Found on EBay — One Magazine

Posted on June 29, 2009 by lmharnisch

The inaugural January 1953
issue of One magazine, published in Los Angeles, has been listed on
EBay. One was a historic magazine that dealt with gay issues. It was declared obscene by the Postal Service, resulting in a landmark 1st Amendment ruling. Bidding starts at $9.99.

Update: This item sold for $455.

Posted in #gays and lesbians, art and artists, books | Comments Off

Matt Weinstock, June 29, 1959

Posted on June 29, 2009 by lmharnisch

Those Plastic Bags

There are times when public servants feel they aren't getting through to the public they're trying to serve.

Not long ago George M. Uhl,
city health officer, warned of the dangers of permitting children to
play with plastic bags, from which three children in his area have
died. They use them as helmets in playing spaceman. Infants elsewhere
in the nation have been suffocated by plastic coverings on mattress
pads.

In his warning Dr. Uhl said the plastic material apparently set up an electrostatic charge, causing it to cling to the face.

A
housewife phoned a few days later and said she used the bags to store
fruit and vegetables, first scrubbing them out with hot, soapy water.
What she wanted to know was would this kill the dangerous germs from
outer space the health department had warned about.

"What was that again?" a startled health man asked.

"You should know!" the irate woman said, "you warned us to watch out for static germs from outer space in plastic bags!"

You can't win them all.

AS HE prepared
to depart on a trip for New York a business executive had a violent
quarrel with his wife. So, to let her know she couldn't push him
around, he took out $125,000 in accident insurance at the airport
naming himself as beneficiary and mailed it to her.

RESPITE
Gals appear in summer frocks,
The mercury is rising.
Vacation time! Good-by to clocks
And hard-sell advertising.
–JOSEPH P. KRENGEL

THE ULTIMATE
ignominy has come to a proud small car owner. He drove into a downtown
hotel parking lot, accepted the receipt from the attendant and went to
his appointment. When he returned to retrieve his tiny Metropolitan he
noticed that the attendant had written opposite "Make of car" the word
"Bug."

SANTA MONICANS
may be interested to learn that North Young has traced the origin of a
classic slang expression to the loading dock of the Bay City Mask Co.
HalO'Ween, the firm's president, confided to him recently that one of
his shipping clerks, U. Snow Hooks, had been shouting this expression a
decade before it became popular.

As Hooks was said to clam up
around the idly curious, North borrowed the company's Mask No. 99 and,
posing as a time-study engineer, stationed himself on the loading dock.
Soon some chickens from a neighboring poultry shop flew up onto the
platform and began pecking holes in the cardboard boxes awaiting
shipment. Hooks rushed out and shouted toward the poultry shop, "Keep
your carton-pecking hens out of here!"

A WHILE BACK Bill Sanella,
Burbank auto dealer, called attention here to the unfairness of the
state sales tax on autos. For instance, suppose you are allowed $2,000
on the car you turn in on a $3,000 car. Only $1,000 cash is involved,
but you must pay sales tax on the full $3,000.

Since, readers
have been pointing out that when the car is resold each new buyer must
pay sales tax on the full purchase price. The refrain: "Where did they
get that name — Board of Equalization?"

AT RANDOM — Every time a new Explorer satellite is sent aloft Tom Cracraft has a countdown of his own — only he enumerates them differently: Expenditure III, Expenditure IV, Expenditure V … Helen
Hall, the real estate lady, asked for a compass in a dime store and the
clerk replied, "We have compasses for drawing circles but not for going
places." Fortunately, she was not going anywhere … A man at a
sidewalk stand declined mustard on his hot dog. "Ulcer," he explained.
When the lady handed it to him he said brightly, "As soon as I divorce
her I can have mustard again" … When she doesn't feel up to par a
lady addicted to adult westerns says, "I feel like just another notch
in a killer's gun."

Posted in Columnists, Matt Weinstock | Comments Off

Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, June 29, 1959

Posted on June 29, 2009 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

Kid Racketeers Outdoing Mafia

I can tell by looking at you that you are a wide-awake member of this community.

