This is an establishing shot from the 1942 feature “China Girl,” which was obviously filmed in the Bradbury Building. Or was it?
[Update: If this is a set, as it appears to be, where did Twentieth Century-Fox build it? People talk about the height of the set for “Rear Window,” but this interior appears to be three or possibly four stories tall — although I would imagine there could have been some trickery involved, like forced perspective or matte shots. A puzzlement.]
Photo 1: Biltmore Hotel, Jan. 9, 2012, 6:30 p.m. Credit: Larry Harnisch
Photo 2: Biltmore Hotel, 1940s
The top photo shows the old lobby of the Biltmore on Monday as it was on the anniversary of the night Elizabeth Short disappeared. This is how the lobby looks after being remodeled in the 1980s and the way it’s described in John Gilmore’s “Severed.” At least “Severed” doesn’t make the mistake of Steve Hodel’s “Black Dahlia Avenger” in describing the current lobby, which didn’t even exist in 1947.
The bottom photo shows the old lobby as it was in the 1940s.
If the Dahlia books blunder on these elementary facts, you can expect the rest of their claims to be even more ridiculous. People simply do not want to do the pick and shovel work of true research.
Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
Here’s a bit of fun trivia from a little documentary that aired on TCM the other day. It’s an early version of the directional signs used by movie crews. And “TWT” stands for?
Photo: CSI:NY filming in downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Larry Harnisch
[Update: “TWT” stands for “They Went Thataway.” Since I’ve been in L.A., the signs for movie crews have gone from marker scrawled on poster board to professional signs printed on light plastic. Sometimes they use obvious initials (CSI:NY) or fanciful titles. “Bedford Falls” was quite the rage a few years ago. I don’t know what movie crews do in the rest of the civilized world but in L.A., they use these signs.]
Can’t draw? You too can be a famous cartoonist.
Jan. 10, 1942: Pearl Harbor survivor William Parks kills himself in San Francisco after going AWOL. “His note to his wife indicated that the bombardment he underwent had upset him,” The Times said.
He was 19.
Aimee Semple McPherson preaches on “The Price of Power” at 10:30 a.m. and “Samson and Delilah” at 7 p.m. on Jan. 11 at Angelus Temple.
Tom Treanor recounts a story about tourists visiting L.A. “Do you want to see the orange groves? The Mt. Wilson telescope, the public library, the museum?
“Why,” said one of the rubbernecks, “we thought we’d like to drive down and see where all those people were killed last night.”
Immigration problems?The Times’ classified ads have a solution.
Jimmie Fidler says: Since the blackout, a woman and daughter have been seeking autographs outside the Mocambo, armed with flashlights.
Here’s another mystery photo from the collection of Steven Bibb.
Photo: This 1929 Cadillac hearse, exported to Argentina, is listed on EBay at Buy It Now for $35,000.
Queen of the Dead – dateline January 9, 2012
• Illustrators are right up there with starlets and socialites on the “people I am unhealthily obsessed with” list. The great Ronald Searle, 91, died on December 30. The British artist—with his cutely Satanic little beard—drew for The New Yorker and TV Guide, the British Life and Punch, did a series of St. Trinian’s girls’ school books which became a movie series; he did movie posters and title sequences—his swirly, detailed drawings are instantly recognizable (the Times compared him to Hogarth and the Telegraph to Bosch: “the humorist illustrator was a man of much darker vision who could find sharp things to say about global poverty, paedophilia or the war on terror”). Searle was a POW in Singapore during World War II, and later said, “it gave me my measuring stick for the rest of my life . . . all the people we loved and knew and grew up with simply became fertiliser for the nearest bamboo.”
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A pitcher from the Hotel Alexandria at Spring and 5th streets has been listed on EBay. In the early 20th century, the Alexandria was one of Los Angeles’ most distinguished hotels. It has withstood several cycles of poverty and restoration, and the Long Beach, Sylmar and Northridge earthquakes, surviving to witness the astonishing downtown renaissance. Bonus: It’s across from the Last Book Store.
Parmelee-Dohrmann was originally at 232-234 S. Spring St., then moved to 436-444 S. Broadway. By 1930, the store was at 8th and Flower streets, with branches in Pasadena, Long Beach and San Diego. Its last appearance in The Times is a display ad from December 1952, listing stores at 510 W. 7th St. in Los Angeles; 520 Pine Ave., Long Beach; and C Street at 7th Avenue in San Diego.
