Movieland Mystery Photo

July 7, 2012, Mystery Photo

Here’s another photo from the collection of Steven Bibb!

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‘Casablanca’ Cast Honors Michael Curtiz’s 15 Years in U.S.

Juyly 7, 1942, U.S. Forces Batter Rommel
July 7, 1942, Comics

July 7, 1942:Twin brothers Walter and Sol Brundo, jazz musicians, join a military band stationed at Camp Haan in Riverside County.   I can’t find any trace of Sol and Walter. I wonder what became of them.

“The Magnificent Ambersons”opens at the Pantages in Hollywood and the RKO Hillstreet, billed with “Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost” and the latest “March of Time.”

The cast of “Casablanca” gives a party for director Michael Curtiz marking his 15 years in the U.S. “Mike said he’d talked with many refugees on his set and worked their actual experiences, escaping from Nazi countries, into the picture, Hedda Hopper says.

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On Assignment

I’m on assignment this week, so posting will be light.

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Eve Golden: Queen of the Dead

Hearse U-Haul

This gag postcard of a hearse has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at  $19.95.


Queen of the Dead – dateline July 2, 2012

•  Don Grady, the hottest of My Three Sons, died on June 27; he was 68. Grady started on The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955, and racked up an impressive résumé before being cast as Robbie Douglas on My Three Sons (1960-71), on which he aged from kid to dad of his own triplets. But Grady’s big love was music: he was a drummer for a rock band, and after leaving acting he became a composer for movies and TV shows (The Phil Donahue Show, Switch, Good Neighbor, The Burning Sands). The Modern editor Ron Sklar calls him “a really, really good guy.” Grady told Sklar last year that My Three Sons “was a wonderful experience, in the sense that I learned that fame is not everything . . . I needed to do something that satisfied me and was fulfilling. And for me, that was music.”

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Keaton Sons Change Names to Talmadge

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July 2, 1942, Comics

July 2, 1942: Buster Keaton’s sons Robert, 18, and James, 20, legally change their last names to Talmadge after a petition to the court by Keaton’s ex-wife Natalie Talmadge.

Lee Gilcrease, 29, kills his wife, Ethel, and commits suicide in an orange grove near 14333 Van Nuys Blvd., leaving their children, ages 3 and 2 months, without parents. Gilcrease apparently suspected his wife of being unfaithful and said in a suicide note: “I am stopping it all.”

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Man Held as ‘Orchid Bandit’

June 27, 1942, Ship Off West Coast Torpedoed
June 27, 1942, Comics

June 27, 1942: James D. Hannah liked orchids. He liked them so much that he usually gave several of them to his girlfriends to put in their hair, a habit that led to his arrest when robbery victim  Elva Sieburg identified him from a mug shot.

Sieburg told police that Hannah was the man who held up the Postal Telegraph office at Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue. Unfortunately, The Times failed to follow up on the tale of the orchid bandit, although a photographer managed to take a very strange picture of him with several alleged victims.

Hedda Hopper has an amusing tale — possibly true– of Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland going bowling in Monterey, Calif., during a vacation in Carmel.

Jessie Beck, ex-commissary girl at Metro, wrote “Other People.” It’s a candid view of the screen great from a waitress’ angle, Hopper says.

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Drunken Brawl at Errol Flynn’s Birthday Party

June 26, 1942, Soviet Sub
June 26, 1942, Comics

June 26, 1942: A brawl at Errol Flynn’s  32nd birthday party involves Barbara Hutton’s butler – Eric Gosta Hadler —  and Flynn’s secretary and stand-in, James Fleming. Hadler says: “It all happened so suddenly I can’t remember what happened.”

Judging by Los Angeles County assessor’s records, Flynn’s home at 7740 Mulholland Drive was torn down and replaced in 1967.

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Posted in 1942, Art & Artists, Comics, Crime and Courts, Film, Hollywood, LAPD | 1 Comment

Movieland Mystery Photo

June 25, 2012, Mystery Photo

Here’s another mystery photo from the collection of Steven Bibb!

Update: This is Billy House. Please congratulate Arye Michael Bender (1), Mike Hawks (2), Jenny M (3), Bob Levinson (4), Herb Nichols (5) and Don Danard via email for identifying him.

Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Eve Golden: Queen of the Dead

Motorcycle Hearse
A motorcycle hearse listed on EBay at $10,000.


Queen of the Dead – dateline June 25, 2012

•  Remember a couple months ago when Thomas Kinkade died and there were all these debates about “was he a worse painter than LeRoy Neiman?”  Well, now they can fight it out in Bad Artist Heaven, as Neiman died on June 20, aged 91. Neiman started his career with Playboy in the 1950s, creating garish Eisenhower/Kennedy-era kitsch (he also created the “Femlin,” the semi-naked sprite who cavorted on Playboy’s Party Jokes page). Neiman’s later paintings sold for three figures, says the New York Times, and that does not include a decimal point. The Times added that Neiman “cast himself in the mold of French Impressionists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir and Degas, chroniclers of public life who found rich social material at racetracks, dance halls and cafes,” which explains the spinning noises I heard from all those Paris cemeteries I toured last month. I actually think Kinkade was a worse artist. Neiman at least had some kitsch value; Kinkade’s work looked like it was painted by an evil teddy bear, using another evil teddy bear as a brush.

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Posted in Art & Artists, Eve Golden, Film, Found on EBay, Hollywood, Obituaries, Queen of the Dead, Television | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Eurasian Held on Suspicion of Being Japanese

June 23, 1942, Comics

 

June 23, 1942, Eurasian

 

June 23, 1942: Meet Stanwood Gertz Jr., who was arrested because he was suspected of being Japanese. Gertz told detectives he was German, Chinese and Hawaiian – and his dyed hair presumably made him even more suspicious.

The Times never followed up on the case of young Mr. Gertz, which it called a “man of many mixtures,” but we have Google. Let’s see what we find.

The website japaneserelocation.org provides a few details. A man named Stanwood Gertz is listed as being born in 1921, which would have made him 20 or 21, not 19. He’s listed as Japanese and white, and apparently was sent to Heart Mountain, Wyo. Notice that he’s a college graduate.

In 1943, he apparently tried to enlist in the Army and eventually served. And that’s about all I can find.

“This Gun for Hire” is coming to the Paramount in Hollywood and Downtown.

Tom Treanor, who was killed covering the liberation of France, describes a trip in a cargo plane to an undisclosed destination, just him and a large piece of machinery that he’s forbidden to identify.

“I have taken five life preservers off the wall and I lie on them hour after hour,” he says. “There are only three things to look at outside the plane — the clouds above, the clouds below and the water below the lower clouds, which is a different color every few minutes.”

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Posted in 1942, Art & Artists, Comics, Film, Hollywood, Tom Treanor, World War II | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Hedy Lamarr’s Sarong: S’awright!

June 22, 1942, Tobruk

June 22, 1942, Comics

June 22, 1942: Hedda Hopper says: Joan Crawford got a mighty entertaining picture in “They All Kissed the Bride.” I’ve always liked Joan. She says, “I love being a star and everything that goes with it. I love the work, the adulation, the people who want my autograph. Some may call it drudgery, but to me it’s always been fun.”

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Movieland Mystery Photo [Update +]

June 21, 2012, Mystery Photo

And here’s Thursday’s mystery chap!

Update: This is Ben Blue. Please congratulate Gary Martin (1), Don Danard (2), Mary Mallory (3), Bob Levinson (4), Mike Hawks (5), Greg Clancey (6), William (7), Jenny M (8), Dewey Webb (9), Gregory Moore (10), Herb Nichols (11), Rick Scott (12), Lorenzo (13) and Mike Rose (14) for identifying him.

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Women Abandon Housework for Overalls and Higher Pay

June 21, 1942, Midway
June 2, 1942, Comics

June 21, 1942: Women are taking jobs formerly held by men, and they prefer them, especially the higher wages, The Times finds.

“How do they like exchanging summer frocks for overalls and aprons for masculine livery? The collective and undisputed answer may come as a shock to husbands and the boys overseas. They like it better than their old prewar routine!” The Times says.

Patricia Fairchild, for example, says driving a cab is better than washing dishes.