When
you read this daily newspaper you don't limit yourself to the dated
happenings of the Paleolithic Age, as reported by Alley Cop. Nor do you
think the open sesame of all knowledge is when you "Ask Andy."

You
are the rare type who — on occasion, at least — turns from the comic
pages to digest the more significant text of the news pages.

And
since you do, you are well aware that Page 1, in recent weeks, has been
devoted to the hue and cry about an alleged fraternity of bocce ball players called the Mafia.

It's
being intensely investigated by congressional committees, state Senate
subcommittees, women's clubs, Sunday supplements and Sam Katzman.

I am not unsympathetic to this widespread probing.

If there is a Mafia, we should know about it at once and do something about it.

What
we do, we make a movie on it starring Julius La Rosa as the nice
Italian kid whose old lady always hoped he would be an opera star, but
he winds up being a torpedo for the mob. However, he goes straight in
the last three scenes and marries Anna Maria Alberghetti, a nice Italian kid.

But look at me. I digress.

What
I started to say is that I don't object to their looking into crime.
Trouble is, they haven't come up with anything conclusive about the
Mafia.

The authorities disagree. Parker says there is one. And Cohen says there isn't one.

Or, more specifically, there ain't none.

And while they've been haggling, another syndicate has moved in right under their very noses.

It
has come to my attention from a number of sources that a mob made up of
little 11-year-old moppets is working the old Girl Scout cooky racket all over town.

First reports came from South L.A. where citizens began calling in complaints that pre-teen youngsters were knocking at their doors and representing themselves as bona fide Brownies. They announced that they were taking orders for Girl Scout cookies at 50 cents a box.

Collect Money and Lam

They collected in advance, lammed, and you know the rest — no cookies.

The
MO has been pretty well defined. The smallest one in the mob makes the
pitch and affects an appealing lisp. They work a neighborhood dry in
approximately one week and then move to another section.

For example, after South Los Angeles, they were reported in the central district. After that in the vicinity of Melrose
and Virgil. And just yesterday I got a call from a lady in the heart of
Hollywood, saying she and all her neighbors had been taken by the
little tykes.

The situation is really out of hand.

If you
ask me, our law-enforcement agencies should stop debating the existence
of the Mafia and concentrate on bringing these phony Girl Scouts to
justice.

And once we get them, what we do, we make a movie on
it, starring Judy Garland as the nice little kid whose old lady always
hoped she would be an opera star, but…

Posted in Columnists, Paul Coates | Comments Off

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept: Your Mideast Conflict

Posted on June 29, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 29, 1983: In Lebanon, rebels trying to displace Yasser Arafat as head of the PLO attack positions held by loyalists in fighting along the Beirut-Damascus highway. Note the byline: J. Michael Kennedy, now of NPR.

Posted in @news | Comments Off

Holy Barbarians

Posted on June 29, 2009 by lmharnisch

Above, the dust jacket of Lawrence Lipton's "Holy Barbarians" that's in pretty good shape. Obviously owned by a square.

June 28, 1959: Lawrence Lipton uses a review of "The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men," by Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg to explore bohemian life of the 1950s.

The reading list at the Daily Mirror HQ is long and quirky: "Never So Few"
and "Go Naked Into the World" by Tom T. Chamales, "Muscatel at Noon" by
Matt Weinstock and EBay's latest contribution to my shelf of books by
W.W. Robinson. Then there's the desiderata, like "The Bridal Night of
Ronald and Thusnelda."

What jumped to the top of the list is Lawrence Lipton's "Holy
Barbarians," a 1959 chronicle of the Beats in Venice, which I encountered
somewhere in the clips, possibly a Weinstock column, although I
can't find it now.

The
book
showed up in the mail a few days ago courtesy of EBay, so I've been
playing Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and some Coltrane all weekend to
create the
right mood while I read it. To do the job right, I suppose I should
have a set of bongo drums somewhere, hang netting and sea shells on the
walls and fill the place with stale marijuana smoke, but I'm not that
much of a stickler for authenticity.

The former husband of mystery novelist Craig Rice, Lipton was born in
1898, so he was about 60 when he wrote the book, roughly the twice the
age of the beatniks who considered him an elder statesman of their
disaffiliated generation.

