Dec. 8, 1941: The Times interviewed average Angelenos (if there is such a thing) for their opinions about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Many, like Horace Goodrich, thought the U.S. would wrap up the war in a few weeks. J.H. Allen was the only one with a contrasting view: “From what I gather, the Japanese must be well prepared. If they are, then we’re in for a long battle.”
In 1962, I was a seventh-grader at Washington Junior High School in Naperville, Ill. On Dec. 7, Mr. Humbert, our social studies teacher, put aside the regular curriculum to give his young pupils a firsthand account of Pearl Harbor.
Many years later, I contacted Mr. Humbert. He didn’t remember me (I was not a stellar student) but he was thrilled to get a phone call from one of his former charges who wanted to hear once more about Pearl Harbor.
Rene P. Humbert died in 2002 at the age of 81. I was his student in a much more formal era of American life. Male teachers wore coats and ties, and didn’t share much about their personal lives. I don’t even remember him mentioning that his brother’s fighter plane had been shot down in June 1944 over France.
What I learned many years later was that Mr. Humbert joined the Navy at 19, went through all of World War II and was called back for the Korean War. Perhaps one reason he was a little hard on us Baby Boomers in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago was because he didn’t graduate from high school, but got a GED and started college at the age of 31 under the G.I. Bill
Mr. Humbert was on the San Francisco, a heavy cruiser, during the Pearl Harbor attack and the ship was untouched except for shrapnel because the Japanese were concentrating on the larger ships. He was also in the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal. In one battle, Rear Adm. Dan Callaghan and Capt. Cassin Young were killed by a 14-inch shell that hit the San Francisco’s bridge.
What follows is his account. I have edited his brief biography very lightly after scanning a typewritten copy with my optical character recognition software. And I have incorporated portions of his Pearl Harbor account from the Pearl Harbor Survivors website.
Photo 1: Rene Humbert, Washington Junior High, 1964.
Photo 2: Rene Humbert, no date.
Dec. 6, 1941: Burt Lancaster gets an important phone call from Deborah Kerr.
Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service says “… well-informed American officials are still convinced that Japan will start a fight in the near future. One of them called it a 60-40 bet in favor of immediate war.”
Times correspondent Tom Treanor, who was killed during the liberation of France, writes about what life will be like after the war.
Jimmie Fidler says: How come reporters aren’t hep to the Carole Landis-Cary Grant datings, specifically to the Ocean Park fights?
Dec. 5, 1941: There’s almost too much interesting news on Pearl Harbor Day minus 2.
Josephine Trout Barnes is reunited with her baby girl Camelia/Camellia/Carmelia (newspapers in the Linotype era sometimes had a fluid sense of spelling when it came to names), whom she abandoned at a downtown hotel.
Ann “Black Widow” Forrester is sentenced to prison on charges of pandering.
Special investigator Wallace Jamie appears on Mayor Fletcher Bowron’s weekly radio program to deny charges that there is a secret “listening post” in City Hall.
And Tom Treanor interviews playwright Erskine Caldwell, who gives a firsthand account of Soviet fighting against the Nazis.
Jimmie Fidler says: The V lettered sweater on Joan Blondell is not war propaganda; the garment is a relic of her Venice High School days.
Photo: 1955 Cadillac hearse, listed on EBay at $7,500.
Queen of the Dead—dateline December 5, 2011
• With Loretta Young and Clark Gable as parents, Judy Lewis was bound to be a knockout—and since she looked like a Photoshop mash-up of Young and Gable, everyone knew damn well who her parents were, despite their lifelong denial. Lewis (who died on November 25, at the age of 76) was conceived during the filming of The Call of the Wild (heh heh), while Saint Loretta the Young was divorced and Gable married to his second wife. (Really, I think even the pope would have given Loretta a dispensation on schtupping 1935-era Clark Gable.) Young later “adopted” her daughter from a cooperative orphanage, and Judy did not find out the identities of her biological parents till later in life—she and Loretta Young remained close, but Gable never even privately admitted his fatherhood (his death in 1960 just before the birth of his “only child” was widely considered a great tragedy—Clark Gable could be a real putz sometimes). Lewis acted on TV (Perry Mason, Outlaws, 77 Sunset Strip, Kitty Foyle, Police Woman, One Day at a Time), though she never approached stardom; she later worked as a psychotherapist in Los Angeles.
