Random shot

Posted on June 4, 2007 by lmharnisch

I passed this car — covered with computer keys — on the Golden State Freeway on my way to the site of a Pacoima plane crash.

Random_shot02

Photograph by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times

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Asian gang war

Posted on June 4, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

1957_0604_gang

June 4, 1957
Los Angeles

Meet the city's Japanese American gangs: The Black Juans, the Dominators, the Koshakus, the Ministers, the Algonquins and the Little Gents.

Unfortunately, The Times wrote very little about them. One exception was a 1970 story about the Yellow Brotherhood, a self-help group founded to help get gang members off drugs and back in school.

One unidentified founder, a former gang member, said: "The kids aren't happy. The parents are working so hard to give the kids the things they didn't have but they are thinking in terms of material things. Not love."

Tadashi Nakamura's 2004 film on the Yellow Brotherhood won an award for best documentary short at the San Diego Asia Film Festival.

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Dear friends at Model Minority: I'm pleased you're linking to this post, but I would prefer to know what's being said.

Sincerely, Larry Harnisch

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Paul V. Coates–Confidential File

Posted on June 4, 2007 by lmharnisch


Paul_coates June 3, 1957

SUBJECT’S NAME: Lester Eugene Davis.

SUBJECT’S DESCRIPTION: Age 42. Height, 6 feet. Weight, average. Light brown hair. Brown eyes.

Any
person with information as to subject’s whereabouts is requested to
contact his daughter, Barbara Davis Chilton, 11812 Philips St.,
Lynwood.

Barbara Davis Chilton is 16 years old. She’s slim and blond and soft of speech.

She’s a pretty girl and looks her age, but her demeanor tips off an early maturity of her mind.

When I talked to her the other day, I sensed that the maturity wasn’t easy in coming. And that it had only recently arrived.

Before
meeting Barbara, I had received a letter from her sister-in-law giving
me a little background on the girl and her missing father.

"Barbara,"
the letter said, "has never seen her father and I feel that if she
could find him she would have the happiness she honestly deserves."

The letter stated that Barbara came from a broken home and that her
father had made attempts to see his daughter when she was young.

But had never succeeded.

1957_0603_chilton
"The girl’s life hasn’t been an enviable one," the sister-in-law wrote.
"She has lived in foster homes, with relatives and friends and has a
long record for running away."

The letter also mentioned that last December Barbara ran away from a foster home again–to marry 21-year-old Jack Chilton.

"Her marriage has been approved by the court now," it said, "and has every possibility of being a very happy one."

The letter left a few questions unanswered.

And I asked them of Barbara.

"First of all," I said, "tell me all you know about your father."

She told me that her parents split up shortly before she was born.

"He stayed in the Inglewood area for a while but eventually, I’ve been told, went to Indianapolis. He was a race car mechanic."

She added that his mother, Linda Davis, used to live in San Bernardino.

"But I don’t know if she still does."

I asked Barbara where she received her information.

"From neighbors, and some from my mother’s parents."

"Did your mother ever talk about him?"

"No. She didn’t want me to see him."

"Do you think she knows where he is?"

"No, not any more."

"Barbara, your sister-in-law wrote me that you’ve never seen him. Is that right?"

"That’s…," she started. "I don’t know. Once, when I was living with
my mother on Inglewood Avenue a man came to the house who might have
been him. I was 10 at the time."

"What happened?"

"I was in the bedroom when the doorbell ran. I went to answer it but my
mother told me to go back into the bedroom and close the door.

"My mother and the man talked in the living room and I heard her ask him:

" ‘How did you find us?’ "

"I opened the door a little bit and peeked at him."

"What did he look like? I asked.

"He looked…" she began. Then she broke into a smile. "At least I think he looked quite a bit like me.

"I asked my mother and she said it was just a friend."

"Does your mother know that you’re looking for your father now?" I asked.

Maybe Barbara didn’t hear the question.

"You know," she said, "if I could find him I think he’d like Jack, my husband.

"You see, Jack is a mechanic too."

