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Above, vaudeville and movies at the Orpheum ... At left, an automobile and a streetcar collide at 9th Street and Flower.
Also note the Latin American Republican League--and that in 1908 this group included Spanish, French and Italians ...
"Although there are 5,000 Spanish American voters in the county, there is not a single Spanish American holding a county office and there are very few of them employed at the courthouse."
--Frank Dominguez, president of the Latin American Republican League.
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May 28, 1908
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May 29, 1908
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We will have to trust the Los Angeles Times when it says Peje Storck was a famous pianist of his day. According to The Times, the pianist arrived in town in 1903 with English violinist Herbert Ritchie, who studied with violin virtuoso Eugene Ysaye. (The Times refers to Storck as Norweigian in some articles in and Swedish in others).
The duo performed many concerts in Los Angeles and received glowing reviews in The Times. "Mr. Storck's art is finished, his tone limpid, lucent, pure, his intellectual force unusual, his execution flawless and his mental attitude that of a poet and idealist," The Times said Nov. 21, 1903.
But we will have to trust the Los Angeles Police Department that Storck was gay--of course even as late as the 1940s, newspapers didn't dare use words like "homosexual."
Instead, The Times tiptoed around the matter, saying: "Storck was arrested in a small private room of the 4th Street depot of the Los Angeles-Pacific Railway Co. Seven other men were arrested at the same time, all charged with vagrancy. The real offense was that attributed to Oscar Wilde."
"... police received complaints ... that a number of well-dressed, well-appearing men were making themselves obnoxious at the 4th Street station. Officers Cline and Cook were sent to the station to watch. They arrested the men one at a time, whenever they could secure direct evidence and Storck was taken with several others."
Despite the intercession of many prominent individuals, Storck was sentenced to six months on the chain gang, where he was forced to work with "Negroes, cholos and tramps," The Times said.
After that, Storck vanishes from The Times. All we know is that in January 1909, state Sen. Estudillo of Riverside introduced a bill calling for a year in prison for the "unmentionable offenses" so that "degenerates of his class" would "not get off so easily in the future."
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Above, Arnold Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' quartet for piano and strings receives its U.S. premiere. I once listened to a recording of a talk by Schoenberg and was surprised to hear him pronounce his name "Shane-berg" as in "Bei Mir Bist du Schoen." Below, Nazi teachers (the National Socialist Teachers Assn.) burn books, starting with "Three Times Austria" (Dreimal Oesterreich) by Kurt von Schuschnigg. This bonfire of 2,000 books was largely ceremonial, The Times said. The Nazis planned an even bigger fire for 30,000 volumes collected from libraries and universities to purge "objectionable literature" forced on the people. Quote of the Day: " 'Books by Emil Ludwig, Stefan Zweig, Vicki Baum' and 'clerical monarchist literature' must disappear from German homes."
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Above, the Dodgers get a champagne welcome from Lawrence Welk at the Aragon Ballroom. Below, can it really be 50 years since Van Cliburn won the Tchaikovsky piano competition? And in case you're wondering: Liu Shi-kun and Lev Vlasenko tied for second place. Daniel Pollack of Los Angeles was awarded eighth place ... Mary Livingston is just fine, by the way....  Email me
Fritz Kreisler and ostriches, with the White Sox thrown in. No shortage of things to do in 1908 Los Angeles ... Below, in an ideal world The Times would have packaged its three stories about red activists, two on the cover of the second section and one inside. All are worth reading. One talks about immigration agents targeting socialists and malcontents--native and foreign-born. In another, a fire official traveling with the White Sox talks about revolutionaries in Chicago. The third reports on a meeting of activists. To be sure, the writing is incredibly slanted. But the account is vivid and immediate.
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Sept. 16, 1957
Los Angeles
Franklyn West Storer, 50, woke up on a Saturday morning to discover
that his beloved 16-year-old daughter, Mary Alice, had taken a fatal
overdose of sleeping pills. In despair, he also took a fatal overdose.
Mary
had lived with her father since her parents' divorce and in her brief
life, developed a love of classical music, so Franklyn bought records
for her, about $1,000 worth, which police found scattered around the
home. Before he killed himself, Franklyn placed a few autographed
pictures of Mary's favorite classical composer around her body, The
Times said.
His sister, Lucille Miller of National City, found the bodies in the Storer home at 5750 Camerford Ave.
after becoming alarmed by two letters from Franklyn saying that he was
afraid Mary would kill herself and that if she did, "there would not be
anything for me to live for."
Beyond that brief, tragic story,
The Times offers no explanation of what happened. Was Mary a performer?
An aspiring composer? We simply don't know. But a further search
reveals at least a few details.
California death records say that Franklyn was born in Ohio and reveal that his wife's maiden name was Bettencourt.
He doesn't appear in the 1929, 1936 or 1938 online Los Angeles city directories, but is listed in 1939 as living at 511 S. Wilton Place, apparently an apartment house.
Franklyn took out a legal notice in The Times on Nov. 14, 1940, saying
that he would only be responsible for his own debts and the vital
records for March 13, 1942, list a divorce action by Franklyn W. Storer
vs. Victoria B. Storer.
According to the 1942 Los Angeles city
directory, Franklin W. Storer was an assistant electrical tester at the
Department of Water and Power and was living at 5722 Waring Ave.,
precisely one block from the death scene. Eliza C. McElwain, widow of
J.W. McElwain, was also living at that address. Because it was during
World War II, she could have been a landlady.
The 1956 street directory only lists Franklyn as living at 5750 Camerford.
The
Social Security Death Index has nothing on Franklyn, but lists a
Victoria B. Storer, born Aug. 30, 1913, died Jan. 14, 2002, in Turlock,
Calif.
Unfortunately, none of these fragmentary details explain the tragedy. We can only speculate.
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Read on »
June 3, 1957
Los Angeles
Los Angeles celebrates the 75th birthday of one of its most famous
emigre composers with a concert at UCLA and a party in Beverly Hills.
Calling him "the dean of the world's music composers" (recall, for
starters, that Dmitri Shostakovich and Aaron Copland are still alive), The Times announces a concert honoring the man who wrote "The Rite of Spring," "The Firebird" and "Petrushka," although none of those works are performed in his honor.
Instead, the Los Angeles Music Festival, headed by film composer Franz Waxman, featured "The Symphony of Psalms,"
conducted by the composer. The concert at UCLA's Royce Hall also
included the U.S. premiere of "Canticum Sacrum" and the world premiere
of "Agon," conducted by Stravinsky's Boswell, Robert Craft, as well as Stravinsky's arrangement of Bach's "Von Himmel Hoch" and "Symphonies for Wind Instruments."
Stravinsky received a scroll from the City Council and a telegram from President Eisenhower. Aldous Huxley read a tribute praising "the perpetual dawns in Stravinsky's work," The Times said.
One of the large mysteries about Stravinsky's years in Los Angeles is
where he lived. A little detective work shows that he had a home at 1260 N. Wetherly Drive
in West Hollywood. When I drove over to find it one weekend last year,
I ended up talking to a man who had grown up across the street in a
house he eventually inherited from his parents. He recalled that as a
youngster he met Stravinsky and shared some pleasant little stories. To
me that is one of the ultimate L.A. moments.
Photograph by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times
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Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.