President, enroute San Diego, visits L.A., urges McAdoo's reelection

You don't have to be a history buff -- although it probably would help -- to get a charge out of the photos our brother blogger Larry Harnisch has assembled over on The Daily Mirror.

They're from The Times' coverage 70 years ago today of the visit to Los Angeles of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Note the president's own rail car, Railroad One, the 1930s equivalent of Air Force One.

The crowd members in their straw hats. The president driving past Broadway and 7th. Protesters demanding the end to an embargo on trade with Spain.

And the president waving his hat -- wait a minute, a president wearing a hat? -- as he prepared to deliver a speech from the back of his Baltimore & Ohio train.

There, standing forlornly next to him is L.A. Mayor Frank Shaw, who was supposed to introduce FDR. But the president ignored him and just started the speech without introduction, according to The Times account the next day.

That's something The Ticket would have definitely blogged about back then, had there been such a thing as an Internet, a blog and ourself.

Worth a look over here.

--Andrew Malcolm

Photo credit: The Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Tony Quinn]

Well, you did not talk about McAdoo. In those days California had an August primary, and incumbent Sen. Wm Gibbs McAdoo was defeated in the Democratic primary by Sheridan Downey, who ran against him from the left. Downey went onto serve 12 years in the Senate, but did not runfor re-election in 1950 giving up the nomination to the "pink lady," the "communist line voting" Helen Gahagan Douglas. But she was "pink down to her panties" and lost to, guess who, Richard Nixon.

See, history can be fun.