Feb. 16, 1942: America’s 16 million bowlers are being asked to help promote physical fitness and mental alertness for the nation’s fighting men in their war against the Axis, and to provide relaxation for defense workers! No effort will be spared in this strike for democracy! You just don’t see words like “keglers” in newspapers anymore… or “cagers,” “harriers,” “mermen” and “roundball.”
“To Be or Not to Be” is opening at the Carthay Circle, Grauman’s Chinese and Loew’s State.
The more intriguing mystery of “The Public Enemy” is the department store used in the early part of the film.
Recall that our young ruffians run through an unidentified department store, committing all sorts of mischief and aggravated mopery. One of the most prominent elements of the sequence is a set of three-story escalators that provide our incorrigible lads with a means of escaping the law.
Feb. 14, 1942: West Coast legislators abandon plans to register “enemy aliens,” a process that would allow them to remain in defense zones. Instead, the congressmen ask President Roosevelt to order the “immediate evacuation” of “all persons of Japanese lineage.”
One legislator said: “We are aware of the gravity of asking a president of the United States to order the evacuation from any area of thousands of men and women who enjoy the rights of American citizenship, but we feel the situation justifies our position and will warrant any action he may take.”
In Los Angeles, “enemy aliens” without permits are restricted to an area north of Long Beach, south of the San Fernando Valley and west of Sierra Madre, Arcadia, El Monte and Whittier. On the Palos Verdes Peninsula, 30 families farming 1,500 acres are forced to move way, abandoning their crops, The Times says.
Cpl. Wallace Butcher, 24, is the first to file a Love Insurance claim after receiving a Dear John letter from his fiancee. In compensation, Butcher will get a tour of Hollywood nightspots with “Movie Starlet Janet Blair,” The Times says.
Betty Rowland is at the Follies and the Cutest Nudists are at the Liberty.
Edwin Schallert writes that widows of men killed at Pearl Harbor will be honored in the Paramount musical “Priorities of 1942,” starring Jerry Colonna, Vera Vague and Susanna Foster. Proposed filming locations include the Lockheed-Vega plant.
Photo: A coffin snuff box listed on EBay at $2,200.
Queen of the Dead – dateline February 13, 2012
• It is dangerous to call someone “the last living” whatever, as you will invariably be proved wrong. So I will only say that Florence Green, who died on February 4, aged 110, is reported to have been the last living World War I veteran. Green joined the Women’s Royal Air Force in September 1918, at the age of 17, and, according to her local Norfolk paper, she had as good a time as my own mother did in Miami during the Second World War: “I met dozens of pilots and would go on dates,” said Green. “I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes but I was scared of flying. It was a lovely experience and I’m very proud.” When asked how it felt being 110, she deadpanned, “Not much different to being 109.”
Here’s two young mystery lads in newsboy caps. And the movie would be?
How to Wear a Hat – Newsboy Cap Edition
How to Wear a Hat – ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Edition
Movieland Mystery Photo – Newsboy Cap Edition
How to Wear a Newsboy Cap – Marc Chevalier Edition
Feb. 10, 1942: The Hawaii Theater at Hollywood and Gower becomes a first-run theater (adios, Charles Foster Kane) with “Hellzapoppin.’ ” The “Congaroos” are “colored performers” who do “snappy dances.” “Stand-ins of the Hollywood stars” sounds like a gag, but it could be real for all I know. And the entertainment is suitable for The Times’ carriers.
Dear Brain Trust: Our friends at the Los Angeles Public Library photo collection are trying to identify this photo. I know you can do it!
Feb. 9, 1915: The Los Angeles premiere of D.W. Griffith’s “The Clansman” (later retitled “The Birth of a Nation”) provokes protests and an attempt to prevent Clune’s Auditorium from showing the film, which was based on Thomas Dixon’s “The Clansman.”
Opposition to “The Clansman” was led by the Rev. Charles Edward Locke, who said:
“While the mechanical construction of the picture is remarkable yet the theme is to be unequivocally denounced as serving no educational or patriotic or entertainment purpose. It opens afresh wounds that have taken more than a generation to heal. It cannot help but arouse sectional antipathy and revive much of the animosity which prevailed between the North and South 50 years ago… It is a libel against the white people of the South and it is a positive blackmail against the Negro.”
The Los Angeles Board of Censors (yes, there was such a thing) saw a rough cut of the film and approved it, with a few deletions. W.H. Clune, the owner of Clune’s Auditorium at Olive and 5th, announced that he would show the picture regardless of attempts to halt the film.
