Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Clifton’s Cafeteria Offers Food for Thought

Posted on June 9, 2014 by lmharnisch

cliftons_pacific

Clifton’s Pacific Seas, 618 S. Olive St.


Long before kitschy was cool and themed restaurants like tiki bars, Planet Hollywoods and Rainforest Cafes existed, downtown Los Angeles sported eclectically decorated and festive Clifton’s Cafeterias. Over the top and lavishly theatrical, Clifton’s operated in Los Angeles’ heart, including Clifton’s Pacific Seas and Brookdale, one sporting an exotic, tropical setting and the other looking like a set from a national park.

Even more remarkable than their lavishly decorated interiors was the generous, lovely operating philosophy behind the chain. From the beginning, Clifton’s operated on the policy of “the Golden Rule,” hoping to treat others as kindly as they themselves were treated. Clifford Clinton, son of missionary Edmond Clinton, was born in China while his parents served the poor after the Boxer Rebellion. Seeing the hungry and homeless, his deep compassion filled him with a desire to take care of those less unfortunate.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

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1944 on the Radio — ‘The First Nighter’

Posted on June 7, 2014 by lmharnisch

radio_dial_1944

June 7, 1944: “The First Nighter” with an episode titled “Susan Stepped Out.” Courtesy of otronmp3.com.

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1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, June 6, 1944

Posted on June 6, 2014 by lmharnisch

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June 6, 1944

HOLLYWOOD, June 5 — When Harriet Parsons (a young producer I know very well — in fact she used to put the bite on me for ice cream sodas) finishes “The Enchanted Cottage” she takes over her second RKO movie, “Who Could Ask for More?” Authoress Kay Smith arrived Friday to huddle with Frank Gruber, who works with her on the script. Remember we told you some time ago about this original story about a femme songwriter who marries a cowboy and gives up Broadway to live out West?

From the Milwaukee Sentinel.

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ALLIES INVADE FRANCE! JUNE 6, 1944; Complete Radio Coverage

Posted on June 5, 2014 by lmharnisch

June 7, 1944, D-day

June 7, 1944, D-Day Map

The headline and map by Charles Owens from The Times.

June 6, 1944: Complete radio coverage of the D-Day Invasion. This was pool coverage using correspondents from various news organizations. By 10 a.m., CBS had resumed regular programming with news bulletins, so I’ll only post up to noon. The full day is at archive.org.

It’s worth noting that German radio was the source for most of the information in the early hours of the invasion. The eyewitness accounts are vivid and it’s worth listening to Quentin Reynolds’ analysis on how the Allies learned from disastrous surprise invasion at Dieppe in 1942.

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Posted in 1944, Radio, World War II | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

D-Day Invasion: Full Radio Coverage of the Invasion of Europe Coming Tomorrow

Posted on June 5, 2014 by lmharnisch

Just a reminder that I will be posting full radio coverage from 1944 of the D-Day invasion starting at 12:37 a.m. Eastern Time (9:37 p.m. Pacific Time), precisely when the first radio announcement was made on June 6, 1944, citing German radio reports.

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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: San Francisco Silent Film Festival Travels World

Posted on June 5, 2014 by lmharnisch

 

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A still from “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” listed on EBay at $14.95.


The 2014 San Francisco Silent Film Festival acts as a mini United Nations with its smorgasbord of films and accompaniment, offering a little something for every taste and nation. Classic American films, programmers, artistic foreign movies, comedy shorts, documentaries, and newly restored prints highlighted the fest, from counties like Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China, Sweden and Russia. It shows the breadth of silent film, though sometimes just something full of fun can leave audiences wanting more.

The festival opened Thursday with a screening of Rex Ingram’s powerful antiwar film, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” making a star of its ravishing young male lead, Rudolph Valentino, as he sensually leads his tango partner across the floor. Released just a few years after World War I, the Great War, “Four Horsemen” shows the brutality and waste of war, tearing families and nations apart. Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra provided another of their romantic, historically accurate scores, compiled from actual score/cue sheets of the period.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

 

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‘Laura’ — The Making of a Film Noir Classic, Part 6

Posted on June 5, 2014 by lmharnisch

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Oh dear. Here we are at the sixth installment on the making of the film “Laura” and novelist Vera Caspary is barely out of diapers. Be assured that the actors will eventually be cast, the sets will be built, the costumes will be made and the script will be written … and rewritten … and rewritten. Gathering “Laura” material has been quite a treasure hunt and here’s a special shout-out to Mike Hawks of Larry Edmunds for a “final draft” of the heavily revised script. Comparing it to the completed film has been a revelation.

