May 24, 1907: LAPD Motorcycle Officers Charge Driver and Passengers With Speeding

Posted on May 24, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

May 24, 1907
Los Angeles

Otis Skinner, the actor starring in “The Duel” at the Mason Opera House,” is under arrest because of a curious regulation in which passengers of a speeding car are charged with breaking the law. Col. Henry Wyatt of the Wyatt Lyceum Circuit was giving Skinner and his manager a scenic tour of Los Angeles when Wyatt’s chauffeur was stopped by motorcycle Officers Humphreys and Green on 7th Street east of Figueroa as they returned to the theater.

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Black L.A. 1947: America’s First Black Ballet Company Founded in L.A.

Posted on May 23, 2018 by lmharnisch

May 22, 1947, Black Ballet Company

May 22, 1947, L.A. Sentinel


May 22, 1947: I cannot do justice to Joseph Rickard in a brief blog post. It’s enough to say that he was a visionary who began what is probably America’s first black ballet troupe, predating the Dance Theatre of Harlem by 22 years.

According to his 1994 obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Rickard, who was white, got the idea of founding the company when he saw a receptionist turn away a little black girl who wanted ballet lessons.  He signed up the girl and her mother for lessons, The Times said.

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Posted in 1947, African Americans, Dance | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

May 23, 1947: Lloyd Osbourne Dies; Inspired Stepfather Robert Louis Stevenson to Write ‘Treasure Island’

Posted on May 23, 2018 by lmharnisch


May 23, 1947, L.A. Times

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

The May 23-24 papers are full of great, crazy stories. It’s hard to choose just one:

Is it Britain about to partition India, which got buried on an inside page?

The Nebraska picnic, or the goat that had quintuplets? You could be serious and talk about the cost of living being at an all-time high. But then again, you’ve got two Irish setters being served with summonses because their late master, Carleton R. Bainbridge, left most of his $30,000 estate for their support.

Maybe it’s film composer Franz Waxman being reviewed (positively) as a symphony conductor. Or J. Robert Oppenheimer giving a talk at Caltech.

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Black L.A. 1947: Racism on the Menu as Bullock’s Tea Room Refuses to Serve Blacks

Posted on May 22, 2018 by lmharnisch

Google Street View
The former Bullock’s downtown store at 7th and Hill Streets, via Google Street View.

May 22, 1947, L.A. Sentinel
May 22, 1947: The campaign to integrate the tea room of Bullock’s downtown store apparently began with Edith Cotterell, who had an account at the department store for two years. Cotterell and two of her friends were escorted to a table, given menus and water. And then they sat.

Twenty minutes later, Cotterell asked the hostess why they hadn’t been served. She was told that the waitresses “refused to serve Negroes and there was nothing that could be done about it,” the Sentinel said.

The store’s manager, Franklin Archer, told Cotterell that the store did not discriminate, but “if the waitresses refuse to served anyone, there is nothing the management can do about it.”

Cotterell and her friends weren’t the only African Americans to receive such treatment. One prospective patron waited five hours without being served, the Sentinel said. White patrons who asked why the black customers hadn’t been served were told “It’s none of your business.”

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May 22, 1947: Art Club Calls LACMA Exhibit ‘Subversive Propaganda’

Posted on May 22, 2018 by lmharnisch

May 22, 1947, Art Club, L.A. Times

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

The California Art Club yesterday lambasted the current Los Angeles County Museum art exhibit—the museum’s eighth annual show—as favoring “radical art” and containing “subversive propaganda.”

…Edward Withers, painter and retiring president of the 500-member club, wrote [museum Director James H.] Breasted Jr. that his group cannot “condone the expenditure of tax funds for the display of subversive propaganda inimical to our form of government.”

