Movie Star Mystery Photo

Posted on April 30, 2010 by lmharnisch

    April 26, 2010, Mystery Photo

Los Angeles Times file photo 

Our mystery guest is Vera Lewis, above, in a photo dated Aug. 27, 1916.

Feb. 12, 1956, Vera Lewis

Feb. 12, 1956: Lewis dies at the age of 82.

June 14, 1925, Vera Lewis

June 14 1925: Elinor Glyn says Vera Lewis is the reincarnation of Empress Sophia Maria!

 
Just a reminder on how this works: I post the mystery photo on Monday and reveal the answer on Friday … or on Saturday if I have a hard time picking only five pictures; sometimes it's difficult to choose. To keep the mystery photo from getting lost in the other entries, I move it from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday, etc., adding a photo every day.

I have to approve all comments, so if your guess is posted immediately, that means you're wrong. (And if a wrong guess has already been submitted by someone else, there's no point in submitting it again).

If you're right, you will have to wait until Friday. There's no need to submit your guess five times. Once is enough. The only reward is bragging rights. 

The answer to last week's mystery star: Bob “Bazooka” Burns!

There’s a new photo on the jump!

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo, Photography | 25 Comments

Court Rejects Chessman’s Appeal for Clemency

Posted on April 30, 2010 by lmharnisch

 April 30, 1960, Chessman 

image

Trout season opens – and The Times’ Saturday sports cover features a cartoon by Alex Perez. 

April 30, 1960: Caryl Chessman’s long fight to avoid the gas chamber is just about over.

On the jump: Dick Clark tells a congressional panel that he never took payola … and Chuck Dressen says, “ Don Drysdale really studies the hitters. You don't have to tell him how to pitch to the hitters. He tells you.”

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Cannibals Eat Presbyterian Missionaries

Posted on April 30, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 30, 1910. Cover

April 30, 1910: I’ve seen lots of peculiar stories in the old papers, but this is the first account I have ever read of cannibals eating missionaries, in this case the Rev. Horatio Hopkins and the Rev. Hector Laurie McPherson of the Presbyterian Polynesian Mission.  There’s also a story about white slavery in New York and a violent strike in Mount Vernon, Ill. Quite a news day.

On the jump, a wife stabs her neglectful husband in the back with a paring knife during an argument, but he forgives her. It’s only a flesh wound, after all.

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Posted in #courts, Religion | 1 Comment

Matt Weinstock, April 29, 1960

Posted on April 29, 2010 by lmharnisch

 

April 29, 1960, Comics

Sinatra Admirer Undaunted by Threats

Matt Weinstock     For many years as a disc jockey and program director Frank Evans has played the records of Frank Sinatra.  He knows and admires him.

    Several weeks ago he was playing them, no more and no less than usual, on his programs on station KRHM-FM but suddenly things were different.

    He was assailed by a deluge of vicious phone calls and mail.  What did he mean, playing Sinatra's records?  Didn't he know about Sinatra?  Some attacked Evans personally.  Others threatened picketing and boycott.  As always, the threateners were anonymous.  The usual identification was "A Loyal American" or "Commie Hater" or "A Patriot," as if those who refused to accept their weird irrelevance were not.

    The reason, of course, was that Sinatra had hired Albert Maltz to write the screenplay of "The Execution of Private Slovik."  Maltz was convicted of contempt of Congress 10 years ago and served a year in jail for refusing to tell a committee if he were a Communist.

 
   

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 29, 1960

Posted on April 29, 2010 by lmharnisch


 April 29, 1960, Mirror Cover

We Are Told You're Nothing but a Procal

Paul Coates    I'm not complaining.  I'm perfectly happy with my job.  I enjoy these daily tete-a-tetes with you.

    But the unpleasant realization is slowly awakening within me that the first major decision of my journalistic career — after venturing west some dozen years ago — was a wrong one.

    I decided then I should write for the entertainment of the local folks.  Become one of them.  Adapt myself.

    So instead of standing around and gawking at the native sand marveling at their curious mores, I did my level best to blend into the Southern California landscape. 

    I never once let on that I was thunderstruck by the behavior patterns of my new neighbors.  Not even in letters home to Mom did I admit that Southern Californians were different than their forefathers east of the Alleghenies.  (If I had, she probably would have sent me a bus ticket and made me go home.)

   

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 29, 1940

Posted on April 29, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 29, 1940, Wasp 

The Wasp is commissioned at Boston Navy Yard. It sank in the Solomon Islands after being torpedoed by the Japanese on Sept. 15, 1942.

April 29, 1940, Germans Bomb

April 29, 1940: “Artie Shaw is making no new friends fast at MGM, where the Missus (Lana Turner) slaves,” Jimmie Fidler says.

