1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, September 24, 1944

Posted on September 24, 2025 by lmharnisch

Sept. 24, 1944, Marlene Dietric

September 24, 1944

Louella Parsons says:  Why is young Van Johnson the idol of the bobby sox brigade and at this moment crowding Frank Sinatra and Alan Ladd for top honors? Van isn’t handsome, he hasn’t a striking physique and he hasn’t Frankie’s ability to sing. Moreover, there are many other young men who are as capable of putting over emotional scenes. Yet Van is the hero of the bobby sox brigade and is receiving more mail than any actor or actress on the MGM lot.

Leading the bestseller list —  Fiction: “Green Dolphin Street,” “Leave Her to Heaven,” “History of Rome Hanks,” “Pastoral” and “Strange Fruit”
Non-fiction: “I Never Left Home,” “The Time for Decision,” “Yankee From Olympus,” “Anna and the King of Siam” and “Basic History of the United States.”

From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.

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September 24, 1907: A Poem on the First Day in L.A.

Posted on September 24, 2025 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

September 24, 1907
Los Angeles

A First Day in Los Angeles

Roving, roving, ever restless, drifting
On from strand to strand.

Have I seen the years slip by me,
Seeking for the promised land.

From the palm trees of Jamaica and
The Golden Spanish main.

To the gray and sullen northland when
The snow was on the plain.

But today I cease from roaming and
My soul is well content—

For the gypsy came among you and
He pitches his world-worn tent.

But the old desire was silenced for he
Found his long-sought rest.

In the City of Angels, in the
Sunset of the West.

Walter Adolf Roberts

557 Crocker St., Los Angeles.

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September 23, 1959: Matt Weinstock

Posted on September 23, 2025 by lmharnisch

September 23, 1959: Mirror CoverSeptember 23, 1959: To folks who think traffic in Los Angeles is a new problem, please read the stories on 1) freeways 2) new buses 3) moving sidewalks. Bonus story 4) drunk drivers.

Matt Weinstock on the complaint that teachers spend too much time maintaining order in the classroom and too little time teaching. “And yet I happen to know that on the third day of school a knife with a 3-inch blade was taken from an arrogant 9-year-old by a child welfare and attendance officer, who says grimly: “It looks like another tough year.”

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September 23, 1959: Paul V. Coates — Confidential File

Posted on September 23, 2025 by lmharnisch

September 23, 1959: Mirror Cover

September 23, 1959: In Iowa, a host tells Nikita Khrushchev: “We have a saying — the Lord helps those who help themselves.”

Khrushchev replies: “God is helping us too, because we are developing quicker, and God therefore is on our side. He helps the intelligent.” One thing that struck me in reading the old stories about Khrushchev’s visit is how often he made biblical references. There’s no question that religion was against communist teachings and Soviet policy, and yet his conversation is dotted with Christian references.

The Air Force cancels the F-108 and North American Aviation announces plans to lay off 2,000 employees, divided evenly between plants in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio.

Paul Coates on how not to start a conversation … and Abby’s advice to a widow who wants to meet a good man and get married.

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September 23, 1947: Janet Flanner, The New Yorker’s ‘Genet,’ Visits L.A .

Posted on September 23, 2025 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, Sept. 23, 1947

L.A. Times, 1947Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

Janet Flanner, during her many years in Paris as European correspondent for the New Yorker magazine, picked up the French love of epigrams. Genet, as she is known to the magazine readers, tried this out yesterday on a Town Hall audience at the Biltmore.

“The United States was the richest country in the world—that’s dandy. Now it is the only rich country in the world, which is terrible.”

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1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, September 23, 1944

Posted on September 23, 2025 by lmharnisch

Sept. 23, 1944, Comics

September 23, 1944

Dear Martha Foster: I’m not such an old-fashioned biddy as to believe that the standards of our Puritan forebears can be held up as a way of life in this hardboiled age, but it frightens me sometimes to see the cynical disregard for morals and discipline that marks the attitude of our young people today.

Dear Martha: Surely you can’t be talking about what we now call the Greatest Generation. Sincerely, Mr. Baby Boomer.

