Plans for a rail route from the city limits at Sunset Boulevard to Griffith Park (remember, this is 1908) … A tourist is robbed … A domestic is hit by a streetcar … A "training school" in San Fernando is to get 10 boys and two girls … And a patient at County Hospital has a curious sleeping malady …
Photograph by Fred Tschantre / Los Angeles Times
OK, who’s the blond with Mickey Cohen? (Hint: No, it’s not Walter O’Malley). Continue reading
Above, I’m a sucker for any story that has "love slave" in the headline. This was buried in the back pages of The Times for some reason … The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the nominations for the 1958 Academy Awards … And Los Angeles is warned to prepare for a siege of smog. On the jump, more Academy Award information.
Feb. 18, 1938
Los Angeles
Talk about a big news day … The grand jury, infuriated when most of the subpoenaed police officers refuse to testify in the Harry Raymond case, seizes intelligence files and discovers the unit was spying on prominent Los Angeles residents … Austria virtually surrenders to Hitler … An African American kills two officers serving an eviction notice … And a Tijuana firing squad executes a man for killing an 8-year-old girl. Even more goodies on the jump.
In terms of quirky human drama, it’s hard to beat the early 20th century issues of The Times. Today we have two people who passed themselves off as someone else.
The first is the woman who claimed to be a famous author … the second is a man with delusions of great wealth … Also note that hundreds of men are at work laying streetcar tracks to the ocean so the city can welcome the Great White Fleet …
People are upset about an increase in phone rates from $5 ($109.94 USD 2007) a month to $7 ($153.91 USD 2007) for businesses and $3 ($65.96 USD 2007) to $3.50 ($76.95 USD 2007) a month for residences … Finally, note the plan to improve the county’s roads. The paved highways will be 16 feet wide, The Times says.
Feb. 17, 1958
Los Angeles
Here’s Part 2 of Ray Hebert’s look at the consolidation of Los Angeles’ mass-transportation system under the MTA. Note the photograph of the streetcar, No. 312, heading from 6th and Main to Bellflower. As far as I can determine, this is a "blimp"-style car, which means it was built about 1913, when Woodrow Wilson was president. By 1958, this streetcar was about 45 years old. Now tell me: Would you honestly want to depend on a 45-year-old car for daily transportation? Or a 45-year-old bus? Or a 45-year-old train? No matter how well-maintained it was? Let’s put it even more graphically: In an era when the U.S. and the Soviets were making their first successful space shots, people in Los Angeles were riding streetcars built 10 years after the Wright Bros.’ first flight at Kitty Hawk.
Feb. 17, 1938
Los Angeles
Los Angeles County, founded Feb. 18, 1850, prepares to celebrate its 88th anniversary … Irving Berlin’s daughter is out of the hospital … The City Council prepares to give the Navy 4 1/2 acres in Chavez Ravine that was once a smallpox hospital … Police complicity in the Harry Raymond bombing seems even more evident … On the jump, the city’s traffic engineer talks about his plan to ease congestion in downtown Los Angeles by removing most of the streetcar tracks. My, this certainly complicates our myth about the shadowy postwar conspiracy of bus companies and automobile manufacturers plotting to get rid of our sainted transportation system, doesn’t it?
Hey look, it’s the Gold Line pulling into Union Station! Oops, I’m about 50 years ahead of myself. Does this elevated train look familiar? Or maybe you remember this artist’s conception of an elevated train, below, from January 1907.
And why would we need elevated trains in 1907? Because of the congestion. For example, this traffic jam on Main Street in January 1907. Now there are people in this world who don’t believe streetcars caused congestion in the early 1900s. I know, because I hear from them whenever I refer to our "sainted" transportation system. As difficult as it may be to accept in 2008, the people living in the early 1900s complained bitterly about the streetcars. In fact, the Los Angeles Times said the streetcars caused "a daily blockade on Main Street."
And no, the elevated trains didn’t get built in 1907 nor in 1958. We
just talked about them. Nor did we follow through on the plan to put
light rail down the middle of the Hollywood Freeway when it was being
built in 1947. Because one thing we like to do in Los Angeles is talk
about the terrible traffic. We talk about it, we study it, we draft
plans and then we put them on the shelf. The transportation plans that have
been performed for Los Angeles over the last century would fill a
library.
Yes, it’s another transportation map. Note the big loop circling downtown Los Angeles–obviously this never got built. I hope I can find the original as it’s a bit difficult to make out what they had in mind.
Speaking of transportation plans that never got built, here’s one from 1923. Again, all roads lead to downtown Los Angeles. And in February 1958, Times reporter Ray Hebert took a look at the latest transportation plans being advocated by the MTA. By the late 1960s or early ’70s, everything would be running smoothly, he said.
Click below to read Ray Hebert’s full story
Page 1: Download 1958_0216_hebert1.jpg
Page 2: Download 1958_0216_hebert2.jpg
Honestly, if you’ve seen one 1950s suburban tract home you have seen them all–Everything shiny, new and safely banal with no more soul than an empty shoe box! Of course now they have mature landscaping and burglar bars. I wasted an hour going out to find a model home only to discover that it looked nothing like the drawing. So here’s the consolation prize. Note that this neighborhood (unlike Rigoletto Village) is close to downtown Los Angeles.
Here’s 50 years of "progress" in the portrayal of African Americans in newspapers’ Sunday comic strips. The top panel is from Windsor McCay’s "Little Nemo in Slumberland," as published in The Times on Feb. 9, 1908. To be fair, McCay used this Valentine’s Day piece to caricature all the characters in his strip–which is, granted, a fantasy–but Imp comes off the worst by far. I love McCay’s draftsmanship and I’ve always wondered why someone who drew so beautifully was so terrible at lettering. But Imp, even making a generous allowance for the context of the prejudice and stereotypes of the early 1900s, pains me, and I find the character deeply offensive. Which is why "Little Nemo" rarely shows up in the Daily Mirror.
Then we have the great strides in human compassion and equality as shown in "Tarzan," by Dick Van Buren and John Celardo, published in The Times on Feb. 16, 1958. Granted, blacks are no longer so grotesquely caricatured, but the superstitious native tribesmen still need a smart, brave white man to boss them around and the "Ape-Man" to save the day. Of course, the natives are merely foils so Tarzan can leap in and catch the villain, in this case, a murderous, plotting Frenchman. (And for the record, even as a kid I thought "Tarzan" was a stupid strip and refused to read it).
It will be decades before we get to strips like "Jump Start," "The Boondocks" and "Candorville" (below, a panel from Feb. 10, 2008).
Photograph by Wayne F. Kelly / Los Angeles Times
OK, who are the men with former Dodger Roy Campanella?
Here’s a clue: It was extremely unusual for the man on the left to be mentioned in The Times. When his name appeared in the paper, he was usually identified as a civic leader.
OK, I apparently stumped everybody with this one. The man on the left is Franklin S. Payne, publisher of the Los Angeles Examiner, which is why The Times usually identified him as "newspaper publisher Franklin Payne." He died in 1970 at the age of 74.
Feb. 16, 1908
Los Angeles
Don’t go looking for the A.P. Macginnis home on the southwest corner of Bonnie Brae and Miramar–it’s gone. But what a place: A 30-room house with an attic and a basement, Tiffany glass fixtures for the electric lights and hand-painted frescoes. Did I mention the 12 bedrooms and nine bathrooms on the second floor? The basement had a bowling alley, billiard room, gymnasium and a "plunge" (a.k.a. swimming pool). Cost was $80,000 ($1,758,963.88 USD 2007).
