Estelle Corwell swoons as she is found not guilty in the killing of George T. Bennett … Los Angeles prepares for a huge influx of Eastern tourists, due in part to discounted railroad fares and a severe winter … And I had no idea the term "chalk talk" was a century old.
According to a note from the L.A. Conservancy’s Modern Committee, Bob’s Big Boy is interested in rebuilding the Johnie’s Broiler, 7447 Firestone Blvd., in Downey that was partially destroyed in an illegal demolition. On Tuesday at 7 p.m., the committee plans to urge the Downey City Council to support complete reconstruction of the restaurant following the original plans. Downey City Hall is at 11111 Brookshire Ave.
Feb. 21, 1958
In addition to their other
credentials, newspaper photographers must now carry letters signed by
Police Chief William H. Parker authorizing them to listen to police
radio calls.
With the understanding, that is, that they will use these permits only in connection with their work.
No
ambulance chasing on the side, see? Or Ordinance 92,524, Section 52.44
of the Municipal Code will getcha. Section 52.44 states it is unlawful
for a person in a vehicle to listen to police and fire messages
broadcast over transmitting stations operated by the LAPD.
THIS LATEST INSULT to the intelligence of hard-working newspapermen is an outgrowth of a case last June.
Two
men were arrested at the scene of an accident in Canoga Park for taking
pictures of the wrecked cars. Officers said they had repeatedly seen
the youths at accidents and had reason to believe they later offered
such pictures for sale to insurance companies as evidence. Obviously,
the youths had hastened to the scene of the collision after hearing the
report broadcast on the police radio.
When their case came up in
court, however, Municipal Judge Harry C. Shepherd quickly freed them,
declaring the ordinance unconstitutional.
He said at the time,
"I don’t see how by the greatest stretch of the imagination that the
City Council, the state Legislature or the U.S. Congress can tell me
what I can or cannot listen to over the radio."
Parker
immediately announced he was disregarding Judge Shepherd’s opinion and
had instructed his men to continue to arrest unauthorized persons
caught listening to police calls on their car radios.
The photogs shrug off the whole matter as merely another instance of the petulance that emanates from the chief’s office.
ONLY IN L.A. —
During Wednesday’s downpour a young woman who recently moved into a new
home on the edge of a canyon got a call from her mother, who asked
anxiously if the newly planted lawn and trees were holding firm.
"I’ve stopped worrying about the backyard," said the frantic daughter. "I’m just hoping the house won’t float down the hill."
AS THOSE WHO are precise about such things know, it’s Colorado Street (not boulevard) in Pasadena. And St. Luke Hospital, not St. Luke’s.
Well, they’re building a wing to the hospital and a sign proudly proclaims the addition as St. Luke’s.
AND THEN,
observes Ernest Oplatka of Sun Valley, there’s the one about the new
man on the rubbish collection truck who had such a hard time figuring
out front from back from side on the ultra-contemporary home that he
summoned the owner and said, "Take me to your litter!"
Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection in the the Regional History Collection
of USC LibrariesAbove, July 24, 1958, mechanics move an MG that was damaged when a man repeatedly smashed the car into a Malibu drugstore in hopes that he could commit suicide by making the building collapse on him. He suffered minor scratches but caused $75,000 damage to the store.
At top, Aug. 7, 1958, Marilyn Monroe plays “Happy Days Are Here Again” after learning that her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, had been acquitted of contempt of Congress for declining to name former Communist associates. Monroe was preparing to film "Some Like It Hot," in which she plays a ukulele. From "Mobsters, Molls, and Mayhem: A Year in the Life of Los Angeles" at the Doheny Library.
ONLY IN
Sherman Oaks–A woman answered the doorbell and was confronted by a
little girl who asked, "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?"
She
said she was sorry, she had already bought some. Then she noticed
standing alongside the Girl Scout a mad carrying a shopping bag full of
the ookiecays.
MISCELLANY — A new
nurse at General Hospital got lost trying to find one of the
neighboring buildings. A taxi driver, seeing her plight, directed her.
But a little while later he saw her again, still lost. She’d completed
a circle without finding the building. So he drove her to her
destination without charge, a nice thing.