“The unexpected opposition to the exhibition of this film has been due to a misunderstanding of the great historical purpose of the picture, which is not an attack on any race or section of the country. It is a most powerful sermon against war and in favor of brotherly love of all sections and nations,” The Times said.
Grace Kingsley follows with a feature on making “The Clansman” and ends by saying: “And now, as one last great difficulty, comes the protest of the darkies and the interference of the police against the exhibition of the picture next week at Clune’s Auditorium.”
Henry Christeen Warnack,who covered the opening for The Times, said that the movie was delayed by the LAPD on orders of the City Council. D.W. Griffith, meanwhile, obtained a court injunction barring interference with the film.
At the intermission, A.P. Tugwell, head of the Board of Censors, addressed the audience, explaining what the censors had done and the dispute over showing the picture. Usherettes in period costumes circulated among the audience, asking people to sign petitions that urged the City Council to let the film be shown.
Columnist Harry Carr followed up with the results of a hearing over the injunction Griffith obtained to bar the City Council from banning the picture.
“In deciding the injunction case yesterday, Judge Jackson addressed a few words to the colored people who half-filled the courtroom.
He told them that, while he did not approve of the play himself, he advised them to stop talking about it and to calm their stormy agitation. ‘There is a certain feeling between the races and there always will be as long as both live in this country,’ said the court. ‘But the production of this play will neither make the position of the colored people better nor worse and it will have no effect whatever upon the standing of the colored citizens of this community.”
As Carr pointed out, the dispute over the film was a bonanza of free publicity.
Thanks to Mary Mallory for pointing out the anniversary!
Feb. 9, 1942: It’s a sad day at the Daily Mirror HQ. No more Jimmie Fidler.
The U.S. moves to Daylight Saving Time “for the duration,” which will last until six months “after the day America wins the war,” The Times says.
You’ll find lots of African Americans in The Times – if you look at the “Situations Wanted” listings in the classified ads. Hm. One job seeker specifies “Gentiles.”
G.K. has a feature on Victor Mature: “Victor doesn’t like being likened to Valentino and isn’t in fact like him…. Is buying Valentino’s house for the view.”
Feb. 8, 1942: FBI agents lead local law enforcement in the continuing raids on Japanese communities. “Trunks and storerooms were ransacked, suspicious areas of newly turned earth were dug into and all buildings were carefully investigated,” The Times said. After a night’s work the raiders had seized 18 people, 17 of whom were turned over to immigration. Oh yes, they found a .38 revolver and what they called “war propaganda.”
Kyle Palmer, Richard Nixon’s future cheerleader in chief, looks at reluctance in Washington to calls for removing all Japanese.
“Reasons for the failure of the federal government to make prompt provision for the removal from Pacific Coast defense areas of American-born as well as alien Japanese are based on a feeling here that the citizenship rights of the native-born outweigh the menace to national security which their presence presents.”
I didn’t think it was possible for me to lose any more respect for Kyle Palmer — I figured I didn’t have any left. Whatever vaguely positive feeling I had was gone.
John Gunther’s “Inside Latin American (nonfiction) and Mary Ellen Chase’s “Windswept” (fiction) lead the bestseller list.
Dwight Franklin, character designer for the studios, is featured in Philip K. Scheuer’s “Town Called Hollywood.” (Jimmie Fidler apparently has the day off).
I drew a range of reactions with my recent post “A World Without Wikipedia: Not Such a Bad Idea,” in which I said “I don’t know a single serious researcher who considers it anything other than a joke.”
That isn’t precisely true. Most of the scholars, historians and academics I have met do think Wikipedia is a joke — except for the ones who find it an incredibly frustrating cesspool of misinformation. And I don’t know of any college professors who allow students to use it in term papers. That should tell you something about the caliber of its information. In fact, I recently had a conversation with Suzanne Stone, senior researcher for “Jeopardy,” and she, too, said Wikipedia is literally not ready for prime time. (And for the record, the L.A. Daily Mirror is designated a Wikipedia-free zone).
Continue reading
Image: President Lincoln’s Funeral at the White House, listed on EBay at $375.
Queen of the Dead – dateline February 6, 2012
• The Prettiest Girl in All of Turkey has died: 98-year-old Keriman Halis Ece, on January 28. She won the Miss Turkey pageant in 1932, and Google-imaging her reveals a pleasant young Barbara Stanwyck-looking type. She then went on to win (are you sitting down, and not drinking anything?) the International Pageant of Pulchritude held in Belgium that same year. (I go all Jayne Mansfield even typing that.) Ece came from an impressive family: her uncle and aunt were composers and musicians, her brother a well-known sportsman, but I can’t find much about what she did later in life. I guess once you have been crowned Princess of Pulchritude, everything else is pretty much downhill.
