Note from August 2009: Devon McReynolds, the Daily Mirror’s UCLA intern, is off to Paris. Until our next intern starts in September, the Daily Mirror won’t be able to transcribe Paul Coates or Matt Weinstock. Rather than discontinue the columns, we’ll be posting them as image files. Because of the way Typepad handles images, the thumbnails are murky, but the full-size images are readable.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
The growth of Southern California was reflected in a Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. report issued yesterday. The company said that the number of telephones it has in service in the Southland has increased more than 50 per cent since Pearl Harbor, more than 25 per cent since V-J Day.
R.L. Sawyers, division telephone manager, said that at the beginning of the war the company had 852,000 telephones in service in Southern California. The number had reached 1,021,000 by the time peace came and today it stands at 1,290,000. The increase for the last two years reached a total of 269,000 telephones.
And there are still insufficient telephones for all potential subscribers. About 149,000 applicants are waiting.
Los Angeles Telephone Exchanges:
August 14, 1944
Sat and talked with Joan Fontaine the night before she left for Mexico and I have seldom seen her as happy. She had an engagement to meet Preston Sturges and there is a very good chance he may direct “The Affairs of Susan,” her first picture for Hal Wallis at Paramount. Her eyes sparkled as she told me if he didn’t direct it at least he would write the story and she knew that would make it the picture she has been waiting for all these months.
Joan was very cute when she said she had cut her household expenses because she hadn’t worked for so long. The man who was with us offered to lend her money. “Oh,” she said. “I don’t need money. I have saved enough so I can live without ever working, but I can’t be extravagant.”
LEO: Planetary rays beneficent. Solid application improved rules of progress necessary for maximum gains. You have capability.
August 14, 1899: A group of boaters is terrified when a whale surfaces nearby.
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Splash!
When visitors wonder why Jim Wallin, Arcadia planning commissioner, has no diving board for his swimming pool, he tells them about his big impulsive moment. Not long ago a nephew from out of state, a husky lad of 21, visited him and kept practicing triple flips, striking the water with a tremendous splash.
Soon the dichondra around the pool was turning brown from the chlorine in the water. Wallin repeatedly suggested he do simpler dives and splash less, but the nephew apparently was wearing earplugs.
The listing has been removed after several people complained, but I’m posting this image in case it surfaces again: A vendor on EBay listed a rather elaborately faked pinup photo, purportedly of Elizabeth Short. And, no, it’s not her.
What makes the fraud unusual is that someone went to great lengths to fake the back of the photo with caption information. Continue reading
August 13, 1959: Did Miss Japan have plastic surgery?
She was a pretty little girl with natural blond hair and baby-blue eyes with stars in them.
Like a lot of other pretty little girls, she got her high school diploma, took a few courses in business college, and landed herself a low-salaried job in an office.
That, back home, was her life.
But then came the local beauty contest, and at the mild urging of a girl friend, she entered. And won.
And here was the first turning point in her life.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Imagine my surprise to find that The Times reviewed Mexican movies, usually in critiques signed “G.K.,” who praised this classic of Mexican cinema starring Pedro Infante, Virginia Serret and Blanca Estela Pavon, who won the Best Actress Ariel for this film.
Aug. 13, 1944
When I say [Michael Curtiz] is one of the very few I do not resent calling me “Lolly,” you get an idea we have been good friends through the years. I was one of five guests when he married Bess Meredyth.
Aug. 15, 1942: The good news: The Times writes about African American troops. The bad news: The story is one stereotype after another.
August 12, 1959: “People said it was just a whim — that they couldn’t understand why a young girl wanted to study law — that it would all go to waste — that I’d just spend time and money and then get married.”
The magnificent Russian dancers are gone, leaving behind a vivid memory. Their seemingly impossible footwork, their leaps, their precision was breath-taking.
I saw them Monday in their final appearance in Hollywood Bowl, and afterward, while the tremendous impact of their grace and agility was still fresh, went backstage with Tom Cassidy of KFAC and Frania Natasha Igloe, the painter. Mrs. Igloe, exiled from Russia in her youth, speaks the language and we thought we might elicit some interesting comments.
August 12, 1959: One man is killed and six are injured in the collapse of a bridge being built over the Pacific Electric tracks on Charlotte Street north of the San Bernardino Freeway near Soto Street.
Yesterday, I got the inside story on a weapon which could win a major battle in the cold war for us.
It wasn’t devulged to me by an atom scientist or a rocket engineer.
I got it, instead, from a retired schoolteacher.
