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| January 13, 2008 - January 19, 2008 »
Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
I set out for Bukowski Square to check on Craby Joe's (more about that later) and discovered Main Street was blocked for filming. Coming to a theater near you will be this scene from a film set in Indianapolis. The record will show that it was filmed using the Farmers and Merchants Bank at 4th Street and Main on Jan. 12, 2008.
Ps. I know I have some readers who are in law enforcement. Anybody care
to critique the way this intersection has been secured? I realize it's
Hollywood, but....
A map of the 1997 North Hollywood shootout. Note the difference.
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Here's shootout site on Laurel Canyon from Google Earth.
Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
This is a detail of the slabs being installed on the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters on Spring Street. I hope, I'm wrong but the idea of a big downtown building that looks like this isn't terribly appealing.
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Photograph by Larry Harnisch / The Los Angeles Times
And what have we here? It looks like there's an abandoned freeway ramp behind this chain-link fence. Hm. Wouldn't it be fun to get a closer look? Stay tuned.
Jan. 11, 1968
Anaheim
Jan. 12, 1958
Jan. 12, 1908
Los Angeles
Streetcars robberies, although not everyday occurrences, were a regular risk 100 years ago on our sainted mass-transit system. In this instance, a passenger grabbed the bandit as he was holding two guns to the conductor's head and the fare collector killed him. I love reading these old papers; most people have no idea just how wild Los Angeles was.
Continue reading Streetcar holdup »
A feud between millionaire James Irvine and his neighbors involving access to land ends up in court ... a dispute over the harbor... political influence and graft ... and a man recovering at home from brain surgery to remove a bullet.
Jan. 11, 1958
This is to report that progress has whacked away another footnote in
the American credo, this time the Tom Sawyer-Huck Finn division.
Ralph Hopkins, who spends his weekends fixing up his desert hideaway,
tried to buy some plain old whitewash all over Antelope Valley, with
discouraging reactions.
When he asked for 10 pounds of it in one store, the young clerk looked
at him blankly, as if he were a doddering old fool speaking poor
English, and said, "You mean white paint!" Ralph said, "No, whitewash,"
but he didn't get through.
IN ANOTHER PLACE the
clerk, aged about 30, had heard of the stuff, then cagily asked what he
wanted it for. To lighten the inside of a 20x20 barn, replied Ralph.
Oh," said the clerk, "then what you really want is Goosefuddles
Synthetic Wonder Paint." Among other things, it injected vitamins into
the wood by osmosis, smelled of heliotrope and, according to the
clerk's mathematics, would cost him only $52.40 plus tax for his barn.
In the next couple of places, Ralph changed his tactics. He asked for
calcimine, a mistake. The clerks recoiled as if he'd said a bad world.
Finally there was the old-timer who admitted he didn't stock whitewash
anymore and suggested substitutes. At length, Ralph wheedled him into
selling a sack of lime which he slaked in an old keg. For $1.25 made
enough whitewash to administer several coats--without any aid
whatsoever from the world of synthetics, but with considerable sadness.
AS PRESIDENT of Chaos Unltd., I feel it is my duty to add what confusion I can to that which already exists.
Now and then at breakfast the pre-teenager in my keeping advises me of
her dream during the night. Usually she is being pursued by a witch or
a dragon or the villain in a horror movie. The other day she came up
with something more original.
"We all went downtown and there was this submarine base," she began.
[She didn't know exactly where, except it was next door to a large dime
store].
"We tried to get aboard but the man said we had to wait two years. So
we waited. Finally we got in and the submarine flew to Santa Monica,
where it landed in the water, which was full of big fish."
Now this makes sense to me in a prophetic symbolic way. I've been
wondering what those deep excavations downtown were for. A submarine
base, of course. And that two-year wait--well, the parking lot
situation is critical. As for a submarine that can fly like a guided
missile, maybe that's what this country needs--more imagination.
Meanwhile, no more lobster bisque for Jane for dinner.
ARMCHAIR sailors
everywhere will appreciate a classic incident reported by the
Manchester Guardian in reviewing the recent disbanding of the royal
naval volunteer reserve, known as the "wavy navy."
