Matt Weinstock -- March 4, 1959

New Twist on Smog Along with the rest of us, W. B. France is weary of reading about smog. But he thinks he has a solution. It is based on a science-fiction story he read long ago. In this tale a huge spaceship, one of ours, spent 200 years traveling around the galaxies. At the end of this time the spaceship headed home. As it neared earth its homesick occupants were met by small planes and warned against landing. The earth's atmosphere had so changed, they were told, it would be fatal for anyone not accustomed to it. KEEPING THIS TALE in mind, clearly the thing for earthbounders to do is get accustomed to smog, even encourage it. In time it would become our natural atmosphere and we would learn to thrive in it. And think of the advantages. We would save the millions of dollars now being spent to combat it. It would repulse an enemy, even the little green men from up there who might try to invade us. Most of all, it would eliminate the constant babble about smog so we could concentrate on crime, scandal and other wholesome topics so dear to us all. * * SOMETHING has been missing since the City Hall tower courts moved to the new courthouse and reporter John Hunt has realized what it is. The intense threesomes -- two women and a man -- who used to grace the rotunda each morning, are gone. The man was a lawyer. One woman wore a brave smile. The other, her best friend, mother or sister, had a look of "Wait until I get on the witness stand and tell what I know about that guy!" They were having a final rehearsal before going up to the separation center. * * CURRENT EVENTS My youngster's conscious of the news, He knows his rights and states his views. When naughty he is independent And calmly takes the Fifth Amendment. -- PEARL ROWE * * A WORKMAN on the graveyard shift in a harbor industrial plant recently reported excitedly to his pals that an amphibian plane had pancaked in near Berth 190. He didn't know, as they did, that it had crashed off Catalina some time ago and been hauled to the berth awaiting further plans by its owners. The next time he looked the plane was gone and he learned it had been trucked to a salvage firm on S Alameda Street. By this time he knew of his original miscalculation and remarked wryly to his cronies. "It must have set some kind of record, flying from Catalina to Compton without wings or tail." * * IT IS NOT uncommon for new MTA drivers on the Sunset Boulevard line to Pacific Palisades to lose their way but one eastbound bus the other day went completely off orbit. The driver, as if impelled by an unseen force, turned onto the San Diego Freeway on-ramp instead of staying on Sunset. He knew immediately from the buzzing of the passengers that he had goofed and as soon as possible he swung off the freeway, circled back to Sunset and, reports Mary Kay Post, secretary to the dean of women, got students to UCLA in time for 8 a.m. classes. * * AROUND TOWN -- Printed sticker on a car with a Tenn. license on Olympic Boulevard: "A big welcome to Alaska from little old Texas" . . . Ernie Maxwell reports fromIdyllwild that it's a big year for snow women -- Marilyn Monroe prototypes.

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, March 4, 1959

CONFIDENTIAL FILE It Happened Here, Believe It or Not In big cities, little dramas are born every minute. This one happened a few Wednesdays ago. Its protagonist was a dark-haired lady, barely 5 feet tall, with a very soft voice. She was, I'd guess, somewhat ungallantly, just past her mid-40s. She had married young, raised her family, and now -- well, there was time on her hands. To fill it, she went back to work and among other things, participated in a weekly ritual known to millions of American women as the visit to the beauty shop. Her beauty shop was in Bellflower. At 7 p.m. sharp, she stepped out of the rainy night, into the same salon she'd been patronizing for years. She greeted the girls and was led back to her regular cubicle by her regular operator. Just like always. But halfway through her shampoo, she jerked up her head. "Did someone call me?" she asked. The operator said yes, she thought someone did. They were paging someone to the telephone. Quickly, the beautician rinsed the customer's hair and draped a towel across her shoulders. The small lady hurried to the phone. She picked up the receiver, which was lying on the counter. "Hello," she said. A man's voice answered. "You can't see us," it spoke gruffly, "but we can see you. We're outside." "Is this a prank?" cried the woman. "No," was the reply. "It's no prank. You can come out quietly, or we can come in after you." The woman paled. "What's this about?" "You know what it's about," answered the man. "It's about a little manner of grand theft." Now the woman was really frightened. She stared in disbelief into the phone. Nervously, she hissed, "You're crazy." She slammed down the receiver. But as she turned away from the phone, she saw two men staring at her. There were standing outside the salon's entrance. A tall one and a shorter one. The tall one beckoned to her. Still slightly dazed, she moved toward them. She was wearing a shampoo cape and the towel across her shoulders. Her hair was dripping wet. Cautiously, she pushed the door open a few inches. "What do you want?" she demanded. One man flashed a badge at her. "Long Beach Police Department," he said. His partner grabbed her arm, pulling her halfway out of the shop. "Get that stuff off you," he snapped. "You're coming with us." "What did you do with that furniture?" asked the first man. "The furniture you stole out of the apartment where you lived," added the second. "Apartment?" cried the woman. "I've been living in the same house for 12 years." Produces Identification Suddenly, she jerked her arm free. She ran to the owner of the beauty salon. "Tell these men who I am," she pleaded. The men were right behind her. The small woman grabbed her purse and fumbled through it. "I've got identification," she cried. "I've never been in trouble in my life." She was so nervous that finally the owner had to help her find her wallet with the identification cards. He handed it to the plain-clothes officers. Carefully, they studied the cards. Then one of them thrust the wallet back at the terrified woman. "Sorry," he grunted. "You're not the one we're after." Together, the pair turned. And they walked back out into the rainy night. To me, it's a shocking story of injudicious police work. But, fortunately, it's a story that Long Beach's tough Irish city councilman, Pat Ahern, is taking a close look at right now.

