Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on June 2, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main Title: Lettering over Art Deco background.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1936 Universal film Three Smart Girls, with Binnie Barnes, Alice Brady, Ray Milland, Charles Winninger, Mischa Auer, Ernest Cossart, Lucile Watson, John King, Nella Walker, Hobart Cavanaugh, and the Three Smart Girls: Nan Grey, Barbara Read and Deanna Durbin. Continue reading →

Posted in 1936, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , , | 46 Comments

November 1947: Women Charged Under 1872 Law for Same-Sex Marriage

Posted on June 2, 2025 by lmharnisch

L.A. Times, 1947

L.A. Times, 1947Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

They were a quiet young couple in their 20s, so quiet that their neighbors in Valley of the Moon, near Santa Rosa, rarely saw them. David Warren worked around their ranch and his wife taught at Sonoma Valley High School.

David and his wife were newlyweds, having taken out a wedding certificate in June and gotten married that month in San Francisco.

But although they lived modest lives, David failed to register for the draft and came to the attention of the FBI. When agents arrested him, they discovered the real story.

Marieta Cook, 26, and Thelma Walter, 28, told officials they fell in love while they were roommates at the University of California in 1940. “I’ve wanted to be a man ever since I was 5 years old,” Marieta said. The women were held under an 1872 law against impersonating another person and making false affidavits to marry.

Unfortunately, The Times never followed the United Press story on this case, so there’s no telling what became of Marieta and Thelma. A Google search turns up nothing. If they were alive today, they would be in their 80s. I would love to know what became of them.

Quote of the day: “Prefrontal lobotomy, a delicate brain operation, is recommended by two prominent neurosurgeons to relieve emotional tension from those patients who have ‘only pain and death to look forward to.’ ”
Drs. Walter Freeman and James W. Watts, “who have performed more than 400 such operations, usually for certain psychoses that have resisted all other forms of treatment.”

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Reminder – My Next ‘Ask Me Anything’ on the Black Dahlia Case Is June 3

Posted on May 27, 2025 by lmharnisch

Boxie and I will be doing a live “Ask Me Anything” on the Black Dahlia case Tuesday, June 3, 2025, at 10 a.m. Pacific time, on YouTube and Instagram (yes I’ve decided to go back).

Continue reading →

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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Stills Photographers Get the Perfect Shot

Posted on May 26, 2025 by lmharnisch

Comedy shot of a doctor's office in Dr. Skinnem's Wonderful Invention, 1911
A still from Kalem’s Dr. Skinnem’s Wonderful Invention (1912).

Long before the advent of trailers, television, and the internet to publicize movies, photographic stills sold motion pictures and stars to the general public. Scene stills were originally simply used as illustrations to sell movies to theatre owners through exhibitor bulletins and to suggest genre and action to potential audiences. Over the next couple of decades, studios developed new ways to organize and produce the images, as well as forming stills departments to organize the production and development of photos.

A new form of entertainment at the dawn of the twentieth century, moviemaking possessed no rules or regulations in how to create, market, or exhibit films. Early pioneers made it up as they went along, finding the best practices and tools in how to organize their industry. Producers and studios at first copied publicity and selling tools of theatre, the circus, and vaudeville, creating eyecatching lithographic posters to attract consumers and shooting photographs of important scenes more as marketing tools to exhibitors. Continue reading →

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on May 26, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main title: Art deco Lettering over art deco background.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1936 RKO film The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, with William Powell, Jean Arthur, James Gleason, Eric Blore, Robert Armstrong, Lila Lee, Grant Mitchell, Erin O’Brien-Moore, Ralph Morgan and Lucile Gleason. Continue reading →

Posted in 1936, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , | 41 Comments

George Hodel: Ask Me Anything, May 2025

Posted on May 20, 2025 by lmharnisch

Here’s Boxie and I with this month’s “Ask Me Anything” on George Hodel.

Warning. Wikipedia says: Larry Harnisch is an infamous debunker of the most popular theory surrounding George Hodel, who is one of the prime and most likely suspects. His claims against the validity of George Hodel are done so through ad hominem fallacies against Steve Hodel and self-declared “independent” research, rather than personal history and facts.

In this session, I discussed the TV mini-series “I Am the Night” and the accompanying podcast “Root of Evil.”
Continue reading →

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Black Dahlia: Eli Frankel’s ‘Sisters in Death,’ a Fraudulent ‘Solution’ to the Black Dahlia Case and the Murder of Leila Welsh

Posted on May 19, 2025 by lmharnisch

Book Cover, lettering over photos of Elizabeth Short and Leila Welsh

Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter, by Eli Frankel, Citadel Press, 400 pages, October 28, 2025. $29.

