April 12, 1983: Oscar-winning animator Zbigniew Rybczyński, 34, is in custody on charges of battery after he allegedly kicked a security guard in the groin outside the Academy Awards ceremony at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion — and then kicked a deputy in the groin while being taken into custody.
Rybczyński, who did not speak English, won an Oscar for the eight-minute film “Tango.” Officials did not know of a motive for the attack, The Times said.
Oh look at this:
April 11, 1943: And here begins one of my favorite “Li’l Abner” episodes: Zoot Suit Yokum.
The Times reports a strange encounter on Guadalcanal in which an unidentified Marine took a rifle from a wounded Japanese lieutenant.
According to Torrance Police Chief John Stroh,who had temporary possession of the rifle, before the Japanese lieutenant died, he told the Marine that he was from El Monte and had graduated from El Monte High School and USC. The lieutenant had apparently gone to Japan just before the war.
Hedda Hopper writes positively about “Mission to Moscow,” a movie she — and many others — denounced during the McCarthy era. (She also considered “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “Meet John Doe” to have communist influences).
Now filming: “Henry Aldrich Haunts a House,” “Corvettes in Action,” “Saratoga Trunk” and “A Guy Named Joe.”
April 10, 1913: The Times seems to be featuring a woman artist, but it’s difficult to make out her elaborate signature. Is it N. Tanaga? V. Tanaga? V. Kanaga? Aha! she was Neva Kanaga. Further research indicates she was Neva S. Kanaga, who was 20 in 1912 and married to Marvin H. Brown, 23, of Fresno. She later worked as an illustrator under the name Neva Kanaga Brown.
On the jump, a clever piece of writing, typical of the era, about a bear that escaped from its owner at Main and 68th streets. And no, the police did not shoot the bear out of the palm tree.
Talk about unintended consequences: A bill before the Legislature designed to prevent Japanese farmers from owning land in California could apply to European investors as well. Oops.
Among the events scheduled for the upcoming Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (April 20-21), you may especially enjoy a panel moderated by Patt Morrison titled “The Real L.A. Noir,” featuring reporters Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton — and me.
The panel is 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on April 20. Hope to see you there – and bring your questions!
Photo: A headline from the Mirror about the Charles Starkweather case. You would NEVER see a headline like this in The Times. Ever. I used to have this over my desk and the folks shooting “The Soloist” liked it so much that they plastered it all over the newsroom.
Read the entire April 4, 1863, issue, from the Huntington Library, scanned by USC.
April 4, 1863: Most of this issue of the Star is devoted to the Civil War and virulent criticism of the North, Abolitionists, President Lincoln, etc.
One item of local interest involves the turnpike over San Fernando Mountain being built by Mr. E.T. Beale. Beale received a franchise for a turnpike from the Legislature, but the Board of Supervisors was unwilling to ratify his franchise because the grading wasn’t good enough. The board and Beale reached another agreement providing for further grading of the road and recommended a toll lasting 20 years as follows:
$2 for a team of 12 or 10 animals
$1.75 for a team of eight animals
$1.50 for a team of six animals
$2.25 (presumably $1.25) for a team of four animals
$1 for two animals
50 cents for one animal
25 cents for a horse and man
25 cents for pack animals
10 cents each for cattle or loose animals
3 cents for sheep.
This is a special shout-out to one of our regular readers, Grant Lockhart. Enjoy, Grant! Sorry about the fuzzy quality. It’s the best I can do.
Update: Dear friends, I regret to report the loss of one of our regulars, Grant Lockhart, the father of Claire Lockhart, whom many of you know. Grant was an expert on old films and regularly identified our mystery movies. You may recall that he recognized last week’s mystery film, “Flesh,” from the first image. Claire writes by way of biography: “He was a celebrity journalist with the Daily Mail and Weekend magazine in London. Old movies were his great passion.”
Grant had been in declining health for some time and was a fan of B-Westerns, so I thought he would enjoy seeing an old “horse opera” as a mystery movie, and I planned this week especially for him. Sadly, he passed away without ever seeing it. So let’s finish out the week in his honor. I apologize for the fuzzy quality of these pictures, but I don’t have any B-Westerns in the archives and I had to obtain this from another source.
When Americans think of classic illustrators from the early 20th century, names such as Charles Dana Gibson, Harrison Fisher, Haskell Coffin, James Montgomery Flagg, and John Held Jr. spring to mind. Forgotten by almost everyone, but in every way these men’s equal, is the great female artist Nell Brinkley. Her image of American womanhood supplanted that of Gibson, conveying the vivacity, intelligence, and spunk of young women eager to take on the world.
Born on Sept. 5, 1886, Brinkley scribbled drawings growing up as a child in Edgewater, Colo. Headstrong and determined, she announced at age 17 that she would leave high school to earn a living as an artist. Soon thereafter, the Denver Post hired the young woman as an editorial cartoonist at $7 a week. Unfortunately, she earned the nickname “Smearo” and was fired after six months. After two years of art school, Brinkley was hired by the Denver Times to draw what became her stock-in-trade, beautiful girls.
My Rolodex card for Roger Ebert, c. 1982.
In the outpouring of appreciations and reminiscences after the death of film critic Roger Ebert, my little tale is really not much. I am adding it because I believe that even a brief encounter – at least this one – is worth remembering.
Before my story, which is quite short, I should explain who Ebert was at that time, which is so very different from movie criticism today that people who didn’t experience it might not understand why he was given such great esteem.