Lou Costello Dies! March 4, 1959

Comedian Lou Costello dies at Doctor's Hospital in Beverly Hills after collapsing the week before while watching television. He was 52. His partner, Bud Abbott, died in 1974. Note: Costello and his family were living in an apartment at 4222 Ethel Ave. while a home was being built at 3322 Longridge Terrace, Van Nuys.

In the Theaters -- March 4, 1916

Trouble Was His Business -- Raymond Chandler

Note: To mark the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death, the Daily Mirror is revisiting some of The Times stories about his life and influence. We invite the Daily Mirror's readers to share their thoughts.   The Raymond Chandler Lookalike Contest RAYMOND CHANDLER'S PHILIP MARLOWE A Centennial Celebration, edited by Byron Preiss December 18, 1988 By Kenneth Turan, Turan is film critic for Gentlemen's Quarterly. (Note that Turan is now at The Times). Hard-boiled fiction is a lean, mean revolution that has grown soft and fat on its own success. American writers, fed up with effete British detective stories that focused as much on tea cozies as corpses, decided to liven things up by adding a dose of reality and a dash of style. Carroll John Daly, who favored lines such as "Dead? He was as cold as an old maid's smile," fired the first shot when he published a short story called "The False Burton Combs" in the December, 1922, issue of a magazine called Black Mask. Then came the big guns: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, all intent, in Chandler's often-quoted words, on "getting murder away from the upper classes, the weekend house party and the vicar's rose garden and back to the people who are really good at it." Did they succeed? And how. Hard-boiled fiction has become a literary growth industry paralleled only by the boom in romantic fiction. Every year yet another brace of Chandler imitators roars out of the blocks to admiring reviews from critics and sizable sales to readers hungry for even a taste of the savory satisfactions the originals gave. The ever-irascible Chandler, who liked to refer to himself as "just a beat-up pulp writer . . . In the United States I ranked slightly above a mulatto," would surely be astonished by the mushrooming of the style he helped pioneer. With success, however, has come inevitable flabbiness. Today's Chandler imitators, even the best of them, are just that, imitators, unable to match the excitement that is generated only by writing that is provocatively original. The situation got so bad that Donald Westlake, whose Parker novels ("Parker steals. Parker kills. It's a living") are in fact the best hard-boiled work of the last 25 years, was moved to make a speech about it a few years back. "I try to inhale and I don't sense any air here," Westlake said of the current state of the genre. "What are these books? What do they connect to? The brevity of those early Black Mask days is long gone. The relevance of those days is gone. The vitality of novelty is gone. The reflections of any underlying trust is gone. I'm not really sure what's left." What's left is the desire to cash in, a desire that even as prestigious a publisher as Alfred A. Knopf, which first published Chandler and Hammett in book form, can't seem to resist. A few months ago, Knopf came out with a hardcover edition of "Woman in the Dark," one of Hammett's more forgettable novelettes, and now comes "Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration." To commemorate the 100th year of the writer's birth, packager Byron Preiss came up with what must have seemed like a good idea at the time, something reasonably dignified and quintessentially lucrative: Contact 23 current mystery writers and have each one of them write a story with Marlowe as detective solving crimes left and right. Add "The Pencil," Chandler's last story. You can almost hear those cash registers ringing already. Not all writers contacted, however, were delighted. Joseph Hansen, for one, made it known that he felt the idea was "somewhat akin to grave-robbing. Philip Marlowe is a creation of the imaginative mind of Raymond Chandler, and I don't believe every Tom, Dick and Harry has the right to lay claim to him. Ethically, you can't do that." Even more likely suspects than Hansen are missing from the list, though whether it's because they weren't asked or because they turned the task down is impossible to say. Westlake isn't here, probably for obvious reasons, and neither is Lawrence Block, the odds-on best of the current hard-boiled writers, or Robert Parker, the most popular. Still, the list contains considerable first-rate talent, people such as Loren D. Estleman, Dick Lochte, Sara Paretsky, Roger L. Simon and Jonathan Valin. And the writers clearly tried to rise to the occasion, often putting in nuggets of detective trivia for fans to relish. One story has Marlowe reading Paul Cain's "Fast One," one of the legendary hard-boiled novels; another has him yearning for the powder-blue suit cognoscenti know he wore in the opening of "The Big Sleep"; a third has Marlowe running into Chandler himself. There are some new twists when it comes to plots--the use of subject matter such as child molestation, for instance, which would have been taboo in Chandler's day. But mostly it's the usual round of missing persons and blackmail, small errands that turn into big trouble. The best stories, interestingly enough, are the ones that succeed in capturing the whiff of melancholia that blew through Marlowe's life like the famous Red Wind. Mostly, however, these tales are simply too derivative to be seriously involving. What made Chandler's stories so readable was not that Marlowe was in them but that they were written with a verve that mere copies, no matter how well-intentioned or clever, cannot hope to match. While the writers clearly had fun paying homage to a man they rightfully respect, sharing in their enthusiasm is something else again.

