Black Dahlia: Blogging "Black Dahlia Files" Part 16 — A Moment of Silence

Posted on February 17, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Wednesday was the 61st anniversary of the kidnapping of 6-year-old Rochelle Gluskoter from the frontyard of a home around the corner from where her parents, Abe and Miriam, were preparing to open their market at 8464 S. Central Ave. Rochelle’s skeletal remains were found in a remote part of Orange County on Nov. 9. 1947. The case was never solved.

Page 21

Now back to all Wolfe’s stuff about “Uncle Vern,” who is presented as a disgraced former prosecutor but really wasn’t. This is terrible research and worse writing. Just an out-and-out lie.

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Feb. 17, 1907: Before Staples Center — City Straightens 12th Street

Posted on February 17, 2018 by lmharnisch
Above, a vanished landmark: The Schermerhorn Inn, at Potter Park, a street that has disappeared.

Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
Feb. 17, 1907
Los Angeles

West 12th Street between Main and Hoover is maddeningly crooked, but how to fix it? One set of residents has agreed to cut the boulevard through front yards because having the street as straight as an engineer’s ruler will raise property values. The other set says that homes will be ruined and that residents will be assessed too much to pay for the work.

Those in favor of the improvement include W.H. O’Melveny (hm. Isn’t that a familiar name?) while opposition is led by Mr. Kincaid, the developer of the Kincaid Tract.

“When the matter was brought up before the City Council several weeks ago, there was a merry tussle, but the side favoring the proposition won out,” The Times says.

Alas, city planners in 1907 failed to anticipate a large sports arena blocking traffic.

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Black Dahlia: Blogging "Black Dahlia Files" Part 15 — Time for a Reality Check

Posted on February 16, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
I was all set, or so I thought, for today’s entry. And then something fell in my lap that I simply couldn’t ignore.

Let’s suppose you are an established author with a well-known book on a particular subject. Let us further suppose that another writer comes along, uses your book as the backbone for his work, runs a picture of you and praises you in his acknowledgements.

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Black L.A., 1947: Stylish Men in Harlem Wearing Berets

Posted on February 15, 2018 by lmharnisch

Feb. 13, 1947, Real Estate

2400 Block S. St. Andrews Place

At top, the home at 2443 S. St. Andrews Place is for sale at $16,500 cash or $18,000 “terms.” Above, the 2400 block of South St. Andrews Place via Google Street View.

Feb. 13, 1947: Columnist Bill Smallwood says “Richard Wright, back from Paris whence he proved such a distinctive favorite, is having trouble getting his Manhattan apartment back! He lives in half of it while awaiting outcome of his filing suit against the occupants to regain the other half.”

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Black Dahlia: Blogging "Black Dahlia Files" Part 14 — Teutonic Thoroughness

Posted on February 15, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Several years ago, I was interviewed by a writer for the German magazine Stern about the Black Dahlia case. In explaining what was wrong with the various Dahlia books, I said: “They lack Teutonic thoroughness.” Of course, it was to be amusing and the writer thought it was an uproarious thing to say. But as a German, he could appreciate the full meaning of that statement, while most American writers wouldn’t understand it.

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Black Dahlia: Ritual Sacrifice? Now I Have Heard Everything – And My Hair Is On Fire

Posted on February 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

Feb. 13, 2018, Black Dahlia

Zippy the Pinhead Yow!

I thought I had heard every possible crackpot idea about the Black Dahlia case (including comments on the blog that aren’t fit for publication). But ritual sacrifice? As Zippy the Pinhead would say: Yow!

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Black L.A., 1947: ‘Why Do 14-Year-Old Girls Get Drunk and Fall Into Bed With Men?’ Judge Asks

Posted on February 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

Feb. 13, 1947, Flora Washington

The Sentinel runs a publicity photo of Flora Washington, who released “Broken Hearted” and “If I Ever Cry, You’ll Never Know” on the United Artist label in 1946.

Flora Washington sings “Broken Hearted” via Archive.org.

