Few Killers Are Executed, Reports Show

Nov. 13, 1909: More than 100 murders were committed in the 30 years since the capital punishment law was passed, but only five killers from Los Angeles County have been executed, The Times says. A convicted killer has a 1-in-20 chance of being executed, statistics show. A severed thumb is the key evidence in the trial of Burt Thornburg on charges of trying to burglarize the store of Yee Sam, 515 N. Main St. … And a judge drops charges against a motorcyclist accused of going more than 30 mph. (He said his motorcycle wouldn’t do 20 mph).

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 9, 1959

Trials and Tribulation of Doodles Weaver     It's an axiom thought up by Sir Isaac Newton and perpetuated by Hollywood:     What goes up must come down.     And its proof sat in front of my desk, in striped shirt and gaudy suit, a shade less subtle than mustard.     His professional, comical name was Doodles Weaver.     "People think I'm important," he was explaining to me.  "Everybody's heard of Doodles Weaver.  The American public really likes me."     With nervous vigor, he tamped the tip of his burned-out cigar in an ashtray on the edge of the desk.     Then he said, "But I can't get a job.  In this town, I can't."      Doodles Weaver gave his age as 44.     "Actually, I'm only 43.  I'll be 44 next May," he corrected.  "I tell people around Hollywood I'm 44 though," he added, smiling feebly.  "Maybe they'll give me some Walter Brennan parts."     Ten years ago, the name Doodles Weaver demanded, and got, $1,000 a week for entertaining the people in Vegas.     Last year, the figure scribbled next to the words "gross earnings" on the comedian's income tax return was $4,200.  This year it promised to be even less, he said.     It was a long, painful fall -- the kind where you bounce off ledges on the way down.     But it's nothing new to Hollywood.     There are hundreds in town -- names you know -- who'll tell you that they've read from the same script.  They'll tell you that when you're making it, you better hang onto it.     But they, like Doodles, testify with keen hindsight.     "I never invested a cent," Doodles told me.  "I never really thought I'd need to.  It was just last year that I finally got around to putting a down payment on a house.  Two thousand dollars.  All my savings."     It's a modest, two-bedroom place in Burbank.  There he lives with his wife, Rita, and year-old daughter, Janella.  They're expecting another child.     He still drives a Cadillac, but he's not exactly putting on a front with it.  The car's 10 years old; and he still owes $400 in payments.     As he talked about himself, I got the impression that Doodles was still in the state of shock.     "The agents.  No matter what agent I got, they all tell me the same thing.  'Everybody knows you, Doodles.  When something comes along, they'll call you.'     "I used to get tickets to the premieres, invitations to the big parties.  Now, nothing. 'Top Ratings . . . Going Great'     "Two years ago, I had a kid show," Doodles sighed.  "Top ratings.  Going great.  The kids love me.  But the station did some rescheduling and I was out.     "Now," he went on, "I pay the bills by doing dinners, banquets.  Chamber of Commerce.  They're people, like everybody else, and they love me.  I put them in the aisles."     Doodles Weaver stood up, lit his cigar, which again had died, and pointed at me.      "You tell me," he said.  "I've still got good stuff.  Real good stuff.  The people outside of show business still have faith in me.  But in the business, I'm lucky if I get one day's work a month."     Havana in hand, Doodles Weaver left.     He did call me, however, the next day.  "Did you hear the news, Paul?" he asked.     "No," I answered.     "I just been promised a new kids' show on TV and got a solid week of good work in a movie," he said.  "I told you things would change."     This, also, is Hollywood.

Woman Wants to Buy Airplane

Nov. 5, 1909: Mrs. H.A. Arnold wishes to buy an airplane and hopes to learn how to fly during the winter. She would become the first woman in the world to buy an airplane, The Times says … And an possible lead on the Denver Strangler of 1894.