Random Shot --Temple B'nai B'rith, 1896

Los Angeles Times file photo I can't even explain it, but I adore this building, Temple B'nai B'rith at Hope and 9th streets, which was built in 1896. The congregation sold the building in February 1927 and moved to Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Some people wonder why I publish black and white photos in color. This is why.

The Times says that everything for the temple was made in Los Angeles, even the pipe organ. Notice that the chorus sang the "Hallelujah!" chorus from "Messiah."

Notice the timbers in front of the temple. They look like railroad ties.

And the streets aren't paved.

I wonder if that's the switch. The temple at Hope and 9th was built to replace the one on Broadway between 2nd and 3rd streets, which is now marked by a plaque. What's especially great about this photo of the 1896 temple is that it's the best picture I've found so far of the early attempt at street lighting. Notice that this is only the bottom of a very high pole that was topped by a carbon arc lamp--kind of like a flying saucer on a stick. And I think the windows are great. View Larger Map Hope and 9th streets via Google maps' street view.

Avenue 21 Elementary School

Daily Mirror reader Dorothy Wiskup is looking for a photograph of Avenue 21 Elementary School (which oddly enough had the address of 141 N. Avenue 22). She says that inquiries at the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Public Library have been unsuccessful.

Found on EBay -- Williams and Walker

The sheet music for "I Don't Like No Cheap Man," by Williams and Walker, has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $5.

