Glendale 'Witch'

While recovering from the flu in 1942 Charlotte Armstrong amused herself by writing a mystery novel, "Lay On, MacDuff!"
To her surprise, she sold it and it was published the way she wrote it.
Until then she had been writing unsuccessful plays. Previous to that
she took classified ads on the phone for the New York Times.

It
seemed like a nice life compared to the arduous toil of writing and
rewriting plays and since that time she had written 13 more, almost one
a year, most of which have appeared in magazines. "A Dram of Poison,"
won the Mystery Writers "Edgar" as the best suspense novel of 1956 and
critic Anthony Boucher called her "one of the few authentic spell-casting witches of modern times."

HER NEWEST is "Duo," two short novels with an L.A. setting. Scheduled for publication later this year is "The Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci."

"There's
no such thing as coasting for Miss Armstrong, wife of ad man Jack
Lewis. She's at her typewriter every day at her home at 1700 Grandview Ave., Glendale. (What's that you say? People in Glendale don't write suspense novels? Huh!)

Miss Armstrong makes a fine distinction in this day of shoot-'em-up and beat-'em-up TV.

"I
find I kill off fewer and fewer characters all the time," she said. "My
'Dram of Poison' had no crime, no violence and no villain."

SOMETHING
has gone wrong with a Rolling Hills resident's TV set and all he gets
is a diagonal picture across the middle with the other two-thirds of
the screen, top and bottom, blacked out. Says he never had so much fun.
The horses in westerns look like dachshunds. As for the ladies at the
Academy Awards, my, my, such distortion.

COULD BE

–CALL CROTSENBERG

THE PHONE RANG at
the home of Bart Bradley, 12, TV actor and the caller asked, "Is Melvin
there?" Bart said he must have the wrong number. A moment later the
routine was repeated. The third time Bart said, "Melvin is being
punished–he can't come to the phone." That stopped it.

EVERYONE TALKS,
some in horrified tones, about juvenile delinquency but the County
Federation of Community Coordinating Councils tries to do something
about it by tracing its causes and understanding it.

The problem was pinpointed recently when a Pico
Rivera housewife reported two little strangers appeared at her home
with this note from their mother. "To whom it may concern: Please send
my children home by five." In other words, she didn't care where they
were just so they didn't bother her.

  NOTE FROM
a voter: "Do you suppose the people in politics and government got the
message last Tuesday that the 2-1 defeat of Prop. A meant we won't
stand for further tax increases? Or will we have to go through all that
again?" Don't hold your breath.

FOOTNOTES — Among
the interplanetary problems raised at the Space Conference in New York
was "Suppose a man sent to another planet liked it so much he didn't
want to return to earth" … The Animal Regulation Department has done
it again. In addition to 1,234 dog and 99 cat bites, the monthly report
lists the year's firstcoatimundi bite. Of course, we've also had chomps
by an eagle, an eland, a mole and an ocelot … Oops, a learned
professor on Channel 4's early morning show, "Continental Classroom,"
committed this redundancy: "The beam of light goes vertically straight
up" … "No truth to the rumor, Bob Holcomb says, that if and when the
cut version of "Gigi" is shown on the late, late show it will be called
"Gi."

Dilemma Continues

A year and a half ago the frustrating dilemma of Roy Huerta, 38, a cook, and his wife, Manuela, 32, was told here.

Ten
years before, in 1947, they were married in Los Angeles. One day in
1949 they took a trip to Tijuana. At the border on the way back they
were asked the usual questions.

Roy had no trouble. He was born in Johnstown, Pa., and served three years in the Army in World War II, 18 months in the South Pacific.

Manuela panicked. Born in Zacatecas,
Mexico, she speaks little English. She said she had never been in the
United States, then said she had. She was detained and accused of
entering this country illegally.

A hearing was set and she was
notified but, out of fear, she ignored the summons. She was convicted
of perjury and forbidden under theMcCarran Act to reenter the country.

"And
so for the last eight years," it was stated here, "Roy has made a
weekly pilgrimage to Tijuana. He takes along groceries, clothes and
gifts for the five children."

THE OTHER DAY a letter came in from Mrs. William Hr. Rosenblatt,
2424 Wilshire Blvd., stating, "The story in your column Sept. 13, 1957,
about Roy Huerta and his separation from his wife and children living
in Mexico has pricked my conscience daily. Can you let us known if this
situation still exists? An injustice of this kind disturbs me. Perhaps
enough attention can be focused on this case to try to heal one of the
many heartaches caused by theMcCarran Act."

THIS IS TO REPORT
that the situation is unchanged. Roy now works as a cook in a
restaurant on Sunset Boulevard and lives with a brother on North
Broadway.

He still travels to Tijuana each weekend to be with
his family. There are now six children, three girls and three boys. The
oldest, Gloria Jean, 9, and two others attend school.

