Governor ‘Powerless’ to Halt Execution

Posted on March 11, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 11, 1960, Times Cover

March 11, 1960: Gov. Pat Brown says he is powerless to interfere with Caryl Chessman’s May 2 execution … and a Los Angeles County official says U.S. automakers are resisting attempts to reduce pollution from car exhaust.  

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No Street Parking in Downtown L.A.

Posted on March 11, 2010 by lmharnisch
March 11, 1920, Parking
March 11, 1920: What Los Angeles is coming to without street parking in downtown, by Edmund Waller “Ted” Gale. The ban was adopted to ease the seemingly ageless problem of traffic. 

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Woman’s 15-Foot Hat Is World’s Largest

Posted on March 11, 2010 by lmharnisch
March 11, 1910, World's Biggest hat
March 11, 1910:  It took three days for Katherine Gessner to make the 15-foot Merry Widow hat out of crepe paper and cloth on a framework of bamboo and wire

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Matt Weinstock, March 10, 1960

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 10, 1960, Peanuts 

Lesson for Today

Matt Weinstock

    A group of firemen have been engaging lately in baffling exercises with the fire hose at the north end of Echo Park Lake and a lady who lives nearby says she is losing her mind with curiosity and wonderment.  They squirt water into the lake, then they place the end of the hose in the lake and pump water out.  "What are they doing," she would like to know, "filling the lake or emptying it?"

    Neither, lady, they're just practicing drafting, another word for pumping.

    Almost all water used in firefighting these days comes from hydrants and drafting is rare.  But firemen never know when they'll need to use it and it's part of the training.

    SUPPOSE THEY WERE SUMMONED to a brush fire isolated from an immediate source of water and had to tap a nearby swimming pool.  They'd have to draft, and to perform the operation they'd have to be sure the connections were secure and know how to avoid air spaces and vacuums.  Otherwise it would be like trying to suck a soft drink through a soda straw with a hole in it.

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, March 10, 1960

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 10, 1960, Mirror Cover

The book Coates is talking about is, of course, "Black Like Me."

DARING THE 'HATE STARE'

A White Man Turns Negro

Paul Coates

(This is the first of two exclusive columns on the remarkable story of a white author who turned "Negro" to get the facts on discrimination in the South.)

    Male, white, American.  Age 40.  Born, Dallas, Tex.  College graduate.  Married.  Three children.  Talks with slight Southern drawl.

    These are the statistics that describe John Howard Griffin.

    And with them, as his lot, his heritage, he became a successful citizen of the United States.  He was a respected man of comfortable means.

    Then, last fall, he changed one of his vital statistics.

    He became a Negro.

    Through pills, ultraviolet ray treatments and dyes, he changed the color of his skin.  That's all he changed.

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Willie Davis, April 8, 1959

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch

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Robert Hilburn on 38-Special, Rush

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch
March 10, 1980, Rush
March 10, 1980: “Bearable by most standards, 38-Special was a godsend next to headliner Rush,” Robert Hilburn says. 

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Hedda Hopper, March 10, 1945

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 10, 1945, Hedda Hopper

March 10, 1945: Hedda Hopper has lunch with Clark Gable … and quite a few other folks.

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Price Tag on an All-Star Infield

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch
March 11, 1970, Billy Buckner
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March 10, 1970: How much would an all-star infield cost these days?

The Times' Ross Newhan heard what the Reds' assistant scouting director thought of young Dodgers Bill Buckner, Bill Grabarkewitz, Bobby Valentine and Bill Russell.

"I'll give $3-4 million for that infield," Rex Howen said.

What would $4 million get you on a baseball team now?

–Keith Thursby

 

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Posted in Dodgers | 1 Comment

Lawmakers Defeat Attempt to Ban Death Penalty

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch

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“I’ve Got to Live With Myself!”

 March 10, 1960, Cover

March 10, 1960: The Senate Judiciary Committee kills Gov. Pat Brown’s effort to repeal the death penalty. Although Caryl Chessman is the pressing issue in the question of capital punishment, his name is never mentioned in the hearing.

Police Chief William H. Parker "called Brown's bill a step in a trend of loosening criminal law which he feared would lead to the abolition of the prison system and the complete relaxation of restraints on criminals."

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Nuestro Pueblo

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch
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Oct. 7, 1938: Joe Seewerker and Charles Owens visit 942 Yale St. (Google maps’ street view shows the lion is long gone). The original run of “Nuestro Pueblo” concluded last year. I’m going back and picking up the ones I missed the first time.

Posted in art and artists, Downtown, Nuestro Pueblo | 1 Comment

Joseph Scott on the Evils of Frenchwomen

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch

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March 10, 1920: Attorney Joseph Scott attacks the morals of  Frenchwomen in closing arguments in the divorce case of Frank Van Camp, head of Van Camp Sea Food Co.  Scott represented stenographer Ruth Cruzen, who was named by Van Camp’s wife, Euphrasia, as the other woman in their divorce.  