Eve Golden has given a couple of interviews about her new book on John Gilbert:
The first is with Michael G. Ankerich and the second is with Mel Neuhaus. Congrats, Eve!
April 4, 1943: Col. Darryl F. Zanuck comes under criticism for trying to return to civilian life. (Zanuck said there wasn’t much chance that he would make more movies of combat.)
Sen. Harry Truman (D-Mo.) of the Senate War Program Investigation Committee says: “I don’t believe in letting fellows back out in the middle of a war.” The committee “implied criticism” of the War Department allowing Jack Warner to surrender his commission as a lieutenant colonel after a few months.
April 3, 1913: That is author L. Frank Baum and composer Louis F. Gottschalk, the team behind “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz,” which was a blockbuster in Los Angeles. The Times said it “is the reigning sensation of the local theatrical world and with a succession of crowded houses at the Majestic there is every tangible indication that this new musical extravaganza with its wealth of pictorial beauty is an out and out success.”
In other news, Police Chief Sebastian (yes, I know) wants $1 million so he can add 75 new patrolmen, three motorcycle officers and four policewomen. He also wants to increase the minimum salary of patrolmen from $83.33 to $100.
The city is struggling to deal with traffic congestion – caused by Los Angeles’ sainted streetcar system.
Read the entire edition online at USC, scanned from a copy at the Huntington Library.
March 28, 1863: The city of Los Angeles is selling 2,000 acres “within the eastern boundary of the city” at a minimum price of 50 cents an acre ($9.19 USD 2012).
The Los Angeles Star visits the new waterworks and describes its construction.
The project consists of a dam 395 feet long “formed by a double row of 24-foot piles driven 18 feet into the ground.”
“From the reservoir formed by this dam the water will be lifted to a height of 40 feet by a wheel revolving by the action of a current formed by a flow of water from the dam.”
“The water thus elevated is delivered on the north bank of the river and will be received in a covered ditch, one foot by two in size, and conveyed to a point near the Catholic burying ground, a distance of about one-half of a mile, where it is proposed to build a reservoir and from whence citizens will be furnished with water through the medium of pipes.”
Mrs. Jane Swisshelm seems to want to exterminate all the Native Americans in Minnesota.
By the early 1920s, real estate development was booming all around Los Angeles. For decades, the city had boldly advertised itself as a mecca in which average citizens could earn their share of the American dream under glorious sunshine and surrounded by beauty.
Los Angeles expanded west and north as the population exploded, and homes evolved from simple bungalows into elegant abodes. Neighborhoods such as Whitley Heights and Windsor Square catered to more prosperous Angelenos: movie stars, bankers and oil men. Streetcar tycoons and real estate moguls Eli P. Clark and Moses H. Sherman seized the moment to begin selling a long-held piece of property above Hollywood.
Oh those Brits! The Express has jumped all over the story about Zooey Deschanel and Jamie Linden visiting the Sowden House, Dr. George “Evil Genius” Hodel’s purported Murder HQ. Naturally, since it’s a better story, they dub it the “Black Dahlia murder house.” Of course there is nothing to show Elizabeth Short ever set foot in the place – or even that she knew Dr. Hodel.
By the way, we are still waiting on the results of tests on soil samples taken last year. The crime lab must be awfully slow, don’t you think?
Being in L.A. is like living on a huge movie set. The white trucks are everywhere. Because I work downtown, I’m accustomed to seeing it standing in for – yes – New York. All the time. Here are some recent shots.
People line up outside a meat market at 2100 N. Broadway.
2100 N. Broadway via Google Street View.
March 28, 1943: And did the “Greatest Generation” meekly, humbly and patriotically accept meat rationing for the war effort?
They did not. They fought for every scrap.
Mobs of clamoring men and women, in scenes virtually unparalleled in Los Angeles, yesterday battled butchers and each other in a fight to stock up on meat and get a head start on point rationing, which begins tomorrow.Traffic jams were common in front of some markets which had seemingly miraculous quantities of meat, as word spread by mouth and telephone.
Los Angeles is reading: “The Robe,” “Mrs. Parkington,” “Guadalcanal Diary” and “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.”
March 27, 1913: Mrs. C.H. Hampton, 139 S. Olive St., is a woman with a stretch of bad luck. First her husband died, and then in December the former Mrs. Schwartz married a man named Hampton who talked her into selling most of her property, then deserted her in Bakersfield after spending all the money.
March 21, 1863: Now that we’re done with the Black Dahlia/George Hodel transcripts we can return to Los Angeles in the pages of the Star, which was brimming with vitriol against the North in the Civil War. Even when one is prepared for such sentiments, the vehemence is shocking. (For those who just tuned in, the Los Angeles Star was staunchly anti-North, and stridently pro-South and pro-Slavery.)
The dens of poverty and misery in New York and other Northern cities are about to be reinforced by a large number of contrabands. The military authorities are about to call upon the benevolent in the North to procure homes and employment for the surplus of unfortunate Negroes now on the hands of the government. In its kindness, the government will try to employ the men in good health, but the women and children must be sent North. That’s the way to do it, of course, and by the time the four millions have been started on their way to earthly glory, what a beautiful time we shall have in the Northern States.
There’s also a long description of an accident of the steamship Senator, which struck a rock off Point Fermin in heavy fog, and whaling – yes, whaling – off the coast.
This issue of the Star, which is in the collection of the Huntington, was scanned by USC and is available here.
ladailymirror.com 