Everyone Can Find Prostitutes Except the LAPD

Posted on March 3, 2010 by lmharnisch

 March 3, 1910, Red Light Resorts

March 3, 1910: Everybody in Los Angeles can find the city’s brothels – except the police, The Times says. Especially that place at 316 1/2 S. Spring St.

There’s more on the jump, plus the crazy “Pawnshop Wife” … and the Union Rescue Mission celebrates its work with the homeless on skid row.  Yes, like traffic congestion, homelessness is a century-old problem in Los Angeles. 

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Posted in Downtown, LAPD | 1 Comment

Matt Weinstock, March 2, 1960

Posted on March 2, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 2, 1960, Peanuts
March 2, 1960, Peanuts

Pity the Candidate

Matt Weinstock

    Now it's time for all good men to come to the aid of the poor, frustrated candidates, trying to hack out a platform that will please almost everyone, offend hardly anyone.

    It can't be done, of course.  Never in history have people been so sensitive.  To make matters worse, they never had such power of retaliation.

    It used to be safe to come out flatly for, say, Christmas.  No more.  People are still angrily paying their bills on last yuletide's excesses.

    It's even controversial to come out for motherhood, a traditional bulwark of political oratory.  It seems we're caught in a nasty population explosion and sociologists and other people contemplating an overcrowded planet are rather against it.

    YOU'D THINK pounding the table against traffic accidents on freeways would be okay.   But hark.  What about the tow truck and repair people?  They vote, too.

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, March 1-2, 1960

Posted on March 2, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 2, 1960, Mirror Cover

Newcomers to U.S. Learn of Clippolas

Paul Coates

    The Govaars family's introduction to the uniquely American art of the gimmick ad came last August in the form of a small handbill on their front doorstep.

    The handbill extolled the quality of what was described as an ortho-construction mattress, made by the Health-Aid Bedding Co.  Why toss and turn uncomfortably in your sleep –  it asked — when you could get a good night's rest on a Health-Aid?

    The price of the mattress,  for three days only, was an amazing $24.95.  A savings of more than $40 off the regular cost.

    The Govaars –  who had immigrated to the United States from Holland just eight months before — were in the market for a new mattress.  Besides William Govaars and his wife, there were their two daughters, Inga, 17, and Maja, 7.

    When Govaars returned home from work that evening his wife showed him the circular.  He was impressed by the bedding company's claims.  It wouldn't hurt to investigate.  So he dialed the phone number printed on the handbill and requested that a company representative drop by.    

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‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’

Posted on March 2, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 2, 1980, Coal Miner's Daughter 
March 2, 1980: Charles Champlin reviews “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” "The musical biography by now has a pattern as fixed as a traditional 12-bar blues. It is just that some blues are better than others, and so are some musical biographies," Champlin says.

On the jump, readers respond to Champlin’s piece on “Cruising” and Jim Murray profiles the Lakers’ Spencer Haywood.

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Hedda Hopper, March 2, 1938

Posted on March 2, 2010 by lmharnisch
March 2, 1938, Hedda Hopper 

March 2, 1938: "When white was the vogue, Pierre changed his apartment to black, where he gave me a swell party before I sailed for Europe on the Queen Mary," Hedda Hopper says. 

Posted in Columnists, Film, Hollywood | Comments Off on Hedda Hopper, March 2, 1938

Fiery Train Wreck Kills 17

Posted on March 2, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 2, 1960, Rail Wreck

The San Francisco Santa Fe Chief smashes into an oil tank truck and trailer 12 miles west of Bakersfield.

March 2, 1960, Elvis

March 2, 1960: Gov. Pat Brown gives up hope that the California Legislature will abolish the death penalty …  and Elvis Presley is being discharged from the Army. Presley tells reporters he's been dating a pretty high school student named Priscilla.

On the jump, Philip K. Scheuer reviews "The Pleasure of His Company" and Gil Hodges brings his first baseman's mitt to training camp, saying that if the Dodgers want to move him to third to make way for Frank Howard, they'll have to buy him a new one.

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Posted in #courts, Downtown, Music, Rock 'n' Roll, Sports, Stage | Comments Off on Fiery Train Wreck Kills 17

Times Advocates Importing Chinese Workers for Menial Jobs

Posted on March 2, 2010 by lmharnisch

 March 2, 1920, Briggs

“It Happens in the Best-Regulated Families,” by Clare Briggs.

