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April 6, 1940: After I ran across a mention of Hollywood gossip columnist Jimmie Fidler in an upcoming Paul Coates column, I thought it would be fun to take a break from Hedda Hopper with a small dose of Fidler. Sample: “What's this about Paulette Goddard, with only three screen leads to her credit, high-hatting the hired help at Paramount?” |
| Charles Bukowski reads his poetry in Redondo Beach |
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April 6, 1980: “After two hours, 16 poems, a lot of locker room laughs and two bottles of Concannon Petite Sirah, Bukowski and a few of his patrons were just this side of drunk and disorderly. Some words in his last poems slipped on the wine at times. And some of the verbal barbs tossed at him by the audience of mostly under 30 men and women had cruel edges now and seemed to sting a bit,” Bill Steigerwald writes. |
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"Naturally I want to start and I think I could help the club if I did," he told The Times' Frank Finch a few days earlier. "But they are paying me good money and I'm willing to do what they ask. This sure beats playing for St. Paul any way you look at it." Given those quotes, not sure this was as big a deal as The Times made it appear. Finch might have been looking for a good controversy late in spring training. Even worse, losing to the Indians allowed the paper to say "Sherry Shelled" in the headline and Finch to write that the Indians scalped Sherry. Hard to believe the paper was still writing such nonsense in 1960. –Keith Thursby |
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May 1, 1898: Bert Williams and George Walker share the stage with McIntyre and Heath at the Orpheum. This postcard of George Walker of the Williams and Walker vaudeville team has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $8. |
| Say, doesn’t that ray gun look familiar? Looks like Han Solo is packing the same Mauser!
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The Knife Turns
 The ides of April are only 10 days away and the squeals of those wrestling with their state income tax are pitiful indeed. A single man, with no dependents, who made $800 less in 1959 than in 1958, was dumbfounded to discover he must pay the state about $140 more than last year. His total payment will be around $375.
Worse is the plight of an elderly woman whose only source of income is an old four-unit apartment house. Of all her expenses, including maintenance, utilities and upkeep, the biggest is income tax.
By the way, the deadline, April 15, falls on Good Friday, and a low-bracket secretary, who has to contribute $42 to the state by that date, wants to know, "What's good about it?"
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THIS BEING National Library Week, book men are expressing their elation at the resurgence of reading. Why, it's almost as if people were turning off their TV sets, refusing to watch reruns the fourth time around.
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Facts We Won't Find in the Census Report
There's nothing profound about the lady's story. Nothing glamorous. Nothing shocking.
For 17 years she worked diligently at being a housewife, raising four kids. It's a job with much heralded rewards.
But it also can lead to monotony — a feeling that you're out of touch with the rest of the world.
That's why, when the government made its appeal for census takers, she was among those who responded.
The way she analyzed it, even the routine task of collecting statistics — asking people how many bathrooms they had — couldn't be less exciting than going through that almost hypnotic routine at home.
She filled out the application, took the test, and, unlike Teddy Nadler, passed. Then, with her three government issue No. 2 1/2 pencils, her red, white and blue Census Enumerator's badge, her FOSDIC (Film Optical Sensing Device for Input to Computers) book, and a portfolio of other forms and questionnaires, she set out into her assigned neighborhood.
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April 5, 1940: Jackie Cooper "vows he's playing the field as far as women are concerned, and Judy Garland is his best friend. 'In fact, she's my only real friend,' says Jackie.” |
Buster Keaton, who received an honorary award, poses as a waiter for a wary Walter Brennan, who probably expects Keaton to pull some prank. |
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April 5, 1960: Despite the sweltering heat, a crowd gathers in bleachers outside the Pantages Theatre for the Academy Awards. Many celebrities detoured to the Brown Derby to be interviewed in a telecast hosted by Tony Randall and Betsy Palmer, The Times says. One of the highlights of the awards telecast was an appearance by Ella Fitzgerald singing George Gershwin songs. More on the jump… |
This continues to be the only Ingmar Bergman movie I have seen… I have a slew of them in my Netflix queue, but this one got prioritized mainly because it was the basis for Wes Craven's 1972 classic, “Last House on the Left.”
Bergman's film, in turn, claims a 13th century ballad as its source, and it scans like a ballad itself or a medieval pageant. Everything is very ponderous and slow-moving, but as inexorable as a forest fire. The Middle Ages characters look like walking statues or paintings, but the human cost of every action is shown in relentless close-up. It's not just pretty pictures Bergman's making here (although of course the sharp blacks and whites are very beautiful). This is raw stuff.
The premise was adapted pretty faithfully for “Last House”: Killers take shelter, unwittingly, in the home of their victim's parents; when the parents find out, they roll up their sleeves and get vengeful. The victim here is Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), the pampered daughter of a farm family. She's beautiful and charming and has always been able to get what she wants out of doting parents Tore (Max von Sydow) and Mareta (Birgitta Valberg). Family tragedy is hinted at; Mareta sighs “She's the only child I have left”; but it's never fleshed out.
Also in the family is a foster daughter, Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom): hugely pregnant and up at dawn doing chores while the virginal Karin sleeps in. Ingeri constantly hears how lucky she is that they haven't thrown her out in her disgraceful condition, and she watches resentfully as Karin is petted and fussed over. Dark-haired where Karin is blonde, praying for aid to Odin in a pious Christian household, she's Karin's opposite and nemesis.
It's Ingeri's wrath that sets the movie in motion: in the very first scene, she leans over a kindling fire and blows, igniting it into flame. Packing Karin's lunch for her fateful ride through the woods, she hollows out a piece of bread and hides a live toad inside. You don't know if it's just plain nastiness or some kind of spell. But then she encounters a creepy pagan bridge-keeper – a fellow worshiper? Odin himself? Something worse? — who claims to recognize her and hisses “I'll help you.” Suddenly realizing she might have actually unleashed something, Ingeri races in terror after Karin, catching up only in time to witness Karin's rape and murder.