One time during WWII a corvette in mid-Atlantic plaintively requested a
sister ship to indicate its approximate position. Came the radio reply,
"Sorry, I'm a stranger here myself."
AS A BARTENDER,
Joseph Gianguili of Pacoima is always bugged by the saloon scene in
westerns in which the grim stranger buys a drink, fishes a coin out of
his vest pocket and tosses it on the bar. What bugs Joe is that he
never gets any change, whether it's for a shot of red-eye or he's
setting up the house. Furthermore, he never looks to see if it's a
quarter or a $20 gold piece.
Maybe this is the reason for so many high-budget westerns.
FOOTNOTES--Leo
Shaw asks, "Have you noticed the falsies on the bumpers of the 1958
Cadillacs?" ... Had your redundancy today? Doris Hellman asks how about
the license plate slogan, "Colorful Colorado"? ... James Reardon, blind
multiple sclerosis victim, will be buried in Valhalla Cemetery after a
funeral service at Jones & Hamrock, 731 W. Washington Blvd., at 1
p.m. today. Friends will contribute the costs.
Jan. 11-12, 1958
Los Angeles
So it's right before Christmas, Dec. 7,
and our guy is a week late with the rent. Not working, no money. The
landlord comes around; he's a machinist at Douglas who owns these four
apartments in Hawthorne.
They fight. Our guy stabs the landlord in the back of the neck with a hunting knife.
Wraps the body in a blanket, puts it in the trunk of the landlord's car and heads for Riverside. Car breaks down near Mt. Rubidoux.
So.... He calls a friend, says come get me. The friend tows the car back to L.A., 11400 Felton Ave.
Our guy rents a car, puts the landlord in the trunk--remember it's been
a couple days by now--and goes out to Lytle Creek, eight miles out of
San Bernardino. Up a dirt road for a mile and then up a firebreak trail
half a mile. Digs a grave and buries him.
It's nine days later and the landlord's cousin reports him missing.
Police investigate, find our guy driving the landlord's car. Says the
landlord loaned it to him, doesn't know where he is.
This is January now. They take him in on a GTA and start questioning
him. He's got a record back to '49: Forgery, burglary and mail theft.
Been in McNeil Island and the County Jail. But he doesn't know anything about the landlord.
They get the wife to tell them he did it. "Buried him out in the
woods." So.... They keep working on him. Put him on the polygraph.
Doesn't know anything about the landlord, just borrowed the car.
Finally, he cracks. Says the landlord was after his wife. He came over
to the apartment. They fought. The landlord got a hunting knife off a
shelf. He dropped it. Our guy picked it up and stabbed him.
Hertel and Rambeau * take him back out there with Al Edsel from the
Sheriff's Department. Dark ... late at night. Just a couple of
flashlights and the spots on the cars. They find the grave under heavy
brush and dig him up.
Our guy tells the papers: "I'm glad it's all over with.... I haven't really slept since it happened."
The Times never followed up on this story. According to California
death records, Harold Kelly Middlekauff died May 5, 1980, at the age of
58. There's no listing for his wife, Eleanor. Beryl Creech, the
landlord, was 44.
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* Police Capt Arthur Hertel and Lt. Earl Rambeau.
Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
I saw the drab concrete facade being installed on the LAPD's new headquarters yesterday and thought: "East Germany, 1962." This promises to be an interesting contrast to what Nathan Marsak calls "The Borg Cube," otherwise known as the Caltrans Building. Email me
Men's clothing... women's shoes... Herbert Witherspoon sings... and the Friars Club holds a meeting...
Jan. 10, 1958
The seminar on semantics will come to order.
A reporter phoned
the Bureau of Public Works seeking information on the collection of
combustible rubbish. He wanted to know whether a refuse truck, when
filled, hauled the load to the dump in Toyon Canyon or elsewhere, then
returned to the point on its route where it had left off. Or whether
another truck moved in and took up the trash load from there.
"Did you say 'dump?' " he was asked.
"Yes," he replied.
