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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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April 24, 1940: “K. Hepburn and H. Hughes will resume hand-holding when she moves west,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
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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. |
| 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. |
| “What’s That?! Someone in a Space Suit Is Leaving the Eliza Ann!” |
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The Amok Amoeba
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. |
Wow! Now there’s an ugly layout, even for 1960. |
Mash Notes and Comment (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.
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(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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April 23, 1940: “Hollywood, where the girl you take to dinner tonight is usually fed up with you by tomorrow,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
| 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 dies at the age of 65. |
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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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Someone recently asked me when “L.A.” became a common term for Los Angeles. I said I didn’t know and was reluctant to speculate because at the Daily Mirror, we don’t guess, we look things up. This postcard of Central Park (now Pershing Square) listed on EBay shows that “L.A.” was in use by 1907, far earlier than I expected. Bidding on the postcard starts at $4.21.
Notice the lush landscaping of Central Park, a stark contrast to the current moonscape, which was intended to repel the homeless. |
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The Vanished Bus
A fun-loving Hollywoodian is sweating out a nightmare, hoping it will go away. The complication is that it wasn't a nightmare, it was real.
He went to Tijuana and became so simpatico with the spirit of manana he overindulged or, as the boys put it, he got load-dead. As he headed home a policeman stopped him and suggested diplomatically that he was in no condition to drive. "Why don't you park your car and take the bus," he said.
The idea appealed to our hero. After all, why risk damaging his new car. It didn't matter about an old, beat-up bus. You see, in his exuberant state he took the officer literally. He selected a bus out of a batch of 10 or 12 of them parked nearby and drove it all the way home.
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NEXT MORNING he awoke with a terrible hangover and a vague feeling that all was not well. His suspicion was verified when he peeked down the street and saw the bus.
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New Information on Griffith Park Hermit
Call this an update on Dennis Farrell.
It's not good news. But it's not bad news, either. Dennis — In case his name has slipped your memory — is the 33-year-old ex-GI who wandered into town out of the Griffith Park hills 10 months ago. For six years, he had lived alone in the 4,200-acre park, hiding in the thick undergrowth by day and stealing into the picnic areas at night to scavenge garbage cans for enough food to stay alive. His sudden appearance one June night last year — bearded and barefoot and bound in rags — answered a couple of questions, but raised a lot more. It answered for his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Chris Farrell of North Platte, Neb., the mystery of what had happened to their son after he had casually walked out of the house one evening in May, 1952. |
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April 22, 1940: “There's talk that Daisy, edjoocated purp of the 'Blondie' pics, will be replaced because the dog's owner is asking too much dough,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
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March 11, 1960: How do you rate as a grandstand manager? Try your hand with the Baltimore Orioles of 1959 and see if you come up with the same strategy as manager Paul Richards. |
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April 22, 1910: Samuel Langhorne Clemens “recognized his daughter Clara (Mrs. Ossip Gabrilowitsch), spoke a rational word or two and feeling himself unequal to conversation, wrote out in pencil: “ ‘Give me my glasses.’ “These were his last words. Laying them aside, he sank first into reverie and later into final unconsciousness.” |
| Movie memorabilia comes in all shapes and forms, but I’ve never seen a pennant like this Theda Bara item before. A little research shows that a series of nearly 200 such pennants was issued about 1915. Ooh, is that a Hobart Bosworth? A lot of 192 of these movie pennants sold for $907.52 in 2008, about $4.72 each. Bidding starts at 24.99 GBP (the vendor is located in the UK). |
| “So I’ll Save the Wear and Tear on Your Tonsils, Mr. Ames.” |
A Hard Life
 If no one minds, I'd like to get literary for a moment. Whitney Balliett of the New Yorker magazine, in reviewing two current books, wrote:
"They deal with what has become, in the past decade, a new hero in American novels — the tired, kindly, fearful, foolish-wise, middle-aged urban white-collar worker who is presented with a suddenly accumulated myriad of complex and often overwhelming moral problems that must be resolved (often in 24 hours or less) without trampling others or compromising himself."
He refers to such character as "the newest Milquetoast."
I have just finished reading Irwin Shaw's novel, "Two Weeks in Another Town" and the leading character' John Andrus, seems to fit this description. He is a former movie actor who lives is Paris and works for NATO. He is married to a French girl and they have two children.
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Being a Celebrity Weighs So Heavily Since everyone else is hesitant to say it, I'll say it myself. I'm a celebrity.
It's been a long, hard, often discouraging fight to reach the top. But, really, I've been a brick through the whole thing.
I bore no grudge against Ralph Edwards even though "This Is Your Life" never once considered mine.
I continued to spend large chunks of my expense account at the Brown Derby even though Bob Cobb never beseeched me for an autographed picture to put up on the wall.
I will still admit, under pressure, that Ed Sullivan is a warm, glib personality kid despite the fact that he has never introduced me from the audience.
But now, I don't need them. Any of them.
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April 21, 1941: “Yvonne of the King Sisters and musician Buddy Cole are on the love list,” Jimmie Fidler says. |
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April 21, 1960: Elvis Presley’s return to Los Angeles to film “G.I. Blues” is put safely on Page 2. Instead, The Times leads the paper with the resignation of the South Korean cabinet. ps. Georg Solti is named music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
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