Matt Weinstock -- March 3, 1959

Death of a Fighter Rene Belbenoit, a gallant man, goes to his grave today at Pierce Bros. Hollywood cemetery. Rene, 59, was found dead, sitting in a chair, in the little desert store he had operated the last seven years in Lucerne Valley. There in the desert he found the peace which all his life had eluded him. A quarter of a century ago, Rene, small in size but a giant in courage, did the impossible -- he escaped, on his fifth attempt, from the infamous Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana. Then began another kind of fight, a crusade for a full pardon from the French government. Rene felt he had been unjustly sentenced to the penal colony. Even though his book, "Dry Guillotine," telling of his ordeal, helped do away with the living death, he never gave up. HIS PLIGHT was first brought to print by Ernie Pyle, then a syndicated roving reporter. He talked to Rene when he was a fugitive living in the Central American jungle. It was through Ernie that I became acquainted with Rene and when Ernie was killed on le Shima in 1945, I helped tell Rene's story. I last saw him in 1956, the day he received his American citizenship. It was a proud moment for Rene as he had been a man without status since his escape. We had a drink on it at Frascati's on Sunset Boulevard. Rene, slowly sipping a Dubonnet, reiterated his intention of getting a pardon from France, presenting his case, like Emile Zola, in a book. He was rewriting the book, "Anatomy of Justice," when death overtook him. There was a final irony to his death from a heart attack. About four months ago he had trouble breathing but he attributed the condition to his terrible time in the jungle. However, he promised his wife that on his 60th birthday, April 4, as a gift to her, he would go to a doctor for a check as she had been urging. He waited too long. * * NOT LONG AGO the Supervisors presented a resolution to Walter Brennan for his contribution to clean entertainment. As always, there were hecklers at the ceremony. One of them called out, "Ha Walter, did they tell you how much that resolution cost the taxpayers?" "No, they didn't," he retorted, "but offhand I'd say the taxes I pay are at least 10 times what you pay so I'm not kicking." * * ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD -- One day last week Mrs. E. L. saw a strange black dog in her neighbor's yard. Later, while at a nearby market, she looked at the free ads on the bulletin board provided for customers and saw one offering a $25 reward for a dog answering the description of the pooch in the yard.  She took the number and phoned it when she got home and explained the situation to the man who answered. In a few minutes an elderly gentleman came in an old car, looked, said, "No, that isn't my dog," and went away. A few minutes later an elderly woman drove up in a new car, called to the dog and it happily jumped in the car. Mrs. E. L. remains amused. She doesn't need the money and wouldn't have taken the reward. She simply loves dogs. * * YOU CAN'T FOOL the children. There was a gripping scene in a TV western the other night in which a naughty blond, shot by mistake in shielding the hero, hovers between life and death as sad-faced townsfolk, suddenly realizing her sterling qualities, look on. At which a girl watcher named Jane remarked, "She's dead. You can tell because the violins are playing." * * AT RANDOM -- Let there be no further speculation on the identity of Lately Thomas, author of the forthcoming book "The Vanishing Evangelist," the story of Aimee Semple McPherson's sensational "kidnapping" and reappearance in 1926. It isn't a pseudonym. Lately Thomas writes from S.F., "I'm sorry to disappoint but there is no mystery. The name is the name" . . . A man driving a small foreign car on W 2nd Street yesterday was wearing a gas mask, the goggle and hose kind firemen use. . . . A man on W 38th Street has a license plate tab stating, "Faubus for President," which he says is being circulated by the American Protective Assn. of Jackson, Miss. Wonder how the Civil War's going?