 March 2, 1920, Statue

March 2, 1920: People – especially women – are drawn by a live model who stands perfectly still in a display window at Harris & Frank’s shop on Spring Street.

On the jump, The Times advocates importing workers from China on three-year contracts to perform menial farm jobs that Americans don’t want and won’t take.

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Higgins Building to Add Two Floors

Posted on March 2, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 2, 1910, Higgins Building 

March 1, 1910:  Thomas Higgins is adding two floors to his building at 2nd and Main streets. A century later, downtown hipsters will thank him!

On the jump, police make a terrible blunder in putting officers in Chinatown back in uniform, The Times says. 

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Matt Weinstock, March 1, 1960

Posted on March 1, 2010 by lmharnisch

March 1, 1960, Mirror Cover

Way Out Walkout

Matt Weinstock

    A great many people walked out on Miles Davis and John Coltrane, two great men of music they had primarily come to see and hear, at last Saturday's jazz concert at Shrine Auditorium, thereby provoking a recurrent point of controversy in listener-ship.

    The Miles Davis sextet was the main event of the evening, last on the program, eagerly awaited.

    Without any formality they went into a way-out number. It went on and on, with Davis and Coltrane alternating on solo passages.  After about 15 minutes a few people got up and left.  Then more and more, particularly during Coltrane's solos.  He probably blows more notes than any other saxophonist but they seemed meaningless and repetitious.

    Most of those who got up and left doubtless felt that whatever it was the group was trying to convey wasn't coming through to them and they'd had it.  After all, they'd applauded wildly for the polished, subtle Modern Jazz Quartet, which preceded them.

   

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A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Movie Columnist

Posted on March 1, 2010 by lmharnisch
 
March 1, 1960, Hedda Hopper
March 1, 1960: Hedda Hopper writes about Claude Rains’ 60 years in show business.

Posted in Columnists, Film, Hollywood, Stage | Comments Off on A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Movie Columnist

‘We Don’t Want the Pope Running the Country’

Posted on March 1, 2010 by lmharnisch

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“I’d Like to Examine This Young Woman!”

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March 1, 1960: Samuel Lubell focuses on Vice President Richard Nixon in his survey of Southern voters and dismisses Democrats' chances, but there's a more complicated portrait of the South buried a few paragraphs further into the story. 

Look at the sampling of quotes: "The Supreme Court has made its decision and it makes no difference who is president" …  "There isn't any difference between the Democrats and Republicans on segregation" …  "No candidate will agree with the South" and "The South can't win. The rest of the country is against us."

And how about the quote on Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) “We don’t want the pope running the country.”

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Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Feb. 29, 1960

Posted on March 1, 2010 by lmharnisch

Feb. 29, 1960, Mirror Cover

Bringing Up Beverly; by Mother Aadland

Paul Coates

    While the rest of you were idly accomplishing a variety of things over the week end, I was interviewing Mrs. Florence Aadland.

    Mrs Aadland, mother of Beverly, protege of the late Errol Flynn, found her way back into the news with the disclosure that she had gone to the Sunset Strip apartment of a 32-year-old skin diver named JackDulin.  She was looking for her daughter.  Jack had inhospitably welcomed her with a load of shot from an old English pistol.

    Preliminary to this, Mrs. Aadland had made an unsuccessful court attempt to retrain him from dating her 17-year-old daughter.  When I met with her she was still smarting from this setback.

    She barely made it inside my office before announcing, "If the man who came up with that verdict calls himself a judge, then I'm Lana Turner."

    It was following this rather intriguing commentary on the American judicial system that we got down to the subject of our two-man seminar:  The care and feeding of precocious children.

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Kennedy and Catholicism

Posted on March 1, 2010 by lmharnisch

Feb. 29, 1960, Kennedy 

Note: For quite a while, the Daily Mirror has been clicking along in perfect synchronization with the past. Mondays were Mondays and Fridays were Fridays. No more, because 1960 was a leap year and 2010 isn't.

Feb. 29, 1960: The Times’ Robert T. Hartmann takes a look at Sen. John F. Kennedy's Catholicism, a central issue in the 1960 presidential race.  "The deep-rooted concern over a Catholic chief executive stems not wholly from blind prejudice but from the original sense of the term 'Protestant,' " Hartmann writes.

