May 29, 1942: The highest-paid executive in America is Louis B. Mayer, who earned $704,426.60 ($11,025,713.90 USD 2012) in 1941. The next-highest is Clark Gable, who earned $357,500 ($5,595,604.59 USD 2012) and Nicholas M. Schenck is third at $334,204.54 ($5,230,983.10 USD 2012).
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson warns that Japan may plan raids on the West Coast in reprisal for the Doolittle raid.
Death Takes a Holiday
Your faithful correspondent is in Paris this week, touring the morgue and the catacombs, having absinthe with bohemians, and going for a fitting at M. Dior’s.
When Milton Caniff hasn’t filled up the panel with dialogue balloons – which is most of the time – he’s quite a dramatic artist.
May 26, 1942: Edwin Schallert visits New York and writes about a promotional tour for “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” which arrived on the 20th Century Limited with Lt. Col. Jack L. Warner and his wife, plus Alan Ladd — who is promoting “The Gun for Hire” — and his wife, Sue Carol. Guests at the gala for “Yankee Doodle Dandy” are paying $17,500 ($247,023.77 USD 2012) a ticket, Schallert says.
Schallert notes that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken many of its masterworks off display because of the war.
Branding your tires with your license plate number is a way to foil thieves!
“The Spoilers” is opening at the Pantages Hollywood and RKO Hillstreet. Interestingly enough, along with the revival of “The Gold Rush,” “Gone With the Wind” is coming back for a limited engagement.
May 25, 1942: Tom Treanor, who was killed covering World War II, visits a munitions factory and writes about women in the workplace.
Interviewing a foreman, Treanor says: I asked him him how he stood it bossing 150 women doing such irritating inspection jobs.
“I’m getting gray,” he said.
“What’s the trouble?”
“You know women,” he said. “They’re unreasonable. You can’t tell them anything. They’re just as unreasonable on the job as they are at home.”
And Charles Owens has a full-page war map.
Continue reading
Our mystery guest, at left, with a mystery companion, who had a nasty experience with an artist’s paintbrush.
Update: As most people realized, this is Frank Albertson with Sally O’Neil in “The Brat.”
We had a nice turnout yesterday for the Thursdays at the Globe discussion of the downtown renaissance and vintage crime. Several guests were longtime Angelenos and shared their recollections of the city’s history, including the architecture, the streetcars and the general ambience of downtown in the 1940s and ‘50s.
One of the more interesting questions was about whether the downtown renovations are “authentic.” My response was that this is downtown Los Angeles, not Colonial Williamsburg, where we would try to re-create a particular period in Los Angeles history. There are certain aspects of downtown in the 1940s, for example, that we don’t want to revisit. When you look at old movies that were filmed downtown, you can see that buildings were covered with ugly, claptrap signage that wouldn’t be tolerated today. And there were far more billboards. The lines of the old buildings are much more exposed now (except for the annoying metal facades installed to “modernize” some of them).
And we got lots of mileage joking about the B-girls in old Los Angeles.
Cheers to our host, Darrell Kunitomi and the other guests, Jessica Gelt and Julie Makinen.
May 24, 1942: Duesenberg for sale (sigh).
Read Kendall has the story of Pvt. Kenneth Arlen, a screen extra whose final job involved getting a kiss from Judy Garland as she finished singing “Over There” in “For Me and My Gal.” Arlen later had dinner with Garland and her husband, David Rose, Kendall says.
May 23, 1942: Iyamma Satos uses three neckties to hang himself in Elysian Park. His suicide note reads:
“My country goes greatly wrong. I cannot face my good friend America anymore, so I had to die. Please bury me quietly.”
May 22, 1942: As the prosecutor finished his closing arguments in the trial of Mazo Shepherd, accused of killing a taxi driver, the victim’s nephew walked up to Shepherd and shot him in the head.
Shepherd was taken from the courtroom and died a short time later, but not before the jury convicted him and recommended the death penalty.
And that’s how they do things in Harlan, Ky.
Here’s another mystery photo from the amazing collection of Steven Bibb!
[Update: This is Claire Luce. Please congratulate Dewey Webb and Mike Hawks for identifying her.]
Photo: A 2003 Cadillac hearse listed on EBay, with bids starting at $18,900.
