LAPD honors dead officer's heroism, November 26, 1958

Police Sgt. Gene T. Nash died after a shootout with robbery suspects in an apartment house on Budlong just south of Adams. In a televised ceremony, Police Chief William H. Parker presented his widow, Cynthia, with her husband's Medal of Valor. But that's only the beginning of the story. Unfortunately, many pieces of the puzzle are missing from The Times, so the picture is incomplete. This is what we know: Nash, 32, and Sgt. W.F. Bitterolf of the Robbery Division, accompanied by Sgts. S.O. Eastenson and C.E. Leonard, went to the apartment house at 2723 S. Budlong Ave. to investigate whether members of a crime ring were hiding there. According to The Times, a group of robbers had been holding up crap games, taking $7 to $140. The Times says Eastenson and Leonard waited outside while Nash and Bitterolf forced their way into the apartment. They found Virgil Lee, 24; Herman Cosby, 35, Rebecca Turner Bly, 29; and Geraldine Brown, 24, who told them that the only other person in the apartment was her 6-year-old son, who was asleep in a back bedroom. View Larger Map Nash found the first bedroom locked. As he went through the bathroom into the second bedroom, he was shot three times in the chest, once in the right arm and once in the left hand. He dropped by the bed where the boy was sleeping. Despite his wounds, Nash drew his revolver and shot Bennie Will Meyes, 31, once in the leg and once in the hand that was holding the gun. Meyes fell and then jumped out a window while Nash shot William Douglas, 29, in the back as he was hiding in a closet, leaving him in critical condition. Bitterolf rushed into the bedroom and told Nash that an ambulance was coming. "He said 'I don't think it will do any good. I don't think I'll make it,' " Bitterolf told The Times. Outside the apartment, Eastenson and Leonard heard the shots, saw Meyes jump out the window and caught him after chasing him for a block. And somehow, Bly's 6-year-old boy slept through the entire incident, The Times said. All three men were evidently taken to Central Receiving Hospital and before he died, Nash identified Meyes as the gunman. Meyes denied shooting Nash while Douglas admitted owning the gun but said he had given it to Meyes. In the ensuing investigation, police arrested another apartment resident, Walter Payne, 35, at Century and Sepulveda boulevards; Olivia Chapman, 25, identified as Meyes' girlfriend; James Williams, 23; Betty Logan, 23; and Willie M. Davis, 23, 1024 E. 75th St., just off Florence and Central. The case was presented to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, The Times said, and Meyes and Douglas were indicted on charges of murder. Hundreds of officers attended Nash's funeral and he was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park.  In addition to his wife, Nash was survived by a 2-year-old daughter. His widow was presented with his Medal of Valor. And then silence. As far as I can determine, The Times never wrote a word about the trial or sentencing. But that's the not the end of the story. For reasons that aren't clear, Douglas and Meyes weren't charged with murder. Instead, they were accused of robbery, assault with intent to commit murder and assault with a deadly weapon. According to legal documents, Meyes and Douglas were given a public defender. But at the opening of the trial, the lawyer asked for a continuance, saying that he hadn't time to prepare the case. It was complicated, he had too many other cases, and Meyes and Douglas wanted separate attorneys, he said.  Meyes and Douglas fired their attorney because he was unprepared, asked for a continuance and filed a request for separate defense lawyers. These motions were denied and the men were convicted. Meyes was judged a habitual criminal and given a life sentence. Douglas was sentenced to five years to life. They first appealed to California courts, and because they had no money, asked for a lawyer to be appointed for them. The state Court of Appeal upheld their convictions without appointing an attorney for them, saying that "no good whatever could be served by appointment of counsel." The California Supreme Court denied their petitions for a review without giving them a hearing. In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new hearing for the men, who were represented by Marvin M. Mitchelson, (yes he's the "palimony" lawyer) and Burton Marks. It's interesting to see two familiar names on the men's legal team: Fred Okrand and A.L. Wirin, who often worked with the ACLU, although it's not clear if this was an ACLU case.    Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority: "Where the merits of the one and only appeal an indigent has as of right are decided without benefit of counsel in a state criminal case, there has been a discrimination between the rich and the poor which violates the 14th Amendment." On June 20, 1964, The Times reported that Meyes and Douglas had been granted new trials. Unfortunately, The Times apparently never followed up on whether the men were retried. I have one hunch about why The Times largely ignored this case, but it's only a hunch. Notice that we never ran pictures of Meyes or Douglas. Notice that the robbers were preying on crap games. Notice that one individual lived near Central and Florence. If either of the suspects were African American, it might explain The Times' lack of coverage. Stay tuned and I'll see what I can find out. Read the Supreme Court decision >>>