Manuela's
case is at a stalemate. Roy has been told by attorneys and the
immigration people that the only hope is the repeal of theMcCarran Act.

Meanwhile,
this patient, conscientious man continues to look forward after nearly
10 years to the day that his family may join him in Los Angeles

DID YOU HEAR
about the tabulating machine that can translate into Russian and then
back into English? Someone inserted the line, "The spirit is willing
but the flesh is weak." It came out, "Vodka is ready but the meat's
gone bad."

RUMMAGE

Though I often buy a new car
Don't call me an easy touch,
It's because my new car dealer
Claims he needs used cars so much.

–PEARL ROWE

TWO YEARS AGO
Malvin Ward wrote a film based on the Mad Bomber of New York. One scene
showed airplane passengers' luggage being examined because of the bomb
threat.

Last week as he was about to take off for L.A. from Idlewild
Airport in N.Y. policemen surrounded the waiting room and asked
passengers to open their luggage for inspection. There was a rumor a
bomb would be planted in the plane.

The real-life incident had an odd twist. A heavy fog prevented the plane from taking off.

ONE OF THE
most imperishable lines I ever heard was the cry of a downtown newsboy,
now dead. No matter what the headlines stated he shouted, "It won't be
long now!"

Walking past sunset and Gower the other day I heard
another enduring remark, one unemployed actor sadly to another: "I've
never seen it like this before." And never will again.

AROUND TOWN — Language enrichment note: Mike Molony heard a customer tell Eddie, a Hill Street bartender, how he "got stooken" with a bum check. Superpluperfect
of stuck, Mike figured … The L.A. Press Club has 2,543 members, 1,398
actives — largest in the world … As one who only recently was
dragged kicking and screaming into his 30s, JackSearles shuddered to hear the announcer dedicate a TV kiddies' program "To you — the leaders of the 21st century!"

Justice Strained

A man who lives in an outlying section a few nights ago drove a guest, a visitor from New York, to the Biltmore Hotel. It was after midnight when he reached the downtown section.

He was driving west on 5th
Street — one-way westbound — and turned left on Olive Street so he
could let his passenger off at the hotel entrance. A gendarme nailed
him.

The motorist asked what he had done wrong. He was told he
had turned left from the middle lane as if it were a two-way street
instead of from the extreme left curb lane. The motorist pointed out
there was no traffic and he had created no hazard. He got the ticket
anyway.

After he said goodbye to his passenger and drove off, he turned right — that is, west — on 6th Street, posted one-way eastbound. The same officer nailed him again.

HE WAS GUILTY,
no question about that, and he has paid his fines. But he remains
outraged. In five minutes, through ignorance, he received two moving
violations. he does not like them on his record. He is a careful
driver. In 20 years of driving he had received only one citation — a
questionable 551A, failure to yield on a left turn.

And he
brings up a point that has been reiterated here. Is our traffic
enforcement, as decreed by a public servant named Parker, supposed to
educate, control and give guidance or merely to punish by issuing as
many citations as possible? He felt that the officer, at least on the
second offense, could have smiled.

Meanwhile, he has resolved
his resentment into a simple statement: "Unless it's absolutely
necessary I shall never go downtown again."

AFTER THE news photogs seemed to have flash-gunned their fill of Harry Truman Tuesday a cameraman from another paper inevitably asked for "one more."

Harry said good-naturedly, "I guess you're not a member of the Just One Club — you didn't give the password."

"What's that?" the photog asked.

"Please," laughed the ex-president.

ONLY IN L.A. — While waiting for a train to pass on Alameda Street, Bob Schwartz of the APCD saw four husky, grinning workmen at the California Milling Corp. — one at each wheel — lift a parked blue Isetta and hold it aloft a moment to see how heavy it was.

ALONG VINE STREET they're telling of the Martian who went up to an earthman,
unaware he was a Method acting coach, and said, "Take me to your
leader." The acting coach studied him a moment and replied, "You're a
little too tense!" — Then there was a certain writer's comment on the
last half hour of the Academy Awards clambake: "I thought Al Jarvis had
gone coast-to-coast!"

AND DON'T FORGET NEXT WEDNESDAY

FOR REASONS he doesn't care to discuss, H.S. has worked out this parody:

"What are you doing?"

"I'm cleaning my doghouse."

"Oh, are you a dog?"

"No, I'm a man."

"Do you think everyone should be a man?"

"That's something everyone should decide for himself, but I do think everyone should keep his doghouse clean."

MISCELLANY — Let's not panic, but the title of Hale Spark's University Explorer program on KNX
Sunday will be "The Stubborn Staphylococcus." It's the germ which
causes boils and stubbornly resists wonder drugs … "Imagine!" says
Frank Barron, "some day we may have war surplus atom bombs" … Modern
Medicine has this quote from a coroner's report: "An act of God under
very suspicious circumstances."