Louella Parsons says: I don’t wonder William Goetz is eager to get Loretta Young started before the cameras. She looks so wonderful since the birth of her baby, and so radiant. He has decided to co-star her with Gary Cooper in Gary’s first independent production, a western, tentatively titled “The American Cowboy.” It’s laid in 1885 and will give Loretta a chance to wear the costumes of that period.

VIRGO: Improved conditions exist. Check carefully before you move to avoid errors, then proceed with assurance. Think and act logically.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.

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September 23, 1907: Rev. J.L. Griffin Baptizes 5 in Echo Park Lake

Posted on September 23, 2025 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

September 23, 1907
Los Angeles

A crowd of 2,000—the faithful and the doubters—gathered at Echo Park Lake as black evangelist the Rev. J.L. Griffin prepared to baptize five believers in the cold water. Children climbed in the trees to get a better view, while other people watched from rowboats.

The rite was supposed to begin at 4 p.m., but several of the people were delayed and Griffin, who had been holding tent revival meetings in Los Angeles all summer, addressed the increasingly impatient throng.

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September 22, 1959: Matt Weinstock

Posted on September 22, 2025 by lmharnisch

September 22, 1959: How the city library saves money in tough times.

“Sometimes I think many people only think they think for themselves,” Matt Weinstock says. Continue reading →

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September 22, 1959: Paul V. Coates — Confidential File

Posted on September 22, 2025 by lmharnisch

September 22, 1959: Los Angeles Mirror CoverSeptember 22, 1959: Mayor Poulson deliberately “shoved the knife” into Soviet Premier Khrushchev, two television newscasters charged today.

Paul Coates takes a survey on what people think about the visit of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

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September 22, 1947: Avak the Healer Comes to Los Angeles

Posted on September 22, 2025 by lmharnisch

image

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

And then he was gone as if he had never been here at all. The hundreds of people who threw themselves at his feet to kiss the hem of his robes or simply to occupy the chair where he had been sitting were nothing but a memory.

He was Avak Hagopian, a somber 20-year-old from Kharadag in Azerbaijan, and working in Tehran as a mechanic—or a goldsmith—the stories vary. He paused one day as he was about to bring down a mallet and was struck with a vision, a vision that returned twice more. With faith in God, he would cure the sick, the blind and the diseased. The young man with the dark, intense eyes grew a beard and let his hair flow to his shoulders. He became “Avak the Healer” or “Avak the Great,” performer of miracles.
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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Los Angeles Silent Film Festival Debuts

Posted on September 22, 2025 by lmharnisch

Clara Bow in 'Kid Boots.' She has short hair tied with a scarf.
Clara Bow in Kid Boots (1926).

The Los Angeles Silent Film Festival achieved remarkable success for its debut the weekend of September 12-14, drawing large, young, and enthusiastic crowds eager for silent films. Organized as “a celebration devoted to the artistry, innovation, and enduring power of silent cinema,” the festival screened a combination of well known classics and recently restored films, offering a little something to please everyone. Produced in conjunction with the American Cinematheque and Mount St. Mary’s Department of Film, Media and Communication, organizers Thomas Barnes, founder of Retroformat Silent Films, Kelby Thwaits, Director of Graduate Programs in Film, Television, and New Media at Mount St. Mary’s, and filmmaker Brooke Dammkoehler, the LASFF revealed the power of silent films to still emotionally speak to us today.

Over the weekend, the Festival recognized two archivists for their contributions to the field. Renowned author and respected film historian Anthony Slide received the LASFF Award for Film Scholarship to recognize how his “research and writing have rescued films, artists, and stories from obscurity.” For more than 50 years, his erudite research, audio commentaries, essays, and writing of such books as Lois Weber: The director Who Lost Her Way in History and The Silent Feminists have educated cinemagoers and deepened their understanding of the workings of the silent film industry and its founding pioneers..

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on September 22, 2025 by lmharnisch

2025_0927_main_title
This week’s mystery movie was the 1960 episode The Case of the Treacherous Toupee, which opened the fourth season of Perry Mason.

With Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, William Hopper, William Talman, Ray Collins, Peggy Converse, Philip Ober, Bert Freed, Cindy Robbins, Thomas B. Henry, Robert Redford, Nelson Olmsted, Dee Arlen, Jonathon Hole, Frank Wilcox, Lindsay Workman, Juney Ellis, Rita Duncan, Hal Smith, Len Henry, George E. Stone, Lee Miller and Patricia Marlowe.

Perry Mason is available on DVD from Critics’ Choice Video and is streaming on the web. Continue reading →

Posted in 1960, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , | 34 Comments

September 22, 1907: No Divorce, Judge Says, You Knew He Was a Bellboy When You Married Him!

Posted on September 22, 2025 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1907, No Divorce

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

September 22, 1907
Los Angeles

She was 34 and a successful businesswoman. He was a 19-year-old bellboy at the Hollenbeck Hotel.

Emma and George Lloyd were married and for a time were quite happy, with Emma running her milliner’s shop at 2132 Downey Ave., and George getting a job as a waiter in an Eastside restaurant.

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September 21, 1959: Matt Weinstock

Posted on September 21, 2025 by lmharnisch
September 21, 1959:  “After many months of research and collaboration, writers Harry Essex and Irving Shulman have finished a pre-sold novel based on [Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s] life and the sensational scandal that marred it. The title, ‘Fatty.’ ” (This book was evidently never published–lrh).

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September 21, 1959: Paul V. Coates — Confidential File

Posted on September 21, 2025 by lmharnisch
Sept. 21, 1959: Paul Coates writes about the damaging effects of Little Rock, Ark., closing its schools over integration.

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Sept. 21, 1947: Los Angeles Leads U.S. in Burglaries, Ranks 3rd in Killings After New York, Chicago

Posted on September 21, 2025 by lmharnisch

Sept. 21, 1947, Comics
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September 21, 1907: 26 Men Deported to China

Posted on September 21, 2025 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

September 21, 1907
Los Angeles

It is one thing to know in the abstract about racial intolerance at the turn of the 20th century and quite another to have to read it in the daily paper. I will spare you the long quotes in pidgin Chinese dialect, but trust me, they make the Charlie Chan movies look like models of multiculturalism.

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September 20, 1947: Marie ‘The Body’ McDonald Marries Karl the Shoe Man

Posted on September 20, 2025 by lmharnisch

Sept. 20, 1947, L.A. Times

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

Marie (The Body) McDonald, 23-year-old film actress, last night was married to Harry Karl, 33, shoe merchant, in a quiet civil ceremony at the home of Karl’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Karl, 829 N. Orlando St.

Superior Court Judge Edward R. Brand performed the ceremony, after which the wedding party attended a reception at the Mocambo restaurant on the Sunset Strip.

The couple will fly to New York for a three-week honeymoon, Karl said, and then return to live in Los Angeles.

Miss McDonald and Karl met at a Hollywood party 15 months ago. It was the second marriage for both. The actress divorced Vic Orsatti, theatrical agent, in Nevada five months ago. Karl was divorced from his first wife, Mrs. Ruth Karl, two years ago.

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September 20, 1907: Suicide Note — ‘Everything Is Boiling’

Posted on September 20, 2025 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

September 20, 1907
Los Angeles

For weeks, Colorado mining investor John Geisel, 57, had confided in his diary as he felt his mind and his life coming unraveled “Good God,” he wrote, “for the first time today I began to fear that I could not control my thoughts.”

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September 19, 1957: Paul V. Coates–Confidential File

Posted on September 19, 2025 by lmharnisch

Sept. 19, 1957

Paul Coates, in coat and tieNever underestimate the power of little old ladies.

I did, two days ago.

I accused a frail, grandmotherly type, born circa 1887, of pulling an amusing little con game to gain herself a free meal or a few bucks
pocket change.

She answered classified ads–I pointed out–representing herself as a wealthy, slightly eccentric old dame. Promising to buy $1,000 pieces of furniture or invest a fast ten grand in some business venture, she would then commence to wangle a free dinner invitation or “suddenly” discover she’d lost her change purse and “borrow” an easy five or ten
bucks from the unsuspecting advertiser.

In Tuesday’s column I mentioned a visit by Granny to the home of interior decorator Barney Feldman. Continue reading →

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