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It's Sunday in 1958, and The Times features a suburban tract home, designed with young (and growing) families in mind. There's no address for this house, so we don't where it was. Click here to download the page: Download 1958_0209_home.jpg
Fighting in the Middle East ... President Eisenhower's health is improving ... Bus service is expected to resume in Pasadena and Glendale once striking union members ratify their contract ... Investigators try to determine why an ICBM exploded shortly after being launched ... And Brigitte Bardot has a nervous breakdown.
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Feb. 9, 1938
Los Angeles
Let's cruise down Wilshire and take a look at the Ambassador--oh wait, I forgot. We let L.A. Unified tear it down, didn't we? Meet a colorful minor character in the Harry Raymond case: T. Ray Costerisan. A bail bondsman who admitted being an underworld agent in the slot machine racket, Costerisan was the grandson of Los Angeles architect George F. Costerisan ... A judge in Pasadena rules that wiretapping is illegal ... Investigators working on behalf of animal rights organizations find a statewide cockfighting ring ... An escaped convict who remade his life as a Sunday school superintendent asks to go back to prison. Prison board officials say they will ask that he be excused from the whipping usually administered to escaped convicts in Texas.
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Feb. 9, 1908
Los Angeles
And the Great White Fleet is sailing around the world. The Owl Drug Co. is sponsoring a contest to guess when it will arrive in Los Angeles.
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It's Sunday, but instead of featuring a home of the week, The Times real estate pages highlight the new Pacific Coast Soda Co. in Santa Ana, and the images are barely visible. However, there's a nice ad for a book on bungalows. Note the stone chimney in the illustration. Guess what happens in the first major earthquake.
Isn't this a great ad? $500 is $10,993.52 USD 2007.
Feb. 8, 1958
Los Angeles
OK, I give up. Any ideas?
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Feb. 8, 1958
"Paul, I am in financial difficulties. The proffeser gave me a job one day--the best he could do.
"My wife just brought me two big beef sandwitches. A friend of mine who works in a restaurant gave them to my wife.
"The only thing I can think of now is to sell my life story back to
Memphis Ward, Hollywood, for 25 bucks. It would be a payment on another
taxi anyway.
"Groucho Marx mentioned me in a Saturday Evening Post story last May
without my permission. He did not mention my name but talked about a
taxi driver on his show that crossed the San Francisco Bay without his
taxi.
"That's when I had my small amphibious Jeep as a cab.
"Groucho still doesn't answer my letters to tell me why he doesn't show the other show of his I was on on television.
"Paul, I challenge Groucho Marx to fight me at Hollywood Legion Stadium, and that is no joke!"
--Parkey Sharkey, Palo Alto Hotel, Palo Alto
Now, Parkey, that's irrational. you know that Groucho can't make your weight.
  Feb. 6, 1958
Los Angeles
This was supposed to be a simple story, a story about second chances: A 75-cent crucifix saves the life of a teenage thief who is shot in the chest. Lying in his hospital bed, he exclaims: "I'm gonna reform!"
But life is rarely so simple. Instead, it's a story of East L.A. gangs, violence and murder.
His name was Elias Alvarado. He was 17 years old and lived at 3773 Princeton St. On the night he went into the Jewel Theater, he was on parole from the Fred C. Nelles School in Whittier with arrests for burglary, auto theft and assault with a deadly weapon.
According to an usher at the theater, Elias and three friends stole a purse belonging to Delia Gross, the wife of the theater manager, Loren Gross. The usher said he chased the four youths to the lobby, where Elias pulled a knife.
 "We've been held up in the past and I've been assaulted by some guys in the theater, that's why I carry the gun," the usher said.
"I'm a very religious guy," Elias told the Mirror. "I had a beautiful gold crucifix but I lost it. Then about two months ago an old man came up to me in Laguna Park in East Los Angeles and sold me this one for 75 cents. I'm gonna reform. I've been religious before but what happened tonight taught me something. I'm gonna be even more religious from now on."