Accident kills children of ex-football star, Dodgers beat Cardinals, 7-5, September 8, 1958

Tragedy strikes at Big Bear Lake Lightning bolt kills two children as father and brother watch from a distance, unable to help. The family's two-week summer vacation at the cabin in Big Bear was nearly over. Soon they would be heading back home to La Crescenta, where Bob was a manager at Los Angeles Automotive Works and his wife, Betty, was a homemaker. On that morning, Bob took their four children down to the lake while Betty stayed behind at the cabin about three miles away. While Bob and his son, Bob Jr., went out fishing in a boat, the other three children played along the shore: Mark, 7; Trudy, 13; and Diana, 14. In a moment, there was a cloudburst and the three children ran into a shed to get out of the rain. Before Bob and his son could get to shore, a bolt of lightning hit the shed. Mark and Trudy were unconscious and Diana was injured. Bob put the three children into the family station wagon and on the way to Santa Anita Hospital at Lake Arrowhead, he and Harvey Pedersen, a teenager from nearby Fawnskin, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to two of the youngsters. At the hospital, emergency crews from the Big Bear and Fawnskin fire departments gave the children oxygen. Mark and Trudy were pronounced dead. Although the first day's story said Diana was burned, blinded and partially paralyzed, doctors found her injuries to be far less serious. According to The Times, she suffered only a slight eye injury that would not affect her sight. Her hand, which had been paralyzed, returned to normal, and she hadn't been burned. At the funeral, the Rev. Bernard Traveille of First Baptist Church of La Crescenta urged mourners "not to let our memory enshrine despair." Instead, he said "to have faith, to harbor hope that Mark and Trudy have found a better life and to have confidence in the love of God." Mark Lawrence Reinhard, 7, and his sister Trudy Lee Reinhard, 13, were cremated and their remains were entombed at Grand View Memorial Park. Bob Reinhard, who was named All-American in 1940 and 1941, was captain of the Los Angeles Dons. He was the No. 1 draft choice of the Chicago Cardinals in 1950 but was traded to the Rams in exchange for Bob Shaw, Tom Keane and Gerry Cowhig. He retired in 1951 to pursue a career in engineering. Bob Reinhard Jr. went on to play football for Stanford, where he was a punter, and he was drafted by the Packers in 1970.  More information about the problems at Grand View Memorial Park is here.

In sports, Gil Hodges hits two home runs (Nos. 21 and 22 of the season) as the Dodgers win against the Cardinals, 7-5. Charlie Neal also hit his 22nd run of the season. Jockey Johnny Longden suffers a broken leg when Gallant Royal collapses from a heart attack at Del Mar and plunges into the rail ... Calvin Griffith, president of the Washington Senators, denies rumors that he plans to ask the American League to move the franchise to Minneapolis ... Althea Gibson scores a comeback victory over Darlene Hard in the U.S. finals at Forest Hills, N.Y. "I may never play tournament tennis again," Gibson says. Instead, she plans to focus on a singing career, she says.

