Matt Weinstock, April 27, 1960

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

“You Flopped, Not I!”

The 'Other' Eddie Fisher Finds Life Never Dull

Matt Weinstock

Eddie Fisher, 49, a special effects man at MGM, has accepted with patience and good humor the fact that he is frequently confused with Eddie Fisher, the singer. He gets phone calls intended for singer Eddie, he gets his fan and pan mail.

At the time singer Eddie was breaking up with Debbie Reynolds in favor of Elizabeth Taylor, the other Eddie, who lives on Cattaraugus Ave., in Culver City, received a call from a New York newspaper asking if he had anything to say. When he said singer Eddie wasn't there the reporter asked what the real dope was, confidentially.

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MOST OF THE CALLS by the way, are from elementary school girls, not teenagers, who ask breathlessly if he is Eddie Fisher. When he says yes they say, "How about singing for us?" There is always a twittering in the background. The reason he gets these calls is simple — his number is listed, singer Eddie's isn't.

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, April 27, 1960

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 27, 1960, Mirror Cover

Tragedy in Curtain Call for Sad Mother

Paul Coates

For Billy Monk's mother, tragedy took a curtain call last week.

But this time, unlike the others, she was prepared. She had warning — which is more than what she had with her other two sons and her only daughter.

First, it was her daughter, Merna Jean, who died four days after birth. That was in the '30s.

And a few years after that, when Billy was an infant, his brother Walter died, at the age of 3, of tubercular spinal meningitis. That left Billy and Lester.

"They were two fine boys," Billy's mother will tell you now.

But on Oct. 9, 1957, Lester fell off the back of a moving pickup truck, grabbing for a hat which wind had blown off his head. He never regained consciousness.

And now, the tragedy of Billy.

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Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 27, 1940

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 27, 1940, Follies

Hey, it’s Betty Rowland!

April 27, 1940: “Judy Garland has penned a book of poems which will be privately published under a nom de plume,” Jimmie Fidler’s staff says.

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Posted in Columnists, Film, Hollywood | 4 Comments

The Further Adventures of ‘Obi-Whatever-His-Name-Was’

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 27, 1980, Alec Guinness

April 27, 1980, Alec Guinness

April 27, 1980: Sir Alec Guinness says, "I don't know what advantages there are to getting older except perhaps learning to pare down one's performance; learning to cut out the flourishes. That's what I'm always trying to do. Occasionally, I'm afraid, I overdo it and become positively bleak. I hate anyone watching me on a film set for this reason. If I appear to be simply standing there doing nothing, they're always so disappointed."

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Posted in Film, Hollywood | 1 Comment

Husband Begs to Be Executed After Killing Wife

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 27, 1910, Execution

April 27, 1910: Ernest Wirth begs to be executed for killing his wife, Hattie, by stomping her head to a pulp. He later told jailers: "I have nothing more to live for. They say there is a world after this. If there is, I want to go to it. I may meet her there. If this is the end, then this world will be better off when my body turns back to earth."

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Posted in #courts | 2 Comments

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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Posted in Columnists, Paul Coates | 1 Comment

Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 26, 1940

Posted on April 26, 2010 by lmharnisch

April 26, 1940, Nazis

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

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: “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.

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: 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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Posted in #courts, Dodgers, Homicide, Nightclubs, Sports | 1 Comment

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

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Posted in Columnists, Film, Hollywood | 1 Comment

Sydney Ford’s Trip Around the World, 1910

Posted on April 24, 2010 by lmharnisch

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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