Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Nov. 18, 1907
South Pasadena
Calvary Presbyterian Church at Center (now El Centro) and Fremont was dedicated in a service featuring prominent local religious leaders, including Dr. John Willis Baer, president of Occidental College.
The Times notes that the original church building was located on Columbia Street, but the location was inconvenient, so the church bought the Nazarene Chapel on Center.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
This dental accessory, imported from England, surfaced in Los Angeles in November 1947 and by January 1948 had altered its slogan slightly to “Wine-Colored Toothpaste,” in ads featuring “local model Betty Reid” and offices at 8572 Hollywood Blvd. It apparently vanished from Los Angeles drugstores in 1954, but continued to be sold in the United Kingdom with offices based at 225 Bath Road, Slough SL1 4AU. A Google search reveals that it remains elusive but in demand in 2005. A user writes “the effect is not at all Dracula-like.”
Quote of the day: “A child born now can expect to live to be 100 if he’s given proper care in infancy and youth, and if he avails himself of present medical knowledge through his adult years.”
Dr. Edward L. Bortz, president of the American Medical Association.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Nov. 17, 1907
New York by direct wire to The Times
Something curious seems to be going on with opera tenors in the monkey house at New York’s Central Park; perhaps there’s an atmosphere that lends itself to “annoying” people, for the problem of mashers at the monkey house has even inspired a 1907 movie by Biograph.
Luckily, Detective J.J. Cain is on the lookout for malefactors who make lewd advances, having arrested Enrico Caruso the year before.
As promised, here are views of the home of Mrs. E.N. Eskey, featured in The Times in 1907. Note the damaged chimney, presumably the victim of seismic Darwinism.
And as a bonus, here’s the home of Igor Stravinsky, which I found in West Hollywood. It was here that Stravinsky and W.H. Auden began writing “The Rake’s Progress” in 1947. When I found the house, I struck up a conversation with a man across the street who was hosing off his driveway. He said had inherited his parents’ house and that when he was a young boy, he met Stravinsky.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Nov. 16, 1907
Los Angeles
Mrs. Amanda Cook (she is also identified as Jennie and Mary) came to Los Angeles from Boston in 1906 with two of her children in search of her husband, Frederick, a union plasterer and bricklayer. She advertised in the newspapers without success and finally took a job as a cook at the Juvenile Detention Home.
Persuaded by her cousin to seek a divorce, she hired attorney George W. MacKnight, who sought out her errant husband and began divorce proceedings.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Sue was 29, tall, blond and athletic with dimples every time she smiled—her big, clunky glasses the only thing that might betray a degree in quantum mechanics—when she left her husband in Austin, Texas, and a job writing for scientific journals, found an apartment right below the Hollywood sign and began turning out screenplays. She had just finished “Death in New Venice,” about a female detective.
Early one morning shortly before Thanksgiving, while it was still dark, she parked her Mercedes at Gladstone’s, 17300 Pacific Coast Highway, the usual gathering spot for the Santa Monica Swim Club, which was planning a bike ride up the coast to Point Mugu.
Some swim club members avoided this newcomer, who had arrived in Los Angeles two months before, because she seemed unsophisticated and took risks that weren’t appropriate for life in a huge city. “Her eyesight wasn’t that great, she’d never lived by the water and here she was swimming before sunrise in the cold ocean,” said Richard Marks, one of her friends.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Nov. 15, 1907
Los Angeles
Architect Charles Mulford Robinson has drafted a proposal for downtown Los Angeles that is stunning in its ambition. One portion calls for broad boulevard leading from a proposed Union Station at Central and 5th Street toward Grand, ending at a new public library and art gallery. The other, equally elaborate, calls for a grouping of civic buildings and terraced gardens around North Spring Street, including a new City Hall.
“First of all, and most important in his mind because Los Angeles is a leading tourist center and should strive to make a good impression at the very start, the architect suggests an immense union railroad station with an approach a mile long—a wide thoroughfare lined with beautiful buildings, with spacious parkways, rows of flowering trees and ornamental lamp posts, and with driveways for all classes of traffic,” The Times says.
Nov. 13, 1947: Little Miss Cornshucks is at the Last Word, 4206 Central Ave. The Last Word opened in July 1947 and seems to have closed in 1951. Or at least it was no longer advertising in the Sentinel.
On the jump: Columnist Edward Robinson writes about the Rev. John L. Branham and his plans to build a church at 50th and Main streets.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
1. In the top of a double-boiler, combine 1 egg yolk, 1 tablespoon powdered sugar and ¼ cup triple-strength M.J.B. coffee. Half-strength or triple-strength, the mellow goodness of those top-of-the-crop coffees makes M.J.B. double-delicious. Then…
2. Place over boiling water and whip with wire whisk until thick and light. Sniff that fragrant M.J.B. aroma while you’re whisking—it’s a hint of the extra flavor M.J.B.’s “individual roast” coaxes from each coffee bean. Finally….
