Anne Elisabeth Dillon

Anne Elisabeth Dillon is neither a scholar nor a gentleman; she just likes watching movies. A copy editor on The Times' National desk, she's been at the paper since 2006.

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.

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 at left belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.

Movie star beaten to death, November 1, 1968

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Newsmen gather outside Ramon Novarro's house, 3110 Laurel Canyon, after he was found beaten to death, 1968. View Larger Map The 3100 block of Laurel Canyon, where Ramon Novarro lived, via Google maps' street view.

Ramon Novarro, a wealthy movie star of the silent era, is beaten to death in his Hollywood Hills home, 3110 Laurel Canyon. Note that The Times couldn't say he was gay so we used the code phrase "a lifelong bachelor who lived alone." Novarro was found naked on a disarranged bed. The garbage cans were full of liquor bottles and bloody men's clothing was found on a neighbor's fence, The Times says.  In 1969, brothers Tom and Paul Ferguson were convicted of the killing and sentenced to life in prison. Paul R. Ferguson won a PEN award in 1975 while still incarcerated.   According to Internet sources of unknown reliability, they were released.

Voices -- Studs Terkel, May 17, 1987

Photograph by Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times Studs Terkel, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oct. 23, 2001.

Bewildered, Insecure, Cynical Studs Terkel on today's troubled blue-collar worker By Stuart Silverstein, Times staff writer Chicago's Studs Terkel, 75, is an oral historian and the author of eight books, including "Working," which was published in 1974, and "Hard Times," which came out in 1970. The following was taken from an interview with Terkel by Stuart Silverstein, a Times staff writer. In it, Terkel talks about the changing self-image of the American blue-collar worker. I think there's a bewilderment among blue-collar workers today. To use an obvious case, the steel workers, more and more, are not working. For one reason or another, the plants are closing. Imports have something to do with it, but not quite as much as the nature of management itself diversifying, not giving a damn about the community. Whether it's Youngstown, Ohio, or Gary, Ind., they're becoming ghost towns. And so they feel they're redundant, a great many of them. The important thing, I think, about the blue-collar guy, particularly those who are skilled and get fairly good pay, is that their sons--their children--can't expect to have it as good as their parents had. So the American dream is taking a beating. It's as though the American dream has come to an end. Because the dream always has been, from the immigrant days on, that my kid will have it better than me. That has always been a fundamental of the American dream. That is no longer the case, it appears. The kids wonder whether they will be as well off as their parents. So more and more, you hear conversations among blue-collar veterans who either are laid off or have retired or are worried about what's going to happen. . . . So, obviously, there's a tremendous insecurity on the part of the blue-collar worker. When I did "Hard Times" in 1970, I interviewed a man who worked for a farm equipment plant. And he got punished because he took his time with his work. He was an old-time craftsman who wanted his product to be good. And his bosses said: "Look at the guy next to you. He's putting out four times as much as you are." The stuff he does isn't too good, but it doesn't matter! We get people to buy new ones. You know, planned obsolescence. And so, we're told craftsmanship is no goddamn good today, not compared to what it was before. I think it's true, to a great extent. People point out that the TV repairman doesn't do his job, or the auto mechanic. Well, where does the lesson come from? The farm equipment worker I just told you about is penalized by the plant's owners because he was too careful and not contributing enough to the gross national product, and I mean gross! And so, the guy who did sloppier work, but put out more in quantity, was rewarded. And so, what example does the car mechanic or the TV repairman, what role model does he have to use? . . . If there's one adjective that describes the blue-collar worker today, most of us would say, I think, cynical. Let's not romanticize the past, either. Remember, before the '30s, those guys worked all kinds of hours and there was child labor, there were horrible conditions, and things have improved considerably. Not because the guy who owns the plant is nice, but because of their working together through unions and, of course, a very sympathetic Administration during the New Deal days. Occupational safety and health and welfare and all that came into being, but it was still pretty rough. However, I think, many of the steel workers were proud of their work. In "Working," they say, "See that building?" Again, I don't want to romanticize, but inside there was a feeling that they were a part of something, that they did produce something. Having a job was the important thing, during the Depression and after the Depression. But the job also was some semblance of income and self-respect and security, especially when industrial unions came into being. Until World War II, a great many working people in the country didn't have much dough in the bank. It was day-to-day, let's save a little, frugal here and there, but working people always had the razor's-edge life to them. You know, they got along, but they didn't have (much). But then came that moment. Money in the bank. Two cars. Three cars! A boat, and suddenly, "Hey, this is my life." And then (there was) looking down upon the new arrivals, whether it was the black or whether it was the asiatic or whether it was the Hispanic coming from Mexico. (The attitude was) "we've got to do something about keeping them in their place." But then during the '60s, something interesting happened, with the civil rights movement and the consciousness of people and the feminist movement and everything else. The young at the time were questioning the nature of work. They wanted work to have meaning. The older people caught some of that, too. Then came the '70s, '80s and deregulation, Reagan and the move to the right. Now the question is, geez, a job, because tightness has set in. . . . High technology is coming into the picture. There'll be less and less of the work by hand, and less and less of the horny-handed, blue-collar guys, and more and more of the computerized society, a new kind of work--machine tending rather than producing. And so, machines will now make machines. Now we have another thing happening. How statistics are used by the government is a joke. We have more and more (jobs); they tell me that the unemployment situation is not that bad because a lot of people have gone back to work. Sure, the steelworker who made $15 an hour, $12 an hour is now pumping gas at three bucks an hour. He's back at work, you see. And you find these cases by the scores, by the hundreds. They're considered employed, but they're making one-fourth of what they did before. Aside from those who don't even apply, who have given up, who don't even make the statistics. Ironically, you've got flight attendants forming a union. They're very militant. So we have crazy switches occurring. There's a sort of paradox, a contradiction. Certain working people, flight attendants and pilots, are union-conscious. Whereas in the old days, they never dreamed of that. You've got athletes, professional athletes, belonging to unions. Never dreamed of that before. At the same time, you've got labor taking a beating in the traditional areas.

