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May 5, 1960: The Republican administration of President Eisenhower announces plans for federal and state funding of medical insurance for people over 65 in the Medicare Program for the Aged. The Democrats opposed the plan in favor of healthcare benefits under Social Security, and “encouraged predictions that the proposal would be rejected as impractical and financially unsound,” The Times says. On the jump, the Dodgers bench Gil Hodges. |
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May 5, 1910: The post office halts an “endless prayer chain” letter started by “a religious crank,” The Times says. The postmaster says that the letter is illegal because it threatens a “dire calamity” for whoever breaks the chain. According to the nearly completed census, Los Angeles’ population is about 300,000. |
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May 4, 1960: Why are people bringing transistor radios to Dodger games? Matt Weinstock has the answer! |
Forest Lawn doesn’t want Caryl Chessman’s ashes!
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May 4, 1960: John Milton Addison is a spellbinder without peer. He’s a millionaire who claims he isn’t selling anything but himself, Paul Coates says. |
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May 4, 1940: “Blue pencil those rift rumors about the Fred MacMurrays. We've checked, and there's nothing to 'em,” Jimmie Fidler’s staff says. |
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May 4, 1980: “Hitchcock was an entertaining companion and a superlative raconteur with a gift of droll timing and a dry understatement. He lifted an eyebrow as eloquently as any actor. But beneath the assurance in public situations, like interviews and platform appearances, he was actually quite shy and, for perhaps the most flamboyant director of them all, guarded and private, with few close friends among either actors or fellow directors,” Charles Champlin says. |
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May 4, 1910: Police conduct gambling raids in Chinatown in the 300 block of Marchessault Street, at 424 N. Los Angeles St., 335 1/2 Apablasa and on North Alameda. On the jump, in the final days of the U.S. census, enumerators say the most uncooperative group is the socialists! |
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May 3, 1960: A stripper named Vagablonde promises to do her Lady Godiva act by riding a white horse down Broadway to protest 15-cent coffee… if someone will furnish a white horse, Matt Weinstock says. |
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May 3, 1960: Ray Burke and George S. Doombadze share a phone number and some frustration, Paul Coates says. |
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May 3, 1940: “Marlene Dietrich, Erich Maria Remarque and Josef von Sternberg a nightly threesome at the Sphinx, where television's being served with dinner,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
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Sept. 20, 1981: Universal Studios says Lynn Redgrave left “House Calls” over her salary “demands,” The Times says. A transcript of a phone call between her husband/manager John Clark and Universal’s Pete Terranova tells a different story. |
| Los Angeles Times file photo May 2, 1960: A hearse carries the body of Caryl Chessman out of San Quentin.
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May 3, 1960: Caryl Chessman is executed after a last-minute plea goes awry when a judge’s secretary calls the wrong number for Warden Fred Dickson. One of Chessman's victims remains institutionalized and may never be released, the woman's mother says. |
I'm so sorry: I know last week I promised Zorro, and I had the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks movie all cued up and ready to go. But there was a full moon out, and Mario Bava's "Black Sunday" had just showed up in the mail, and I was all excited from having recently watched "Black Sabbath" for the Final Girl Film Club — anyway, one thing led to another. Bava's film provides witches AND vampires, thank you, plus exploding coffins, swooping bats, walking corpses, terrified milkmaids and all the gorgeous black-and-white visuals you could want. It's perfect for a chilly full-moon night.
We open with a prologue in the 1600s, where Moldavian witch Asa (Barbara Steele) is being sentenced to death by her own brother for sorcery. Because she is so very evil, she has to be branded with the mark of Satan, then killed with a spiked mask to the face, and THEN burned at the stake. The Moldavians do not mess around and neither does Bava. It's a gruesome opener. Asa is not the falsely accused variety of witch — before taking the spiky mask, she snarls out a curse on her brother and his descendants. A rainstorm prevents the witch-burning mob from setting fire to her body, so she's buried in the family crypt, still in the spiky mask.
Two centuries later, it's a more enlightened age. A pair of doctors (John Richardson and Andrea Checchi) are riding through the Moldavian wilderness on their way to a medical conference. How professional! Their carriage driver is reluctant to take a shortcut through the forest because of local superstition about a witch, but the doctors just laugh this off. But that's before their carriage loses a wheel — and before they decide to explore an old tomb nearby, and find a woman's perfectly preserved corpse inside, and before they meet the beautiful and mysterious local princess, Katia (also Steele), walking her dogs nearby. Has an ancient curse been revived? Will evil walk again? Cue howling dogs!
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The All Night and Day Bank, Spring and 6th Streets, c. 1911. |
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May 3, 1910: You may recall the All Night and Day Bank from a 2009 post. For reasons that aren’t explained in this story, depositors began a run on the bank and in the days before the FDIC this could mean failure. The run ended the next day, after 36 hours, and the bank remained solvent despite the withdrawal of about $100,000. The Times said. “At 6 o'clock last evening the line of depositors who were after their money extended from the paying teller's window, out through the 6th Street entrance to Spring Street and along the latter thoroughfare to the Security Savings and Trust Co. building a full block away. In the line were gray-haired women, young girls with schoolbooks under their arms, old men and young men, white men and colored men, Japs, Greeks, in fact all classes and most all nationalities whose habitat is Los Angeles,” The Times said. Remind me again about the “wisdom of crowds.” I keep forgetting. |
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May 2, 1960: ONLY IN L.A. — A man telephoned the city desk Friday when the 10 a.m. air raid siren test sounded to ask if it was the burglar alarm on the city treasury. Les Wagner assured him it wasn't, pointing out, "What's to steal?" |
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May 2, 1960: Let me cite you the case of Bertha H. Hangen, the Topanga elementary school teacher who is fighting dismissal on charges that she referred to individuals in her flock as “stupid,” “baby,” “messy looking” and, in one instance, when a child was crying, said she “would get him a crib and a baby bottle.” |
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May 2, 1941: “I've yet to see Adolphe Menjou in evening attire sans a boutonniere,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
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May 2, 1960: Don Dwiggins of the Mirror News writes: “At exactly 10:03:25, an unidentified guard tripped a lever that sent cyanide pellets dropping into an acid bucket beneath Chessman's seat. “Chessman seemed to tense noticeably, held his breath, and then sucked strongly. For the next 8 and three-quarter minutes, Chessman died. “On inhaling the first breath of the deadly hydrocyanic fumes, Chessman stiffened. His eyes rose upward. He threw his head back and gasped. “Then, Chessman focused his eyes on a single electric light bulb overhead and directly in front of him. It was 10:05 — two minutes after the pellets dropped. “Veins in Chessman's throat swelled full and a thin film of perspiration glistened on his forehead. He gripped the arms of the steel chair with taut fingers. “His body slid downward against the chest strap and his head rolled suddenly to the left. Again, Chessman threw his head back. A single tear glistened in the corner of his right eye and the lids slowly closed for the last time. “Chessman's mouth opened and a rasping cough began. “Coming at approximately 30-second intervals, the death cough shook his body and left a spasmodic trembling through his shoulder and neck muscles. “On the fourth gasp, Chessman's head dropped forward against his chest; the mouth still open. Slowly, Chessman's fingers relaxed their grip on the chair. “For long minutes, there was no sound in the steel vault surrounding the lethal chamber, other than the monotonous drone of the exhaust fan sucking the deadly fumes from the chamber.” |
| Los Angeles Times file photo From left, UC history professor Richard Drinnon; actors Marlon Brando, Steve Allen and Shirley MacLaine; and UC professor Eugene Burdick enter the governor's mansion in Sacramento to urge Gov. Pat Brown to spare the life of Caryl Chessman.
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May 2, 1960: Caryl Chessman spends his last hours typing letters to friends. Before being transferred to a cell next to the gas chamber, he shook hands with 17 of the 18 men on death row. One inmate was asleep and Chessman didn't want to wake him, The Times said. He told the others, "I'll see you in the morning." An officer said that was a standard remark for men taking the six-floor trip, The Times said. Chessman made no request for a final meal, The Times said. He was served fried chicken, French fries, vegetable salad, pie and coffee. On Feb. 17, 1972, when the state Supreme Court overturned California's death penalty, former Gov. Pat Brown praised the ruling, saying: "The decision will do more to expedite criminal trials than anything in the last 100 years." Gov. Ronald Reagan criticized the court, saying it had put itself "above the will of the people." |
| The Times publishes another drawing by Charles Owens, showing what the fight for Dombas, Norway, might have looked like.
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May 1, 1940: “Hollywood After Dark: Amazonian Geraldine Ross, Florentine Gardens star, singing torch songs to mite-y George E. Stone, adoring her nightly from a floor-side table,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
