Found on EBay -- Robinson's

A clever little item from J.W. Robinson's: A combination shoehorn and buttonhook. Listed on EBay with bids starting at $9.99.

Matt Weinstock -- January 15, 1959

Frontier Pusher-Back To newsman John Cornell goes a silent roll of drums, a bugle call and maybe a flag-raising for alertness above and beyond the call of routine. John was banging out a rewrite about Les White, Southland auto dealer, being elected potentate of Al Malaikah Temple for 1959. He came to the part in a press release stating White would be host next August "when several thousand Shriners from temples in 11 Western States, Alaska, Mexico and Hawaii will gather in Los Angeles." WITHOUT FLINCHING, hesitating, hedging or checking, John bravely wrote it "12 Western States, Mexico and Hawaii," thereby making geographical and place-name history. Clearly John is a man who reads other things besides Paul Coates, Hal Humphrey and the comics. Asked about his monumental achievement Cornell modestly disclaimed credit. "Any red-blooded rewrite man would have done the same," he said. What are his plans for the future? He hopes someday he may write "13 Western States"- when Hawaii makes the varsity. * * PERHAPS YOU too, along with A. M. Tetove of Northridge, noticed an odd thing about the date card sent out by the Department of Motor Vehicles with the 1959 license renewals. The example given to instruct filler-outers presents the case of a person who lives in Sylmar and used the car last Tuesday to and from work in an office in Van Nuys. However, he seems to contradict himself farther along, stating that on this Tuesday he also used the car to go to Tujunga and Magnolia in North Hollywood- purpose, "Recreation." Wait'll his boss hears about that! * * NO BEANS EITHER The grocers closed in unison They're acting mighty clanny, As for me I search and search- I find it most uncanny. - WALTER JARVIS * * THIS SCHEDULE change came whizzing across news editor Barney Miller's desk at KNX yesterday: "Monday, Jan. 10 only, 9:05-10 P.M., THE BUSINESS OF SEX will pre-empt FROST WARNINGS." * * LIFE CAN BE grim in hospitals, but occasionally the day is brightened by the repartee between nurses and patients. A nurse named Ethel, known as Ethel-cal, brought an 86-year-old man an eggnog with liquor, as ordered by the doctor. He said, "It's delicious. Taste it, Ethel." She said, "I can't. I'm in uniform." Pop retorted, "Well, take off the uniform." Had everyone in stitches. * * MY MY, we're racy today. A Palos Verdes couple got their daughter Kay a kitten which was named Sam. However, after a checkup by a vet, it is now known as Sam Spade. * * ONLY IN L.A. -- A sporty gent in a downtown saloon asked a slightly tipsy dame if she'd like a drink. She said, "I'll have a little wine, thank you." "Wine?" he exclaimed, "what are you, a wino?" "I beg your pardon!" She replied haughtily, "Winos drink muscatel and port! I drink sherry!" * * MISCELLANY -- His students will get a chance to heckle Jerry Blunt, head of the City College drama department today when he plays the lead in "Caesar and Cleopatra." Incidentally, the campus auditorium, where it will be held, will be demolished soon to make way for new buildings. It formerly was UCLA's Millspaugh Hall and the locale of many college movies.