 

Vintage fashions on EBay -- Bullock's Collegienne

I did promise that I wouldn't go off the deep end on vintage fashions, but here's a real period piece: A young woman's hat from the Collegienne department at Bullock's Pasadena. Bidding starts at $9.98.

           

Vision of an African American utopia -- Allensworth

Photograph by Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times A LOOK BACK: The sun sets on Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, where original buildings and replicas provide a glimpse of the utopian community founded by a former slave and retired Army chaplain for his fellow African Americans in 1908.

By Peter H. King October 27, 2008 Reporting from Allensworth, Calif. -- From outside her house in this beaten-down little town in the southern San Joaquin Valley, Nettie Morrison, Allensworth's unofficial mayor, can look up the road a few hundred yards and see where it all so grandly began -- the birthplace of one of the more audacious California dreams. A century ago, it was on this flat, barren piece of California that Col. Allen Allensworth, a former slave and retired Army chaplain, came to launch a utopia: a colony of, by and for black Americans. Read more >>>

Movie star mystery photo

Los Angeles Times file photo This week's mystery guest has 125 credits on imdb. Update: Steven Bibb and Gregory Moore have correctly identified our mystery star. I'm going to defer revealing her name to give other readers a chance. Congrats, Steven and Gregory!

Los Angeles Times file photo Here's another picture of our mystery guest. Los Angeles Times file photo Add Don Danard to the list of readers who recognized our mystery guest. Los Angeles Times file photo And today's photo shows our mystery guest with another mystery woman, who has more than 130 credits on imdb. (Sorry, Louise Brooks has 26 credits on imdb. Our mystery guest was a mystery even to me, apparently!) Add Alexa Foreman and Herb Nichols to the people who have identified *one* of our mystery women. And yes, this is Evelyn Brent and Louise Brooks from "King of Gamblers." (Brooks' scenes were evidently deleted). And finally, a clip of her with Maurice Chevalier and a still from one of her movies, "The Law West of Tombstone." She is Evelyn Brent.

Serial killer Harvey Glatman captured, October 31, 1958

Harvey Murray Glatman is arrested and freely admits killing three women.  He was executed in the gas chamber Sept. 18, 1959. It took him eight minutes to die.

