Flying Saucers Over L.A.

Aug. 2, 1960: Oh they didn’t really do that, did they? Yes, they did.   Aug. 1, 1960: Only a portion of a front-page story about UFOs was saved in the microfilmed edition of The Times.  Aug. 9, 1960: A reader tries to explain a flying saucer sighting.

In August 1960, The Times was full of stories about flying saucers – even the Army and Air Force were building them! An incident evidently occurred somewhere near Malibu that made the front page of the Aug. 1 paper, but only the runover was preserved in the microfilmed edition and there’s nothing in the Mirror.  The Times editorial page attributed the purported sighting to the “midsummer norm of semi-abnormality.“ A few days later, Jack Smith wrote about Gabriel Green, a “35-year-old bachelor from Whittier” who was running for president “on the flying saucer ticket.” Translation: crackpot. Interestingly enough, someone has uploaded audio of an August 1960 convention of flying saucer enthusiasts held at the Shrine Auditorium. The Times didn’t cover this event, so it’s difficult to precisely date it. Here’s audio of Gabriel Green explaining his political platform. And here is an interview with a fellow who called himself Prince Niasan, who said he was from another planet and had been on Earth since 1927. In 1962, Green ran for U.S. Senate, and he ran for president from the Universal Party in 1972. Green did not receive an obituary in The Times, but the death date of Sept. 8, 2001, reported in online sources, is verified by the Social Security Death Index. Bonus: Suzanne McDermott singing “The Roswell Incident.”

Nixon, Kennedy Agree to TV Debates

Los Angeles Times file photo Republican National Convention delegates cheer Lodge and Nixon.

July 29, 1960: NBC Chairman Robert W. Sarnoff sends telegrams to John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon suggesting a series of televised debates. The debates will become one of the cultural milestones of the 1960s. A Times editorial quotes Barry Goldwater: "This great Republican Party is our historic house .... I am proud to call myself a Republican as well as a conservative.... We must remember that Republicans have not been losing elections because of more Democrat voters. We have been losing elections because conservatives too often fail to vote." On the jump, Times Political Editor Kyle Palmer and James Reston of the New York Times assess the upcoming campaigns.

A Final Note on the Democratic National Convention

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

Pacific Telephone has pulled its equipment out of the candidates’ headquarters at the Biltmore and the cleanup crew is getting all the banners and placards off the floor of the Sports Arena. The applause at the Coliseum has died away and everybody’s gone home. Before the Daily Mirror moves on to its next story, I have a few final thoughts. If you have slogged through Kyle Palmer’s columns on the 1960 Democratic National Convention, you have read more of his work than just about anybody since he died of leukemia in 1962. I posted his stories not because they are well-written or enduring, but because they are stale and musty,  condescending, petty and blatantly partisan, as forgotten as Grandpa’s old suit, embalmed in mothballs in a spare closet. And make no mistake, despite the claim in his obituary, "He was a well-rounded newspaperman, soft-spoken, scrupulously fair,” his work was that of the worst sort of political hack. Today, Palmer is nothing but a footnote to Richard Nixon’s career, and on those rare occasions when he is mentioned at all, it is as a dirty joke about “the bad old days.”  If you read the columns by James Reston of the New York Times, which The Times syndicated, you are even more aware of the contrast between him and Palmer. Fifty years later, Reston’s writing is everything that Palmer’s is not: fresh and still insightful, without the benefit of knowing – as we do – the events that followed. There’s no point in resurrecting Palmer simply to give him one more lashing. He’s already been swept into the dustbin of history. It’s a place he earned many times over by abandoning a reporter’s duty to be impartial, seduced by what he imagined was his ability to be a power broker and kingmaker when he was merely exploited by those who used him as an eager, aggressive dupe.  Palmer is relevant today as a timeless example of a reporter who abused his position and forgot the sportswriters’ adage: “No cheering in the press box.” Those who fancy themselves political commentators, who are tempted by the notion of tilting public opinion and swaying the course of history, would do well to study Kyle Palmer’s career to see if they wish to share his forgotten corner of the political graveyard, where his grandiose marble monument, engraved with fine but empty words, is tumbled over and buried in the weeds.