Feb. 4, 1942: “As Coroner R.E. Williams and his aides bore the pitiful little body, still clad in her gay blue and white striped red school dress, toward town for an autopsy to determine the cause of death, the hundreds of law enforcement officers and volunteers turned in cold fury to the grim job of tracking down her murderer.”
Shirley Marie Bell, 6, was found in Cajon Wash, strangled with her jump rope. She was apparently abducted on her way to school. Several people reported seeing her on the handlebars of a bicycle ridden by a man headed for the desert. She was crying, one rancher said.
Searchers found the tracks of a man and a child leading into the desert. Then signs of a scuffle and Shirley’s lunchbox.
As news of the tragedy spread among the searchers and onlookers, angry mutterings that the murderer should pay with his life on the end of a rope swelled through the crowd. Sheriff [Emmet L. ] Shay said nothing at this but directed his deputies to be on the alert to guard the life of the suspect, if and when found.
Several men were questioned in the case, and in 1946 suspect John William Carlson showed a surprising amount of knowledge about the incident, although he eventually recanted his story. The killing was never solved.
“It Started With Eve” is opening at the Pantages Hollywood and RKO Hill Street, with “Confessions of Boston Blackie.”
Jimmie Fidler says: Nelson Eddy, who stands so erect, sprawls on chairs and divans.
[Update: This is Glen Boles. Please congratulate Mike Hawks and Mary Mallory for identifying him!]
Feb. 3, 1942: The FBI, police and sheriff’s deputies round up 336 “alien Japanese fishermen” on Terminal Island.
“Operating with machine-like efficiency, the FBI agents, headed by J.W. Vincent, in charge of operations, had prepared lists of the names and addresses of all those for whom warrants had been issued,” The Times says.
But that’s not good enough. The Los Angeles County Defense Council wants to round up “all enemy aliens INCLUDING AMERICAN-BORN JAPANESE UNABLE TO PROVE THEY DO NOT HOLD DUAL CITIZENSHIP.”
After chiding the government for taking so long to round up the Japanese, The Times editorial page says:
“This is a necessary measure, as much for the protection of enemy aliens as for the protection of the United States, and well-disposed aliens will comply with the regulations to the letter. Others will feel the weight of the law. This is war.”
An unidentified California congressman said: “There is no hatred for the Japanese on the Pacific Coast and the demands for ordinary precautions in this situation represent neither hysteria nor any attempts at reprisal for what happened at Pearl Harbor.”
Jimmie Fidler says: Dorothy Lamour has inaugurated the idea of giving Defense Stamps as tips.
Betty Rowland at the Follies!
Photo: 6152 Agra St. Credit: Google Street View.
Feb. 2, 1942: Lewis Buell Chase dialed the sheriff’s substation in Firestone Park and told a deputy: “I have just murdered a woman.”
He had gone to the home of his estranged wife, Susie, at 6152 Agra St., Bell Gardens, to see if she would sign some papers. They argued, and as their 11-year-old son, Robert, played outside, he slashed her jugular vein with a boning knife.
He was convicted of first-degree murder with a recommendation of life in prison. Robert Chase was left in the custody of his grandmother, Mrs. Roxie Shipp, also of Bell Gardens.
Police are also investigating the shooting of palm reader Madame Lorraine, allegedly by her protege, Charlotte Jean Le Nord.
The women, described as “motion picture fans,” had recently seen a film involving Russian roulette and police speculate that they were imitating the movie when the shooting occurred. I guess she didn’t see that one coming.
In cage ball, referees at a game between Southern Oregon College and Monmouth were kept off the floor. Instead, the officials were placed in two “crow’s nests” behind the baskets.
Coaches, players and fans say the system is an improvement, allowing a faster game.
Referee Frank O’Neil said: “It virtually eliminated petty pushing, hacking and the like. Players found they couldn’t get away with it and didn’t try.”
Jimmie Fidler says: The fact that eight out of 1941’s top 10 box office stars were men (Bette Davis and Judy Garland were the exceptions) points directly to my oft-repeated statement that there is too much sameness among actresses.
(The eight men are: Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, Bob Hope, Gene Autry, Jimmy Cagney, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Abbott and Costello.)
Mary Mallory points out that this is the 90th anniversary of William Desmond Taylor’s death. I did several posts when the Daily Mirror was at The Times:
ladailymirror.com 