An original drawing by Edmund Waller “Ted” Gale has been listed on EBay. Waller was a longtime cartoonist who was an institution at The Times, but he quit in 1934 in a disagreement over its editorial policies and went to the competing Examiner. He died in 1975.This item dates from 1936. Bidding is up to $5.50.
Here’s another photo from the amazing collection of Steven Bibb!
James Reese Europe
I think my favorite period is 1900-15. Not that I’d want to live back then, I’m not mad, but I do love the fashions, the architecture, the music. My iPod is overflowing with ragtime, pop and Broadway tunes of the pre-War years, and my favorite band by far is James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra. I learned a lot about Europe while writing my biography of Vernon and Irene Castle (oh, you didn’t think I was going to miss a chance to plug one of my books, did you? Not bloody likely!).
Europe was born in Alabama in 1880 (some sources say 1881)—his father was a former slave who went on to study law at Howard University. The Europes were a highly educated and ambitious family, and musical as well, so perhaps James’ career turn did not overly dismay them. He directed several all-black musicals, then turned to composing and conducting, and in 1910 founded the Clef Club, a booking agency, union and social club for black performers.
Tall, imposing and with a no-nonsense demeanor, Europe led the Clef Club Orchestra in “A Symphony of Negro Music” at Carnegie Hall in 1913; that same year, his Europe’s Society Orchestra (which included Ford Dabney and Noble Sissle) signed with Victor Records, becoming (perhaps—I hedge my bets!) the first black orchestra to sign a US recording contract. In 1913 and ’14, he made the recordings I love the best: wild, engaging ragtime numbers such as “Too Much Mustard,” “Castle House Rag,” “Castle Walk,” “You’re Here and I’m Here,” “Down Home Rag,” “The Lame Duck Waltz” and “Il Irresistible,” a ragtime tango. More than any other band I have heard, Europe’s blends ragtime, Eastern-European klezmer music, South American rhythm—and it’s danceable and fun.
About the Castles: dance stars Vernon and Irene signed Europe to accompany them on their 1914 nationwide tour: Vernon called Europe’s “The best dancing music in the world,” and Europe lauded Vernon as “one white absolutely without prejudice.” He snuck the Castles into some of the blacks-only clubs just beginning to open in Harlem, and during the tour, Vernon fined a cast member $50 for using the word “nigger” backstage in conversation—$50, in 1914! To avoid the problem of segregated hotels, the Castle Company simply lived in their luxurious train; when possible, Europe’s band performed onstage with the dancers, though some theaters (oh, you know who I’m talking about) made the black players sit in the orchestra pit, safely away from the whites.
Irene may not have been as happy about the association was Vernon, for one reason: drummer Buddie (also spelled “Buddy” sometimes) Gilmore, who got Vernon obsessed with drums. Vernon became a good, enthusiastic player, but Irene complained that “Drumming is all very well in a restaurant . . . but in a house, beginning almost before breakfast and ending some time after midnight, it becomes a little trying.”
Both Vernon Castle and James Reese Europe enlisted when the Great War broke out: Europe joined New York’s 15th Infantry Regiment, the first black regiment to reach France. He was supposed to be a military bandleader, but soon saw combat: his biographer, Reid Badger, wrote that Lt. Europe was the first black officer “to lead troops into combat in the Great War.” His 369th Infantry Regiment was nicknamed the Hell Fighters for their fearlessness; they served 191 days in combat, and when on leave entertained Paris with their wild American music.
The Hell Fighters returned to a heroic welcome in New York, marching up Fifth Avenue from midtown to Harlem (Irene Castle cheered them on, but by then, poor Vernon had died in a plane crash). In the spring of 1919, The Hell Fighters Band made a series of records for Pathé which are today available on CD—terrific music, on the cusp between ragtime and jazz (indeed, “Jazz Baby” and “Jazzola” are two of the selections—along with the best “St. Louis Blues” you will ever hear). Europe was set to become one of the leading stars of the dawning jazz age, when the unthinkable happened: on May 9, 1919, after a performance at Boston’s Mechanics Hall, drummer Herbert Wright got into a dressing-room argument with Europe and stabbed him in the throat—Europe died hours later, at the age of 39, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was all but forgotten during the Harlem Renaissance and the jazz revolution that followed, and still today does not get the acclaim he should.