It's a nice story of redemption and second chances.
But it's not complete.
Elias said something else. He denied taking part in any purse-snatching. "All I know is that I heard a dame yelling and somebody grabbed me," he said. "It's dark inside a movie house, y'know."
At the time, that didn't seem to bother anyone. As far as The Times was concerned, Elias lived to repent and got a second chance.
But someone else also got a second chance that night: The usher at the Jewel Theater who shot Elias with a .32 semiautomatic.
His name was Lorenzo Castro. He was 18 and lived at 9212 Abbotsford Road, Pico Rivera. On the night he shot Elias, he also had a record of arrests: for driving a car without the owner's permission and for carrying a concealed weapon. He too had been paroled -- from a state forestry camp.
You see, in the 1950s, the Jewel Theater, 3817 Whittier Blvd., was a hangout for the White Fence Gang, one of the city's oldest and most violent Eastside groups, according to The Times. In 1952, a couple of gang members jumped an off-duty LAPD officer when he asked them and their girlfriends to stop drinking and swearing. According to a 1953 Times story, the White Fence Gang hung out at the Fresno Street Playground, which was on Fresno near Olympic Boulevard. (I'm assuming it was about here).
Lorenzo wasn't charged with shooting Elias, but after that he had been harassed by the gang, he said. "Ever since that other time the White Fence Gang has been giving me a bad time. They've been pushing me around the theater," he said.
He said that on Feb. 23, a Sunday, some White Fence members had harassed him at the theater. On his 6 p.m. dinner break, Lorenzo and a friend, Ruben Ramos, 20, cruised East L.A. and at East 6th Street and Grande Vista, Lorenzo supposedly saw two of the gang members who had harassed him, police said.
Lorenzo and Ruben forced Gerald De La O, 14, and George Rodriguez, 13, into the car and drove up to Soledad Canyon. Once they arrived, Lorenzo told the two boys to get out of the car and start walking. When they were about 15 feet away, he ordered them to turn around and shot them. As they lay on the ground, Gerald kept moaning while George whispered for him to be quiet. Hearing the moaning, Lorenzo returned and shot Gerald again; then he fired at George, but missed.
Gerald died, but George, although wounded, survived by pretending to be dead. Once Lorenzo and Ruben left, George walked to get help and flagged down a truck driver.
Police said Lorenzo had prepared an elaborate alibi to cover his story in the shootings. According to The Times, police and sheriff's deputies said gangs played no role in the fatal kidnapping. Neither suspect was a gang member, police said. George's family also said he wasn't in a gang. The Times says nothing about whether Gerald was a gang member, so we don't know.
Lorenzo was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Ruben was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to five years to life. He was deported to Mexico in 1962. A Catholic when he entered prison, Ruben became a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in 1971 asked the Governor's Board of Executive Clemency to allow him to return to the U.S. so he could have his marriage recognized at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
Did Elias really pull a knife the night he was shot? Did Lorenzo have a reason to shoot him or was he just a gun-crazy youth? We don't know because The Times never wrote anything further about Elias Alvarado, George Rodriguez or Lorenzo Castro. We can only hope that they took advantage of their second chances.
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Feb. 8, 1958
Los Angeles
  Quote of the day: "Crime prevention is not the function of the police. It is the primary responsibility of the family, schools and churches." --Police Chief William H. Parker
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Feb. 8, 1938
Los Angeles
 Above, Lutheran minister Martin Niemoeller protests a secret trial by the Nazis on charges of treason. Niemoeller, who survived the war, was one of hundreds of dissident German ministers who were arrested by the Nazis in the 1930s ... A new grand jury is selected and prepares to hear evidence in the Harry Raymond bombing ... Bombing witness Hope Green says she received a threatening phone call telling her to "take $2,500 and leave town or get rubbed out" ... Police in Georgia investigate the slaying of a minister as he was writing his sermon ... A British health expert talks about the success of public healthcare in Britain and says the U.S. medical profession will follow suit--someday ... And an airplane that can land itself, short stories and human interest features in the Saturday Evening Post--only a nickel (71 cents USD 2007).
