Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
Salonica Street is a popular dumping ground for cars that have been wrecked on the southbound Pasadena Freeway. This car has been sitting here for weeks. For a while, another wreck was keeping it company, but that one disappeared.
Update on the Jan. 11 post: This car has finally disappeared, Jan. 21, 2008.
Jan. 21, 1958
Apropos of no one knows what, a whiskered habitue of Hill Street cafe society known as Buttercup mused the other night, "Well, in a couple of months now I’ll be getting my pension — then I can start taking things easy."
The joint, El Rainbow, rocked with laughter, which still echoes when the remark is recalled. It is common knowledge that Buttercup has made something of a career of not working.
It is also unanimously agreed that if Buttercup manages to take things easier than he has in the last few years, he will achieve the all-time high in relaxation.
THERE’S JUST the trace of Madison Avenue in this notice in the Postal Bulletin for Jan. 16: "As a result of various experiments and favorable comments, the use of cuspidors in all postal installations is discontinued effective Feb. 1. This is in the interest of employee welfare and morale, improved conditions and other attendant benefits."
Morale?
HIS MOTHER took Mike Richards, 6, to the barbershop and as usual Mike was uncooperative. Finally she said, "If you don’t stop squirming, I’m going to take those boots away from you."
She was referring to the cowboy boots he received for Christmas, his most prized possession.
"And if that doesn’t work," said Mike in the cool, challenging voice of Wyatt Earp, "what are you going to do?"
A RECENT SERMON here on semasiology (a fancy word for "semantics") drew quite a spate (a fancy word for "flood") of rebuttal.
It had to do with adman Jack Smalley’s embarrassing discovery that he had incorrectly used the world "fulsome" in a radio commercial and his consolation in finding that W. Somerset Maugham also appeared to have used it improperly.
Half a dozen readers upheld Maugham’s usage and disparaged Smalley. Another half a dozen said maybe.
Others encouraged further discussion of words that mean the opposite of what some people think ("enervate," "sophisticated," the noun "glamour").
It also elicited a confession from W.G. Kibbey of Tujunga. Many times in writing letters of condolence to bereaved friends, he expressed the hope that the deceased would get safely across the River Styx. One day he looked it up and was aghast to find it referred to the lower world, not the upper.
But as Dr. Siegfried Kreisler puts it, "I love the labyrinths of the English language."
FOR NEARLY 40 years a lady named Julia has been fulsomely addicted to a comic strip featuring a precocious, hard-minded little girl of about 7 who is always seeing things more clearly than anyone else and getting them out of jams.
Well, the lady has finally given up on the kid. A strip a few days ago had someone saying of her, "This child is too young to hear such things."
It occurred to Julia that maybe the kid who never grows up is too young to hear the harsher things, but SHE isn’t.
AT RANDOM — When someone else calls attention to Estelle Taylor’s being on the Animal Regulation Commission, Stanley Denton says, "Naturally — she was once married to a boxer" (Jack Dempsey) … Marshall Kandell of the LACC Collegian reports that at a recent gathering of University of Minnesota undergrads, the student body president committed this classic non sequitur, "This is the height of epitome" … Sobering piece of information from Will Harriss: The country around Waterproof, La., has been declared a hardship area by the federal government on account of a three-year drought … Ed DeVere, Culver City editor, answers his phone, "DeVere here."
Jan. 21-23, 1958
Los Angeles
People who lived on Lorna Lane in Brentwood had any number of reasons for staying away from the home of Maurice and Dr. Paula Olivier.
It could have been the gates, which were always locked.
Perhaps it was the frontyard, where the Oliviers cut down two large trees and installed floodlights that burned all night — until the couple had the utilities shut off because they thought the neighbors were stealing electricity.*
Possibly it was the fire started by candles that the Oliviers were using because there was no power.
It could have been the smell, because according to the Mirror, the Oliviers’ "horror castle" was sparsely furnished and filled with tin cans and debris.
