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June 8, 1960 – Matt Weinstock says, “As the streetcar passed Evergreen cemetery, proofreader Frank Martinez heard a little boy exclaim, ‘Look at all the pretty flowers, mommy! I wish I could get you some like that!’ She replied, with a wise and tender smile, ‘You will, soon enough.’ ” CONFIDENTIAL TO FULL OF PRIDE: You are full of prunes. Pride has caused more divorces than adultery. Take him back, Abby says. |
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June 10, 1960: Paul Coates writes updates on several continuing stories. Tijuana appears to be improving after years of preying on tourists … Harold Moore, whose son, Leonard, was killed in a holdup by drug addicts, is looking for a job … and the attempt to colonize in the Galapagos Islands isn’t going well. |
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June 8, 1940: “No wonder Patricia Morison can't lose weight despite doctors' prescribed diets. She eats what they order at meals, then sneaks two and three hunks of chocolate cake when they're not looking,” Jimmie Fidler's staff says. |
| Parkey Sharkey, the terror of Palo Alto, with his taxi, about 1961. |
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Readers frequently assume that Parkey Sharkey was a fictional character invented by Paul Coates to fill his Saturday letters column. I recently found a copy of Sharkey’s pamphlet “Whiskey Road” on EBay and learned that everything he wrote was exactly like the letters to Coates – in fact half of “Whiskey Road” is Coates’ old columns. “Whiskey Road” was not a particularly expensive book but it’s extremely hard to find. A vendor has listed a copy on Amazon at $156. A page of “Whiskey Road” is on the jump. The whole pamphlet (40 pages) is more of the same. If there are any Daily Mirror readers who are interested in outsider authors, Sharkey is your man. |
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The dealer says this Arts and Crafts furniture will last for a century,
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June 8, 1910: A Wyoming rancher tracks down and kills a wolf nicknamed “One Toe,” a notorious killer of cattle that was too wary for traps … and a police officer bravely captures and kills a mad dog found in the gutter at 1st Street and Bunker Hill. There was no antidote for rabies at this time, and if the officer had been bitten he would have died. |
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June 7, 1960: Matt Weinstock says people should stop hoarding their newly designed Lincoln pennies. The “oF” on the back isn’t an error. It’s intentional. A writer asks Abby, “Can a man LOVE his wife and BE IN LOVE with another woman at the same time?” |
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June 7, 1960: Paul Coates has the story of a baby girl who was left in Ray Gahring's Cadillac, which was parked behind his real estate office at 7131 Balboa Blvd. The little girl would be 50 now. I wonder what became of her. |
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June 7, 1940: “Hollywood After Dark: Dorothy Lamour calmly changing stockings at her table in the Del Mar dining room while strong men wilted,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
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June 7, 1960: A car made in Israel? Are you serious? The dealer says the fiberglass-bodied car with a 36-horsepower Ford engine will do 65 mph. Over a cliff, maybe. ps. According to the Wikipedia entry (I know, I know) a popular Israeli myth says that the local camels found the fiberglass bodies tasty. |
Well, "First Spaceship on Venus" is quite the odd little movie: a vintage space epic filmed in East Germany and co-produced with Poland. It features an international team of characters and a strong anti-nuclear message! Released in German as "Der schweigende Stern" ("The Silent Star," based on a book of the same name by "Solaris" author Stanislaw Lem), it came out in the U.S. two years later dubbed into English and heavily cut. But even in this very imperfect form, the film has an eerie beauty.
And actually, I watched it in an even more imperfect form — I have to confess I watched the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" episode featuring this movie. Please don't all throw rocks at me! I'm going on vacation this week and I just ran out of time. If it helps, I really don't think "First Spaceship" deserves to be an MST3K movie. It just isn't bad enough.
The plot concerns a mysterious meteorite that proves to contain an alien message of some sort. Scientists can't decipher it but are able to determine that it came from Venus. Radio messages to the planet go unanswered, so this can-do Iron Curtain society sends a ship to find out what's happening on Venus. The whole world (represented by a varied crowd and a friendly, presumably state-run media) watches and cheers as their beautiful, candelabra-like vessel takes off: clearly, this future world is a harmonious place.
