Reminder: Boxie and I will be doing a live Ask Me Anything on the Black Dahlia case Tuesday, July 7, 2026, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube. The next Black Dahlia Book Club is July 21, 2026, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube.
Can’t make the live session? Email me your questions and I’ll answer them!
A publicity shot from Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. How many people can you identify?
Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), with a virtual who’s who of film comedians,will be shown in a 70-millimeter print Sunday (July 5) at 1 p.m. at the Fine Arts Theater, 8556 Wilshire Blvd., in Beverly Hills.
The showing will feature appearances by Kramer’s widow, Karen Sharpe Kramer; daughter Kat Kramer; and the last surviving cast member, Barrie Chase. Also attending are cast member Buddy Hackett’s son Sandy; and cast member Edie Adams’ son Josh Mills.
James Curtis will sign his latest book, Comedy Is a Grim Business: The Making of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The book, which goes on sale tomorrow, is also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, with copies through Larry Edmunds, Book Soup, Skylight Books, and Vroman’s.
Tickets to It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World are $10 and available online.
For Monday, we have two mysterious persons and a mysterious car. Continue reading
Update: Mamie Van Doren is hallucinating about her alleged “friendship” with Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.
Welcome to the sixth session of the Black Dahlia Book Club!
I finally got tired of talking about George Hodel and Steve Hodel (at this point, I know Steve’s monologues from memory) so I decided to spend some time looking at portrayals of the murder and the investigation. I consider myself first and foremost a historian of the Black Dahlia case, and think it’s important to examine the source material in detail to emphasize the challenges of researching the murder of Elizabeth Short.
Next month: Black Dahlia Ask Me Anything, July 7 on YouTube.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
July 1, 1907
Los Angeles
If you ever wondered if the Locomobile or Pope-Hartford got great gas mileage, the answer is no, as shown in the results of the 185-mile Lakeside Endurance Race. In cost and fuel efficiency, the 1907 automobiles were about the equivalent of a 2006 Ford Explorer (MSRP $31,650) or a Range Rover Sport (MSRP $56,085-$69,025).
The car with best gas mileage in the economy competition was the Pope-Hartford, 8½ gallons (21.76 mpg), in the class of touring cars costing $1,501-$3,000 ($30,805.88-$61,570.71 USD 2005).
Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Thus began a career that endured past his retirement in 1965—making way for Martin Bernheimer—until shortly before his death in 1990 at the age of 91. Goldberg was The Times’ first full-time classical music critic.
Construction of the Statue of Liberty, artwork by John Durkin, Harper’s Weekly, Jan. 19, 1884.
Note: This is an encore post from 2018.
Written in 1883 to help raise money for building the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty would stand, Emma Lazarus’ 14-line poem “The New Colossus” would take on a life of its own: becoming enshrined on the statue as a memorial to the poet and as a statement of welcome to those seeking refuge in our country. As we approach Independence Day, the meaning behind its words rings even clearer today.
Born July 22, 1849, in New York City as the fourth of seven children to wealthy merchant Moses Lazarus, Emma received a strong private education, learning to speak at least four languages and becoming an excellent writer, especially in poetry. Ralph Waldo Emerson mentored her. She translated works of literature as well as setting down her own odes, many based on romantic literature and others on troubling historic events regarding her fellow Jews, receiving much praise upon their publication. She also worked to alleviate the suffering of women and the poor.
Mary Mallory’s “Living With Grace” is now on sale.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
I’ll be putting that little landmark on my tour of the Black Dahlia crime scene, which is about three miles away. Bradbury’s first book got a press run of about 3,000 copies and sells for $1,000 to $4,000 and up.
June 26, 1947: Los Angeles Sentinel columnist Edward Robinson takes a trip to the University Station after LAPD officers discover that he is carrying two driver’s licenses. One identifies him as “white” and the other identifies him as “Negro.”
With all the digging I have done in old Los Angeles newspapers, I have never come across anything like this.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
An unknown press photographer in Long Beach captured them in a small fraction of a second, the old three-masted square-rigger and the brand-new helicopter: old and new, past and future.