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, January 15, 1959

CONFIDENTIAL FILE Mother Knows Best (She Says So Herself) REPORT FROM A BOY'S BEST FRIEND: Deep down in the grimy recesses of my mind lives the unreasonable conviction that, in my dear mother's eyes, I'm a bum. As I say, there is no rational basis for this. My mother is a sweet, inoffensive, prematurely gray, little lady who thinks I'm too young to be married and is quietly certain that my wife is systematically starving me to death. Other than this one small prejudice, her whole philosophy in life, she keeps telling me, is: "If you can't say something nice about somebody, don't say nothing." And I keep telling her, "That's a double negative." To the best of my knowledge, she has never gone around knocking me behind my back. In fact, she always speaks very highly of me. And, for the record, I do of her. But I cannot escape the gnawing feeling that she really thinks me unworthy. As a result, I'm constantly trying to prove myself to her. And yesterday I tried again. After getting what old newshands like Lee Tracy would call a "scoop" by interviewing Anastas Mikoyan, I rushed to the long-distance phone and got my mother. "Mom?" I shouted into the phone. "Just thought I'd call and tell you I had an exclusive interview with Mikoyan." "That's a nice way for a son to start a conversation," she replied. "I beg your pardon?" I said. "A boy calls his mother who is three thousand miles away," she explained. "No hello. No 'How do you feel, Mom?' " "Hello, Mom," I said meekly. "Hello, Sonny," she replied. "How do you feel?" "Don't ask!" she snapped. There was, you will forgive me, a pregnant pause. Then I continued, enthusiastically: "Anyway, dear, about this interview. I though you'd like to know that I . . ." "I already know," she interrupted. "You interviewed the Russian." "How did you know?" "My neighbor," she said. "She read something about you in today's New York Journal-American." "What'd it say?" I asked. "You don't know?" I shouted. "Didn't you buy a copy?" "We don't take the Journal-American," my mother answered. "We take the World-Telegram." After a moment, she added: "How did you talk to him?" "To who?" I asked. "To whom," she corrected. "To Mikoyan. How did you interview him? You don't speak Russian. He doesn't speak English." I explained that the Soviet's deputy premier had an interpreter with him. 'Got to Watch Them' "Umm, hmm," she said sagely. "And how do you know that the interpreter gave you the right answers?" "Well, Mom," I told her, "I just assumed that . . ." "You've got to watch them," she warned me. "Anyway," I said weakly, "I just thought I'd call you." "What else is new?" she demanded. I assured her that nothing else was new. "Are you eating enough?" she said. "I saw a picture of you and you looked thin." I assured her that it wasn't a picture of me. "That smog out there is pretty bad," she suggested. I assured her that it was. "Good night, Sonny. And try to get some sleep for a change. You sound sick to me," she said ominously. I assured her I was and then said good night.

Elizabeth Short remembered, January 15, 1947

A video I did on the case several years ago. Today is the anniversary of the killing of Elizabeth Short, whose body was found in the 3800 block of South Norton Avenue in 1947. I always do two things in her honor: trim my roses and make a donation to Heading Home (formerly Shelter Inc.), which helps homeless and abused women in the Medford, Mass., area. Here's a CBS radio show on the crime called "Somebody Knows."

Voices -- Christine Collins, September 10, 1931

Dodger Stadium -- and a Zoo, January 15, 1959

A mail bomb loaded with dynamite sits in the post office for three weeks because the victim didn't leave a forwarding address!

Fresh off an apparent victory in getting a downtown stadium for the Dodgers, some City Council members moved on to their next objective--opening a zoo in the same neighborhood. "That's our next big job, to get our fine, big zoo started," said Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman, who was an early backer of the Dodgers moving to L.A. A council committee would meet later in the month to deal with a contract to turn operation of the proposed zoo over to the nonprofit Friends of the Los Angeles Zoo. "With the world's largest zoo located next to the world's finest baseball park, Los Angeles will have a worldwide attraction for tourists," Councilman Gordon Hahn said. "Let's get it done." --Keith Thursby

Mickey Rooney stars in "The Last Mile," about death row prisoners who overpower the guards and try to escape, based on the 1930 play by John Wexley in a production that starred Spencer Tracy. The California Assembly approves a resolution asking the NCAA to reconsider its two-year sanction against USC.

Found on EBay -- Overell's, 1908

Here's a pin from Overell's, listed on EBay. Bids start at $14.99.