3. Add mixture to 1 scant cup of hot milk, blend well. Serve at once—and hop in bed to dream of M.J.B. for breakfast. For even with sleepy eyes half-shut in the morning—you can’t make a bad cup of M.J.B.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Sept. 19, 1907
Los Angeles
“Hidden somewhere in Los Angeles is a daredevil Spanish woman who should be standing with the Mexican revolutionaries when they are arraigned here in the United States Court,” The Times says.
“Letters recently confiscated show that she was the most daring and reckless anarchist of all the band. Her name is Maria Talivera. She is said to be a beautiful and attractive woman. Her friends and even her husband regarded her as a quiet housewife, intent on cooking frijoles. But in her fry pans she was seeing men fighting, hearing in the sizzle of the grease the clash of arms, the pound of horses’ feet and the din and commotion of a nation’s government overthrown.”
The one-page fact check of Karina Longworth’s “Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood” was even more successful than I expected. Well done, Brain Trust. Grade: Fail.
Ready? Here we go:
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Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Nov. 13, 1907
Los Angeles
An uproarious meeting was held last night at Simpson Auditorium to raise money for the four Mexican revolutionaries being held in the Los Angeles County Jail. The hall was packed with “revolutionists, Socialists, labor unionites, atheists and others of that ilk,” The Times said, noting: “A wild-eyed anarchist with a smoking bomb in his hand was the only thing needed.” “The audience was composed mainly of Mexicans and Spanish-Americans, but not of the better class,” The Times said.
A red flag was hoisted above the Stars and Stripes and red crepe paper was strung throughout the hall, while music was provided by a Mexican orchestra of boys and girls “who were supposed to represent the purity of the cause,” The Times said. Mexican women pelted defense attorney Job Harriman with flowers when he began his address.
Here’s a “fun” challenge. How many mistakes can you spot on the first page of “Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood?”
A friend who has written many distinguished books on Hollywood emailed me over the weekend about Sheila O’Malley’s review in the Los Angeles Times of Karina Longworth’s “Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood.”
An ad for “I Accuse” in Exhibitors Herald, Nov. 5, 1921.
The “war to end all wars” ended November 11, 1918, at 11 am. After four years of butchery, gas attacks, hand-to-hand combat and trench warfare, soldiers walked away from their hellholes stunned by the conflagrations they had seen. Ambitious leaders seeking increased power amid growing nationalism, military rivalry and pure hatred inflicted gross bloodshed on their weary citizens. Many people around the world found the conflict a barbarous mess, a vast killing fields rendering munitions makers multimillionaires and ordinary men just cannon fodder. Many cried out for disarmament and the end to war.
One such patriot was renowned French director Abel Gance. Rejected from serving at the front due to lingering effects from tuberculosis, the young man served as stretcher bearer, carrying gravely injured men from the front. He abhorred the destructive war, writing in 1916: “How I wish all that those killed in the war would rise up one night and return to their countries, their homes, to see if their sacrifice was worth anything at all. The war would stop of its own accord, horrified by its own awfulness.” Turning his outrage and anguish into poetry and passion, Gance created the moving film “J’Accuse” in 1919, a powerful cry for universal disarmament and an indictment against victory at any cost.
Mary Mallory’s latest book, “Living With Grace: Life Lessons from America’s Princess,” is now on sale.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1936 Paramount picture “The Big Broadcast of 1937,” with Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Burns, Martha Raye, Shirley Ross, Ray Milland, Frank Forest, Benny Fields, Sam Hearn, Benny Goodman and his band, and Leopold Stokowski and his symphony orchestra. Screenplay by Walter DeLeon and Francis Martin, based on a story by Erwin Gelsey, Arthur Kober and Barry Trivers, photographed by Theodor Sparkuhl, special effects by Gordon Jennings and Paul Lerpae, art direction by Hans Dreier and Robert Usher, music and lyrics by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin, musical direction by Boris Morros, dance ensembles staged by LeRoy Prinz, interior decorations by A.E. Freudeman. Produced by Lewis E. Gensler and directed by Mitchell Leisen.
“The Big Broadcast of 1937” has never been commercially released, but you can find it on the gray market.
Thanks to the member of the Brain Trust who requested “The Big Broadcast of 1937.”
If you have a mystery movie request, send it in!
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Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project..
Andrea Brodine, 6, for whose life many have prayed since she was stricken by a deadly paralysis two weeks ago, walked again at the Huntington Memorial Hospital yesterday—supported by a mechanical carrier device but strongly on the road to full recovery.
The little girl’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Brodine, 839 Lincoln Ave., Pasadena, were in despair when she was first taken to the hospital. Their daughter, suffering a type of spinal paralysis, seemed doomed to die.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Nov. 12, 1907
Los Angeles
Half a block from his home at 1131 Westlake, John P. Shumway Jr. was badly injured when the carriage he was driving collided with the 11th Street trolley. Shumway was thrown about 20 feet, striking the pavement head-first, and the horse ran for the stable, pulling what was left of the smashed carriage, witnesses said.
Shumway was carried to his home, where his father, Dr. John P. Shumway, treated him for a concussion, bruises and cuts. A year later, the family filed a personal injury suit against the Los Angeles Railway, seeking $10,355 ($204,938.83), although The Times failed to report the outcome of the trial.
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