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A brawl on a Hollywood ranch may be to blame for the death of William Schumaker, hit above the right ear with a lantern and booted in the head ... Empty streetcars heading back to the barn often speed through town, endangering pedestrians ... A streetcar on Temple lurches to a stop at Beaudry with such force that passengers are shoved against the front door, throwing one woman to the ground, where she is pinned by the door and cut by broken glass ... A burglar is caught by a special officer ... The Humane Society has been busy protecting the safety of working horses, mules and burros. And prosecutors plan charges against railroad officials in a fatal crash between a freight train and a streetcar.
Three stories about problems with the streetcar system on one page--I'm beginning to notice a pattern.
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Craby Joe's is gone but the sign lives on.
Jeremy Hansen writes: The Museum of Neon Art is hoping to have the sign up and running by Feb. 14, the next downtown LA Artwalk. The new location of the museum is on 4th, between Spring and Main on the south side of 4th. Check it out.
That's great. By the way, Ed Fuentes of View From a Loft has suggested getting official designation of 7th and Main--the former home of Craby Joe's--as Charles Bukowski Square. It sounds good to me.
My pals at the 1947project are looking for several new writers as the site rolls over into its newest incarnation. I can tell you from my own experience with 47p that they're a great bunch of folks (shout out to Richard, Kim, Nathan and Mary) and that you'll get an awesome education on Los Angeles history.
Here's the post.
 Test pilot Henry C. Bosserman, a distinguished World War II flier, dies when his chute fails to open in the crash of a F-104A near Palmdale. The debris endangers children waiting at bus stops ... Wedding bells are to ring for 77-year-old Rep. Usher L. Burdick (R-N.D.) and his "thirtyish" secretary ...
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A "bodacious riot of hillbilly hotcha"--with Humphrey Bogart? And who else is in the cast? Ronald Reagan? Coming up next year, Bogart as a cowboy (with Jimmy Cagney) in "The Oklahoma Kid."
The Carnegie Foundation warns that colleges risk ruining themselves in competing for desirable students by offering recruitment deals to athletes, drum majors and tuba players ... Japan has no intention of revealing its plans for naval expansion ... A convoluted story that says the U.S. will beam anti-Axis propaganda to Latin America ... Concerns over German ambitions toward Austria ... Police detectives dispute a landlady's story that conspirators used her rooming house to prepare the bomb that injured Harry Raymond ... And 195 inches of snow on Donner Summit.
On the jump, civic groups appeal to the governor to clean up Los Angeles ... A prisoner on Sing Sing's death row asks to hear a jazz broadcast on the night he is to be executed. Prison rules forbid playing the radio in the death house on the day of an execution ... And a woman shows off her rare rug--made of platypus pelts. Written by a Times reporter who assumed a platypus was a waterfowl.
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A profile of the Salvation Army's new soup kitchen as the city struggles to deal with the growing number of homeless men in Los Angeles ... Quote of the day: "Something further will have to be done on the part of the city, for the number of idle men is increasing rather than decreasing and it will continue to do so." --Dana Bartlett of the Bethlehem Institution's El Club Belen, on feeding the homeless
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Feb. 6, 1958
It isn't customary for a fireman to play policeman but William L. Smith
of Rescue Co. 3 decided recently that something had to be done about
whoever pulled 30 fire alarm boxes in the Bunker Hill area between Dec.
14, 1957, and Jan. 30, 1958.
False alarms are a nuisance and cost money.
Borrowing the techniques of his son, Officer Kenny Smith of the LAPD,
Bill charted and analyzed the time of day and days of the week that the
30 boxes were pulled.
He concluded that the box at 1st and Flower would probably be set off
between 6 and 7 p.m. on Wednesday Jan. 29. He got permission for a
stakeout.
