A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Movie Columnist

Nov. 24, 1961: “After the picture, we stepped into Jackie Gleason's Rolls-Royce, which he'd loaned us for the occasion, and drove to El Morocco for a bite to eat. There Hollywood producer Cubby Broccoli told me he will start the film ‘Doctor No,’ by President Kennedy's favorite mystery writer Ian Fleming, in Jamaica come January.”

Injured Diver Dies After Falling From Rescue Helicopter

“Mary and Pete Are Reunited.”

Skin diver Harold B. Gavenman dies after a tragic series of accidents in which he was struck by a boat propeller and fell 100 feet while being lifted to a rescue helicopter.

Nov. 23, 1959: Jack Smith profiles Debbie Reynolds, 27, who is returning to the screen after an absence for the birth of her daughter, Carrie, and the breakup of her marriage to singer Eddie Fisher. "With tomboy energy, Debbie has bounced back into stardom -- and with astounding success. Today she is possibly the busiest star in Hollywood," Smith says. Debbie Reynolds is “too busy for bitterness,” Smith says.

Is it possible that Hal Holbrook has been doing Mark Twain for 50 years? Yes it is.  Here he is in 1967. Dec. 2, 1959: Philip K. Scheuer reviews “Mark Twain Tonight.”

Jeane Hoffman profiles Rams general manager Pete Rozelle. “It’s hard to get Pete’s mind off football,” his wife, Jane, says.

Nuestro Pueblo – Chavez Ravine

Aug. 24, 1938: Joe Seewerker and Charles Owens find evidence of an old brickyard in Chavez Ravine and touch on the Chinese Massacre.  Note: The original run of Nuestro Pueblo concluded in 1939. I’m going back and picking up the entries that I missed the first time.

Nuestro Pueblo

Aug. 19, 1938: Joe Seewerker and Charles Owens find a windmill on a farm at Garfield Avenue just north of Gage Street. Below, the area today, via Google maps’ street view.  It’s interesting to note that Seewerker refers to Mayor Fred Eaton’s role in the aqueduct because he’s usually overshadowed by William Mulholland. View Larger Map Note: The original run of Nuestro Pueblo concluded in 1939. I’m going back and picking up the entries that I missed the first time.

Plane Crash Kills 42

Nov. 17, 1959: Investigators speculate on whether a bomb exploded on a National Airlines DC-7B that crashed in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 42 people. Ultimately, no cause was ever determined. ... And  Gene Sherman reports on border drug traffic.   Jack Smith writes: "It is easy enough to find statistics suggesting that we are soft -- mentally, physically and morally. More people are in hospitals. More people are swallowing pills. More people are in jails. More people have tics and syndromes. The New York Yankees are falling apart and the heavyweight champion of the world is a Swede." Robert R. Kirsch says John Gosling’s “Ghost Squad” is “a must for every true crime buff.” ”Mother, May I Go Steady?”

Nov. 17, 1959 Jeane Hoffman had a typically interesting story about all the wannabe teams hovering around Los Angeles. The Chargers—yes, they started in L.A.—were the closest to reality. Then there were the Stars (baseball) and Jets (basketball), teams that had to overcome several factors to become real franchises. The Chargers looked like the real deal, heading to the Coliseum in 1960. "We get fourth choice in Coliseum dates but that's enough for seven home games," said Tom Eddy, assistant to Barron Hilton. The Stars were lined up with names like Branch Rickey as president of the Continental League and Mark Scott, host of TV's "Home Run Derby," as team vice president. But where to play if they really got going? Hoffman said the Stars were talking to Walter O'Malley about playing in the Dodgers' yet to be built ballpark "but if he doesn't let them in they'll have to go to Orange County—or to court." As for the Jets, who apparently had Bing Crosby involved, they were confident that an L.A. franchise would come their way. Said Len Corbosiero, "If we can't get a new franchise, we hope to move out an established team." --Keith Thursby