Photo: Gwangi! Gwangi!
I’m a sucker for any movie that has cowboys, dinosaurs and Freda Jackson warning “Gwangi! Gwangi!” So imagine my surprise to discover what an EBay vendor says is Willis O’Brien’s large preproduction model for an unproduced film from 1941 – later made by Ray Harryhausen as “The Valley of Gwangi.” Bidding starts at $16,499, or Buy It Now for $19,499.
As with anything on EBay, an item and vendor should be evaluated thoroughly before submitting a bid.
… and this movie would be?
Jan. 7, 1942: Whenever people give me this nonsense about the past being “a kinder, simpler time,” I always think of stories like Joe Downs and his “wife.”
President Roosevelt delivers his annual State of the Union address, which was praised by the Republicans in Congress. Yes, kids, there was a time when Republicans had the audacity to praise a Democratic president.
There are many interesting aspects of Roosevelt’s speech (on the jump) but I’m particularly struck by his conclusion. It’s difficult to imagine any contemporary politician invoking religion so forcefully.
Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race. We are inspired by a faith which goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: “God created man in his own image.”
We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are fighting as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image — a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom.
That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives. No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been — there never can be — successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance and decency and freedom and faith.
Tom Treanor says: We didn’t save any rubber Sunday. If anything, the Sunday driving was heavier than usual. At the intersection of Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Blvd., cars were backed up at one time between a quarter and half a mile.
As I have said before, traffic in Los Angeles is not a new problem; it is a very old one that we are still trying to solve.
“How Green Was My Valley”opens tomorrow at Grauman’s Chinese and Loew’s State.
Jimmie Fidler says: A casual line in a letter just received from Fred Allen set me thinking. Says Fred: “There are so many ‘anti’ campaigns today a guy with a good ‘for’ movement could clean up.
I was watching this movie the other night and thought: “Hey! Wait a minute. That’s…..”
The film shouldn’t be too hard to identify. But the location … hmmmmmm. As I often say, living in Los Angeles is like living in a big movie set. They film everywhere.
Photo: Thompson submachine gun, serial No. 4208, with detachable stock and ammunition drum. Credit: Mayo Auction and Realty.
This .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun 1921A, reputedly seized after a 1933 shootout with Bonnie and Clyde, is being auctioned, along with the couple’s Winchester 12-gauge shotgun on Jan. 21, by Mayo Auction and Realty of Kansas City, Mo.
The weapons have been in the possession of a police officer’s family for many years and were loaned to the Springfield, Mo., Police Museum from 1973 to 2011, the vendor says.
Presumably, any collector with enough money and interest to acquire this submachine gun knows the paperwork that is involved in owning one.
And in case you’re wondering, a submachine gun fires handgun ammunition (.45 caliber, in this case) rather than machine gun-caliber ammunition.
Here’s another mystery photo from the collection of Steven Bibb!
[Update: This is Lois Butler in “The Boy From Indiana.”
Jan. 5, 1962: A dark, painful day in the history of Los Angeles journalism. Virtually overnight, the city becomes a two-newspaper town. The evening Mirror ceases publication Jan. 5, merging with The Times, and the morning Examiner merges with the evening Herald-Express on Jan. 7, prompting a congressional investigation of possible collusion.
A tearful Norman Chandler, president of Times-Mirror Co., tells Mirror employees: “This is to me the most difficult, heart-rending statement I have ever had to make. The Mirror was my dream — this paper was conceived by me. I believed in its reason for being. I had confidence in its ability to grow with the community and to mature as a successful metropolitan paper.”
“Unfortunately, the economics have proved to be such that my original concept has not worked out.”
Randolph A. Hearst, president of Hearst Publishing Col, says: “The conditions which force the Examiner to cease publication are the same conditions that have resulted in the demise of many other well-known newspapers throughout the country. Costs have risen far more rapidly than revenue. Continuing losses, with no foreseeable change in the trend, make discontinuance of the Examiner an economic necessity.”
Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-New York), head of the House Judiciary Committee, says “a city of 2 1/2 million people with a metropolitan area of almost 7 million will become a two-newspaper town.”
Discussing the consolidation of newspapers, Celler says: “This trend bodes ill for our much-vaunted freedom of speech and press and shackles such freedom. In many instances, both sides of the problems are never presented and the news as well as the editorials often become slanted. This must be forfended.”
