Sydney Pollack’s 1969 film “The Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” will be shown as a tribute to Michael Sarrazin on June 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. Also showing, “Harry in Your Pocket” (1973). The film is based on a novel by Horace McCoy. Tickets are $11/$9/$7.
Note: The Times is reporting that Mack Ray Edwards is a suspect in the 1961 disappearance of 7-year-old Ramona Price outside Santa Barbara. Here’s a 1959 column that Paul Coates wrote about one of Edwards’ victims.
Today marks an anniversary that won’t be celebrated in a Redondo Beach home.
But I promised an anguished father that I wouldn’t let you forget it.
Two years ago today, 8-year-old Tommy Bowman ran down a mountain trail and vanished behind a curtain of secrecy which still defies all investigation.
Yesterday, Tommy’s dad called me.
“I hate to be a bore,” Eldon Bowman began hesitantly. “But I thought maybe you’d write something about Tommy. I just can’t believe that it’s all over and done with. I just know that someone, somewhere has to know something.
“Somebody has to know where my boy is,” he added with emphasis.
I guess you could yodel like Patsy Montana in this outfit. It’s a Marge Riley shirt, which has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $35.
You’ll recognize Eve Golden as one of the Daily Mirror regulars. Now that I’m no longer at latimes.com I’m free to use outside writers and Eve is my first addition. She describes herself as: a biographer, show-business historian, photo archivist and obituary writer. And a haughty dowager.
Queen of the Dead—dateline June 13, 2011
• Carl Gardner, the cutest and most elfin-looking of The Coasters, died on June 12, age 82. A tenor, he sang lead on such hits as “Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown,” “Poison Ivy,” and “Searchin’.”
• There are not many female movie producers in Hollywood, and now there is one less: Laura Ziskin, 61, died on June 12. She is best known for the hugely successful Pretty Woman—the annoying tale of an adorable, perky prostitute—but for my money her masterpiece was the dark, funny thriller To Die For, based on the Pamela Smart murder. Ziskin also produced four Spider-Man movies and was the first woman to produce the Oscars telecast (in 2002).
• Singer Seth Putnam, 43, died on June 11 after ingesting a truly impressive amount of Ambien. In a 25-year career, Putnam fronted for such festively named bands as Anal Cunt, Shit Scum, Adolf Satan, Vaginal Jesus, Necrophiliacs, and Seven Minutes of Nausea. Putman had a Sid Vicious-caliber death wish: “I have a really high drug and alcohol tolerance,” he somewhat optimistically told The Boston Phoenix in 2004, adding sadly that “I don’t want to be a suicidal mess anymore.”
• The Telegraph can always be relied upon for the very best in obit writing, and they did not let us down with the passing on May 5 of Henry Lorimer, 71. The Scottish-born marketing director started out to become a Benedictine monk, arriving at the Abbey in a Rolls-Royce, but his clerical career ended “when the novice master found fault with his polishing of the brass in the abbey. Lorimer is said to have upbraided him in turn with a large Easter candle before stuffing him into the confessional.” Hats off, as usual, to good folk at The Telegraph.
July 24, 1932: Cartoonist Edmund Waller “Ted” Gale puts Miss Los Angeles in the midst of a dazzling array of national stereotypes for the 1932 Olympics (note that Mexico is in a sombrero … and is Japan wearing a uniform?) Miss Los Angeles is one of those cartoon characters that disappeared ages ago, but she was a frequent presence on the Los Angeles Times editorial pages.
Is Jack Gilbert generous? Wow! Virginia Bruce sports a new blue Packard roadster and one of the biggest diamond rings in Hollywood, The Times’ Tip Poff says.
And at the California Theatre, “Sex Mysteries Demonstrated With Living Artist Models.” Reminds me a little bit of “Mom and Dad.”
This postcard showing the interior of the H.J. Whitley & Co. jewelry store, 345 S. Broadway, has been listed on EBay. The store opened on Dec. 9, 1903, (yes, just in time for Christmas) and was a branch of the business at 111 S. Spring St. The store had a lavish opening, with floral decorations and an orchestra, The Times said. “Smilax and asparagus plumosus was used in profusion in the windows and in the store, where the fine bouquets continued to rival the jewelry in attractiveness,” The Times said. Bidding starts at $3.
 LAPD Officer Charles Randall “Randy” Champe |
 LAPD Officer Gary Alan Howe |
The daily NewsWatch of the Los Angeles Police Protective League always honors the anniversaries of LAPD officers killed in the line of duty. For June 13, the union features the deaths of Officers Charles Randall “Randy” Champe and Gary Alan Howe, who were killed in 1991, when their helicopter had engine failure and crashed at Raymond and Vernon avenues.