Los Angeles Times file photo Judith Ann (Vanhorn) Dull, Glatman's first victim. Lorraine Vigil, on her first job as a model, thought it was odd that a supposed photographer calling himself Frank Johnson didn't head for Hollywood. Once on the Santa Ana Freeway, "he began driving at a tremendous speed. He wouldn't answer my questions or even look at me," Lorraine said. He pulled over and drew a gun, but she fought with him and grabbed the muzzle. They rolled out of the car and onto the shoulder of the highway. She bit him on the wrist and got the gun. "If I had known how to fire it, I believe I could have killed him," she said.    Glatman's victims: Judith Dull, Shirley Ann Bridgeford and Ruth Mercado. Note: I wish people wouldn't post Glatman's gruesome photos of his victims on the Internet. These thoughtless crime buffs have no idea how much pain they are causing to the victims' families. "I don't give a darn if I go to the gas chamber." "It was my first and only job. I think I applied for it because I was lonely."

Changeling -- Part V

Los Angeles Times file photo The Northcott ranch. Notice the stop sign used as a precursor to crime scene tape.

Los Angeles Times file photo Detectives find a gun and an ax in the Northcott home in Los Angeles, but cannot link them to the killings. Los Angeles Times file photo Gordon Northcott

Los Angeles Times file photo Sanford Clark showing Deputies Sepulveda, Mendoza and Ybarra the direction taken from Mint Canyon cabin by Gordon Northcott when the latter told Clark, according to his story, that he was going to visit a mine where Northcott says he aided a miner slay his partner.

Los Angeles Times file photo Gordon Stewart Northcott points with a pencil to a chicken house at his ranch where the state contends one of his alleged boy victims was slain. Undersheriff Rayburn, left, and Deputy Brown, right, keep him closely guarded as the trial jury inspects the ranch.

Los Angeles Times file photo Sheriff Clem Sweeters, left, and Deputy Bob Bailey, foreground, watch a trusty dig for bodies on the Northcott ranch.

Los Angeles Times file photo Investigators dig in the desert in a search for Northcott's victims.

Los Angeles Times file photo Deputy J.R. Quinn and Sheriff Clem Sweeters with items recovered at the ranch.

Travel -- Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast

Photograph by Jay Jones The Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, Fall River, Mass.

By Jay Jones Reporting from Fall River, Mass. Karen Zorn and her boyfriend fled their cozy bed-and-breakfast earlier this year. It wasn't that the place was dirty or the neighbors noisy. Zorn says they grabbed their bags and left for a nearby motel after discovering that, apparently, some of the other guests were ghosts. The couple had just finished checking in to the B&B in Fall River, Mass., when things started to go awry. "We went up to the room and it was freezing cold. It was the coldest room in the house by far. And that kind of spooked us out," she recalls. Read more >>>

American Basketball Association comes to L.A., October 30, 1968

By Keith Thursby Times staff writer The American Basketball Assn., which gave the world three-pointers, slam dunk contests and Dr. J., came to Los Angeles for a brief stop. The team was called the L.A. Stars but its real star was on the bench. Bill Sharman had been a standout player with USC and the Boston Celtics. He even played baseball for a while in the Brooklyn Dodgers' minor league system. He came back to L.A. as the Stars' coach after two seasons coaching the San Francisco Warriors. "I made the move because I love Los Angeles," Sharman told The Times' Dan Hafner. "There is no other place I want to live and I've tried a number of different ones. I like the climate here and I like the people." The Stars played in the Sports Arena but never drew much attention. The team was young and mostly unknown and attendance was bleak. Perhaps things would have been different with an ABA star like Julius Erving or David Thompson matched with a coach of Sharman's drive and experience. But the Stars would last only two seasons in L.A., having moved to Los Angeles after a season in Anaheim as the Amigos. Hafner's story advancing the Stars' first home game included Sharman's view on what the league needed to survive: "Two things could make our league an instant success. One would be to land UCLA's Lew Alcindor. The other would be to get a national television contract. Our league needs exposure." Sharman spent three seasons in the ABA, winning a title with the Stars after they moved to Utah. The next season, Sharman would be back in L.A. as coach of the Lakers. Here's some ABA video found on YouTube that includes old game clips and interviews. See what L.A. for the most part missed.