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Posted in 1947, Art & Artists, Museums | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Trash

Posted on May 22, 2018 by lmharnisch

 

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Posted in Black Dahlia, Books and Authors, LAPD, Streetcars | Comments Off on Trash

Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: 6533 Cahuenga Terrace, Designed for a Diva

Posted on May 21, 2018 by lmharnisch

image
An overhead view of 6533 Cahuenga Terrace, via Google Street View.

Hyperbole reigns in the world of real estate listings, inflating a dump into a dream palace or attempting to gild a lily. Nowhere is this more prevalent than around the Los Angeles and Hollywood area, where fictionalized listings purport to be the former homes of motion picture stars, particularly Theda Bara, Charlie Chaplin, and Valentino. Most of the time, reality far outshines the make-believe concocted by realty agents. Such is the case with 6533 Cahuenga Terrace, which listings have claimed possessed Theda Bara, Pola Negri, and Rudolph Valentino as owners, but was built in 1923 for opera prima donna Maude Lillian Berri, a little gal from Fresno, with a story fit for the movies.

Born Maude Lillian Berry July 10, 1871, in San Francisco, the star-to-be grew up as one of the daughters of “Commodore” Fulton Berry, early California pioneer. The family moved to Fresno when she was a child, where her father became a raisin and oil industrialist and later member of the Bohemian Club and top yachtsman. Miss Berry, raised to be a lady, lived at home and sang in the local church choir before moving to San Francisco and singing in the First Presbyterian Church choir. The young lady also possessed a wicked sense of humor, with the Marion Daily newspaper reporting August 15, 1907, “Miss Berri says she began to sing when she began to talk.”

Mary Mallory’s latest book, “Living With Grace: Life Lessons from America’s Princess,” will be released June 1. Update: June 30.

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Posted in Another Good Story Ruined, Architecture, Hollywood, Hollywood Heights, Mary Mallory, Music, Stage | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on May 21, 2018 by lmharnisch

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This week’s mystery movie has been the 1970 film “The Boys in the Band,” with Kenneth Nelson, Frederick Combs, Cliff Gorman, Laurence Luckinbill, Keith Prentice, Peter White, Reuben Greene, Robert La Tourneaux and Leonard Frey. Written and produced by Mart Crowley, photographed by Arthur J. Ornitz, production design by John Robert Lloyd, costumes by W. Robert La Vine, set decorations by Phil Smith, editing by Carl Lerner and Gerald Greenberg, directed by William Friedkin.

“The Boys in the Band” is available on DVD from Amazon.

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , | 44 Comments

May 21, 1947: South Carolina Jury Acquits 28 in Lynching

Posted on May 21, 2018 by lmharnisch

March 22, 1947, L.A. Times

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

For the record
An earlier headline on this post incorrectly reported the length of the jury’s deliberations. It was five hours and 15 minutes, not 15 minutes.

A few weeks after the acquittals in the lynching of Willie Earle, who was suspected of killing a cabdriver, Los Angeles Assemblymen [Gus] Hawkins and [??] Allen introduced a resolution in Sacramento urging Congress to pass a Federal anti-lynching law. [In 1962, Augustus Freeman “Gus” Hawkins became the first African American elected to Congress from a Western state].

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Posted in 1947, African Americans, Crime and Courts | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

May 21, 1907: J.G. Fleenor ‘Barefoot Burglar’ Talks!

Posted on May 21, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

In a jailhouse interview before he was taken to San Quentin, James G. Fleenor, the barefoot burglar, set the record straight on his escapes, his relationship with a white woman and how he began a life of crime.

It had been rumored that Fleenor returned to Los Angeles after escaping from a San Francisco jail because of his relationship with Mrs. B.J. Byres of 1669 Tennessee St. He insisted that he hopped the first freight train leaving the yard and discovered later that it was going to Los Angeles.