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Matt Weinstock

Posted on June 3, 2007 by lmharnisch

Matt_weinstockd
June 3, 1957
An alumnus of a large social fraternity has received a letter from
national headquarters in Indianapolis alerting him to a "major crisis
in California."

Under this particular fraternity’s laws, Negroes and Orientals are not eligible for membership.

The crisis centers about Assembly Bill 758, now under consideration by the Committee on Education.

It proposes that effective July 1, 1959, "No state-owned college or
university nor student council or student assembly thereof, shall
recognize for official campus activities any student organization,
fraternity, sorority or other private student organization which
restricts its membership on the basis of either, race, color, religion
or national origin."

If this legislation passes, the Greek-letter fraternity warns, it will
affect chapters at Berkeley, UCLA, San Jose, Fresno and Davis.

"Opposition to AB 758," the letter continues, "carries with it no
implication of racial bigotry or disagreement with the persisting ideal
of the ultimate brotherhood of men. Those opposed feel that progress
toward that ideal will be limited rather than encouraged by the
legislation proposed."

The alumnus is urged, if he agrees with this philosophy, to make his
view known to his friends, his representative in the Legislature and to
Assemblyman Vernon Kilpatrick of Lynwood, sponsor of the bill. The
letter concludes:

"There is no time to be lost, and the issue is vital–not only to our
fraternity, but to freedom-loving Americans everywhere. We are counting
on you."

The alumnus, who among other things learned tolerance while a university student, is resigning from the fraternity.

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Stravinsky turns 75

Posted on June 3, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

1957_0603_stravinsky

June 3, 1957
Los Angeles

Los Angeles celebrates the 75th birthday of one of its most famous
emigre composers with a concert at UCLA and  a party in Beverly Hills.
Calling him "the dean of the world’s music composers" (recall, for
starters, that Dmitri Shostakovich and Aaron Copland are still alive), The Times announces a concert honoring the man who wrote "The Rite of Spring," "The Firebird" and "Petrushka," although none of those works are performed in his honor.

Stravinsky_house
Instead, the Los Angeles Music Festival, headed by film composer Franz Waxman, featured "The Symphony of Psalms,"
conducted by the composer.  The concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall also
included the U.S. premiere of "Canticum Sacrum" and the world premiere
of "Agon," conducted by  Stravinsky’s Boswell, Robert Craft, as well as Stravinsky’s arrangement of Bach’s "Von Himmel Hoch" and "Symphonies for Wind Instruments."   

Stravinsky received a scroll from the City Council and a telegram from President Eisenhower. Aldous Huxley read a tribute praising "the perpetual dawns in Stravinsky’s work," The Times said.

One of the large mysteries about Stravinsky’s years in Los Angeles is
where he lived. A little detective work shows that he had a home at 1260 N. Wetherly Drive
in West Hollywood. When I drove over to find it one weekend last year,
I ended up talking to a man who had grown up across the street in a
house he eventually inherited from his parents. He recalled that as a
youngster he met Stravinsky and shared some pleasant little stories. To
me that is one of the ultimate L.A. moments.

Photograph by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times

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Chasing Marilyn Monroe

Posted on June 2, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0602

 

Wrong_door01_2
Photographs by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times
The "Wrong Door Raid" apartments at Waring Avenue and Kilkea Drive, May 27, 2007

Wrong_door_8122

June 2, 1957
Los Angeles

Let’s suppose you are an American baseball legend being divorced by
your beautiful Hollywood actress wife. Let’s further suppose that you
see her car parked outside a small apartment house near Melrose and Crescent Heights
late one night in 1954.

Naturally, you decide to break down the door and catch her in the act
with another man, even though you have a less than 50-50 chance of
breaking into the right apartment.

Of course, you call some private detectives. And being an American
baseball legend, an Italian American baseball legend, your chums
include a well-known Italian American singer.

Out comes the ax and down goes the door at 8122 Waring Ave.

Uh-oh.

Instead of catching Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and various companions (including Frank Sinatra) terrified Florence Kotz Ross.

Who was asleep.

By herself.

