Movieland Mystery Photo [Updated]

  Jan. 28, 2011, Mystery Photo  

  Los Angeles Times file photo  

  July 26, 1970, Virgil Miller  

[Update: Here’s a fun discovery. The Times published this photo to accompany a 1970 feature on cameraman Virgil Miller. According to the caption information, this is the crew filming “Let ‘er Buck” in Pendleton, Ore., in 1924. Please congratulate Mary Mallory, Rotter and Mike Hawks for identifying director "Big Ed" Sedgwick.]

This is a particularly interesting shot. It looks like there’s a mystery keyboardist with a tiny piano or some sort of keyboard instrument. Mood music?  

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | 7 Comments

Paul Coates and Matt Weinstock, Jan. 28, 1961

 
 

  Jan. 27, 1961, Comics  

Jan. 28, 1961: Matt Weinstock’s daughter Jane graduates from Paul Revere Junior High. After the ball was over one weary father said to another: "We got them this far but I don't know if they'll make it the rest of the way." He is so right, Weinstock says.  … and Cab Calloway is emcee for the Harlem Globetrotters!

Paul Coates writes about the problem of charging the mentally ill as criminals and refers to the case of Thomas L. Graeff, who refers to himself as Jesus Christ II.

DEAR ABBY: For a 23-year-old college graduate I guess I'm pretty stupid, but here's my situation. Last year I met a very attractive man of 29. He told me from the start he'd been keeping company for several years with a woman a little older than himself and he had no intention of severing their relationship. From all appearances their "relationship" included everything but the marriage license. I have fallen head over heels in love with him and…

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, Jan. 28, 1941

  Jan. 28, 1941, Parley Fails  

  Jan. 28, 1941, Comics  

Jan. 28, 1941: Times reporter Tom Treanor, having recently returned from Europe, writes about conditions in Nazi-occupied France.
 
Edwina Booth, whose life turned to tragedy when she contracted a tropical fever during filming of "Trader Horn" in Africa, is destitute in California, Jimmie Fidler says. 

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Movieland Mystery Photo [Updated]

  Jan. 27, 2011, Mystery Photo  
  Los Angeles Times file photo  

[Update: This is Hugh Herbert, but the rest of the people in the photo are unidentified. Please congratulate Dewey Webb, Mary Mallory, Carmen, Rotter, Mark Heimback-Nielsen, Eve, Cold in Phoenix, Roget-L.A., Herb Nichols, Sarah, Julie Merholz, Randy Skretvedt, Mike Hawks, Benito, Norma Desmond and Stacia for identifying him!]

Our mystery folks are making a mystery cocktail! Notice the little risers being used to lift the table!

Posted in Film, Food and Drink, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | 22 Comments

Atlanta Police Seek to Solve Slayings of Black Youths

 

  Jan. 28, 1981, Comics  

 

  Jan. 28, 1981, Atlanta Child  Murders  

Jan. 28, 1981: Lee Manual Gooch, 15, is missing four days after the discovery of the strangled body of Terry Lorenzo Pue, the 14th black child to be killed  in Atlanta in 1 1/2 years, The Times says. Freelance photographer Wayne B. Williams will be arrested in June on suspicion of killing as many as 28 victims between 1979 and 1981. Williams was convicted on two counts of murder in February 1982.

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Posted in Comics, Crime and Courts, Homicide | 1 Comment

Matt Weinstock, Jan. 27, 1961

 
 

  Jan. 27, 1961, Comics  

Jan. 27, 1961: Matt Weinstock has an item about folk music featuring singer Joyce James and guitarist Bill Fernandez. One of their songs is David Arkin’s “The Klan,” about a cross burning in East L.A.

CONFIDENTIAL TO MURIEL AND FAYE: Try Alaska. The men are plentiful and the nights are long.

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Paul Coates, Jan. 27, 1961

 

 
 

  Jan. 27, 1961, Mirror Cover  
  Jan. 27, 1961, Mel Blanc  
Jan. 27, 1961: Carroll Van Court asks Mirror readers to pray for Mel Blanc, who was badly injured in a car crash.