Matt Weinstock, Nov. 3, 1959

Lockheed has plans for a monorail system for Southern California. Haven in Cyprus     How does it go, one may wonder, with those resolute citizens who muster the courage to drop everything and leave the rat race for peace and quiet elsewhere?     John Plake, Hollywood publicist, who made the big decision some months ago, writes from his haven in Nicosia, Cyprus: "I just saw where the Dodgers were in the World Serious, or am I mistaken?  I don't understand baseball very well but as far as I could tell Charles Neal made two touchdowns.  Looks like L.A. is getting Togetherness through baseball.  Norrie sure made headlines in his clash with Mr. K.  Where was Sheriff Biscailuz all that time?  We're happy here.  We don't have any anxieties about how we're going to pay the rent.  I'm only afraid that at the end of three years I won't be fit for employment in the states.  I've always said I would like to have been born 75 years ago and it's pretty much like that here."     One gets the notion that John not only doesn't care about progress but is also opposed to the inalienable right of every American to have a nervous breakdown. ::      NOW AND THEN the editors of the erudite Yale Review get out a brochure to prospective subscribers that is itself an experience in reading.  The current one has this passage: "We would by no means imply that we can give you only a filboid studge kind of justification for reading The Yale Review.  We require of our writers lucidity and so far as their matter permits, grace."     Who you calling a filboid studge, Mac? :: ALTERNATIVE Our State Dept. says that     Russia needs To woo us not with words     but deeds, So: what if Pravda's crude     condemning Gives way to rude ICMB-     ing? --F. MENDELSOHN JR. ::     IT WAS, as authorities reported in relief, a safe and sane Halloween.  Oh, maybe a little mischief here and there but no real mass vandalism.      Out my way, for instance, some boisterous boys swiped the huge, hollowed-out pumpkin from a neighbor's doorstep, tossed it high in the air and let it fall with a pistol-shot squash in front of my house.  Quite a mess to clean up next day but you figure on things like that.     On the other hand there was the group of hysterically babbling teen-age girls, about a dozen of them, who pounded so hard on the door they almost broke it in.  When it was opened they stormed into the house, screaming like outraged witches.  They didn't wait to be handed candy bars, they snatched them rudely out of my hands and, without a thank you, took off into the night, ranting wildly.     Gave me the frightening feeling that Halloween is no longer so much boisterous as it is girlsterous. ::     BY CONTRAST there was the happy 6-year-old boy who came to the door and, on receiving his tribute, held out his hand, containing two jelly beans, and said joyfully, "Here's some for you!"  This youngsters parents are going to have to take him in hand and teach him the rudiments of blackmail or he'll be out of it. ::     A LAWYER ran into a police lieutenant he has known for  a long time and said, "I heard you got transferred -- what did you do?"      "I don't know," the bewildered officer replied.  "All I did was say there was no such thing as the Mafia." ::     AT RANDOM -- A man phoned the Shrine Auditorium for some information about the opera "Andrea Chenier" and John Northcutt briefly outlined the plot in which two principals are beheaded.  "Is it a tragedy?" the caller inquired . . . If a Santa Monica cutlery shop wants to know who has been phoning and asking for Mack the Knife, I have  a full confession from the culprit . . . A Redondo Beach couple who went into a restaurant in Big Bear for breakfast were puzzled by a note attached to the menu stating, "Please do not order boiled, poached or scrambled eggs today."  They concluded the chef was eggcentric or possibly an eggomaniac . . . Inevitably there's a windshield sticker that states: "Help Stamp Out Traffic Cops."

Young Adventurer Sent Home

Nov. 1, 1939: Charles Conner of Chicago, who ran away at the age of 14 to fight in the war, is sent home after a remarkable series of adventures. At one point, when the ocean liner carrying him was stopped by a British patrol for nine days, he decided to swim 2 1/2 miles to shore … And Jews are fleeing Vienna for “a reservation in former Polish territory.”

Brubeck Quartet at Reseda High School

Dave Brubeck at Reseda High School: $2.

