Matt Weinstock, April 26, 1960

Posted on April 26, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 26, 1960, Matt Weinstock

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 26, 1960

Posted on April 26, 2010 by lmharnisch
Paul Coates, April 26, 1960

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 26, 1940

Posted on April 26, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 26, 1940, Nazis

April 26, 1940, Map

Nuestro Pueblo artist Charles Owens draws a full-page map on the war in Norway.

April 26, 1940: On the set of "Boomtown," Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Frank Morgan "filmed a drinking scene this morning with each demanding his own pet liquor substitute. Clark insists on apple cider; Spencer, Coca-Cola; Frank, cold tea,” Jimmie Fidler says.

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Carter Describes Failed Hostage Rescue Mission

Posted on April 26, 2010 by lmharnisch
 April 26, 1980, Hostage Rescue 

April 26, 1980, Hostage Rescue

April 26, 1980: “With the failure of its bid to rescue the American hostages, the Carter administration returned Friday to its long-struggling program of political and economic sanctions against Iran in an atmosphere of deepening pessimism that any solution to the crisis is in sight,” The Times says.

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From the Vaults: ‘Dr. Cyclops’ (1940)

Posted on April 26, 2010 by lmharnisch

Cyclops_ad Well, this was just nowhere near as bad as I expected! Of course, it's difficult to be bored when the movie is only 77 minutes long.

Larry discovered an ad for "Dr. Cyclops" in the Daily Mirror files and gave me carte blanche to branch out into movies from 1940, so I gave it a shot. My expectations were rock-bottom. Low-budget sci-fi movies always seem like they'd be kitschy fun but so often turn out to be awful ("Teenagers From Outer Space" comes to mind). So this was really a pleasant surprise.

The titular doctor starts out as respectable biologist Dr. Thorkel (Albert Dekker, who would go on to run the mental institution where Liz Taylor gets menaced with a lobotomy in "Suddenly, Last Summer"). Thorkel has some interesting ideas about radium and human biology and The Secrets of Life, and all too soon we learn that he will kill to protect them!

Unaware of Dr. T's homicidal tendencies, a team of scientists answers his summons to come help him with his mysterious research in his jungle hideout. They're played by Charles Halton (who has a small uncredited role in "It's A Wonderful Life"), Janice Logan and Thomas Coley; joining the scientists are Victor Kilian as a strapping miner and Frank Yaconelli as Pedro, a cartoonish Latino who talks like Speedy Gonzales (Yaconelli was actually born in Italy).

It's not long before they discover Dr. Thorkel's horrible secret: He's shrinking stuff! Including Pedro's beloved horse Pinto, who is now the size of Barbie's horse Dallas! The quintet clearly knows too much, so into the shrink-ray they go.

Soon they are on the run from the enraged, now-giant doctor (earning his Cyclops moniker) and his cat! Will they survive?

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Posted in Film, From the Vaults, Hollywood | 2 Comments

Russia Expels Thousands of Jews From Kiev

Posted on April 26, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 26, 1910, Jewish Refugees

April 26, 1910:  “Heartless cruelty marked the ejection of the Jews. Young and old, well and ill, the strong and the weak, mothers with babes only a few days old, were driven out at the word of command. Many who did not move fast enough to suit the troops were clubbed or jabbed with bayonet points,” The Times says. 

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Matt Weinstock, April 25, 1960

Posted on April 25, 2010 by lmharnisch

 

April 25, 1960, Peanuts

One of the most famous phrases from “Peanuts” was said by Lucy, of all characters.
 

Idea for Chessman

Matt Weinstock     There was a brief but stirring encounter the other day between two long-time friends, J. Farrington Barrington Arrington, who retired undefeated as a police reporter with the demise of the Daily News, and A. Brigham Rose, the astute and flamboyant counselor, now of San Diego, during which Rose mentioned he'd been asked by the press there to comment on the Caryl Chessman case. 
 
    "I told them Chessman should try a writ of coram nobis," he said, "it's his only chance."
 