Intruder kills former actress, August 28, 1958

She is one of those cold cases that leave all kinds of unanswered questions even when the killer is finally caught, convicted and sent to prison. Nothing about it passes the sniff test. We know her name was Helene Funk Jerome, born in New York on March 12, 1908, which makes her 50 at the time of the killing. She was living in a rear apartment at the Las Palmas Hotel, 1738 N. Las Palmas. That's the one used in "Pretty Woman." She was supposedly a retired actress, but her credentials are rather vague. The Times said she was a graduate of either the Royal Dramatic Academy or the Royal Dramatic Society in London, so I'm guessing it was the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, which has no record of her -- at least online. Most of her career was spent on the stage in China, The Times said. She never made any movies and shouldn't be confused with Helene Jerome Eddy, who died in 1990. About 1943, Helene married Edwin Jerome, an actor who had a long career on Broadway before coming to Hollywood, where he appeared in such roles as a butler in "Gigi" and a doctor in "The Three Faces of Eve." They were estranged, he said, but remained friendly. He lived about 2 miles away at 1710 N. Harvard. It's unclear whether Edwin called the hotel or the hotel switchboard operator called him, but either way, he became concerned when the operator said Helene's phone had been off the hook for a long time. He told police he went to the apartment to investigate and found Helene's nude body. The screen had been torn from a window near the door and detectives inferred that someone had broken in. The autopsy found that she had been strangled. Edwin told police that he had been there late Tuesday, the night before the killing, and had answered the phone because she was asleep. Edwin said the caller was a man, but didn't get his name. A few days later, police arrested Edgar Glenn McAdoo, 25, because he closely resembled the police sketch of a man seen with Helene in a bar a few hours before she was killed. McAdoo, who was working as a carhop after arriving from Lubbock, Texas, two months earlier, admitted being in a bar with Helene and said he escorted her back to the apartment but went home to 6674 Yucca St. Investigators searched Helene's apartment for fingerprints to see if any matched McAdoo and he was given an extensive polygraph exam. However, prosecutors refused to file charges against him. He was released, charged with outstanding traffic warrants and freed on bail. Next, based on an informant's report, police arrested Miller F. Dowdy, 42, who operated an all-night newsstand at Las Palmas and Hollywood Boulevard. Although the informant said Dowdy had been with Helene on the evening before the killing, Dowdy said he was working all night, although he admitted going on a date with her about three weeks earlier. Dowdy was released a few days later for lack of evidence and police arrested Jordan Holt, 32, who was captured on a hotel roof and admitted being with Helene on the night of the killing, The Times said. The paper never reported what became of Holt, although he was apparently released. In September 1960, police found another suspect, Henry Adolph Busch, 29, who admitted strangling three Hollywood women, including his foster mother's sister. He was questioned about Helene's killing, but apparently nothing came of it. Finally, in November 1962, a 26-year-old shipping clerk from La Puente, Michael John Donahue, walked into the Portland, Ore., police station and confessed to killing Helene. He said he left Los Angeles a week earlier to get away but decided to confess to clear his conscience. Donahue said he followed Helene and a young man (presumably McAdoo) home from a Hollywood bar, then broke in once the man left. They argued and he killed her, he said. Donahue pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and in April 1963 was sentenced to five years to life in prison. This is only chronology I can come up with for Helene's killing and it doesn't fit together terribly well: Edwin is at Helene's apartment. It's late and she's asleep. The phone rings and Edwin answers, then he leaves. For the rest of it to work, Helene would have to get up, go to the bar and meet McAdoo, come home with him, and then be killed by Donahue. And Holt is supposed to fit in there someplace. This lady seems to have been hanging around with an awful lot of low-life men who were much younger; two of them were half her age. And then throw in the guy working at the all-night newsstand; not exactly prime date material. The Times doesn't say anything about what she did for a living. I wonder what was really going on.  Helene was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park. In addition to Edwin, she was survived by sisters Josephine Laroza and Frieda Theis and brothers John and Bernard Funk. Edwin died a little over a year after the killing, having moved to Altadena. He "reportedly never recovered from the shock of the unsolved murder of his wife," The Times said. Public records are inconclusive on confessed killer Michael John Donahue. A man by that name died in Long Beach in 1999, but it's unclear if this is the same man. View Larger Map

July 14, 1908

Adjusted for inflation, the $15 refrigerator sold for $329.81 USD 2007, the $26 refrigerator was $571.66 USD 2007.

abid socialist Joseph H.N. Longy writes threatening letters to Los Angeles businessmen, saying that he'll burn down their homes unless they send him $5. Of course, if he had been psychic Victor Segno, and promised to send a daily "success wave" for $1, he would have been successful.  Longy, who was released in 1909, above, used the return address of Howell Hall, 814 S. Main St. View Larger Map Also note the story on early Los Angeles residents asking the City Council to preserve the Protestant cemetery on Fort Hill, which "has become unsightly through neglect," The Times says. Email me

Death in El Segundo

 

July 22, 1957
Los Angeles

We're heading west on Rosecrans Avenue. It's early Monday morning, a few moments after 1:30 a.m., and the streets are dark. There's nobody out but a few drunks and some people heading home from the swing shift. It's all quiet.

