Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
October 9, 1907
Los Angeles
She was known as Trellis C. Harris or Trellis Blessing—or Edna Hall. But her method was always the same. She would commit some theft, then fake an epileptic fit, spitting up blood from a capsule hidden in her mouth.
Eugene Vale, author of “The Thirteenth Apostle,” lives and works a few blocks from Sunset and Laurel Canyon Blvds., rendezvous of actors, entertainers, agents and horse players, and fountainhead of glib, superficial wisecracks about Hollywood.
Yet out of this setting has come a book which critics are comparing with “The Magic Mountain,” “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Green Mansions.”
Vale, born in Switzerland, has been writing all his life, books, plays, short stories, poems. He came to Los Angeles in 1946. The idea for “The Thirteenth Apostle” began germinating 20 years ago, and three years ago Vale isolated himself and began writing. He spent two and a half years at it and his first completed draft was 20,000 pages, which he cut to 515 for the finished manuscript. Continue reading
Reginald de Koven’s “Robin Hood” will be performed in Philadelphia.
October 8, 1944: Louella Parsons says: The first official visit Effie Klinker, Edgar Bergen’s new wooden spinster, made was at my house. The old gal, who Edgar says was a teacher before she joined Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, was dressed to the teeth for the occasion. She wore a shirtwaist of purple taffeta, a John Frederics hat in green, and gaiters – of all things – to say nothing of a watch on her bosom.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.
Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
October 8, 1907
Los Angeles
Health officials and a deputy district attorney have joined to urge the Board of Supervisors to ban fishing within a half-mile of the city’s Hyperion line that pours sewage into Santa Monica Bay.
America Tropical, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1932.
F. K. Ferenz of the Plaza Art Gallery at Los Angeles’ El Pueblo looked to make a statement in 1932, showing that the city celebrated world class artists and Olvera Street was the place to visit, when he commissioned world renowned Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros to create a mural on the upper wall of his gallery. Audacious and bold, the work of art called out the American government at a time when the country sunk deeper into the Great Depression. Its story of censorship and retribution speaks out even today.
Virtually forgotten by the city, Olvera Street and El Pueblo saw rebirth thanks to the efforts of Northern California native Christine Sterling. Dismayed that city officials ignored the care and upkeep of the very place where the city of Los Angeles was founded, she led a crusade in the late 1920s to save it and the area’s first home, the Avila Adobe. Organizing a letter writing campaign and winning donations to restore the Adobe, she finally convinced the city to restore and update the street into a romanticized “Spanish atmosphere” and marketplace. Continue reading
As anyone who was around then will recall, things were mighty tough in 1936. The Depression was on and jobs were scarce and, while hardly anyone went hungry, many persons weren’t eating too well.
In this prevailing condition a young newspaperman named Hal set out from New England to find a place for himself. He got to Detroit in winter, found nothing, and decided to head for California, where at least it was warmer. He lined up a ride with an auto caravan and in a few days found himself marooned in Wyoming with $3.
He hitchhiked to Los Angeles, registered at a cheap downtown hotel and tried unsuccessfully to get a job on the papers. When his money was gone he sneaked out of the hotel, leaving a note that he’d return for his bag and pay his bill. Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2008.
Denise Hamilton writes:
It was 59 years ago today that brunette starlet Jean Spangler vanished, leaving behind a young daughter, gangster pals, movie star connections and a mystery that remains unsolved more than a half-century later.
On October 7, 1949, the beautiful 27-year-old divorcee, who lived in an apartment near Park La Brea, told her mother she was meeting her ex-husband, then heading off for a night movie shoot. Jean kissed her 5-year-old daughter Christina, waved goodbye to her mother and clip-clopped off in her high heels. She was never seen again.
In the October 2025 Ask Me Anything on the Black Dahlia case, I talk about my work in progress, Heaven Is HERE!
I discussed the books that contributed to “The Black Dahlia Mystique.” Continue reading
October 7, 1944
Danton Walker says: Agnes De Mille is the unseen star of “Bloomer Girl,” as she is the star of almost any show for which she is choreographer. This much-touted extravaganza, though gorgeously costumed, sumptuously set and brimming over with talent, is too heavily fraught with all this new world a-coming stuff for a lighthearted operetta. Though laid in 1861, its topics are all pointed up to apply to 1944, probably because Hollywood had a hand in it.
Louella Parsons says: One thing about Preston Sturges, he doesn’t underrate his own talents. He was approached recently to act as commentator on a radio show. “Yes I am interested,” drawled Sturges, “providing you give me a two-hour show and build a theater for me.” Which shows how interested Pres really was in the idea. He has just signed Ray Steele, of “Hail the Conquering Hero,” to a long-term contract. Steele, incidentally, is the first actor signed by the satirical Mr. Sturges.*
*Apparently she means Freddie Steele.