"We call them 'land reclamation projects,' " he was told solemnly.
Then
there's the phrase that showed up on Dave Rees' business page in a
story about the economic slump. Reluctance at the marketplace this
semester is known as "consumer hesitancy."
Oh, yes, that truck
full of trash deposits its load at its assigned land reclamation
project, then returns to where it left off. Makes two trips a day.
ONLY IN L.A. -- Office
workers returning from coffee breaks or lunch are finding a phone
message on their desks (placed there by playful colleagues) from a Miss
Annette, with a NO number.*
When they call back, a sultry-voiced
maiden comes on the line and says, "Hi! Gee, it's nice to hear from
you." She goes on to say she hasn't been doing much all day, just some
modeling and if you like, she'll send you three poses. "And enclose a
dollar," she concludes softly, "just to cover me."
The blow is the realization that Annette is a recording.
IN THE EVENT you hadn't heard, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, a name that is sheer poetry, is no more, or won't be after Feb. 28.
Alpheus C. Beane, a partner in the brokerage firm since 1941, is dropping from the lineup. He'll be replaced by Winthrop H. Smith. No, not Psmith, Smythe or Ithsmay--Smith.
As
a test run, someone called the number to find out how the crisis was
being handled now that the announcement has been made. The result is
inconclusive. All the operator said was, "Merrill Lynch!"
Unless the situation improves, he plans to give more attention to Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne and Foot, Cone & Belding.
AS HE PAID his auto license renewal fee at his bank, Al Besset of Montebello remarked, "This is my mad money."
"You down to that?" asked the clerk.
"No,"
replied Al, "it just makes me mad to have to pay it--in addition to the
car payment and the gas tax and the insurance and everything else!"
AN EXPECTANT mother named Barbara, a lady with a Machiavellian sense of humor, has been pondering a suitable bon
mot for the big moment when her husband, a local M.D., comes in to see
her and the baby for the first time. As of now, she plans to say, "Dr.
Frankenstein, I presume."
AT RANDOM--Les
Wagner overheard this exchange: "Where did winter go--my fruit trees
are blooming." "It went to Florida." ... A maintenance supply company
has an ad in Sales Executives Bulletin stating, "Please do not scare our
salesmen with large orders. Kindly phone them in"... Anyone else struck
with the coincidence of a TV station showing "Citizen Kane" the same
week Marion Davies donates $1,500,000 to UCLA Medical Center for a
children's wing?... A parent dragooned to a Hi-Y installation can't get
over the impression created when the boys with flat haircuts bowed for
the invocation. They looked like a bunch of Edsels coming down the street abreast.
* Attention young persons: This refers to the ancient practice of using two-letter prefixes with phone numbers.
Jan. 10, 1958
It was yesterday, late afternoon, when I got the tip.
Davie Mack was going to surrender.
If it was true, it definitely was news. Because Davie, according to my sources, was a very wanted young man.
He was a young man whom police officers had been tailing for quite a
while. And he was a young man whom these same officers suddenly
couldn't find when they got something hot--something they felt was
substantial--on him.
The big break for the police came Wednesday when Barbara Burns,
18-year-old daughter of the late comic Bob, was arrested for using
narcotics. She had reportedly told officers that Mack had been
supplying her.
My source said the surrender was set for 9 o'clock last night at the office of a prominent Hollywood attorney, Harrison Dunham.
I arrived there at a quarter of the hour.
The office was dark and locked. And I began to wonder. But I didn't
wonder for long. Because after a few minutes, Dunham showed up. He
unlocked the door and invited me in.
"Yes," he admitted, "it's true. I guess you'd like to stick around."
I said I would.
It was 10 minutes to 9 then, so we talked and waited.
I asked him who was coming down from LAPD.
"O'Grady and Santuzzi," he said. "I guess that's who it will be, anyway."
Then he leaned over his desk at me.
"Look," he said, "I don't know what you're planning to write, but this
kid is a good kid. He has problems. I'm hoping the law will get him to
a good hospital. He needs it bad."
I nodded.