AS BILL and
Investigator Kenneth Held watched, a boy of 10 came out of an apartment
building to mail a letter. On the way back to the apartment he tripped
the fire alarm box. They chased and caught him and he readily admitted
pulling most of the 30 boxes. Subsequently other juveniles who had
participated in the false alarm spree were turned up.
Tripping a fire alarm box may seem relatively harmless but it can be
dangerous. For example, a firetruck responding to one of the false
alarms at 7:37 p.m. Jan. 6 collided with a car at 4th and Figueroa,
slightly injuring several men.
Had they been seriously injured, someone would have been in trouble.
Section 625A of the Penal Code states that turning in a false alarm is
a felony when a serious injury occurs.
As for the boy, he's a bright youngster whose problem is mostly lack of
parental supervision. Firemen are arranging for him to visit the
station. They figure that will be easier on the taxpayers than going to
him.
Meanwhile, Fireman Bill Smith seems to have acquired the nickname "Sergeant Wednesday."
A MAN ON the
telephone Tuesday at 4 p.m. said, "You don't know me. I never called
you before. My name doesn't matter. I just wanted to say something. I'm
mad. I got to rustle the money for my auto license in the next few
minutes or pay double. I'll have to park my car. That'll be 50 or 75
cents. Then I'll have to get gas. That's 8 cents tax on each gallon.
Then I'll have the privilege of trying to get on the freeway, which I
understand cost $1,000,000 a mile to build. You know what that means in
the rain. That's all." Click.
REPORTER Don Dwiggins phoned Walter Plett, CAA administrator, for any new developments on the Norwalk tragedy and was told, "He's in a space meeting."
What's this, thought Don, the CAA planning to regulate outer space too?
Turned out the meeting was about air space along federal airways.
A CARELESSLY parked
car blocked the driveway as Dr. Howard McDonald, president of L.A.
State College, tried to back out of the crowded lot at the North
Vermont Avenue campus and when no one came to move it he sounded his
horn.
A student came up and asked, "Who the devil do you think you are, the president?"
"Well," retorted President McDonald, "I have aspirations."
AT RANDOM--Pretending
to be a country editor, Max Mannix, columnist in El Pueblo--the city
employees mag, not the Santa Anita nag--offers to let paid-up
subscribers write their own obituaries. "You can make it as flowery as
you wish," he writes. "We will then hold it and when you kick off we
will print it." Not a bad circulation come-on for real ... Understand a
Hollywood pixie wears two watches. The one on his left wrist is to tell
time, the one on his right is set at bar closing time ... From T 'n' T:
"If Patrick Henry thought taxation without representation was bad, he
should see it WITH" ... Simile: As quiet as a carwash emporium on a
rainy day.
Feb. 6, 1958
I received a phone call last night, sheriff. A man asked me to pass a
message along to you. My caller was Raymond McCafferty of Whittier.
Maybe you remember the name. He's the father of one of the 48 victims of Saturday's plane crash in Norwalk.
His only son, Leslie, 21, a crew member of the Navy Neptune plane, received prominent mention in the papers this week.
The stories said that Leslie's life might have been saved if the crash
area hadn't become so congested with the morbidly curious. According to
one story, it was two hours before Leslie reached a hospital.
But that's not why the boy's father contacted me.
He called to see if I had any "pull" with you; to see if I could get
you to do something about the actions of one of your deputies who was
at the scene.
The deputy's name is Kermit Kynell.
And McCafferty's done quite a bit of checking on him in the past few
days. In fact,, he and his wife even drove over to Norwalk Sheriff's
Station the other day to confer with him personally.
Actually, McCafferty's first contact with Kynell came through the impersonal medium of television.
It was on the evening of the crash and the McCaffertys had just learned
that their son might have been on one of the involved planes. They
turned on their TV set in hope and in dread.
A deputy--as it turned out later, it was Deputy Kynell--was being interviewed by George Putnam.
"The deputy," McCafferty told me, "had stains like blood or gasoline
all over his uniform. He was telling Putnam about being inside the
wreckage with one of the victims."
