Suzette Johnson appears in “The Foxes of Harrow.”
July 17, 1947: The Los Angeles Sentinel has a news story on the death of bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, who collapsed in a record store in Seaside, Ore., and a mention in Earl Griffin’s Hollywood Spotlight column. (The Los Angeles Times had nothing). The New York Times published a news story from United Press and reported on the funeral, saying that 200 attended the private service in New York while 100 more stood outside in the rain.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
By mid-July, Arnold Schoenberg was hard at work on a composition he had conceived several months earlier, when choreographer Corinne Chochem sent him details on a song for a potential commission.
Although the price was too high for Chochem, Schoenberg remained focused on the idea of a work of up to nine minutes for a speaker, orchestra and chorus, saying: “I plan to make it this scene—which you described—in the Warsaw ghetto, how the doomed Jews started singing before going to die.”
Equalization Board’s Orders,
City Police and Exposes
Fail to Curb Honky-Tonks
Note: This is a post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Yesterday, Examiner reporters again visited the liquor establishments to determine what the state officers had done about enforcing the law [against B-girls].
At 462 S. Main, for instance, here is what happened:
A reporter seated himself at the crowded bar and ordered beer.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
July 17, 1907
Los Angeles
A serial arsonist has been at work in Hollywood, setting six fires in the last three weeks. The community’s small volunteer fire department has been overwhelmed by the crimes.
“The entire neighborhood rushed to the scene,” The Times said of one blaze in June. “The volunteer fire department hurried out their hose cart and laid a long line of hose, but the water pressure was not sufficient to send a stream that would reach the burning dwellings.”
This week’s mystery movie has been the 1958 British production “Fiend Without a Face” or the “The Flying Brains Movie,” made by Amalgamated and released by MGM. With Marshall Thompson, Kynaston Reeves, Kim Parker, Stanley Maxted, Terence Kilburn, James Dyrenforth, Robert MacKenzie, Gil Winfield, Launce Maraschal, Kerrigan Prescott, Peter Madden, Michael Balfour, R. Meadows White and Lala Lloyd.
The screenplay was by Herbert J. Leder from an original story by Amelia Reynolds Long. Set design was by John Elphick, special effects by Ruppel & Nordhoff, and Peter Neilson, camera operator was Leo Rogers, dress supervisor was Anna Duse, makeup by Jim Hydes, hairdressing by Barbara Barnard. Music by Buxton Orr, conducted by Frederic Lewis, produced by John Croydon and directed by Arthur Crabtree.
“Fiend Without a Face” is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Sojourn Over—James Brink and his wife and their nine children as they prepared to depart yesterday for their Oklahoma ranch after spending two and a half years here on as much as $278-a-month relief ($2,631.04 USD 2005). The county fixed up their car and is paying all expenses back to Oklahoma.
Fred Thomson in an undated image.
In the early days of the Hollywood film industry, moguls and movie stars lived simply, residing in comfortable but elegant homes. As the business evolved from small companies into large-scale moviemaking factories in the 1920s, residences followed the same path. Romantic, grandiose mansions fit for filmmaking royalty soon became the norm, designed by such top-notch Los Angeles architects as Gordon Kaufmann, Roland Coate, and Wallace Neff.
In 1926, Neff designed the Hollywood “house” to top them all: Frances Marion and Fred Thomson’s The Enchanted Hill in Beverly Hills, sitting at the apex of one of the city’s highest hills. The ultimate model for romantic Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, The Enchanted Hill reigned as moviedom’s ultimate showplace, a fairy-tale residence come to life.
Mary Mallory’s “Living With Grace” is now on sale.
She will give a presentation at Larry Edmunds Bookshop on Sunday, July 22, at 2 p.m.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
July 16, 1907
Los Angeles
Under continued lobbying from the Church Federation, the city attorney is preparing new restrictions on prizefighting that local promoters say will kill the sport.
“The new ordinance hedges the boxing game about with sufficient restrictions to make the bouts uninteresting to the average gallery fiend who cares only for the bouts that furnish a few buckets of blood with each round,” The Times said.
Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Over at Republic Studios, master showman Orson Welles is engaged in an enormous stunt: He has promised to film “Macbeth” in 24 days (later cut to 21) for less than $1 million. (final cost $800,000 $7,571,348.78 USD 2005 ).
Hedda Hopper writes: “If he can film ‘Macbeth’ for $500,000, it’ll be Hollywood’s answer to Laurence Olivier’s ‘Henry V,’ which cost $5,000,000 [$47,320,929.85 USD 2005].” It’s all an experiment to see if the studios can get a “reasonable return” on the classics.
In the last post on historic Los Angeles in “Illegal,” here are a few nighttime shots of Main Street. At the far right you can see the sign for the Hotel Cecil.
The 500 block of South Main Street via Google Street View.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
July 14, 1907
Los Angeles
Led by the Rev. Juan Caballeria (or Cabelleria), the city is preparing to celebrate its 126th anniversary Aug. 2 with concerts, Mass in the Plaza church and cannon fire. The old artillery piece will be lit by Gen. Jose Aguilar, a former member of the Mexican army who battled the Americans and later joined Gen. John C. Fremont.
In this portion of “Illegal,” we have a long chase sequence. I’m not able to identify all the locations so any help would be appreciated.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Architecture, murder and hardboiled writing. Do you suppose McCoy had the 1947 Project in mind when he knocked off this forgotten little tale? (Note the first-person narration, genre-lovers). He’s got a nice little formula: A good hook, the story and a stinger at the end.
July 10, 1947: The Sentinel devotes a significant part of its front page to the San Diego slavery trial with a story by Clinton M. Arnold. The Sentinel said it was the only black weekly in the U.S. devoting so much coverage to the case.
I suppose you prop guys at Warner Bros. think this is very funny.
“California Today,” by Tim Arango and Charles McDermid, presents a strange bit of nonsense: The Mirror (the sister paper of the Los Angeles Times published in the afternoon) folded “partly because the old streetcars went away as the city embraced the automobile.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
July 12, 1907
Los Angeles
Gas Co. employees found a man scalded over the lower half of his body wandering the yards at Center and Aliso after he fell into a vat of boiling water produced by the carbon pit. The man, who was unidentified but believed to be J. Cochran of 232 E. 1st St., was so badly burned that much of his skin tore away when he ripped off his clothes.
Here’s another shot of the California State Building lobby and the bank of elevators as Hugh Marlowe exits.
July 10, 1947: The Sentinel publishes a picture of Newton Joshua, who discovered the body of Rosenda Mondragon. I don’t recall ever seeing his name in coverage of the killing.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
July 11, 1907
Los Angeles
Among the presentations at the current educators convention is a seminar on teaching the arts. If you have ever attended a colloquium on arts education or listened to arts educators, these comments from another era sound depressingly familiar, and for all the progress that may have been made, we have learned so little.