"And his family," he continued. "They're fine people. Maybe you could
keep them out of it. It won't help anything by dragging them into it."
The minute hand on Dunham's modernistic wall clock kept moving as we talked.
And at four minutes to 9 the phone rang.
Dunham aswered it, and when he recognized the voice, he shook his head.
"Yes," he said. "I'm here.
"But you've got to...
"Dammit, Dave, I've explained and explained...
"It's better this way, David. You've got to trust me. We're going to do
everything we can to see you get treatment. Good treatment. Fort
Worth...
"Where are you, Davie?... Melrose and Western... Look, boy, you're six,
seven minutes away... So get over here. They'll be here any minute
now..."
As they attorney spoke, O'Grady and two other narcotics officers walked in.
"Just a minute, Davie, I've got another call..."
Dunham pressed the hold button on his phone. He greeted the officers
and asked them to sit down. He explained to them that Davie was on the
phone and would arrive in a few minutes.
Then he returned to his conversation with the suspect.
"Davie, you going to come right over? ...
"Davie, what do I have to tell you to make you trust me...
"Davie, there just isn't any other way."
Dunham hung up the phone.
One of the officers stood up and walked toward the attorney. "Look," he
said, "if he doesn't give himself up we'll put out an all-points
bulleting and..."
"Relax," interrupted another officer.
"Don't worry," said the attorney. "He's coming."
He did, too. About five minutes later.
He was a skinny kid with too much hair on top of his head. He wore
horn-rimmed glasses. He didn't look happy but he didn't look sad,
either. He studied the group for a minute. Then he walked over to the
couch and sat between two of the officers.
The attorney spoke. "Davie, these men are here to..."
"I know," said Davie. "I know."
There was a hard, awkward silence.
Finally, one of the officers spoke. "Well, I guess we might as well go."
Dunham nodded. "You ready, David?"
Davie nodded. He stood up. "I"m ready," he answered.
Pausing only long enough to shake hands with the attorney, the three officers and Davie Mack filed out of the room.
Jan. 10, 1958
Los Angeles
This is an old joke, but these are old pictures:
Question: Why don't the British manufacture typewriters?
Answer: They can't figure out how to make them leak oil.
OK, this is the Berkeley roadster, which even I have never heard of. The same is true for the German Lloyd. I have heard of a Skoda, but I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Now this is really alarming: I have discovered something called the Internet Movie Cars Database. I suppose you knew that a Skoda is briefly visible in "North by Northwest." But I didn't.
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A "widow" from the Azusa Street Revival evicts her husband and says the Lord will be a father to their children... (she's developed the "gift of tongues," which has "driven a score or more crazy in this city")... a dog that's the terror of Sonoratown... an angry patron at the Orpheum...
and a spat with the Daughters of the Confederacy. Cut-rate railroad fares from Chicago to Los Angeles: $33 ($688.60 USD 2006).
Sept. 4, 1948
Los Angeles
The King's, 8153 Santa Monica Blvd., 1945-1954
KWIK-AM (1490) 1947-1951
Johnny Grant 1923-2008
Jan. 9, 1958
Passengers on a plane en route to Los
Angeles from New York a few days ago were in a state of mild excitement
over the presence of Lee J. Cobb, the distinguished actor.
Somewhere over the wide-open spaces the young stewardess approached
Beatrice Bardacke, an administrator with the Fund for the Republic, and
whispered, "See that old man over there in the corner?"
Beatrice looked in the direction indicated.
The stewardess continued, "I think he's a little hurt about all the
fuss that's being made over Mr. Cobb. No one has even noticed him. I
wonder if you'd go over and talk to him. Tell him you recognize him."
Then she added blankly, "His name's Mischa Elman."
EVERYONE HAS uttered or heard the familiar inquiry, "Where've you been?" And the familiar reply, "Oh, no place."
Well, reports publicist Chet Swital, there actually is a "no
place"--the juncture of Longitude 0 and Latitude 0, off the west coast
of Africa.
A person would have to fly or sail over the exact spot, which is ocean. However, two nearby islands, Annobon and Fernando P'o, are probably as close as anyone would want to get to no place.