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Alfred Hitchcock Dies

Posted on April 29, 2010 by lmharnisch

 

April 29, 1980, Hitchcock Dies

April 29, 1980: Director Sir Alfred Hitchcock dies in his Bel-Air home at the age of 80.

On the jump, former Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski calls Ronald Reagan an "extremist" and backs George Bush as the Republican candidate for president.

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Youth Attacks Girl With Ax

Posted on April 29, 2010 by lmharnisch
 
April 29, 1910, Etta Lumsden

E. 4t5th Street

East 45th Street, via Google maps’ street view.

April 30, 1910, Frank Allen

April 29, 1910: A mother finds her teenage daughter unconscious and bleeding after being struck in the head, and police question Frank Allen, a “boy of peculiar habits,” who lives next door.

"Allen showed many marks of the youthful degenerate," The Times says. "He is fairly tall for his age, narrow through the shoulders. His face is rather thin, and only the ruddy color from work in the open serves to hide the marks of viciousness. The boy's eyes appear very tired, and the lids and corners are wrinkled. His face shows weakness. The under lip is set back considerably from the upper one, and the face recedes abruptly until there is little or no chin, and even this is cleft by a great dimple. The skin is drawn and pimply."

The youth (he was apparently 14, although his age varies in stories) was sent to the Preston State School of Industry at Ione until he turned 21. The Times said the victim recovered from her injuries, but name never again appears in the paper.

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Matt Weinstock, April 28, 1960

Posted on April 28, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 28, 1960, Comics
“We Failed Miserably!”

Time for a Final Note of Appreciation

 

Matt Weinstock

    How's your humility today?  Well, suppose we share mine.

     I am haunted by a note from a longtime reader, particularly the last sentence:  "I have cancer and it will only be a matter of weeks now and I thought that I should tell you that you have made the years a bit more pleasant for me."

 
    I don't mean to spoil anyone's day with somber thoughts but here is a cheerful man, awaiting the big adventure, taking a moment of his allotted time to be gracious as he sets his house in order.  Vaya con dios, H.C.A.
 
::
 
    LIFE CAN ALSO be frustrating for bail bondsmen, those liberators of people in jams, who most persons think have "got it made."

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 28, 1960

Posted on April 28, 2010 by lmharnisch


April 28, 1960, Mirror Cover

Let's Not Be Too Hasty in Judgments

 

Paul Coates

    On my way to work yesterday morning, I developed a sudden dislike for Citrus Municipal Court Judge William M. Martin.  And I imagine that, throughout the day, a lot of other people did, too.
 
    At least, they did if they were listening to the same newscasts that I was tuned in on.

    Judge Martin, I learned shortly after flicking on my car radio, had sentenced a 102-year-old Baldwin Park man to 30 days in jail for being a bad housekeeper.  The centenarian, Charles McKaughan, was guilty of permitting too much rubbish to gather around his small shack — the report continued — and he was slapped with 30 days in spite of his plea that at his age being tidy just wasn't that important anymore.
 
    By the time I reached the office, I had my tirade against the judge and his brand of justice mentally composed, just waiting to be put down on copy paper.  Jailing a 102-year-old man for a month because his humble home didn't have the Good Housekeeping seal of approval struck me as a pretty ruthless kind of justice.
 
    I'm afraid Judge Roy Bean is going to have to wait a while longer for a successor.
 

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 28, 1941

Posted on April 28, 2010 by lmharnisch

 April 28, 1941, Beauty Contest 

April 28, 1941, Churchill

April 28, 1941: “That George Raft-Edward G. Robinson feud has become so venomous that their portable dressing rooms have now been moved to opposite sides of the stage,” Jimmie Fidler says.

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Lakers Moving to L.A.

Posted on April 28, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 28, 1960, Elgin Baylor

April 28, 1960, Lakers

April 28, 1960: The Lakers became the newest member of Los Angeles' growing collection of sports teams, agreeing to move from Minneapolis in time for the 1960-61 season.

Owner Robert Short and the Coliseum Commission agreed on playing dates and rent at the Sports Arena, Mal Florence reported in The Times.

This was a very different NBA than the current league. Florence reported that the Lakers would play 28 games in the Sports Arena (capacity 14,500) and a few games in the Los Angeles State gym (capacity all of 5,200). That doesn't sound major league at all by current standards.

And the Lakers planned to play a few games in San Francisco to ease travel. The Lakers did play two games in San Francisco, as well as two games in Portland (no, not against the Trail Blazers). And they even played the Celtics away from Boston Garden, at Providence R.I.