Maybe that's what these two men on the graveyard shift thought.

Let's pull over here, at Palm Avenue. North of us is the tank farm for the Standard Oil refinery and south of us are new homes. Up ahead is a police car, all lit up. I make it out to be 1957 Ford 300, four-door black and white. The only sound is the police radio. You can see the front passenger door is open. It says: "El Segundo Police."

Before we get out, I need to say something: We're going to find two dead--or dying--police officers up there. At home, there's two widows who kissed their husbands goodbye and hoped they would see them in the morning. There are five kids who are going to grow up without their fathers. It's a terrible tragedy and I don't want to minimize that. But it would be another tragedy if one more police officer died because we didn't learn a lesson from what happened here. These men can't tell us, so we'll never know exactly what went on. But let's see what we can figure out about the shooting by picking it apart.

The officer in the driver's seat is Milton Gus Curtis, 27. He's fresh out of the academy in Riverside and has been on the El Segundo department for two months. Curtis has been shot in the upper right chest, right side and right forearm (or right wrist) with three .22-caliber short rounds.

His partner is Richard Allen Phillips, 28. He served in the Air Force during the Korean War and has been on the Police Department about three years. He's been shot three times in the back, also with .22-caliber short rounds. His service revolver is next to him, all six shots fired. He's supposed to be quite a marksman.

(Important discrepancy note: The Mirror says that according to officers who responded to the scene, Phillips' body was in the police car. The Times says Phillips was on the ground next to his service revolver).

Notice that even though it's dark, the killer hit his target six times. That seems like fairly accurate shooting.

Phillips' citation book is lying open on the right fender. (Note: The newspapers said it was on the roof). He started to write a ticket, but he had only filled out the date.

OK, here's a map.

 

Crime scene photos courtesy of the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.
Notice Phillips' citation book on the hood and the police siren on the right fender.

Here's what happened:

Curtis and Phillips were parked on the north side of Rosecrans at Sepulveda about four car lengths east of the intersection. Margaret Osburn, who was heading home from work on westbound Rosecrans Avenue, said she stopped at the signal, in the right lane. A car later identified as a 1949 Ford pulled up to her left, then jumped the red light and roared through the intersection. "I said to myself what a stupid thing to do with the police car in plain sight," Osburn said.

Curtis and Phillips began their pursuit.

Alan King, 19, was heading west on Rosecrans, on his way home from a job at a service station when Curtis and Phillips came up behind him. King thought they were pulling him over, so he stopped, but they kept going. He went to his home around the corner from here on Poinsettia and watched the driver, Curtis and Phillips at Rosecrans and Palm.

Osburn passed by here and saw the two officers and the driver standing outside his car. One of the officers was shining a flashlight in the driver's face, Osburn said.

According to Osburn, the driver was taller than either officer, with husky shoulders. He was about 25 years old with curly blond or light brown hair and was wearing a red plaid shirt with the tail pulled out instead of tucked into his pants.

King, who was watching from the back porch of his home on Poinsettia, said he saw Curtis and Phillips remove the driver from the car. There appeared to be a struggle, King said. "When the man quieted down, one of the officers [presumably Curtis] went back to the prowl car and talked into the radio mike." Then King stepped out of view.

Another team of El Segundo police officers, C.D. Porter and James T. "Ted" Gilbert cruised past.

"It looked like Curtis and Phillips were writing a routine traffic citation," said Gilbert, who had been Curtis' partner until two weeks earlier. "We drove past slowly and continued west on Rosecrans. When we went past, Phillips was outside the car with his citation book starting to write a citation. Curtis was behind the wheel phoning."

El Segundo police dispatcher B.F. Bangasser said that at 1:29 a.m. (this time is reported elsewhere as 1:20 a.m.), one of the officers radioed to have him run the plates on the 1949 Ford. As he was checking, another police car came on the air. Then a voice cut in: "Ambulance." (Or "Send...ambulance.") "It was Phillips," Bangasser said.

King heard shots and ran back to the porch in time to see the driver get into the 1949 Ford and "speed down Rosecrans."