The crash also killed a man on the ground who was burned beyond recognition. John Doe No. 121 was eventually identified as Lino Daniel Falguero, a 36-year-old furniture salesman.
Witnesses praised Howe, who was the pilot, for maneuvering the crippled helicopter away from a day-care center and an elementary school, crashing in a vacant lot. The officers were flying a 2-year-old Aerospatiale 350 B-1 and were scheduled to make a flyby at Main Street Elementary School as part of the DARE anti-drug program. According to the Los Angeles Times, the final words from the helicopter were Champe, saying: “We’re going down with an engine failure.”
At the time of the fatal accident, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates voiced concern that the officers’ deaths were eclipsed by public outrage over the police beating of Rodney G. King on March 3, 1991.
In 1995, the engine manufacturer agreed to pay the officers’ families $8 million.
Credit: Los Angeles Police Protective League
My childhood heroes: The Lookies! They don’t guess, they look it up in their new World Book Encyclopedia!
Dr. Michele K. Troy of Hillyer College writes: Rob Wagner (Red Ink, White Lies) recommended I contact you with an odd research question I have regarding the original L.A. Daily News. He said if anyone would know the answer, you would.
Thanks Michele! Nothing quite makes my day like an odd research question.
Michele is wondering about a fellow named Wolfgang Krause-Brandstetter, a German writer who was in the U.S. as a representative of Tauchnitz, which was affiliated with Albatross Press “a British-owned firm that printed and sold Anglo-American paperbacks in English from German in the 1930s.”
At least that was his cover story. According to Michele, Krause-Brandstetter might have been using his journalist’s credentials to gather intelligence on military activities in Los Angeles.
She explains: He later claimed that he wrote for the L.A. Daily News while he was here. I know he was in the U.S. from February 1936 to August 1936, spending the beginning in New York, but the bulk of his time in California. He returned to California again around July/early August 1938 and stayed in California through December 1938, when he returned to Germany.
Sure enough, he turns up in a Lee Shippey column from May 11, 1936.
I already checked Google’s news archives, but didn’t find too much. Now I’ll throw it open to the brain trust.
And some folks say research drudges lead uninteresting lives.
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 San Diego has everything a family might want: A moderate climate and jobs in the expanding defense industries. But there’s no place to live.
Rep. John H. Tolan (D-Oakland) is holding hearings in San Diego on the plight of migrants who came to California in hopes of getting a job but can’t find a home.Otis Porter, 39, of Pawnee, Okla., who earns $135 ($1,976.74 USD 2010) a month at the Consolidated Aircraft Corp., says he’s paying nearly $80 ($1,171.40 USD 2010) a month in rent for a one-room cabin for his family of eight. Porter says: “I would rather be back in Oklahoma if I had a job.” Eventually, the government will build the Bayview Terrace Housing Project for government workers. |
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 Photograph by Larry Harnisch /ladailymirror.com
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The third-floor newsroom at The Times is being remodeled, and workers have exposed the wooden blocks underneath the ratty green carpet (c. 1982) that’s older than some of paper’s reporters. The third floor used to be the Linotyping room, and the old typesetting machines required a heavy industrial floor. The only Linotype machine left is on display in the Globe Lobby. Another one used to be stored in the basement of the parking structure, but it’s gone. |
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A program from Groucho Marx’s one-night performance of “The Same Boat, Brother” at Philharmonic Auditorium on Nov. 14, 1945, has been listed on EBay. According to reviews in the Los Angeles Times, the show was fairly unsuccessful. Bidding for the program and six other Marx items starts at $749.99. As with anything on EBay, an item and vendor should be evaluated thoroughly before submitting a bid.
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Glen Creason, the map specialist at the Los Angeles Public Library, will give a presentation on “Los Angeles in Maps, Part II,” on Thursday, June 16, at 6:45 p.m. at the Los Feliz Branch Library, 1874 Hillhurst Ave. Creason is the author of “Los Angeles in Maps.” Ask him about the Lizard People.
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 ou may recognize this photo because I ran it a few years ago. But it’s one of my favorites. This fellow was branded with a very certain stereotype that he played in countless films, so I like to see him out of character.