What is advertised as original still No. 25-17 of Theda Bara from the lost film “Salome” has been listed on EBay. I have seen enough of these photos to confirm that the production code begins with “25-XX.” The Witzel studios also took publicity shots of Bara in “Salome” and these, naturally, don’t have production code numbers. Bidding starts at $149.18.
[Update: This is Mona Barrie.]
Here’s another mystery lady from the collection of Steven Bibb.
There’s a new photo on the jump!
Dec. 4, 1941:Dr. Richard A. Carter, head of the Carter Neurological Clinic in Garden Grove, is accused of negligence in administering a fatal dose during insulin shock treatments for Virginia Lamb, 22, of Anaheim for dementia praecox. It’s unclear from The Times stories exactly what was wrong with Lamb, who left a husband and 2-year-old son, Edward. Carter told Lamb’s husband, Alvin, that she had a “mild form of insanity.” Unfortunately, I can’t find the outcome of the trial in the clips.
Jimmie Fidler says: Looks like another long idle spell for William Powell: the old illness.
The Daily Mirror HQ lost power for two days after the Santa Ana winds hit Southern California. It will be a while before I get caught up.
Dec. 3, 1941: Here’s how Los Angeles County once handled immigration. Officials paid families on welfare $100 ($1,464.25 USD 2010) over 10 months to go back to Mexico. Since 1930-31, more than 4,000 families had gone back to Mexico under the program, The Times said.
Tom Treanor, who was killed covering World War II for The Times, picks up a hitchhiker and learns about Army life.
The Marines wear loud uniforms and they’re loud guys and they walk around like they’re kings. I don’t go for that stuff. But they get into more fighting. I’d like to get in the middle of it. After you’ve been a soldier for a while, all you want to do is get into the fighting. That’s what these strikers don’t understand until they see us coming at them. If they order us to go get them, we’ll go get them. We do what we’re ordered.
Garbo skis in “Two-Faced Woman,” her first picture since “Ninotchka,” opening at Grauman’s Chinese and Loew’s State.
Jimmie Fidler says: I would be most unfair to the motion picture industry, including all its branches and people, if I failed to dwell on the fact that the movies contributed almost $975,000 to the U.S.O. It was the largest single contribution to this fund!
An interesting bit of Los Angeles Times memorabilia has turned up on EBay. This is a Sept. 4, 1911, letter from Harrison Gray Otis (notice that he didn’t use his military title) to Drayton Pitts, acknowledging the receipt of a poem titled “The Times Holocaust,” presumably commemorating the 1910 bombing. As Otis notes in his letter, the property at 1st Street and Broadway was cleared in preparation for a new Times Building that opened in 1912.
Although the paper never published a poem titled “The Times Holocaust,” it did publish a poem by Pitts titled “The Crime of the Century” on The Times Bombing on Oct. 1, 1912, and Dec. 31, 1915.
Dec. 1, 1941: With the attack on Pearl Harbor six days away, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair says U.S. troops are ready to fight, but would suffer heavy losses with only six months of field training. “Properly trained units cannot be developed in one year,” he says.
Tonight on KFI: The Voice of Firestone!
Dorothy Darling, “a naughty personality in platinum,” is at the Follies!
Jimmie Fidler says: Pat O’Brien (Notre Dame fan-atic) is circulating a petition, urging the Fighting Irish to break no-postseason-games rule and seek a Rose Bowl bid.
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This rather remarkable pair of vintage shoes from the Collegienne department at Bullock’s Wilshire has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $9.99.
Here’s another mystery photo from the amazing collection of Steven Bibb!
[Update: This is Natalie Thompson, who appeared in “The Vanishing Virginian.” ]
Regular reader Marc Chevalier sends along his version of the proper way to wear a newsboy cap. He says it helps to have an authentic period cap: “The caps made in the ’20s and ’30s have a somewhat different shape from the ones made today. They’re more, well, sculptured.”
Nov. 30, 1941:President Roosevelt says the U.S. may be at war in a year – actually, it was a week later.