Police are going to find the killer's car about four blocks west of here with three shots through the back window and one through the trunk. Phillips was supposed to be quite a marksman and he hit the killer in the back, but maybe the killer wasn't injured too badly since the bullet went through part of the car first and lost momentum.

Two years after the killing, a homeowner digging up weeds at 555 33rd St. is going to find the murder weapon, a nine-shot Harrington and Richardson revolver, .22-caliber short. That's a small cartridge. A year later, he'll find the cylinder and some other items.

OK, let's go over what happened again and see if anything is missing.

Don't jump and look at the stories about how the case was solved in 2003 and what else the driver had done that night. For now, let's concentrate on what we have in the original news reports.

First of all: The driver ran a red light with a police car in clear view. That should be a tipoff that something is wrong with the guy.

Second: King says they got the driver out of the car. He said it looked as though they struggled with driver, but King was half a block away, so I wonder how much he could have seen. If what King saw was accurate--that they struggled with him and them calmed him down--I wonder why they didn't detain him right then. Police officers in the 1950s weren't shy about administering a little "street justice" to people who gave them a hard time. Or maybe that's how they "calmed him down."

Third: Osburn drives by and sees both officers standing next to the killer outside his car with one of them shining a flashlight in his face. My guess--and it's only a guess--is that they performed a field sobriety test. It's done like this: Hold your arm out straight and touch the tip of your nose with your index finger. Like this one with Gail Russell.

Fourth: He shoots them. Which one first? Did the killer shoot Phillips in the back outside the police car and then shoot Curtis in the right side as he was behind the wheel? How did that work?

Maybe it will help if I act out the role of of Officer Curtis: I see the driver run the red light, I activate the lights and pull up behind him at Rosecrans and Palm. I get out of the car with my partner. We talk to the driver. I go back to the police car, get in the driver's side and radio the dispatcher with the license plate number. Unless I've written it down, that means I can see the license plate from where I'm sitting and read it to the dispatcher. The killer shoots my partner in the back. While I am sitting in the driver's seat, the killer shoots me in the right chest, right side and right wrist/forearm. The shots would have to come from the passenger side of the car.

Now I'll be Officer Phillips: I see the driver run the red light. We pull up behind him at Rosecrans and Palm. I get out of the car with my partner. We talk to the driver. My partner goes back to the car while I start writing up a citation. I put the citation book on the hood of the police car. I'm shot three times in the back. The killer shoots my partner three times. I turn around and fire six shots at the killer's car, hitting it three times in the back window and once in the trunk. I get into the police car, pick up the radio mike and say: "Ambulance."

The problem is that I can't get this scenario to work if I assume that the police car pulled up directly behind the killer's car. For that to work, the killer has to do some weird doubling back to shoot Phillips and then shoot Curtis from the passenger side of the police car.

The only way I can get it to work is if the police car is to the left of the killer's car, either side by side or off to the left rear of the 1949 Ford. If I'm right, I wonder why they parked there instead of behind him.

A couple other things bother me besides that scenario:

The first is the killer's driver's license--where is it? We know the police didn't find it at the crime scene and it's hard to imagine that Curtis and Phillips didn't ask for it. If the driver said he didn't have one, that should have raised their suspicions even further after he jumped the light--especially if he struggled with them.

For that matter, where's the registration on the car? I assume they asked for that too. If they got his driver's license and the registration, they would have noticed the car belonged to someone else and that should have made them even more suspicious.

My guess--and it is a guess--is that the killer shot the two officers and retrieved his driver's license from Phillips, who was writing the citation.

And that's the other thing that bothers me, maybe the most: Gilbert's comment about "writing a routine traffic citation." Obviously, it wasn't routine. If these two men were complacent, they certainly paid a terrible, tragic price.

Because what Curtis and Phillips didn't know is that the killer had just stolen the car after holding two teenage couples at gunpoint and raping one of the girls.

The investigation and solution of the case, which was turned over to the Sheriff's Department, is another fascinating story.

In 1960, the man who found the murder weapon while digging weeds in his yard at 555 33rd St. turned the gun over to police, who learned that it had been purchased June 18, 1957, at a chain store (eventually identified as Sears) in Shreveport, La., by a man using the false name of George D. Wilson. A search of records at the nearby YMCA showed that a George D. Wilson registered there June 16, 1957. The handwriting sample will come in handy many years later.