Helicopters were exotic aircraft in 1947 and newspapers coined names like “the Flying Eggbeater” and “the Whirlybird” for them. Their strengths were quickly recognized, however, and in 1947 Los Angeles became the first U.S. city to use them for mail and express service. (Apparently the mail pilots had a habit of hovering over sunbathers, prompting a lawsuit by women members of the Santa Monica Ambassador Club). The DWP also began using copters to check power lines and they proved themselves in fighting a 3,600-acre wildfire in Big Tujunga Canyon, which killed two men and injured at least 75 more.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Gov. Warren is justified in his concern over the growth of gangsterism in California, dramatized by the effective and efficient taking-off of the charming but unlamented Bugsie Siegel.
The governor notes that the arrival in a community of one criminal is a relatively small matter. Likewise, the assassination of a crook is of no particular importance to a community, and grief at his passing is restricted to a minor and unselect circle. Gang wars have a way of settling themselves, and if the murderer of Siegel is caught, law enforcement officers are apt to express, in a mild manner, their gratitude.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
For the rest of his life, Sugar Ray Robinson was haunted by that eighth round in Cleveland. Haunted by the hard left to the jaw of Jimmy Doyle, who until the moment his head hit the canvas with a sickening thud was riding a string of victories to a chance at the title of welterweight champion.
Doyle, born Jimmy Delaney, was a classy fighter who made his professional debut June 6, 1941, at the Olympic. “Jimmy first attracted our attention by his old-fashioned standup stance,” Times sports columnist Al Wolf wrote. “He looked like a throwback to the days of John L. and Gentleman Jim as he stood there stiff-backed and stiff-necked, feet firmly planted, left arm extended in an upward arc. It could have been a picture from the Police Gazette of yesteryear.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
For me, stumbling across Jim Tully is one of those wonderful accidental discoveries that are a byproduct of research. He’s as obscure and forgotten today as he was famous in the 1920s. (His name has appeared exactly once in The Times in the last 20 years).
An Irishman with a natural gift for storytelling, Tully was almost entirely self-taught, which gave him a spare, unpretentious style that translates well to modern times, unlike the stale, artificial constructions of his more literary contemporaries.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1961 Columbia film Homicidal with Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin, Eugenie Leontovich, Alan Bunce, Richard Rust, James Westerfield, Gilbert Green and introducing Jean Arless. Continue reading
For several years, because of what she posted on her blog and now what’s in her so-called memoir, people have been badgering me about what Mamie Van Doren (age 95) thinks she “remembers” about her old pal Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. I ignored them as long as possible, but I reached my limit with this story by Ryan Coleman in Entertainment Weekly.
Titled You Thought I Was Dead: My Life of Celebrities, Sex, and Champagne, published in May by the Permuted Press, the book apparently features what Van Doren (presumably with the assistance of an uncredited ghostwriter) claims to recall about the 1940s in Hollywood. Life is far too brief to waste time fact-checking the alleged autobiography of a superannuated starlet of 1950s drive-in movies famed for her figure and fortunately, Amazon’s sample doesn’t include the Black Dahlia chapter or I would be forced to read it.
It’s enough to say that Van Doren’s main claims, as reported in Entertainment Weekly, are utterly untrue. Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
The day before, The Times reported a curious incident in which a bullet tore into the propeller of the plane shortly after it took off for Tulare, Calif., and had reached an altitude of 600 feet.
Police detained 14-year-old Ronald A. Husner, 3468 Greenwood Ave. in Mar Vista, who admitted being in the area shooting rabbits, but said he wouldn’t have been able to hit the plane with his .22-caliber rifle.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
June 18, 1907
Los Angeles
The victim: A collie named Baby
The plaintiff: Hazel G. (or Ella M.) Schurger, 1156 S. Flower.
The suspect: J.J. Brady of the Immigration Bureau, a next-door neighbor.
Note: This is an encore post and originally appeared in 2005 on the 1947project.
In the spring of 1968, Times reporter Charles Hillinger went up to San Luis Obispo for a story about a prison facility for elderly convicts, like John D. “Frenchy” Florence, 82, whose felony was unrecorded, and a thief named Simon Birdow, 78.
Gardening was particularly popular among the men, and Jesse Houston, 70, showed off his snapdragons, lilies of the Nile and hollyhocks, as well as his orchard of peaches and nectarines. Houston, Hillinger noted, had been the facility’s shuffleboard champion for three years.
Alas, I can’t find any photos of the original Thomas taxicabs that debuted in Los Angeles in 1908. The Western Motor Car Co. put this Chalmers-Detroit into service in Los Angeles in 1909. Continue reading
ladailymirror.com 