Morrow Mayo didn’t do terribly well in the first page of his chapter on the 1927 Marion Parker case (“Strange Interlude”) in “Los Angeles.” Let’s see if the next page is any better.
We find that once again, Mayo has trouble quoting documents accurately. This is his version of William Edward Hickman’s telegram to Parker’s father:
In comparing this text with a photo of the telegram from the Los Angeles Evening Express, Dec. 19, 1927, we find that he dropped a few words and he misspelled Marion as Marian. The text actually reads:
[Marian] Marion secure. [Use good judgment.] Interference with my plans dangerous.
[Marian] Marion Parker
George Fox
[I apologize for the poor quality of the scan. It was a challenging day with the microfilm reader.]
Keep reading for a photo of a letter Hickman sent to Marion’s father compared with Mayo’s purported text of the letter. And I have to say that while Mayo’s transcription makes Hickman sound somewhat rational, seeing the actual letter, with its crazy quilt of cursive writing and printing, conveys some of Hickman’s lunacy.
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ALSO
Fact-Checking ‘Los Angeles’ – Part 1
Fact-Checking ‘Los Angeles’ – Part 2
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Any day I can do research is a good day – even if I run into trouble, as I did on Tuesday. I stopped by the Los Angeles Public Library to delve into the microfilm on the Marion Parker case. And here’s what I found in the Los Angeles Evening Express for Dec. 19, 1927. (Sorry about the quality of the scan. It was a challenging day).
No, your eyes aren’t fooling you. Morrow Mayo made a slight error in transcribing William Edward Hickman’s telegram. [It should be the special delivery letter]. And the names were below the text, as signatures.
ALSO
Fact-Checking “Los Angeles,” Part 1
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For many people, this will be an exercise in tedium. But I’m hopeful that the research fanatics among the Daily Mirror readers will find it engaging.
I’m going to spend some time on Morrow Mayo’s “Los Angeles” to examine its reliability. In other words, I’m going to fact-check portions of the book, mostly against reports from The Times.
Mayo often quotes The Times in his book, so we know he referred to it for some details, but we may find ourselves on a treasure hunt to unearth his other source material, so I expect to examine other period newspapers along the way, depending on just how far it’s worth carrying the whole matter.
I’m starting with “Los Angeles” because this is where most contemporary historians begin. To be sure, there are earlier works on the subject, but where they are dry, dusty and plodding recitations of the past, “Los Angeles” is a jaunty dash through history with a guide who gives readers a wink and a sly look as he promises to tell “the real story.” Mayo is an entertaining and engaging author, but (spoiler alert) he’s not especially accurate, and his errors, combined with his caustic commentary, have influenced generations of writers – even those who may not be aware that they are following in his footsteps.
Where to begin? I’ve decided to start in the last section of the book, rather than at the beginning, (the Portola expedition discovers the future metropolis is inhabited by “a tribe of circus freaks,” Page 6) or at the end, with Mayo’s bibliography, although it will be fun to examine his source material in another post, depending on one’s idea of fun.
In a brief biography on the book jacket, Mayo says that he spent six years in California working for various newspapers before he began “Los Angeles” in 1931, so I’m starting with an event that he observed first-hand: the sensational coverage of the 1927 abduction and killing of Marion Parker by William Edward Hickman. One would expect that a newsman would be fairly accurate in writing about an event that occurred a few years earlier and was still fresh in his memory. But is he? Let’s put him to the acid test.
Before going further I should note that the Hickman case involves a particularly gruesome killing of a 12-year-old girl and the original accounts in The Times are extremely graphic. I’m not much on ghoulish sensationalism so I don’t plan to recount everything that was done to Marion Parker unless it’s necessary to contrast it with Mayo’s version of the crime.
Here’s Page 293 of the chapter titled “Strange Interlude.”
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