Maybe it was because Maurice, a pharmacologist who was busy inventing tranquilizers, had long, shaggy hair and warned people not to trespass.
Or because he and his wife always answered the door armed with a pistol.
And some might avoid the house after police responding to calls about gunshots found 12 bullet holes in the ceiling and more bullet holes in a medicine cabinet and in the headboard of a bed.
Whatever the reason, everybody on Lorna Lane left the Oliviers alone — except for the prowlers who Maurice said were sent by the pharmaceutical companies to steal the secrets to his tranquilizers.
And then one night, the German shepherds got hungry. All 10 of them.
Paula ran to a neighbor’s home, bleeding profusely and covered "literally from head to foot" with dog bites, the papers said. Police responding to the call found the dogs tearing at Maurice. In one of the more bizarre aspects of this bizarre case, doctors discovered that although many of the dog bites were fresh, others were old and had become infected, officials said.
Interviewed from his bed at General Hospital, Maurice blamed the mauling on a dog named Gunner. His wife was mixing formula for some of the younger dogs and pointed a spoon at Gunner, Maurice said.
"He’s been taught to lunge at anyone with a weapon in his hand," Maurice said. "I suppose he thought the spoon was a weapon. He lunged at her arm and twisted it. I pulled his tail to get him away. Then he attacked me. Whenever I’d fight him off, he’d start in on my wife again. None of the other dogs joined in. They just barked and ran around like crazy."
Maurice said he had no idea how Gunner got a bad burn on his back. "Who knows how that happened?" he shrugged.
The dogs were taken to the 11th Avenue Animal Shelter, which was bombarded with calls from people seeking to adopt them. Shelter officials said the Oliviers hadn’t made any arrangements on what to do with them.
The Times never followed up on this story, so we don’t know what became of the dogs or Paula Olivier. According to California death records, Maurice Charles Olivier died June 3, 1996, at the age of 77.
The "horror castle" was apparently torn down. Zillow lists a home at 640 Lorna Lane having been built in 2005.
* Alternative explanation: Maurice also said all his money was tied up in litigation against the pharmaceutical companies over his tranquilizer patents.
Los Angeles Times file photo
Who’s the distinguished gentleman with Joe Louis, endorsing Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election?
Jan. 21, 1938
Los Angeles
The state attorney general’s office steps into the bombing investigation and everyone in our cast of characters gets ready for the drama. (I love the front page photo of Police Capt. Earle Kynette). On the jump, a photo page gives a better idea of the relationship between Harry Raymond’s house on Orme and the police surveillance post on 7th Street. Looks like the Daily Mirror will be making another field trip. I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but keep your eye on Joe Shaw. In fact, watch everybody. (Also on the jump, two police officers are convicted of rolling drunks–the LAPD was incredibly corrupt during the Shaw era).
Also note (and I don’t have time to do more than mention it) the Paul Wright murder case, which was one of Aggie Underwood’s favorites, mostly because the newspapers had to sanitize what the victims were doing when they were killed. To vastly simplify a complicated case, Wright went to bed, leaving his wife and his best friend in the living room. Only he really didn’t go to bed (I don’t know how he could sleep, no matter how tanked he was, since she was supposedly playing the piano); as I recall from the files, he stayed up and spied on them using a full-length mirror on the bedroom door. He caught them in the act and shot them both with a Luger.
And yes, all of them had been "drinking heavily."
Here’s a headline that says: "Read Me":"Cornered and Bullet-Riddled, Bandit Blows His Brains Out."
I stumbled across this while researching the mysterious noise mentioned in Matt Weinstock’s column and it’s too good not to share. This is quite a story about a couple of very tough customers. The descriptions are ornate and graphic, especially on the runover. The "death room" for instance. And get a load of the men’s hats.
Jan. 18, 1958
After a long, persistent search, a collection agency operative the
other day located–in jail–a young man who had become six months
delinquent on a bill he owed. And he told his pathetic story.
