Here’s Monday’s mystery chap, courtesy of writer Christopher McPherson. The annoying black box is where our mystery fellow thoughtfully signed his photo.
Update: Yes, this is William Bakewell (d. 1993), who appeared in “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
The San Fernando Valley has experienced a great evolution over the last several centuries from bucolic fields to economic powerhouse. Quiet and peaceful for years, it served as Southern California’s breadbasket for decades until Angelenos looked to its empty vistas as places to escape harsh, city life. What had been a vast agricultural and ranching engine eventually became hedgerows of homes and factories.
For centuries, Indians lived here peaceably until the Spanish arrived and claimed the land, later establishing the San Fernando Rey Mission in 1797. Indians and settlers farmed and ranched the land on behalf of the mission, until Isaac Lankershim and Isaac Newton Van Nuys purchased 60,000 acres on July 2, 1869, and established the San Fernando Homestead Assn., later reorganized as the Los Angeles Farm and Milling Co. In 1888, Lankershim established the Lankershim Ranch Land and Water Co. to subdivide the land, starting the migration of Americans to this rich undeveloped area.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.
We are being bombarded by stories about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with videos of long lines at stores and the attendant consumer frenzy.
The L.A. Daily Mirror prefers a more subdued approach to buying gifts during the holiday season. Here’s proof that an ideal retro gift can be practical and inexpensive. It’s the Parker T-Ball jotter, which has changed very little since this 1957 ad.
You can pick one up at most office supply stores for about $8. We like ours with the gel refill, medium point. Perfect for doing the New York Times crossword puzzle.
What’s on your shopping list? If you have a good gift idea, share it with us.
Jack Webb and William Conrad phone in their answers to the L.A. Daily Mirror Reader Survey.
Update 2: Today’s the last day to express your thoughts in the Daily Mirror Reader Survey. And stay tuned for the results.
Update: More than 100 L.A. Daily Mirror readers have taken the survey and the results are most gratifying! I’m going to run it a few more days for any stragglers in the crowd, but I suspect I have already received the bulk of responses.
So far, the most essential item is the mystery photo, which I assumed, but it’s nice to have some data to show just how popular it is.
Readers — a lot of them — would like book reviews. And so would I, but the challenge is finding the time to do them, as in our oft-repeated lament: “So many stories, only one Larry Harnisch.”
I’ll publish more detailed results when the survey closes in a few days. And thanks for reading!
I have asked for readers’ feedback in the past, but I have never gone so far as to conduct a survey. This is my first attempt at writing a poll, so if I have omitted one of your favorite features or blogs, it’s entirely an oversight.
What we’re looking for is what works and what we could do better. There’s an open question at the end where you can write to us.
The L.A. Daily Mirror Reader Survey is open through December and results will be posted in January.
CLICK HERE to take the L.A. Daily Mirror Reader Survey.
And thanks!
Note: This is a post I originally wrote for the 1947project in 2005. I’m reposting it for newer readers.
CAIRO, Nov. 30. (AP) With Arab bitterness mounting in the Middle East, Syrian demonstrators set fire to the United States Legation in Damascus today.
The Arab League’s secretary general declared his people will never permit the United Nations to partition Palestine.
A reliable source here said King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia has agreed to contribute the oil revenues of his kingdom—paid to him by American oil companies and estimated at $18 million a year—to support Arab military forces to fight partition.
There was no indication the Arabs planned immediate military action, but six Jews were killed and 16 wounded in Palestine outbursts today.
In Damascus, 6,000 youths, dominated by Moslem brotherhood members, marched to Government House and asked for arms and a jihad (holy war). Premier Jamil Mardam Bey told them:
“President (Shukri) Al-Kuwatly approves your demands because partition threatens not only Syrian independence but the very being of all Arab nations.”
Note: This is a post I wrote in 2006 for the 1947project and I’m reposting it for newer readers.
Nov. 29, 1907
Oh Those Shriners: Recall, if you will, the grisly train wreck that killed a large number of Shriners returning from their convention in Los Angeles. It seems that one of them, George F. Hageman, inadvertently touched off a legal dispute between two belles of Reading.
Sarah Reber and Maude Weber went before the court insisting that each of them was the rightful heir of the bachelor, who was “tall and handsome and very popular with the fair sex,” The Times says. Both women claim that Hageman “spent his last evening in Reading with them” before he left for the Shrine convention and made promises of $12,000 in stock.
The court awarded the stock to Reber.
The City Beautiful: By the way, this postcard of Broadway and 7th reflects one of Charles Mulford Robinson’s complaints in drafting a design for downtown Los Angeles: all the low awnings along the streets. (Note the Orpheum Theatre).
Nov. 29, 1983: Bridget Marie Hicks was a 17-year-old girl with two children and apparently too many problems.
A worker at the South-Central Multi-Purpose Child Development Center found her hanging from a tree. Police said Bridget, a student at nearby Locke High, tied a jacket to a tree limb and hanged herself.
Bridget’s father told the late George Ramos: “She was not the type of person to take her own life. I can’t believe it.”
And some family speculated that she had might have been killed.
But friends said she was “despondent over personal problems,” Ramos wrote.
The Times never followed up on this story, so we know nothing more about Bridget. She would be 47 now and her children would be about 30 and 31.
I’m always looking for Oviatt items and here’s a jacket that has been listed on EBay, with bids starting at $149.99.
And not just any jacket. This one was tailored for future President Lyndon Johnson.
For the record: As Wayne Selover points out, the EBay listing took the LBJ Oviatt’s label from an online photo gallery. In other words, we were apparently quoting ourselves. Thanks, Wayne. We should read more closely even if it is Thanksgiving morning!
Here’s a traditional roast turkey recipe from the “Every-Day Cook-Book and Family Compendium,” written about 1890 by Miss E. Neill. Be sure your fire is bright and clear and watch out for the gall-bag.
Continue reading
A wartime Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, with many service personnel welcomed into people’s homes for a holiday meal.
The Times published cooking tips for war workers, advising cooks who were otherwise engaged “for the duration” to use prepared mixes, packaged pie crust and canned pumpkin to cut preparation time.
Nov. 28, 1943: Rumors of what will be known as the Tehran Conference (Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 1943) of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.
Opening soon: “In Old Oklahoma,” starring John Wayne, Martha Scott and Albert Dekker, at the Paramount, Hollywood and downtown.
Marine Maj. Henry Pearson “Jim” Crowe of Boston and Los Angeles uses a double-barreled shotgun during fighting on Tarawa.
Film director Mitchell Leisen “has a special way with the ladies,” Hedda Hopper writes.
Police sketches of “Little Cowboy” by LAPD artist F.G. Ponce.
I call her “Little Cowboy” because her shirt said “I’m a Little Cowboy.” She was Jane Doe No. 62, coroner’s No. 77-8735, DR 77 596-048
In case you just tuned in, I was given a box of material that was cleaned out of the old press room at the LAPD’s Parker Center headquarters, sometimes called “the cop shop.” The box was a jumble of press releases, photographs, artists’ sketches and other items dating from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. I am organizing and cataloging the material and I’ll be posting selected items on a weekly basis.
July 21, 1977: About 8 p.m., the body of “Little Cowboy,” a girl 3 to 5 years old, was found near Sunset and Glendale Boulevards. She was described as Latin, “brown hair, brown eyes, 37 inches long, 28 pounds.” Her upper front teeth were chipped. She had pierced ears and shoulder-length brown hair tied with an elastic band.
Jan. 13, 1936: One look and I knew this gem was gone. In fact, even the cross street has been obliterated. The U.S. Hotel was at Main and Market, across from City Hall.
Times columnist Timothy Turner writes:
“Rapid change and disregard of traditions is considered the rule in Los Angeles. Yet we have the U.S. Hotel, which was built in the 1860s by Louis Mesmer, remodeled in the 1880s and is still owned and operated by his son, Joseph Mesmer, in the 1930s.
Jan. 6, 1924: The Times publishes a photo of an Oakland car that was driven up to the Hollywood sign.
In the early 1920s, developers began opening virgin tracts of land for construction all around Los Angeles. To help sell these new developments, real estate agents coined fancy names like Bryn Mawr, Outpost Estates and Whitley Heights, while also constructing large signs spelling out their names with individual letters in white and red.
The Beachwood Canyon development named Hollywoodland opened March 31, 1923, under the auspices of real estate developers Tracy Shoults and S. H. Woodruff, on behalf of landowners E. H. Clark and Moses Sherman, and partner Harry Chandler. They considered the best way to advertise their new planned community, as well as outshine the myriad other developments around the city.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.
By Yvonne Villarreal in The Times.
Let’s get this straight:
There was never a “long and often bloody struggle between LAPD Police Chief William Parker and gangster kingpin Ben ‘Bugsy’ Siegel” for the simple reason that Siegel was shot to death in June 1947 and Parker didn’t become police chief until August 1950. In other words, Parker became chief three years after Siegel’s death.
Why can’t anybody get L.A. history right?
ps. You know that Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills, not the city of Los Angeles, right? Good.
I suppose the venomous Cathy Seipp (d. 2007) is pretty much forgotten now. I hadn’t thought about her in a long time until the death of Wanda Coleman and remembered that Seipp took regular potshots at Coleman when she wrote as Margo McGee in Buzz magazine (d. 1998). Which makes me ask: Which legacy would you prefer: Seipp’s or Coleman’s?
Note: This is a post I originally wrote for the 1947project in 2006.
Nov. 23, 1907 South Pasadena
Warning: This is a grotesque, tragic story with graphic details.
Pasadena Detective Wallace H. Copping is investigating the murder of a young baby boy, whose half-eaten body was found in a pigpen on the Berry ranch in South Pasadena.
Authorities say the boy, weighing about 14 pounds and less than 10 days old (yes, quite a large baby by today’s standards), was discovered by Mrs. J.H. Anderson, whose husband leases the ranch. Apparently Mr. Anderson picked up the baby’s body as he made the rounds of about 20 homes gathering garbage to feed his pigs.
Eve Golden poses an interesting question: How did America observe the 50th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination?
And for Friday, a mystery chap, courtesy of Christopher McPherson.
Thursday’s mystery guest, Alice Joyce, was identified by Laura, Mary Mallory, Eve Golden, Joan Myers, Bob Hansen, Kent, Mike Hawks and Maedez. Congrats!
ladailymirror.com 