"I looked at my wife," McCafferty continued, "and she looked at me. I
don't know--I can't remember--which one of us said it, but one of us
said, 'Oh, my God, he must have been in there with Les.' " It was the
next day before McCafferty found out for sure that their worst fears
had been correct.
"I talked to anyone, everyone I could find who might know something
about what happened to my boy. Whether he suffered much. Whether it was
painful.
"That," the boy's father told me, "is how I learned so much about Kynell."
The man's voice choked.
"I learned that the deputy went into the airplane," he continued, "and
helped my boy. He lifted some debris off of him and laid him down, made
him more comfortable.
"He laid down in the mess, right beside him, and he talked to my boy and helped him.
"He got compresses. He applied them. Gasoline was raining down like water and he shielded my boy's face from it."
Raymond McCafferty paused.
"Mr. Coates," he started again, "that plane could have exploded at any time and that deputy would have been killed.
"That was a pretty wonderful thing for a man to do."
I told Mr. McCafferty that I agreed.
"And another thing," he continued, "when my wife and I talked to the
deputy, he didn't tell us about what he personally had done.
"He just told us the things we wanted to hear.
"He told us that our boy was in shock most of the time and that he
didn't suffer much. He told us little bits of the conversation.
"That's why I want you to call Sheriff Biscailuz. So that the deputy gets a citation. Will you call him?"
"I'll call him," I promised.
McCaferty thanked me. "One more thing," he added. "The deputy called me today to find out when the funeral was.
"He said he wanted to attend. He said he'd consider it an honor to go to the funeral because my boy died so much like a man."
Again there was a pause.
"I know it's not much," McCafferty said, finally, "but I'm going to do something for the deputy.
"I'm going to replace the uniform he ruined when he lay there with my son. They have to pay for their own uniforms.
"So I'm going to buy him a new one."
(Click below to read the rest of Gene Sherman's interview with Meredith Willson).
A price war sends gasoline to 25.9 cents a gallon ($1.89 USD 2007) ... Sarah Churchill gets into a scrap with reporters ... A boy suspected of stealing a pistol leads police on a chase through the city's storm drains ... A steelworker kills a motorist while trying to commit suicide by driving the wrong way on Century Boulevard at 90 mph.
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Continue reading Feb. 6, 1958 »
Feb. 6, 1938
Los Angeles
A full page from The Times' Sunday comics shows what the tobacco companies did in the days before Joe Camel ... Yes, kids, you can drive like a maniac and still eat right if you smoke Camels.
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Feb. 6, 1938
Los Angeles
It's Sunday in Los Angeles, and the weekly real estate section features the floor plan of a modern home--cost $3,990 ($57,055.15 USD 2007) ... Japan builds a navy ... As Hitler consolidates his power, Germany wants the return of colonies it lost after the World War ... control of Danzig ... and "influence" in Austria ... Dist. Atty. Buron Fitts expands his investigation of graft and corruption in Los Angeles ... Former actress Hope Green says the bomb that injured Harry Raymond was made at her rooming house, 2032 W. 24th St. She implicates an unidentified "high city official" in the bombing plot. On the jump, the German ambassador says his country wants to be a "good neighbor." Quote of the day: "The 'great goal' of the German government is peace--'real peace.' " --German Ambassador Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, in an Associated Press story datelined Philadelphia.
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Jan. 31, 1908
Los Angeles
What happens when a freight train hits a streetcar near what is now Cesar Chavez Avenue and the Los Angeles River.
Continue reading Streetcar wreck »
As I keep saying, the carnage on the streets of early 20th century Los Angeles is not to be believed. A detailed story on a fatal car accident ... A brave teamster struggles to control a runaway team of horses as they rampage down Broadway ... Minors are banned from poolrooms ... And a woman charged with defrauding the Lankershim Hotel is back in jail after failing to make bail ... On the jump, a woman becomes hysterical and faints on a streetcar ... A Sunland rancher suffering hallucinations is hospitalized.
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Feb. 6, 1908
Los Angeles
Just another day on the city's sainted transportation system.