 

Feb. 13, 1947: Municipal Court Judge Edwin L. Jefferson calls for an investigation of “why 13- and 14-year-old girls get drunk and fall into bed with men” in a hearing for a 20-year-old man who was accused of having sex with a 15-year-old niece.

Jefferson was the first black judge in the Western United States, according to 1989 obituaries in the Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times.

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Black Dahlia: Blogging "Black Dahlia Files" Part 13 — The Subject Is Roses

Posted on February 14, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

I always cut my roses on Jan. 15 as a memorial to Elizabeth Short, because I remember that on the night before the body was found a neighbor had a strange encounter at the crime scene when he went there to dump some rose clippings.

Frankly, it’s scary to chop my roses down to sticks but sure enough by Valentine’s Day they are coming back to life, especially now that they’ve gotten some 12-18-6.

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Feb. 14-15, 1907: Gas Explosion in Downtown L.A. Levels Building, Kills 7

Posted on February 14, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
Feb. 14-15, 1907
Los Angeles

An 11:30 a.m. blast caused by an accumulation of gas shattered the Rawson building at 114 W. 2nd St. in an explosion blamed on a gas company employee who struck a match to check the meter. Four people were killed immediately while three more died of their injuries and 30 were hurt, some of them so badly that their crushed limbs were amputated.

The explosion killed two waitresses, La Von Meyers and Annie Crawford; retired farmer John W. Main; and tailor J.M.C. Fuentes. Charles G. Haggerdy, who worked in a tailor shop, died a few days later of his injuries, as did janitor Ferdinand Stephen.

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Black L.A. 1947: Judge Backs Racial Ban, Orders Native Americans Out of West Hollywood Home

Posted on February 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

Feb. 13, 1947, Los Angeles Sentinel

Feb. 13, 1947: Dorothy Bradley becomes the first African American cashier hired at the Safeway grocery store in Watts. She was hired as the result of a campaign by the Watts Citizens Welfare committee protesting Safeway’s refusal to hired black people as cashiers or clerks.

Isabel Crocker
Isabel Crocker in an archival photograph from the Los Angeles Times.

Feb. 13, 1947, L.A. Sentinel

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Black Dahlia: Blogging "Black Dahlia Files" Part 12 — I’m My Own Grandpaw

Posted on February 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Page 16

In the Black Dahlia books, all roads lead to William Randolph Fowler and it would be interesting to see how a sociologist would make a graph of the incestuous literary kinship system.

Will talks to Mary Pacios, who collaborates with John Gilmore on “Severed.”

Will talks to Donald H. Wolfe (“Mogul,” footnotes Pages 361-362).

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Feb. 13, 1907: Hotel Alexandria Celebrates 1st Anniversary

Posted on February 13, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
Feb.13, 1907
Los Angeles

An enormous masked ball for the city’s elite was staged on Mardi Gras at Kramer’s Studio and Dancing Academy, 1500 S. Figueroa.
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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Hollywood National Bank Watches History Go By

Posted on February 12, 2018 by lmharnisch

 

Carol Hughes Christmas
Carol Hughes as photographed by Schuyler Crail, with Hollywood and Cahuenga in the background, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

Note: This is an encore post from 2016.

One of the most important and busiest intersections in Hollywood has always been that of Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards. The location of Hollywood’s first hotels, the intersection also soon became the home of one of Hollywood’s first banks, the Hollywood National Bank. The location serves as witness to much of the city’s business and movie history, acting as a gateway to dreams.

In 1888, Horace D. Sackett constructed a simple two story hotel on the southwest corner of Prospect Avenue and Cahuenga Boulevard on three lots generously given him by town developer Harvey Wilcox, the heart of the speculator’s subdivision as well as a prime stage coach stop. The quaint inn, which he called the Sackett Hotel, consisted of eighteen rooms with one shared bathroom, while downstairs featured a general store, lobby, parlor, and kitchen. Just three years later in 1891, Sackett opened the city’s first post office in part of his general store, becoming a prime gathering spot for the growing community.