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, March 3, 1959

Photographs by the Los Angeles Times Frank Heller and Linda Mintz in a photograph published Nov. 11, 1958, in The Times.  Slave Camp to Murder Trial Nazi Victim Still Hopes For Linda Mintz, tomorrow the horror may end. The tiny, frail Polish war refugee, who has spent most of her adult life behind bars and barbed wire, may once again know the luxury of freedom. Tomorrow morning, the district attorney's office will reveal whether it wants to try her for a third time for a crime which she denies today as vehemently as she hysterically denied it 21 months ago, when officers first took her into custody. Then, on the final day of May, 1957, the $200-a-month domestic was formally charged with the "vacuum cleaner" murder of Mrs. Thelma Macomber, 42, her wealthy Studio City employer. The gray doors of County Jail have blocked her from society since -- as did the grim portals of Nazi concentration camps and European displacement centers during the 40s and early 50s. Twice in the last 21 months, the state has presented its case against Mrs. Mintz. Each time, the juries deadlocked hopelessly. The first panel, after four days of unsuccessful deliberation, was dismissed when it stalemated 7-5 for conviction. The second jury, released only a few days ago after a week of violent disagreement, hung at 8-1 for acquittal. Hours ago, I left the prison ward bedside of Mrs. Mintz in County General Hospital, where she's resting after the 13-week ordeal of the second trial. She fears reporters, photographers, newspapermen. But on this, the eve of the most important day of her life, she wanted to talk. "I will tell you that I am innocent, and I am afraid," she said. She sat upright in her bed. "Afraid of what?" "I don't know. I'm just afraid. I don't think I can go through another trial. I just don't think I can." During her first trial. Mrs. Mintz broke up repeatedly, and when it finished, she was treated at Patton State Hospital for a nervous breakdown. At the second trial, she was much more composed -- until the jury foreman announced that a verdict was impossible. "I don't blame the United States. The United States has been good to me," she said. Linda Mintz has a natural smile. Even when her forehead is furrowed with confusion, her lips are smiling. She rambled endlessly as we talked, from subject to subject, from sadness to hope to sadness. But no matter where the conversation started, it always ended up on her boy, Alex. "When I'm free, I will study at night. Alex will go with me to school. I will never leave him." Alex was 11 when Mrs. Mintz went to jail. Today he is being cared for in a children's home. "When the police took me, Alex was there. I don't think I'd be gone for long. All I said to him- I said, 'See you later, Alex.' "I babied him," the boy's mother confessed. "But you don't blame me. You can't. I know how I raised my child. On the floors of those camps, with lice and filth. I would walk 10 miles to a farm to get eggs and milk for him." Would Bury Sad Past Mrs. Mintz's steel eyes flashed when she talked of her son. "He's very mechanical," she continued. "Since he was a little boy, he liked science. I want him to go to college and be a scientist." Money? "It's gone now. But I can work. It went very fast after I was arrested, all that I had saved to send my boy to college. "But Mr. Heller and Mr. Taylor (attorneys Frank Heller and Charles Taylor, who defended Mrs. Mintz at her second trial) never asked me about money. God sent them to me." "Have your attorneys told you whether they think you'll go free tomorrow?" I asked. "They have said there is a chance," she answered. "But I've just got something else on my mind. About Alex. This is a boy. He has to grow up to be a man. I think, for him, when I am free, I would like to change my name. "What am I going to tell that boy?" she continued. "Look at me. I'm 37. But my hair is gray now. I don't know if he'll know me. "I want someone to give me advice. What should I tell him? How should I explain?" Hopes for Understanding "Mrs. Mintz," I said, "if you're freed tomorrow, what are you going to do about Alex?" "I'm going to run to him," she told me. "The first think I will do. I will look at him in every place all over to see that he's all right. "I will look in his head. I will look in his ears." Mrs. Mintz's voice pitched excitement. "I don't know what I'll tell him. But I'll hold him. I will kiss him a lot. "A lot," she repeated softly. Smiling, she closed her eyes. A moment later she opened them. The smile was gone. She looked at me closely. "Do you think people will ever believe me?" she asked. "That I didn't do it?"