Lipton
was the Boswell of these Beats, capturing their lives in exquisite and
often excruciating detail. It's fair to say that the book wasn't
written as much as it was tape-recorded. Many conversations, some of
them quite long, are merely transcribed from tapes Lipton made of his
friends.

Behold, actual hipster talk (Page 102):

"It
isn't art or intellectualism, it isn't genius that's got me hooked.
It's the life. Do you have any idea what it's like out there? Sure, it
isn't Main Street any more. Sinclair Lewis' Gopher Prairie is a thing
of the past. So is Zenith City, for that matter.Squareville is modern
now. It's got network television and Life magazine culture. You can
tune in the Metropolitan opera on the radio. You can stay out late and
come home drunk once in a while without being hounded out of town. You
can play around a little, if you're discreet about it, without too much
talk. The drugstores carry paperback editions of Plato and Lin Yutang.

"But
the tension! Wages go up three cents and coffee goes up ten. So they
pipe sweet Muzak into the supermarkets and you go around in a daze
loading up that cute little chromium-plated cart without looking at the
price tags. And let most of it rot in the refrigerator before you get
to it. Last year's car is out of style before you finish paying for the
tail fins. It's a rat race. Who's got time to laze around in the sand
for an hour, or take a quiet walk by the ocean in the evening, or watch
a sunset?

"Here I can get away from it for a while, at least
evenings and weekends. I can do without things. God! do you know what a
relief that is? Not to have to keep up with anybody. Nobody to show off
for. The people at the office, they don't even know where I live. I
tell them I live in Santa Monica. That's close enough, and it sounds
respectable. It's got the same telephone exchange as Venice, so nobody
suspects anything.

"This is the one place I've ever lived
where you can take your skin off and sit around in your bare bones, if
you want to. Only the rich, surrounded by acres of land and iron
fences, can enjoy anything like that kind of privacy. That's what I
mean by being hip. And staying cool."

Barbara Lane is part
time square and part time hipster, but her heart is in Venice West. "In
town, at the office, I work. Here I live," she will tell you. "It's
like having one foot on each side of the tracks. But that's the only
way I can make it."

Notice that there isn't a single "daddy-o." In fact, there isn't one in the entire book. If you think James Ellroy's novels are written in authentic hipster talk, you'll be shocked that their speech is so ordinary — though they do ramble.

I
have more to say about "Holy Barbarians," but I'm only halfway through
it. You might want to read along. The book is available for free from
archive.org in pdf and plain text format.

Is it worth reading? Consider these gems:

Page 20: By which I meant, I suppose, pretty much the same thing that
[Kenneth] Rexroth meant when he wrote, apropos of Bird and Dylan,
"Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense — the creative
act."

Page 103: Like Jack Kerouac says in On the Road, "Mexico is a whole nation of hipsters!"

Comments? Send them along.

Posted in Blues, books, Music, Nightclubs, Venice Division | 2 Comments

Dodgers Beat Padres 19-0

Posted on June 29, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 29, 1969: The Dodgers gained a share of a National League record thanks in large part to their struggling young neighbors to the south, the Padres.

The Dodgers scored 10 times in the third and demolished the Padres, 19-0, equaling the largest winning margin ever in a National League game. The Dodgers scored and scored and it wasn't pretty. They needed only six hits in the 10-run inning. The Padres contributed six walks and five wild pitches.

How bad were the Padres?

"The Mets of 1962 lost 120 games, a record figure, and historians will tell you there has not been a poorer team," wrote The Times' John Wiebusch. "That's the trouble with historians, they're always looking at the past. Someone had better start watching the San Diego Padres of 1969."

–Keith Thursby

Posted in Dodgers | Comments Off

Lawyer’s Life Unravels

Posted on June 29, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 29, 1889: Attorney Duval denies being a drug addict.

Posted in #courts | Comments Off

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept: Your Job

Posted on June 28, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 28, 1981: Lockheed is hiring.

Posted in Transportation | Comments Off

Bridging the Bay

Posted on June 28, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 28, 1921: Our favorite Times artist, Charles Owens, sketches a proposed bridge across San Francisco Bay from Hunter's Point to Alameda.