Last time, we had gotten Caspary’s work to Hollywood (she remained on the East Coast), where her play “Blind Mice” with an all-female cast had been turned into the 1931 film “Working Girls” – with the addition of male actors, including Buddy Rogers and Stu Erwin.

Caspary’s autobiography is rich in details about Depression-era New York, but it casts little light on her growth as a writer and the creative process behind “Laura,” so I’m skipping the daily drama of her life except where it touches on films.

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1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, June 5, 1944

Posted on June 5, 2014 by lmharnisch

June 5, 1944, African Americans

June 5, 1944, Louella Parsons

June 5, 1944

HOLLYWOOD, June 4 — Erich Pommer, one time high mogul of UFA productions in Berlin, became an American citizen last week and celebrated by signing for two pictures with Producers Corp. of America. Years ago, before the world went crazy, I met Pommer in Berlin and at that time asked him if he ever intended to make a follow-up on his sensational “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” “Sometime — maybe,” he replied, and sure enough, “The New Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” will be one of the two films he will make for the Sig Schlager company.

From the Milwaukee Sentinel.

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1944 in Print — Life Magazine, June 5, 1944

Posted on June 5, 2014 by lmharnisch

June 5, 1944, Life Magazine

June 5, 1944

Reporter Charles Christian Wertenbaker says: The spring of 1944 will be remembered by those who passed it in England as a time when nerves were tauter than during the blitz. All spring long the tension grew until by the middle of May it seemed that something must soon snap. Something, indeed, soon would snap. As everybody everywhere knew, the battle for Europe must soon begin.

Italy looks like home to some soldiers – a comparison of Italian and U.S. landmarks.

The movie of the week is the British film “The True Story of Lili Marlene.” (Imdb calls it “Lilli Marlene”).

Courtesy of Google Books.

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‘Laura’ — People Who Write in Library Books Should Be Shot

Posted on June 4, 2014 by lmharnisch

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In researching “Laura,” I borrowed Gerald Pratley’s “The Cinema of Otto Preminger” from the Los Angeles Public Library, only to discover that some idiot had scrawled through the entire book. The individual who committed this crime spent lots of time underlining random words and drawing lines in the margins, with a continuing descant of arguing with the author, rendering the book virtually unreadable.

There are those who hail marginalia as the loftiest poetry of the human soul and bemoan the rise of tablets and other devices that deprive a reader of marking up a text. I am not one of them. It’s nothing but selfish vandalism – at least in a book that one does not own.

Posted in Books and Authors, Film, Libraries | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip, by Louella Parsons, June 4, 1944

Posted on June 4, 2014 by lmharnisch

June 3, 1944, comics

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June 4, 1944

HOLLYWOOD, June 3 — Paulette Goddard, in the past, has been a girl to keep her emotions to herself. I suppose I have written a dozen or so interviews with her and always she has obviously talked for the public and never has anyone see the real Paulette. But not today. She is so happy over her marriage to Capt. Burgess Meredith that all her reserve is gone and she answers all questions without a moment’s hesitation.

From the Milwaukee Sentinel.

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‘Laura’ — The Making of a Film Noir Classic, Part 5

Posted on June 3, 2014 by lmharnisch

laura_cover

In case you just tuned in, I’m using Louella Parsons’ May 15, 1944,  item on Rouben Mamoulian being replaced as director of “Laura” to do a bit of digging into the production of this film noir classic – however one happens to define film noir.

I’m going to be taking a look at the genesis of Caspary’s novel, which was the basis for the film, but first it may be worthwhile to examine her writing career over the roughly 20 years from the time she ghostwrote “The Fox Plan of Photoplay Writing” in 1922 to “Laura,” which began as an unsatisfying draft of a play.

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1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, June 3, 1944

Posted on June 3, 2014 by lmharnisch

June 3, 1944, Comics

June 3, 1944, Louella Parsons

June 3, 1944

HOLLYWOOD, June 2 — Red haired Arleen Whelan, who found movie acting hard going and went to New York and made a smash hit in “Doughgirls,” may have one of the plum roles of the year. According to information from New York, Sam Goldwyn is negotiating with her for “Those Endearing Young Charms” and the only thing that stands between Arleen and the job is the money question. She’s asking a fortune, and that’s understandable as she comes back to Hollywood in a blaze of glory.

From the Milwaukee Sentinel.