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Posted in 1907, Black Dahlia, Books and Authors, Crime and Courts, LAPD, Real Estate, Streetcars | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

May 20, 1947: Madman Muntz Sells Cars at a Bargain

Posted on May 20, 2018 by lmharnisch

May 20, 1947, Madman Muntz

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

Posted in 1947, Transportation | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

May 20, 1907: James G. Fleenor, L.A.’s ‘Barefoot Burglar,’ Recaptured!

Posted on May 20, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

May 20, 1907
Los Angeles

Night jailer O.L. Gilpin thought the man in the drunk tank looked familiar—and indeed he was. Despite passing himself off as George Thompson, it was our old friend James G. Fleenor, otherwise known as the “barefoot burglar,” who walked out of a San Francisco jail en route to serving a prison term at San Quentin and hopped a freight train to Los Angeles.

“I was fair about the whole thing,” Fleenor told The Times. “When the officers left here I told them I would escape, but they were not bright enough to realize I meant what I said. When they placed me in that cell in the San Francisco station, I walked about and inspected it. Awaiting my time, I pried open the door.

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Posted in 1907, Black Dahlia, Books and Authors, LAPD, Streetcars | 2 Comments

Black Dahlia: A Note to Fans of Piu Eatwell’s ‘Black Dahlia, Red Rose’

Posted on May 19, 2018 by lmharnisch


Dear fans of Piu Eatwell’s “Black Dahlia, Red Rose” (I know there’s at least a few of you because you write to me):

Leslie Dillon was absolutely, positively in San Francisco when Elizabeth Short was killed.

Nothing else matters. Not allegations of police corruption, not claims about coverups, nothing about what may have happened at the Aster Motel. All of that is merely camouflage to conceal the fact that Dillon was hundreds of miles away when the killing occurred.

End of argument.

Posted in 1947, Black Dahlia, Books and Authors, Cold Cases, Crime and Courts | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

May 18, 1947: Friends Raise Money to Buy Prosthetic Legs for Boy Injured by Unexploded Bazooka Shell

Posted on May 18, 2018 by lmharnisch

Oct. 18, 1948

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

Members of Cub Scout Pack 522-C gathered more than 32 tons in a paper drive to help buy artificial legs for injured pack member Jackie Cooper, 12.

Jackie and his friend, Lee Seely, 11, are being treated at General Hospital after an April 26 blast that occurred when one of the boys dropped an unexploded bazooka shell that someone found at Seal Beach, home of the Naval Weapons Station. Lee was hit in the abdomen with shrapnel and Jackie’s legs were amputated, his right leg below the knee and his left leg at mid-thigh.

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Black L.A. 1947: Sheriff’s Deputy Reprimanded for Striking Sentinel Staffer With Gun

Posted on May 18, 2018 by lmharnisch

Florence and Hooper, via Google Street View
Florence Avenue and Hooper Avenue, via Google Street View.

May 1, 1947, Police Brutality Charged

May 1, 1947, Police Brutality ChargedMay 15, 1947: About 3 a.m. on April 17, 1947, Louis V. Cole of the Sentinel advertising department was delivering tear sheets of that week’s ads when his car stalled.

Cole was standing at Florence and Hooper Avenues trying to hail a cab when a patrol car from Firestone substation of the Sheriff’s Department passed and apparently circled the block and stopped.

Deputy L.A. Thorne approached Cole and ordered him to take his hands out of his pockets.

“Cole’s compliance was apparently not quite rapid enough,” the Sentinel said. “Thorne ‘assisted’ him with a stunning blow on the arm” with the barrel of his pistol.

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Posted in 1947, African Americans, Crime and Courts | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

May 18, 1907: Black Worker on Search for Lost Lumber Gets in Fatal Fight

Posted on May 18, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

May 18, 1907
Los Angeles

William Mullen, a black strikebreaker for the Pioneer Truck Company, was delivering a shipment of lumber when he realized that he had lost some of his load and retraced his route to look for it.