"The often unspoken question is whether Kennedy would be subject to, and responsive to, the discipline and direction of the Roman Catholic clergy while executing the office of the president of the United States." 

On the jump, Hartmann says Jackie Kennedy is a liability – she’s too beautiful!

“Finally, and this compounds his other problems, there is Mrs. Kennedy. She is also too young, too rich and too beautiful — not in a classic way but with the exotic elfin features of a high-fashion model. Those who know Jackie Kennedy like her very much. But to strangers she is visibly bored by campaigning, no match at politics for the practiced partners of Johnson, Humphrey, Nixon and Symington.”

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Posted in Film, Hollywood, JFK, Politics, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment

Ultimate Baby Einstein? Sperm Bank Specializes in Nobel Winners

Posted on March 1, 2010 by lmharnisch

Feb. 29, 1980, TRS-80

Look! It’s a Trash 80 with 64K RAM and an 8-inch floppy drive for only $3,450 [$8,902.02 USD 2008].

Feb. 29, 1980, Sperm Bank

Feb. 29, 1980: Let’s see … a sperm bank of Nobel-winning scientists. These children should be at least 30 now.Wonder what they're up to.

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From the Vaults: ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ (1920)

Posted on March 1, 2010 by lmharnisch
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April 13, 1920: “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'” at the Million Dollar Theatre… Not for weaklings and mollycoddles!  – with Jesse Crawford at the Organ.  

Note: Since we began in 2007,  the Daily Mirror has wanted to provide posts about historic films, but like the rest of the DM, we wanted to make it a unique, personal view. We found a fresh, original voice in Anne Elisabeth Dillon, who works around the corner from us on the National copy desk. Please welcome her — lrh

Jekyllpatient I feel unqualified to talk about “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1920). Watching a silent film is like studying a museum piece. It's so stylized that it doesn't feel anything like what we know as a movie; talking about it should require an advanced degree of some kind. But it's still available for movie-watching yahoos like me to just sit down and watch. Which I did the other night, and I loved it.

At first it's just a blast to sit down and watch a movie from 1920. The lighting flickers like a lantern – I kept thinking how great it would look projected on the wall of a nightclub. The costumes are exquisite. Everyone wears fabulous eyeliner.

Also, this was my first John Barrymore movie, and yummm… he was called the Great Profile, but he is truly beauteous from all angles. So tall and regal! And the title cards have gorgeous Art Deco-style designs on them.
April 11, 1920, Barrymore, JekyllSure, the stylization is sort of distancing for the modern viewer, but after a while you do get caught up in the story.

Dr. Jekyll has some out-there scientific ideas, but morally speaking he is extremely virtuous, what with running a low-income medical establishment (the shots of Edinburgh's poor, standing around his waiting room hoping for affordable healthcare, are shockingly familiar, even with the abundance of picturesque shawls) and being engaged to the good and kind Millicent.

Millicent's dad, Sir George (Brandon Hurst, who is no slouch himself in the profile department) is a good friend of Dr. Jekyll's and takes him out for a night at the dance hall. There we meet dancer Gina, who is dangerously Italian – we deduce, from her one-shouldered outfit, that she is not so virtuous as Millicent. Dr. J. is fascinated by her, and shortly thereafter gets cracking on his famous potion.

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Posted in Fashion, Film, From the Vaults, Hollywood | 2 Comments

Downtown Parking Ban to Ease Traffic

Posted on February 28, 2010 by lmharnisch

Feb. 29, 1920, No Parking 

To ease congested streets, Los Angeles will ban street parking from Figueroa to Los Angeles streets and 1st to 9th streets. Notice that Spring hasn’t been straightened out yet, another attempt to relieve traffic. 

Feb. 29, 1920, Parking

Feb. 29, 1920, Parking

Feb. 29, 1920, Children 

L.O. Keown  and his wife (God-fearing, churchgoing, hardworking people, The Times says) were too busy to teach three of their eight children to speak English, so the youngsters made up their own language. Now child welfare officials want them to break them of the invented language and have them speak the language that “is their birthright.”

Feb. 29, 1920: If the plan to ban parking in downtown Los Angeles sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Back in 1908, the city did something similar with horse-drawn freight wagons. 

