1944 in Print — Life Magazine, Aug. 7, 1944

Posted on August 7, 2025 by lmharnisch

Geraldine Fitzgerald was born in Dublin, Ireland, and is a product of that city’s famous Gate Theatre. Her initial appearance on Broadway in Shaw’s “Heartbreak House” brought offers from all major Hollywood studios. Now under contract to Warner Bros., she is currently appearing in 20th Century-Fox’s lavish $5-million production of “Wilson.” As the second Mrs. Wilson, she handles with skill the role of a mature and dignified first lady.

Aug. 7, 1944

Geraldine Fitzgerald is the cover photo as Life features the rarely seen movie “Wilson.”

Lonnie Smith, a Houston dentist, casts a ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African Americans could not be barred from voting in Texas Democratic primaries.

Life reports on the unsuccessful July 20 bomb plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

This week’s photo essay by photographer Ralph Crane shows various techniques of making movies. Above, a set of what is identified as Warner Bros.’ remake of “The Petrified Forest.” Presumably this is “Escape in the Desert.”

From Google Books.

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Posted in 1944, Film, Hollywood, Photography, World War II | Tagged 1944, film, hollywood, photography, World War II | Comments Off

Aug. 7, 1907: Too Late for Wife to Repent Marriage to Abusive Husband, Judge Rules

Posted on August 7, 2025 by lmharnisch

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Aug. 7, 1907
Los Angeles

He swore at her and told her to go to hell. He rarely worked and only helped her run their boarding house when he felt like it. She hid all the butcher knives to keep him from killing her and their little girl. She hid his pistol in a bag of rags and sold it. She threw his razor down between two houses.

Finally, she sought a divorce after he came home drunk Feb. 22, 1907, and began hammering on the doors, threatening to break them down, and promising to kill her and their daughter, who had sought refuge with one of the lodgers in their boarding house.

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Posted in 1907, Black Dahlia, Books and Authors, Crime and Courts, Streetcars | Tagged 1907, crime and courts, divorce, domestic violence | Comments Off

Matt Weinstock, Aug. 6, 1959

Posted on August 6, 2025 by lmharnisch

Of Men and Machines

Man’s dependence on mechanical devices was chaotically demonstrated again the other day in a huge market in San Fernando Valley.

A motorist rammed into a power pole outside the store, disrupting the electricity inside. Suddenly the customers were groping around in semidarkness, grabbing cabbages when they wanted lettuces.

Amid frantic phoning to get the power restored, a few crank handles were found to operate the registers manually. The rest of the cashiers had to get back to basic pencil-and-paper arithmetic.

All in all, it was a harrowing reminder that life without juice is not sweet.

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Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, Aug. 6, 1959

Posted on August 6, 2025 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

Here Is How Stupid One Can Easily Get

An old “fad” is making a comeback among Southern California teen-agers.

It’s a seemingly harmless kick, but unless the kids are wised up, and fast, tragedy could very easily be the result.

The fad — inhaling gasoline fumes and fumes from glue-soaked rags — sounds ridiculously innocuous. But it isn’t.

It can be as fatal as Russian roulette.

Just how widespread it has become, I don’t know.

But I do know that during the last week I’ve received a few calls with the information that the kids are at it again.

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Posted in Columnists, Paul Coates | 1 Comment

Aug. 6, 1947: Asian Americans Sue Over Deed Restrictions Forcing Them Out of White Neighborhoods

Posted on August 6, 2025 by lmharnisch

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

Petitions were filed in the Supreme Court of California here yesterday seeking to restrain the Superior Court from hearing injunction suits against two American-Orientals to restrain them from continuing to occupy their present homes.

The petitioners are Tom D. Amer, Chinese-American citizen and war veteran, who lives with his family at 127 W. 56th St., and Yin Kim, also a veteran, who is of Korean descent and who lives at 1201 S. Gramercy Place.

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Posted in 1947, Crime and Courts | Tagged 1947, Asian Americans, crime and courts, deed covenants, housing | Comments Off

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

Posted on August 6, 2025 by lmharnisch

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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Posted in 1944, Columnists, Film, Hollywood | Tagged 1944, film, hollywood, Louella Parsons | Comments Off

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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Posted in 1947, Black Dahlia, Cold Cases, Homicide, LAPD | Tagged Ask Me Anything, Black Dahlia, Cleveland Torso Killings, Elizabeth Short, John Gilmore, lapd | Comments Off

Aug. 5, 1947: Hitchhiking Couple Confess to ‘Kiss of Death’ Murder

Posted on August 5, 2025 by lmharnisch

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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Posted in 1947, Crime and Courts, Homicide | Tagged 1947, crime and courts, homicide, Kiss of Death Murder | Comments Off

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

Posted on August 5, 2025 by lmharnisch

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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Posted in 1944, Columnists, Comics, Film, Hollywood | Tagged 1944, comics, film, hollywood, horoscope, Louella Parsons | Comments Off

Matt Weinstock, Aug. 4, 1959

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

‘Lady’ and the Mails

As 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

Confidential File

Maybe This Is Way Simon Built Towers

Whether 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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Posted in art and artists, Columnists, Paul Coates | Comments Off

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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Posted in 1947, Animals, Medicine | Tagged #Polio, 1947, Animals, Patsy Pfeifer, rodeo | Comments Off

Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

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 →

Posted in 1944, books, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged 1944, Alexis Smith, film, Fredric March, hollywood, mystery photo | 35 Comments

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

Posted on August 4, 2025 by lmharnisch

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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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Hollywood Heights, Mary Mallory | Tagged film, hollywood, Hollywood Heights, Mary Mallory | Comments Off

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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Posted in 1907, 1914, Black Dahlia, Immigration, Religion, Streetcars | Tagged #Jews, #texas, 1907, Galveston Plan, immigration | Comments Off

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

Posted on August 3, 2025 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

‘Lost’ Youth’s Letter Tells Tragic Story

Today, 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 →

Posted in Columnists, Paul Coates | Comments Off

Matt Weinstock, Aug. 3, 1959

Posted on August 3, 2025 by lmharnisch

Free Enterprise

The 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 →

Posted in Columnists, Matt Weinstock | Comments Off

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

Posted on August 3, 2025 by lmharnisch

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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Posted in 1947, African Americans, Books and Authors | Tagged 1947, African Americans, Books and Authors, Kingsblood Royal, Sinclair Lewis | Comments Off

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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Posted in 1907, Fires, Food and Drink | Tagged 1907, explosions, Fires, gasoline stoves | Comments Off

Flying Saucers Over L.A.!

Posted on August 2, 2025 by lmharnisch

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

Note: This is an encore post from 2010

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

Posted in JFK, Politics, Richard Nixon, UFOs | Comments Off