In case you just tuned in, I’m doing a little fact-checking as I go through Scotty Bowers’ “Full Service.” This will be fairly tedious except to a research drudge.
In my last post, I began examining an alleged 1946 encounter between Scotty Bowers and Walter Pidgeon. According to Bowers’ account,
Then, just as I was about to leave, a shiny Lincoln twodoor coupe drove up. It was a big, swanky, expensive car. Only someone rich and famous drove something like that.
Fact-Checking “Full Service”: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
You might assume that after dwelling on whether a Lincoln of this era had air conditioning (answer: no) I might be ready to move on.
You would be wrong.
I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to determine what kind of car Pidgeon was driving in this era. A Nov. 18, 1946, Hedda Hopper column refers to an accident, but that’s all.
There’s also a reference to this incident in the journal Motion Picture for 1947, but Google’s snippet view provides only partial information.
At least we know that Pidgeon 1) could drive and 2) had a car. Those might seem like somewhat absurd statements, but when one is checking a book at the molecular level everything is fair game – and “Full Service” is clearly a book that needs to be checked at the molecular level.
ladailymirror.com 
Larry–when I was doing some gas station research in the early 1980’s, I visited the ARCO headquarters in that monstrosity at 555 S. Flower St. On one of the upper floors they had kind of a museum. In their files were many (but probably not all) photos of their stations around Southern California. I understand the company museum is no longer there but you might drop a call to their public relations dept. and ask to look at the photo file.
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