LIBRA: Not especially auspicious but with your help, the intelligence you can give undertakings, you need not slip behind in any worthy endeavor. Hard work will advance you.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com
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By Keith Thursby
Times staff writer
They don’t write exits like this anymore.
Dizzy Dean and the Cubs lost to the Yankees, 6-3, in the second game of the 1938 World Series. But it was more than a loss–it might have been the last chapter of a great career.
Consider Henry McLemore’s story which focused on Dean’s shuffle down “baseball’s last mile” after the Yankees knocked him out of the game. Continue reading
October 7, 1909: Pedro Vasquez was arrested by Detective Talamantes for stealing two pairs of trousers. After the jurors convicted Vasquez, they took up a collection so he could buy a shirt since he didn’t have one. Continue reading
A great despair has settled on Jeffrey Rimmer of Garden Grove.
Not long ago he became outraged at what seemed a miscarriage of justice and wrote this letter, which a paper printed: “By suspending the wealthy attorney’s jail sentence for killing two old people in a drunk-driving and hit-and-run case, and fining him $5,000, the community benefits in three ways: The people will be saved the expense of keeping one more inmate in prison; two senior citizens have been eliminated from possible public aid; the $5,000 will aid the redistribution of wealth, contributing materially to our prosperity.” Continue reading
October 6, 1949
Here’s another item from the LAPD scrapbooks at the city archives: The police chief is William A. Worton (are you paying attention, everybody who thinks William Parker was chief in 1949? especially you, Will Beall, writer of “Gangster Squad?”) and he disbands the gangster squad.
Note: This is an encore post from 2008.
By Gary Rubin
Times Staff Writer
Would he pitch?
That was the question Dodger fans were asking themselves 43 years ago on the eve of their World Series opener against the Minnesota Twins.
The “he” in this case was Sandy Koufax, who not only won 26 games for the team in 1965, but won the pennant-clinching game against the Milwaukee Braves and finished the season with a record 382 strikeouts.
There was just one problem:
Game 1 was scheduled to be played on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, considered the most important holiday among Jews.
This week’s “unsuitable” mystery movie was the 1934 Paramount film Search for Beauty, with Larry “Buster” Crabbe, Ida Lupino, Robert Armstrong, James Gleason, Toby Wing, Gertrude Michael, Bradley Page, Frank McGlynn Sr., Nora Cecil, Virginia Hammond, Eddie Gribbon and “Pop” Kenton. Continue reading
October 5, 1959: Matt Weinstock on UFOs, downtown bars and the greatest invention of all time.
Elmer Clarence “Mox” Meukel told his story to a couple of hobos in a shack on Scott Island in the Truckee River near Reno.
Most people wrote him off as a crackpot dreamer. After all, he was a sometime songwriter and self-taught inventor, but these men listened to his story.
Mox said he and some co-workers at Bendix Corp. had been designing a motion detector that would sound an alarm when a child got near a swimming pool.
On Feb. 1, 1958, the day he was laid off at Bendix, two military planes collided over Norwalk, killing 48 people. Mox said he realized that his motion detector could
be turned into a device that would prevent such midair crashes.
Without a job, he began working on the device in the garage of the home at 7716 Bonner Ave., Sun Valley, that he shared with his wife, Jean, and three children.
“Mox sold his engineering books, my jewelry, cameras, a rifle, tools–just about everything we owned to finance this thing,” his wife said. Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project. It was a response to Kim Cooper’s post on the stabbings of Lillian Dominguez and Barbara Jean Morse.
I’m really glad you picked this one, Kim, as it helps disprove the current myth—promoted by many aspiring sleuths—that serial attacks/killings were an unrecognized phenomenon until recently and that the local police (the LAPD in the Black Dahlia case and Santa Monica police in the Dominguez case) were incapable of connecting seemingly random murders into the “obvious” pattern.
October 5, 1909: Richard Johnson Proctor, a penniless old character in Santa Ana, dies on a cot in a filthy room. Investigators discover he was wealthy man with a fortune in gold.
Note: Here’s an entry I wrote in 2006 for the 1947project. I thought newer readers might enjoy it.
October 5, 1907
Los Angeles
Hilliard Stricklin is a man with an urgent desire to do something for his fellow African Americans. He says that he came to Los Angeles from Chattanooga, Tenn., about 1895 with a few dollars in his pocket, worked hard and saved his money until he opened a grocery store at 2053 Santa Fe Ave.
What he wants most is to build a facility for the elderly and for orphaned children, naming it the Stricklin Memorial Home for the Aged in honor of his mother.
ladailymirror.com 