The reason Chet knows all this is that he had just received letters
from Annobon and Fernando P'o. Curiously enough, the Annobon letter was
from the city of California. They were responses by amateur cameramen,
one on each island, to an article Chet wore for a Spanish trade
publication seeking film strips on, of all things, the giant coconut
crab.
If anyone anticipates a punch line here, stop dreaming--all this is from nowhere.
AS ANY WRITER will tell you, the New Yorker is probably the most difficult magazine to crack. But not for Richard M. Doyle of San Gabriel.
Last November, he read in the Machias Valley (Maine) News Observer that
the Main Central Railroad had discontinued passenger service on its
Bangor-Calais branch. As a boy he frequently took that ride.
Recalling E.B. White, essayist and humorist, frequently wrote about Maine, Doyle wrote a reminiscent letter about the old line.
White liked it and it's in this week's New Yorker. It was Doyle's first venture into writing of any kind.
REMEMBER the
item here about the housewife who ran out of bread and borrowed some
from her next-door neighbor, who wasn't at home, and left a note,
"Mice"? Well someone, presumably the neighbor, borrowed some milk when
she wasn't home the other day and left a note, "Meow."
SO YOU DON'T think the cops and robbers motif which dominates TV influences children?
Alan Litz, 7, of Montebello has discovered that a croquet mallet can be
quite an equalizer in dealings with bigger boys. Apparently they've
discovered it too. A neighbor, Bobby Perrenoud, 8, came to Alan's door
and said to his mother, "I can stay until 5 o'clock--unless there's
trouble."
MISCELLANY -- The
Let's Have Better Mottoes Association selection for January is "Coming
to work doesn't hurt--it's the long wait to go home"...
Tom Cracraft has figured out what's wrong with TV programs in "compatible color." They don't compat--at least not on his set...
"Where can I send my Christmas cards?" a reader asks. Don't know. The
places I checked already have an oversupply. If any further word, I'll
report it.
Cully of Culver City postcards: "If we got all the government we pay for we'd be in a heck of a fix"...
In the event you hadn't heard, Take Tea and See Week starts tomorrow...
Councilmen Ernest Debs and James Corman have a $1-a-pound bet on their
postholiday reducing campaign. Thought the cottage cheese industry
would be glad to know.
Los Angeles Times file photo
Pat Collins, left, Edward G. Robinson and Julian Eltinge for a performance by the Dominos Club, Nov. 25, 1935.
Well, that explains it.
Yes, I was trolling EBay again in my continual search for reasonably
priced items from the Mason Operahouse. What should I find but a
program from a 1917 benefit performance for the family of Maitland
Davies, featuring our old friend Julian Eltinge. Plus Charlie Chaplin,
Leo Carrillo, William S. Hart, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and an audience
that without exaggeration was an array of the era's stage and screen
luminaries.
A little research reveals that Davies was a dramatic critic for one of
The Times' competing papers. But having been a critic at one point in
my career, it is difficult to imagine such an outpouring of goodwill
for someone who reviewed the performing arts.
Aha! Further research reveals that before going to the dark side,
Davies was a singer and actor of some renown, although given the
sketchy resource material in the early online newspapers, it's
difficult to tell whether he was particularly prominent.
Although he died in Los Angeles, he apparently wasn't worth an obituary
in The Times, but Davies received a few lines in the New York Times, which
noted that he died during an operation "at his home." His obituary in
the Chicago Tribune says that Davies was a well-known singer before
becoming a dramatic critic for the Los Angeles Evening Express and the Los Angeles Tribune. The
Chicago paper also noted that Davies was the brother of the late Acton
Davies, for many years the dramatic critic of the New York Sun.
Another EBay mystery solved.
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This letter showed up on my desk last week. Note the postmark: August
2007. Apparently "Black Dahlia" and "Los Angeles Times" is almost all it takes to
get a letter to me--eventually--although I don't recommend it. For the record, Elizabeth Short wasn't even in Los Angeles in 1945.