Yet another book that treats the murder of Elizabeth Short as a game of Clue in which an author thumbs through a list of suspects and produces a half-baked “solution” using torturous leaps of logic and fraudulent claims as necessary. A zealous but amateurish project that attempts to link two murders separated by five years and 1,600 miles that have nothing in common, implicating a man who committed neither murder. Only for “true” crime fanatics who are unconcerned with reality.

::

Sisters in Death is evidence of the dismal state of the “true” crime genre (truly there is no bottom to this market) and further proof, if any were necessary, that unsolved murders exert a powerful magnetism on one another in the public imagination. Cold cases separated by years, hundreds of miles and completely different methods miraculously become “just like” one another, the work of a shrewd serial killer who is always one step ahead of the hopelessly incompetent police. At least for the purposes of a devious author who isn’t shy of fabricating facts – and there is something about the Black Dahlia case that fosters lying among writers.

The accused “murderer” in question is Herman Carl Balsiger, who has been linked through crackpot internet theories to the March 9, 1941, killing of Leila Adele Welsh in Kansas City and the January 15, 1947,  murder in Los Angeles of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia. Continue reading →

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on May 19, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main title: Lettering over gray background.

This week’s mystery movie was the 1933 Warner Bros. film The Keyhole, with Kay Francis, George Brent, Glenda Farrell, Monroe Owsley, Allen Jenkins, Helen Ware, Henry Kolker and Ferdinand Gottschalk. Continue reading →

Posted in 1933, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , , | 44 Comments

‘Ask Me Anything’ on George Hodel – May 20

Posted on May 13, 2025 by lmharnisch

Reminder: Boxie and I will be doing a live “Ask Me Anything” on George Hodel and Steve Hodel on Tuesday, May 20, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube and Instagram.

Can’t make the live session? Email me your questions and I’ll answer them! The video will be posted once the session ends so you can watch it later. Remember, this is ask me anything, so please remember to ask questions rather than make comments. Thanks!

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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Griffith Observatory Celebrates 80 Years of Reaching for the Stars

Posted on May 12, 2025 by lmharnisch

image
The cover of an undated brochure about Griffith Observatory, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

Note: This is en encore post from 2015.

Originally a dream of Los Angeles benefactor and convicted murderer “Colonel” Griffith J. Griffith, Griffith Observatory now stands as one of the city’s preeminent and most beautiful structures. Looming high over Franklin Avenue and visible for miles, the magnificent building stands as one of Los Angeles’ Art Deco jewels. Still radiant after 80 years, the Griffith Observatory stands as a monument to ingenuity and ambition, urging residents to look up to the skies.

Griffith, a wealthy mining speculator, donated 3,015 acres of the old Rancho Los Feliz to the city of Los Angeles in 1896 for use as a public park. In 1903, however, residents turned against him after he shot his wife in the face during a drunken rage. Inspired by a look through Mount Wilson’s enormous telescope in 1912, Griffith offered Los Angeles $100,000 to construct a similar observatory on Mount Hollywood.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywood land: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

Continue reading →

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on May 12, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main Title: Lettering against trees in the background.

This week’s mystery movie was the 1932 film Cynara, with Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, Phyllis Barry, Henry Stephenson, Viva Tattersall, Florine McKinney and George Kirby. Continue reading →

Posted in 1932, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Black Dahlia: Ask Me Anything, May 2025

Posted on May 6, 2025 by lmharnisch


In the May 2025 Ask Me Anything on the Black Dahlia case, I talk about my work in progress, Heaven Is HERE!

I also discuss Eli Frankel’s forthcoming book Sisters in Death, which attempts to link Carl Balsiger to the murders of Elizabeth Short and Leila Welsh.

Continue reading →

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Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Carmel Myers Pioneers TV Talk Shows

Posted on May 5, 2025 by lmharnisch

Carmel Myers
Carmel Myers in a show from 1951 that featured Jeanette MacDonald.

Long before Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, or Ellen DeGeneres came on the scene, former silent film star Carmel Myers premiered the celebrity talk show with her self-titled “The Carmel Myers Show” in the early 1950s. Following in the footsteps of the “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” Myers allowed nothing to diminish or destroy her, surviving tragedy as well as failure. Reinventing herself several times, Myers pioneered in television as well as consumerism…

Born April 9, 1899, in San Francisco to rabbi and lecturer Isadore Myers, Carmel and her older brother Zion, later a screenwriter, were raised in Los Angeles after the family moved south in the early 1900s. Father Isadore ardently preached Zionism, returning the Jewish disaspora to their original home in the Holy Land, as well as acknowledging that the Talmud gave women equal rights.