"At every corner where two streets cross, we used to see an express wagon, as many as four at a junction, standing there most of the day waiting for business to come to them. And at some places were these big furniture vans almost as big as a house," one unidentified councilman said, according to The Times of May 16, 1908.

And The Times manages to drag in a little riff on women shoppers and their long-suffering husbands who can wait in no-parking zones for no more than two minutes. 

I can't say it often enough: Traffic congestion in Los Angeles is at least a 100-year-old problem. If there were easy answers, it would have been resolved decades ago.

Posted in Downtown, Education, Freeways, Transportation | 1 Comment

Doobie Brothers, Billy Joel Shut Out Disco at Grammys

Posted on February 28, 2010 by lmharnisch
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Feb. 28, 1980, Jim Murray
Feb. 28, 1980, Jim Murray

Feb. 28, 1980: The Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes" wins the Grammy for best single while Billy Joel's "52nd Street" wins for best album. Bonus appearance: Bob Dylan! … and Jim Murray writes about Spectacular Bid.

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Hearing on the Gas House, Part 3

Posted on February 28, 2010 by lmharnisch

DSCF1900 

Sept. 8, 1959: This is the third part of a transcript of testimony by “Holy Barbarians” author Lawrence Lipton before the the Los Angeles Police Commission on the Gas House, the Beat hangout in Venice.  Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

Excerpt: “A square is a person who is a conformist with the ways and — of society, its institutions; does not question them and — does not subscribe to the way of life of a Beatnik. This does not mean he is an anti-Beatnik. He might be a Sunday Beatnik who comes around only on weekends for his fling….”

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A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Movie Columnist

Posted on February 28, 2010 by lmharnisch
Feb. 28, 1939, Hedda Hopper  
Feb. 28, 1938: Hedda Hopper writes, "I chatted, for the first time, with Franchot Tone. A fine, intelligent actor. His crooked smile always annoyed me, and suddenly I knew it was to cover up an inferiority complex. I'd like to see him do Adolphe Menjou parts." And Bill Fields wishes her good luck! 

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U.S. Doomed by a Culture of Leisure

Posted on February 28, 2010 by lmharnisch
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“Give Me Your Pistol, Buck. Mine’s Overheated!”

Feb. 28, 1960, This Week 

In 1960, The Times was inserting This Week magazine in the Sunday papers. The editor was William I. Nichols, who countered the phrase “Better Dead Than Red” with the slogan “Better Brave Than Slave.”
 

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"This Week's first editor, Mrs. William Brown Meloney, wrote the words quoted on the eve of World War II. We reprint them now, as a tribute to her — and to mark the 25th anniversary of the magazine's first issue, which appeared Feb. 24, 1935. It is now a full generation since these words were written, but even in a world of missiles and H-bombs their message remains unchanged."

–William I. Nichols, Editor

Feb. 28, 1960, Whitman

The prolific Howard “Crisis in Morals” Whitman begins another series in The Times, launched with a pithy comment by a conveniently anonymous companion. This one reminds me of the “Athens vs. Sparta, U.S. vs. the Soviet Union” lectures we had in sophomore history class. 

Feb. 28, 1960, Whitman

“It is doubtful that teenage charge accounts will solve our youngsters’ problems of civilized behavior, sex orientation, respect for elders or serious preparation for adult living,” Whitman says.  [What a curious mention of homosexuality – or at least I take it that way. Hm. – lrh] 

Feb. 28, 1960, Gallup Poll

Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) leads Democratic candidates in the latest Gallup poll, beating former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, Sen. Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas) and Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) in hypothetical matches.

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The Times op-ed page reeks of must and mildew: Yet another stodgy, cliched political cartoon by Bruce Russell, and a piece by Kyle Palmer lobbing another hand grenade at the Democrats. Palmer is usually described as The Times’ political powerbroker, a staunch Republican who made Richard Nixon. But he strikes me as a sad fellow who was utterly blinded by his agenda.  

Feb. 28, 1960, Carl Furillo
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Feb. 28, 1960, Carl Furillo

Feb. 28, 1960: Are the Dodgers going to get rid of Carl Furillo, who played only 50 games last season?  The answer will come in May.

Posted in art and artists, Comics, JFK, Politics, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment