1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, Aug. 6, 1944

Posted on August 6, 2025 by lmharnisch

Aug. 6, 1944, Singers

Aug. 6, 1944

Jennifer Jones is a strange, restrained, shy girl with little of the small talk and frivolous comments on life that characterize the average young woman of her years. Talking to her, you get the impression she is telling you just what she wants you to know and not one thing more. She isn’t given to early confidences and you have to know her well to get under her skin, so to speak.

Jennifer and I got off to a very bad start. Our first interview was held in my home after she had won the coveted “Bernadette” role in “Song of Bernadette.” She either forgot to say or she had been warned not to mention that she was married to Robert Walker and is the mother of two little boys.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.

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Black Dahlia: Ask Me Anything, August 2025

Posted on August 5, 2025 by lmharnisch

In the August 2025 Ask Me Anything on the Black Dahlia case, I talk about my work in progress, Heaven Is HERE!

I took a brief look at William Mann’s forthcoming book “Black Dahlia: Murders, Monsters and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood.”
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Aug. 5, 1947: Hitchhiking Couple Confess to ‘Kiss of Death’ Murder

Posted on August 5, 2025 by lmharnisch

Aug. 5, 1947, Joseph L. Hardy Jr.

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

“Last Wednesday, I killed a man.”

Joseph stood tall for the news photographers, with his wife, Lois, by his side, a shock of hair swept down over his forehead, but otherwise neat and trim. They look like somebody’s parents in an old photo at your childhood friend’s house.

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1944 in Print — Hollywood News and Gossip by Louella Parsons, Aug. 5, 1944

Posted on August 5, 2025 by lmharnisch

Aug. 5, 1944, Comics

Aug. 5, 1944

Veronica Lake may not get that chance to walk across the Paramount lot to RKO for Niven Busch’s “Duel in the Sun” for the reason that she will have the top role in “Miss Susie Slagle’s” at her home studio. She doesn’t play the aging boardinghouse keeper, Miss Slagle, but she will be seen as a glamorous nurse with whom the hero falls in love.

Betty Field has bowed out as Miss Slagle and today Lillian Gish was tested for the park. She’d be wonderful and it seems more than likely she’ll get it. Joan Caufield of “Kiss and Tell” fame plays another nurse, and Sonny Tufts is her doctor-boyfriend. The book, by Augusta Tucker, has been changed considerably, but the interest at Johns Hopkins Hospital and University is still high.

LEO: Things may appear a little difficult and people you meet unfeeling. That means you have a job on your hands, must treat it with unfaltering will, calmly, patiently.

The Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.

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Matt Weinstock, Aug. 4, 1959

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

August 4, 1959: Gordo, by Gus Arriola

‘Lady’ and the Mails

Matt WeinstockAs you may have read, “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” the controversial novel by David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), is okay again. At least for the moment.

Postmaster General Arthur F. Summerfield banned it from the mails several months ago as “obscene and filthy.” Critics and writers protested. (Read Alfred Kazin’s blistering comments in the July Atlantic.) The book’s publishers invited the Post Office “into the 20th century.”

Last week Federal Judge Frederick Bryan of New York overruled Summerfield’s
order. He stated, “The postmaster general has no special competence which qualifies him to render an informal judgment” and held that Summerfield’s ban order violated the guarantee of speech and press in the First Amendment.

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Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, Aug. 4, 1959

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

August 4,1959: Los Angeles Mirror Page 1: Big Waves, Rip Ties Rout L.A. Swimmers
Confidential File

Maybe This Is Way Simon Built Towers

Paul Coates, in coat and tieWhether his towers stand or fall, Simon Rodia, the little immigrant stonemason from Watts, has added another hue to the kaleidoscope that is Southern California.

He can take his place now alongside such contributors to the local color as Peter the Hermit, Mad Man Muntz, Memphis Harry Lee Ward and Lucky Baldwin.

Still alive, he has already become legend in a locale where screwballs and fanatics and  mystics are so common that, by their very number, they crowd each other into obscurity.

I don’t mean to infer that Rodia fits any of the above classifications. In fact, I’m sure now that he doesn’t — although I once had my doubts.

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Aug. 4, 1947: Patsy, Teenage Polio Patient, Dreams of Going to a Rodeo

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project. It reflects the research resources that were available 20 years ago.

Fourteen-year-old Patsy Pfeifer has two ambitions in life. One is to see a rodeo. Like many teenage girls, she is crazy about horses. When she’s not reading about them in stories by Will James, the straight-A student paints pictures of them.

Her other ambition is to walk. Patsy has been bedridden since she got polio around Christmas 1942. One day, after she had been in the hospital for a few months, she was surprised to see actress Shirley Temple at her bedside, giving her an award for her essay on “What Florence Nightingale’s Life Means to Children.”

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main title: Lettering over a steamboat on the Mississippi
This week’s mystery movie was the 1944 Warner Bros. film The Adventures of Mark Twain, with Fredric March, Alexis Smith, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, C. Aubrey Smith, John Carradine, Bill Henry, Robert Barrat, Walter Hampden, Joyce Reynolds, Whitford Kane, Percy Kilbride and Nana Bryant. Continue reading →

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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Roy D’Arcy: The Man With the Devilish Grin

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

Roy_D'Arcy
Roy D’Arcy, photo courtesy of Mary Mallory.

Note: This is an encore post from 2014.

Discovered by the great silent film director Erich von Stroheim and introduced to films in his magnificent “The Merry Widow,” suave Roy D’Arcy, born Roy Giusti, fashioned his screen persona and perhaps even his life, after the extravagant Teutonic director. Like von Stroheim, he grew up in Europe, perhaps witnessing Austrian-Hungarian aristocracy and an old-world way of life soon to be destroyed by World War I. Unlike most Hollywood actors, he began at the top, and worked his way down. A top character actor for a short while in the late 1920s, D’Arcy’s life remains mostly in shadow, perfect for the often reptilian characters he portrayed on screen.