"Mrs. Ross was fast asleep about 11 p.m. when five or six
men suddenly battered down the back door to her apartment, tearing it
from its hinges and leaving glass strewn on the floor," The Times said.
"Immediately … a bright flash of light was shone in her eyes and she
was confronted with a number of men, some of whom seemed to be carrying
an instrument which at first sight she believed to be an ax."

Wrong_door_8120
The men fled and Ross reported the incident to police as a burglary.
Then Confidential magazine published a story about the raid in its
February 1957 issue, touching off the Legislature’s investigation of
scandal magazines and private detectives.  Ross learned the identities
of the raiders when one of the private detectives, Philip Irwin, told
the story to the investigative committee and the grand jury.

Sinatra received similar treatment when he was served with a subpoena
in Palm Springs at 4 a.m. on Feb. 16, 1957, and he filed a complaint
with the LAPD about the incident. Although his testimony was
contradicted by others, Sinatra was adamant that he remained in a
Cadillac parked outside the complex during the raid.

Private detective Barney Ruditsky, Irwin’s boss, testified before the
grand jury that Sinatra and DiMaggio remained outside while he and
Irwin broke down the door. During the investigation, Irwin testified
that he had been beaten up by six men after he told an official of the
State’s Bureau of Private Investigators and Adjusters his version of
the raid. He also testified that he hadn’t sold the details to Confidential
magazine.

In September 1958, the "wrong door" lawsuit against DiMaggio, Sinatra,
Irwin, Ruditsky, Patsy D’Amore and John Seminola was settled for $7,500
($53,739.63 USD 2006).

And where was Monroe during all of this? Next door, visiting girlfriend Sheila Stewart Renour at 8120 Waring.

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Riot at Virginia Tech

Posted on June 1, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0601_miller
June 1, 1957
Los Angeles

In Washington, Arthur Miller
is found guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to reveal who else
attended a Communist meeting in 1947. In an appearance before the House
Un-American Activities Committee, Miller, the playwright and husband of Marilyn Monroe,
admitted being at the meeting but said his conscience prevented him
from saying who else was there. Federal Judge Charles E. McLaughlin
allowed Miller to remain free on bail pending his sentence.

In Blacksburg, Va., a riot by 300 Virginia Tech
students is halted when the student band plays "Dixie." The students
were protesting the city’s plans to annex part of the campus.

In Los Angeles, Nobel Prize-winner Linus Pauling
continues to speak out against testing nuclear weapons. He says that
even minute quantities of radiation released by the blasts raise the
risk of genetic damage, bone cancer and leukemia.

Also in Los Angeles, U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
vows to continue blocking China’s admission to the United Nations.
"We’ve blocked Red China’s entry into the U.N. 34 times since I’ve been
at the U.N.," he tells The Times. "That’s one of my assignments."
Noting that there are more U.N. members now, Lodge says: "The job gets
harder all the time. But we get it done."

Lodge also said that making peace in the world would aid the U.S.
economy and help cut taxes. "The only way to get real economy,  to hope
for a real tax reduction,  is to reduce the tensions that breed war
and eventually reduce our expenses for military items.  Sixty  percent
of our expenses are for support of the military,"  Lodge said.

And at the Ambassador Hotel, thousands of bridge players are gathering for the 23rd annual Bridge Week, sponsored by the American Contract Bridge League.

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Below, Longwood Estates, Long Beach and Arestia boulevards. This cleanly designed piece stands out from most of the real estate display ads in The Times. There’s no architect’s drawings or floor plans, just crisp type and a photograph of a happy couple with lots of white space. A forward-looking piece of work.

1957_ad_longwood

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Matt Weinstock

Posted on June 1, 2007 by lmharnisch

Matt_weinstockd_2
June 1, 1957

A rewrite man assigned to vacation relief on the police beat was shown around the new police building the other day.

As he entered a padded cell he was told to feel how soft the walls were.

When he turned around he was alone.

"Hey, where’d everybody go?" he yelled.

His pals left him there for an hour.