Oct. 24, 1959: Don’t worry. That train crash is actually in Canada ... The New York district attorney is considering perjury charges against Charles Van Doren and Hank Bloomgarden, who voluntarily made substantial changes in their testimony about rigged TV shows.  Dist. Atty. Frank S. Hogan refuses to reveal what the changes were.

L.A. County Seeks to Curb Smog

Oct. 24, 1959: Smog continues to blight Los Angeles. City Hall is barely visible from Temple and Hill streets. And Walter O'Malley promises that Dodger Stadium will be dignified.

Matt Weinstock, Oct. 21, 1959

Above and Beyond         For sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty, a colleague asks a typographical paean for Jerry Leshay, associate director of the George Gobel TV program.  An associate director's job is to make the show go.  Working from a booth, he co-ordinates all the action.  He signals performers to cut or stretch.  He cues the orchestra.  He alerts those who go on next.  He cuts in the commercials.  Everything is timed to the second.  Above all else, the show must end on time.      Last week, as the program finished on a high happy note -- Gobel was in fine form -- and the credits were being run off, Jerry saw he was a few seconds over.  Here was a crisis.  Credits may be a bore to watchers but they're the lifeblood of a TV staff.     With calm martyrdom Jerry, low - that is, last -- man on the totem pole, pulled the switch on his own credit.   ::       THE MATTER OF COMMUNICATION gets high priority these days.  In order to understand the Russians, for example, we are reminded constantly that we must first communicate with them.  Well and good.  But apparently we also have certain problems of communication at home.     While in Atlanta recently a local lady named Esther came upon a delightful exchange.  A priest, transplanted from New York, informed the rectory housekeeper that he and another priest would be gone for a few days.     "Oh, y'all gonna be gone?" she asked.      "No, not all of us," he replied, "just two of us."     "I don't mean all y'all," she said in exasperation, "I just mean some y'all."   ::   NEEDLED No, I didn't sew this gown. And further I confess Until you asked that     question I'd rather liked this dress.     --JUNE R. DRUMMOND   ::        THE PAPERS had a  story a few days ago about the Sierra Madre gendarmes breaking up a wild beatnik party attended by bearded youths and black stockinged girls; and arresting two young men for intoxication.     Not quite so, says a young man who was there.  It was a beatnik-theme costume party, attended by Pasadena City College drama students, little theater actors, insurance salesmen, lawyers and a photo lithographer.  Two uninvited guests drank too much, this informant says, were tossed out, and blew the whistle on the group as a bunch of beatniks.     It's getting so an innocent bystander can't tell the beatniks from the neatniks.   ::       WHEN THE brush fire in Angeles National Forest broke out and for a time threatened foothill homes, a young man in Van Nuys phoned his aunt, who lives in Altadena, to find out if she were in danger.  She wasn't.  The fire had headed toward her home for a brief period, then turned north in the nick of time.     They began checking regularly, and their calls took on a pattern.  As they chatted, the nephew would report the PBY was taking off again from the airport near his home and pretty soon the aunt would report it had just come over and dropped its load of borate solution on the fire.     "Just keep that stuff coming and we'll be all right," she would say.     They never felt closer.   ::     AROUND TOWN -- It's a big year for Fairfax High, except maybe in football.  No. 1 grad of course is Larry Sherry, World Series hero.  Close behind is Daniel Pollack, 24, who placed eighth in the 1958 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow won by Van Cliburn.  Pollack, born in L.A., at last is getting recognition in his home town.  He'll appear in a concert tomorrow at Wilshire Ebell . . .