You can easily find Europe’s 1919 work, but I am going to leave you with his earlier music, which I prefer, and I defy you not to jump up and dance around your apartment to “Too Much Mustard” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTmxbfhnLhw) and “The Castle House Rag” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRQ5CU3l8tQ). And just for the heck of it, here is some rare footage of Vernon and Irene Castle actually dancing to Europe’s music, from their 1914 film The Whirl of Life (which I wish would be restored and issued on DVD, with a Europe soundtrack!). Turn off the sound, which is totally incorrect for the period, and play some Europe’s Society Orchestra in the background: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5TE74e9vAg. Europe’s Orchestra can barely be spotted to the far right of the large-ballroom set (you can click off at 3:48, when we shift to 1939 and Astaire/Rogers, if you don’t want to lose that 1914 feeling).
A lot of items from the Biltmore Hotel, including a bill for two days in August 1947, seven months after the Black Dahlia killing, has been listed on EBay. This map appears with a booklet titled “Guide to Biltmore Services.” Bidding starts at $1.99.
From its days as an elegant bank building to its abandoned and forgotten existence in the 1980s and 1990s, the former Security Trust and Savings Bank at Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga Boulevard has served as both a local institution and location setting for films and books. Not as beautiful as the empty bank building at Hollywood and Highland Avenue, the banking veteran still survives as an example of an attractive building for an utilitarian function.
Here’s 323 5th St. via Google’s Street View.
Seven photos by C.C. Pierce showing Fire Department equipment have been listed on EBay. Pierce was a prolific photographer who chronicled the early days of Los Angeles. Many of his photographs are at the Huntington, and USC also has a sizeable collection. The above picture is No. 7458. Bidding on the photo starts at $2.50.
Also for sale: Volunteer Firefighters Parade, July 4, 1871, with the first fire engine.
Fire at Broadway and 3rd St., 1913 (No. 7635). (Notation on back: Bryce Building Fire, Sept. 16, 1911
Chicago Wall Paper Co. Fire)
Fire at Broadway and 3rd St. (No. 7636)
Engine Co. 5. Noted on back: This group of horses were called the “White Angels.” 1900: 4th and Towne at that time city had 11 fire engines companies, 5 hose companies, 2 chemical engines, Thos. Strohm was fire chief.
Firehouse (No. 1587) Old fire engine house 9th and Main now occupied by the Rives-Strong Building. Published in The Times, July 17, 1938.
Firehouse on West Adams (no number).
This photo of an unidentified dancer at the Follies Burlesque Theatre in Los Angeles has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $18.95.
Here’s yet another photo from the amazing collection of Steven Bibb!
Nov. 9, 1982: Patrick James Henneberry and George Peters, leaders of the purported Church of Naturalism, were beaten to death with a blunt instrument and shot at close range on the Laurel Canyon estate on Woodstock Road leased by the church, The Times says.
Here’s another picture from the amazing collection of Steven Bibb!
Nov. 7, 1942: Pursuing British mobile forces, equipped with big American-made Gen. Sherman tanks, have overtaken some of the remnants of Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Matruh region of Western Egypt “and are steadily chopping them to pieces,” front dispatches said early today, The Times says.
Errol Flynn is ordered to stand trial Nov. 23 on charges of “criminally attacking” two underage girls. Betty Hansen, 17, accuses the actor of “molesting her” during a Sept. 27 dinner party. while Peggy LaRue Satterlee, who was 15 at the time, says Flynn “twice attacked her” on a cruise to Santa Catalina Island aboard his yacht, the Sirocco.
Photographer Peter Stackpole testified that he took pictures of Flynn and Saterlee and that the actor talked about captioning one photo of Saterlee: “$5,000.”
Stackpole also said he took Saterlee home and that “she appeared ill at ease and cried most of the way home. She talked a lot but it didn’t seem to make much sense. She was very emotional and upset.”