The Man for the '60s

Photograph by Wayne F. Kelly / Los Angeles Times July 15, 1960: Presidential nominee John F. Kennedy arrives at the Coliseum.

If you didn’t live through this era, if all you know about JFK is the womanizing and the Rat Pack, then maybe this photo is nothing more than an interesting and somewhat ironic curio. But if you’re of the right age and recall those scant years of optimism before LBJ’s “My fellow Americans”  and Nixon’s “I’m not a crook,” this photo is heart-piercing. Today, we know that Camelot was nothing but a movie set of plywood and 2 by 4s, with the carpenters, grips and makeup crew waiting just out of the frame while Jackie Kennedy showed us the White House and John John played under his father’s desk in the Oval Office. And most of us have learned far more than we care to know about the many transgressions of the Kennedys, who had more dirty laundry than a Motel 6.  One ride in a convertible in Los Angeles in the summer of 1960. Another ride in a convertible in Dallas in the fall of 1963. The 1960s were not a more innocent time. It is only some of us who lost our innocence in them.

Kennedy Comes Out Fighting

July 16, 1960: In his acceptance speech at the Coliseum, John F. Kennedy says: "We know that it will not be easy to campaign against a man who has spoken or voted on every known side of every known issue. Mr. Nixon may feel it is his turn now, after the new Deal and the Fair Deal -- but the cards will be cut before he deals." On the jump, the text of Kennedy’s actual speech as published in The Times. His prepared speech appears numerous places on the Internet, but the actual text delivered that night at the Coliseum does not. For example, "In his prepared text, the phrase [above] read ... 'but before he deals, someone had better cut the cards.' Kennedy made a number of changes and deleted portions of his prepared speech, as did Sen. Johnson," The Times said. "Both apparently were trying to fit their speeches into a tight television schedule."

The Kennedys' Moment of Glory

Photograph by Larry Sharkey / Los Angeles Times July 15, 1960: Preceded by photographers, John F. Kennedy leads his entourage into the Coliseum. I believe the fellow in the lower left is Stanley Tretick, who frequently photographed Kennedy.  Los Angeles Times file photo The convention meets at the Coliseum to hear Kennedy. Notice the Dodgers’ baseball diamond.

On the jump, photos of Kennedy’s acceptance speech, Rose Kennedy and a fellow I believe is Edward Kennedy, although he isn’t identified in the caption information – and I can’t imagine what he was doing with the Wyoming delegation.

Johnson Chosen as Kennedy’s Running Mate

July 15, 1960: What seems obvious, if not inescapable, today was a shock at the convention. A Times editorial said: "Who would have dreamed before Thursday afternoon that Lyndon Johnson would be asked to be vice presidential candidate and would accept?" Times Political Editor Kyle Palmer called Johnson’s selection “unexpected but expedient.” James Reston of the New York Times said: "The story in Los Angeles -- this fabulous symbol of the new American empire beyond the Rockies -- is not really the rise of Sen. Kennedy. It is the story of the movement of history. It is the changing of the guard."

Adlai Stevenson’s Last Hurrah

Photograph by Otto / Los Angeles Times July 9, 1960: Agnes Meyer chats with Adlai Stevenson at a cocktail party in Pasadena.

It has always been difficult for me to consider Adlai Stevenson a serious candidate for president, and evidently American voters felt the same way. He half-heartedly sought the 1960 nomination after being defeated in 1952 and 1956, and clearly he was no match for marshaled forces of John F. Kennedy. Photograph by Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times  One of the key moments of the 1960 Democratic National Convention was a rousing speech for Stevenson by Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) urging delegates “Do not reject this man who made us all proud to be called Democrats, do not leave the prophet without honor in his own party.” Norman Mailer wrote in his Esquire magazine article: “One had not heard a speech like this since 1948 when Vito Marcantonio's voice, his harsh, shrill, bitter, street urchin's voice screeched through the loud-speakers at Yankee Stadium and lashed seventy thousand people into an uproar.”

