In one segment of the survey, I asked readers what other websites they visited. Interestingly enough, the Los Angeles Times was the top website, followed by IMDB, the New York Times, Wikipedia (ahem), L.A. Observed, Curbed L.A., the Daily Beast, L.A. Weekly, L.A. Morgue Files, She Blogged by Night, LAist, Franklin Avenue, Dodger Thoughts, Nitrateville, Self-Styled Siren and the Fedora Lounge.
I neglected to ask about the SkyscraperCity blog, which sends some traffic my way.
Jan. 21, 1944
It’s Friday in 1944 and today we have:
—Charles Boyer is the guest star on “Amos ‘N’ Andy.” Courtesy of Archive.org
Last month, the Daily Mirror polled readers for the first time. The responses were gratifying (thank you) and interesting. Of course, this is an opt-in poll, so it’s not as reliable as one of the more formal, scientific polls, but it’s interesting even so.
WordPress is making it difficult to post today. Apparently my jetpack header is malformed.
I uploaded the mystery photo the old-fashioned Windows95 way, but posting will be light until WordPress gets it fixed.
Jan. 20, 1944
It’s Thursday in 1944 and today we have:
— “Macbeth’s Bloody Knife” on “Challenge of the Yukon” (later “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon”).
— “The Scarecrow and the Snowman” on “Ellery Queen” with guest Jeanne Cagney.
Courtesy of Archive.org.
Joseph Farnham in an undated photo, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
Title writers are the mostly forgotten men of the silent film era, the scribes who relayed important plot points and character arcs through witty or descriptive lines employed on cards throughout a silent film. These bon mots weren’t just witty throwaways, they were often the glue that held disparate skits or weak plots together and made them coherent to screen audiences. Their resuscitation work revived flat films, and invigorated well-made ones.
Large, friendly, talented Joseph White Farnham ranks as one of the top title writers of the 1920s, the only winner of the Academy Award for title writing issued by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Farnham possessed great experience and skill in all types of writing and film production, helping his beloved movie industry develop into a major economic powerhouse by the 1930s.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.
Jan. 19, 1944
It’s Wednesday in 1944 and today, we have one of the few “Superman” episodes I can find online.
— “The Green Death,” on “Superman.” Courtesy of Archive.org.
Jan. 18, 1944
It’s Tuesday in 1944 and today we have:
— “Molly Gets Flowers From a Man Named Ralph” on “Fibber McGee and Molly.”
—Esquire’s “All-American Jazz Band” from the Metropolitan Opera House. This is a terrific find. The audio quality is fairly decent for the 1940s and look at the personnel. The announced performers are singer Billie Holiday; drums, Sid Catlett; trombone: Jack Teagarden; clarinet: Barney Bigard, saxophone: Coleman Hawkins, trumpet: Roy Eldridge. Other online sources also list Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, Red Norvo, Lionel Hampton, Oscar Pettiford, Al Casey and Mildred Bailey.
Here’s the mp3 version in case your browser doesn’t have a plug-in for the ogg format.
Both recordings courtesy of Archive.org.
Jan. 17, 1944: Charles Beard, American historian, is featured on this week’s cover. There’s also a feature on cartoonist Bill Mauldin and the movie “A Guy Named Joe.” All scanned by Google.
Jan. 17, 1944
It’s Monday in 1944 and today we have:
—“Information Please” hosted by Clifton Fadiman, with John Kieran, Franklin P. Adams, Oscar Levant and guest John P. Marquand, author of the current best-seller “So Little Time.” Bonus fact: The Republican and Democratic national conventions will be held in Chicago this year. Courtesy of Archive.org
—“I Love You Again” on “Screen Guild Theater,” with William Powell, Paulette Goddard and Charles Winninger. Courtesy of Archive.org
—“Hop Harrigan.” Courtesy of Archive.org.
Jan. 1, 1945: We jumped ahead to see what The Times considered the top stories of 1944, the year we’re going to focus on in 2014. The D-Day (current Times style being D-day) invasion is the most important story, followed by what we now know as the Battle of the Bulge.
Times columnist Tom Treanor is killed in August during the liberation of France.
Spanish will be taught in all grades at Los Angeles schools (Aug. 27).
Esther Takei, the first Japanese American to return to Los Angeles from an internment camp, arrives to enroll in college. (Sept. 11).
Movies for 1944: “Going My Way,” “Double Indemnity” and “Wilson.”
“System Disk Not Found.”