Feb. 5, 1958
AROUND TOWN--Naughty
youngsters are filling paper bags with water and putting them in the
seats of sports cars parked near KTLA. When the owners get in their
cars in the dark, squish ... Note of anachronism: A sign on a fence on
San Julian Street between 6th and 7th streets: "No Admittance. War
Plant" ... Aside to San Fernando Valley residents: Did you read that
the fuel used in the U.S. satellite was developed at Rocketdyne, the
huge installation in the Santa Susana Mountains from which satanic
noises emanate? Feel better?
Feb. 5, 1958
In a few days, Albert Bigelow goes to sea again.
And if--as it's feared--he doesn't return, there will be those who'll say it figured. They'll say that the sea was his destiny.
In a way, they'll be telling the truth, I guess.
Because the sea has always held a special fascination for Bigelow.
He became personally acquainted with it as a young man and he learned to navigate as well as he could drive a car.
Then, in 1941, when Bigelow was 34, Pearl Harbor was attacked. And Bigelow was among the first to line up at his Navy Recruiting Station.
As
is the fate of many hopeful sailors, he was landlocked for a couple of
years. But finally he talked his way back onto the ocean.
During late '43, he was in command of a submarine chaser in the Solomon Islands.
He remembers one day during the fighting when more than 100 Japanese planes were shot down.
But
more vividly, he remembers the corpse of one Japanese airman which
floated bolt upright in a peaceful cove for weeks after the heavy
fighting.
"Every day we passed the cove," Bigelow recalls, "we saw the figure, its face growing blacker and blacker under the terrific sun.
"We
laughingly called him 'Smiling Jack,' "he adds. "As a matter of fact, I
think I gave him that name myself and felt rather proud of it."
Today, Bigelow reflects that the insensitivity which the war forced him and other decent men to develop is appalling.
Bigelow
was at Pearl Harbor as captain of a destroyer escort when the first
news that we had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was released.
 "It was then," he says, "that I realized for the first time that, morally, war is impossible."
After peace came, Bigelow returned to his wife and two daughters in New England and built up a successful business as an architect.
Then,
in 1955, he and his wife took in two Japanese girls who had been
injured and disfigured by the A-bomb blast at Hiroshima and who had
come to the United States for plastic surgery.
Bigelow remembers that the two girls harbored no resentment, that they loved him and his wife.
How could he respond to that kind of attitude, he wondered at the time.
It
wasn't long afterward that he joined the Quakers, the Society of
Friends. And he became an active member of the committee for nonviolent
action against nuclear weapons.
When the U.S. was conducting regular A- and H-bomb tests in the Pacific, Bigelow
was asked by the New England office of the American Friends Service
Committee to take a protest petition, with 17,411 signatures on it, to
Washington.
He was selected because he had been active in
Republican politics in Massachusetts, and was acquainted with some name
politicians.
But there, in spite of his connections and the
known fact that the Friends Service Committee is a highly respected and
useful agency, Bigelow drew a blank.
After repeated attempts to
contact influential "old friends," either by phone or in person to
present the petition, he finally was told to leave his damn piece of
paper with the guard at the gate.
Bigelow's conclusions: "It
seems terrible to me that Americans can no longer speak to or be seen
by their government. Has it become their master now instead of their
servant?"
But Bigelow didn't give up.
In fact, that's the reason he and three other men are leaving San Pedro Harbor in their 30-foot ketch next Monday or Tuesday.
They're
going to take a different attack on the nuclear explosions which they
call "monstrous, evil and unworthy of human beings."
They're
going to sail to the area where the U.S. government has scheduled
nuclear bomb tests this April. They're going to anchor and wait for the
bombs to fall.
It's as dramatic a protest as any man could conceive.
But I know for a fact that Bigelow isn't doing it for publicity. I don't believe, either, that he'd be especially anxious to become a martyr.
He merely feels that we're destroying ourselves.
And
that it's his duty, as a conscientious citizen of the world, to do
everything in his power to prevent us from doing so. He's now convinced
that the only way he can reach us with his message is to dramatize it
to the extent that it may cost him his life.