Posted in Architecture, art and artists, Nuestro Pueblo | 2 Comments

The Family That Likes to Fight

Posted on June 28, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 28, 1899: Cooking with a gasoline stove.

Meet the battling Colan boys!

Posted in #courts, Architecture, Food and Drink | Comments Off

Peculiar Insanity

Posted on June 28, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 28, 1889: The Times pays a call on Mrs. Elizabeth Severet, who is ailing and a bit crazy. Upon later examination, her mind was clear and she said she planned to live with relatives in Baltimore.

Posted in health | Comments Off

Matt Weinstock, June 27, 1959

Posted on June 27, 2009 by lmharnisch

Re: Sharks

There's so much activity in Sharksville
these days, first thing anyone knows the papers will appoint shark
editors. Meanwhile, a man who used to be a commercial shark fisherman
says it's a waste of time to try to kill them from a distance with
rifle fire.

When he went after the big blues and whites off Baja
California the procedure was to slip up behind them — they swim just
below the surface — and harpoon them with a 12-ft. pole with a
detachable 3-ft. steel spear on the end. Attached to the spear was a
dynamite charge with a one-minute fuse. The harpooned shark always
dove, thenblooie!

During a shark-scare discussion at a party in Canoga
Park, Harry Gibson reports, a girl remarked, "And I always thought a
basking shark was a con man lolling in the sun at Palm Springs."

On the wrist watch found in a 750-lb. shark killed off Catalina, Jack L. Peterson and Elliott Earll chorused: "I knew that some day John Cameron Swayze would go too far with those Timex commercials."

And
some brash young men, who had painted the fins of their surfboards
black, came rushing at a cluster of girls at Hermosa Beach with the
boards upside down, yelling, "Shark!" Broke the ice very nicely.

AWHILE BACK,
a lady in Eagle Rock reported six quarter-pounds of margarine had
splashed on her roof and driveway as if dropped from a great height.
The assumption was that they had fallen or been thrown from a plane.

Bob Presnell, the movie writer, who lives on Magnolia Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, offers another mystery. He found a recently deceased fish –a tomcod, he thinks –in his back yard. Only explanation –a nervous seagull dropped it.

Step right up folks, and report your phenomena.

REMINDER
Variety is the spice of life —
But don't forget you have a wife
–J.S. McHOSE

LIFE BECAME a little confusing a few days ago aboard an El Paso-to-L.A.
plane. En route the pilot announced that arrival time would be 5:30,
then said, "Oh, I'm sorry, that's eastern time, I'll have to figure it
out and let you know." As the plane was about to get down at
International Airport the stewardess gave the weather reading, then
said it was 7:30 in Los Angeles. A passenger told her it was really
8:30 and when the ship came to a stop the confused girl asked the
attendant who opened the door, "What time is it, please?"

THREE broken-down politicians stood on a Spring St. corner chatting the other day and one said, "We are victims of McGloober's disease."

"What's that?" he was asked.

"McGloober's disease," was the reply, "is the inexorable law of politics — the bad politicians drive out the good."

"You are paraphrasing Gresham's law of money," his questioner said.

The
third, hitherto silent, said sadly, "I'm glad to know that we are
associated, however remotely, with money. I haven't seen any lately."

THAT THUD you just heard was a fellow named Al falling out of his chair at hearing for the 64th
time a marshal or a mayor in a western drama say, "This is going to be
a big country some day, son, the frontier is growing up, and you better
realize guns never settled anything."

VACATION NOTE — Ernie Maxwell reports that a young man leaned back comfortably against a tall pine in Idyllwild
and mused, "For thousands of years man has been fighting his way out of
the woods — now he's working like crazy to get back into them."

FOOTNOTES — Last Monday a man leading a lame horse north on Sepulveda from Imperial Blvd. had reached the tunnel under the airstrip as Harold Mallon drove by. Maybe someone can tell him, did they make it through the blinding, poor-lighted bore? … Jay Gurey doesn't need to listen to the radio for weather reports. "When I can see the Tishman Building from 3rd and Western," he says, "I know there's no smog alert."

Posted in Columnists, Matt Weinstock | Comments Off

Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, June 27, 1959

Posted on June 27, 2009 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

Mash Notes and Comments

"Dear Mr. Coates,

"Are you acquainted with the following fact?