Seymour Westerman has
an employee who makes up his own words to describe things. The other
day he reported, "The office we delivered the desk to was very small
but the owner insisted that we put it khaki corner and while we were
moving it one of the legs carbunkled right under it."
John Richards, who spent some time in Japan, says the Japanese pronounced it Sy-a-natta.
Above, meet Charles West, who says: "I have never treated my wife very mean, although I slapped her a couple of times when I thought she needed it." Below, mayhem on 3rd Street when a piano mover ties a horse-pulled rig to the rear of his Bekins wagon–and the front team of horses makes a mad dash toward Spring, dragging both wagons down the street … Distress in Long Beach over the collapse of a bank … Mrs. J.P. Morgan visits Southern California … A prisoner receives an inheritance from his mother–but can’t get out of jail to collect it. He was charged with breaking into offices in the Bradbury Building and stealing postage stamps … And the Anti-Cigarette Society asks the Board of Education to encourage students not to smoke.
OK, who’s the young man with the guitar?
Phil Spector? (Kris Gray, Fred Ahlert). Absolutely…. This is a photo taken Nov. 10, 1958, and published in the Los Angeles Examiner. It was sent to me by William Dotson of the USC libraries and appears in a new exhibit at the Doheny Library, "Mobsters, Molls, and Mayhem: A Year in the Life of Los Angeles." The exhibit features 55 photos from the Examiner collection, including subjects such as Mickey Cohen and the Dodgers, and will be on display until May 16.
Feb. 20, 1958
The case of Tom Garrett,
21, who was denied his $40 weekly unemployment compensation because he
was detained for 24 hours at gunpoint by two criminals and therefore
was not "available for work," rang a bell for others who are jobless.
Of course, Goodie [Note: Gov. Goodwin Knight–lrh] rushed in with a
personal check, thereby earning more votes than he could have done in a
dozen speeches, and goodie for him.
It was another instance of bureaucratic regulation being enforced to the point of silliness.
AN INGLEWOOD woman offers one more folder for the file. She was denied her check because, she was told, she hadn’t made enough contacts.
"I am an aircraft assembler with many years’ experience," she said
yesterday, "and when there were jobs I always had one. I think things
will roll again soon and I expect to go to work.
"But I think it’s unfair to make an issue of looking for work when
there isn’t any," she continued. "Everywhere I go there are ‘No Help
Wanted" signs. Yet the bureau says I must go to these places and apply
for a job.
"I have a 10-year-old daughter to support and of the $37 they
reluctantly give each week they require me to burn up the little
gasoline I can afford in what everyone knows is a futile search for
work."
A PARTY OF out-of-state newsmen was brought here a few days ago on a briefing tour of Navy installations.
Each place they went, the newsmen, as is customary, were given a new
set of admittance badges. This became annoying, particularly to C.W.
Skipper of the Houston Post, and he did something about it.
Which is another way of stating that he went through the Point Mugu
Missile Center with a cellophane badge proclaiming him a member of the
Wheaties Space Patrol.
FOR HER Lincoln’s Birthday assignment in El Centro School in South Pasadena last week, Laura Morgan, 9, wrote:
He didn’t go to El Centro School
But Abe Lincoln was nobody’s fool.
SPEAKING OF education
or the lack of it, which almost everyone seems to be doing, a girl
student at Belmont High went to the office to report the combination
lock for her locker had been broken and to get a new one.
"How did you get it open all this time?" she was asked.
"Oh, I just left it open," she replied.
"Did you lose all your things?" she was asked.
"No, there wasn’t anything in there but books."
THE WAY Bob
Nathan tells it, a motion picture editor printed a letter from a reader
blasting the film "Jayne Eyre." The letter said, "This is the worst
movie I ever saw, a waste of time, effort and money."
A few days later a rebuttal letter was printed stating, ""That guy was
all wrong. The picture was beautiful, tender, moving, truly a work of
art. I liked it so much I saw it 79 times."
Two days later, the first correspondent was back. "Tell that fellow to
go see it again," he wrote, "then he’ll be an octoJaneEyreian."