    "Never heard of it," Mr. A. said.
 
    "Coram nobis does not appear in any California statute book, it is in English common law," Rose said.  "It is a complex proceeding and provides the only method whereby a person can go behind an affirmative judgment of the courts after all other legal remedies like habeas corpus have been exhausted."
 
    "Will it cure a sore throat?"  Mr. A. asked.  "I got one."  
    

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 25, 1960

Posted on April 25, 2010 by lmharnisch


 April 25, 1960, Mirror Cover

Heartsick Mother's Problem One Which Has No Solution

 
Paul Coates    Steve's mother knows she did wrong.  But she wonders, under the circumstances, what would have been right.
 
    "I don't know," she told me from behind her handkerchief, "what any other mother would have done."

    For a long time, she started her story, things hadn't been exactly right with Steve.  His moods — they changed so fast.  Morose one minute; happy to the point of being silly the next.
 
    His age?  Nineteen.  But he's immature.  Still a boy.  That's what his mother told me. 
 
    "It was a few weeks ago," she began.  "I was cleaning the bathroom when I came across a little plastic bag with six cigarettes in it.  Hand rolled."
 
    There was something funny, strange, about them and other things had been happening.  Steve was at work so she kept them, and when he came home, she asked him about them.   

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Posted in Caryl Chessman, Columnists, Film, Hollywood, LAPD, Music, Obituaries, Paul Coates | 3 Comments

Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 25, 1940

Posted on April 25, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 25, 1940, Nazi Army

April 25, 1940, Fliers

April 25, 1940: “It's a three-day rest-cure for Tuffy, dog hero of 'Four Sons.' Vets say he's suffering from nervous breakdown,” Jimmie Fidler says.

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GOP Lawmaker Calls Reagan ‘Dangerous,’ Will Run as Independent

Posted on April 25, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 25, 1980, Hostages 

Eight crewmen are killed when a mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran is aborted.

image

April 25, 1980: Rep. John B. Anderson (R-Ill.) announces that he will enter the presidential race as an independent, saying, "The time has come in the history of the American republic to put country ahead of party."

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Beverly Hills Confidential

Posted on April 25, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 25, 1960, Clinton Anderson

April 25, 1960, Clinton Anderson

April 25, 1960: Beverly Hills Police Chief Clinton H. Anderson describes the Johnny Stompanato killing in “Beverly Hills Is My Beat.” The book, which also covers the Bugsy Siegel murder,  is readily available via Bookfinder.

On the jump, hundreds of East Germans are fleeing to the West … Josephine Baker at the Huntington Hartford… and at an auction of Dodger souvenirs from Ebbets Field, one bystander says: “It looks like a bomb hit the place.” “Better that than what happened,” answered a Flatbush diehard, according to The Times.  

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Street Evangelist Starts Riot

Posted on April 25, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 25, 1910, Riot

April 25, 1910: Timothy Callahan, who runs a small mission  near San Pedro and 3rd streets, is mobbed when he sets up a pulpit on Los Angeles Street and offers money to the needy. “The man who a few seconds before was anxious to do his fellow men good was very busy trying to kill a few,” The Times says.

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 24, 1940

Posted on April 24, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 24, 1940, British Bomb Oslo

April 24, 1940, Negroes Burn to Death

April 24, 1940: “K. Hepburn and H. Hughes will resume hand-holding when she moves west,” Jimmie Fidler says.

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Sydney Ford’s Trip Around the World, 1910

Posted on April 24, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
image 

April 10, 24, 1910: Times writer Sydney Ford (Henrietta B. Freeman) embarks on a journey around the world. In Parts 1 and 2 of Ford’s chatty travelogue, she writes about the voyage to Hawaii and sightseeing on Honolulu. I'm always interested in bylined stories because even into the 1960s so many were unsigned, and I'm especially curious because newspapers had few women reporters in this era. Ford and Alma Whitaker are about the only regulars I've found at The Times from the 1910s.

Ford's 1912 book based on her columns can be located on Bookfinder.com. It’s also available via Google, above.

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Found on EBay – Sawtelle

Posted on April 23, 2010 by lmharnisch

Sawtelle Postcard Ebay
Sawtelle Postcard EBay 		These early 20th century postcards showing Sawtelle, an area of Los Angeles west of the San Diego Freeway and bisected by the Santa Monica Freeway, have been listed on EBay. The top image shows two streetcars on Oregon Avenue and the bottom one shows tracks near 4th Street. Bidding starts at $9.99.
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Matt Weinstock, April 23, 1960

Posted on April 23, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 23, 1960, Comics

“What’s That?! Someone in a Space Suit Is Leaving the Eliza Ann!”

The Amok Amoeba

Matt Weinstock     Future historians looking back on 1960 doubtless will make a footnote on April 19, the day of the great L.A. amoeba quest.  It started innocently enough.  Bruce Hayes, early morning KFWB broadcaster, reported an amoeba was amok near the Civic Center and a search was under way. 

    Now anyone who has taken even elementary zoology in school knows an amoeba is a microscopic, one-celled animal, actually a shapeless, harmless blob.

    BUT SWITCHBOARDS lit up all over town.  Literal-minded people somehow got the idea, as other fun-loving KFWB announcers carried on the joke during the day, that the berserk amoeba was a cross between Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young.

    Of course, many persons joined in the gag, reporting sightings.  A woman in Wilmington  said she'd trapped it in her fish pond.  It was seen hopping fences in Gardena.  Members of the Encino Mulch Society claimed to have captured it.  It was observed near Santa Barbara, heading north.  But there was some genuine concern.

   

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 23, 1960

Posted on April 23, 2010 by lmharnisch

 
April 23, 1960, Mirror Cover

Wow! Now there’s an ugly layout, even for 1960. 

Mash Notes and Comment

 
Paul Coates    (Press Release)  "An actor, by name TV star Don Porter, decided he needed a publicist and dropped in to see me regarding same.

    " 'I need publicity,' said Don.  'What kind can you give me?'
 
    "Waiting a moment to extract my pipe, I replied, 'I've got two kinds, Don.  Notoriety and piety.  Which one do you want?' " (signed) Aleon Bennett, Public Relations, 8272 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood.
 
   –Come on, Aleon, you could have said that with your pipe in your mouth.
 
::
 
    (Press Release) "One of the world's most lighthearted museums opened recently in Munich's 600-year-old Isar Gate.
 
    "Dedicated to the memory of Karl Valentin, the Valentin Volkssaenger Museum displays sketches and songs of a beloved Munich humorist.  

   

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 23, 1940

Posted on April 23, 2010 by lmharnisch

 April 23, 1940, Flooding

image 

April 23, 1940: “Hollywood, where the girl you take to dinner tonight is usually fed up with you by tomorrow,” Jimmie Fidler says.

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Movie Star Mystery Photo

Posted on April 23, 2010 by lmharnisch

    April 19, 2010, Mystery Photo

Los Angeles Times file photo

As nearly everyone guessed, this is Bob “Bazooka” Burns. Above, Burns and Martha O'Driscoll, examine the bazooka baseball pitcher, Dec. 29, 1946. 

Feb. 3, 1956, Bob Burns

Feb. 3, 1956: Bob Burns dies at the age of 65.

 
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: Janice Jarratt!

There’s a new photo on the jump.

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | 48 Comments

World Mourns Mark Twain

Posted on April 23, 2010 by lmharnisch

 

April 23, 1910, Mark Twain

image

April 23, 1910: “Several of his neighbors who stood close to him in life were permitted today to view the body. Mr. Clemens did much of his work in bed, and in death he still seemed a part of the surroundings of his active life. Ranged about him were his books. Beside him was his tabouret set with a tobacco jar, a collection of pipes, a stand of cigars and matches in abundance. Above his head was a reading lamp,” The Times says.

Notice that one thing he did in his final years in Redding, Conn., was to build a library.

The Bancroft Library's Mark Twain Papers and Project is here. 

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