Matt Weinstock, Oct. 20, 1959

Memorable Speech       Almost a week later, those who heard it are still tingling over H.C.(Chad) McClellan's talk before the Rotary Club.     McClellan, 62, L.A. paint company executive and onetime NAM president, organized and managed the U.S. exhibit in Moscow, which 2,700,000 Russians visited in its six-week run last summer.     He represents capitalism, a hate word in Russia.  Yet in his five months there he earned the respect of the Russians by his blunt sincerity.  He spoke the same way to the Rotarians.     "We've spent nearly a trillion dollars in my lifetime fighting wars," he said.  "Sure, we've safeguarded our country, but we've lost 1,500,000 casualties.  And after every war we've merely switched partners and gone into the dance again, with a greater threat to our nation and at higher cost."     Now, he went on, we're confronted with the possibility of a war of extermination.     "YOU'RE NEVER going to solve this one," he said, "with a chip on your shoulder or hatred in your heart."       He continued, "People think Communists are dastardly villains because of their acceptance of a concept with which we disagree.  I met dozens of young Communists -- the freshest looking, nicest kids you ever saw.  They're simply misguided, misled, misinformed -- not evil.  Sure, there are bad men at the top.  We get bad men at the top of some of our organizations here."     His plea:  "You don't shove people, you communicate with them."     From a man like McClellan these seem words to remember.   ::       CARL WINFIELD of Whittier prizes a trophy he win in a bowling tournament as  a classic example of the literal mind at work.  When presented, it had a tag on it requesting him to denote how he wanted his name engraved.  He wrote that he'd like it in block capitals.  And that's the way the inscription reads, "Carl Winfield In Block Capitals."   :: DEFINITION Seventy-two commercials Screamed with evict and elation - That, my lords and ladies, Is "station identification."     J.R. MCCARTHY    ::       OOPS, a story in a Montebello paper stated that a clergyman would give a sermon on "The Meaning of Immorality."  On the other hand, maybe that's what he meant, not immorality . . . On a higher education note, a calendar of future events for an SC organization lists a "beer burst" for May.  For those who barely finished high school, it's still "beer bust."   ::       IN ANNOUNCING his transfer from the L.A. to the S.F. office of the Western Beet Sugar Producers, Lee Goodman sent out a press release stating, "Prior to getting into public relations, Goodman was one of the more distinguished reporters at the Los Angeles Daily News in that he owned and often wore a tie.  In his youth he attracted considerable attention as perhaps the most unbearably enthusiastic member of the Emerson School of Self Expression Bugle and Drum Corps."     And man, did he look funny, wearing that tie, and no shirt.   ::       ONLY IN L.A. -- Sunday night a stern old gent, with his stern old spouse beside him, was driving an old Cad on Hollywood Freeway.  On the back was a big sign, "Vote for MacArthur for President."  Adds Bill Peters who saw it, "There was a full moon."   ::       MISCELLANY -- A man on the phone said he keeps dreaming that when he inhales a cigarette, smoke comes out of his ears and he wakes up coughing.  Told him this corner's dream interpretation service has broken down and advised him to try some place else.  Suspect a fun-loving friend of a friend . . . House to house magazine subscription solicitors, some of them trained, out-of-state boys and girls using a sob story, are swarming here, the California Intelligence Bureau warns . . . An old car parked beside a beach house Sunday at Malibu had painted on the rear, "Tourist Go Home."  An expert in these matters thinks it was also directed at dropper-inners.

Residents Flee Big Tujunga Fire, Oct. 16, 1959

Oct. 16, 1959: Mae West is censored … and Gov. Pat Brown hints that he may show mercy to Caryl Chessman. Audrey Hepburn in “The Nun’s Story.”

Local freeways would need "major surgery" to handle the traffic from Dodger fans heading to Chavez Ravine, the general manager of the city's traffic department told the traffic commission. S.S. Taylor said at least 65% of fans attending Dodger games at the yet-to-be-built ballpark would be using freeways. His report was based on studying traffic patterns used by fans at two Dodger games against the Giants in August. The traffic problems were of great magnitude but not insurmountable, Taylor said. Well, I knew there was some good news to be found. -- Keith Thursby