Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, Aug. 1, 1959

Posted on August 1, 2025 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

Mash Notes and Comments

Paul Coates, in coat and tie“Dear Mr. Coates:

“You are my court of last resort. I’ve tried everything but my mind will not rest.

“On June 12, we went into a pet shop in Inglewood, as a friend of mine told me they had a 2-month-old bobcat kitten for sale for $75. She knew we had been watching for one.

“I first phoned the pet shop and the owner told me this was so. So when my husband came home from work we went right over to purchase the kitten. There was a large sign on the cage: FOR SALE, 2-month-old BOB CAT, $75 (male).

“So when my husband wanted to buy it and take it home, the owner said he’d like to clean it up a bit and keep it for a few days for attraction.

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1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, Aug. 1, 1944

Posted on August 1, 2025 by lmharnisch

Aug. 1, 1944, Comics

Aug. 1, 1944

What a picture for Clark Cable, “The Life of Lucky Baldwin,” who was one of California’s most colorful characters. Lunched with Louis B. Mayer and he told me producer Everett Riskin is now preparing the biography for Clark, and there are two women of equal important who were wooed and won by that impetuous gentleman. Continue reading →

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Aug. 1, 1907: Swarm of Bees Terrorizes Downtown Los Angeles

Posted on August 1, 2025 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Aug. 1, 1907
Los Angeles

A mass of bees “wandering in from the country” swirled along Broadway, forcing dainty young women and the toughest police officer to seek cover in a vain attempt to avoid being stung.

“Whether attracted to the neighborhood by the bevy of pretty girls who happened to be there or by the flowered hats on display in the show windows is not known,” The Times said.

Continue reading →

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Found on EBay — Quiet Birdmen

Posted on July 31, 2025 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2009.

This Quiet Birdmen belt buckle has been listed on EBay.
Continue reading →

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Matt Weinstock, July 31, 1959

Posted on July 31, 2025 by lmharnisch

Responsibility Law

Matt WeinstockEvery motorist has heard of the financial responsibility law. Today a man named Tom furnishes a horrible example of how it can work.

On May 20 he stopped in the left lane at Sepulveda Blvd. and Vose St., Van Nuys, behind a car which was signaling a left turn.

As he waited, a third car, driven by a woman, crashed with terrific impact into his rear, jamming his car into the car ahead. The skid marks measured 60 ft. before the crash, according to the police report.

Tom suffered a serious whiplash of the neck and lower spine. He has been under treatment since the accident. Curiously enough, he was the only person injured. He has lost 10 weeks’ work and his car, although partially repaired, is still a mess.

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Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, July 31, 1959

Posted on July 31, 2025 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

‘Stop the Press,’ Cries Flash Reporter Joe

Paul Coates, in coat and tieTo you, the Laurel Canyon fire may be old news.

But I just heard about it.

And I’ve got to admit that it’s a matter of special embarrassment to me, because I should have been the first to know.

I happen to be the only newspaper columnist in the world with a bona fide personal news correspondent in Laurel Canyon. His name is Joe Oliveira. His age is, roughly, 12.

His loyalty, however, is divided between me and a mimeographed weekly neighborhood sheet which he publishes himself, called The Little Press.

Ordinarily, Joe keeps me up-to-the-minute on Canyon activities, ranging from stray
cats and broken windows to juvenile plots to extort fudge bars from Sam, the Ice Cream Man.

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1944 in Print — Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons, July 31, 1944

Posted on July 31, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 31, 1944, Comics
Note: This is an encore post from 2014.

July 31, 1944

Walter Winchell says: Times Sq. Ticker: Otto Preminger’s production of Vera Caspary’s hit novel “Laura” gives the villainous role to Clifton Webb, his first film. It’s a racy mystery murder with Gene Tierney in the role Jennifer Jones was touted off by D.O. Selznick … The author always denied that the crime-writer-columnist-radiorator villain was [Alexander] Woollcott but sophisticated New Yorkers will immediately think it is. Even though he is called Waldo.

Louella Parsons says: I knew there was some deal with a Mexican star in the offing for Mary Pickford, but every time I put it up to Mary she’d just look mysterious and say, “I can’t talk.” Well, today she told me that she, Hunt Stromberg and Dudley Murphy have made a three-way deal with Pedro Armendariz, famous Mexican actor — the first triple star ownership. Armendariz was in “Maria Candellari” with Dolores Del Rio, and that is as fine a picture as has ever been made in Mexico. The deal is made so the young man can return to Mexico and appear in Dudley Murphy’s pictures there also. Mary first saw Armendariz when she visited in Mexico last year. His first American picture is “Dishonored Lady” for Hunt Stromberg, which goes into production in October.

