Nov. 20, 1947: Bobby-Soxer Kills Girl, 5

Posted on November 20, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947
L.A. Times, 1947

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

Joyce, 13, came home that afternoon and told her father and stepmother what she had done. Her father, an auto body mechanic, ordered his wife and son not to say anything until he figured out what to do. The next morning, Joyce went to school as if nothing was wrong while her stepmother washed out her bloody clothes.

The next day, Joyce calmly faced four detectives, but collapsed in tears when her stepmother fell, sobbing, at her feet. Then she told her story.

Continue reading →

Posted in 1947, Black Dahlia, Crime and Courts, Homicide | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Nov. 20, 1907: Police Capture Streetcar Bandits

Posted on November 20, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Nov. 20, 1907
Los Angeles

Police battling the current crime wave say they have arrested two men who staged daring holdups on the Ascot Park and Eastlake streetcars, robbing the motormen and conductors as the cars reached the ends of their routes. These holdups had so infuriated local officials that Chief Kern armed bicycle officers with shotguns and ordered mounted policemen to resume patrolling the city.

In each case, robbers waited at the end of a streetcar route, when the trolley was empty except for the motorman and conductor, overpowered the men and robbed them. The bandits only took money or guns. Continue reading →

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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Hollywood Celebrates Christmas With a Parade

Posted on November 19, 2018 by lmharnisch

View down Hollywood Blvd. xmas Parade
The view down Hollywood Boulevard in 2014. Photograph by Mary Mallory.

Hollywood Boulevard, Santa Claus Lane
Photo: Santa Claus Lane, shown in a postcard on EBay, listed as Buy It Now for $8.50.

Note: The 87th Hollywood Christmas Parade, with Nancy O’Dell as grand marshal, is Sunday beginning at 5 p.m. This is an encore post from 2011, with an update from 2014. 


Created by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1928 as a way to boost holiday shopping on Thanksgiving weekend, the Hollywood Christmas Parade has endured for over 83 years under a variety of names. The first parade, called the Santa Claus Lane Parade, featured Jeanette Loff, Santa Claus, and a few floats. Its older cousin, the downtown Los Angeles Christmas parade, attracted tens of thousands and featured elaborate floats, like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, started by the New York Department store to increase sales.

Mary Mallory’s latest book, “Living With Grace: Life Lessons From America’s Princess,”  is now on sale.

Continue reading →

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on November 19, 2018 by lmharnisch

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This week’s mystery movie was the March 18, 1910, Edison production of “Frankenstein,” directed by J. Searle Dawley, photographed by James White, with Augustus Phillips, Mary Fuller and Charles Ogle. Music scored and performed by Donald Sosin.

The Library of Congress released this historic version of “Frankenstein” earlier this month after restoration by the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center at the Library of Congress. More about the restoration is here.

It can be downloaded here.

Continue reading →

Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , | 28 Comments

Nov. 19, 1907: Crime Wave Sweeps L.A.

Posted on November 19, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Nov. 19, 1907
Los Angeles

An influx of crooks, petty hoodlums and vagrants drawn by good weather and horse racing at Santa Anita are blamed for a siege of crime throughout the city. The jail is so crowded—300 being held in a building designed for 125—that 95 men arrested for intoxication between Saturday night and Monday morning were released because there was no room for them. Drunks who posed no danger were merely put on a streetcar for a ride home, The Times says.

Carl Chrisensen [Christensen?], who had just served two months for vagrancy, was among 35 men sentenced to the chain gang for being homeless. Officers said Christensen begged at the back doors of homes and wore fraternal pins of the Masons and Eagles to gain housewives’ sympathy. When arrested, he was found to be carrying burglary tools, and he was sentenced to six months’ hard labor.

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Nov. 18, 1907: Historic Pasadena Presbyterian Church Moved to South Pasadena

Posted on November 18, 2018 by lmharnisch


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.

 

Continue reading →

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Nov. 17, 1947: Miracle Red Toothpaste Tints Gums a Healthy Pink

Posted on November 17, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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.

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Nov. 17, 1907: A #MeToo Moment in the Monkey House; Opera Tenors in Trouble

Posted on November 17, 2018 by lmharnisch


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.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in 1907, Animals, Crime and Courts | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Nov. 16, 1947: Alvira Earp, Widow of Frontier Lawman Virgil Earp

Posted on November 16, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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1423 S. Van Ness

Posted on November 16, 2018 by lmharnisch


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.

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Nov. 16, 1907: Husband in Elaborate Disguise Shoots Estranged Wife on Streetcar

Posted on November 16, 2018 by lmharnisch

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.

Continue reading →

Posted in 1907, 1908, Homicide, LAPD, Streetcars, Transportation | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Nov. 15, 1981: Still Unsolved — Aspiring Screenwriter Killed in Hit-Run Staged to Look Like Rape

Posted on November 15, 2018 by lmharnisch

 

L.A. Times, 1981

Sue Latham 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.

Continue reading →

Posted in 1981, Cold Cases, Crime and Courts, Film, Hollywood, Sports, Transportation | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Nov. 15, 1907: Charles Mulford Robinson Drafts a Los Angeles of the Future

Posted on November 15, 2018 by lmharnisch


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.

Continue reading →

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Black L.A. 1947: Little Miss Cornshucks; St. Paul Baptist Church Plans a New Building

Posted on November 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Sentinel, 1947

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.

St. Paul Baptist Church Via Google Street View
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.

Continue reading →

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Nov. 14, 1947: Frightening Food From the 1940s – M.J.B. Nightcap

Posted on November 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

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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.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in 1947, Film, Food and Drink, Frightening Food From the 1940s, Hollywood, Streetcars, Transportation | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sept. 19, 1907: Deadlier Than Male

Posted on November 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

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.”

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‘Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood’ | One-Page Fact Check: Fail

Posted on November 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

Karina Longworth’s ‘Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood’
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:
Continue reading →

Posted in 1920, 1921, 1923, 1925, Another Good Story Ruined, Architecture, Film, Hollywood, One-Page Fact Check | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Black L.A. 1947: The Week’s Juke Box Hits

Posted on November 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

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“Since I fell for You” by Annie Laurie leads the Sentinel’s Juke Box Hits.

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Nov. 13-14, 1947: Deadly Violence in the Holy Land

Posted on November 13, 2018 by lmharnisch
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Nov. 13, 1907: Revolutionary Defense Fund

Posted on November 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

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.

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