June 11, 1938

s difficult as this may be to believe (and I'm sure it is), traffic is not a new problem in Los Angeles. The city's streets were congested 50 years ago, they were congested 70 years ago and, yes, they were a mess a century ago. As regular readers of the Daily Mirror know, proposals for elevated trains, subways, one-way streets, bans on curbside parking and prohibitions against large, cumbersome vehicles have been kicked around for decades. So here we are in 1938, taking yet another look at the city's impassible streets. You might find yourself asking why people living 70 years ago didn't adore our sainted streetcar system, because this is before (according to conspiracy theorists, anyway) the shadowy cabal of bus companies and car manufacturers plotted the postwar demise of the beloved Red Cars. And there's an update in the trial of Police Capt. Earle Kynette in the Harry Raymond bombing, in which the defense, out of desperation in a doomed case, throws everything imaginable at the jury in a vain attempt keep their client out of jail. Above left, apparently all one needed for a dialect joke in 1938 was an African American and a mule. Incredibly enough, this gem of ethnic humor appeared on The Times editorial page. Really. Email me

June 11, 1908

ook, if you dare, into the mysterious disappearance of a fisherman on Santa Catalina Island named Tony the Greek, obscured not only by the details, but further muddied by the convoluted account in The Times. Toss in a private detective (Paul Blair of the Blair Detective Agency) who's approaching the disappearance as a case out of Sherlock Holmes and it's a good day's work merely to untangle the facts. View Larger Map Also: Plans for an incline railway up Mt. Washington, starting at Avenue 43 and Marmion Way (above). As the story notes, the railway was designed as a funicular, like Angels Flight, with two cars counterbalanced so that one descends when the other ascends. On the jump, a race war between whites and Japanese in the Imperial Valley over picking cantaloupes. Email me

June 10, 1958

ormer leading lady Virginia Pearson, left, dies at the age of 72. In her later years, she lived at the Motion Picture Country Home, The Times says. At the top, an extremely specific help wanted ad for Western Airlines.  View Larger Map Also: Tony La Rosa, who runs La Rosa's Little Italy, 5751 W. Pico, is freed after getting his finger stuck in a hole that was drilled in the top of a floor safe in an attempt to open it ... Dr. Murray Abowitz testifies before the state Senate Un-American Activities Committee ... And an evangelical Christian basketball team is getting ready for a 10-week tour of Asia. Email me

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

June 10, 1908

ow this is what I'd call an extremely gray page. Even electronic "zipotone" doesn't help much. But what great stories.... First of all, Mrs. D.C. Caloo is freed after being held as a prisoner at 732 W. 9th St. by Edna D. Wilkins. Caloo's husband and a sheriff's deputy went to the home in search of Mrs. Caloo. When Wilkins refused to admit them to the home, the deputy went around back, where he saw Mrs. Caloo standing at a second-story window. The deputy climbed up a back porch, got into Caloo's room and broke down the door to free her. Mrs. Caloo is insane, according to Wilkins, who was holding her to settle a debt, The Times said. And there's a story about the "bedroom lobby" planned for next week's Republican National Convention in Chicago to be staged by delegates' wives to ensure that there will be a plank for women's suffrage. Email me

Streak Ends for Dodgers

June 9, 1968 By Keith Thursby Times staff writer on Drysdale's string of scoreless innings and consecutive shutouts finally ended in a 5-3 Dodgers victory over the Phillies. Tony Taylor scored on a sacrifice fly in the fifth for the first run against Drysdale after 58 2/3 scoreless innings. Drysdale's streak would stand until 1988, when Orel Hershiser was on the mound and Drysdale in the broadcast booth for the Dodgers. The game featured a protest by future Angels Manager Gene Mauch, who was running the Phillies in 1968. He wanted Drysdale checked to make sure he wasn't putting anything on the baseball. Umpire Augie Donatelli looked at  Drysdale's wrist and hair and warned him not to touch the back of his head the rest of the game. A few days later, The Times published photos of Don Sutton and Drysdale being checked by umpires. Manager Walt Alston complained that his pitchers were being singled out. After Tom Seaver and the Mets blanked the Dodgers, 1-0, Alston wondered why Seaver wasn't given the same treatment Drysdale and Sutton received. "[Umpire Ed] Sudol said it is up to the umpires as to who'll they'll check," Alston said. "He said it's up to them to decide whether a pitcher is throwing a sinker or a splitter. "They had better get some experts umpiring behind home plate if they're going to distinguish between the two pitches. I don't think they're qualified to do it." keith.thursby@latimes.com