Another equally important clue was the fingerprints found on the steering post of the stolen Ford (note the "necker's knob or "brodie knob" on the steering wheel--lrh). As we all know, two partial prints were assembled to make a complete print that was run through a computer database and revealed a suspect. In fact, he turned out to be the killer. 

And here's some dazzling insight from Sheriff's Detective Sgt. Howard Hopkinson, from 1960:

"The killer was soft-spoken and gentlemanly with the kids. He had an accent but we have been unable to put it down as to whether it was Southern. We think that it was. He was apologetic to the kids and he never used profanity before them."

Sheriff's Detective Lt. Al Etzel added: We have a strong suspicion that this guy is a reputable person. He may have a good job, a family he thinks a lot of and he figures that when he got caught on the traffic citation, he would be made on robbery and criminal attack. He panicked.

"Here is a man who goes out with a gun, a small flashlight and a roll of adhesive tape to commit robbery and criminal attack and he ends up killing two policemen. He is somebody the people least suspect, not a murdering 'cop hater.' He had something he didn't want to lose."

They were right. In 2003, Gerald F. Mason, a retired gas station owner with one prior arrest many years before, was convicted of the killings. He will be eligible for parole in 2010, according to the State newspaper published in Columbia, S.C.

Here come Porter and Gilbert. We better get going.

 

Curtis and Phillips were buried side by side at Inglewood Park Cemetery. Let's stop by and see them on the way back.

 

Update: Several people have asked why there is no mention of Officer Curtis' survivors. I don't wish to minimize the loss felt by his friends and family--in fact I try to put a face on the devastation that people feel when an officer dies in the line of duty. Curtis was survived by his wife, Jean; son, Keith; daughter, Toni Lynn; his sister, Dimitra Taruny; brother, Blaine; mother, Jessie Looney; and father, Gus Curtis. Phillips was survived by his wife, Carole; daughters Carolyn and Patricia; son, Richard Jr.; parents, Mr. and Mrs. T.G. Phillips; brothers, Charles and Eugene; and sisters Eunice Tabagio and Marcella Tuttle, The Times said.

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One for the books

 

July 14, 1957
Los Angeles

At 95, Mary Foy has the formula for longevity: Watch your health, keep mentally active and be Irish. 

The Times catches up with Foy and her "double cousin," Ella Foy O'Gorman, as the women celebrate their 95th birthdays in the home they share at 1706 S. Menlo Ave.

Foy is of special significance because she became the city's first librarian--in 1879--and where would we researchers be without librarians?

Born on July 13, 1862, Foy was the first of 10 children, The Times said in 1933, the daughter of Samuel Calvert Foy, a saddlemaker, and Lucinda Macy, who learned the alphabet while crossing the country to Los Angeles in a covered wagon in 1850. Foy was born in the family home at Macy and Main streets. Her family moved to 7th Street and Figueroa about 1904, then moved again to San Rafael Heights in Pasadena.

Foy was the sole employee of the library when it was above a saloon at Main and Temple streets, at a monthly salary of $74 ($1,512.56 USD 2006). "Miss Foy once recalled that patrons of the saloon often came to her and her books to settle their arguments," The Times said in her 1962 obituary.

Five years after graduating from Los Angeles High School, she returned as a teacher and became the principal before resigning in 1901 to fight for women's suffrage. She also attended law school. A lifelong Democrat, Foy served as a national committeewoman to the Democratic National Convention in 1919 and ran for Congress in 1934. She helped found the pioneer organization that became the First Century Families of California and was active in the Native Daughters of the Golden West.

For her, the most interesting time in local history was 1867 to 1876, when "Los Angeles awoke from being a sleepy pueblo and began to grow into a modern American city," The Times said.

At 95, she and her cousin were "smart as paint and wise as serpents," living in a home full of books, manuscripts and artifacts of the past, The Times said. "The orderly little house is neat and workmanlike, with a marked mental aura. The cousins betray a persisting love of adornment with their bright dresses with pleated ruffles at the necklines, strands of pearls and brooches."

As for never marrying, Foy said: "I wasn't prejudiced against it" (one story, in fact noted that she was "much too pretty to be a bluestocking"). "I was too busy to think of it."