LEO: If you keep emotions sensibly controlled you need not fear difficult spots today may produce. Chin up, be enthusiastic. You’ll shine as you usually do.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com

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1944 in Print — Life Magazine, July 31, 1944

Posted on July 31, 2025 by lmharnisch

image

The stony-faced Russian on the cover is Marshal Grigory (frequently rendered Georgi)  Zhukov, 49, sometime chief of operations of the Russian general staff and commander on the southern front. He wears at his neck Marshal’s Star; at upper left, two Orders of Suvorov; and at upper right the Gold Star as a Hero of the Soviet Union. Others: two Orders of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner, Stalingrad medal.

Note: This is an encore post from 2014.

July 31, 1944

I’m a bit late in posting this issue….

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, President Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented fourth term. Vice President Henry Wallace, however, loses the nomination to Harry Truman, “a machine politician who has made a good Senate record and who had the blessing of President Roosevelt. Neither an extreme New Dealer nor an extreme conservative, he was promptly dubbed “The Missouri Compromise,” Life said.

Meet professor Alexander Ivanovich Petrunkevitch, Yale’s “spider man.”

In the movies this week: Linda Darnell.

Via Google Books.

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July 31, 1907: After a Day at the Beach, Beer, a Fight and Gunshots

Posted on July 31, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 31, 1907: Woman Bound Over for TrialNote: This is an encore post from 2006.

July 31, 1907
Los Angeles

After a delay due to illness, newsboy Charles “Winnipeg” Wilson took the stand to testify against Evelyn Ferguson, who is accused of shooting him because he was attacking her friend Grace Ryan.

Although “she was not in a condition at the time of the shooting to remember much about how it happened,” Ryan testified that she and Ferguson had returned from a day at the beach when they began fighting with Wilson and a group of companions.

Continue reading →

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Matt Weinstock, July 30, 1959

Posted on July 30, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 30, 1959: Comic strip panel. A woman says "Seems to Me You Have a Complete Disregard for the Female of the Species." the man says he is choosy“Seems to Me You Have a Complete Disregard for the Female of the Species.”

Beatnik Memo

Matt WeinstockAs others before him, Lawrence Lipton, Boswell of the beatniks, has learned that all sorts of unlikely things can happen when a person writes a book. Exhibit A is a letter Lipton received from D.A. MacInnes of Chicopee Falls, Mass. In it was a wryly amusing sales pitch MacInnes had received from a plywood firm in Memphis.

Offering with seeming reluctance to supply materials for beatnik shops, the firm wrote, “I guess there is a little beatnik in all of us, especially in the summertime. This letter is to show how far people will go to get out of work and to warn you that if you have any salesmen or secretaries who are either growing beards or wearing leotards you had better either replace them, marry them or send them to Memphis.”

Memphis to Chicopee Falls to Venice, Cal. Don’t try to make sense out of it, it’s pure irrelevance.

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Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, July 30, 1959

Posted on July 30, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 30, 1959: Los Angeles Mirror Cover

Confidential File

A Crumbled Kookie Caper, and No Comb

Paul Coates, in coat and tieI don’t know Edd Byrnes personally, and it’s probably for the best.

In person, he might be a charming, very likable young man.

And if that were the case, all of my firm convictions about him would be destroyed.

Mr. Byrnes — for those of you who don’t have straying teen-age children — is the latest of Hollywood’s incessant stream of male idols.

They call him, for reasons beyond my aging ken, “Kookie.”

I first became aware of him as a peril to my peace of mind when my kids began performing the ritual of chanting “Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb.”

Naturally, I hadn’t the vaguest notion what it meant. And I hadn’t the vaguest interest in finding out.

But I did. Continue reading →

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July 30, 1947: Peaches Strange at the Follies Burlesque

Posted on July 30, 2025 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

She was born Mildred Strange in Oklahoma in 1910. Raised by her uncle, a Methodist minister, she taught Sunday school in Shawnee, east of Oklahoma City. For a while, she ran a bookstore in a small town.

And then she joined Minsky’s burlesque as Peaches Strange. On her first trip west, she and co-star Myrna Dean broke 20-year box office records at the Follies Burlesque, 337 S. Main St., a theater that is a story in itself.

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1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, July 30, 1944

Posted on July 30, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 30, 1944, Helen Bennett

July 30, 1944

The youthful glamour department at MGM is in the hands of two young ladies whose widely divergent careers started about the same time. June Allyson, without five minutes’ training, went to Broadway and got herself a job in the chorus. Gloria de Haven, the daughter of the Carter de Havens, has been trained to be an actress from the day she learned to walk, and this training was backed by an education in private schools.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.