Albert Bigelow is a brave man.
A man with far more conviction than some of the men who are leading our world today.
[Note: Bigelow was sentenced to 60 days in jail for sailing into the Eniwetok test site--lrh].
A link to his archives is here.
Sorry, folks. The 25-city tour by the Beach Boys and the Maharishi was abandoned after appearances in Washington, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New Haven, Conn. The May 19, 1968, Hollywood Bowl concert was canceled.
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Eisenhower has a cold (the president's health has been an issue for some time now) ... A Vanguard rocket is destroyed after it breaks up during a launch ... More rainfall ... Could cloud seeding be working?
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Feb. 5, 1938
Los Angeles
The Harry Raymond bombing drops to the back page on this Saturday morning in Los Angeles ... The Assembly vice investigation continues ... The gagged and beaten body of a Filipino houseboy from Beverly Hills is found in a laundry bag hidden in a Jefferson Boulevard storm drain ... A judge and a prosecutor are initiated into a law fraternity (note the Masonic reference in the headline: "rode the goat") ... Times elevator operator John C. "Pat" Opp dies. Quote of the day: "Although having but one leg and using crutches, Opp boasted he could hop as fast as most persons could run with two legs." --Obituary on Times elevator operator John C. "Pat" Opp.
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Here's what I like about the 1908 papers: The stories are a crazy mix of tragedy and sentiment, flowery language and daily life that can be absolutely brutal ... The county puts unemployed men to work building Laurel Canyon Boulevard ... Ghastly conditions at the Receiving Hospital (What? It doesn't have an ambulance?) ... A couple of homeless men complain about the "fly specks" on the pastries handed out at a soup kitchen--turns out they're poppy seeds ... A woman who claimed to be a famous author is in jail on charges of defrauding the Lankershim Hotel ... What happens when 14 mail carriers get ill? The mail does not go through ... A young woman is gagged and tied to the bed while burglars ransack her home ... A two-ton mechanical model of Jerusalem is on display at the Broadway.
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Feb. 4-5, 1958
Los Angeles
Here are some lead sports pages from the Mirror News. This may not seem funny if you don't work in the news business but to anyone who lays out the paper, what they did with the photo of the ice skater is hilarious. And then there's the big liquor ad. (Also note the difficulty in reproducing the Mirror pages).
The full page is here: Download 1958_0204_mirror.jpg
And just to top it off, here's what the Mirror did the next day with the boxing photo. As my friend and colleague Gary Metzker says: "They're out of control. They are TOTALLY out of control."
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Feb. 4, 1958
Everyone is out to make an extra buck but sometimes opportunity knocks so hard it takes a man off his feet.
As in the case of a mail pitch received by E. Hewe of Pasadena from a firm in Brockton, Mass.
"You have been recommended as a person who might be interested in an
exceptional opportunity which we have open for qualified men," it
states and expounds glowingly on the commissions and bonuses to be made
in selling the firm's products house to house. That is, if he acts at
once.
The keynote of the letter is secrecy. "This is confidential," it
begins. "Please read carefully and destroy. Remember," it concludes,
"this is held in strictest confidence."
On the enclosed postcard E. Hewe wrote, "I did not want to reveal your
secret but I am such a blabbermouth I destroyed your letter before
reading it."
LIFE CONTINUES to be full of little surprises, some new.
Ed Clement went into a pet shop in Walteria to buy a dog collar. Near
where he stood he noticed a doll buggy with something moving under a
blanket.
He thought nothing of it--until a clothed baby chimpanzee leaped out of the buggy and into his arms and cuddled against him.
The owner immediately claimed it but Ed says, "If it had called me daddy so help me I'd have punched it right in the mouth."
DARR SMITH, the
newsman who became a film actor, received a card stating that if he
appeared in person at the Screen Actors Guild office and signed a
released he would receive his residual share in "High Noon," recently
sold to TV.
