Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Janet Flanner, during her many years in Paris as European correspondent for the New Yorker magazine, picked up the French love of epigrams. Genet, as she is known to the magazine readers, tried this out yesterday on a Town Hall audience at the Biltmore.
“The United States was the richest country in the world—that’s dandy. Now it is the only rich country in the world, which is terrible.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Sept. 23, 1907
Los Angeles
A crowd of 2,000—the faithful and the doubters—gathered at Echo Park Lake as black evangelist the Rev. J.L. Griffin prepared to baptize five believers in the cold water. Children climbed in the trees to get a better view, while other people watched from rowboats.
The rite was supposed to begin at 4 p.m., but several of the people were delayed and Griffin, who had been holding tent revival meetings in Los Angeles all summer, addressed the increasingly impatient throng.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
And then he was gone as if he had never been here at all. The hundreds of people who threw themselves at his feet to kiss the hem of his robes or simply to occupy the chair where he had been sitting were nothing but a memory.
He was Avak Hagopian, a somber 20-year-old from Kharadag in Azerbaijan, and working in Tehran as a mechanic—or a goldsmith—the stories vary. He paused one day as he was about to bring down a mallet and was struck with a vision, a vision that returned twice more. With faith in God, he would cure the sick, the blind and the diseased. The young man with the dark, intense eyes grew a beard and let his hair flow to his shoulders. He became “Avak the Healer” or “Avak the Great,” performer of miracles.
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Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Sept. 22, 1907
Los Angeles
She was 34 and a successful businesswoman. He was a 19-year-old bellboy at the Hollenbeck Hotel.
Emma and George Lloyd were married and for a time were quite happy, with Emma running her milliner’s shop at 2132 Downey Ave., and George getting a job as a waiter in an Eastside restaurant.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Sept. 21, 1907
Los Angeles
It is one thing to know in the abstract about racial intolerance at the turn of the 20th century and quite another to have to read it in the daily paper. I will spare you the long quotes in pidgin Chinese dialect, but trust me, they make the Charlie Chan movies look like models of multiculturalism.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Marie (The Body) McDonald, 23-year-old film actress, last night was married to Harry Karl, 33, shoe merchant, in a quiet civil ceremony at the home of Karl’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Karl, 829 N. Orlando St.
Superior Court Judge Edward R. Brand performed the ceremony, after which the wedding party attended a reception at the Mocambo restaurant on the Sunset Strip.
The couple will fly to New York for a three-week honeymoon, Karl said, and then return to live in Los Angeles.
Miss McDonald and Karl met at a Hollywood party 15 months ago. It was the second marriage for both. The actress divorced Vic Orsatti, theatrical agent, in Nevada five months ago. Karl was divorced from his first wife, Mrs. Ruth Karl, two years ago.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Sept. 20, 1907
Los Angeles
For weeks, Colorado mining investor John Geisel, 57, had confided in his diary as he felt his mind and his life coming unraveled “Good God,” he wrote, “for the first time today I began to fear that I could not control my thoughts.”
Sept. 18, 1947: The Sentinel reports the intriguing production of an all-black, musical version of “Camille,” produced by Thomas Hammond with a score by Serge Walter, lyrics by Rene Du Plessis, starring Herb Jeffries. A previous commitment prevented Lena Horne from appearing in the show, the Sentinel said.
A brief in the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 9, 1947) adds that Marvin Mar was adapting the novel for the production. Daily Variety reported (Sept. 10, 1947) that the production was supposed to open in Los Angeles and move to New York.
The New York Times reported (July 21, 1947) that the scenery was being designed by Sydney Engelberg. The Times said (Nov. 20 1947), that the production was sponsored by Ben Marden. Hammond told The Times that the production depended on whether he could sign Margaret Webster as the director. Webster was on the West Coast helping her ailing mother, Dame May Whitty, and wasn’t expected to return to New York for several weeks, The Times said.
The Sentinel and The Times said that a movie adaptation was also being discussed, to be filmed in England or Canada.
And none of it ever happened.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Adopted across the country and lampooned by Woody Allen, Los Angeles’ right turn on a red light was born in obscurity. Although the city used traffic semaphores (mechanical devices with metal arms reading “STOP” and “GO” that swung out of the signal—just like in the old cartoons and the opening of “Double Indemnity”) instead of lights, the right turn on red was in effect as early as 1939, when the City Council sought to ban them.
The state Legislature banned the right turn on red in 1945, but because cities were allowed to post exceptions, three survived: Mission Road at Macy Street and Sunset Boulevard at Castellar Street (now Hill Street), both downtown; and at Ventura and Lankershim Boulevards in the Valley.
Restored in 1947, the right turn on red remains the birthright of all L.A. motorists.
Bonus factoids: The city experimented with synchronized signals in 1922 to ease traffic. The length of a stop was cut from 45 seconds to 30.
“The traffic situation is Los Angeles’ single biggest problem,” The Times said — in 1924.