He is a foundry worker and his mad passion in life is his hopped-up motorcycle.
His trouble started several months ago when he was motorbiking eastward
on one of the freeways and saw a police car in pursuit. He turned on
the juice to more than 100 mph and was outdistancing the law when he
ran out of gas. For this offense he was fined and his driver’s license
suspended.
Three months later he again ran out of gas while being chased by the gendarmes at great speed. This time he went to jail.
"So you see, the reason I couldn’t pay our bill all these months," he
explained to the collection operative, "I was so broke I couldn’t even
buy enough gas to get away from the cops."
The collection guy, who thought he’d heard everything, acknowledged the
motorcyclist’s logic, then quietly stole away, to return another day.
SPEAKING OF crime
and punishment, a man arrested in a liquor store holdup had a market
stickup three days before pinned on him because the gun used on both
occasions was painted a wicked chartreuse.
This is a blow to police reporters. Hitherto, points out Sid Hughes,
they’ve had to be concerned only with a robbery suspect’s description
and type of gun. Now, color of gun.
TWO WILSHIRE BOULEVARD
publicity men, Bill Day and Rudy Wilson, got to reminiscing about their
boyhood in L.A. and they have decided to come forward and confess their
part in the eerie, mysterious noise which terrified residents of the
Virgil Avenue-Temple Street area about 45 years ago.
The noise was front page news for a few days and was attributed to escaping underground gas from old oil wells in the vicinity.
Actually the noise was created by a bunch of youngsters, including Bill
and Rudy. They ran a 100-foot resined cord through a hole in a 10-foot
square galvanized iron real estate sign and pulled it back and forth.
They became so expert they could evoke everything form a low rumble to
a high shriek which could be heard as far as what was then, at least,
Westlake Park.
Gosh the best my sissy gang could do was yank trolleys off the wire at the end of the line after the motorman had switched them.
I HAD
high hopes that my recalcitrant typewriter would turn over a new platen
with the new year but it’s apparent I was just a dreamer.
We’ll be chugging along fine, me with my touch system, Elsie with her
nuts and bolts, until we come to a word to which she is allergic.
No matter how much control I try to exercise, old Elsie persists in
spelling perpahs for perhaps, fihgt for fight, gun for fun, nears for
earns, fell for feel, guess what for heel and assorted other
transpositions.
Perpahs it’s metal fatigue.
FOOTNOTES —
The Palms Women’s Club held an Oriental Luncheon the other day. That
is, the decoration motif was Oriental. The food was tamale pie … No
word from Westbrook about Eleanor Roosevelt being selected the most
admired woman for the 11th consecutive year. A thing like that could
get frustrating … Anybody else notice they completed those traffic
islands along the Miracle Mile just in time — to start tearing up the
street again. Or as one businessman puts it, "again and yet" … By the
way, did you notice the panelists on the TV program "The Last Word"
vetoed the White House-approved word "finalize" as "personally
unattractive" … And so ends Be Kind to Matt Weinstock Week,
proclaimed by Book Editor Rex Barley on finding some books of short
stories he thought I’d like. Sorry, too busy not finding any good ones
in the magazines.
By Keith Thursby, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 20, 2008
Watching a college basketball game on TV used to be a very big deal.
Can it really be 40 years ago that a very young version of me–I was nearly 11–was one of countless sports fans and curious coach potatoes who watched UCLA lose to Houston, 71-69, in the Houston Astrodome? The first regular-season basketball game to be televised nationally was beamed into my little black and white set in Norwalk. I was a witness to history, even though as a UCLA fan I hated the result.
I must admit, I don’t remember much of the game. It did seem a little more like a prize fight than a basketball game, with the huge crowd and the basketball court set like a boxing ring on the stadium floor.