Born February 10, 1892 in San Francisco, California, to dentist Dr. John Giusti and his wife, per US immigration records, Roy appears to traveled the world as a young man before employing his artistic talents. The San Francisco Chronicle noted in their May 27, 1900 edition that Dr. and Mrs. Giusti and child departed New York May 24, 1900 on the steamer Grosser Kurfuerst for Germany. Here things grow a little murky.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

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Aug. 4, 1907: Galveston Plan Brings Russian Jews to Southwestern U.S.

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch



Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Aug. 4, 1907
Galveston, Texas

The Times reports on the Jewish Territorial Organization headed by author and playwright Israel Zangwill and banker Jacob Schiff to help Jews fleeing persecution in Russia.

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Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, Aug. 3, 1959

Posted on August 3, 2025 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

‘Lost’ Youth’s Letter Tells Tragic Story

Paul Coates, in coat and tieToday, the story’s a grim one.

It starts with a letter I received last week.

The letter begins: “Dear Mr. Coates:

“I’m 18 years old. I live with my parents in Los Angeles.

“I have an older married brother.

“Now you know a little about my family.

“What I’m writing to you about is help for mentally ill people.

“I don’t consider myself outright crazy, but I have a feeling inside me that’s building up to the point where I feel I’m going to be before very long.

“I can’t tell my parents or friends what all is wrong. That’s why I wanted to see a physchiatrist (spelled wrong, I know). I need to talk to someone trained in this field who can ask leading questions to find the real motivations of people’s problems. Continue reading →

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Matt Weinstock, Aug. 3, 1959

Posted on August 3, 2025 by lmharnisch

Free Enterprise

Matt WeinstockThe 30-cent bite for a pack of cigarettes in vending machines is still outraging the addicts and, free enterprise being what it is, two regulars in a downtown saloon have set up an unusual business operation.

They take turns watching for customers heading for the cigarette machine. This is not always easy to do, if you know this saloon.

When one appears he is intercepted and given a fast hustle. As long as he is about to invest 30 cents in cigarettes, how about skipping the machine and letting a pal buy them for him around the corner? Continue reading →

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Aug. 3, 1947: ‘Kingsblood Royal’ by Sinclar Lewis Leads Bestseller List

Posted on August 3, 2025 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

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

“Kingsblood Royal,” like “Gentleman’s Agreement,” deals with prejudice, in this case, discrimination against blacks. Lewis’ novel was criticized in some reviews for superficial characters and a didactic, melodramatic plot and praised in others for focusing on racism. It received an award from Ebony magazine because it “did the most to promote racial understanding in 1947.”

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Aug. 3, 1907: Gasoline Stove Explodes, Destroys House

Posted on August 3, 2025 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Aug. 3, 1907
Los Angeles

An enormous explosion shattered the night in the Dayton Heights neighborhood near what is now Virgil Avenue and Middlebury Street.

“The shock of the explosion awakened people for blocks around, many of them rushing out of doors in their nightclothes, fearing that an earthquake had occurred,” The Times said. “Several men were on the scene in a few minutes.”

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Flying Saucers Over L.A.!

Posted on August 2, 2025 by lmharnisch

August 2, 1960, Air Force Flying Saucer

Aug. 2, 1960: Oh they didn’t really do that, did they? Yes, they did.

Note: This is an encore post from 2010

Gabriel Green, Flying Saucer Candidate for President

Incomplete article on flying saucersAug. 1, 1960: Only a portion of a front-page story about UFOs was saved in the microfilmed edition of The Times. Continue reading →

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Aug. 2, 1947: Los Angeles County Clerk Refuses Marriage License for Interracial Couple

Posted on August 2, 2025 by lmharnisch

 

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

Her name was Andrea and she was 24. His name was Sylvester and he was 26, a World War II veteran working at Lockheed. And they were in love. So like many young couples, they wanted to get married.

But unlike every other couple, they were refused a marriage license at the Los Angeles County clerk’s office because Andrea Perez was white and Sylvester S. Davis Jr. was black. And Section 60 of the California Civil Code stated: “All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or Mulattoes are illegal and void” while Section 69 forbid issuing licenses for such marriages.

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Aug. 2, 1907: Dr. Lucy Hall-Brown Dies

Posted on August 2, 2025 by lmharnisch


Note: This is an encore post from 2006 and reflects the minimal online resources that were available 12 years ago. 

Aug. 2, 1907
Los Angeles

The Times reports the death of Dr. Lucy Hall-Brown, a prominent woman physician who was active in the Red Cross. Although we know where she lived (Vermont and 30th Street), we have no idea where she went to school, her age or whether she had any survivors. Nor are we told why she was buried at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y., rather than Los Angeles.

A Google search reveals that Hall-Brown was a frequent correspondent with Clara Barton, but not much more.

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Matt Weinstock, August 1, 1959

Posted on August 1, 2025 by lmharnisch

Yes? No?

Matt WeinstockSomeone at the Allied Artists Studio got an idea the other day for a gimmick to draw attention to the opening Aug. 5 of the movie, “The Big Circus” — have a wire walker go back and forth on a high wire stretched across Broadway from the roof of the Orpheum theater. Publicist Ted Bonnet was assigned to get permission.

He went to the Police Commission in the Police Facilities Building and was told, “This is a traffic matter. The man for you to see is the chief of the traffic division on the sixth floor.”

He went there and was told, “This is not a police matter. The man to see is the chief of the  streets use division of the Board of Public Works. When we’re notified that the permit has been issued, we’ll handle the matter.” Continue reading →

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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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