Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, May 20, 1940

May 20, 1940: “Hollywood After Dark …  At Ciro's, Dolores Del Rio drawing gasps with a gown of black net over a flesh-colored slip which looked like black net over Dolores,” Jimmie Fidler says.

John Wayne Denies Confrontation With Sinatra

 

John Wayne and Maria Cooper, left, and Frank Sinatra at fundraiser.

May 15, 1960: Witnesses say John Wayne and Frank Sinatra nearly got into a fight during a benefit dinner at the Moulin Rouge over Wayne’s comments about Sinatra hiring blacklisted writer Albert Maltz for “The Execution of Private Slovik.” Later in the evening, Sinatra and a companion allegedly roughed up a valet. The next day, Wayne denied that there was any confrontation with Sinatra. “I like Frank,” he said. The city attorney declined to file charges against Sinatra in the incident, but his companion, John Hopkins, was convicted of battery and sentenced to 10 days jail and a year’s probation for hitting valet Edward Moran. Moran also filed a $100,000 civil suit against Sinatra, but The Times didn’t report the outcome.

Beverly Hills Confidential

April 25, 1960: Beverly Hills Police Chief Clinton H. Anderson describes the Johnny Stompanato killing in “Beverly Hills Is My Beat.” The book, which also covers the Bugsy Siegel murder,  is readily available via Bookfinder. On the jump, hundreds of East Germans are fleeing to the West … Josephine Baker at the Huntington Hartford… and at an auction of Dodger souvenirs from Ebbets Field, one bystander says: “It looks like a bomb hit the place.” “Better that than what happened,” answered a Flatbush diehard, according to The Times.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 23, 1960

Wow! Now there’s an ugly layout, even for 1960.

Mash Notes and Comment       (Press Release)  "An actor, by name TV star Don Porter, decided he needed a publicist and dropped in to see me regarding same.     " 'I need publicity,' said Don.  'What kind can you give me?'       "Waiting a moment to extract my pipe, I replied, 'I've got two kinds, Don.  Notoriety and piety.  Which one do you want?' " (signed) Aleon Bennett, Public Relations, 8272 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood.      --Come on, Aleon, you could have said that with your pipe in your mouth.   ::       (Press Release) "One of the world's most lighthearted museums opened recently in Munich's 600-year-old Isar Gate.       "Dedicated to the memory of Karl Valentin, the Valentin Volkssaenger Museum displays sketches and songs of a beloved Munich humorist.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 20, 1960

Census Takers' Woes Myriad in a Big Way      Census takers take, among other things, oaths.     Before beginning their tours of duty, they solemnly swear that they are not Communists, fascists, blabbermouths or mixed up in payola.  They also take a pledge that -- no matter how distasteful or misrepresented they find working conditions -- they won't unite against Uncle Sam and go on strike.       This last little clause, I can tell you now, is going to save the Bureau of Census and the United States government from chaos unequalled in our 184-year history.       Before the government began recruiting enumerators, it sent out advance propaganda agents to lull prospective applicants into thinking that they would earn approximately $12 a day, whether they were paid by the hour or were paid a bounty for the heads which they counted.       Which was, even in these inflated times, a reasonable enough wage.

Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 19, 1941

April 19, 1941: “Franchot Tone beaued Olivia de Havilland to the Mocambo the other night, took her home at 11 -- and returned with another girl,” Jimmie Fidler says.

Bukowski From the Bottoms Up

Charles Bukowski reads his poetry in Redondo Beach

April 6, 1980: “After two hours, 16 poems, a lot of locker room laughs and two bottles of Concannon Petite Sirah, Bukowski and a few of his patrons were just this side of drunk and disorderly. Some words in his last poems slipped on the wine at times. And some of the verbal barbs tossed at him by the audience of mostly under 30 men and women had cruel edges now and seemed to sting a bit,”  Bill Steigerwald writes.

Artist’s Notebook: Outside the Edison

“Outside the Edison,” by Marion Eisenmann.

I thought it would be fun to write about the crowds that have revived downtown nightlife in the last few years, so late one Friday, Marion Eisenmann and I strolled up 2nd Street from The Times and studied the people waiting to get into the Edison.  It’s an ultra-hip club with an entrance in the alley and lots of arty-industrial metal stairs going down to what used to be the boiler room in the basement of the Higgins Building. There’s usually a long line on the sidewalk on Friday nights and sometimes a stretch limo is parked nearby. The flashy young crowd lined up for half a block and the packs of bicyclists that take over the streets are quite a contrast to the many nights when I left The Times Building to find that I had downtown to myself. Marion says: "It was easy to determine the color mode for this illustration. It was night, and the people lining up for the club were dressed in black or black and white." Note: In case you just tuned in, Marion and I are roaming Los Angeles in a project inspired by Joe Seewerker and Charles Owens’ Nuestro Pueblo. Anyone who’s interested in Marion’s artwork should contact her directly.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, March 3, 1960

Let Us Consider Case of Robert Martinez        Robert Martinez, I met by degrees.     There was the first letter from him six weeks ago.  In spelling that was hampered by the fact that he never got beyond the eighth grade, he told me that he was an ex-con looking for a job.     It's the kind of letter that I get ten, maybe a dozen, times a month.     I used to catch work for a few of them now and then, but the parolee grapevine just about ran me out of business.  I suspect that each one I helped told five of his job-hunting friends, who in turn, passed the word around to five of their friends.  Invariably, the mail load boomed after each success I scored.     And I'll tell you honestly, my successes weren't much to brag about.  Not many employers in town were willing to "gamble" on men who've made mistakes.      And those who were, I generally managed to alienate by pestering them once too often.      But back to Martinez.

