Black L.A. 1947: Drag Ball Planned for the Avodon Ballroom in DTLA

Posted on August 16, 2018 by lmharnisch

Google Street View
The site of the Avodon Ballroom at 843 S. Spring St., via Google Street View. 

Aug. 14, 1947, Drag Ball

Aug. 14, 1947: A drag ball is planned for the Avodon Ballroom, 843 S. Spring St. Although the Sentinel didn’t follow up on the event, drag balls were mentioned regularly in the paper.

The earliest reference I could find in the clips was from 1934, when a drag ball was planned for the Elks Temple, 3616 Central Ave., on Christmas Eve 1934.  Promoter Tony Collins offered a $250 prize ($4,700 USD 2018) for the best impersonator. “Judges will be the leading dressmakers from Hollywood and Los Angeles,” the Sentinel said.

Drag Ball, Club Alabam
An undated photo of a drag ball at the Club Alabam, image from the Gordon-Beverly Collection at UCLA.

Collins promoted another drag ball to be held in July 1935 at the Club Araby, 55th Street and Central Avenue. Collins said 4,000 people attended his previous drag ball at the Elks Temple.

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Posted in 1947, African Americans, Black Dahlia, Dance, Downtown, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Nightclubs | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

August 16, 1947: L.A. Widow Says Louisiana Sheriff Failed to Protect Husband From Lynch Mob

Posted on August 16, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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

His face and body were burned with a blowtorch so that his eyes popped out of his head. He was beaten with a wide, flat object, like a belt or a wide plank. His wrists were hacked with a cleaver and he was partially castrated.

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Black L.A. 1947: Nellie Lutcher’s ‘He’s a Real Gone Guy’ Leads This Week’s Juke Box Hits

Posted on August 15, 2018 by lmharnisch

Aug. 14, 1947: Nellie Lutcher’s “He’s a Real Gone Guy” is this week’s No. 1 juke box hit, according to Murray’s Record Shop, 1055 E. Vernon. “True Blues” by Roy Milton is No. 2.

On the jump, Ask Evangeline helps a young man who is paying off his dead relatives’ debts. “If only I could find a girl who would go along with me until I had some money I might find some happiness too. Please tell me what to do.”

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Aug. 15, 1947: India Formally Partitioned Into Two Nations

Posted on August 15, 2018 by lmharnisch

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

NEW DELHI, Aug. 15 (Friday) (U.P.)—The proud British Empire of India died last night as the clocks struck midnight.
Two independent nations were born at the moment of its death—the dominions of Hindustan and Pakistan.

Adm. Viscount Mountbatten, great-grandson of Queen Victoria in whose name India was made an empire 70 years ago, ceased to be viceroy and became governor general of Hindustan.

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Aug. 14, 1947: L.A. Telephone Exchanges, Adams to Whittier

Posted on August 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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

The growth of Southern California was reflected in a Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. report issued yesterday. The company said that the number of telephones it has in service in the Southland has increased more than 50 per cent since Pearl Harbor, more than 25 per cent since V-J Day.

R.L. Sawyers, division telephone manager, said that at the beginning of the war the company had 852,000 telephones in service in Southern California. The number had reached 1,021,000 by the time peace came and today it stands at 1,290,000. The increase for the last two years reached a total of 269,000 telephones.

And there are still insufficient telephones for all potential subscribers. About 149,000 applicants are waiting.

Los Angeles Telephone Exchanges:

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Black L.A. 1947: ‘A Song Is Born’ a New High in Interracial Pictures

Posted on August 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

image


Aug. 14, 1947: The Sentinel runs a feature on “A Song Is Born” (working title: “That’s Life”) in production at the Goldwyn studios. If the plot sounds a bit like “Ball of Fire,” also made by the Goldwyn studios, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on August 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

Aug. 18, 2018, Mystery Photo

This week’s mystery movie has been the 1959 film “Gangster Story,” with Walter Matthau, Carol Grace, Bruce McFarlan (MacFarlane), Raiken BenAri (Raikin Ben-Ari), David Leonard, John Albright and Clegg Hoit (Hoyt). Screenplay by Paul Purcell, based on an original story by Richard Grey and V.J. Rhems (Rheims), music supervision by Alex (Alec) Compinsky, title song “The Itch for Scratch” written by Leonard Barr, Ronald Bloomberg and Ted Stanford. Photography by Max Glenn, produced by Jonathan Daniels and directed by Walter Matthau.

“Gangster Story” is available on Amazon.

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , | 33 Comments

Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Hale’s Tours Offer Virtual Reality in 1906

Posted on August 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

George C. Hale
George C. Hale in the Salt Lake City Herald, Oct. 20, 1905.

Note: This is an encore post from 2016.

Technology changes often move with the speed of lightning, upending life as it moves hurly burly into a brave new world. The early 1900s saw many new-fangled products introduced such as radio, air conditioning, and vacuum cleaners, while several relatively new inventions such as telephones, automobiles, and electricity moved more into the mainstream.