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Girl in coma

Posted on May 31, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

1957_0531_payette

1957_0531_payette_pixMay 31, 1957
Long Beach

Suzanne was supposed to have a simple bit of surgery. Didn’t everyone
get their tonsils out? The 15-year-old went into St. Mary’s Hospital in
Long Beach on May 31, 1956, but during the operation, her heart
stopped. Doctors opened her chest and massaged her heart. But it was
too late. By the time her heart resumed beating, her brain had gone too
long without oxygen and she suffered irreversible damage.

Days passed, and then weeks. The Times wrote about others who had
fallen into comas. There was 12-year-old Herbie Gray of South Pasadena,
who was riding his bicycle and got hit by a truck Nov. 28, 1955, and
Mrs. William Wrigley, who suffered a stroke Dec. 23, 1947, and was kept
alive by what was considered "a medical miracle."

Suzanne’s mother said: "She seems to be trying to tell us something."

Her care was extremely costly and her father, Lyle, a furniture
salesman, used up all the family’s money. "I have borrowed from everyone we
know," he said. "There is nowhere else to turn."

Suzanne’s story touched the hearts of many people in Los Angeles and
across the country. Anonymous benefactors donated money as well as football
tickets for charity raffles. Schoolchildren raised $884 in nickels and
dimes. Her parents brought a $1.5-million lawsuit ($10,747,925.65 USD
2006) against the hospital, the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, but
The Times didn’t cover the outcome of the suit. 

"People have been wonderful, but there’s so far to go to meet the cost
of Suzanne’s bills," said her younger brother, Lyle Jr., 11. 

"Suzanne seems to be making progress," her father said after she had
been in a coma for three months. "Physically, she appears fairly good.
We think she recognizes us when we enter her room. She breaks out in a
sweat and seems to get excited."

But after six months of hospital care, she was no better and her parents brought her home to 2728 Ostrom Ave.,
Long Beach, to be tended by her mother and father.  "At least we can
give her 24-hour care and try to make her comfortable," her mother
said. "We can do no more."

"Our insurance money is used up, our borrowings are gone and donations
from kind people have been used up also," her father said.

1957_0531_payette_pix02
"My wife believes that occasionally Suzanne recognizes her for a
moment," he said. "And at times she seems to have some expression in
her face. She doesn’t talk, but she will make sounds."

On May 31, 1957, the first anniversary of her operation, The Times offered no hope of her recovery.

The Payette family, which also included another daughter, Sally,
apparently moved to Minnesota. Lyle and Isabelle Payette died in 1986.
Judging by online genealogical records, Suzanne spent 20 years in a
coma before dying in 1976.

Herbie Gray died March 3, 1957, without regaining consciousness. Ada
Wrigley died Dec. 16, 1958, at the Wrigley mansion in Pasadena.

However, The Times also wrote about a "miracle man." His name was
Melvin Eugene Hewitt and in 1951, he was revived after hitting his head
on the sidewalk during a brawl outside an El Monte bar. He was
considered dead on arrival at El Monte Medical Center, but two doctors
cut open his chest and massaged his heart. After six weeks in a coma,
Hewitt regained consciousness, although he suffered brain damage.

In 1957, his mother, Mabel Werrett, told The Times: "He is a religious
man and he speaks with conviction. I place a lot of faith in his
words."

She quoted him: "Someday soon, Mom, I will be completely cured and my mind will be as normal as when I had my accident."

Melvin Eugene Hewitt died Dec. 28, 1987, at the age of 63, 36 years after he was given up for dead.

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Killing in Alhambra

Posted on May 30, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

1957_champion01
Photographs by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times
22 Champion Place, Alhambra, Calif.

 

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1957_0531_picture_3
May 30, 1957
Alhambra

Yeah, we’re back in Alhambra, parked on the pinched, narrow street outside 22 Champion Place,
a quirky, old two-story house built in 1910. It used to belong to a
Western artist named Frank Tenney Johnson, who died in 1939.