Flynn, who is being represented by Jerry Giesler, says that he will be vindicated when he tells his side of the story.
A photo of Marjorie White and Frank Albertson has been listed on EBay, with bids starting at $9.99.
Marjorie White
1904 – 1935
My friend, writer Mel Neuhaus, calls them “say girls.” The hard-boiled dames who start out every line with a side-of-the-mouth “say . . .” You know, they were part of the “comedy couple” in early talkies, who lightened things up when we got tired of the stars cooing at each other. These gals never became as famous as their tough-talking sisters Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard or Joan Blondell, but they brightened up many a Depression-era film: Helen Kane, Lillian Roth, Polly Walters, Zelma O’Neal, Pert Kelton, the great Patsy Kelly.
One of the brightest was Marjorie White (not to be confused with her near-contemporaries Alice White or Thelma White). Pert rather than pretty, with a mile-wide grin and a strong belt singing voice, she was born in Canada in 1904 and was onstage by the age of eight, as one of the Winnipeg Kiddies; by her early twenties, she had teamed with Thelma Wolpa in a vaudeville act (Wolpa later became the aforementioned Thelma White, so they were sisters, if only via the stage). In 1924 Marjorie married dancer Eddie Tierney, then appearing in Keep Kool (one of the Keep Kool Kuties was Barbara Stanwyck, by the way). Tierney joined the White Sisters act.
Marjorie appeared in a handful of Broadway shows and revues, including Hello, Lola (1926, with a young Elisha Cook and Ben Franklin—I am assuming not that Ben Franklin), Ballet Moderne (which opened and closed like a suitcase in 1928), Lady Fingers (with the wonderful Eddie Buzzell, 1929) and Ziegfeld’s 1932 Hot-Cha! (I would kill to have seen this—it also starred Bert Lahr, June MacCloy, Buddy Rogers, Eleanor Powell, Iris Adrian—a great “say girl” herself—and Lupe Velez). Brooks Atkinson of the NY Times called Marjorie a “jaunty hoyden” in this show, which sums her up better than I ever could.
Fox snapped her up in 1929, putting her into their all-star musical revue Happy Days. In a way, Marjorie starred, as a showboat singer bound for Broadway—but she was really the smallest potatoes in the film, which showcased cameos by Fox stars Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Edmund Lowe, Victor McLaglen, George Jessel, Will Rogers, Ann Pennington and others (also making her screen debut was 13-year-old Betty Grable, deep in the chorus line). The NY Times called Marjorie an “enterprising little person” in Happy Days, noting her “energetic and comic efforts.”
A good supporting role in the Gaynor/Farrell starrer Sunnyside Up (1929) followed, a classic comedy-couple pairing with Marjorie and the braying Frank Richardson. She had two good numbers (“You’ve Got Me Picking Petals Off of Daisies” and “It’s Great to Be Necked,” along with a reprise of the title tune). And at only 4’10”, she made wee Janet Gaynor look normal-sized. In 1930, she brightened up Her Golden Calf as well, as the comic relief to leading lady Nancy Carroll: “If it were possible to have more of the singing of Marjorie White . . . the photoplay would be more amusing,” wrote the NY Times.
That same year she was reteamed with Frank Richardson and the annoying El Brendel for New Movietone Follies of 1930, starring William Collier, Jr., and Miriam Seegar. Her biggest hit—or at least her best-remembered film—was Just Imagine, the art deco sci-fi extravaganza of 1930. It was a lost film for decades, and the production stills were so enticing, that when Just Imagine was finally discovered, it turned out to be an inevitable disappointment. The comedy was limp, the romance (Maureen O’Sullivan and John Garrick) dull, El Brendel annoying. But comedy couple Marjorie White and Frank Albertson remain the hit of the film, especially in their comic duet, “Never Swat a Fly.”