Paul Coates dips into the mailbag and endures a reader’s taunts that he is getting old.

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Posted in Columnists, Film, Front Pages, Hollywood, Paul Coates | 2 Comments

Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, Jan. 27, 1941

  Jan. 27, 1941, Defense Records Stolen  

  Jan. 27, 1941, Comics  

Jan. 27, 1941: Tom Treanor writes about the popularity of the Lockheed Hudson among British fliers. “The Hudson's such a sweetheart to the British airmen that it has been made the heroine of their next-to-the-dirtiest war flying song,” Treanor says.  

Jimmie Fidler says: Here's the kind of determination that's needed to be a successful "movie mamma." The other day, stopping at Columbia, I found the anteroom crowded with moppet applicants for a minor kid role, each one shepherded, of course, by a militant mother.

As I watched, a pretty 6-year-old was dismissed from the producer's sanctum with a few words of consolation.

Craftily, her mamma took her aside, produced a comb and brush, and with a few deft strokes, completely changed the tot's appearance. Minutes later, the same child re-entered the big shot's office for another try and — you've guessed it — came out with the job!

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Movieland Mystery Photo [Updated]

  2011_0126_mystery_photo  
  Los Angeles Times file photo  

[Update: This is a production shot from “Tennessee Johnson,” published Jan. 2, 1943. The fellow  on the ladder with the gloves is director William Dieterle.]

In this mystery scene, we have a large room, a big cast, and lots of lights!

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | 10 Comments

Location Sleuth — ‘Farewell, My Lovely’

Here’s another historic location in the 1975 film “Farewell, My Lovely,” a scene with Robert Mitchum and Jack O’Halloran at the Far East Cafe on 1st St. in Little Tokyo.

[These images are a little funky. They’re frame grabs from a copy of the film I taped off the air many years ago and recently transferred to DVD.]

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Photography | 3 Comments

Matt Weinstock, Jan. 26, 1961

 
 

  Jan. 26, 1961, Comics  

Jan. 26, 1961: The sound of an auto collision at Sunset Boulevard and Roxbury Drive attracted the usual crowd of onlookers and as Eugene Rodney, producer of the Robert Young TV show, dejectedly appraised the damage to his white Thunderbird, one of them, a man in sports shirt and slacks, asked, "Is there anything I can do?"

Rodney recognized him as pianist Jose Iturbi and after a moment's contemplation said, "Yes, there is! Would you play 'The Ritual Fire Dance' from 'El Amor Brujo' by De Falla–Softly!"

DEAR ABBY: Yesterday I saw two people together who had absolutely no business being together. The man is the husband of a very good friend of mine. The women is the wife of a respected professional man. He was helping her into his car and they were laughing and so wrapped up in each other's company they didn't know anyone else was on the street. This was about noontime.

It worked on my mind so much I decided to call up my friend and tell her about her husband….

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Posted in art and artists, broadcasting, classical music, Columnists, Comics, Matt Weinstock | 1 Comment

Jan. 26, 1961, Paul Coates

 
 

  Jan. 26, 1961, Mirror Cover  

Jan. 26, 1961: Paul Coates has the latest example of the recurring stories the Mirror published about petty intimidation by LAPD officers, under Chief William H. Parker, particularly traffic officers. 

ALSO

Justice Strained

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Posted in #courts, Columnists, Crime and Courts, Downtown, Front Pages, Matt Weinstock, Paul Coates | Comments Off on Jan. 26, 1961, Paul Coates

Philip K. Scheuer, Town Called Hollywood, Jan. 26, 1941

  Jan. 26, 1941, Riots Reported  

  Jan. 26, 1941, Hitler's Comet  

Jan. 26, 1941: Times reporter Tom Treanor, having returned from Europe, writes about the black market money exchange in Romania.

Jimmie Fidler has the day off. Philip K. Scheuer writes about the filming of two Norman Krasna pictures, "The Devil and Miss Jones" and "The Flame of New Orleans."