Random shot

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times Speaking of watering troughs, at least one has survived in the Los Angeles area. This one in South Pasadena, on Meridian just south of Mission, was built across from the train station so people could water their horses when they made trips to the depot.

Mystery photo

Los Angeles Times file photo Well? Everybody guessed Eve Arden. (Banner software was first). The gentleman on the right will be more of a challenge. He is not, as someone guessed, Brooks West, Arden's husband. The young fellow on the left is named Carlos. Email me

June 9, 1958

bove, yes, such things really happened. Anybody who thinks the past was a "kinder, simpler time" needs to revisit their history lessons ... At left, an interesting figure is back in the news: The late Robert S. "Rattlesnake" James, the last man to be executed by hanging in California. On Aug. 4, 1935, James tried to kill his wife, Mary, by putting her foot into a box of rattlesnakes after tying her to a table in their La Crescenta home. Although the snakes bit her, she didn't die, so James drowned her in a backyard fish pond. (Does the fish pond part sound familiar?) The man in the news is Johannssen C. Houtenbrink, alias "Snake Joe," who sold James the rattlesnakes that were to be the murder weapon. Houtenbrink was bitten by one of the 200 snakes he kept at his home, 2414 N. San Gabriel Blvd., South San Gabriel. (Note: Google maps doesn't like this address). Snake Joe recovered, only to be bitten again in 1959. View Larger Map Email me

June 9, 1938

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Special prosecutor Joseph Fainer, left, Deputy Paul Casey and George Sakalis, a key witness in the trial of Police Capt. Earle Kynette in the Harry Raymond bombing. Because of the attempts to intimidate Sakalis against testifying, Casey had been assigned to guard him, The Times said.

bove and at left, witness George Sakalis, who was waiting to testify in the Earle Kynette trial. Also note the story about Jon Hall, whose nose was sliced open with a knife in 1944 during a fight with Tommy Dorsey on a second-floor balcony at 1220 Sunset Plaza Drive. That brawl involved Allen Smiley, who happened to be sitting on a sofa with Bugsy Siegel when something rather unfortunate happened in 1947 (hint: it involved an M-1 carbine).  View Larger Map

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June 9, 1908

	Dolly Graham, actress, shows off the directoire gown on the streets of Los Angeles. Shocked citizens report the garment to prosecutors as "indecent" and "not nice." Email me

June 8, 1958

Visions of the future from 1958: People will live in geodesic domes (note that the floor plan on the dome displayed at the home show has no bathroom).  At left, predictions for 2000: Cars will be banned from the urban cores of America's large cities, everyone will use solar power  transmitted without wires and freeways will be double-decked. Downtown workers will leave their autos at huge parking structures on the fringes of the city and take mass transit to their jobs. "Each structure, from the largest to the smallest, will have blast-resistant cores which will protect inhabitants against storms, man-made blasts and other disasters." --J.J. Svec, Building Construction Illustrated Email me Arye Michael Bender writes: I was a film major at Southern Illinois University, when Buckminster Fuller, designer of geodesics, was in residence.  He was a funny, fast talking little man, with a very unique vision.  His favorite phrase at the time was, 'Anticipatory and comprehensive'. Some years later, I actually knew someone who lived in a geodesic dome.  His name is Donald Walters, but he's better known as Swami Kriananda. The dome did have a bathroom, but leaked in the rain. Although his specific designs for homes and cars did not find their way into the mainstream, we all in some degree, live in Bucky Fuller's world today.  His influence is everywhere from Disney World, to the very fabric of carbon composite designs, to the global village of the Internet.  His works were both comprehensive and anticipatory.