LOOSE ENDS–For
the first time within memory the streets around 1st and Hill were a sea
of mud, washed down from newly made excavations … Bill Lay of South
Gate says "Maverick" goofed Sunday, showing a cattle drive in the late
1800s. In the herd were several Brahmas, introduced into the country in
the late 1920s … The agenda for the United World Federalists peace
assembly in San Pedro Saturday, at which Actor Robert Ryan will appear,
frankly lists "Buzz Sessions" for 2 p.m. … Ted Argue postcards from
Victorville that a hitchhiker heading east on Highway 66 carried a
sign, "Give Me a Ride or I’ll Vote for Him Again" … John of Hawthorne
asks why all the fuss because an airman stayed a week in a cage. "Let
him spend Saturday night in the drunk tank over on Avenue 19," he says,
"and he’ll really have an experience" [Note: This refers to an
isolation experiment intended to simulate spaceflight–lrh] … Ray
Southworth thinks people who keep saying "in the last analysis" should
see a psychiatrist.
Feb. 20, 1958
I may not be much of a bear around the house, but as a journalist, I’m fearless.
I give you All the News That’s Fit to Print. I am an Independent
Newspaperman For All the People, the Voice Slightly West of the Rocky
Mountain Empire.
I Dare, Where Others Don’t.
So if you want to get my typewriter fighting mad, just tell me that yours is a story too hot to print.
That’s what E.B. "Jett" Simrell did yesterday. He sent me a copy of an
appeal to the nation which–according to him–newspapers had refused to
print, even as a paid advertisement.
The appeal read in part:
To divorced men, all he-men and womanly wise females:
Do you believe we should and must have:
1–Organized effort to put men legally back in the driver’s seat at home?
2–Laws that will give a GOOD man
the legal power to securely hold and protect his home and family
against the whimsy and unbridled emotions of his dreamy, unrealistic,
over-romantic mate?
Naturally, although I wouldn’t say so publicly, I sensed that maybe Simrell was onto something big.
And I became even more convinced when I read his printed statement further:
It is man’s fault! We let
our guard down … If we have any guts left we can restore men and
women to their respective domains as nature intended.I am ready to dedicate the remainder of my life to restoration of the male-female identity in America.
I am not a woman-hater–I love ‘female’ women.
ARE YOU READY TO FIGHT?
Was I! I was so fighting mad that I grabbed up my phone and within seconds, had Jett Simrell on the line.
"Jett," I demanded, "is it true that other newsmen squirmed out of printing your story?"
"True," he said. "They even turned down a three-inch paid ad."
"Then, buddy," I assured him, "you’ve come to the right man. Spill it."
Jett cleared his throat. Then he began.
"For one thing," he said, "females won’t use their womanly wiles on you anymore. They’d just as soon punch you in the nose.
"But I’d rather see a few women spanked on their bottoms than see
thousands of kids running wild in a state of mass confusion. And that’s
what the wholesale divorces are doing today."
Jett paused. Then he started again.
"Yes, I was married. For more than 15 years. I’ve got three wonderful
daughters. I picked out a young wife who hadn’t been immersed in the
attitudes of the so-called modern woman.
"For six years, it worked out. But slowly, she started picking up on
what she heard on the radio, read in the papers and learned from
neighbor women. She started wanting all kinds of liberties.
"I gave her some. And she wanted more. Well, to end it briefly, she finally got everything I worked for."
Jett cleared his throat.
"Each sex has its own place," he went on. "Women should be women. Men should be men. Is that asking too much?"
I agreed with Jett that, definitely, it wasn’t.
"Then you’ll join my campaign? You’ll get in the fight to put the pants back on the man."
"I would, Jett," I replied, "but I can’t. I’ve got a previous appointment."