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 16, 1959

Search for Better Brand of Justice     Erle Stanley Gardner, you either like or dislike.     He's easy to categorize.     If you don't like him, he's a troublemaker, a rebel who gets his kicks by destroying the public's illusions concerning the integrity and intelligence of our district attorneys and police.     As author of more than 100 Perry Mason mystery novels, he's continually belittling these public servants.  His man Mason always shows them up.     As a private citizen, Gardner founded the now-famous Court of Last Resort, which, in freeing dozens of innocent men from prison, has proved in fact that our system of justice isn't infallible.     (And when you prove, time after time, that certain prosecutors and police ruined innocent men's lives in their over-zealousness, you're not about to win any popularity contests about law enforcement officials.)     If you like Gardner, he's the champion of the underdog, unafraid to step on anybody's toes.      The other day, however, I sat down with Gardner for a talk -- and walked away an hour later with a new definition of the man.     "Frankly," he told me, launching into one of his favorite subjects, "the basic problem facing law enforcement today is one of public relations.     "People get fed up seeing law enforcement authorities, and particularly prosecutors, take technical advantage of the laws.  Laws," he explained, "with usually severe penalties, enacted to curb a usual serious crime situation -- but they apply them to much lesser situations."     Gardner cited the Mann White Slavery Act.     "Years ago," he said, "people became fed up with the pimps and panderers who seduced young girls and forced them into prostitution.     "They passed the Mann Act.     "What happened after that was that a couple of young men took some women, who were ready, willing and able, on a train from Sacramento to Reno.  It was the type of weekend trip that is indulged in by young people from time to time and place to place everywhere -- with the single exception that they crossed a state line.     "To the extent that the people had in mind when they passed the law, there was no white slavery involved, but a prosecuting attorney promptly arrested them as white slavers."     Gardner also mentioned  a case in which an ordinary auto theft by a bunch of winos on a New Year's Eve was tortured into a kidnapping because the car's owner was passed out drunk on the back seat.     Gardner's dislike of "eager beaver" prosecutors -- D.A.'s who measure their personal success by number of convictions rather than whether they feel justice was done- is passionate.     But he's equally firm in his defense of district attorneys who try to live their role as representatives of the people with honor.     "I know one district attorney who committed political suicide by refusing to prosecute a man he felt was innocent," he said.     "Unless we give law enforcement authorities better tools with which to work," he said, "their hands are tied.  They're licked before they start. Element of Distrust     "Yet the legislatures won't give them the tools because they distrust what law enforcement will do with those tools.     "We need new laws to cope with modern conditions, but the people don't trust the prosecutors to apply them properly.     "The fundamental problem today," Erle Stanley Gardner concluded, "is how the people themselves feel toward prosecutors and toward police."     Gardner is neither a rebel nor a champion of the underdog.  He's merely a man in search of a better brand of "justice for all."

Family Killed in Kansas Farm Town

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.' Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them." --Truman Capote, “In Cold Blood.” Nov. 16, 1959: Intentionally avoiding a direct endorsement until the Republican National Convention, Republican leaders show their support for Vice President Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential race.

Monte Montana! Ty Hardin! Jerry Mathers!

Ferd’nand invents the Man Cave.

Back when stock cars were really stock. Elmer Musgrave wins a 100-lap race at Ascot Stadium in a 1958 Pontiac. Rodger Ward is second in a 1958 Ford.

Beating Victim Identified

A Senate subcommittee hears testimony about drug traffic from Mexico. Reading may become a lost art!

Nov. 11, 1959: Here’s a name that may sound familiar to people who follow the Black Dahlia case: Lillian Lenorak. You may recall that Mary Unkefer, a jail matron from Santa Barbara who befriended Elizabeth Short in 1943,  wrote a letter to the district attorney’s office in 1950 about transporting Lenorak from the home of Dr. George Hodel to the psychiatric ward at Santa Barbara General Hospital. Unkefer’s letter is one of the most disturbing items in the district attorney’s files on the Black Dahlia case. I would caution that accounts of Lenorak’s death describe her as extremely volatile and mentally unstable, with a history of stormy romances. Reports of her death say that she was threatening to jump out of a moving car during an argument with Frank Back over why he wouldn’t give her a key to his house. Keep in mind as you read these letters that this lady is not a typical, well-grounded, middle-class suburban housewife but a chronic patient of mental hospitals and adjust your skepticism accordingly.     Note: The above page was too long for my scanner so I had to scan it in two pieces and paste it together    To be sure, this is a vivid account. The question anyone should have is to what degree it's reliable. Sgt. Bill Bentley also wrote a letter to district attorney's investigator Walter Sullivan about Lenorak. Bentley's version isn't nearly as dramatic but perhaps more reliable.

Found on EBay – 1883 L.A. Directory

Here’s an unusual item: An 1883 Los Angeles city-county directory has been listed on EBay.  As the vendor notes, there is only one copy listed in online catalogs and that’s at UCLA. As the vendor also notes, a copy from the Dawson collection was sold in 2007. That copy (item 228) sold for $5,175. Bidding starts at $3,750.

Cooking With the Junior League, Pasadena

“It is a very special day in a young woman’s life when she makes her first ice box cake.  And as with the leg of lamb, I regret that they have declined in popularity, because it was delicious.”

This week in Cooking With the Junior League, Mary McCoy visits the cuisine of Pasadena. She writes: The Junior League of Pasadena’s classic Pasadena Prefers (1964) is another of those time capsule cookbooks that perfectly capture the home cooking of a particular time, place, and people.  Here, it’s affluent suburban housewives in southern California in the 1960s, the kind of women who might be called upon to wrangle a hoard of hungry small children, whip up a weeknight supper for the family, or pull off some gracious, elegant entertaining at a moment’s notice, and make it look effortless. Read more>>>