I’m taking a break from the daily listings of history and museum news. Compiling the lists is time-consuming and they don’t seem to get many readers.
In the meantime, there’s the L.A. Daily Mirror and the L.A. Crime Beat crafted with care from Twitter feeds by the bots at paper.li.
On the other hand, it’s hard to resist stories like “Fire Destroys World’s Largest Stove.”
Photo: 1995 Cadillac hearse for sale on EBay.
Queen of the Dead – dateline August 15, 2011
• I mentioned recently that I worked in advertising in the 1980s—well, I found out that the Don Draper to my Peggy Olsen died on August 7. Bernard Cooper—who was 84—was founder and president of Cove, Cooper, Lewis, one of those small, workhorse New York advertising agencies that don’t get TV shows made about them. Bernie was a great boss, and what might be called a firecracker. Bursting with energy—sometimes to the dismay of us Peggies—he fought in the Navy in World War II, ran 13 New York marathons (starting in his fifties), helped form the New York Road Runners Foundation, and in a way got Yours Truly started on a writing career. When I say I was a Peggy Olsen at CCL, I am not kidding: I was a bright-eyed 20-something secretary and Bernie spotted my way with words and let me write copy (yes, to the fury of the older male copy staff, just like on Mad Men). Those Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous ads in TV Guide? Mine! So thanks, Bernie, and bon voyage.
Photo: First all-women jury in Los Angeles. Credit: EBay listing.
Photo: First all-women jury in Los Angeles. Credit: Bain News Service, Nov. 2, 1911.
You can pay $9.99 for a cropped version of this photo on EBay or get it full-frame from the Library of Congress for nothing.
Photo: Capt. Ed Jokisch. Credit: Jokisch family
This is Part 2 of my interview with the late Ed Jokisch.
Continue reading
Image: A “zute” suit cartoon from the California Eagle, Aug. 21, 1941.
In case you’re wondering, I tracked down the Navy’s 1943 report on the Zoot Suit Riots but I can’t get out to the National Archives in Riverside until September. So stay tuned.
“Zoot Suit” and History, Part 1| Part 2 |
Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
In the meantime, I made the wonderful discovery that the California Eagle, a weekly newspaper for African Americans published by Charlotta Bass (more about her another time) has been digitized and uploaded to Archive.org. The Eagle and its rival the Los Angeles Sentinel provide a stark counterpoint to the mainstream, white newspapers of the era. The Eagle is full of stories about discrimination that offer a sobering view of the 1940s.
For example, do you think the white newspapers covered the NAACP’s August 1941 protest over this brand of stove polish? Guess again.
On the jump, President Roosevelt’s June 15, 1941, statement against discrimination in hiring by federal defense contractors, and an Aug. 14, 1941, follow-up in the California Eagle.
Roosevelt said: “No nation combating the increasing threat of totalitarianism can afford arbitrarily to exclude large segments of its population from its defense industries. Even more important is it for us to strengthen our unity and morale by refuting at home the very theories which we are fighting abroad.”
Four postcards of the January 1910 Aviation Meet in Los Angeles, taken by the C.C. Pierce studio, have been listed on EBay. The meet was held at Dominguez Field and is one of the major events in the history of Los Angeles – and in the history of aviation. Bidding starts at $40.
A postcard showing the J.W. Robinson Co. Building has been listed on EBay. And it’s more of a mystery than I expected….
Photo: The Santa Barbara Junior League Cookbook, 1939. Credit: L.A. Daily Mirror archives.
The Culinary Historians of Southern California will hold its annual used cookbook sale on Aug. 21 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Hollywood Farmers Market, at Ivar and Selma avenues. Magazines, menus and other ephemera will also be for sale. The Daily Mirror test kitchen has been inactive for some time, but we do enjoy picking through old cookbooks when we find them and years ago we had a particular soft spot for family recipe boxes we sometimes found in thrift stores. One can discover quite a bit of history in a family’s recipes. We may just have to pay a visit and see what we find!
Photo: Diary of Alexander Sterrett Paxton. Credit: Washington and Lee University.
Daniel de Vise of the Washington Post writes about a collection of six Civil War diaries obtained by Washington and Lee University. The diaries were kept by Alexander Sterrett Paxton, who joined his Washington and Lee classmates in the Liberty Hall Volunteers for what he called the “war of Southern Independence & of resistance to Northern Despotism.”
Paxton wrote: “Nothing is so exciting as to get a shot at a Yankee. How strange that the better & kinder feelings of our natures should be thus changed!”
The diaries were purchased for $21,000 by a group of alumni and given to the university.
Mark St. John Erickson of the Newport News Daily Press writes about efforts to conserve the turret of the Monitor, which was recovered by Navy divers and federal archeologists in 2002.
Kate Taylor of the New York Times’ Arts Beat looks at the latest fallout from the Russian embargo on loans to American museums. The embargo is the result of a dispute with the Chabad-Lubavitch organization, which wants Russia to return a large collection of books and documents seized by the Nazis.
Some people really don’t like the idea of reinterpreting “Porgy and Bess” for Broadway. Like Stephen Sondheim.
The L.A. Daily Mirror and L.A. Crime Beat lovingly prepared from Twitter feeds to the most exacting standards by the bots at paper.li. What’s this? The bots are leading with nude photos of Lee Grace Dougherty from TMZ.
“Union Station” by Marion Eisenmann, Aug, 8, 2009
Note: I’m reposting the artwork Marion Eisenmann did several years ago. It’s a pleasure to share her work with a new audience.
Aug. 11, 1941: Walter P. Palmer and William S. Raney are killed when their plane goes into a spin during a flying lesson and crashes into a bean field at Woodley Avenue and Oxnard Street in Van Nuys, which is now somewhere in the middle of the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area.
Lee Shippey writes about the shortage of silk stockings and blacking out aircraft factories as the nation prepares for war. But not everyone is enthusiastic. An opinion piece by former Rep. Samuel B. Pettengill, “The Gentleman From Indiana,” questions whether Japan is worth a war. “I sometimes think the chief reason for war is that mankind likes to go on a grand drunk at least once in a generation, plastered with slogans,” Pettengill writes.
FALSE ALARM: Nothing to those Barbara Stanwyck-Robert Taylor baby rumors; the new room is for a billiard table, which no stork is bringing, Jimmie Fidler says.
Photo: BMW M1. Credit: Bonhams
A BMW M1 painted by Frank Stella is being auctioned at the Quail Lodge Sale, Aug. 18-19, in Carmel. The BWM belonged to racecar driver Peter Gregg, who committed suicide after an accident left him with double vision and therefore banned from racing. Phil Patton in the New York Times.
BLACK DAHLIA
A filing in Bankruptcy Court reveals that Steve Hodel is claiming unpaid royalties for “Black Dahlia Avenger.” The unpaid sum: $224,571.07. The court rejected Hodel’s claim for interest against Arcade Publishing.
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times looks at Michele Bachmann’s views on the Renaissance.
Tea party queen and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is convinced that America is sinking into tyranny. Why? In a remarkable profile of the candidate appearing in the Aug. 15 issue of the New Yorker magazine, the artistic flowering of the Italian Renaissance takes a beating for having done away with the God-fearing Dark Ages.
The L.A Daily Mirror and L.A. Crime Beat from Twitter feeds prepared to the most exacting specifications by the bots at paper.li.
Photo: Dick Lane in 1947. The woman may be Jane Harvey, who was crowned “Queen of Television Week” in March 1947.
Credit: Steve Dichter Collection.
This is Part 4 of James Curtis’ 1975 interview with Dick Lane. In this installment, Lane discusses the early days of television in Los Angeles and Klaus Landsberg.
[Update: This is Helene Costello (d. 1957). And yes, that is quite a bracelet.]
Here’s a photo of a mystery woman and some mystery jewelry, courtesy of Steven Bibb!
Photo: 130 W. 30th, via Google maps’ street view.
SPOTLIGHT
David W. Dunlap, writing in the New York Times’ City Room, tells the story of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, sometimes called the “gay synagogue,” which is moving into a building with an Assyrian motif.
NEWS
Google is helping to fund the restoration of one of the buildings at Bletchley Park, the famous site of World War II code-breaking. The machines built to help crack the German Enigma codes are often viewed as the some of the earliest computers. BBC
BLACK DAHLIA
Marilyn Manson’s paintings of the Black Dahlia will go on display Nov. 12 as part of the Theatrification event at the Million Dollar Theatre. The event also features David J’s “Black Dahlia” song cycle, written for the film “The Chanteuse and the Devil’s Muse,” which will be used in a staging that tells the story of Madi/Mady/Mattie/Matty Comfort. Comfort, in case you have forgotten, became part of the confusing myths surrounding the Black Dahlia case because she was photographed by Dr. George “Evil Genius” Hodel. Hodel, at least according to his son’s book franchise, supposedly committed every unsolved killing in Los Angeles for decades, plus the Zodiac murders, designed the Edsel and discovered Milli Vanilli.
The L.A. Daily Mirror and L.A. Crime Beat gathered from Twitter feeds and prepared to the most exacting specifications by the bots at paper.li.
ladailymirror.com 