A map from 1912 shows the plans for the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Note the Silver Lake Parkway, which was not built. The Arroyo Seco Parkway was actually proposed even earlier, as part of Charles Mulford Robinsons' "City Beautiful" project of 1906-7. (He also advocated realigning Spring Street and putting City Hall there … and he proposed planting jacarandas along the city's streets). |
 Los Angeles Times file photo This photograph of the Arroyo Seco Road, dated 1921, shows a pleasant country lane between Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Construction on the river channel next to the Pasadena Freeway, July 1, 1935. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Construction is nearly finished, Oct. 17, 1940. |
 Los Angeles Times file photo. Rose Queen Sally Stanton, Gov. Culbert Olson and Highway Patrol Chief E. Raymond Cato at the ribbon cutting of the Arroyo Seco Parkway (Pasadena Freeway), Dec. 30, 1940. This is in the general location east of Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena where the sinkhole opened July 16, 2008. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times And in a matter of months (Feb. 4, 1941) after the opening, the southbound Arroyo Seco Parkway (Pasadena Freeway) is backed up at the Figueroa Tunnels. If you ever wondered what a 67-year-old traffic jam looks like, this is your answer. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Emergency turnouts are added to the Pasadena Freeway in 1950 to ease congestion and prevent accidents. |
 Photograph by Gil Cooper / Los Angeles Times Workers install center dividers on the Pasadena Freeway, June 15, 1961. If you have ever seen the beating that these guardrails take from accidents, you can imagine what it was like when there was nothing but perhaps a little landscaping to keep cars from plunging into oncoming traffic. Email me |
Photograph by the Los Angeles Times
If you drive the Pasadena Freeway regularly, you will recognize immediately that it no longer looks anything like this. Yes, the ramps are entirely different. (And the Golden State Freeway hadn't been built when this picture was taken). But my point for now is the hillside in Elysian Park, which kept dropping mud and boulders on the southbound lanes, as occurred in February 1958.
Photograph by Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times
Here's a picture of the freeway after cleanup allowed some lanes to be reopened. In 1958, the southbound Pasadena Freeway carried 120,000 cars a day, the Mirror said. The Mirror also noted that another mudslide took out a bridge in 1937.
Feb. 20, 1938
Los Angeles
Adjusted for inflation, the price on the first home ($18,750) is $268,116.31 USD 2007. Zillow lists it at $1.7 million. The last home ($28,800) is $411,826.66 USD 2007. Zillow lists it at $3.6 million. I guess this would be an appropriate time to mention deed restrictions. At this time, people of color were barred from owning or renting homes in many neighborhoods of the city. The legal battles over these restrictive covenants gathered momentum after World War II.
Feb. 20, 1938
Los Angeles
Yes, the AP actually wrote the above story and The Times actually published it. Below, one of the most backward sentences I have read in a long while: "Not guilty will be the plea of Earle Kynette, suspended acting captain of the police intelligence unit, indicted Friday on charges of attempted assassination in the bombing of Harry Raymond, private detective." This reminds me of Wolcott Gibb’s satire of Time magazine’s writing: "Backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind. Where it will end, knows God." Prisoners give Kynette and his co-defendants a warm welcome at the jail … And heavy snow isolates residents of Lake Tahoe.
At top, notice that the buggy dealer was not too far from the auto painting shop. Above, czarist agents in Los Angeles? How cool is that? Reminds me of the Mexican revolutionaries who were arrested in 1907. (Note the arrest of socialists in the same clipping). Below, a malicious valentine triggers a nasty dispute in the city’s French colony … Orpheum executives deny rumors that a new theater will be built at 5th and Main … And a rare gold coin takes the sting out of being arrested for going 70 mph.
Feb. 19, 1958
Popular music can be a fragile commodity. good tunes die at birth if
they don’t have popular appeal, whatever that is. Bad ones make the top
80 without a hitch if the right guy with a guitar sings them and the
disc jockeys play them every 20 minutes, in itself a suspicious
procedure.
Consider then the plight of Jerry Leshey of CBS-TV. He wrote a song,
"The Sands of Time." Teddy Wilson recorded a haunting, moody
interpretation of it. Johnny Desmond also made a record, as yet
unreleased. And tomorrow the tune will be heard as background music on
"Climax!"
But last Friday, Peter Potter served up Johnny Desmond’s platter of it
on "Juke Box Jury" and the panel sentenced it to be a "miss." The
consensus, voiced by panelist Steve Allen, was, "It’s too good to be a
hit."
NEXT DAY, Jerry was brooding around the house, wondering if the verdict would send his beloved brainchild to an inglorious death.