(In case you're wondering: The blurry background is an old New Yorker
cover I use to "outsmart" my HP scanner, which insists on cropping
pictures for me and usually does a terrible job of guessing what I
want. The little green seal shows that my mail was X-rayed and checked for anthrax, a precaution imposed at The Times since 9/11).
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Marion Davies gives $10,374,451.61 USD 2006 for a children's wing at UCLA Medical Center, the largest individual gift to the university up to that time.
Daniel Meskil is convicted of fatally shooting Officer Patrick Lyons, the second LAPD officer ever killed in the line of duty. Notice that The Times used an illustration for breaking news instead of a photograph... Searching for moonstones on Redondo Beach... And a free concert of new Victor records (cost: $7.30-$104.33 USD 2006).
Jan. 8, 1958
Monday at 6:30
a.m., as Marvin Hanks of East L.A. walked from his home to his garage
to drive to work, he observed that the full moon in the western sky was
green--grass green. "What goes on here?" he asked himself. Later in the day, he referred his wonderment here. What
you saw, Marv, was a celestial phenomenon known as a green flash. It's
unusual but not rare and has long been the subject of study. As Ray Holmes, APCD
senior meteorologist, explained it, the light rays from the moon bend
as they pass through different atmospheric densities, creating a
rainbow effect that can change from pale yellow or orange to blue. The
green is more easily seen that the others.  Conditions must be
exactly right for the green moon. The light must be very bright and the
air must be unusually clear. We had both Monday. See what can happen when the air clears? THERE'S SUCH a thing as a person being too conscientious, Jim Bloodworth, the writer, will tell you. As a filip
to his proposed visit to his home town, Memphis, over the Christmas
holiday, he decided to give a party for his family and friends there.
He wired a hotel to reserve a room and addressed Christmas card
invitation to 50 persons. Then he decided against it, canceled the hotel reservation and discarded the invitations. On
his arrival in Memphis, however, a friend congratulated him on his
wonderful idea of giving the party. Baffled but in there fighting, Jim
hastily called the hotel and retained the room. The party was a great
success--$500 worth. On his return here the mystery cleared. His
houseboy said, "I was sure glad to do you that favor. You know, you
accidentally brushed all those invitations into the wastebasket before
you left. I bought stamps with my own money and mailed them." BELVEDERE, out in enchilada country, is bursting with pride over the appointment of a local boy, Carlos Mendoza Teran, 41, as a municipal judge. As a boy, Teran shined shoes and sold papers at 1st and Rowan and attended Belvedere
Junior High. Later, he went to Garfield High, where he played end on
the football team although weighing only 145, and UCLA, where he was
middleweight boxing champion. Incidentally, he almost became a
professional boxer. One sad note dimmed his appointment. His
mother died two months ago. He would have liked her to have been
present when he was sworn in Monday. TWO CIVIC CENTER habitues
were discussing juries and the suspicion that sometimes they hold off
announcing their verdicts in order to get an extra free meal. One
observed, "Most of the juries I've seen look like they could use a good
meal--especially after the ear pounding they take from those attorneys." Sustained. AT RANDOM--While in Tokyo with Bob Hope's troupe, reporter Frank Laro
headed into a cafe but was stopped at the door by a polite Japanese who
said, "Orientals only." Gave Frank an odd feeling... Ray Southworth
nominates for oblivion the politicians' phrase "At first blush." Ray
doubts that second blushes are much less embarrassing these days...
Speaking of blushing, This Week magazine for next Sunday -- printed in
advance--will have an article titled "The First Man Into Space" by Don Dwiggins of this paper. It's about A. Scott Crossfield,
North American test pilot who will fly the secret X-15 a hoped-for 140
miles into space. Don wrote it last May... While on that subject,
Alberto Diaz overheard a paisano
remark, "That vodka really gets you high'... A group of Hollywood
writers have tape-recorded a mythical telephone conversation between
Mickey Cohen and Chief Parker, very ribald and full of double entendres.
Nov. 7, 1952
Operation Skywatch was launched July 14, 1952, and used thousands of ground-based civilian observers who volunteered to search the skies around the clock for unidentified aircraft that were undetected by U.S. radar.
