Paul V. Coates, Confidential File, March 12, 1960

 
March 12, 1960, Mirror Cover

Uh-oh.

Mash Notes and Comments

Paul Coates    "Dear Paul,

    "Ever ask yourself WHY so many women look worse after they return from the powder room than they did before they entered?

    "Ask Ed Cabrera, the lighting specialist whom architects and decorators call 'Mr. Lighting,' and he'll tell you straight out that it's the fault of — you guessed it — the lighting.

    "F'rinstance, overhead lighting casts shadows which make it tough to neatly apply lipstick or eye shadow and the next most common fault rests with the application of too much or too little rouge or powder because of hot spots from unbalanced lighting.

    "So what, you ask?
   
    "So this, wise guy:

    "It's bad for business because the gals are sensitive to this sort of thing and are ready to leave shortly after such mishaps.  And it's a black mark against the name of hospitality when the occasions are social.

  

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John Sayles, March 12, 1980

March 12, 1980, Mama Mia!

March 12, 1980: Alka-Seltzer’s “Spicy Meatballs” was voted the best commercial of the last 20 years. 

March 12, 1980, John Sayles

Kevin Thomas on John Sayles and “The Return of the Seacaucus Seven.”

On the jump, prize-winning commercials. Remember the Coke ad with Mean Joe Greene?

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Westbrook Pegler, March 12, 1926

March 12, 1926, Westbrook Pegler

March 12, 1926: Sportswriting as it was practiced in the 1920s. In this item, Westbrook Pegler covers the intrigue surrounding the Gene Tunney-Willie Stribling match. As tortured as the writing is, I have to admit that it sounds like it’s out of “The Front Page.”

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Movie Star Mystery Photo

  March 8, 2010, Mystery Photo
Los Angeles Times file photo

Update: This is Lillian Bond  in a 1925 photo.  She died in 1991. Please congratulate Mike Hawks and Mary Mallory for identifying her!

Dec. 20, 1930: Lillian Bond 

Dec. 20, 1930: MGM signs Lillian Bond.
 
Just a reminder on how this works: I post the mystery photo on Monday and reveal the answer on Friday … or on Saturday if I have a hard time picking only five pictures; sometimes it's difficult to choose. To keep the mystery photo from getting lost in the other entries, I move it from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday, etc., adding a photo every day.

I have to approve all comments, so if your guess is posted immediately, that means you're wrong. (And if a wrong guess has already been submitted by someone else, there's no point in submitting it again).

If you're right, you will have to wait until Friday. There's no need to submit your guess five times. Once is enough. The only reward is bragging rights. 

The answer to last week's mystery stars: Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson!

On the jump, a new photo!

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | 23 Comments

Dinosaur Expert Roy Chapman Andrews Dies

March 12, 1960, Roy Chapman Andrews 

March 12, 1960: Roy Chapman Andrews is not an author I think about very often anymore, but he wrote one of the favorite books of my childhood, “All About Dinosaurs.” I suppose he’s one reason I took all those anthro courses in college.

More on the jump, plus a frustrated writer threatens suicide unless he talks to Charles Brackett … Robert Blake stars in “The Purple Gang” … and Don Page looks at sports rumors on the radio. Note: Chick Hearn is a “good and improving” sportscaster.

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Texas Politician Opposes the Automobile

 March 12, 1920, Automobiles

March 12, 1920: Former Texas Sen. Joe Bailey wants to abolish autos except for businesses, according to his opponents in the governor’s race. Bailey says, “I believe that next to the dog, the horse is man's best friend."

More on the jump, plus Clare Briggs.

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Posted in Animals, Comics, Politics, Transportation | 1 Comment

Robber Holds Up Streetcar


March 12, 1910. Holdup

March 12, 1910: This story reminds me of Walter Collins’ streetcar robberies, but those didn’t occur until 1923. In fact, a streetcar conductor killed a robber in 1908.

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Posted in Changeling, Robberies, Transportation | 1 Comment

Artist’s Notebook: Drawing Salon

Everything and Everybody by Marion Eisenmann 

“Everything and Everybody,” by Marion Eisenmann.

Marion Eisenmann sends two sketches from one of the recent “Late Nite Drawing Salons,” which are held Monday nights at the E3rd Steakhouse & Lounge. We thought the salon would offer some interesting subjects for her notebook and convey the atmosphere of the downtown art scene. The revival of downtown Los Angeles, in which blocks and blocks of gritty, run-down skid row buildings have been turned into living and working spaces, is one of the remarkable stories of the last 25 years.

Marion says: The event was called the Gallery Girls Late Nite Drawing Club. Besides the models were not too many females in there, maybe two, three including me. Everyone was into their own business, whether it was painting, drawing, collaging or drinking a glass of wine. Yeah, it was indeed an eclectic evening, besides the visual atmosphere I was carried away by the music, which was a fusion of Bollywood film music and Kamasutra. – Enjoy.

I asked about the image in the background and Marion explained that a man “actually came out and drew these charcoal images on the graphite wall behind the models, which provided a constantly changing backdrop.”

More artwork on the jump.

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Matt Weinstock, March 11, 1960

 
image

“This Will Be Almost Painless”

A Peep by Wire

 
Matt Weinstock     This is to alert the ladies that the "Dr. Seaton" is busy again.  He phoned a lady I know the other day and in his pleasant voice said he was Dr. Seaton of the city health department.  He was making a nutrition survey, he said, and wanted to ask some questions.
 
    First, how tall was she?  She told him.  Was she overweight?  She isn't and said so but didn't like his familiar tone.  Then he asked her bust and hip measurements and she retorted that they were none of his business, although she is of movie star proportions, and hung up. 
 
    She phoned the health department and confirmed her suspicion.  There is no Dr. Seaton there, and the health department is not making a survey.  Furthermore, people were warned about the caller a month ago, when many such calls were reported.  Attempts were made to trace him at the time, but they were unsuccessful.
 
   

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, March 11, 1960

 
Marh 11, 1960, Mirror Cover

Deep South's Constant Sullen Hate, Contempt, Sadism Bared

Paul Coates(Second of two articles)

    John Howard Griffin became a Negro by choice.

    He did it with special pills, ultraviolet ray treatments and vegetable dyes.

    And he did it with the assurance that when the humility and scorn became too  much of a burden, he could resume his life as a first class white American.

    Yesterday, I told you how Griffin, an author and a native Southerner, began his fantastic six-week masquerade as a Negro and started his travels through the South.

He Wanted to Know

    I gave you his reason:

    To sort the fact from fiction about the oppression of the Southern Negro.

   

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Posted in #courts, Columnists, Countdown to Watts, Front Pages, Homicide, Paul Coates | 2 Comments

Jim Murray, March 11, 1980

March 11, 1980, Jim Murray

Jim Murray writes about Johnny Miller, for whom golf came easily until he hit his “wall of pain.”

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Westbrook Pegler, March 11, 1926

March 11, 1926, Westbrook Pegler

Before he emerged as a columnist on the national scene, Westbrook Pegler was a sportswriter. Here’s one of his columns about spring training by the Brooklyn Dodgers. And, frankly, he reads like a pretty fair writer.

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Hot Stove League, 1960

March 8, 1960, Hot Stove League

March 8, 1960: The Times published a month of these features in March 1960, so I’ve decided to string them out on Thursdays so they’ll last a good part of the year. Enjoy!

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Posted in Hot Stove League, Sports | 1 Comment

Governor ‘Powerless’ to Halt Execution

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.

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

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

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

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

image 

image

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Robert Hilburn on 38-Special, Rush

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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