Matt Weinstock -- January 14, 1959

Capricious Electron An engaging stranger named Peter Buchanan came into the office, apologized for taking my time, handed me a typewritten half-sheet of paper and asked me to read it and perhaps check it. It was a theory he had spent 15 years developing, he said, and he felt it was vital for the world to know. "As American scientists study the electron," it began, "the electron will become more capricious, defiant of observation and measurement because American scientists start with the wrong hypothesis." That's as far as I got because the rest of it was about wave mechanics, quantum phenomena and mathematical equations, including Einstein's. He lost me. I'VE BEEN around when electronics engineers and space guys get together and tried to understand them, too, but I can't. They're also very polite and considerate but they speak a strange language. I'm sure all this is for the best for we want our boys to do well in outer space or whither we are drifting, but I simply do not know what they're talking about. Why, I wouldn't know a capricious electron if it sidled up and handed me a chocolate malted milk.  I happen to be the fellow who flunked the same high school course in plane geometry -- twice. * * ONLY IN Beverly Hills -- On arriving home, Maggie, 7, was asked by her mother what she'd done in school. "We didn't have any written tests," was the reply, "but the girls beat the boys in a moral tests." Ma gasped, then realized that to a 7-year-old oral sounds a great deal like moral. * * THROUGH SHOT AND SHELL IN CUBA In places of peril You'll always find Errol. Twist his arm -- I don't doubt it. He'll tell you about it. - RICHARD ARMOUR * * YOU KNOW that dispirited look you sometimes see on the faces of policemen? They come by it the hard way. A lady named Grace who routed a prowler in her apartment by screaming was later asked by an officer, "Was this man a Caucasian?" "Oh no," she replied. "I'm sure he was a white man." * * ON RETURNING to L.A. from a trip north, Jess T. Martinez found his wallet missing. He remembered stopping and getting out of the car on Highway 33, outside Coalinga, so he phoned Coalinga police and told an officer about where he'd parked. Next day he received his wallet in the mail. The following day he received the change from the dollar bill kept to pay the postage. About a 1000-to-1 shot. * * MONDAY AT UCLA Anastas I. Mikoyan denied the existence of an Iron Curtain. "This is fiction," he said. Apparently no one thought of it at the time but Bill Graydon, a specialist in belated retorts like the rest of us, points out that another bit of fiction tops the American best seller lists -- Boris Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago," which blasts communism. * * AT RANDOM -- Add writer Sylvia Tate ("The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown") to the roster of those convinced a person isn't safe anywhere. Last July she was stung by a wasp. Since, she has had 39 antidote shots, has seven more to go. She has a susceptibility which could be fatal . . . Phone number of the UCLA Extension Division just opened in Orange County is TRojan 12380 . . . Mr. and Mrs. Jerry T. Meek ask a typographical posy for La Puente deputy sheriffs and firemen, whose names she does not know, who responded instantly and probably saved the life of Kali Kathleen Meek, 12 days old, choking from a chest cold . . . Dr. Glen Erwin Bonecutter of Long Beach has been elected to membership in the County Medical Assn. . . . One of the three city high school girls in the state cherry pie contest Friday at the Department of Water and Power Service Center in Van Nuys is Cherie M. Courtois of Bishop Conaty Memorial High. Yep, she can bake a cherry pie. Wonder if Peaches Browning ever baked a peach pie?