Continue reading →

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on May 5, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main Title

This week’s mystery movie was the 1956 Twentieth Century-Fox film The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, with Tom Ewell, Sheree North, Rita Moreno, Rick Jason, Les Tremayne, Alice Reinheart, Gregory Walcott and Jean Willes. Continue reading →

Posted in 1956, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: TCM Classic Film Festival’s Fantastic Voyage

Posted on April 30, 2025 by lmharnisch

TCM_poster
While not quite as elaborate as in past years, the 16th Annual TCM Classic Film Festival still offered a tasty smorgasbord of movies, special events, and programming for classic movie fans. Spread out over four days and multiple venues at the end of April, the festival traveled the globe with its helpings of entertainment and education, meant to draw everyone from classic film fans to social media influencers to celebrity chasers.

Opening night featured travel to a galaxy far, far away with a screening of the seminal “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back,” preceded by introduction and salute to filmmaker George Lucas. High end passholders walked the red carpet along with celebrities before the grand festivities.

As usual, organizers created an elegant throwback in the Roosevelt Hotel’s Club TCM, with the feel of a classic era nightclub or lounge. Oversize portraits of such glamorous stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Gloria Swanson, Norma Shearer, and Paul Newman graced its walls. Display cases featured stylish costumes worn by Joan Crawford in “Mildred Pierce” (1945) and another film, Elizabeth Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1966), Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman from “Batman Returns” (1992), and a Dolores Del Rio outfit. Continue reading →

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Reminder – My Next ‘Ask Me Anything’ on the Black Dahlia Case Is May 6

Posted on April 29, 2025 by lmharnisch

Boxie and I will be doing a live “Ask Me Anything” on the Black Dahlia case Tuesday, May 6, at 10 a.m. Pacific time, on YouTube and Instagram (yes I’ve decided to go back).

Continue reading →

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Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on April 28, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main title: rain and a background strewn with pennies.

This week’s mystery movie was the 1936 Columbia film Pennies From Heaven, with Bing Crosby, Madge Evans, Edith Fellows, Louis Armstrong, Donald Meek, John Gallaudet, William Stack, Nana Bryant, Tommy Dugan and Nydia Westman. Continue reading →

Posted in 1936, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , | 31 Comments

Movieland Mystery Photo (Updated + + + +)

Posted on April 21, 2025 by lmharnisch

Main title: Lettering over image of cloverleaf.

This week’s mystery movie was the 1935 MGM film The Winning Ticket, with Leo Carrillo, Louise Fazenda, Ted Healy, Irene Hervey, James Ellison, Luis Alberni, Purnell B. Pratt, Akim Tamiroff, Betty Jane Graham, Billy Watson, Johnny Indrisano and Ronald Fitzpatrick (per the credits Roland Fitzpatrick in the AFI Catalog and IMDB) Continue reading →

Posted in 1935, Film, Hollywood, Mystery Photo | Tagged , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Mary Mallory: Hollywood Heights – ‘Auction of Souls’

Posted on April 21, 2025 by lmharnisch

Jue 23, 1919, Auction of Souls
Photo: June 23, 1919, “Auction of Souls.” Credit: Los Angeles Times

Note: This is an encore post from 2011.

Los Angeles has long been a haven for refugees and artists, particularly those fleeing political and militaristic struggles.  As early as 1915, Armenians began arriving in Southern California after fleeing from the massacres and pogroms inflicted on them by Kurds and Turks.  By December of that year, 1,500 Armenians lived here without knowing the whereabouts of many members of their families back home.

Many continued to come, as the papers warned of massacres, imprisonment, torture, and murder of innocent men, women, and children. Genocide.  An article’s headline in the September 27, 1915, Los Angeles Times read, “Massacre of Armenians at Height of Its Fury, … Report States that Five Hundred Thousand Men, Women, and Children Have Either Been Killed by the Turks or Driven to the Desert to Perish of Starvation – Extermination of Non-Moslems is Programme Decided Upon.”  850,000 were reported killed by late October, nearly three quarters of the population of the entire country.

Continue reading →

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George Hodel: Ask Me Anything, April 2025

Posted on April 15, 2025 by lmharnisch

Here’s Boxie and I with this month’s “Ask Me Anything” on George Hodel.

Warning. Wikipedia says: Larry Harnisch is an infamous debunker of the most popular theory surrounding George Hodel, who is one of the prime and most likely suspects. His claims against the validity of George Hodel are done so through ad hominem fallacies against Steve Hodel and self-declared “independent” research, rather than personal history and facts.

Also, Steve Hodel is editing his father’s Wikipedia page again, though it’s minor this time.

Continue reading →

Posted in Black Dahlia, Cold Cases, Homicide, LAPD | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment