Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay get married… (note that The Times used an AP photo)… will the Dodgers play at Wrigley Field? (no "Moon Shots" there, folks)… Sarah Churchill, daughter of a fellow named Sir Winston, gets popped for being incredibly drunk and magnificently abusive… Hollywood pioneer Jesse Lasky dies… and a deputy kills a teenager… So many stories and only one Larry Harnisch.
ladailymirror.com 
I recall reading Neil Sullivan’s fine book, “The Dodgers Move West,” and it was incredible how volatile the ballpark situation was only three months before the home opener. Had the Coliseum Commission not done an aboutface, the Dodgers’ early history in Los Angeles might have been considerably different.
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“President Eisenhower sent Congress today a record peacetime budget just short of 74 billion dollars. He said by far the largest part of it, almost two-thirds, is for defense against growing danger from Russia in “the dawning age of space conquest.”
At the time the only federal budgets that exceeded these were the ones of World War 2. In a few years, the WW2 budgets would be surpassed. Developing intercontinental ballistic missiles was a pretty expensive proposition.
Southern Calif. got it’s share of the defense dollars in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Probably more than its share. The trouble with that is the local economy became so dependent on defense spending is that with every military spending cutback, downturn or de-escalation, there was a corresponding downturn or recession in the Southern California economy. Could almost say that war was good for the local economy and peace was bad. Starting in the 1950’s, maybe even earlier, Southern California got hooked on defense spending. At the same time, California politicians were some of the most hawkish in the nation in those years. Coincidence?
I can’t believe all the front page headline stories about ordinary missile tests in the Los Angeles Times post-Sputnik. First UFO’s, then detailed accounts of every missile test the military was conducting. Must have been a lot of interest in those days.
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