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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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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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.

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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Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Today is the anniversary of the Feb. 10, 1947, Jeanne French murder. Frequently linked to the Black Dahlia in the popular imagination and absurdly claimed as one of the umpteen victims of Dr. George “Evil Genius” Hodel in “Black Dahlia Avenger,” French was a tragic, broken-down alcoholic. Spending the last night of her life in a Westside cafe, she dumped the contents of her purse on the bar and picked through the debris in hopes of finding enough money for just one more drink. She had no paper money, nothing more than a few coins. Whoever killed her beat her with the handle of a socket wrench, pushed her out of his car into the street and stomped on her until a rib broke and punctured her heart. A bleak, terrible death.

Her son, David Wrather, told the coroner’s inquest: “She’s gone now and I’m sure she would want me to say the right thing—she made a lot of her own trouble.”

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Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

I was at a signing at Book Soup last night for Kim Cooper’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” (important note: there’s parking behind the store, otherwise you have to contend with West Hollywood’s insane parking situation. Those people aren’t cruising Sunset Boulevard, they’re just looking for a parking place). The attendant at the lot two blocks away ($7) asked me if I was headed for the Roxy, which made me laugh all night. Yeah, that’s me, Mr. Viper Room.

A common question at the signing: C’mon, Harnisch, are you really going to blog the entire Wolfe book?

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Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Page 8

In those days Leimert Park was a nice, middle-class neighborhood on the fringe of the more fashionable Adams District west of downtown Los Angeles.

Here, in a few words, “Mogul” demonstrates its lack of familiarity with two historic Los Angeles areas that are nearly three miles apart, a definition of “West Adams adjacent” that even the lowest real estate agent would find excessive. Wolfe’s psychological map of Los Angeles (an exercise wonderfully described in “Shotgun Freeway”) is a little distorted. (Here’s a clip of the movie).

Sunrise was at 6:53 a.m. on Wednesday, January 15, 1947.

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