Two Baltimore and Ohio freight trains in a head-on crash, Laurel, Md., July 31, 1922. Via Shorpy.
What started out as an annoying but (seemingly) manageable technical problem with the ancient ENIAC in the L.A. Daily Mirror’s city room has turned into the computer equivalent of a heart-lung transplant. No data have been lost and we are backing up everything we have. But the ENIAC’s room full of vacuum tubes is going to have to make way for a current model. (Translation: The power supply died on my home-built computer and I’ve been forced to adopt the universally despised Windows 8).
As anyone who has had the misfortune to deal with Windows 8 will tell you, it has a horrible user interface and is designed with utter contempt for the user. The entire attitude seems to be borrowed from Grayson, the School Bully in “Ripping Yarns”: “Click here, you disgusting idiot, to get your MICROSOFT mail!” “Click here, you pitiful little moron, to write a MICROSOFT document!” “Click here, you small, wretched twerp, to view a photo.” “Don’t talk to me about a START button, you minuscule, repulsive creature.” Think of it as Darth Clippy.
All of which is to explain that posting will be irregular in the coming days/weeks, as I grapple with the Windows 8 upgrade. I work a month ahead, so daily posts have been done to the middle of February, but getting the mystery photos up could be a challenge because they must be done daily.
Anyway, keep checking back. There will be lots to read (and listen to). But the mystery photos may be a challenge.
Update: Thanks for all the tips and advice. This is a history blog, not a Windows vs. Mac blog, so I won’t be posting the responses, but thanks for your input.
Here’s a very sincere mystery woman, courtesy of writer Christopher McPherson.
Jan. 16, 1944:
It’s Sunday in 1944 and today we have: “Texaco Star Theater” with Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa and guest Mary Pickford. Allen talks about the Jan. 10, 1944, issue of Life magazine featuring photos of comedians. Also in Life magazine, Margaret Bourke-White’s feature on “It’s a Big War.” Warning: The recording has some surface damage. Courtesy of Archive.org.
—“Riley Plans to Build a House” in “The Life of Riley” with William Bendix. In case you haven’t noticed, this is another radio show that refers to the housing shortage, as did “Kraft Music Hall.” Courtesy of Archive.org
—“Income Tax Forms Arrive” on “The Great Gildersleeve.” (In case you didn’t notice, “Fibber McGee and Molly” also dealt with income tax forms.) Courtesy of Archive.org
—Jack Benny visits the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro. Courtesy of Archive.org.
Jan. 16, 1944: Clark Gable attends the launch of a Liberty ship named for Carole Lombard, who was killed in a Nevada plane crash. The CBS news, courtesy of Archive.org.
Back in the 1990s, when I began scrounging and scouring for everything I could find on Los Angeles in the 1940s in my research on the Black Dahlia case, I got a copy of Otto Friedrich’s 1986 book “City of Nets” from the Los Angeles Public Library. And, frankly, I was not impressed by the work of Friedrich (d. 1995).
In case you have never read it, “City of Nets” is kind of like this:
“As Oscar Levant was making a left turn onto Sunset Boulevard en route to perform on a radio broadcast with Kay Kyser and Clark Gable, Gary Cooper was having lunch with Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Mann, Marjorie Main and bandleader Xavier Cugat at the Hollywood Brown Derby, where Cugat, having gotten his start as a cartoonist and caricaturist, drew bawdy sketches of his companions on the tablecloth.
“Meanwhile, out in Burbank, on the New York Street at Warner Bros. back lot, director Raoul Walsh was rehearsing with James Cagney and Allen Jenkins for the next shot in….”
For more than 400 meticulously footnoted pages. Continue reading
Top songs on the Hit Parade. No wonder all the radio shows are talking about “Paper Doll” and “Shoo-Shoo, Baby.” Via Billboard.
Jan. 15, 1944
It’s Saturday in 1944 and therefore we have a new issue of the Saturday Review of Literature.
And a new issue of Billboard Magazine. Via Google Books.
Struthers Burt has an item on the 1943 anthology O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories and he writes of receiving the first prize in the days when recipients were paid in bags of $10 gold pieces.
Jan. 15, 1944
It’s Saturday in 1944 and today we have:
— “Command Performance” with Frances Langford, and Spike Jones and the City Slickers doing “Glow-Worm.” “Shoo-Shoo Baby” must have been a popular song in January 1944. It was on the “Kraft Music Hall” and appears again on this show!
Courtesy of Archive.org.
ladailymirror.com 