As some of you know, the Daily Mirror is being killed by The Times in a pruning of blogs with low traffic. I’ll post a longer farewell next week, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for participating in the mystery photos. They were my most popular feature. Through the mystery photos, I got to know “the brain trust,” a corps of readers with a humbling knowledge of film. My first criteria in selecting mystery guests was that I didn’t know who they were, so in almost every case (aside from my two-week binge on Lucille Ball and a few other exceptions) I couldn’t identify any of them. And they proved to be a wonderful history lesson for me: Trixie Friganza … Jack Mulhall … Julian Eltinge … Pier Angeli. I had an agenda with these pictures, though I don’t think anyone ever realized what I was up to. Most people saw the pictures as a daily movie quiz that was (at least ideally) fairly challenging. And that was fine. But the mystery pictures were actually a years-long photo essay on fame and forgetfulness. Nearly every image I posted was of someone who was once a prominent performer – and yet look at how dimly most of them are remembered. In some ways, the indignant responses were the most perversely rewarding: “Am I supposed to know who that is?” No, you’re not. That’s the point: The stars of today are the obscure nobodies of tomorrow. Alas, that’s a lesson that some of Hollywood’s current problem children haven’t learned. Thanks for reading…. Keep checking next week for a final farewell post that ties up all the loose ends from the last four years. |
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| You may recognize this photo because I ran it a few years ago. But it’s one of my favorites. This fellow was branded with a very certain stereotype that he played in countless films, so I like to see him out of character.As some of you know, the Daily Mirror is being killed by The Times in a pruning of blogs with low traffic. I’ll post a longer farewell next week, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for participating in the mystery photos. They were my most popular feature.
Through the mystery photos, I got to know “the brain trust,” a corps of readers with a humbling knowledge of film. My first criteria in selecting mystery guests was that I didn’t know who they were, so in almost every case (aside from my two-week binge on Lucille Ball and a few other exceptions) I couldn’t identify any of them. And they proved to be a wonderful history lesson for me: Trixie Friganza … Jack Mulhall … Julian Eltinge … Pier Angeli. I had an agenda with these pictures, though I don’t think anyone ever realized what I was up to. Most people saw the pictures as a daily movie quiz that was (at least ideally) fairly challenging. And that was fine. But the mystery pictures were actually a years-long photo essay on fame and forgetfulness. Nearly every image I posted was of someone who was once a prominent performer – and yet look at how dimly most of them are remembered. In some ways, the indignant responses were the most perversely rewarding: “Am I supposed to know who that is?” No, you’re not. That’s the point: The stars of today are the obscure nobodies of tomorrow. Alas, that’s a lesson that some of Hollywood’s current problem children haven’t learned. Thanks for reading…. Keep checking next week for a final farewell post that ties up all the loose ends from the last four years. |
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| [Update: Elisabeth Bergner: The German star, seen previously here as “Catherine the Great,” displays her versatile genius in “Escape Me Never,” at the Four Star, her art being hailed as more exquisite on the screen, even, than in the stage play, in which she appeared recently in New York, in a photo stamped June 16, 1935.[Update: Please congratulate Dewey Webb, Eve Golden, Steve Stoliar, Steven Bibb, Anne Papineau, Mike Hawks, Gregory Moore, Jenny M and Mary Mallory for identifying our mystery guest!]Here’s our mystery gal!
There’s a new photo on the jump! |
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June 10, 1941: Bill Henry files a color story on soldiers using rifles with bayonets to herd strikers away from the North American Aviation plant. Unfortunately, my new optical character recognition software can’t handle these old clips, so I have to post the images of the stories. Henry’s story is worth reading. Also on the jump, Ethel Waters stars in “Cabin in the Sky.” Jimmie Fidler says: On the newsstands this month is a magazine which features an astrological analysis of Cary Grant’s present status and future prospects… The birthday used in preparing Grant’s chart was 1909, a date given out in a studio publicity department biography. Cary’s real birth year was 1904! |
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A campaign button for George A. Smith has been listed on EBay. The vendor mistakenly identifies the individual as Mayor George Alexander. Actually, this is onetime Councilman George A. Smith, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1909 against Alexander. |
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Mary Mallory, a key member of the Daily Mirror’s “brain trust,” will be signing copies of her new book “Hollywoodland” from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 11, at Chevalier’s Books, 126 N. Larchmont Blvd. More information is available here. |
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| June 9, 1961: Wrestling isn’t even a sport at all. It’s a drama in three acts in which a lot of nice old ladies get rid of all their hostilities and aggressions occasioned usually by the fact their daughters-in-law don’t make pies the way they used to or won’t let them give fudge to the grandchildren.Wrestling today still has the simple basic plot of a medieval morality play. There’s a good guy and a bad guy. The good guy loses all the way up to the end when the bad guy goes too far. Thereupon, the good guy tears him apart like a cat looking for a mouse in a sofa. |
This unusual combination of Batchelder tiles has been listed on EBay. I have seen individual tiles from this series, like the one at right, in previous listings, but this is the first time I’ve seen a combination of them. 