"A cat can stray into your garage, find a comfortable place to sleep.

"You put your car in the garage, lock the door and retire.

"He wakes up any time in the night and wants to get out.

"The owner hears it and calls you on the phone and demands that you get up and let his cat out of your garage.

"If you are like me, you tell him where to go, and go back to sleep.

"Next the sheriff rings your bell and you get up and let the cat out, no ifs or buts.

"You may be old. You may be sick. The night may be cold and damp, but you get out of a warm bed and go out and let the cat out.

"You may be discomforted, but who cares? The cat is happy.

"This happened to me the other night.

"I supposed it will happen again, but what can I do about a cat like that?" (signed) O.E. Van Tuyl, 8914 Marshall, Rosemead.
—I could tell you, O.E., but the sheriff will be after both of us.

(Press
Release) "It probably never will be recorded in the history books, but
the current Look magazine reports that Vice President Nixon is the
fastest dresser in high office.

"His time: eight minutes for
formal clothes, two and half minutes for regular wear." (signed)
Publicity Dept., Look Magazine, New York City.
—Pull down the shades, Pat. Here comes that Look reporter with his damn stop watch again.

"My dear friend:

"May I share with you a very exciting experience I have enjoyed?

"Should you be impressed with my story, please pass it along to your friends.

"I
attended a 13-week course with the Simmons Institute on human
relations. One of the assignments during this course was to go home and
tell our spouses, 'I love you because' — giving a new reason for 30
consecutive days, and then bring in a report.

"I was quite impressed with this assignment and asked many of my friends and relatives to help me out.

"It was amazing how the reports came in. Some spouses were shocked, some suspicious and some made a game of it.

"Best
of all, I like to tell about an attorney I know who specializes in
divorce cases. Since I told him of this assignment, he now instructs
his clients to try the above advice for one week before he takes the
case.

"If, by the end of the week, they still want the divorce he will then proceed to get it for them.

"He
instructs them to say, 'Even though I am going to divorce you, I want
you to know that I love you because' — giving them several reasons
such as: you are a good dancer, you are handsome, you are helpful, etc.

"Was I thrilled by the result of the first case he reported me!

"Before the week was over, this client phoned to say, 'It's all off!'

"Imagine just the communication of the four powerful words, 'I love you because'…

"Try it on your wife –the results will be very gratifying, I assure you." (signed) Mrs. Violet Dworman, 1411 N. Fairfax, L.A.
—What's the use, Violet? These Hollywood marriages never last, anyway.

Posted in Columnists, Paul Coates | Comments Off

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Music

Posted on June 27, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 27, 1979: The Zenith, with stereo tuner, plays records, cassettes and eight-track tapes. The price is $469.95, including speakers. That's $1,376.31 USD 2008. And you can probably pick up one in a thrift store for $10.

Posted in #Jazz, Music, Rock 'n' Roll | Comments Off

Minister, Wife, Pray as Confession to Sex Crime Is Read

Posted on June 27, 2009 by lmharnisch

Los Angeles Times file photo

May 4, 1939: Church members rally around the Rev. Joseph Jeffers and his wife, Zella, after their arraignment.

June 27, 1939: The Rev. Joseph Jeffers and his wife, Zella, pray as her confession is read in court. They were accused of a sex crime that The Times considered unprintable. The defense charged that Jeffers was framed because of his controversial views against Catholics and Jews.

Posted in #courts, Religion | Comments Off

Woman, Baby Hurt in Bike Crash

Posted on June 27, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 27, 1899: The Times published many stories about fires that were started by gasoline stoves. Given the primitive nature of firefighting at the time, the results were often tragic.

June 27, 1899: A woman with her baby crashes while trying to ride her bicycle down 1st Street. Before it was altered, 1st Street was extremely steep with a 45-degree grade. The old Central Police Station was on the south side of 1st between Broadway and Hill.

Posted in 1899, Downtown, LAPD | 1 Comment

Lawsuit Over Estate Reveals Abusive Home

Posted on June 27, 2009 by lmharnisch

June 27, 1889: Redondo Beach and Inglewood are being developed.