At the Southern Pacific railroad crossing at Alameda and 2nd streets, Mullen noticed some lumber leaning against a shack belonging to a railroad flagman named Caulfield, who was presumably white. Mullen asked Caulfield if there was more of his lumber inside the shack and Caulfield said no.

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Posted in 1907, 1908, African Americans, Animals, Crime and Courts, LAPD, Photography, Streetcars | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on May 18, 1907: Black Worker on Search for Lost Lumber Gets in Fatal Fight

Black L.A. 1947: ‘Whites Only’ Jobs as Black Unemployment Rises

Posted on May 17, 2018 by lmharnisch

L.A. Sentinel, 1947

May 15, 1947: The Sentinel calls for a federal fair employment practices act. Below, racial preferences in classified ads in the Los Angeles Times.

 May 15, 1947, Los Angeles Times May 15, 1947, Los Angeles Times
May 15, 1947, Los Angeles Times May 15, 1947, Los Angeles Times
May 15, 1947, Los Angeles Times May 15, 1947, Los Angeles Times
Posted in 1947, African Americans | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Black L.A. 1947: ‘Whites Only’ Jobs as Black Unemployment Rises

May 17, 1907: Wife-Beating, Speeding Drivers and a Slashed Burro

Posted on May 17, 2018 by lmharnisch

May 17, 1907
Los Angeles

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

The Le Canns continued their spat in court after Mrs. Le Cann showed Judge Chambers a piece of skin she said was torn from her lip when her husband, Fred (also listed as Ferdinand), shoved her as she was calling the police.

“He threatened to kill me and I’m afraid to death of him,” she testified.

The husband cross-examined the wife (apparently that’s how things were done in 1907), demanding: “Who gave you those diamond earrings you were wearing that day?”

Mrs. Le Cann refused to answer and the quarrel resumed until it was squelched by the judge in dismissing the case.

In the meantime, Charles Richmond was fined $40 ($820.94 USD 2005) for beating his 18-year-old wife and is facing a trial June 5 on charges of disturbing the peace.

“The husband cross-questioned his wife yesterday while she was on the witness stand. He tried to make the woman admit that he has been kind and attentive to her,” The Times said. “She was poorly dressed and seemed to fear the man. She declined to testify in his favor and the court found Richmond guilty.”

* * *


Anna Larson of Boyle Heights pleads not guilty to slashing a burro with a knife… J.W. Church is fined $10 for speeding after he struck stenographer K.M. Spooner with his auto at 3rd Street and Broadway… M.J. Lester is fined $10 for beating his son Rial, 13, so badly that he was covered with welts and had to be treated at the Receiving Hospital. The Times identifies Lester as being black.

Posted in 1907, Black Dahlia, Books and Authors, LAPD, Streetcars | Comments Off on May 17, 1907: Wife-Beating, Speeding Drivers and a Slashed Burro

Black Dahlia: ‘We Got Our Asses Handed to Us’

Posted on May 16, 2018 by lmharnisch

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Here’s a follow-up on Episode 5 of “It Was Him.” Wayne Wolfe Jr. sums up my interview on John Cameron’s theory about Ed Edwards and the Black Dahlia case.

Posted in 1947, 2018, Black Dahlia, Cold Cases, Crime and Courts, Television | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Black L.A. 1947: World War II Veteran Kills Wife, Commits Suicide

Posted on May 15, 2018 by lmharnisch

May 15, 1947, Mother's Day Suicide

May 15, 1947, Murder Suicide

May 15, 1947: Robert B. Hudson, 30, was “ambitious, quiet and conservative in his activities,” the Sentinel said. He was discharged from the service with the rank of staff sergeant after 27 months in the South Pacific. He and his wife, the former Jewel Ramsey, 30, a teacher at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School, bought a house at 3513 9th Ave. and he was attending the Glover Tailoring School.

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Posted in 1947, African Americans, Crime and Courts, Homicide, LAPD, Suicide | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Black L.A. 1947: World War II Veteran Kills Wife, Commits Suicide