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, January 14, 1959

CONFIDENTIAL FILE Red Tape Frequently Chokes Logic, Justice Postscript to a tragedy; Two and a half years ago, a young Norwalk housewife returned from the home of a neighbor to find her husband sprawled dying across his bed. He had been shot through the head with a .22-caliber rifle. There was no mystery to the fatal shooting. Within minutes after they arrived at the scene, County Sheriff's Department detectives had three suspects in custody, and detailed confessions from each. And it was those confessions which turned the killing into one of the most bizarre tragedies ever to take place in Southern California. The story was headlines, not only here, but all across the nation. The reason: The persons who "plotted" to shoot the 31-year-old steelworker were his own three sons -- ages 10, 9 and 7. The 7-year-old actually pulled the trigger. Although it's off the front pages now, the story's not over. Yesterday I was visited by the mother of the three boys. I'm not going to mention her name, or the names of her children. The family is still living in Southern California -- in another neighborhood now, where people don't know their story. But I am going to tell a few of the astounding facts which she related to me concerning the present plight of the family. Immediately following the shooting, the boys were made wards of Juvenile Court. But eventually the mother was able to get all of them back home on probation. By all rights, the family should be receiving nearly $220 a month in Social Security benefits. The woman's deceased husband paid for this insurance, just like millions of others are paying for it, every day. But on a very very questionable technicality, the family is not getting the full amount due. At present the widow is receiving only $118 a month. Shares for the three boys, who even today don't fully understand the consequences of their act, have been withheld. The reasoning of the Social Security office: Because the children were never charged with a crime, they can't be cleared. That apparently, is the logic of the Social Security office. Pride of the Individual The boys' mother struggled along as long as she could without additional assistance. Finally, last year, she broke down and applied for state aid. Today she gets it -- an additional $153 a month. But it's charity. Money she doesn't want. Combined with the $118 Social Security check, it gives her $271 a month. But she'd rather settle for the $220, and get her family's name off the charity roles. "I could supplement the $220 by doing some work," she told me. "Baby-sitting. Any kind of work. I'm not lazy. But as a charity case, I'm not allowed to. "What I'm fighting for, actually, is less money that I'm getting now. But," she added, "at least it's money that's rightfully mine."

Ricardo Montalban, 1920 - 2009

Los Angeles Times file photo Ricardo Montalban and Johnny Indrisano in a photo dated Feb. 13, 1950, training for the film "Right Cross." Indrisano, a veteran prizefighter, died in 1968 at the age of 62.

Voices -- Vin Scully replays 1956 game

Photograph courtesy of the Dodgers Vin Scully and Walter O'Malley during a game televised in New York. Note the carton of Lucky Strikes.

Scully pulls up his own chair Dodgers announcer watches a replay of his broadcast of Larsen's World Series perfect game and offers a review. By Diane Pucin January 14, 2009 Vin Scully recently watched the MLB Network replay of the perfect game pitched by Don Larsen for the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series. He watched and he listened. He listened to Mel Allen call the first half of the game and then listened to himself, an earnest and eager 28-year-old, call the second half. What did Scully notice about that broadcast? People have asked that a lot since the rebroadcast was aired Jan. 1 on the new MLB Network. Because the game re-airs today at 11 a.m., it's appropriate to listen to what Scully thinks now of that game and what he thought then. Read more >>>

Voices -- Christine Collins, September 8, 1931

Los Angeles, Calif.,   Sept. 8, 1931     Dear. Mr. Neumiller,     I am writing to you again in behalf of my husband, Walter J. Collins, No. 12824, an inmate at Represa, Calif.     I understand that his name appears on the June calendar and that he will be called before the prison board some time this month for a hearing.     I wish that you would consider a parole for him as I really need his support. I am not at all able to work and am solely dependant upon others for a livelihood. Due to worry over my health and conditions in general I spend a great part of my time in bed with nervous breakdowns. If Walter were released, I am sure that he would be able to secure a position and support me, thus enabling me to regain my health. 'When a person's health is gone this old world looks very dark and dreary.' --Christine Collins I certainly have suffered thru the loss of our only son, whom you know was kidnapped and thot to have been at the Northcott murder farm. Then the brutality of the L.A. police and my imprisonment in the psychopathic hospital because I would not accept someone else's child as my lost boy caused the loss of my position which was my only source of support, as well as the loss of my health. I am really destitute, having to rely upon strangers for help. I have a sick sister who is unable to work on account of her health as much as she is willing to help me. I am writing to you from a humane standpoint and hope that you will just give my husband another chance. I am sure that he will make good. He has been imprisoned for nearly eight years and we both have suffered terribly in that length of time. I know that should a parole be granted at this meeting I would regain my health and I would certainly be most grateful to you. When a person's health is gone this old world looks very dark and dreary. Hoping you will give this consideration and thanking you for your previous courtesy, I beg to remain, Respectfully yours, Mrs. Walter J. Collins 2614 N. Griffin Ave. Los Angeles, Calif. ps. Please do what you can for Walter. Thank you. Mrs. C.