Somewhere, somebody is already thinking about a Black Dahlia costume for Halloween, so here is my annual reminder: Dressing up like the victim of a grotesque murder is not the look you want. Please rethink your choices. Thanks.
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Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
RIVERSIDE—A contingent of 369 Navajo Indian boys and girls from New Mexico and Arizona has arrived at Riverside’s famed Sherman Institute.
Many of the youngsters, who range in age from 10 to 18, will be introduced to formal schooling for the first time, but others are returning for the second year of the Navajo educational program.
Last year, emphasis was principally on trade schooling, but the younger Navajos, many of them unable to speak English, were brought here for basic schooling.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Sept. 17, 1907
Los Angeles
Mexican Independence Day was celebrated in a grand program sponsored by the Club Porfiro Diaz of Los Angeles at Turner Hall, 325 S. Main (demolished 1951), which was decorated with American and Mexican flags.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1944 MGM picture “Barbary Coast Gent,” with Wallace Beery, Binnie Barnes, John Carradine, Bruce Kellogg, Frances Rafferty, Chill Wills, Noah Beery Sr., Henry O’Neill and Ray Collins.
It was produced by Orville O. Dull, screenplay by William R. Lipman, Grant Garrett and Harry Ruskin, from an original story by William R. Lipman and Grant Garrett. Photography by Charles Salerno Jr., musical score by David Snell, art direction by Cedric Gibbons and William Ferrari, set decoration by Edwin B. Willis and Glen Barner, costume supervision by Irene and Kay Dean, makeup by Jack Dawn, directed by Roy Del Ruth.
“Barbary Coast Gent” has never been commercially released on DVD or VHS, but can be found on the gray market.
A postcard of Hamburger’s Department Store is listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $2.99.
Note: This is an encore post from 2013.
The classy, oversize May Co. Department Store located at 801 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles is up for sale. Today, the mostly empty Broadway Trade Center hosts makeshift swap meet stalls on the first floor in this once celebrated building, the largest department store west of the Mississippi River. Once known as Hamburger’s Department Store, the facility later operated as the May Co. Original owner Hamburger’s was a more elegant and upscale Wal-Mart, hosting every type of business under its roof, even a movie theater.
Hamburger’s Department Store ranked as one of Los Angeles’ premier shopping centers in the early 1900s. Asher Hamburger and his son David immigrated to Los Angeles from Sacramento in 1881, establishing the 20 x 100 foot People’s Store at Main Street and Requena. This department store featured mass but quality goods at fair prices, popular with penny-pinching consumers.
Also by Mary Mallory
Keye Luke
Auction of Souls
Busch Gardens and Hogan’s Aristocratic Dreams
Also on the Daily Mirror
On Location, the May Co.
Movieland Mystery Photo – Architecture Edition
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Sept. 16, 1907
Los Angeles
Occidental’s fall semester has gotten underway with a boisterous gathering in the Hall of Letters. The first order of business was to punish underclassmen who dared to wear corduroy trousers, a right restricted to the upper classes. “Offending students were unceremoniously shorn of the ‘extreme pegs,’ ” The Times said. “ In the roughhouse, Dean Ward was among those who went to the floor.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Low flying charges have been filed by the Civil Aeronautics Administration against Stanley Beltz, Lockheed test pilot, who reportedly took a four-engined Constellation down to 200 feet or less over a Playa Del Rey residential district last Friday.
The complaint, turned over to the CAA, declares Beltz violated minimum altitudes (1,000 feet), endangering lives and property.
Beltz denied being as low as householders reported. He explained he descended toward the coast to test a radio altimeter offshore.
This little brief appears to be nothing more than yet another of the many Times stories about pilots buzzing Los Angeles after the war, which seems to have occurred nearly every day. But in fact it leads to heartache and death.
Stanley A. Beltz was a prominent test pilot and after joining Lockheed in 1943 flew almost every type of plane the company made, except the F-90 and F-104 Starfighter. He piloted the first test flight of the C-130 transport from Burbank to Edwards Air Force Base in 1954.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
The ram’s horn, once a trumpet of war but now a symbol of faith, sounded at sundown yesterday in Los Angeles synagogues to mark the dawn of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana.
In Temple Emanuel, Beverly Hills, Rabbi Ernest Trattner told the congregation that “New beginnings come, not in new seasons, but in new attitudes. Solutions of life’s problems come, not in the passing of time, but in self-discipline and self-dedication. Let us start the year with God and keep step with Him all the year and peace and power and gladness shall be ours.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Further note: Rotten Tomatoes, gives this film 32% on the Tomatometer.
“The Black Dahlia,” directed by Brian De Palma, screenplay by Josh Friedman based on the novel by James Ellroy. Starring Josh Hartnett (Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert), Aaron Eckhart (Leeland “Lee” Blanchard), Scarlett Johansson (Kay Lake), Hillary Swank (Madeleine Linscott) and Mia Kirshner (Elizabeth Short). Universal Pictures.
(Contains spoilers. You have been warned)
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