UCLA was hampered by an eye injury to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor. Newspapers in the days leading up to the game had stories about his condition, whether he would play and if he could be anything close to full strength. He played but wasn’t the same dominating player.
"The second half, I could tell he was real tired," teammate Lynn Shackelford told The Times’ Robyn Norwood in a 1998 story looking back at the game. "We kind of had to wait on him a few times to set up the offense–kind of like his last three years in the NBA. We weren’t used to that when he was 20."
Alcindor finished with only 15 points and was overshadowed by Houston’s star, Elvin Hayes, who had 39 points.
A big part of the game’s history, of course, was simply that UCLA lost, snapping a 47-game win streak. Alcindor hadn’t lost a game since high school. The Times’ Jeff Prugh, writing the game story in the next morning’s paper, put its significance about as directly as possible: "It happened!"
The game was credited with showing that basketball can be a ratings winner on television. Dick Enberg, the longtime Southern California sportscaster (Angels, Rams and UCLA) who called the game in Houston, said in The Times’ 1998 story: "You could credit some of the national success of college basketball to the game being on TV. Now, you can check the TV Guide and see 20 games a week."
Like many a kid growing up in Southern California back then, UCLA basketball for me was a television event. After all, no other team in town offered same-night delayed broadcasts of their home games. The Channel 5 games–Enberg did those games too–became appointment viewing for sports fans long before TiVo was invented.
Waiting up to watch an hours-old game sounds prehistoric now. Just like watching anything on a black and white TV. I could get a better picture watching a game on a phone.
But the games were special. A lot of that started in the Astrodome that night.
These days, I often find myself doing the dad thing and telling my two teenage sons to turn off that obscure college basketball game so they can do their homework. After all, there will be more games to choose from the next night.
But will they see anything to match what I’ve seen in black and white? Hard to imagine.
Keith Thursby is deputy design director for The Times’ California section. He also spent four years as sports editor of the Orange County Edition.
Jan. 19-21, 1958
Los Angeles
Her name was Velda and she had apparently been a model in New York. That’s where she met Burt Lancaster, at right with nurse Genevieve Grigoli.
It’s not clear how well she knew the handsome leading man–at least
they were close enough that she visited him at Cedars of Lebanon
Hospital while he was recovering from an appendectomy.
Her husband, actor Allan Nixon, wasn’t sure how close they were, either. And that’s when the problems began.
"My husband read a meaning in the visit that wasn’t there," she said.
"He became angry. He was jealous. It was exaggerated out of all
proportion."
Nixon, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound former football player "cuffed me a few times," she said.
She grabbed one of the pearl-handled steak knives that he had given her
for Christmas. "I let him have it," she said. He left the apartment at 6400 Franklin Ave., then came back for his clothes. Velda grabbed a second steak knife and stabbed him again.
While Nixon was treated at General Hospital for stab sounds in the left
shoulder, left forearm, right hand and left leg, his wife was arrested
on charges of attempted murder.
"She started teasing me about seeing Lancaster," he told The Times
during an interview at the hospital. "I must have been teasing her too
and she took it serious. The next thing I knew she had a knife in her
hand."
Saying that he might have been somewhat to blame for what happened and
worried about the effect a trial might have on his acting career, Nixon
refused to press charges.
She said she was leaving him to go back to New York, but apparently they tried a reconciliation and moved to 1856 N. Vista Del Mar.
That’s where she turned on the gas, went into the bathroom and struck a
match. Velda Mae/May Nixon died Sept. 30, 1958, having been burned over 75%
of her body. She was 31.
Allan Nixon, the former husband of Marie Wilson,
eventually abandoned a faltering movie career to become an author. His
first efforts ("Blessed Are the Damned," "The Last of Vicky" and
"Nobody Hides Forever,") drew tepid reviews which noted that he had
promise and predicted that he would someday write a first-rate novel.
The Times praised his 1968 book "The Actor," saying that it was the best Hollywood novel since Jesse Lasky Jr.’s "Naked in a Cactus Garden."