In the same way, motion pictures began undergoing their own revolution around 1905-1906, when retired Kansas City Fire Chief George C. Hale introduced his Hale’s Tours and Scenes of the World to paying audiences. Filmgoing would soon move beyond kinetoscopes into nickelodeons and eventually movie palaces. More importantly, audiences would no longer just view a movie, but experience it as well.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

 

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Aug. 13, 1947: ‘Cuando Lloran los Valientes’

Posted on August 13, 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.

Imagine my surprise to find that The Times reviewed Mexican movies, usually in critiques signed “G.K.,” who praised this classic of Mexican cinema starring Pedro Infante, Virginia Serret and Blanca Estela Pavon, who won the Best Actress Ariel for this film.

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Aug. 12-13, 1907: Bucket of Blood Is a Den of Drunken Debauchery

Posted on August 13, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Aug. 12-13, 1907
Los Angeles

Despite the name Bismarck Cafe, police call the saloon at Main and Winston Streets the Bucket of Blood because it’s a continual source of crime and violence.

It is a place, The Times says, “of drunken debauchery among girls of tender ages, painted women and men. Into this immoral pesthole, young girls are enticed nightly to drink and listen to a band concert. Although the police make arrests in this dive every night, it is allowed to run unmolested.”

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Aug. 12, 1947: Distinguished UCLA English Instructor Dies in Plunge from S.F. Building; ‘He Was Not Married’

Posted on August 12, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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

Dr. Stanley Dean Johnson sounds like quite a fellow. He’s a specialist in the works of John Donne, having received his bachelor’s and master’s from the University of Missouri and his doctorate from Yale, where he was Phi Beta Kappa.

He taught English at Northwestern from 1939 to 1943, when he enlisted in the Army, and was discharged as a first lieutenant in the Transportation Corps in 1946. In the fall, he was hired as an English instructor at UCLA.

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Aug. 11, 1947: Two Men Found Shot to Death in Bizarre Mystery

Posted on August 11, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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

Someone found them shot to death on the floor of the Portal Motel at 2775 N. Cahuenga: two men completely clothed except for their shoes, each with a bullet in the head and another in the stomach. The pistols, one of them a Japanese Nambu war trophy, were also recovered—each had been fired twice.

Their cars were in the parking lot. One was registered to 25-year-old Robert Haskell Blum, 4671 Pickford St. The other belonged to 27-year-old John Darold Sever, 539 Ruberta Ave., Glendale. Maps show that the Portal Motel is about midway between the two homes on the main highway between Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

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Aug. 10, 1947: North Broadway Tunnel, Doomed Downtown Landmark

Posted on August 10, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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

image Building contractor Robert Beryle regarded the 762-foot Broadway tunnel, excavated in 1901 through Fort Moore Hill, as his masterpiece. Another crew was building the 1,045-foot 3rd Street tunnel at the same time and an informal competition developed between the two to see which would be finished first.

In 1949, the city decided to remove Fort Moore Hill, where another Beryle building, Los Angeles High School, was located, as well as the Broadway tunnel.

Beryle died Oct. 17, 1949, at the age of 90, a few days before the arch, all that was left of the Broadway tunnel, was pulled down. In his final days, Beryle often told his family stories about the tunnel’s construction, so they kept the secret that it had been destroyed.

In 1948, The Times’ list of tunnels included:

  • The Newhall tunnel, completed by the Southern Pacific in 1876 and excavated by Chinese laborers.
  • The Hill Street tunnel, built by Pacific Electric in 1913.
  • The 2nd Street tunnel, 1924.
  • Pacific Electric Subway, 1925.
  • Tunnel linking Vermont and Western Avenues in Griffith Park, 1928.
  • Sepulveda Boulevard tunnel, 1930.
  • Figueroa tunnels on the Arroyo Seco Parkway, 1931-1936.
  • Tunnel beneath Crenshaw Center department stores, c. 1948.
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Aug. 9, 1947: 2 Firefighters Die Fighting Big Tujunga Canyon Blaze

Posted on August 9, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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

Their names were Carl Joseph Masterson and Edward Jerome Duffy, who went by the nickname Harry. Carl was 40, born in Kansas and lived at 1032 Julius St. in Downey. Harry was 21, born in Nebraska and lived 2061 Saturn Ave., Huntington Park.

Carl was stationed at the Lopez Canyon guard station and Harry worked in the Deer Creek firefighting camp. They suffocated when they were caught in a ravine while fighting the Big Tujunga Canyon wildfire, which burned 3,600 acres in four days before thunderstorms gave the mostly volunteer crews the upper hand.

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Aug. 8, 1947: Two Years of Peace Haven’t Healed Wounds of World War II

Posted on August 8, 2018 by lmharnisch

Aug 8, 1947, L.A. Times  
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

L.A. Times, 1947The Times runs a picture page, taking stock of changes since the end of the war. In Nijmegen, Holland, townspeople adopt the graves of men from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions who died taking Nijmegen Bridge.