According to The Times, the active phase of the program ended Jan. 1, 1958, when observation posts were transferred to the North American Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs.
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Jan. 8, 1958
There are businessmen in this town whose professed interest in humanity I question.
Among them is the owner of a local tire agency who advertised in an East Los Angeles paper this week:
"If you are riding on smooth tires, you're only fooling yourself. It's
bad enough to risk your own life, but how about the lives of your loved
ones?"
And then followed his dramatic appeal to the readers' consciences with:
"Planning to buy a new car?
"If so, let's trade tires. Let us put tires on your old car not quite
as good as yours and pay you the difference. It's money found."
And if you survive the trip to your favorite new car agency, let the
sucker who gets stuck with your smooth-tired automobile risk the lives
of his loved ones instead, I presume.
ALSO ON MY DESK is a handbill showing the recent double-horror attraction for a South Side theater.
It advertises:
"FREE CANDY to all boys and girls attending the show."
And it ballyhoos the "monster" in one of the pictures as
"A teenage titan of terror on a LUSTFUL BINGE that paralyzed a town with fear."
There are psychiatrists who see no damage in permitting kids to attend occasional horror shows.
But I question, sincerely, whether boys and girls lured into a theater
by a promise of free candy are going to benefit from viewing a "lustful
binge."
It's a pretty sad choice of words. And it took a pretty sad example of an adult to combine them with free candy.
TWO DAYS AGO, I reported the frustration of a chemical engineer in
Glendora who tried to fulfill his civic obligation by reporting an
unidentified flying object.
He tried to contact both Civil Defense and Operation Skywatch offices.
He placed half a dozen phone calls to CD units, to military installations, to Skywatch stations.
His reward was either no answer or no interest. Plus some derision.
He told telephone operators and police of his plight, but they were at a loss as to who else he might try.
So maybe it's a good idea to write down this phone number: SY camore 5-7235.
It's the number of the Pasadena Air Defense Filter Center.
According to Capt. Gordon L. Brock, the center operates 24 hours a day,
covers Southern California plus parts of western Arizona and Central
California and is prepared to investigate all unusual aerial activity.
He admits that, unfortunately, not many people know it exists.
LAST MONTH, I wrote about a 9-year-old girl from Granite City, Ill.,
who visited Hollywood with her parents to have a final wish fulfilled
before she died.
The wish was to meet Roy Rogers. And a meeting was arranged.
At least, the little girl and her parents were told it was.
But some Hollywood press agentry at its worst fouled up the girl's
hopes and left her standing on a street corner for an hour, waiting
vainly for Roy to appear.
After the fiasco, it was pretty well determined that Roy never knew of the proposed meeting.
Yesterday, there came a postscript to the story in a note from the girl's mother:
"I would like very much for you to publish our thanks to Girl Scout
Troop 156 for the individual greetings they sent her for Christmas.
They gave her a tremendous thrill.
"Also, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans made several calls and sent her a
lovely gift box for Christmas. Of all her gifts, the one she was
happiest with was the costume which they sent her.
"Donna was released from the hospital recently after a third operation on her brain tumor.
"Four doctors had told us that the operation was impossible but somehow
God decided to change that. Now, they tell us she will be blind but,
thank God, she will live.
"We shall never forget the kindness shown us by everyone."
Jan. 8, 1958
Los Angeles
Here's a wonderful project to put under someone's microscope: 20th
Century Fox decides to cash in 176 acres next to Beverly Hills for a
massive development of office towers, apartments, an auditorium and a
hotel.
Century City offers a microcosm of what was occurring in Los Angeles:
Movie studios pressured financially by the intrusion of television, the
rising value of open parcels of land and the demise of the city's
height ordinance, which stipulated that no building could be taller than City Hall. And
cars. Note the reference to 133 acres of parking for 28,979 cars.
Also note the last few paragraphs, which say that Universal Studios was
reportedly weighing a real estate firm's offer for its 448 acres in
University City. I suppose we'll hear more about this later.