Former typist Mary Moore and Evelyn Newton, who once ran a dress shop, are now operating a gas station in Alhambra!

“They agree the new life gives them more freedom, better wages, healthful outdoor exercise,” The Times says.

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Church Organist Accused of Killing Parents

June 20, 1942, comics

June 20, 1940, Tobruk

June 20, 1942: Officials of San Diego’s streetcar system are dismayed that the 20 surplus cars obtained from New York are in worse shape than the ones San Diego scrapped two years earlier. San Diego acquired the cars in an expansion of its mass transit system to accommodate the influx of defense workers.

Church organist Courtney Fred Rogers, on trial in the killings of his parents, testifies of attending seances with his mother and grandmother. Rogers, who was apparently a quiet loner, also described an “unnatural” childhood of reading about “philosophy, Oriental, archaic and occult sciences.”

Walter Pidgeon, who was supposedly slipping off to trysts with Scotty Bowers after the war, is  named “Father of the Year.”

Fact-Checking Scotty Bowers’ “Full Service”: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25

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Saving L.A. History, One Page at a Time

LAPD Bulletins
Photo: The LAPD Daily Police Bulletin for Jan. 16, 1947, the day after the Black Dahlia’s body was found. Notice that the Dahlia isn’t mentioned. Credit: Larry Harnisch/LADailyMirror

 


My latest column for The Times is about Joan Renner and her project to digitize the daily LAPD bulletins from 1907 to 1957.

Posted in History, LAPD | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Movieland Mystery Photo

June 18, 2012, Mystery Photo

Here’s another mystery photo from the collection of Steven Bibb!

Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Eve Golden: Queen of the Dead

Cuban Herase
This postcard of a Cuban hearse has been listed on EBay, listed as Buy It Now  at $20.


Queen of the Dead – dateline June 18, 2012

•   Production designer J. Michael Riva, 63, died on June 7. Modern filmgoers know him as the man behind the “look” of the Lethal Weapon, Spider-Man, Charlie’s Angels and Iron Man films (as well as The Color Purple, Dave, The Goonies, Ordinary People and others). But we die-hard fans also know him as one of three grandsons of the great Marlene Dietrich. His mother (“that howwible Mawia Wiva”) suffered from “I want to be my mother” syndrome and wrote a vicious memoir, which I recommend you read with one eyebrow raised cynically, and then go straight for Steven Bach’s excellent Dietrich bio (bypassing, of course, anything by Charlotte Chandler or David Bret). Michael Riva laughed about the glamour of production design to NPR in 2009: “Tony, in the Iron Man armor, pukes in a toilet. I design a toilet. My big job for the day. After that I can go home. My kids ask me, ‘What’d you do today, Dad?’ I designed a toilet!”

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Posted in Eve Golden, Film, Obituaries, Queen of the Dead, Television | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Movieland Mystery Photo – Sports Edition

June 16, 2012, Mystery Photo

Easy, but a fun picture

Posted in Mystery Photo | 11 Comments

Judge Cites ‘Right of Battle’ in Sentencing Conscientious Objector

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June 16, 1942, Command to Fight
June 16, 1942:  Robert Lee Allen is sentenced to five years in federal prison for refusing to enlist in the Army. Judge Jeremiah Neter, 80, noted that Allen had not used the available provisions to file for conscientious objector status and noted “the right of battle taught all through the Bible.”

Simons Drive In at Washington and Grand, and Sunset and Highland is hiring cooks, waitresses and car hops.

Paul Whiteman will be performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Shrine Auditorium in a program with Bing Crosby, Harry James, the Kings Men and Dinah Shore.

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Posted in 1942, Art & Artists, Comics, Crime and Courts, Food and Drink, Music, Religion, Stage, World War II | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Mexican Workers Sought to Fill California’s Farm Labor Shortage

June 15, 1942, Comics

June 15, 1942:  The Japanese who operated farms have been evacuated to internment camps, many farm workers have taken defense jobs and still more have been drafted.

So to get farm labor, California turns to …  guess where: Mexico!

Times artist Charles Owens has a terrific war map of the Middle East.

And the Navy Relief Society makes a Father’s Day pitch for donations.

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