The late Marty Rossman, who worked at The Times in 1962, told me: “The blood ran on the floor that day.” Some of the Mirror’s high-profile columnists and writers (Paul Coates, Matt Weinstock and Paul Weeks, for example) moved to The Times. Others were not so fortunate. The late Bill Kershaw, a slot when I started at The Times, lost his job and went to the Herald Examiner before rejoining The Times. The late Jerry Clark, a former Mirror employee, once said he asked Otis Chandler who decided to kill the Mirror. Otis replied: “I did. Next question.”
For people too young to recall afternoon papers or understand their function, here’s a brief explanation: The morning papers (or AMers) tended to be a straightforward reporting of the news of the day, and for much of the 20th century, there were multiple editions per day for home delivery, closing stock market figures, racing results, street sales, etc. The afternoon papers (or PMers) tended to be updates of breaking news stories, with more sensational treatment, stock market figures, racing results, features, serialized novels (a specialty of the Herald-Express) and that sort of thing.
As American lifestyles changed after World War II and into the 1960s, more people were getting their news from television, cutting into the circulation of afternoon papers until they slowly faded away.
The Examiner’s circulation was 381,037 daily; 693,773 Sunday. The Herald-Express’ circulation was 393, 215. I’ll have to do some digging to find the Times’ and Mirror’s circulation figures. The Herald Examiner folded in 1989 and many employees joined The Times.
Jan. 5, 1942: Nazi patrols plow through students protesting in Paris’ Latin Quarter, “firing a warning burst from machine guns over the heads of the crowd” and then proceeding to “clean up the situation,” The New York Times reports. “A separate report stated that at least 100 hostages had been ‘liquidated.’ ”
Japanese immigrants Henry Morishita and K. Goto try to establish their San Diego vegetable market as the headquarters of the Free Japanese Committee to Aid Democracy, which would raise money to help U.S. defense.
Times columnist Tom Treanor, who was killed covering the liberation of France, muses on what life will be like after the war.
“In the aircraft factories, employment of women, after a lull, is about to pick up again. Experience to date has shown that women can do what has heretofore been considered men’s work and do it satisfactorily. Many jobs they perform better,” Treanor says.
Redondo Beach Councilwoman Bernice Venable has come up with a play to beautify the many blocks of right of ways abandoned by the Pacific Electric Railway.
“When the Pacific Electric abandoned its right of way the removal of rails left broad stretches of unsightly, broken ground centering some of the city’s most scenic residential boulevards,” The Times says.
And yes, that means the streetcar system was already being dismantled before World War II. Are you surprised? Good.
Nathan Marsak, this is for you: Recent enemy submarine activity off the coast has restricted the movement of tankers, which in turn has curtailed oil production. The Times once covered the mining and oil industries, believe it or not.
Film director Fritz Lang is planning a lecture tour on “Fear Psychology.”
Jimmie Fidler says: Study in contrasts: Bouncing Betty Grable and sedate Judy Garland at adjoining tables at the Mocambo.
Photo: The 4200 block of South Olive Street via Google’s Street View.
Jan. 4, 1942: William E. Kosdy uses a shovel to dig a two-person bomb shelter in the backyard of his home, 4236 S. Olive St. “I didn’t follow any specifications. This is no time to be waiting for specifications or permits,” he says.
Rychei Tanaka is arrested after he was allegedly seen leaving a rooming house at 310 1/2 S. Los Angeles St. with a bag full of swords. Sakiko Takemoto told police that the swords belonged to her brother, and upon investigation, authorities arrested her and her mother, Chika, for failing to obey a presidential order to surrender a .22-caliber rifle, a revolver, a signal flare and a shortwave radio.
The Ambassador Hotel announces that the Cocoanut Grove will only be open for dancing on Friday and Saturday nights “until the habits of the socially inclined have returned to normal.”
Los Angeles police officers return to eight-hour shifts after working 12 hours a day since the Pearl Harbor attack. However, police will be asked to work one 12-hour shift per week.
War workers at the Severance Tool Co., 3844 S. Santa Fe Ave., begin every morning with a 15-minute religious service. And yes, they are paid for the time they spend in worship.
“After a Scripture reading, a short talk and perhaps a devotional song, the meeting is closed with a prayer as each workman kneels before his tool-cutting machine,” The Times says.
Clark Gable tells Jimmie Fidler why he and Carole Lombard didn’t dispute stories that their marriage was in trouble. “Denial, Mr. Fidler, is often as incriminating as admission. So we simply ignored the rumors.”