Alas, there are so many stories and only one Larry Harnisch, so it is
beyond the scope of the Daily Mirror to give the Century City project
the attention it deserves, but I will try to post updates as they
occur.
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Here's the Laker in our mystery photo: Darrall Imhoff.
Photograph by Ben Olender / Los Angeles Times
The Lakers over the Celtics 123-115, April 26, 1966, tying the playoffs 3-3. The Celtics, playing in Boston, won the seventh game 95-93, taking their eighth consecutive NBA championship. Several people have asked me the name of the Celtic player to the right. He's not identified on the back of the photo. Feel free to guess.
Update: The Celtics in question have been identified as Larry Siegfried, John Havlicek, center of photo, and Satch Sanders, No. 16 (which Mike Ryerson notes looks like a 15 because the angle and wrinkles in the jersey).
 Los Angeles Times file photo
All-American Darrall Imhoff in 1958 with the Golden Bears.
Photograph by Ben Olender / Los Angeles Times
Imhoff and Jerry West as the Lakers beat the St. Louis Hawks 109-105, in a photo published Nov. 28, 1967.
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Here's a relic of headline writing: "H'wood."
Oil at 40 cents a barrel ($8.36 USD 2006), overcrowded jails, a road from the San Gabriel Valley to Long Beach (the stirrings of a freeway, perhaps?), a near-lynching and a lady of the stage who had led a colorful life. A gritty portrait of life in Los Angeles a century ago.
Jan. 7, 1958
Los Angeles
"Dear mother," the note from 9-year-old Jimmy began.
They weren't his words, of course. They were dictated by his father,
David James Darr, a 34-year-old machinist who was apparently holding a
.45 to his son's head.
Jimmy told his mother that he hated visiting his father; the boy was
terrified of him. But the judge ruled that as part of the divorce and
child custody agreement, Jimmy had to go, so he did.
"Once, before he went, Jimmy told me: "Mommy, if I call you up and tell
you something, don't believe it because he makes me do it," Eula, 28, told
The Times. "I told him, 'I know, darling, I know.' "
David and Eula had been married in Yuma, Ariz., in 1947, but 10 years
later, whatever love there might have been had turned into a nightmare of
hatred and legal battles that led to a February 1957 divorce.
According to The Times, David threw battery acid into the car of a man
who testified on Eula's behalf in the divorce. He put sugar in the gas
tank of another friend's car, broke into Eula's home and slashed the
furniture, splashed her house with red paint and put rock salt on the
lawn to kill it.
Then there was the court fight over Jimmy. Eula petitioned the court to
have alternate visitation rights canceled because David kept
threatening to kill her and their son. One time, he sent Jimmy back
home to Colton, where Eula worked in a drugstore, carrying a bullet for his mother.
On Jan. 4, 1958, a Saturday, David called and threatened to kill Jimmy
and himself unless Eula came to see him. "Then he called yesterday and
said it was too late, that he was going to do it," she said of his last
phone call, which came on Sunday.
She called the deputies at the sheriff's Norwalk station and asked them
to check at David's apartment, 12616 Lambert Road, where David lived
with a teenage son from a previous marriage. But deputies couldn't find
Jimmy or David.
About 2:30 a.m., Jimmy finished his note and his father shot him in the
head with the .45, then went into the bathroom and shot himself. A
neighbor said she heard gunfire and moaning, but added: "I haven't
got a telephone yet and I didn't know what to do."
David and Jimmy weren't discovered until the next morning, when Abner
M. Fritz, a teacher who lived in an adjoining apartment, broke in after seeing a bullet hole in his bathroom
wall and a .45 slug in the bathtub. He was joined by David's teenage
son, who had spent the weekend with a relative.
Jimmy was lying between a bed and a wall while David was sprawled in
the bathroom, The Times said. They both died a few hours later at
General Hospital.
"I wish now that I had gone to him when he asked me to," Eula wept.
"Then maybe he would have killed me instead of shooting Jimmy."
Although The Times never followed up on this story, California death
records show that Eula Fae Chabot died March 3, 2000. She was 70.
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