Fred Hancock, a painter who was knocking out a small wall in the dining
room, noticed Jerry’s dispirited manner and asked what was the trouble.
"Juke Box Jury" said my song was too good to be a hit," moaned Jerry. "What do you do about that?"
Fred puffed on his cigar, asked, "Why don’t you worsen it up a little bit?"
YOU’D BE surprised
how many people believe the big freeze, the excessive rains and other
phenomena are the results of atomic explosions upsetting the balance of
nature. As one gal in a beauty parlor put it, "We better stop monkeying
around with things we don’t know anything about."
Me, I’m going to consult my friendly witchdoctor.
ONLY IN L.A.–A
couple of weeks ago the city desk got a flash that a man was pinned
under a streetcar at 7th and Broadway. Photog Delmar Watson and
reporter Jack Tobin rushed there but found no streetcar, only a truck
with a flat tire.
They asked the driver, who was working on the tire, what about the man
supposed to be trapped. "Oh that’s the fellow over there," he said,
pointing. "The jack wouldn’t work so he got under and tried to lift the
truck with his feet. I made him stop after the first try. I was afraid
my insurance wouldn’t cover it if he got hurt."
The husky young man came over and said, "The reason I couldn’t lift it
was that I couldn’t get leverage. I usually lift elephants."
The newsmen gave him a disdainful look that said, "That’s all, brother!" and departed, pictureless and storyless.
And then Saturday night, on Art Linkletter’s "People Are Funny," there was the guy. Elephant lifter Mark Evans, performing.
I DON’T HAVE NO papers
left, said Alfonso Cardenas, an A-11 at Belmont High, as he finished a
pile he’d been folding for Frances Hov, journalism teacher.
"You’ll never get into college if you talk like that," she said.
Alfonso nodded, then said, "I’m in a spot. If I talk like you want me
to, the kids wouldn’t understand me. If I talk my way the teachers
glare at me."
Come to think of it, you don’t hear anyone say, "It is I," any more.
FROM A Hollywood paper: "Police said the men, Bart James Blackburn, 22, and Ronnie David Rhonemus,
20, who sawed their way out of the jail Tuesday with a third man, were
driving a white 1957 Thunderbird." To which Gil Krause murmurs, "A
sharp character, no doubt."
AT RANDOM — The news
story about the L.A. Dodgers opening spring training in Vero Beach,
Fla., Thursday reminded James K. Hyde of the old one about the
restaurant owner going out to lunch … Since being momentarily blinded
by the car ahead the other night, Herb Stinson has a new safety slogan,
"Please dim your taillights" … An obituary, in another paper, had an
ironic typo. Stated a deceased gentleman would "live" in state at a
certain funeral parlor … Death of Joe Frisco reminded Tom Mannix of
the time Joe stuttered to a friend, "I got a doctor who’s curing me of
betting on the horses." The friend said he never heard of such a thing
and asked where the doc was. "Oh, about six furlongs from here," said
Joe.
Feb. 19, 1958
May 14, 1954–Three workers were critically burned in a foundry explosion at 1651 S. Compton Ave., Compton, late today.
The men, whose bodies were turned into flaming torches when a pot of
molten magnesium exploded, were rushed to Georgia Street Receiving
Hospital. Doctors offered little hope that any of the trio would live.
Witnesses reported that one of the victims, Cipriano Torres, 31, ran
from the foundry room, stripped off his flaming shirt and ran back into
the rain of liquid fire to rescue his foreman….
As doctors predicted, two of the three victims died within 10 days after the explosion.
But the third–with more than 70% of his body burned–defied all laws of fatality. He lived.
His name is Cipriano Torres. He was, on May 14, 1954, the man who ran
back into the spewing, burning liquid metal to carry his boss out of
the foundry.
I visited Cipirano Torres yesterday–to see how he was getting along. I
met his wife, Mildred, and his four children, Christine, 11; James, 9;
Linda, 8; and Robert, 7.
The kids had just come from school, but they looked more like they had
just dressed up for church. Even 7-year-old Robert, who was preoccupied
outside chasing his sisters with a dead mouse, looked immaculate.