Things continue in this pre-"Star Trek" vein aboard the ship, as the international team copes with zero gravity and dodges meteor showers. German Robert Brinkmann (Gunther Simon) reminisces about an old romance with fetching Japanese doctor Sumiko Ogimura (Yoko Tani).
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June 7, 1910: The 20% grade of Grand Avenue is a popular place for car salesmen to show customers the speed of their vehicles. In fact, Grand is such a perfect test track that the Police Department has set up a trap for car salesmen and anyone else who dares to break the speed limit. One officer with a stopwatch was stationed at Grand and 6th Street and another an eighth of a mile up the hill, with a motorcycle patrolman at the top. When a speeding car passed the officer at 6th, he signaled the second officer, who clicked his stopwatch. If the car was speeding, the second officer signaled the motorcycle officer, who issued a ticket to the driver – a total of 18 motorists. Car salesman L.A. Pratt tells officers he was only going 14 mph. They say he was doing 25. |
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Although the ostrich farms get more attention, Los Angeles also had alligator farms, shown above in an image from USC’s digital archive. The postcard at left showing alligators at play has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $5.95. |
| The miracle auto of tomorrow! No driver! No traffic! No accidents! |
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June 6, 1960: A fellow named Don gets a phone call from a woman selling cemetery plots and asks some tough questions. DEAR WAITRESS: There are no 'disgraceful' jobs — just disgraceful people, Abby says. |
| USC stalls UCLA, 46-44, the Bruins’ first defeat at Pauley Pavilion. |
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March 9, 1969: Sports columnist Jim Murray calls John Wooden “the best basketball coach in the history of the collegiate game — or maybe the game, period. He wins NCAA championships with teams that fit comfortably in Volkswagens. He never needed a team that could walk to Catalina without getting its hair wet.” |
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June 6, 1960: Paul Coates has a follow-up on the story of a doctor confined to a mental ward who saved another patient’s life. |
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June 6, 1948: If this plane (a YB-49) looks familiar, it should. Among the five dead crewmen is Capt. Glen Edwards. |
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June 6, 1940 — Jimmie Fidler has a little story that begins: “Franz Waxman, the composer who scored 'Rebecca,' has a newly acquired Chihuahua pooch.” |
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June 6, 1980: With the skill of a surgeon, Martin Bernheimer dissects a performance by operatic sensation Luciano Pavarotti (d. 2007). “He conquered. He came. He sang. In that order,” Bernheimer says. Notice that in return for agreeing to use a dress rehearsal as a preview, Pavarotti demanded that protege Madelyn Renee replace Diana Soviero as Mimi for one performance. Soviero was understandably upset and told Bernheimer: "I hope I never see San Diego again.”
You knew “La Boheme” had its U.S. premiere in Los Angeles, right? (Oct. 14, 1897). |
| Anne Blanche in “Freckles” at the Los Angeles Theater. |
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June 6, 1910: Exhibit 1 in the argument that the past was not a kinder, simpler time is Abraham Flexner’s book “Medical Education in the United States and Canada.” The Times reports on Flexner’s shocking and brutally honest study about the dismal quality of many medical schools in the United States. Please notice that in California at this time, medical students weren’t even required to have a high school diploma.
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| KTLA’s Stan Chambers, left, Times reporter Nieson Himmel, center, and Jerry Clark. |
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Note: Jerry Clark, who died Tuesday, was a longtime newsman who ran an informal group of retirees called the “Old Farts of The Times” (or in polite company, the OFS, pronounced “oafs”). One of his customs was to send members a weekly e-mail of someone’s recollections in a feature he called the “Saturday Story.” This is his “Saturday Story” from March 27, 2010. Writing -30- to a 35-Year Career Seventeen years ago today was my last day of almost 35 years of working for Times Mirror newspapers–4 years with the Los Angeles Mirror News and 30-plus years with the Los Angeles Times.
Could it be that I have been retired half as long as I was employed at First (and Second) and Spring? My final night seems just like yesterday.
The 1993 company buyout, the second in two years, was perhaps the most generous of the many buyouts that cut the Times work force by more than 50% over the years.
I had not considered the buyout when I first heard about it. As a member of management, I was too busy answering employees' questions: Will their be another buyout next year? How will we get the paper out without the experienced workers who will be taking the buyout? Will there be more overtime for those who remain? Will part-timers be made full-time? I didn't have the answers but pointed out that overtime increased in the previous year after the first buyout.
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