 |
 |
I must say, the L.A. Daily Mirror readers are truly outstanding. My traffic indicates that they prefer old type fonts to nude photos by a slight margin. At left, the Selectric OCR font in all its glory. I think the Web approximation is way too clean and tidy.
Photo 1: Nudes by Witzel for sale on EBay. Credit: For sale on EBay.
Photo 2: IBM Selectric commemorative stamp. Credit: U.S. Postal Service.
Photo 3: IBM Selectric OCR font. Credit: Selectric.org
Photo: Jack Benny, forever 39.
e’re celebrating our 39th day at the L.A. Daily Mirror by taking time to thank the readers for their patience as we unpack boxes and get accustomed to the new place.
Our numbers are slowly coming back, but in many ways we are starting from scratch as far as Google and the other search engines are concerned. Curiously, Facebook has become our No. 1 source of Web traffic while Google was by far the Daily Mirror’s biggest source of traffic at latimes.com, followed by the rest of the search engine mafia and Wikipedia.
As you may have noticed, this incarnation of the Daily Mirror is a bit different than it was at latimes.com. After six years of marching through the daily papers (two with the 1947project and four with The Times) the focus has shifted to broader view. Much of this is because I have far less time for a blog, but I think it needed a change – at least I did. The good news is that now that I’m no longer restricted to Times staffers, I can add new voices on the blog and I am pleased that several members of the brain trust have stepped forward to share their writing. More readers have offered their work and I’m going to look everything over as soon as I come up for air. So many stories, only one Larry Harnisch.
Now it’s time to ask for your suggestions. Do you prefer daily posts from a particular year or something more overarching? What would you like to see?
And thanks for reading. Tell your friends!
This postcard of the new Arroyo Seco Parkway, a name that has been restored after decades of being called the Pasadena Freeway, has been listed on EBay. For more than a year, drivers have had to contend with construction of a concrete divider that replaced metal guardrails installed years ago, so it may come as a surprise that the parkway originally had nothing to keep cars from crossing into oncoming traffic. Highway engineers eventually learned that this was a bad idea, and after long experimentation with guardrails, customarily include center dividers in their plans. Bidding starts at $2.66.
Photo: IBM Selectric commemorative stamp. Credit: U.S. Postal Service
Today’s post on the IBM Selectric got me to thinking about the variety of interchangeable typeballs that were used for fonts. The most memorable was ORATOR, which looked like this:
Photo: IBM Selectric stamp. Credit: U.S. Postal Service
SPOTLIGHT
Chicago Tribune cultural critic Julia Keller reflects on the 50th anniversary of the IBM Selectric typewriter, which is being honored with a commemorative stamp. [Does anyone remember the ORATOR font?]
She writes: Fifty years ago this month, an electric typewriter called the Selectric was introduced by IBM. To celebrate the birth of a device that changed not only business practices but also our ideas of how utilitarian objects can double as eye candy, the United States Postal Service has released a new stamp featuring the Selectric.
And in a bit of symmetry that befits a natty gadget such as the Selectric, the woman who designed the stamp — the aforementioned Derry Noyes — is the daughter of the man who gave the Selectric its captivating contours: Eliot Noyes (1910-1977), celebrated American architect and industrial designer.
Arnie Cooper, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has an update on Afghanistan’s giant Buddhas, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.
Peace for London’s Pearlies? Alistair MacDonald writes about it in the Wall Street Journal.
NEWS
A jury in Philadelphia found that the U.S. did not act illegally in seizing gold coins from a woman who said they belonged to her late father. AP via Washington Post.
The 38-acre site of the proposed United States National Slavery Museum is being sold at a tax auction, with more than $215,000 overdue. Kate Taylor in the New York Times.
The Port Huron, Mich., Museum is closing the World War II-era Coast Guard cutter Bramble and offering it for $300,000, according to the Port Huron Times Herald.
Jodie Jacobs, writing in the Chicago Tribune, takes a look at the upcoming Jewish Heritage Day being honored in Europe on Sept. 4.
L.A. Daily Mirror and L.A. Crime Beat, lovingly assembled from Twitter by bots, on paper.li
Olvera Street by Marion Eisenmann, Aug. 8, 2009
Note: I’m reposting artwork that Marion Eisenmann did for the Daily Mirror when it was with the L.A. Times.
To visit the old Plaza is to stand at the crossroads of the city’s past and present — and maybe even its future. I wonder what the preservationists who envisioned “a Mexican street of yesterday in a city of today” — like a Colonial Williamsburg with sombreros and castanets — would think of the crowded sidewalks and live performances with calls of “Viva Mexico!”
Talking about Olvera Street is a bit like the old fable of the blind men describing the elephant. To some, it may be the parade of proud parents with their beautifully dressed little girls in their christening outfits headed for church, or perhaps it’s the teenagers, in elegant quinceanera outfits, posing for pictures. Maybe it’s one of the restaurants, the life-size burro on wheels used in the souvenir photos, people lounging around the bandstand listening to live music, the ringing bells of the pushcart vendors or the booths selling masks, marionettes and miniature guitars. I even found a Frida Kahlo mesh shopping bag for sale at one stall.
 |
 |
A set of five nude photos (this is the tamest one) by the Witzel studio has been listed on EBay. Witzel was one of the leading portrait studios in Los Angeles and did many early publicity photos for the theater and films. These are listed as Buy It Now for $975. As with anything on EBay, an item and vendor should be evaluated thoroughly before submitting a bid.
An example of what is sometimes known as a “Biscailuz badge” has been listed on EBay. These are presentation badges that weren’t intended for deputies, but were only given to celebrities and other notables by Los Angeles County Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz. This one is inscribed to H.S. Grove.
According to the website badgehistory.com Nelson Eddy had one of these badges and all of them apparently had a serial number ending in “A.”
Biscailuz was quite generous with badges and gave them to reporters and photographers in lieu of press passes. When Peter Pitchess became sheriff, he sent deputies to reclaim (almost) all of them. The late Chuck Hillinger of The Times told me that he still had his (he was probably on the road when the officers came for it).
The LAPD was also generous with celebrity badges in the 1930s and solved the problem by adopting the current shield design in the 1940s as part of the reforms under Chief Arthur Hohmann.
Photo: Pier Angeli and friend with a reminder on Daylight Saving Time, 1958
I decided to import my old lmharnisch blog, devoted mainly to dissecting “The Black Dahlia Files” by Donald “Fake Document” Wolfe. Now there are posts going back to 2005 – with some major gaps. There may also be some copies of posts I did for the 1947project. None of the posts are tagged, so I’ll have to go back and do that manually…. Enjoy!
[Update: Here’s one of my favorites posts from the archives: Steve Hodel’s “Black Dahlia Avenger,” inscribed to James Ellroy, for sale on EBay in 2006. No really!]
Postcards and photos of the railway trip to Mt. Lowe, with its hairpin turns around the mountains, are quite common – but a brass model of the car in HO gauge? That’s a new one on me. This intriguing item, with the original box, has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $33 but there is a reserve.
City Hall, July 3, 2009, by Marion Eisenmann
I’m going to be reposting the artwork Marion Eisenmann did for the Daily Mirror when it was with the L.A. Times. Tomorrow’s sketch will feature Olvera Street. You can contact Marion here.
The bots at paper.li that automatically assemble “newspapers” from Twitter feeds had an attack of the vapors, so after two days of nothing I deleted the paper and started over. If you have bookmarked it, replace it with this one.
Photo: Dick Lane and Helen Wallace in “Sioux City Sue,” 1946.
In 1975, while still in college, I did a short series of interviews. There was no real purpose to these, other than they were with people who interested me on some level, and I had a sort of childlike faith that an outlet for them would appear. As it happened, one of those interviews did lead to a life-changing event, resulting in what was to become my first book. I went on to a career in business, but eventually went back full time to writing. In the last 35 years I’ve interviewed a lot of people–and have shoeboxes full of cassette tapes to show for it. Those original reel-to-reel talks, however, never were of any use to me.
Last year, contemplating a new project, I took the plunge into digital recording, replacing the old imperfect cassette tape with the new imperfect (so they tell me) SD card. Coming up to speed, I consulted with the people in the Oral History program at Cal State Fullerton, who very kindly gave me pointers. Soon, I was making sound files, converting them to MP3s, and e-mailing them to a typist halfway across the world.
My encounter with the oral history people reminded me of those reels of tape stored out in my garage. Were they still playable? Would the Sony quarter-track deck that recorded them still work? And could they be converted to digital files and put on CD?
Happily, the answer to all these questions was YES. And so, slowly, I digitized them, made preservation CDs, and backed them all up as recommended. But I still didn’t have a use for them, other than to maybe donate them to the Herrick library. Then the Daily Mirror became an independent entity, and Larry said that he would welcome any content I might wish to contribute. It didn’t occur to me at first that a transcription of one of these stone age interviews might be appropriate to the Mirror, but then one day it hit me–I did indeed have a voice that still rang in the ears of generations of local TV viewers.
 |
 |
Items from the Florentine Gardens – souvenir photos, matchbooks, menus, cocktail napkins, etc. – aren’t particularly rare, but this item is unusual. According to the vendor, this menu is autographed by Errol Flynn and Sophie Tucker (no, they weren’t an item. Tucker performed at the club. I assume Flynn was cruising Hollywood in search of an underage “protege” for the evening).
Bidding starts at $99.95. As with all things on EBay, an item and vendor should be evaluated thoroughly before submitting a bid.
Photo: The Wall Street Journal’s slide show on “How to Dress a Victorian Lady.” Credit: Wall Street Journal.
To make sure their bodices are correctly ripped (it’s harder than it looks), the annual convention of the Romance Writers of America featured a presentation on how to dress/undress a Victorian lady. As we say at the Daily Mirror, any day we can do research is a good day, but we somehow never thought of this. A great story by Alexandra Alter in the Wall Street Journal.
I have procrastinated about looking at Bill James’ “Popular Crime” because, as curious as it may seem, I don’t care much for “true” crime books. Even when they are well done (which is almost never) the subject matter is depressing and more often than not they are written in a bad imitation of “Hollywood Babylon”: “If only Thelma Todd had known that lurking in her darkened garage was a drug-crazed Maurice Chevalier armed with swizzle stick … but no, her heart beating fast beneath her skin-tight blouse as she thought only of her tryst with Shemp Howard, she scurried onward toward certain doom as fast as her creamy legs and milky-white thighs would carry her….”
I’m no Kenneth Anger, but you get the idea.
Would you pay for $46.95 for a page cut from a magazine? Here’s a vendor who thinks someone will.
We’re always looking for photographs by the studio of C.C. Pierce and spotted this item on EBay. But, hullo, what’s this? “Please note there is print on the reverse.” Sounds like a magazine! A quick check of Google books reveals that this is Page 195 of the Pacific Monthly, Volume 24 (1910). And frankly, you could probably buy the whole volume for that kind of money – if you were patient about finding a copy.
The Daily Mirror deplores the vandalism of books and magazines by collectibles dealers – or anyone else. It is an abomination.
Photo: Dick Lane and Helen Wallace in “Sioux City Sue,” 1946.
Coming up Wednesday: Biographer James Curtis shares his interviews in L.A. Voices, beginning with Part 1 of a 1975 Q&A with actor Dick Lane.
“Rope” opens in Los Angeles, Sept. 24, 1948. Credit: Los Angeles Times
[Update: This is a 1949 photo of Joan Chandler (d. 1979), who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope.”]
Here’s our mystery gal!
There’s another photo on the jump!
Photo: Times President Gen. Harrison Gray Otis. Credit: Press Reference Library, 1912
Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the favorite pinata of Los Angeles historians, is the subject of a new biography by Mike “City of Quartz” Davis, now being serialized in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Based on the first installment, it seems Davis has some things right – that no decent biography exists. But I don’t expect much more than a thorough hatchet job in the Morrow Mayo-Louis Adamic school:
ladailymirror.com 