Hearing on the Gas House, Part 2

Sept. 8, 1959: This is the second part of a transcript of testimony by “Holy Barbarians” author Lawrence Lipton before the the Los Angeles Police Commission on the Gas House, the Beat hangout in Venice.  Part 1 is here.

Waiters Go On Strike

Edmund Waller “Ted” Gale on the waiters’ strike.

Feb. 21, 1920: The Times satirizes a strike by members of the Southern California Waiters Assn. who wanted a raise of $1 a day [$10.66 USD 2008] and rejected restaurant operators’ offer of 50 cents a day.  The Times said waiters at first-class restaurants earned $7 to $8 a day in tips, or up to $85.28 USD 2008.  Bonus factoid: The Times opposed the evils of tipping in a Feb. 19, 1920, editorial.

Matt Weinstock, Feb. 18, 1960

Squaw Valley Squawk       Doubtless it is attributable to crotchety advancing age but the Squaw Valley gymkhana leaves me cold.  So a flock of virile young people are going sliding in the snow.  What does that prove?  Outside of the fact that the taxpayers get stuck for part of the bill, millions of dollars.       Sure, it's part of the Olympic Games which provide the setting for international goodwill.  Perhaps it's momentarily buried under a snow bank.  So far, more has appeared.  Instead, the Communist East Germans scored a bitter propaganda victory over the free West Germans in a  preliminary skirmish involving appeasement.       Then there's the game of hockey, a very rough, business.  Whoever heard of opposing players with sticks in their hands getting to love each other?  Mostly what has come out of Squaw Valley are squawks -- about the accommodations, about the ice and about the strange ways of foreigners.        But let us look on the bright side.  The Nevada gambling people never had such a windfall.   ::       IT IS CLEAR that Fred Whichello and Grant Cooper have done their work well.  Guests at Ben and Mickey Wayne's Valentine Day party were asked to represent great lovers.  Four couples came  as Dr. Finch and Carole.  "And each of us," whispers one of the four, "thought we were being terribly original."   ::       MODERN WOMAN She's aggressive, tyrannical,     outspoken, bold-- Most frightening of all,     she's just 5 years old.         TERRI McDANIEL   ::       ANOTHER thrilling chapter in the fantastic adventures of Reinhold Schmidt, Bakersfield grain buyer, comes from a press release from the organization Understanding.        Schmidt, as reported here, was scheduled to speak in Pasadena last Thursday -- if he  returned in time from a  space ship trip with friends from the planet Saturn to the pyramids in Egypt.       Miraculously, he made it.  To quote the press release:  "Schmidt was left off by his space friends in the mountains north of Pasadena approximately one hour before lecture time!"  The exclamation point is theirs but let us share it.       He told of his trip, again quoting, "to and under the pyramids where he was permitted to see an ancient space ship buried there."       So shame on all you unimaginative stay-at-homes who haven't accepted the space age.  You don't know what you're missing.   ::       ANY DAY NOW you may be seeing the slogan, "Help Stamp Out Phreatophytes."  It's the name of  a deep-rooted plant that absorbed and thereby wasted 25 million acre-feet of water last year in the western states.  Consider that the Department of Water and Power delivered only 515,000 acre-feet to the city's 2,400,000 residents last year.  Another comparison -- the thirsty plants drank more than the entire storage of Lake Mead.       Perhaps the menace could be dramatized in a TV western.  The hero, whacking away at a water-rustling phreatophyte at the last water hole, is caught in the act by the sheriff.  "It was him or me, sheriff," he says, handing over his machete.       Meanwhile, a bill has been introduced to Congress to investigate the unwelcome plant and find ways to eradicate it.   ::       AT RANDOM -- A scheduled interview with Page Smith, UCLA history prof, on the University Explorer program Sunday on KNX, dealing with Revolutionary War history, in connection with Washington's birthday, has been canceled.  Apparent reason: Smith has announced his candidacy for Congress in the 16th district . . . You'll have to take Mary O'Brien's word for it that a 16-year-old boy she knows saw the headline, "Five Asylum Escapees at Large" and asked innocently, "Where's Large?" . . . Publicist Elinor Churchin has instructed decorator Dean Reynolds to paper one wall of her Sunset Strip home entirely with subpoenas.  She has received about 30 of them, mostly civil suits in which she was a witness but also a grand jury summons involving Mickey Cohen . . . David Helfman of Santa Susana observes that the submarine in Argentine stays mainly on the under-scene.