He did so and picked up a check for $25.78. And he recalled his one,
ephemeral scene in the classic film. All the others were cut out.
He was a background character in a saloon in which Gary Cooper, waiting
for three bad guys to come and give him trouble, was knocked down by
the bartender. Darr helped him get up. Of course, only relatives and
close friends with 20-20 vision who had been alerted to watch for the
scene knew it was Darr.
Nevertheless, Darr is grateful. But he wonders if Princess Grace, who
starred in the picture, will have to come over from Monaco and sign a
release to get her check.
TODAY is
the deadline for SAM 123, whoever he is. (It's the imprint on the tiny
cellophane envelopes containing the 1958 auto license stickers showing
where to place them on the rear plate).
Anyway, a Glendale man is pretty angry at SAM (as in sample) 123. His
tab tore in half as he tried to remove the cardboard and stuck
together. He reported this to the MVD and was issued another tab--after
filling out the same forms and paying an additional $2. He's disgusted.
WHILE IN Mexico City recently an L.A. woman decided to acquire the chemiserie look and bought a sack dress.
When she tried to board a bus, however, she couldn't. The skirt was too
narrow. Whereupon the driver motioned her to slither down the street
where the step up would not be so high. She made it OK.
Now she asks, "Would L.A. bus drivers be that accommodating?"
AT RANDOM--Saturday
night a radio station kept breaking into a musical program with
bulletins about the tragic air collision--followed in one instance by
the message of the sponsor, an airline, about the joy and safety of
flying ... Pete Pitchess, candidate for sheriff, has already had his
baptism of fire, typographical division. One paper spelled it Pitchers
... No truth to the rumor, assures Hatton Hulett, that the U.S.
satellite made two passes over Las Vegas ... The Cimmangad Gazette,
semiannual publication (typed) of the recently promoted B6 class at
Queen Anne Place School, has its own version of the movie: "I Was a
Teenage Third-Grader."
Feb. 4, 1958
Mrs. Shannon is not against progress. Her argument is not with the
achievement itself. It's with the method employed to reach it.
She phoned me last night with her story.
"I live at 16200 Gilmore St. in west Van Nuys," she said. "Do you know where that is?"
I said I did, generally.
"It's exactly three houses from the proposed San Fernando Valley
Airport runway extension," she clarified. "We bought our home in a new
tract here in 1950, back when only three or four planes a week took off
from the airport. Commercial planes--not jets."
"And now?" I asked.
"Now," she said, "there are planes taking off at all hours of the day
and night. Thundering jets. Our house is directly in the path of the
takeoff strip, and I'm living in fear of the day when one of the planes
comes crashing into our neighborhood.
"In the last four years, planes have crashed into houses around the
airport twice," she continued. "Once a woman was killed and a bunch of
children just escaped with their lives.
"The other time, nobody was home, fortunately. There was a fuel tank that fell from still another plane not too long ago, too."
Mrs. Shannon mentioned that she had a 7-year-old daughter.
"When she was a few years younger she used to run screaming into the
house every time a jet would come over. A lot of them are only 75 to
100 feet up."
I asked Mrs. Shannon if she's ever considered selling her house, and this obviously was the question she's been waiting for.
"Considered? We've been trying for a year now. A few years ago houses
were going for around $16,000-$18,000 here in the neighborhood.
"We put ours up for $16,000. Finally we cut it down to $14,000. People
will pull up in front to look at the house and if a plane's going by,
they'll duck at the noise and then won't even bother to come in.
They'll just drive off.
"A real estate man told us the other day we'd be lucky to get $11,000-$12,000 for it."
I asked about the neighbors--what they were doing.
"Some of them sold out a few years ago when the jet traffic started
getting heavy," she said. "But now some of those are being sued because
they supposedly didn't tell the new owners about the increased noise
and danger.
"Then last June, just about every family in the neighborhood--some 150
or 160--signed a petition asking the city to buy us out if the airport
bond issue passed and the runway was extended.
"A few politicians promised us that the city would buy our homes--but they were | |