He died in 1995 at the age of 79.
Someone asks: "Why is the Harry Raymond bombing important?"
Good question.
In 1937, Clifford Clinton, the owner of Clifton’s Cafeterias, was named to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury after a long dispute with the city’s health officer. Clinton led an investigation of Mayor Frank Shaw’s administration, alleging that "vice and petty crime are rampant in the city and under the protection of public officers," The Times said. Clinton’s home was bombed, but no one was injured.
However, Raymond, a private detective who was employed by Clinton’s reform movement, nearly died from the bombing and it was soon discovered that his home had been under police surveillance at the orders of Capt. Earle Kynette, head the LAPD’s intelligence unit.
The repercussions of the bombing and Kynette’s conviction in the blast touched off the recall of Mayor Shaw, who was defeated (despite a Times editorial supporting him) by Judge Fletcher Bowron. In the ensuing reform movement that cleaned out City Hall, the LAPD lost many of its top officers, who were linked to corruption.
More than 200 African Americans gather at First Methodist Church to protest the vandalism of a house on East 33rd Street that was rented to a black family (above, the original Jan. 16, 1908, story) … A man on crutches is hit by a streetcar at 9th and Main … An actor tells police two robbers beat him when he claimed he didn’t have any money … Pianist Josef Hofmann is staying at the Hotel Alexandria … A man is arrested at 1st near Main on charges of carrying a .45.
"The Game of the Century," it was called.
An audacious claim, considering there were still 32 years of basketball to play.
The UCLA-Houston clash in the Houston
Astrodome on Jan. 20, 1968–30 years ago tonight–wasn’t the best game
ever played, but it was one that changed college basketball.
It was spectacular–No. 1 UCLA against No.
2 Houston, Lew Alcindor against Elvin Hayes, a battle of two unbeaten
teams with UCLA’s 47-game winning streak on the line.
But it was also, to use John Wooden’s word,
"a spectacle"–a game staged in front of a then-record crowd of 52,693
on a court smack-dab in the middle of the vast dirt floor of the
Astrodome, itself a marvel of its time, and shown live on national TV
under glaring temporary lights.
"It was a terrible place to play, in
reality," Wooden said. "The court was out in the middle, the seats were
way back–and of course the dressing rooms seemed a quarter-mile away."
The lights were so bright, Sports
Illustrated wrote that the Astrodome "very nearly became the first
place in the world where a player lost a rebound in the lights."
"I didn’t feel as though the players could
shoot well," Wooden said. "But of course, Hayes shot very, very well.
He had a tremendous game."
Hayes scored 39 points–29 in the first
half–as he led Houston to a 71-69 upset in what Wooden still calls
"one of the great individual performances in a game I ever saw."
As for Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
it was uncertain until the day before the game if he would even play
because of an eye injury that had hospitalized him the previous week.
But the anticipation was so intense that when he arrived in Houston,
the inch-thick patch newly removed from his eye, Alcindor found a
specially made 10-foot bed in his hotel room, with "Big Lew" printed at
the foot.
The next day, he endured the worst game of his UCLA career, making only four of 18 shots and finishing with 15 points.
"The game wasn’t really well-played, other than by Elvin," Abdul-Jabbar recalled on its 20th anniversary.
Dick Enberg, then a UCLA broadcaster whose
network career was launched partly by that game, still remembers the
frenzy of the Houston fans storming the court from their seats more
than 100 feet away, clamoring past the press and officials positioned
in 18-inch deep trenches dug at its edges.
"When Houston won, it was like the return
to the Alamo," Enberg said. "People were leaping over us in the
foxholes. It was just this thundering herd."
With that, the future of college basketball was transformed, in ways previously unimaginable.
The crowd of 52,000-plus–fans paid $2 to
sit in the highest reaches of the Astrodome and only $5 for "front-row
seats," still 100 feet from the action–was then the largest to witness
a basketball game in the United States. (About 75,000 had seen the
Globetrotters play in an outdoor stadium in Brazil.)