Bartender Eddie Watton was closing up at the Theatre Cafe, 324 S. Main St., and wanted the man at the end of the bar to leave. But Arthur McNamee refused to go until he finished his beer. McNamee became abusive, then walked around the end of the bar and put his hand in his hip pocket, Watton said.
“I hit him on the jaw with my right fist,” Watton said.
McNamee fell backward and his head his head. He was found in the street, dying of a skull fracture.
The Times never followed up on this story, so we don’t know whether Watton was prosecuted in the death. But in July 1942, the state suspended the liquor licenses of bars that the military had declared out of bounds, including the Theatre Cafe, “for the duration.”
Edward Everett Horton is appearing at the El Capitan in the play “Springtime for Henry.”
Jimmie Fidler says: “I’m unable to understand why Don Ameche hasn’t reached a higher run on the Hollywood ladder.
Photo: Jack Huston in “Boardwalk Empire.” Credit: Macall Polay HBO via the Los Angeles Times.
I was watching “Emperor of the North” and thought a post on newsboy caps might be a good follow-up on How to Wear a Hat – Noir Edition. Because you should never have to see something as unfortunate as the costume of Jack Huston in “Boardwalk Empire,” where the suit doesn’t match the shirt, doesn’t match the tie, doesn’t match the hat – oh that hat. Dressed from the Salvation Army.
Here’s a lesson on wearing a newsboy cap from Lee Marvin in the 1973 film “Emperor of the North,” set in 1933, with costume design by Ed Wynigear, who also worked on period films such as “Tora! Tora! Tora!” “1941,” “Under the Rainbow” and “The Sand Pebbles.”
Photo: Postcard for J.D. Naftzinger, funeral director and embalmer, listed on EBay, as Buy It Now for $150.
Queen of the Dead—dateline November 28, 2011
• I am going to get “More, More, More (How Do You Like It?),” stuck in your brain for the next week, I apologize in advance. Actress and singer/songwriter Andrea True, 68, died in Kingston, New York, on November 7. She is best remembered for her disco hits—in addition to the one above, “New York, You Got Me Dancing” and “What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number,” all of which reached the charts (and the dance floors) in the late 1970s. True also acted in numerous films throughout that decade, most of them soft-core porn (including such eyebrow-raising titles as The Russians Are Coming, Doctor’s Teenage Dilemma, The Wetter the Better, Once Over Nightly, and Little Orphan Sammy).
November 27, 1941: The Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railways ask the City Council to repeal a ban against buses operating in downtown Los Angeles. Pacific Electric officials said the ban prevented them from routing the line from Los Angeles to Alhambra, San Gabriel and Temple City out of Main Street. The repeal would also allow Pacific Electric to turn its station at 6th and Main Streets into a bus terminal, The Times said. (Are you surprised that the campaign to convert streetcar lines to buses started before World War II?)
Tom Treanor, who was killed covering World War II for The Times, tells the story of seven recruits about to take an oath to join the Marines.
Jackie Cooper and Susanna Foster star in “Glamour Boy,” with Skinnay Ennis and his orchestra live on stage at the Paramount!
Jimmie Fidler says: Wot a jaunt around the Caribbean bases that must have been for Oliver (oh-so-fat) Hardy. During one hop in a too-small plane he had to stand for seven hours because he didn’t fit in the seats and there was no room on the floor.
Photo: The 1200 block of Innes Avenue, home of the George F. Harrington/Kitty HQ, via Google Street View.
Nov. 26, 1941: Kitty may not be a typical name for a dog – but then George F. Harrington is an unusual fellow, for he claims that owning a dog is a constitutional right. Threatened with a 30-day jail sentence for not licensing Kitty, Harrington took his battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear his case. Harrington, of 1203 Innes Ave., decided to pay the $4 fee and take his fight to Sacramento.
Jean Renoir’s “Swamp Water,” with Walter Brennan, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews and Walter Huston, is opening at Grauman’s Chinese and Lowe’s State.
Jimmie Fidler replies to a reader from South Bend, Ind., who says: “I think the Hays office is right in banning sweaters. You should hear the boys whoop and holler when one appears on the screen.” Well, boys will be boys and Hollywood prospers on whoops and hollers, Jimmie says.
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