In the Theaters -- March 3, 1914

Trouble Was His Business -- Raymond Chandler

Note: To mark the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death, the Daily Mirror is revisiting some of The Times' stories about his life and influence. We invite the Daily Mirror's readers to share their thoughts. The MEAN Streets The Heat, the Winds; It's the Season for Discovering Raymond Chandler's L.A. October 3, 1987 By SAM HALL KAPLAN, Times Design Critic This is the season when the high-desert air, baked by the sun, becomes the Santa Ana winds that lash out across the city to the west, fanning fires, creating havoc and generally getting on everyone's nerves. For Los Angeles, it is the Mean Season, when during the day the air conditioner breaks down, the car overheats and the ice cream melts; and during the night the neighbors fight, the burglar alarm won't shut off and the cats won't shut up. Marlowe Sums Up L.A. For me, it is a time to stay out of harm's way, avoid the freeways, Dodger games, cocktail parties and conversations with the ex-wife; give in to the whims of the children and the present wife; have an extra beer, water the lawn and reread Raymond Chandler. His detective-hero, martyr, design critic, alter ego Philip Marlowe summed up the city he experienced, and the season, in "The Long Goodbye": "When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of the traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulders of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. . . . Out there in the night of a thousand crimes people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. . . . People were hungry, sick, bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness." Exactly where Marlowe is standing and the locations of other buildings and places from Chandler's rich legacy have challenged readers with curiosity, writers without much else to do and editors looking for a gimmick since his novels and short stories began appearing in the '30s. As a result, various articles have been written, maps published and tours offered purporting to locate the scenes and settings of Marlowe's doings and undoings in Los Angeles. But as someone who has dog-eared Chandler's novels, and scoured the Los Angeles cityscape, I don't trust the gumshoeing of others. And there is no way to check with the prime suspect: Chandler died -- nonviolently -- in 1959 in La Jolla at the age of 70. And even if Chandler were alive today I don't think I would trust the addresses he might offer. Certainly Marlowe wouldn't trust him, for the Los Angeles that Chandler created was a conscious construct of allusions and lies. Still, there are enough clues in the novels, and in publications such as "The Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles" (Aaron Blake Publishers: $4.95), to aid the curious in search of Marlowe's Los Angeles. If not exact locations, then similar moods and scenes. The house from which Marlowe viewed the city in "The Long Goodbye" is off Lookout Mountain Avenue, above Laurel Canyon. Site of House Unknown The avenue still exists, off Laurel Canyon Boulevard, but we don't know where the house is. More evocative is his house in "The High Window" -- clinging to a cliff above High Tower Drive in Hollywood Heights, marked and reached by a fanciful elevator tower. That is where he also lived in the movie version of "The Long Goodbye," starring Elliott Gould, and that in my mind is where Marlowe belongs, drink in hand. You can find the tower at the end of High Tower Drive, a short street that runs north from Camrose Drive, which is west of Highland Avenue. Apartments, duplexes and single-family houses still cling to the cliffs above the drive. The elevator, however, is not open to the public; you need a key to get in. The detective's office was two small rooms on the sixth floor, in the rear, of the Cahuenga Building (It might be 615 Cahuenga Blvd., but then again, it might not), with a pebbled glass door panel lettered "Philip Marlowe . . . Investigations" in flaked black paint. It is described by Marlowe, in detail, in "The High Window": "I looked into the reception room. It was empty of everything but the smell of dust. I threw up another window, unlocked the communicating door and went into the room beyond. Three hard chairs and a swivel chair, flat desk with a glass top, five green filing cases, three of them full of nothing, a calendar and a framed license bond on the wall, a phone, a washbowl in a stained wood cupboard, a hatrack, a carpet that was just something on the floor, and two open windows with net curtains that puckered in and out. . . ." No Fan of Office Buildings Marlowe does not like office buildings. The Belfont downtown on 9th Street, as described in "The High Window," "was eight stories of nothing in particular that had got itself pinched off between a large green and chromium cut-rate suit emporium and a three-story and basement garage that made a noise like lion cages at feeding time. The small dark narrow lobby was as dirty as a chicken yard." There is no Belfont there, but there are other buildings nearby fitting the description. Walking east on 9th at dusk, then north on Spring, one can get a feel of the hard-edged city of the 1930s and '40s, and now. Marlowe also does not paint a pretty picture of what goes on in these buildings. In the Fulwider at Santa Monica Boulevard and Western Avenue, described in "The Big Sleep," there were "plenty of vacancies or plenty of tenants who wished to remain anonymous. Painless dentists, shyster detective agencies, small sick businesses that crawled there to die, mail order schools that would teach you how to become a railroad clerk or a radio technician or a screen writer -- if the postal inspectors didn't catch up with them first." Government buildings do not fare particularly well either. Bay City, a thinly disguised Santa Monica, is the site of numerous Marlowe adventures. Marlowe describes Bay City's City Hall in "Farewell, My Lovely": "It was a cheap-looking building for so prosperous a town. It looked more like something