 

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

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Black L.A. 1947: Jazz Musicians Outraged by Esquire Jazz Book for 1947

Posted on February 12, 2018 by lmharnisch

Feb. 13, 1947, Jazz Concert at the Shrine Auditorium
Feb. 13, 1947: Coming to the Shrine Auditorium – Esquire Award winners Lester Young, Woody Herman, Benny Goodman, Lucky Thompson, Benny Carter, Dodo Marmarosa, Barney Kessell and Vic Dickenson.

Feb. 13, 1947, Esquire Jazz Book

Feb. 13, 1947: Esquire magazine began an annual poll in 1943 to select the leading American jazz musicians. But in 1945, Arnold Gingrich, one of Esquire’s founders, left the magazine in a falling-out with Publisher David A. Smart.

In Gingrich’s place, the magazine hired Ernest Anderson, a publicist for Eddie Condon, to run the poll. An article on the magazine’s website by Alex Belth says Anderson “made a mockery of it by ostensibly turning it a press release for Condon, a white, middlebrow bandleader who had never previously been mentioned in Esquire’s jazz coverage. The panel of experts resigned en mass in protest and the jazz poll came to a halt.”

Note: The microfilmed copy of the Los Angeles Sentinel is missing the first section.

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Black Dahlia: Blogging "Black Dahlia Files" Part 11 — The Thrill Is Gone

Posted on February 12, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
Page 14

“Hansen studied the body and the ‘sacred setting’ for some time before he stood up and said to Finis, ‘We won’t know what we’re really dealing with here until we get a post mortem.’ He requested that the body be covered until Ray Pinker of the crime lab arrived.”

I could quit here and be a happy man. Wolfe has been given access to the district attorney’s files. He even reprints the first two pages of the LAPD summary on Pages 325-326 of “Mogul.” But clearly Wolfe hasn’t read his own book. If he had, he would know that Pinker beat Hansen and Brown to the crime scene.

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Location Sleuth

Posted on February 12, 2018 by lmharnisch

Look what I found while watching the opening of “Some Like It Hot.” Why it’s signage for a 1950s Standard gas station. Hey isn’t that going to be in the shot? Naw, don’t worry about it.

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on February 12, 2018 by lmharnisch

Voyage to Italy/Journey to Italy
This week’s mystery movie has been the 1954 Italian film “Voyage to Italy” or “Journey to Italy,” with George “Georges” Sanders and Ingrid Bergman. It was directed by Roberto Rossellini.

The film is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.

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Feb. 12, 1907: Alhambra Acres and Vermont Avenue Square

Posted on February 12, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
Feb. 12, 1907
Los Angeles

Imagine the surprise of Mrs. Robert Jackson, who was about to move into her new home on Vernon Avenue and discovered that the contractor had built it on someone else’s lot, next to the one that she owned. Fortunately, she was able to swap property with the owner, The Times notes. I suppose we should be thankful that builder didn’t go to medical school.

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Black Dahlia: Blogging "Black Dahlia Files" Part 10 — The Riddler

Posted on February 11, 2018 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Pages 12-15

Here’s a riddle: Let’s suppose for a moment that you are writing a historical piece; nothing terribly esoteric for a scholarly journal but something for the average reader. You have a choice between a schlocky, sensational paperback and original documents that few people are allowed to see.

Wrong.

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Feb. 11, 1907: Woman Fractures Skull Leaping From Streetcar That Passed Her Stop

Posted on February 11, 2018 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
Feb. 11, 1907
Los Angeles

 

The Eastside gets a new Baptist Church and 2nd Street and St. Louis.

Like Tom and Huck

A large pond 7 feet deep at Normandie and San Marino left by the runoff of recent rainstorms proved too tempting to the boys of the Forrester tract and so they launched a raft to play.

The raft tipped, The Times says, sending 8-year-old Clarence Rhodes of 1004 S. Jasmine tumbling into the water. Hearing the boys’ cries for help, M. Allen rushed from his home at 922 Normandie, plunged into the water and rescued Clarence.

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