June 27, 1889: A contested will brings the dirty linen of the Banta family into court … Eugene Destry's father-in-law accuses him of vagrancy as a last resort after Destry tried to persuade his sister-in-law to join his wife in a life of prostitution.

Posted in #courts | Comments Off

Found on EBay — Hanging Rock

Posted on June 26, 2009 by lmharnisch

A postcard listed on EBay shows an old Ventura County landmark that has been hidden for decades. The famous Hanging Rock was submerged by the reservoir of Matilija Dam, built to hold the Ventura River. The Matilija Coalition is trying to have the dam removed.

At left, a Oct. 17, 1901, Times story reports the beauty of Matilija Springs.

Bidding on the postcard starts at $5.99.

Posted in travel | Comments Off

Matt Weinstock, June 26, 1959

Posted on June 26, 2009 by lmharnisch

An Act to Remember

Unintentionally profound remarks come from the strangest places.

The setting for this one was postwar Japan. It was told to Hal Humphrey by publicist John Plake, who was there.

The
soldiers in a certain headquarters company had done everything there
was to do, which was not much, and they were bored, as the saying goes,
almost to tears.

One day they decided to put on a show. All available talent was rounded up and urged to do its worst.

ON THE schedule
that day there was the guitar player, the magician, the singer. Then
came the finale. A young man wearing a long underwear leotard, a fake
flower in his hair and papier-mache wings dashed out on the platform. He
spun around — perhaps pirouetted is the word — flapped his wings and
collapsed, not as gracefully as he imagined, like a fallen angel. He
half rose, flapped his wings one more time, looked out at the audience
and shouted hoarsely, "Everything is being done wrong!"

DID YOU KNOW that
news photographers have a theme song? Well, they do. Furthermore,
several of them sang it the other day when a burly, belligerent and
handcuffed prisoner, who indicated he hated cameramen, was escorted
into a courtroom.

It goes, "He who shoots and runs away (another version has it "from far away") lives to shoot another day."

PEOPLE IN A position
to give out complimentary tickets to theaters or other events are
constantly besieged by persons wishing same. In fact, handling tickets
can become a nuisance to the point of making other work secondary. And
so a certain editor, constantly fighting off the freeloading wolves,
notoriously fierce, derisively tears off two or three green stamps from
a sheet and hands them out with each pass.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

It isn't really necessary to teach us how to drive.

The thing we need instruction in is how to stay alive.

–FELIX DE COLA

AN ELDERLY woman who rides around in a one-seat electric car is a familiar sight around Bixby Park, Long Beach.

The
other day she went to a neighborhood market and purchased the few items
her limited income permits. When the box boy offered to carry them out
she said, smiling, "put them in the Cadillac, please." She confided to
the manager, "That's my little joke."

But when she went out to her car, no groceries. The boy had put them in the Cadillac and it was gone.

A BRITISHER
living here is known for his irascible temperament and his sardonic
view of civilization. Very little pleases him. When something
particularly irks him he writes a letter to the London Times. The other
day Martin Ragaway found him unaccountably pleasant. "If Charley gets
any sweeter," he admonished the Britisher's wife, "he'll have no
personality at all."

THE DARNEDEST
things happen in restaurants. Slim Means, veteran chef, was working
recently in a small seaside cafe and a waitress put in an order for two
friend eggs — one sunny-side up, the other over easy. He didn't
believe her but it was true. Two women had only the price of two eggs
and were going to split them. One wanted them one way, the other
another.

AT RANDOM — A girl with a Pasadena insurance company has the semi-official title Supervisor of Errors … Writer Caskie Stinnett,
here to host the Saturday Evening Post party Monday at the Beverly
Hills Hotel, was surprised to see so many people wearing wash-and-dry
suits. "It's the same old story," he said, "what is a new trend in
Philadelphia is a long-established tradition everywhere else" … The
way Bob Skeetz tells it, a gal in a bikini came into a beach city jewelry store and asked for one of those "sharkproof" watches … And Dick Degnon reports a Riverside Dr. surplus store is advertising shark repellent for bathers, with the slogan of "Don't be a shark tidbit."