His wife,
Vinnie, died in  December 1956, and since they had no children, she
left everything to her sister, Evalyn, and her son, James. Evalyn had
been living by herself at the house since 1952, when she divorced her
husband, Clarence, a janitor for the Monrovia school district, and her
sister went into a sanitarium.

Let’s go inside. Keep your hands in your pockets and don’t move
anything. Notice as we head toward the house that there’s a little
building to the side with a basement. I think that was Johnson’s
studio, but that’s just a guess. It could be a garage.

How about that? The front door is unlocked. The house is loaded with Johnson’s paintings–lots and lots of cowboys.

Notice the vacuum cleaner, and a couple of cushions that have been
pulled off the sofa, as if someone was doing housework. There’s a TV
tray upset on a pile of newspapers.

Let’s go upstairs and look in the bedroom.

That’s Evalyn in the bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. Her son will tell the papers that her face is black. She was 67.

Police will find out that she’s entirely dressed except for one shoe.
Her hands are tied tightly behind her back with a piece of wire with
brown plastic insulation.  She’s been strangled with some pink cloth that was apparently torn from a woman’s half-slip. The
medical examiner, Dr. Frederick Newbarr, will find that she was knocked
unconscious first.

 

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1957_champion02
Let’s go out into what I’ll call the studio. Norman Rockwell spent a
few weeks working here in 1945. Now it’s full of old junk. The only
thing new is down in the basement: another piece of wire, with yellow
plastic insulation instead of brown, and connectors on either end.

That’s about all we know. Evalyn’s son, James Ash, and daughter-in-law,
Lois, live across the street in a house set way back on the lot. Lois saw her mother-in-law this morning
when Evalyn stepped out of the house to get the newspaper. This
evening, they’re supposed to go to San Gabriel Cemetery and put flowers
on Vinnie’s grave. Apparently they were going to go earlier in the day,
but Evalyn decided to visit the cemetery at night so she could spend
the day at Hollywood Park.

Van Wormer, her ex-husband, says he talked to her on the phone about
once every six weeks. Otherwise he  hadn’t had any contact with her. A
high school kid takes care of the yard, but he was in school when she
was killed.

Evalyn’s slaying has never been solved. She is buried at San Gabriel Cemetery. Maybe we should stop there on the way out.

We better get going. The police will be here any minute.

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Fireball engulfs desert

Posted on May 29, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0529_atest

Photograph by the Associated Press
"A furiously boiling ball of fire,
measuring 900 feet from edge to edge, churns with awesome grandeur at the Nevada
atom bomb test site. The blast, which was set off on a 500-foot tower, was
photographed from a distance of 11 miles."

May 29, 1957
Atomic Test Site, Nev.

The Associated Press captured the explosion in well-wrought, anonymous prose. One of 40 reporters and photographers, accompanied by
14 NATO observers and some civil defense workers, the AP writer
described the detonation of the 10-kiloton bomb 500 feet above the
Nevada desert on a steel tower:

"The fireball devoured the the
tower and shot skyward wrapped in an ugly garment of smoke. A
shuddering sound wave rolled off the desert.

"The column of smoke spilled over into the awesome mushroom. And there
it hung, churning and thrashing, until dissipated by gentle wind.

"The wind stretched the mushroom and its trunk into long, narrow clouds
and bore them to the northwest. When a low, gray haze lifted from the
explosion area, test personnel found only stubs of the tower’s legs,
about four feet high, remaining in the ground. Some lower portions of
the tower had fallen onto the sand when the upper section was turned
into atomic dust."

But rather than a poetic description, the thrust of the story was about how safe it
was to explode atomic devices in the atmosphere. The AP writer made a
point of noting that "safety-conscious scientists" had waited for days
until the weather was exactly right for testing an atomic bomb. In
fact, the writer said, this series of tests was the safest since atomic
blasts began at the Nevada test site in 1951.

"As the blast’s 35,000-foot
mushroom cloud broke up, turned pink under the sun’s first rays and
floated lazily away, Test Manager James E. Reeves said:

"The heavy fallout is in the test area. Only light, long-delayed fallout will result in off-site areas."