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April 5, 1910: The dynamics of an abusive relationship sound as though they haven’t changed in a century. J.H. Eakins is as gentle as a lamb and loves his wife except when he’s drinking – then he beats her mercilessly. Now that he’s in jail, his wife says he’s a martyr to the “cruel and unsympathetic” legal system. On the jump, Barney Oldfield in the “Blitzen” Benz vs. Ralph De Palma in the “Mephistopheles” Fiat at the Motordrome! |
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The Stamp Age and Its Problems
It turns out that an idea projected here — trading stamps redeemable for cash instead of premiums — is already working fine at Tom Robertson's service station in Arcadia.
The customer receives one stamp for each gallon of gas he buys. The book holds 200 stamps and when filled is redeemable for $2 in cash or $2.25 in trade.
Tom figures that his cash stamps are worth about 50% more than the regular ones. A person must spend $120 for enough stamps to fill a book of regulars and the filled book has a value of approximately $3. The same $120 spent for gas and oil would fill two of his books, each worth $2.25.
Curiously enough, Tom also gives green, blue and frontier stamps and most people like them. As one customer explained, "I'm buying an electric blanket on the layaway installment plan — I'm paying 1 cent a gallon of gas for it." He meant that if he took the cash (not legible) he'd blow it on high living and probably never get the treasured e.b.
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Sawdust Trail Leads Through Midway
To you, Cucamonga may mean nothing but a Jack Benny joke, but to history it may be remembered as the scene of one of Christianity's major jurisdictional disputes.
Recently, a syndicate was formed to buy acreage in that quiet village and to build a $15 million "Bible Storyland" which will attempt the astonishing blend of open-air Sunday school, Disneyland and Coney Island carnival concession.
The mere announcement made churchmen wince. But it wasn't until they read the imaginative brochure of Bible Storyland that the wince turned into a full-fledged howl of pain. A committee of 40 religious leaders has charged that the brochure contains "amazing Biblical interpretations and horrible religious ideas." The promoters claim their theological amusement center would "convert thousands, and fill our churches."
I don't take sides in controversial matters. All I'll admit for the record is that if Bible Storyland achieves nothing else, it will at least be a subject for a new Evelyn Waugh novel.
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April 4, 1926: Westbrook Pegler, writing of Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics, says, “The dealers came crowding from neighboring stands and bought up Mr. MacGillicuddy's athletes and soon he was left with nothing but his franchise and a wardrobe of uniforms, which later he populated with Joe the Gas Man, Sam the Ashman, Billy the Ice Man, Ike the Milk Man, Moe the Coal Man, Jim the Mail Man, George the Elevator Man and a couple of other guys.” |
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April 4, 1960: A little boy, a dog, an ice cream cone … and an ice bag? Very cute. No, we don’t do this anymore. On the jump, the Air Force discontinues work on a light ray that would bring down missiles. Doesn’t that sound familiar? … and of the five movies nominated for Academy Awards for best picture, only one was filmed in Hollywood. |
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April 4, 1910: A teenage girl’s trip to a merry-go-round at the end of the Macy Street bridge nearly ends in a lynching after a “lust-crazed cholo” tries to kidnap her. |
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April 3, 1938: Hedda Hopper profiles Dorothy “Dottie” Lamour. “Her sudden success has roused a great deal of jealousy. And the girls say: 'Why should she have all the luck?' “But … I believe you'll agree with me — when she got her chance she was prepared.”
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April 3, 1960: The president of USC says his athletic program can't compete with the Rams and Dodgers. And in an era of declining attendance for Southern California college teams while the pros were thriving, Dr. Norman Topping said college football needed some help from the pros to survive. "Pro football has some obligation toward building up college football. It's their only farm system," Topping told The Times' Mal Florence in the first of a series of stories on college presidents. "The professional football teams will kill off college football through radio and TV as professional baseball has done to the minor leagues." Topping also noted that the pros and colleges have different objectives. "The pros are a business venture," he said. "College football is a recreation, a rallying point for students and alumni alike." — Keith Thursby |
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“This Should Be Quite a Story!!” |
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April 3, 1960: The Times’ Sunday supplement, This Week magazine, features its annual reading program with a list of “200 Great Books for Young Americans,” ages 14 to 18. I’m always fascinated by what people of another era considered influential books – especially whether they have been forgotten (which reminds me of the “Zombie Summer Reading Program” by my friends Mary McCoy and Brady Potts). In fact, many of the titles on this list have endured: Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” Others will be familiar to people who are of a certain age, haunt thrift stores or were desperate to read something at the summer cabin: James Gould Cozzens’ “S.S. San Pedro,” John Gunther’s “Inside Russia Today” and Peter Freuchen’s “Book of the Seven Seas.” And some are just obscure. An interesting wrinkle: Books that especially appealed to girls were indicated with an asterisk, but writer Clifton Fadiman says it’s OK — really it is — if boys want to read “The Nun’s Story,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “A New England Girlhood.” I was a bit surprised that J.D. Salinger and Rachel Carson made the list. And even more surprised that William Faulkner didn’t. |
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April 3, 1910: This headline stopped me cold: “Mohammedan Easter.” It’s a feature from the Sunday magazine on the Muslim pilgrimage to what the writer calls Neby Mousa and is known today as Nabi Musa. The author, Harold J. Shepstone, appears to be a prolific British writer of the “Ripping Yarns” variety (lion taming, polar exploration, etc.) with a career ranging from the 1900s to the 1940s. |
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