Posted in Columnists, Matt Weinstock | Comments Off

Paul V. Coates — Confidential File, June 26, 1959

Posted on June 26, 2009 by lmharnisch

Confidential File

Mickey to Hit Banquet Trail

Mickey
Cohen, reputed former czar of a million-dollar bookie empire, is
preparing to hit the banquet trail to spread the word that "crime don't
pay."

Already
a verbal-contract agreement has been reached between the ex-mobster and
the head of a nationally known lecture agency, whose clients include
U.S. senators, admirals and university presidents.

The agency, with offices here and in the East, reportedly is set to finalize negotiations within a few days.

The plan — learned exclusively by the Mirror-News — was confirmed to me today by Cohen and, in part, by the involved agency.

A
spokeswoman for the lecture booking outfit admitted that preliminary
conferences had been held, and that at present the agency was "feeling
out the reaction."

"Whatever we do," she assured me excitedly, "we don't want to change Mr. Cohen's style of murdering the King's English.

"In person," she added, "he's quite a different man than I expected. He's — I suppose I shouldn't say it — but he's adorable."

Cohen,
while not so lavish in praise of his own appearance and personality,
pointed out in his conversation with me that he was fully qualified to
speak on a variety of subjects.

" 'Crime Don't
Pay' will be the theme," he explained, "but I can handle anything. Like
'Crime in Politics,' 'Juvenile Delinquency' and 'The Mafia.'

"The so-called Mafia," he corrected himself.

"What
I'll do is tell them the experiences I went through," he said. "I'll
show them that all is not gold that glitters. A fast buck ain't all
that it's set up to be. Things like that."

Mickey
explained that his decision to stump the fried chicken and mashed
potato circuit was prompted by a conversation he had with Mirror-News
columnist Drew Pearson on a recent trip east.

"Pearson
told me I should give lectures," he said. "But I done it before. Once I
spoke in Oxnard to 300 people. And another time, I spoke to a juvenile
delinquency home in Banning."

"When
you drive an expensive car and wear expensive clothes," I asked Mickey,
"isn't it going to be hard to prove your point that crime doesn't pay?"

"I don't dress expensive," he replied. "I'm just neat."

I asked him what arguments he'd use to show that crime doesn't pay.

"I'll
use me as an example," he said. "I'll them it's no good when you're
notorious and you've got people pointing at you all the time.

"And," he added, "when you're harassed and bothered all the time by the police, it just don't pay."

He explained to me that the tentative format for his tour would be a lecture, followed by a question-and-answer session.

"Suppose
somebody in the audience asks you how you can look so prosperous with
no visible means of support, Mickey? How would you answer that?"

He was thoughtful, but only for the briefest moment. "I'll tell them," he said, "that I got a big borrowing capacity.

"Besides,"
he went on, "I'll be getting paid, remember? I used to do those
lectures as favors. I didn't know there was dough in it."

Mickey
admitted that he had some qualms about facing women's clubs around the
country, but what he liked best was "straight from the shoulder" talks
to juvenile delinquents.

Wants to Help a Little

"Like
that time in Banning, he said, "I told those kids that if I could get
one of them to go straight, I'd feel I done something."

I asked Mickey if he planned to make a specialty of lecturing to juveniles.

He
shrugged. "I don't know whether the agency will book me in them places.
I don't think those institutions have that kind of dough."

The
lecture agency, which books speakers for the United States, Canada and
Hawaii, has numbered among its clients Sen. Paul Douglas, Dr. Robert M.
Hutchins, Drew Pearson, Sen. J. William Fulbright and Vice Admiral Munson.

The agency's spokeswoman assured me that such company wouldn't be too fast for Mickey.

"Our clients are all top men," she said, "but after all, Mr. Cohen, in a sense, was a captain of industry in his field.

"I think he'll be a tremendous hit with the women," she added. "He's really quite captivating."

Then, with a sigh, she concluded: "But maybe I'm prejudiced. I've always been intrigued by cops and robbers."

Posted in Columnists, Mickey Cohen, Paul Coates | Comments Off

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Re: Sharks

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An Act to Remember

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Confidential File

Mickey to Hit Banquet Trail

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