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Pasadena Raids Illegal Stock Exchange

Posted on March 10, 2010 by lmharnisch

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March 10, 1910: A speeding streetcar takes a curve too fast at 7th and Alvarado, jumps the tracks and goes tearing into what’s now MacArthur Park. If it hadn’t run into a telegraph pole and a pepper tree, it might have ended up in the lake, The Times says.

And on the jump, Pasadena police raid a bucket shop,  stock exchanges that were banned because they traded on margin. The Times says that such operations had been driven out of Los Angeles with raids in 1908.

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Matt Weinstock, March 9, 1960

Posted on March 9, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 9, 1960, Abby

Board Meeting

Matt Weinstock

    The hostess at a house party in Santa Monica happened to mention that she had a late model Ouija board,  and several surprised guests, who thought the boards had gone out with mah-jongg, insisted that it be produced and be put to work.  They said some vital questions needed answering.

    A table was cleared, two ardent disciples of the occult placed their hands on the frail board, asked questions, and let it run amok.

    Ouija gave the following answers:

    1- Nixon will be the next President.
    2- Kennedy will be the Democratic nominee.
    3- Chessman will not be executed.
    4- Gov. Brown will not be re-elected.
    5- The Dodgers will not win the National League pennant.
    6- Kansas City will win the American League pennant with the White Sox second.

    At this point, F.C. Neumuth, one of the guests, reports, Ouija became tired and uncooperative and made no sense whatever.

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, March 9, 1960

Posted on March 9, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 9, 1960

Father, Son Talk Over the Slaying of Seven

Paul Coates

    In his 57 years, stolid Ralph Whitney never made a more difficult phone call. 

    He placed it late yesterday afternoon from the quiet Pomona Valley community of Upland to the West Palm Beach, Fla., County Jail.

    That's where Dennis, second youngest of Whitney's 10 children, was.

    This was to be the first conversation between the father and his son since the 17-year-old youth went off on a cross-country murder spree that stupefied the nation.

    But the call — which we had arranged for him to make from the offices of the Upland News — got off to a bad start.  The drawling deputy who answered gave it to the father straight.  "That kid killed seven people," he said.  "I ain't going near him to bring him to the phone."

    But another deputy eventually did.  Dennis said hello into the speaker and the strange exchange between the father and his confessed-killer son began:

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Charles Champlin on Farrah Fawcett

Posted on March 9, 2010 by lmharnisch
March 9, 1980, Farrah Fawcett
March 9, 1980, Farrah Fawcett

March 9, 1980: Charles Champlin profiles Farrah Fawcett, 33, on the next phase of her life, when she’s more confident in her own judgment and less influenced by advisers.  

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Hedda Hopper, March 9, 1944

Posted on March 9, 2010 by lmharnisch

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March 9, 1944: Hedda Hopper tells Betty Bacall to forget this Lauren stuff. “ ‘Betty Bacall’ is euphonious and easy to say,” Hopper says. Gosh did she ever get anything right? 

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Posted in Columnists, Film, Hollywood | 1 Comment

Kennedy, Nixon Lead in New Hampshire

Posted on March 9, 2010 by lmharnisch


March 9, 1960, Combs Family

On the jump, an attorney seeks to keep state officials from removing Alice Marie Combs, 4, center, from her foster home in an effort to find a more intellectually stimulating family for the girl, who has an IQ of 138.

March 9, 1960, Cover  

March 9, 1960: Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Vice President Richard Nixon lead their parties in the New Hampshire primary.  The Associated Press story noted that although the Republican candidate usually runs a 2-1 ratio to the Democratic candidate in New Hampshire, the difference between Kennedy and Nixon was much closer, 53,111 to 38,012.

Also on the jump, jurors resume deliberations in the Finch case after listening to a nine-hour reading of Dr. R. Bernard Finch’s testimony.

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Black Dahlia on Display

Posted on March 9, 2010 by lmharnisch

  March 4, 2010, Dahlia Exhibit

One of many mistakes in the Black Dahlia poster from “Behind-the-Scenes: The LAPD Homicide Experience.” Notice that the location is wrong – the body was actually half a block away.

Note: Most of the media’s attention to the LAPD’s “Behind-the-Scenes” homicide exhibit focused on the Kennedy family’s protests over the display of Robert F. Kennedy’s bloody clothes, but the Daily Mirror was more interested in material relating to the 1947 killing of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia.

Because I couldn’t make a quick trip to Las Vegas, I asked my friend Gwen Sharp, who is a partner in the Sociological Images blog, to look at the display, get some photos and write about it. What follows are her observations.

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Posted in Homicide, LAPD | 5 Comments

Lawyers Too Greedy, Attorney Says

Posted on March 9, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 9, 1920, Lawyers 

March 9, 1920: Attorneys have given up criminal defense work in favor of wealthy corporate clients and civil cases, attorney Samuel T. Untermyer tells the  county bar association.

More on the jump, plus Clare Briggs.

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