The writer noted that 31 aircraft immediately entered the test area to
track the cloud. It was all so safe, the writer said. After all, this
10-kiloton explosion, with only half the force of the bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was from "a low-powered member of the United States
nuclear weapon family."

A little detective work shows that Times aviation writer Marvin Miles
had been sent to Nevada to cover the tests, known as Operation
Plumbbob, but excessive winds forced
prolonged delays. Miles filed story after story about how the tests
were postponed and apparently The Times brought him home and decided to
use AP.

Here’s the original press release on the blast, which was code-named "Boltzmann."

Here’s a link to the National Security Archive’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

Here’s a map of the radioactive cloud’s track across the U.S.

 

1957_0528_plumbbob

Photograph courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory

Perfectly safe, folks, this was just a little one.

1957_0530_abomb

Times political cartooning B.C. (Before Conrad) on Memorial Day. 

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Neumann on the Mideast, Part 19

Posted on May 28, 2007 by lmharnisch

Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann
on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his
return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Part 19, March 31, 1957

1957_0331_neumann_2

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Maid held in murder

Posted on May 28, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0528_hed_2

1957_0528_mintz_2May 28, 1957
Los Angeles

Former Nazi prisoner 33822 sat at the defense table, her hands clasped
tightly.  Her light blue cotton dress was wilted from the heat and her
dab of lipstick only accented her jail pallor. Police said Laja Minc, who lost a father, stepmother, two sisters and a brother at Auschwitz, was a
thief. Police said Laja Minc, 36, who used the name Linda Mintz, she was a brutal
killer.

She was liberated Feb. 13, 1946, and brought to the U.S. on May 2,
1952, The Times said. There was a brief postwar marriage that resulted
in a son, Alex, who was now 11.

Mintz had worked as a maid in the homes of several Los Angeles families
that felt sorry for her. But she always stole from them and was
eventually fired.

Her latest employer was Thelma Macomber, 42, who lived with her husband, contractor Fred S. Macomber, at 11920 Laurel Hills Road in Studio City. Thelma’s 65-year-old mother, Irene Sampson, also lived in the home with her new husband, Robert M. Sampson, 28.

It was Robert who found Thelma’s body in the bedroom. Her skull was
bashed in and the bed had been set on fire. He tried to revive her, but
she died at North Hollywood Receiving Hospital.

During the investigation, Mintz said that a freelance photographer who
visited the home a week before had gone into the bedroom and argued
with the victim. Upon reading the account in the newspapers, Max
Tatch, 53, contacted police and said he had been to the home the
week before to photograph the exterior but denied any allegations that
he had returned.

At the police station, Mintz positively identified Tatch as having been at
the home and he was arrested. Investigators had trouble verifying
Tatch’s movements on the day of the killing. He had been at a camera
shop earlier in the day but had spent most of the afternoon sorting
negatives at his apartment and could not provide any witnesses.
Polygraph tests were administered to Mintz and Tatch, but the results
were inconclusive.

1957_0528_macomber
Tatch was released and Mintz was charged with homicide after police
chemist Ray Pinker performed a detailed analysis of the badly damaged
push vacuum cleaner taken from the Macomber home. Analysis found fatty
tissue and broken teeth in the appliance and its sharp edges matched
wounds on the body.

A search of Mintz’s room revealed a cache of items stolen from her
employers: silver spoons, kitchenware, bedding, hand-embroidered
doilies, cut-glass stemware, silver trays, jewelry, a fur, sheets, a
Paris gown and spike-heeled shoes.

Mintz insisted that Tatch was the killer, even though Irene Sampson
insisted that Mintz never saw Tatch when he visited the home and
therefore had no idea what he looked like.

At her first trial, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and
sentenced to a mental hospital. Pronounced sane a few months later, she
was retried, but the jury deadlocked. Rather than undertake a third
trial, the district attorney’s office dropped the homicide charges.

Courtroom spectators applauded as Mintz was released after 22 months in  jail.

In 1960, Laja Minc, a.k.a. Linda Mintz, was arrested for shoplifting
from a grocery store at 1020 S. Crenshaw Blvd.