 

In the 1940s, she led the unsuccessful fight to preserve the 1873 Los Angeles High School on Fort Moore Hill, which was demolished in 1949 to make way for the Hollywood Freeway. The redwood building was too expensive to move, the group decided. The wrecking company planned to cut part of the building into sections to be sold as storerooms.

Foy died Feb. 18, 1962, and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery after lying in state at City Hall. She was the oldest living graduate of Los Angeles High School.

I'll leave you with two memorable quotes:

When asked about their social lives, Foy and O'Gorman said they went out occasionally even at the age of 95, "However our constant companion is right in this house. It is the dictionary," they said.

"I've lived through dozens of depressions," Foy said in 1933. "Whenever the rains failed we had 'em for one thing. Californians have faced disaster too often to be scared about this one. We always bounce back."

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Gail Russell--in memoriam

 

Photographs by the Los Angeles Times
Sgt. C.H. Specht examines damage to Jan's Restaurant, 8424 Beverly Blvd., caused by Gail Russell's convertible.
Below right, Russell fails a test for intoxication administered by Specht.   

July 6, 1957
Los Angeles

You poor thing. Look at you lying there, probably for a couple days now, sealed off from the world in a little home on the Westside. No husband, no children and no career. Just an empty vodka bottle on the floor and you sprawled next to it in a blouse and the pants from your pajamas. Dead at 35. Your mother wanted you to have the career she never had. I'm sure she didn't realize you weren't cut out to be a movie star; so tightly wound and such a painfully shy, insecure bundle of nerves.

Let's go back 20 years to 1941, when you were studying to be an artist and someone started calling you "the Hedy Lamarr of Santa Monica High." How you hated that nickname and kept apologizing for it, so embarrassed that when you finally ran into Lamarr volunteering one night at the Hollywood Canteen you looked the other way.

You said: "We lived first in Chicago, came gypsying to California. When my family first came here it was a vacation, really. Then we put a down payment on a house and a down payment on some furniture. My brother went into the Army and one by one pieces of furniture went.

"When I was discovered for the movies I was sleeping on the living room floor on newspapers. I went for my first interview with paint all over my face--I'd been helping paint a room at the technical school. Paramount offered me a minimum salary--$50 a week--and Mom said, 'Take it, we need the money.' "

(Below right, Russell with Richard Lyon and Nona Griffith in 1944 after their juvenile movie contracts were approved).

"Mother practically dragged me in to see William Meiklejohn, supervisor of talent and casting at Paramount, who had tracked me down at University [Santa Monica] High School. I was petrified. Mr. Meiklejohn, a kindly man, kept trying to get me to talk, but nothing would come out.

"For my first test they put me into an evening gown. I had never even worn high heels before--or makeup of any kind. To say I was self-conscious is understatement plus. A week later they cast me in a Henry Aldrich picture, wearing a bathing suit and a transparent raincoat. It had been raining and there was a large puddle across from the studio commissary where the scene was to be shot. Of course they had to do it just as the sets broke for lunch and such stars as Alan Ladd, Bing Crosby and others were passing by.

"There I was trying to speak my lines while holding an umbrella which kept slipping from my nervous fingers. To this day I refuse all bathing suit scenes in public or private."

For one audition at Paramount, they put you in the fishbowl, a glass booth lit so that the actor couldn't see who was outside watching.

Below right, a studio publicity shot, 1949.

"My coach accompanied me and we read the script together. Then he excused himself. There I stood, sat, or something, for 10 minutes waiting for him to return. Finally they turned on the outside lights and to my horror I saw 15 executives filing away one by one. I frantically tried to remember what I had done those 10 minutes. What an experience!

"I started out weighing 125 pounds," you said of making "The Uninvited," then I was rushed to New York for the opening. When I got back I weighed 106--all in two months. Everything was that way, rush... rush... rush... So many pictures one after another. I tried to be a nice guy and took on too many things and didn't take care of my health."

You nerves got so bad that you spoiled one take after another.

"I have hand trouble. Unconsciously I clasp my hands and then start wringing them. It's getting to be a gag now on the set. Director John Farrow ("Calcutta" and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes") had a stock line to deliver every time my hands wouldn't behave. It was, 'Hands, Gail, cut.'  They finally tied my hands to my sides with handkerchiefs."