out of the Bible Belt. Bums sat unmolested in a long row on the retaining wall that kept the front lawn--now mostly Bermuda grass -- from falling into the street. . . . The cracked walk and the front steps led to open double doors in which a knot of obvious City Hall fixers hung around waiting for something to happen so they could make something else out of it. They all had well-fed stomachs, the careful eyes, the nice clothes and the reach-me-down manners. They gave me about four inches to get by." The scene at City Hall at 1685 Main St. is more polished now, but the Santa Monica Pier at the foot of Colorado Boulevard still can have a raucous quality, and, in the evening when the fog rolls in, a hint of mystery. As described in "The Big Sleep," it is the Bay City Pier, from which Marlowe and others catch a launch to an offshore gambling ship. Chandler also played with addresses. "You could know Bay City a long time without knowing Idaho Street. And you could know a lot of Idaho Street without knowing Number 449," he writes in "The Little Sister." And he is correct, for the scene described certainly is not Idaho Avenue in Santa Monica- - not with a lumber yard, broken paving and "rusted rails of a spur track (that) turned in to a pair of high, chained wooden gates that seem not to have been opened for 20 years." That sounds more like something off of Colorado Avenue, in Santa Monica's industrial area. But Chandler adds that "Number 449 had a shallow, paintless front porch on which five wood and cane rockers loafed dissolutely, held together with wire and the moisture of the beach air. The green shades over the lower windows of the house were two-thirds down and full of cracks. Beside the front door there was a large printed sign 'No Vacancies.' " The latter description clearly places the house in Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood. For a hint of that mood, look at some of the fading beach houses, many divided into apartments, in the area bordered by Pico, Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards. There is no mistaking Malibu in the description of Montemar Vista in "Farewell, My Lovely": "I got down to Montemar Vista as the light began to fade, but there was still a fine sparkle on the water and the surf was breaking far out in long smooth curves. . . . Beyond it the huge emptiness of the Pacific was purple gray. Montemar Vista was a few dozen houses of various sizes and shapes hanging by their teeth and eyebrows to a spur of mountain and looking as if a good sneeze would drop them down among the box lunches on the beach." Canyon Murder Site In "The Big Sleep," Marlowe is at the palatial home of Gen. Sternwood, where "faint and far off" he can see some of the old wooden derricks from which the Sternwoods had made their money. Says Marlowe, the narrator: "Most of the field was public now, cleaned up and donated to the city by Gen. Sternwood. But a little of it was still producing in groups of wells pumping five or six barrels a day. The Sternwoods, having moved up the hill, could no longer smell the stale sump water or the oil, but they could still look out of their front windows and see what made them rich. " But Marlowe adds "I don't suppose they would want to." As for the house, the model for it is said to have stood on the 7000 block of Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, where one can see on a clear day the Baldwin Hills oil fields on South La Brea Avenue. A portrait of Beverly Hills between Santa Monica and Sunset boulevards is painted in one line in the short story "Mandarin Jade": "The Philip Courtney Prendergasts lived on one of those wide, curving streets where the houses seem to be too close together for their size and the amount of money they represent." That is not a bad sketch of the area today. House in Pasadena A house in the Oak Knoll section of Pasadena is described in "The High Window" as "a big solid cool-looking house with Burgundy brick walls, a terra cotta tile roof, and a white stone trim. . . ." It could be one of a number of houses there. The Chandler Mystery Map puts it on the 1200 block of Wentworth Avenue. You take your pick. The mood and directions are quite clear in "The Little Sister" -- as Marlowe drives east on Sunset Boulevard, but doesn't go home. "At La Brea I turned north and swung over to Highland, out over the Cahuenga Pass and down on to Ventura Boulevard, past Studio City and Sherman Oaks and Encino. There was nothing lonely about the trip. There never is on that road. Fast boys in stripped-down Fords shot in and out of the traffic streams, missing fenders by a sixteenth of an inch, but somehow always missing them. Tired men in dusty coupes and sedans winced and tightened their grip on the wheel and ploughed north and west towards home and dinner. . . . I drove on past the gaudy neons and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colors, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper, hard-eyed carhops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad. Great double trucks rumbled down over Sepulveda from Wilmington and San Pedro and crossed the Ridge Route, starting up in low-low from the traffic lights with a growl of lions in the zoo." We have freeways now, but stripped-down cars still shoot in and out of the traffic, drivers wince and grimace and the trucks growl. Gone is Bunker Hill, which Marlowe described in "The High Window" as "old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town," with "women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look over the street behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank . . . cokies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it. . . ." Now these lost souls can be seen on Skid Row, in the doorways on 6th and 7th streets east of Alvarado Street, in the alleys off of Hollywood Boulevard, along the Venice and Santa Monica beachfronts, and even on Rodeo Drive, if only for a few minutes before they are hustled off by the police. Marlowe's mean city is a little more hidden today, but it is there.