The Protests

Photograph by R.L. Oliver / Los Angeles Times

Photographer R.L. Oliver wrote: “The Rev. Maurice A. Dawkins, minister of the People's Independent Church of Christ, started at midnight Sunday in a 24-hour vigil of prayer and fasting, advocating a liberal civil rights platform. In the rear are Freedom Marchers.” Interestingly enough, the photo evidently appeared in the earlier editions of The Times but wasn't published in the final, microfilmed version. On July 10, 1960, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a civil rights demonstration called the March on the Convention Movement for Freedom Now.  Activists marched from Shrine Auditorium to the Sports Arena and back to the auditorium, where Democratic officials addressed them. Many of the speakers were booed by the crowd despite pleas from Clarence Mitchell, an official of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People: "This is not the NAACP way. We do not boo our invited guests."

Kennedy Wins!

July 14, 1960: John F. Kennedy is chosen as the presidential nominee … and The Times disapproves. "Mr. Kennedy disturbs us because he made such a desperate game of winning the nomination. It is no sin to be ambitious; the ambition of his rival, Richard M. Nixon, is well known and of long standing. But there was a ruthless, all's-fair-in-love-and-politics quality in Kennedy's drive for the nomination, and one cannot be sure yet whether it is the game that he loves or the candle that he deserves." On the jump, analyses by The Times’ Kyle Palmer and James Reston of the New York Times.

The Bosses

Los Angeles Times file photo July 13, 1960: Robert F. Kennedy puts the arm on New York Democratic leader Carmen DeSapio as New York Mayor Robert Wagner and Rep. Michael Prendergast (D-N.Y.) listen.

This is one of my favorite photos from the convention because it strips away all the smiling for the camera and shows the raw muscle of politics.  Look at Bobby Kennedy’s hand. He means business. Much was written during the convention and afterward about the new generation replacing the old in American politics. Here’s a sample:  Theodore White  in “The Making of the President 1960,” (Page 155): ”Even such currently active politicians as Carmine DeSapio and Mike Prendergast, leaders of New York’s huge but impotent delegation, seemed of an ineffectual age, dazed and somewhat bemused. They strolled through the lobby of the Biltmore on their first day almost hand in hand, as if afraid to be alone in this sunny city and alien mingling of strangers, then retired to lounge by the swimming pool of the Ambassador Hotel.” Norman Mailer in his 1960 Esquire magazine article: “Bobby Kennedy, the archetype Bobby Kennedy, looked like a West Point cadet, or, better, one of those reconstructed Irishmen from Kirkland House one always used to have to face in the line in Harvard house football games. "Hello," you would say to the ones who looked like him as you lined up for the scrimmage after the kickoff, and his type would nod and look away, one rock glint of recognition your due for living across the hall from one another all through Freshman year, and then bang, as the ball was passed back, you’d get a bony king-hell knee in the crotch. He was the kind of man never to put on the gloves with if you wanted to do some social boxing, because after two minutes it would be a war, and ego-bastards last long in a war. “Carmine DeSapio and Kenneth Galbraith on the same part of the convention floor. DeSapio is bigger than one expects, keen and florid, great big smoked glasses, a suntan like Man-tan -- he is the kind of heavyweight Italian who could get by with a name like Romeo -- and Galbraith is tall-tall, as actors say, six foot six it could be, terribly thin, enormously attentive, exquisitely polite, birdlike, he is sensitive to the stirring of reeds in a wind over the next hill. "Our grey eminence," whispered the intelligent observer next to me. “Bob Wagner, the mayor of New York, a little man, plump, groomed, blank. He had the blank, pomaded, slightly worried look of the first barber in a good barbershop, the kind who would go to the track on his day off and wear a green transparent stone in a gold ring.” More photos of the bosses on the jump.

The Candidates

Los Angeles Times file photo

July 10, 1960: Sens. Stuart Symington, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy and former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson join hands at a Beverly Hills reception. This is one of only two group photos that I could find of the Democratic candidates in The Times archives and Sen. Hubert Humphrey is missing. In the second picture, taken on the last day of the convention, Stevenson is missing.  On the jump, more photos of the candidates.