In Essen, Germany, mothers struggle to feed their children one meal a day. At the current rate, it will take 130 years to rebuild Essen, The Times says. Elsewhere, women at the Dachau war trials hide their faces from news photographers.

On Corregidor, the jungle is overgrowing military emplacements. “The rock-strewn tunnels still hold bones of Americans,” The Times says.

And then there’s Paris, where Christian Dior is unveiling what will become known as his “New Look,” creating a terrible scandal not only because his creations use so much fabric—but because his model’s dress is unbuttoned to the waist, revealing a pink brassiere.

“The audience of sophisticates—buyers and fashion writers, many from the United States—gasped. Unbelievers, they thought the mannequin had forgotten to button up. But she tossed her head and swung slowly around.”

“The men like it, you know,” a Dior saleswoman whispered to the dubious.

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Black L.A. 1947: L.A. Sentinel’s Lost Pages

Posted on August 7, 2018 by lmharnisch

Los Angeles Sentinel

The Aug. 7, 1947, issue of the Sentinel isn’t in the archives, so I won’t be posting this week. Tune in Aug. 14, when I’ll resume.

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Aug. 7, 1947: Marriage of Elizabeth Sheedy to Timothy Doheny a Highlight of Social Season

Posted on August 7, 2018 by lmharnisch


Aug. 7, 1947, Doheny Sheedy Wedding

Aug. 7, 1947, L.A. Times

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

BY CHRISTY FOX

Outstanding on the summer bridal calendar was the wedding yesterday of Elizabeth Sheedy, daughter of Mrs. Martin Sheedy and Frank Ainsworth Sheedy, to Timothy Michael Doheny, son of Mrs. Leigh M. Battson of Beverly Hills and the late Edward Laurence Doheny Jr. The ceremony took place at 4:30 p.m. in All Saints Episcopal Church, Beverly Hills.

Rev. Herbert J. Smith officiated in the presence of assembled friends and relatives. The church was beautifully decorated in all-white flowers with candles and clusters of gardenias marking the aisle and gardenias and dahlias at the altar. A reception followed at Los Angeles Country Club where bridal white flowers were used similarly.

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Aug. 7, 1907: Too Late for Wife to Repent Marriage to Abusive Husband, Judge Rules

Posted on August 7, 2018 by lmharnisch

 


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Aug. 7, 1907
Los Angeles


He swore at her and told her to go to hell. He rarely worked and only helped her run their boarding house when he felt like it. She hid all the butcher knives to keep him from killing her and their little girl. She hid his pistol in a bag of rags and sold it. She threw his razor down between two houses.

Finally, she sought a divorce after he came home drunk Feb. 22, 1907, and began hammering on the doors, threatening to break them down, and promising to kill her and their daughter, who had sought refuge with one of the lodgers in their boarding house.

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Scotty Bowers’ Mountain of Lies — Not the Hill I Care to Die On

Posted on August 6, 2018 by lmharnisch

Full Service

Scotty Bowers’ mountain of lies is not the hill I care to die on. But be assured that he has told a mountain of lies. Have you seen even one photograph of him with one of his alleged amours? Scotty and Spencer Tracy? Scotty and Katharine Hepburn? Scotty and, well, any A-list celebrity, really? Rin-Tin-Tin? Trigger? Flipper? Nellybelle?

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Posted in Another Good Story Ruined, Books and Authors, Film, Hollywood, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on August 6, 2018 by lmharnisch

Aug 11, 2018, Mystery Photo

This week’s mystery movie has been the 1949 film “Lost Boundaries, with Beatrice Pearson, Mel Ferrer, Susan Douglas, the Rev. Robert H. Dunn, Richard Hylton, Grace Coppin, Seth Arnold, Parker Fennelly, William Greaves, Leigh Whipper, Maurice Ellis, Edwin Cooper, Carleton Carpenter, Wendell Holmes, Ralph Riggs, Rai Saunders, Morton Stevens, Alexander Campbell, Royal Beal and Canada Lee.

Based on William L. White’s “Document of a New Hampshire Family” from Reader’s Digest, screen adaptation by Charles Palmer, screenplay by Virginia Shaler and Eugene Ling, additional dialogue by Maxime Furlaud and Ormonde de Kay. Art direction by Herbert Andrews, makeup by Fred Ryle, props by Fred Ballmeyer, music by Louis Applebaum, musical direction by Jack Shaindlin, additional songs by Albert Johnston Jr., Herbert E. Taylor and Carleton Carpenter. Photographed by William J. Miller and directed by Alfred L. Werker.  Presented by Mantle Pictures, a Louis de Rochemont production.

“Lost Boundaries” is available on DVD from Warner Archive.

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , | 29 Comments