–Keith Thursby

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Posted in Lakers, Sports | 1 Comment

Bill Stout Reports

Posted on April 28, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 28, 1960, Bomb Shelter 

April 28, 1960, Bomb Shelter

April 28, 1960: Bill Stout, a fixture of early Los Angeles TV, looks at how Southern California might fare in a nuclear attack. Stout, who died in 1989 at the age of 62, once said that television news, "in some ways is quicker and better than newspapers. The Symbionese Liberation Army shoot-out (in 1974, which followed by a few months the Patty Hearst kidnapping) in South L.A. was a good example. We covered it live. Newspapers covered it later in the day. They had great stuff, but not as good . . . not with the immediate wallop of TV.”

On the jump, one employer opens a parking lot just for compact cars.

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Posted in broadcasting, Television, Transportation | 4 Comments

Hazing Trial Exposes Sorority’s Initiation Rite

Posted on April 28, 2010 by lmharnisch


April 28, 1910, Sorority

April 28, 1910: Rituals of the Alpha Alpha high school sorority, long before the invention of pregaming and beer pong.

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Posted in Education | 1 Comment

Found on EBay – Batchelder Tile

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

batchelder_tile_ebay_cockatoo This Batchelder tile of a cockatoo has been listed on EBay. Although I’ve listed other Batchelder tiles of animals (which featured a rabbit, a deer, a lion and birds), this doesn’t seem to be part of that series.  Bidding starts at $69.99.
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Matt Weinstock, April 27, 1960

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

image

“You Flopped, Not I!”

The 'Other' Eddie Fisher Finds Life Never Dull

 

Matt Weinstock

    Eddie Fisher, 49, a special effects man at MGM, has accepted with patience and good humor the fact that he is frequently confused with Eddie Fisher, the singer.  He gets phone calls intended for singer Eddie, he gets his fan and pan mail.
 
    At the time singer Eddie was breaking up with Debbie Reynolds in favor of Elizabeth Taylor, the other Eddie, who lives on Cattaraugus Ave., in Culver City, received a call from a New York newspaper asking if he had anything to say.  When he said singer Eddie wasn't there the reporter asked what the real dope was, confidentially.
 
::
 
    MOST OF THE CALLS by the way, are from elementary school girls, not teenagers, who ask breathlessly if he is Eddie Fisher.  When he says yes they say, "How about singing for us?"  There is always a twittering in the background.  The reason he gets these calls is simple — his number is listed, singer Eddie's isn't.

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 27, 1960

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch


April 27, 1960, Mirror Cover

Tragedy in Curtain Call for Sad Mother

 

Paul Coates

    For Billy Monk's mother, tragedy took a curtain call last week.
 
    But this time, unlike the others, she was prepared.  She had warning — which is more than what she had with her other two sons and her only daughter.
 
    First, it was her daughter, Merna Jean, who died four days after birth.  That was in the '30s.
 
    And a few years after that, when Billy was an infant, his brother Walter died, at the age of 3, of tubercular spinal meningitis.  That left Billy and Lester.
 
    "They were two fine boys," Billy's mother will tell you now.
 
    But on Oct. 9, 1957, Lester fell off the back of a moving pickup truck, grabbing for a hat which wind had blown off his head.  He never regained consciousness. 
 
    And now, the tragedy of Billy.

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 27, 1940

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

 April 27, 1940, Follies  

Hey, it’s Betty Rowland!

 
April 27, 1940, White Slave Ring

April 27, 1940: “Judy Garland has penned a book of poems which will be privately published under a nom de plume,” Jimmie Fidler’s staff says.

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Posted in Columnists, Film, Hollywood | 4 Comments

The Further Adventures of ‘Obi-Whatever-His-Name-Was’

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 27, 1980, Alec Guinness

April 27, 1980, Alec Guinness

April 27, 1980: Sir Alec Guinness says, "I don't know what advantages there are to getting older except perhaps learning to pare down one's performance; learning to cut out the flourishes. That's what I'm always trying to do. Occasionally, I'm afraid, I overdo it and become positively bleak. I hate anyone watching me on a film set for this reason. If I appear to be simply standing there doing nothing, they're always so disappointed."

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Posted in Film, Hollywood | 1 Comment

Husband Begs to Be Executed After Killing Wife

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch


April 27, 1910, Execution

April 27, 1910: Ernest Wirth begs to be executed for killing his wife, Hattie, by stomping her head to a pulp. He later told jailers: "I have nothing more to live for. They say there is a world after this. If there is, I want to go to it. I may meet her there. If this is the end, then this world will be better off when my body turns back to earth."

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Posted in #courts | 2 Comments