October 25, 1943: Three bandits who hit a handful of businesses met their match at a cafe at 1306 S. Main St. when they tried to hold up assistant manager Joe D. Poindexter.

Two of them came into the cafe and ordered tomato juice. When Poindexter opened the cash register to ring up the sale, they drew guns.

“As I was handing the money over, one of the men leaned across the counter with his gun in his hand. I grabbed it from him and both ran out to a car parked in front, where another man sat at the wheel,” Poindexter told The Times. ” I fired through the plate-glass window and one man stumbled and almost fell. I believe I hit him in the arm and leg.”

They came back the next day and threatened Poindexter, breaking the door to the cafe and yelling “We’ll get you yet” when he wouldn’t let them in. One of the men had his right arm in a sling, apparently from their previous encounter with Poindexter.

Fred MacMurray’s last picture at Paramount is “Girls Town” with Veronica Lake, Hedda Hopper says. “No wonder he wants to free-lance,” she says. “He’s making too many pictures.”