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Memories of Naperville, Ill., June 2, 1864

Posted on June 2, 2014 by lmharnisch

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This is a frame grab from a video I shot years ago showing one of the strangest tombstones I have ever seen. The shot that killed Dr. Horace Potter, Surgeon, on June 2, 1864, near Kingston, Ga. 150 years later, not forgotten.

Posted in 1864, Civil War | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Movieland Mystery Photo ( Updated + + + + )

Posted on June 2, 2014 by lmharnisch

June 7, 2014, Mystery Movie
This is “Princesse Tam Tam”  with Josephine Baker. You can also find it online, although there are no subtitles. And thanks to glcrumpacker for the suggestion.

If you would like to request a mystery movie, drop me a line.

“Princesse Tam Tam” Part 1
”Princesse Tam Tam” Part 2
”Princesse Tam Tam” Part 3
Documentary on Josephine Baker

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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Crossroads of the World Welcomes All

Posted on June 2, 2014 by lmharnisch

Crossroads of World Int
The interior of Crossroads of the World, courtesy of Mary Mallory.


Long before the Grove or Americana on Brand, the Crossroads of the World existed as a retail center replicating simpler times and more glamorous surroundings. It sprang from tragedy to become an architectural and cultural highlight for more than 77 years. Intended to be an exotic shopping destination, it instead functions as eclectic office suites for independent businesses.

In the early 1930s, 6665 Sunset Blvd. was the location of Charles H. Crawford’s business office. Crawford, a former saloonkeeper and political boss, called the “Underworld Czar” and “Wolf of Spring Street” in a 1986 Los Angeles Times article, possessed gangland connections. On May 20, 1931, he and former police reporter and editor Herbert Spencer were shot and killed in his office by former Deputy Dist. Atty. David Clark, who claimed self-defense.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

 

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Black Dahlia: Dr. George Hodel and Soil Test Results … ‘Definitely Not Elizabeth Short’

Posted on June 1, 2014 by lmharnisch

your_theory
KNBC-TV Channel 4 has finally updated its story on Buster the Wonder Dog finding … something … at the purported Murder HQ of Dr. George Hodel.

Let’s review the timeline:

On Nov. 9, 2012, the makers of the TV show “Ghost Hunters” taped a segment in which retired LAPD Detective Steve Hodel and retired Sgt. Paul Dostie, formerly of the Mammoth Police Department,  and Dostie’s three-legged cadaver dog, Buster, searched the vicinity of the Sowden House on Franklin Avenue for evidence of human remains. Hodel’s father, Dr. George Hodel, lived in the house in the 1940s and it is Steve Hodel’s contention that his father killed lots of people there — including Elizabeth Short — although there’s not a bit of proof that he ever killed anyone there or anywhere else.

The segment wasn’t included in the TV show, but the outtakes aired on KNBC-TV on Feb. 1, 2013.

In a Feb. 3, 2013, post in the Daily Beast, Christine Pelisek said results were due “next week.”

And then we waited.

And waited.

 

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Posted in 1947, Another Good Story Ruined, Black Dahlia, Cold Cases, LAPD | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Movieland Mystery Photo — Request Time

Posted on May 31, 2014 by lmharnisch

May 30, 2014, Mystery Photo

His Excellency wants to know if you have a request for an upcoming mystery movie. The Daily Mirror archives are spotty, so I can’t guarantee that I’ll have a copy, but if you have a request, drop me an email.

Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

1944 on the Radio — ‘The First Nighter’

Posted on May 31, 2014 by lmharnisch

radio_dial_1944

May 31, 1944: “The First Nighter” with a show titled “Give Up the Ship.” Courtesy of otronmp3.com.

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‘Laura’ — The Making of a Classic Film Noir, Part 4

Posted on May 30, 2014 by lmharnisch

laura_cover

 

In case you just tuned in, I’m using the May 15 post by Louella Parsons on Rouben Mamoulian being replaced by Otto Preminger as director of “Laura” to spend some time examining the production of the film noir classic.

A previous post took a brief look at the life of author Vera Caspary, whose novel was the basis for the film. In her autobiography, “The Secrets of Grown-Ups,” she says that early in her career, she was the ghostwriter for a correspondence course on the art of the photoplay.

I didn’t expect much from a 92-year-old book on writing for the movies by someone who had never done it and the first chapter is not promising. It’s loaded with irrelevant material to pad out the lesson. And yet I was curious enough to keep reading on the chance that there might be glimmers of the future author in what promised to be a dreadful book. Can one learn anything about a 1940s film from a somewhat iffy text written 22 years earlier?

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