Queen of the Dead – dateline May 21, 2012
• Restaurateur (The Forge and The Glen in Tulsa), racecar driver, military historian and coffee heir (McLaughlin’s Coffee Company) Bill McLaughlin, 83, died on May 1. Bill was the son of dancer Irene Castle, which is how I met him—he was a marvelous help when I wrote my biography of Vernon and Irene Castle a few years ago. He was funny, smart, and both honest and fair about his mother, who could be a real handful (Irene was one of those energetic, forceful people who sometimes make you want to hide under the furniture and pretend you are not home). Bill’s father was the equally impressive Frederic McLaughlin, the first owner of the Chicago Black Hawks, a major in World War I, and the son of W.F. McLaughlin, who founded the family coffee company in 1852. Vernon and Irene would be pleased that Bill named his daughter Castle McLaughlin, and that he followed their lead in animal-rescue causes (Irene, as usual, went overboard and sometimes made PETA look sane and temperate).
Graeme Fernie, a reader in Australia, sends along this mystery photo that he found in an album that includes images of San Francisco. He says it’s labeled San Juan. Other scans from the photo album are here.
I’m going to be appearing in next week’s Thursdays @ The Globe gathering at The Times at noon on May 24. Jessica Gelt and Julie Makinen are going to talk about the downtown hipster renaissance. I will be on hand to discuss the old days in downtown Los Angeles and vintage crime. Any questions about the Black Dahlia? Come on by.
May 19, 1942: It’s officially straw hat season in Los Angeles, so men, dump that felt chapeau and get yourself a nice Panama.
Lee Shippey writes that the evacuation of the Japanese has forced many (white) Angelenos to get back to doing yard work and gardening. And sorry, madam, there are no fresh strawberries at the market; the people who grew them have all been rounded up. But it’s a different story in Hawaii, Shippey says, where there are too many Japanese to be segregated.
And New York bans nighttime baseball for the duration. L.A., however, still has night games at Gilmore Field.
May 18, 1942: Former Police Officer Roy J. Allen, who was convicted with Earle Kynette in the 1938 Harry Raymond bombing, dies in the hospital at San Quentin. He was 38.
More on the Harry Raymond bombing
Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” returns to theaters, “with music and narration.”
May 17, 1942: Lt. William K. Long lands his P-38, with smoke pouring from one of the engines, between the Venice and Ocean Park piers. “Then, swimming a short distance through deep water, he waded ashore,” The Times said.
Philip K. Scheuer visits the set of “Love and Kisses, Caroline” and asks: “Who’s that skinny little girl?”
Answer: Diana Barrymore.
Tenor George Garner and pianist Netta Paullyn Garner will present a concert at Occidental College to benefit the “Negro branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association,” The Times says. Garner was the first African American to sing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Rediscovering George Garner on the Daily Mirror
Look what I found! A mystery fellow in a newsboy cap!
How to Wear a Hat – Newsboy Cap Edition
How to Wear a Hat — ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Edition
Movieland Mystery Photo – Newsboy Cap Edition I
Movieland Mystery Photo – Newsboy Cap Edition II
Movieland Mystery Photo – Newsboy Cap Edition III
Movieland Mystery Photo – Newsboy Cap Edition IV
How to Wear a Newsboy Cap – Marc Chevalier Edition
Tips on how to tell Chinese (allies!) from Japanese (enemies!) by cartoonist Milton Caniff.
May 16, 1942: Earl Blaisure came home drunk at 2:30 a.m., picked up his .22 rifle and pointed at his wife, Molly, the latest in what she described as continual beatings and mistreatment.
This time, however, she told him she was leaving. Fleeing an attack by her husband, she ran into the kitchen and grabbed a boning knife.
As their young children slept, she stabbed him in the heart. She was acquitted.
The city ordinance against jaywalking had recently been ruled invalid, leading to what police say is a sudden increase in pedestrians’ deaths.
The Supreme Courtreversed the murder conviction of Isaac Williams, an African American who was convicted of killing a Japanese during a holdup. Williams had accused the police of beating him into confessing, but prosecutors believed the evidence was so overwhelming that they didn’t bother to dispute his brutality claim, The Times said.
The Supreme Court interpreted the failure to deny the charges as though there was no defense, The Times said.
The officers in question, (possibly Detective Lloyd?) Baughn, (possibly Lee) Slajer and Capt. Edgar Edwards, belatedly told the Police Commission that the brutality charges were untrue.
This Batchelder soap dish has been listed on EBay. Of all the Batchelder items that I have seen on EBay over the years, I don’t recall one of these. Bidding starts at $49.
May 15, 1942: In a typical publicity stunt, someone from showman Earl Carroll’s operation offered to select Caltech’s beauty queen. Nobody told them that the campus was all-male (oooh girls can’t be engineers!). So the young men decided to have a drag beauty contest with assistance of some women from the Pasadena Playhouse.
And Disney composer Frank Church, who wrote “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf,” commits suicide after suffering a mental breakdown.
ladailymirror.com 