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July 30: 1907: Runaway Horse Races Down Broadway, Plows Into Hotel Lobby

Posted on July 30, 2025 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

July 30, 1907
Los Angeles

A horse and buggy had been hitched outside Jevne’s grocery store at 6th Street and Broadway when a furniture van hit the buggy, frightening the horse.


As the terrified animal ran down Broadway, it swerved onto the sidewalk at 7th Street to avoid a streetcar and plunged through a plate glass window in the lobby of the Hotel Lankershim, scattering a room full of guests. Continue reading →

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Matt Weinstock, July 29, 1959

Posted on July 29, 2025 by lmharnisch

Great Scott! I've Kept You Rigid for Almost Two Hours!“Great Scott! I’ve Kept You Rigid for Almost Two Hours! Why Didn’t You Stop Me, Miss Simmons?

Body Surfers

Matt WeinstockIt appears that Bob Lee, who, as reported here, was knocked down by an unidentified object, which turned out to be a young man, while wading at Newport Beach, has cast a slur upon a noble sport, body-surfing — riding the
waves to shore without benefit of boards, water wings or other appurtenances.

“In the old days,” B.G. of Wilmington writes, “before the shoreline was filled with feather merchants (turistas)
and the beaches were cluttered by breakwaters, the sport was wonderful.

Now we practice it at the mercy of every wave jumper. I am a native and I have been playing the surf for 30 years, taking time out to eat, of course, and have yet to be struck by a body surfer. However, my husband, also a native, recently had four stitches taken in his chin to repair the damage caused by an idiot who attacked him with his thick skull. These people should get out of the way before they really hurt someone.”

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Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, July 29, 1959

Posted on July 29, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 29, 1959: Hawaii Puts 2 "Orientals" in U.S. Congress. Ouch!

July 29, 1959: The “Orientals” being sent to Congress from Hawaii include future Sen. Daniel K. Inouye. And notice the story about Nikita Khrushchev being invited to visit the U.S.

Confidential File

Great White Hunter White Feels Blue

Paul Coates, in coat and tieI present you with my recently completed thesis on the subject: “Proper Protocol to Get a Wildcat Out of Your Back Yard.”

My collaborator on this project was Mr. Keith White, an engineer.

Mr. White, who lives in Northridge, first suspected that there was a wildcat in his back yard several weeks ago.

For no apparent reason, huge branches of eucalyptus trees began crashing down on the premises in the middle of the night. Two of them — 5 or 6 in. thick — were snapped off last weekend. Continue reading →

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13 Die When B-25 Hits Empire State Building, July 29, 1945

Posted on July 29, 2025 by lmharnisch

13 Killed, 25 Hurt as Plane Hits Empire State Building

July 29, 1945: B-25 Hits Empire State Building

Note: This is an encore post from 2010.

July 29, 1945: “For two minutes the pinnacle of the chromium-girt Empire State stood out sharp and clear in the drizzle while orange-red flames licked around. Then the soft fog closed in again to hide the scene from the horrified sight of thousands of midtown office workers who had rushed to the windows at the sound of the explosion, which echoed over central Manhattan like a blockbuster.”

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Reminder – My Next ‘Ask Me Anything’ on the Black Dahlia Case Is August 5

Posted on July 29, 2025 by lmharnisch

Boxie and I will be doing a live “Ask Me Anything” on the Black Dahlia case Tuesday, August 5, 2025, at 10 a.m. Pacific time, on YouTube. I won’t be doing more streaming videos on Instagram because I don’t have enough subscribers.

This is Elizabeth Short’s birthday. If you choose to observe it, please do so respectfully. That means do not go to her grave and leave cigarettes (she didn’t smoke) or pour out cans of beer (she didn’t drink). Again. Be respectful.

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Midnight Show at the Follies Burlesque — July 29, 1939

Posted on July 29, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 29, 1939, Follies Ticket

Note: This is an encore post from 2016.

Somebody bought a ticket for the July 29, 1939, midnight show at the Follies Theatre and got to see Betty Rowland, “the ball of fire.”

The ticket stub is listed on EBay for 99 cents. Continue reading →

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Matt Weinstock, July 28, 1959

Posted on July 28, 2025 by lmharnisch

July 28, 1959: Peanuts

Ticket Trouble

Matt WeinstockEveryone is in favor of motherhood, peace and traffic safety but strident voices are being raised over one phase of the crackdown on delinquent drivers.

Almost everyone goes along with DMV director Robert McCarthy’s campaign to protect the innocent from careless drivers by revoking the licenses of those who pile up too many
moving violations.

But now the insurance companies have gotten into the act. They are sending policyholders forms to fill out listing their accidents and moving violations for the last 24 months. It is
indicated that those who have sinned are going to have their rates raised. As a result, the squawks are reverberating.

Continue reading →

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