The game also was the first regular-season
college basketball game to be televised nationally–syndicated by Eddie
Einhorn on TVS for 120 stations in 49 states–and it drew tremendous
ratings, proving that there was an appetite for college basketball, and
setting the stage for today’s made-for-TV games.
"There were so many firsts involved, people
cannot put it out of their minds," said Don Chaney, the former Clipper
coach who is now an assistant with the Knicks and was a senior guard on
that Houston team. "People that I know were too young to be there are
always telling me, ‘I was at that game.’ "
Could Judge Roy Hofheinz–the major domo of
the dome, as Sports Illustrated called him–have imagined that 30 years
later basketball in a dome would not only no longer seem absurd, but
that the Final Four would be destined in rapid succession for the
Alamodome, the ThunderDome, the RCA Dome, the Metrodome and the Georgia
Dome?
Or that CBS would be in the middle of an eight-year, $1.725-billion contract to televise the NCAA tournament?
"You
could credit some of the national success of college basketball to the
game being on TV," Enberg said. "Now, you can check the TV Guide and
see 20 games a week."
That part of the legacy isn’t something Wooden always embraces.
"The television people won’t like hearing
me say it, but I said it before so I’ll say it again: I think
television is one of the worst things that ever happened to
intercollegiate basketball," he said. "It’s made showmen out of the
players and that hurts team play. And it means that there are games
played every day of the week at any time of day.
"There’s always the other side, though, and
that’s that it provides income that has been the savior of many women’s
sports and the non-income producing sports."
Money was the issue in 1968 as well, when
the UCLA athletic director at the time, J.D. Morgan, approached Wooden
about playing Houston in the Astrodome. Wooden thought the hullabaloo
about the Alcindor-Hayes matchup would detract from team play and was
reluctant. But when Morgan told him the schools stood to make more than
$80,000 for the game, Wooden knew it had to be played.
"{Morgan} was reassuring," Wooden said. "He
said in addition to the money, that he thought it would be very good
for basketball and would give basketball exposure throughout the
country. He was right."
UCLA and Houston had met the previous year
in the NCAA semifinals, with UCLA winning, 73-58, on the way to the
third of UCLA’s 10 national championships under Wooden.
But even in defeat, Hayes was confident.
"He was pretty outspoken when we beat him
in the semifinals in ’67," said Lynn Shackelford, the former UCLA
forward. "He said, ‘We’ll definitely beat them next year.’ He said
Kareem was overrated–even after losing, he said that."
Three games before the rematch, Alcindor
suffered a scratched cornea in a game against Cal and had to miss the
next two games, confined to a dark room at the Jules Stein Eye Clinic
at UCLA most of the week.
"The doctors said there was no way he could play well," Wooden said. "He had vertical double-vision, the doctors said.
"I talked with him about that, and told him
he didn’t have to play because he wouldn’t do well, and there was such
tremendous attention. I think Lewis made a statement later that he
probably shouldn’t have played. I did give him the option.
"It sounds like I’m making excuses. I don’t
want to do that. They were a fine team. Without Alcindor, we weren’t
the same. He wasn’t himself at all."
It was not just Alcindor’s vision, but his conditioning, after hardly practicing for a week.
"The second half, I could tell he was real
tired," Shackelford said. "We kind of had to wait on him a few times to
set up the offense–kind of like his last three years in the NBA. We
weren’t used to that when he was 20."
Alcindor was hampered, and Hayes was at his best.
"He was on fire," said Chaney, still a good
friend of Hayes, who until this season ranked as the NBA’s
fourth-leading scorer of all time–he since has been passed by Michael
Jordan–and now owns and operates automobile dealerships in the Houston
area.
"They could have put three or four guys on
him, and he was not going to miss many," Chaney said. "Every shot was
either in, or in and out."
As close as the final score was, UCLA never had a good shot to win in the final seconds.
Hayes, a 6-foot-9 forward, was not directly
matched against the 7-2 Alcindor, as Wooden points out, but he blocked
three of Alcindor’s shots, and the crowd roared his nickname, "Big E."
UCLA tied the score, 69-69, on two free
throws by Lucius Allen, but Hayes–only a 60% free-throw shooter–went
to the line with 28 seconds left and made both. A couple of UCLA
turnovers later, Houston inbounded the ball with 12 seconds left and
ran out the clock.
"The city of Houston had itself a week’s
celebration," Chaney said. "They ran the game on TV again and again. It
must have been shown five times a day for a solid week.
"From the California side, they were upset
and disappointed. Kareem had a bad eye. He wasn’t 100%, I’ll give him
that. But had he been 100%, he would not have stopped Elvin that night."
Only a couple of days later, the Bruins
suffered another blow when Edgar Lacey, a starter, quit the team.
Benched during the game because he wasn’t playing the denial defense
Wooden wanted against Hayes, Lacey was upset by Wooden’s postgame
comments that he didn’t look as if he wanted to go back in.
"That was one of the most disappointing
things, what happened with Edgar," Wooden said. "I told the press he
gave me the impression he didn’t want to play. I’m sorry I said that.
It hurt him, and that’s why he quit. I was very disappointed. Edgar was
a fine boy."
Both teams knew they would never win the
NCAA title that season without meeting again. It happened in the
semifinals at the L.A. Sports Arena, and this time, Wooden used a
diamond-and-one defense with Shackelford on Hayes.
This time, the roles were reversed. Hayes,
unable to get the ball, made three of 10 shots and finished with 10
points. Alcindor made seven of 14 and had 19 points and 18 rebounds.
The Bruins roared to a 22-point halftime lead and won, 101-69, then went on to beat North Carolina in the championship game.
"That {semifinal game} was the best game we
played in my four years," Shackelford said. "That was the closest we
came to our potential."
An overlooked fact, in Chaney’s eyes, was
that Houston was without starting guard George Reynolds, a transfer
ruled ineligible before the final game of the season because of his
junior college academic record.
"Someone had done some research–I think it might have been the California side," Chaney said.
Besides that, the Cougars had gone
Hollywood. Hayes and Theodis Lee appeared on "The Joey Bishop Show"
days before the game, and center Ken Spain went on "The Dating Game" as
the players soaked up the California scene.
"That really hurt us," Chaney said. "We
were a team that was very pleased with the year we had. We got carried
away and lost our focus. We learned a big lesson. I did, and I know
Elvin did. We got full of ourselves."
That game, though, is not the one people
remember. It certainly wasn’t the semifinal of the century. The
memories are in the Astrodome.
"It’s interesting, after all these years in
broadcasting, people say, ‘What’s your most memorable event?’ " Enberg
said. "Incredibly, that’s still the most memorable game I’ve covered in
any sport–certainly college basketball."
Arrests are expected in the Harry Raymond bombing… An attempt at child visitation at Barbara Stanwyck’s San Fernando Valley ranch (18600 Devonshire) does not go well … Paul Whiteman, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland and Ilona Massey at the Cocoanut Grove… And non-farming Jews are being forced to leave Ecuador.
Here are a couple of interesting items on EBay, both related to Main Street (shout out to Bukowski Square! Let’s make it official).
First, the Milano Cafe, 166 N. Main.
And here’s a shot of Main and 3rd.
It’s a bit difficult to be certain because of the low resolution, but notice a few things: It looks as though Main Street hasn’t been paved, which occurred roughly in the 1890s. And note the various modes of transportation: horses, streetcars, several bicycles and pedestrians. Also note the early style of street lamps. Finally, notice that the building on the far right has fire escapes while the building in the center apparently doesn’t.
