Note: This is an encore post from 2013.
A wartime Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, with many service personnel welcomed into people’s homes for a holiday meal.
The Times published cooking tips for war workers, advising cooks who were otherwise engaged “for the duration” to use prepared mixes, packaged pie crust and canned pumpkin to cut preparation time.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
November 27, 1907
Los Angeles
A shadowy, global conspiracy of anarchists is being described in the trial of revolutionaries Ricardo Flores Magon, Antonio Villareal and Librado Rivera in federal court. The fourth defendant, L. Gutierrez De Lara, was charged separately with committing larceny in Sonora, Mexico.
“The first positive evidence of a gigantic conspiracy to overthrow a friendly government was legally introduced,” The Times said. “Although there has been intimation of the danger[ous] character of the three men under arrest, and a partial expose of their cowardly plans to [overthrow] the presidents of this country and of Mexico, the far-reaching character of the junta has hardly been realized, even by government officials.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2011.
Here’s a traditional roast turkey recipe from the “Every-Day Cook-Book and Family Compendium,” written about 1890 by Miss E. Neill. Be sure your fire is bright and clear and watch out for the gall-bag.
Continue reading
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival offered a tantalizing Grand Tour across the cinematic universe in their recently concluded festival, educating and edifying audiences with thoughtful programming, excellent film accompaniment, and the chance to connect with other silent film cineastes.
This year’s timely theme centered around the grind and struggles of working class people just trying to survive hardships and adversity with character and morality intact. Life was about serving community not self, bettering the lives of others. Mini themes revolved around the Klondike, independent, take charge women, seedy/cut-rate carny/circuses, and the threatening sea.
Citizens can be thankful for policemen like Dalton Robert Patton, whose funeral was held yesterday.
Patton, 58, who retired from the LAPD in 1943, was not a “front page cop.” He preferred to work quietly, without fuss.
Friends yesterday recalled his classic encounter with a safe cracker. Patton, detective captain at Hollywood station, spent months tracking him down and had him, as the saying goes, “dead bang.”
But to everyone’s consternation a jury acquitted him. After the trial the burglar said, “No hard feelings, captain. And I want you to know I’ll never crack another safe in your division .”
It’s my guess that E.B. (Jet) Simrell — the 46-year-old ex-market owner who surrendered to the FBI yesterday after having threatened the lives of seven judges — figures he’s got one big card to play in his crusade against the “un-feminine, all-powerful American woman.”
And it’s my opinion that he’s sadly wrong.
If Simrell carries out his plan to “fast until death to win unanimous approval of the truths for which I fight,” he might win himself a little public pity.
But that’s all.
Long ago, he lost sight of the objectives of his fight. And with them, he lost everything, including, possibly, his sanity. Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2008.
Police Sgt. Gene T. Nash died after a shootout with robbery suspects in an apartment house on Budlong just south of Adams. In a televised ceremony, Police Chief William H. Parker presented his widow, Cynthia, with her husband’s Medal of Valor.
But that’s only the beginning of the story. Unfortunately, many pieces of the puzzle are missing from The Times, so the picture is incomplete.
This is what we know:
Nash, 32, and Sgt. W.F. Bitterolf of the Robbery Division, accompanied by Sgts. S.O. Eastenson and C.E. Leonard, went to the apartment house at 2723 S. Budlong Ave. to investigate whether members of a crime ring were hiding there. According to The
Times, a group of robbers had been holding up crap games, taking $7 to $140. Continue reading
Photo: The 1200 block of Innes Avenue, home of the George F. Harrington/Kitty HQ, via Google Street View.
Note: This is an encore post from 2011.
November 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. Continue reading
No, the object at left is not a flying saucer on a stick. It is, in fact, Los Angeles’ earliest attempt at street lighting in which carbon arc lights were mounted on tall poles around the city. This one was near 7th Street and Alameda, where a 20-story wireless telegraph antenna was being built. That’s some skyhook, folks.
And a milestone in women’s history: “The first women’s campaign committee ever formed in Los Angeles for the purpose of doing a definite work in an election.”
The Times is careful to note that these women can’t actually vote!
In the broad scheme of things, the Fern Dell water hole isn’t very important. But people who knew about it and went there to fill their jugs with cool, fresh spring water are disquieted since the Health Department declared it unfit to drink because of pollution.
The spring represented to people a renewed contact with nature and, symbolically perhaps, purity in a poisoned and synthetic world. Also, as one man commented, “It was the last thing around here that was free.”
The word from the Recreation and Parks Department is that the Health Department is working on the job but the contamination is difficult to trace. It’s not a simple matter of replacing the old, possibly rusted outlet pipe. First, the source of the spring, somewhat high in the hills, must be traced. Then the possibility of seepage into it from a sewer must be checked.
Vice President Richard Nixon will be grand marshal of the Rose Parade!
(News item) Mrs. Carol Carpenter, 19, was arraigned in Los Angeles Municipal Court yesterday on felony child-desertion charges . . .
Today, I took a one-lesson course on How to Turn a Law-Abiding Citizen Into a Criminal.
I talked with Mrs. Carpenter. What I learned, I’ll pass on to you.
Then, if you will, judge the woman. Judge the law. And judge the morality of the society which has branded her a criminal.
As background to the case, I’ll tell you that Carol Carpenter and her husband, Daniel, were married four years ago, while he was in the Army. She was a month short of 16 at the time. He was 18. Continue reading
Boxie and I will be doing a live “Ask Me Anything” on the Black Dahlia case Tuesday, December 2, 2025, at 10 a.m. Pacific time, on YouTube.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
One Republican, Claude I. Bakewell of Missouri; Vito Marcantonio of the American Labor Party; and 15 Democrats voted against this measure: John Blatnik of Minnesota; Sol Bloom of New York; John A. Carroll of Colorado; Emmanuel Celler of New York; Helen Gahagan Douglas of California; Herman Eberharter of Pennsylvania; Franck Havenner of California; Chet Holifield of California; Walter Huber of Ohio; Frank Karsten of Missouri; Arthur G. Klein of New York; Thomas Ellsworth Morgan of Pennsylvania; Joseph Lawrence Pfeifer of New York; Adam Clayton Powell of New York; and George Gregory Sadowski of Michigan.
Quote of the day: “Pretty please.”
What Minnie Chapman refused to say to her husband, George, while they were drinking—so he shot her to death. Chapman was sentenced to Pennsylvania’s electric chair in the “Pretty Please Murder.”
This week’s mystery movie, deemed “unsuitable” for children by Modern Screen Magazine, was the 1931 MGM film The Bachelor Father, with Marion Davies, Ralph Forbes, C. Aubrey Smith, Ray Milland, Guinn Williams, David Torrence, Doris Lloyd, Edgar Norton, Nena Quartaro, Halliwell Hobbes, Elizabeth Murray and James Gordon. Continue reading
Kitty Higgins in all its uproarious humor.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
This was rather a racy edition of The Times, especially for a Sunday paper. Next to the Kertz’s saga, the news editor placed an advance on a martial relations course at UCLA (sample lectures: “Love and Conduct in a Changing World,” “Sex Problems of Youth”). And the front page featured the story of a ballet dancer with the Ballet Russe who lost part of her costume during “Scheherazade.” Pretty ribald for a family paper in the 1940s. Continue reading
Above, Sam’s Lunch Room in 1938 and below, Avenue 19 via Google maps street view.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
November 23, 1907
South Pasadena
Warning: This is a grotesque, tragic story with graphic details.
Pasadena Detective Wallace H. Copping is investigating the murder of a young baby boy, whose half-eaten body was found in a pigpen on the Berry ranch in South Pasadena.
Authorities say the boy, weighing about 14 pounds and less than 10 days old (yes, quite a large baby by today’s standards), was discovered by Mrs. J.H. Anderson, whose husband leases the ranch. Apparently Mr. Anderson picked up the baby’s body as he made the rounds of about 20 homes gathering garbage to feed his pigs.
Note: This is an encore post from 2008.
In a confrontation over a divided Berlin, a Soviet official says the government plans to give control to the East Germans by Christmas, and some Soviet troops are reportedly going home. President Eisenhower vows to maintain the occupation of West Berlin. The central issue was whether the U.S., Britain and France would accept East German participation in the organization that controlled the city’s military and commercial air traffic. Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2008.
By Gary Rubin
Times staff writer
Fifty years ago today, sports fans in general and baseball fans in particular woke up to read the startling news that Hall of Famer Mel Ott was dead after surgery for a kidney injury suffered in an automobile accident in New Orleans. He was just 49.
Baby boomers may not be all that familiar with Ott, but in a 21-year playing career, all spent with the New York Giants, Ott was one of great power hitters of all time, finishing with 511 home runs, a National League record that stood until broken by Willie Mays in 1965.
Though not particularly big, at 5-9, 170, Ott generated great power with a unique batting stance. As the pitch came in, the left-handed Ott would raise his right foot at least a foot.
Nov. 22, 1963: The Times publishes an extra.
Note: In case you are wondering, this is a repost from 2013.
I recently attended graduation exercises for a local college and the commencement speaker spent quite a while talking about how the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a watershed moment in her life.
As she was speaking, I studied the faces in the audience — the family and friends of people in their early 20s who were graduating from college — and wondered: “What on Earth do these kids make of this? Does it resonate at all?” Actually, no. Not in the least. And why should it?