Then there was "The Angel and the Badman," the first of  the movies you made with John Wayne. A few years later when his wife, Esperanza, sued for divorce, she testified that she nearly shot him when he broke into their home the next morning after spending the night with you. She also said he gave you a car, although he claimed it was only the down payment.

 

Russell and defense lawyer Harvey Silbert in 1953, when she pleaded not guilty to drunk driving.

You and Wayne testified that there was no relationship between you. But your first arrest for drunk driving was only a few weeks later, Nov. 24, 1953, about the time your marriage to Guy Madison was unraveling. By the next year, you were in such bad shape that your lawyer wanted the trial held in your hospital room.

In 1955, you drove off after rear-ending a car in North Hollywood. And then you plowed into Jan's Restaurant, 8424 Beverly Blvd., at 4 a.m. on the Fourth of July, 1957 and pinned the janitor under your new convertible. 

You said: "I had a few drinks. I had two. No four. Oh, I don't know how many I had. It's nobody's business anyway."

 

Russell, age 31, in 1956.

In August 1957, you ended up in General Hospital's prison ward when two officers found you passed out after you failed to appear for a hearing in the drunk driving case.

You tried so hard to beat the bottle. You joined A.A. and spent a year in a clinic. "It was so lonely in the hospital in that oxygen tent for three months with no one to talk to except the Man Upstairs," you said. "I had long talks with Him--that's the reason I'm here today."

 

Russell and an unidentified man, presumably attorney Rexford Eagan, for another court hearing in 1958. She is  32 in this photograph. Note her dilated pupils.

And then for the last eight months of your life, you sealed yourself up in your home at 1436 Bentley Ave., and sketched and painted and drank until the place was full of art and empty liquor bottles. You wouldn't even open the door for the neighbors, just talked to them through the window. Your sister-in-law phoned every day in the week before you died. You told her you were painting and sketching and planning to get back into acting.

Your sister-in-law will say: "She was really, really and truly trying to stop drinking. It was tragic because she was so talented and suffering so much. If she had enjoyed drinking it would have been something else--but she didn't. No matter what they say about Hollywood, the people there were always wonderful to her through the long years she had her problems. She always got through when she made a call and anybody who ever worked with her always believed in her."

You once told Hedda Hopper: "I've learned you can't satisfy everyone. You start and then, all of a sudden, it stops and you can't even please yourself."

You'll get a private service at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood and be buried next to your father.  Some of your old co-stars will be there: Alan Ladd, Jimmy "Henry Aldrich" Lydon, Diana Lynn and Mona Freeman. No sign of John Wayne, though.  Or Guy Madison.

Rest in peace, Gail Russell Moseley,  1925-1961

Here's "The Angel and the Badman" on Google video.

Bonus fact: Jan's is still in business.

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Forest Lawn

Easter Sunday seemed like a good time to drive over to Forest Lawn and visit a few graves. I bought some flowers and went off to find Norma McCauley and Caren Lynn "Sande" Crabbe.

The woman at the front gate was extremely professional and helpful, and she gave me precise directions. Norma is in the Columbarium of Sunlight and Sande is in the Sanctuary of Celestial Peace. I was surprised at how many people were simply spending time at the hillside graves, with folding chairs and flowers. A couple of young men were partway up a hillside with a Marine flag.

The Columbarium of Sunlight is quite pretty and I had it entirely to myself. While I was in the area I found the graves of Earl Carroll and Beryl Wallace, who died in a plane crash, Mary Pickford and Atwater Kent, which reminded me of "Millionaires' Row" up at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.

The Sanctuary of Celestial Peace was a bit different. I went in the wrong door and in wandering around, stumbled across the crypt of Art Tatum.

In fact, it was quite a day for musicians, as I also found Alfred Newman and Max Steiner, who had been sent a large floral wreath. There were roses on the crypt of William "Hopalong Cassady" Boyd.

"Sande" Crabbe is partway up the wall and while I was getting water for the flower I ran into a couple of women. It turns out  Paramahansa Yogananda of the Self-Realization Fellowship is in the same building and they were meditating in front of what appeared to be his crypt. I didn't want to interrupt them to find out.

One of the crypts was elaborately decorated for an Easter egg hunt. I have seen all sorts of grave decorations in searching for Los Angeles history, but this was a first and very nicely done.
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