I was surprised, because I had heard through a church organization that things weren’t too well with the Torres family.
As I talked with Torres, I learned that 29 months passed after the
accident before he left the hospital to rejoin his family. The first
seven of those months were a blank nightmare.
In the past year and a half, he said, he’s been back in the hospital seven or eight times for additional operations and grafts.
"But I’m improving all the time," he told me. "I can drive the car a
little now." With his good right arm, he pointed to the small patch of
lawn in front of the house. "I cut the lawn…."
Torres’ wife got a word in here. "To cut that little patch, it took him five hours and had him aching all over."
"But," she added, with unhidden pride, "he insisted on doing it."
There was some talk then about the kids, about friends who had done so
much, about the Rev. Arthur Herries of the Vermont Avenue Presbyterian
Church, who supplied the faith, and about matters more general.
Torres told me that he had done foundry work for eight years before the
accident. "It paid well," he said. "As a matter of fact, we had just
started looking for a home when the accident happened."
Then I asked him the rather personal question about his current financial status.
He confirmed what I had heard before. His compensation benefits of $35
a week were cut off a week before last Christmas, when he was
"officially" released from hospital care.
"About last August, I reached a point where I could start doing a few
things," he said. "So I took over in the house and my wife went to
work. She’d cook the meals before going. All I’d have to do was serve
them."
She was laid off once last fall and again six weeks ago.
"Do you have any income now?" I said.
Torres said that as a veteran, he received a small monthly pension from
the government for nonservice-connected disability. he was also drawing
$20 a week against a final insurance settlement for his disability.
"But with a little luck, I’ll be working again pretty soon," he told
me. "Pensions don’t buy the kind of things I want my kids to have."
He’s already been out, looking …
"But when I take a physical exam, they look at me like I was nuts."
Mrs. Torres broke into one of her frequent smiles about then. "They
said he wouldn’t live," she said. "But he did. They said he wouldn’t
walk. He’s walking. Now the say he can’t work, but I don’t believe
them."
Then a more sober thought changed her expression.
"One day at the hospital," she told me, "about a year after the
accident, one of the insurance representatives came up to me and told
me, ‘Frankly, Mrs. Torres, your husband would be a lot better off dead.’
"So I told him, ‘As far as you’re concerned, mister, maybe yes. But as
far as he’s concerned, and as far as I’m concerned, and as far as our
children are concerned, no, mister. No, never."
And this is the hero and his family today.
Photograph by Bruce H. Cox / Los Angeles Times
I went down into the archives last night and pulled the original photo of Ralph P. Merritt, head of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and our 1958 rapid transit plan. The map is labeled "Mass Rapid Transit Projection for Los Angeles Metropolitan Area."
I made a large scan of the map so everyone can try to read it. The original isn’t terribly clear (after all, this photo was only a graphic element and never meant to be used as a map) so I’ll interpret the labeling:
This map is broken down into "Major Radial Service" and "Major Circumferal Service." In other words, the entire transportation plan is seen as a wheel with spokes radiating from a central hub, which is–as you might expect for 1958–downtown Los Angeles. The circumferal route describes the rim of the wheel and the radial routes constitute the spokes. This design, by the way, is how the origin and growth of the city’s streetcar system was described in 1923: Spokes of a wheel radiating from downtown Los Angeles. The only difference then was that the "wheel" had no rim.
The radial routes are:
1. Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley
2. Pasadena, Pomona, San Bernardino and Riverside
3. Fullerton, Santa Ana and Whittier
4. Long Beach and San Pedro
5. Santa Monica
The circumferal routes are:
A. Airport, Coliseum and Beach Cities
B. Burbank and Glendale
C. Lakewood and Santa Ana
D. Santa Ana and San Bernardino
E. Downtown Los Angeles / Central Transit System
F. Fullerton and Santa Ana
Comments, insights? Let me know. Surely there must be some transportation experts who’d like to venture an opinion.
Feb. 19, 1938
Los Angeles
Antisemitism in Austria … Earle Kynette is indicted in the Harry Raymond bombing … Unrest in the Mideast … On the jump, two men are executed at San Quentin in a double hanging.