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Movieland Mystery Photo [Updated]

  Jan. 25, 2011, Mystery Photo  
  Los Angeles Times file photo  

[Update: This is Joan Crawford in “The Ice Follies of 1939.” ]
Hm. What’s going on here?

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | 11 Comments

Location Sleuth

  Jan. 25, 2011, Mystery Photo  

  Earl Carroll Neon  

I was watching the 1975 version of “Farewell, My Lovely” for the first time in a long while and began wondering how they got the neon sign from the Earl Carroll Theatre for the opening titles. The top photo is a frame grab from the film and the bottom photo is a frame grab from a 1940s training film for firefighters. The actual sign was animated so that the letters in THEATRE in the upper right spelled out “Eat at” Earl Carroll Theatre. 
 
ALSO

Earl Carroll on the Daily Mirror

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Nightclubs, Photography | 6 Comments

Matt Weinstock, Jan. 25, 1961

 
 

  Jan. 25, 1961, Comics  

Jan. 25, 1961: In the 1920s, most movie stars lived in Hollywood, particularly the Whitley Heights area. Their agents had offices nearby. When the film people began moving to Beverly Hills their agents followed partway, settling along the long, narrow strip of unincorporated territory on Sunset Boulevard. There they could make themselves available to their clients and also avoid paying the city business license tax. And so what had been called Sunset Center, then the County Strip, then simply the Strip because known as the Sunset Strip. Around this nucleus of agents the so-called glamour nightclubs and restaurants grew, Matt Weinstock says.

CONFIDENTIAL TO "READY TO GIVE UP": Yes, I can refer you to an excellent source of help. His name is God. And he is always available.

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Posted in art and artists, Columnists, Comics, Matt Weinstock, Religion | 1 Comment

Paul Coates, Jan. 25, 1961

 

 
 

  Jan. 25, 1961, Mirror Cover  

Jan. 25, 1961: Mel Blanc, 51, is making progress after being badly injured in a head-on crash with Menlo College student Arthur Rolston, 18, on Sunset Boulevard at the notorious “Dead Man’s Curve” at Groverton Place. Blanc suffered head injuries, a broken pelvis and two broken legs. After the crash, the city of Los Angeles moved quickly to reconstruct that section of Sunset by “raising the outside lanes,” The Times said. 

Paul Coates writes about one of his worst fears: Being assigned to do a first-person story about the rain.

ALSO

"Dead Man’s Curve" on the Daily Mirror

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Posted in Columnists, Film, From the Vaults, Hollywood, Paul Coates, Transportation | Comments Off on Paul Coates, Jan. 25, 1961

Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, Jan. 25, 1941

 
 

  image  

  Jan. 25, 1941, Comics  

Jan. 25, 1941: The recent Jew persecutions in Rumania struck a special note of horror to a visiting American because they were so invisible, Tom Treanor says.

Why cast Margaret Sullavan as a Jewish refugee ("So Ends Our Night") when she looks as Irish as Paddy's pig? Jimmie Fidler says.

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Movieland Mystery Photo [Updated]

  2011_0123_mystery_photo_top  
  Los Angeles Times file photo  

[Update: These are  photos published in 1965, showing Hal Needham, Stephanie Epper and Patty Elder.]

Here’s a mystery sequence of photos showing a stunt that went wrong.

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | 8 Comments

Wife Seeks Divorce After Learning Mother-in-Law is Black

 
 

  image  

  Jan. 25, 1911, Twins  

Jan. 25, 1911: Divorce proceedings reveal the peculiar tale of Elda P. Kenny/Kenney and her husband, Robert.

The Kenneys married in Cleveland in 1902 and moved to Los Angeles shortly thereafter, The Times says. In 1910, the Kenneys returned to Cleveland to see Elda's parents and she decided to visit his parents in Shenandoah, Va.

Robert refused to accompany her, so Elda went alone. And she was horrified: Her mother-in-law "was as black as your shoe," she told the judge in her divorce proceedings. 

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Posted in #courts, Countdown to Watts, Crime and Courts | 7 Comments