1930 and 1931 consisted mostly of long-forgotten films and small roles: as the delightfully-named Totsy Franklin in the Jeanette MacDonald film Oh, for a Man; Charlie Chan Carries On; as “Pee Wee” in Women of All Nations (with El Brendel, again); The Black Camel (another Chan thriller); the Joe E. Brown comedy Broadminded; and a cameo in the short Hollywood Halfbacks (also featuring such B or washed-up stars as Mary Brian, Johnny Mack Brown, Franklin Pangborn, Betty Compson and Priscilla Dean).
Only in MGM’s wonderful Possessed (1931) did Marjorie get a good part, as a gum-chewing doxy brought to the newly-snooty Joan Crawford’s apartment. Marjorie’s part is brief but memorable—she is funny and touching, recognizing that she is out of her element and managing to make a graceful, embarrassed exit. Them it was off to Broadway and Hot-Cha, and back for a nice supporting part on Wheeler and Woolsey’s 1933 Dilpomaniacs (in which she did a slapstick song and dance, “Sing to Me,” with Bert Wheeler). Later that year came a tiny part in Paramount’s Edmund Lowe/Wynne Gibson comedy Her Bodyguard.
But by the mid-1930s, work was drying up for these early-talkie “say girls.” Marjorie supported herself with nightclub and vaudeville work; her only 1934 film was as Larry Fine’s giggly secret bride in the Three Stooges short Women Haters—and it turned out to be her swan song. On Aug. 20, 1935, she was a passenger in a car involved in a two-vehicle collision in Los Angeles; she died the following day, aged 31. The film industry was still reeling from Will Rogers’ death the week before in a plane crash, and Marjorie’s obit was pretty much buried on the inside pages.
I leave you with this clip of Marjorie White in the otherwise pretty terrible Just Imagine (1930), singing PETA’s theme song, “Never Swat a Fly,” with the quite adorable Frank Albertson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRuWwK51CgI
—Eve Golden
Photo: Hugh Herbert, honorary mayor of Studio City, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
Tomorrow is election day. Elections and politics are important to everyone, be they Joe Citizen or Joseph Kennedy. Over the years, celebrities have entered the political arena, some to support candidates, some to raise their fading glory, and others because they truly hoped to provide public service. In the 1930s and 1940s, many Hollywood stars served as honorary mayors in their communities, bringing recognition to their local neighborhoods and advocating for public services, roads and parks to better people’s lives.
Pier Angeli and friend remind the Daily Mirror readers to turn the clock back one hour.
Nov. 2, 1942: The Army hires 10 women to serve as truck drivers at Ft. MacArthur so that men who have been doing the job can be released to field positions.
“The women drivers will work an eight-hour day and a 48-hour week, maneuvering half-ton trucks and command cars at first to get the feel of Army vehicles,” The Times says. “Later they will be assigned to heavier two and one-half-ton trucks.”
A lot of five photos showing the Jan. 23, 1913, fire at the Los Angeles Wallpaper and Paint Co., 529 S. Main St., has been listed on EBay. The blaze injured Fire Chief Archibald “Archie” J. Eley and 18 men, The Times said. Eley recovered from his injuries and upon retirement from the Los Angeles Fire Department in 1919, worked for a Hollywood studio. He died June 4, 1943, in Thousand Oaks at the age of 78.
The 500 block of South Main Street via Google’s Street View. The fire was approximately across the street from what is now the Nickel Diner.
Photo No. 1 | Photo No. 2 | Photo No. 3 | Photo No. 4 | Photo No. 5
Oct. 31, 1982: Times staff writer Ruth Ryon profiles the renovations at the Earl Carroll Theatre, 6230 Sunset Blvd. Now the Nickelodeon Studios, the theater was designed by Gordon B. Kaufmann and opened on Christmas Eve 1938.
Curbed L.A. has posted a list of some “haunted” locations in L.A., including the Biltmore, where Elizabeth Short was left by Red Manley in January 1947, never to be seen again. The photo, alas, shows the current lobby, which didn’t exist then. Steve Hodel’s “Black Dahlia Avenger” makes the same mistake, which tells you something about the caliber of “research” in the book. The actual lobby, off the Olive Street entrance, looked like this in the 1940s:
ladailymirror.com 