. Below,  Clarke writes an update to coincide with the release of "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Email me

March 18, 1938

Above, a first-person account of the Rape of Nanking. Below, Poland and Lithuania hover at the brink of war ... Anti-fascists riot in Paris ... And in a radio address, Secretary of State Cordell Hull "reaffirmed this country's intense desire for peace and distaste for war but emphasized that the United States will demand respect from foreign nations and insist on playing its rightful part in world affairs."

Quote of the day: "Maybe the procedure I used was not entirely judicial but you must remember that this is St. Patrick's Day." --Detroit Judge John J. Maher, who leaped from the bench, dragged a man who had been threatening him to the courtroom door, slapped him and kicked him into the corridor.

Email me