And — unorthodox and overly simple as it sounds — I’m convinced that our government ought to squander a few bucks on investigating its possibilities.
The former schoolteacher, whose name is Helen Bowyer, readily admitted to me that her idea wasn’t an original one.
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Dr. Stanley Dean Johnson sounds like quite a fellow. He’s a specialist in the works of John Donne, having received his bachelor’s and master’s from the University of Missouri and his doctorate from Yale, where he was Phi Beta Kappa.
He taught English at Northwestern from 1939 to 1943, when he enlisted in the Army, and was discharged as a first lieutenant in the Transportation Corps in 1946. In the fall, he was hired as an English instructor at UCLA.
Aug. 12, 1944
Geraldine Fitzgerald’s sparkling performance as Edith Galt, second wife of Woodrow Wilson, creates a new and fresh interest in her. Fitting, I think, that Jack Warner should again lend her to Darryl Zanuck, for he did more to bring out her talents as an actress than any other producer.
Laird Cregar had a change of heart and is back in the East. George Sanders ditto. Cregar went on eight weeks suspension, but apparently thought better of his revolt and is back on the lot.
LEO: Uneventful maybe as far as important advance (events?) go. Takes on different aspect in domestic affairs, personal interests. Much depends upon your disposition, cheery manner.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.
Reminder: Boxie and I will be doing a live “Ask Me Anything” on George Hodel and Steve Hodel on Tuesday, August 19, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube.
Can’t make the live session? Email me your questions and I’ll answer them! The video will be posted once the session ends so you can watch it later. Remember, this is ask me anything, so please remember to ask questions rather than make comments. Thanks!
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Aug. 12-13, 1907
Los Angeles
Despite the name Bismarck Cafe, police call the saloon at Main and Winston Streets the Bucket of Blood because it’s a continual source of crime and violence.
It is a place, The Times says, “of drunken debauchery among girls of tender ages, painted women and men. Into this immoral pesthole, young girls are enticed nightly to drink and listen to a band concert. Although the police make arrests in this dive every night, it is allowed to run unmolested.”
Someone is always giving someone a plaque or a scroll for extraordinary conduct or service and this is to suggest that a medal or trophy be struck for Gregor Piatigorsky. But not for playing the cello, at which he is world famous. For cautious driving.
Nine years ago, after taking driving lessons for six months, Mr. P. ventured out on his own. Only one thing bothered him — the fierce, unrelenting refusal of motorists coming from the opposite direction to permit him to turn left at intersections. It became a complex. And for nine years Mr. P. has never made a left turn.
Wait a minute, the Beats reject things like beauty contests. What’s with this?
Now don’t get me wrong, comrade.
I’m for peace at any reasonable cost. And I definitely am in favor of Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to our country.
But the administration’s switch in attitude toward the Soviets has thrown all Americans into a spin.
I mean, like it’s so sudden.
For years, we’ve been conditioned by editorial cartoons to think of the Russians in general as bearded, heavy-booted bomb carriers, and Khrushchev in particular as a monstrous kewpie doll with a rummy nose, a rather unattractive mole on his cheek, a silky smile, and a bloody knife stashed up his sleeve.
Aug. 11, 1969: The Times brings out an extra for the La Bianca killings.
Note: In keeping with the Daily Mirror’s practice of posting original documents in Los Angeles history, often for the first time, we present former Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent
Bugliosi’s opening statement from July 24, 1970, in the Charles Manson trial.
Bugliosi gave copies of his remarks to reporters covering the trial, including Sandi Gibbons, now of the district attorney’s office, who provided a photocopy. Bugliosi’s statement is a model of clear writing; there’s barely a word out of place. The text has been edited to conform to Times style but has preserved Bugliosi’s occasional errors (“their” for “there,” for example). This is in part to preserve the quirks of the document … and to make it easy to trace copies that are posted on other websites without permission.
[handwritten notation: “I have Xed myself from your world.”]
OPENING STATEMENT
TATE – LA BIANCA MURDER TRIAL
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Someone found them shot to death on the floor of the Portal Motel at 2775 N. Cahuenga: two men completely clothed except for their shoes, each with a bullet in the head and another in the stomach. The pistols, one of them a Japanese Nambu war trophy, were also recovered—each had been fired twice.
Their cars were in the parking lot. One was registered to 25-year-old Robert Haskell Blum, 4671 Pickford St. The other belonged to 27-year-old John Darold Sever, 539 Ruberta Ave., Glendale. Maps show that the Portal Motel is about midway between the two homes on the main highway between Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
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