According to the Social
Security Death Index, Laja Mintz died in August 1981 in Hennepin, Minn.  Social Security records say Laja Mintz was born in 1916, which would have made her 41 at the time of the killing rather than 36. 

Fred S. Macomber died Jan. 7, 2002, in Santa Monica, according to Social Security records. Thelma Macomber is buried at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park.

In a letter to The Times, Tatch thanked his friends and clients for their support and newspapers for their fairness while he was  being investigated in the killing.

"I wish to pay tribute to the fine men of the Van Nuys detective department who worked so hard and left no clue unturned to prove conclusively that I was innocent," he wrote.

"Such men as Lt. Ernest Johnston and Detectives Stewart, Kealy, Hoakum and Nelson are a credit to the community and their profession. Any innocent person  who comes before these excellent officers  will receive a square deal  and courteous treatment, providing, of course, he or she is willing to be helpful and co-operative, as I tried my best to be."

 

Max_tatch_photo_2

Photograph by Max Tatch, Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1947 

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Random shot

Posted on May 28, 2007 by lmharnisch

I passed this building on Melrose en route to the "Wrong Door Raid" apartment house.

Melrose_eyes02_2

Photograph by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times

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Countdown to Watts

Posted on May 27, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0527_ucla
May 27, 1957
Los Angeles

In eight years, the city will explode in the Watts riots of August 1965 and white Los
Angeles will ask itself what happened.  Look, for instance, at how the
Mirror portrays integration at UCLA, which is held up as a model
program. (Except, for example, hints such as the orientation program for students from Africa and Asia about why they can’t find a place to live in Los Angeles).

But delve into the microfilm, fellow Caucasians, and read the Los
Angeles Sentinel and the California Eagle, two African American
weeklies. Even a brief scan of the black newspapers in 1957 reveals a
boiling cauldron of righteous anger:  Teachers cannot get jobs in many Los
Angeles County school districts because they are African American.
Black employees are laid off from skilled jobs at North American
Aviation and offered new positions–as janitors. Blacks picket local
stores that refuse to hire African Americans.

Worst of all, a subpoena of Police Chief William H. Parker in a series
of police brutality cases brought by the NAACP is ignored in a shameful
conspiracy of silence by the white media. In fact, the lone white
newsman to profile the situation, radio announcer Lew Irwin, is told that
his feature on the matter is being killed because it is "too controversial."

In the summer of 1957, eight years before the Watts riots, the Los
Angeles Sentinel ran a series titled: "Does Los Angeles Have a Negro
Leader?" The short answer was no.

History doesn’t get any uglier than this.

To be continued….

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Boy kills drunk father

Posted on May 27, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

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May 27, 1957
Maywood

Drunk again, Harold L. Johnson, 43, lay passed out on a bed at 3069 Prospect Ave. in Maywood. His wife, Agnes,  38, helped herself to some money in his pocket.

When Johnson came to and began beating his wife, as he often did, she
called police and ran to a nearby motorcycle shop where their
15-year-old son, Lester, worked.

"If he comes back, I’ll have him arrested," Agnes said. "You won’t have
to," Lester replied. "I have a billy club and will take care of things
myself."

Police warned Lester not to attack his father. But when Harold Johnson
returned and resumed beating his wife, Lester retaliated.

"I decided to do it my way," he said, according to the Mirror.
He warned his father not to beat his mother. Then, "I hit him as many times and as hard as I could," he said.

Police found Harold Johnson unconscious with 10 deep cuts in his head.
He was taken to Maywood Hospital but refused to be transferred to
General Hospital, so he was released. His last act was to go to the
Maywood police station and demand that his son be freed.

The next day, the Maywood Fire Department received an emergency call
and arrived at the Johnson house to find Lester trying in vain to
revive his father. He was dead. Lester Johnson, a sophomore at Bell
High School, was taken to the police station and charged with murder.

On June 10 1957, a coroner’s jury found that the death was excusable
homicide. According to Dr. Frederick Newbarr, Harold Johnson died of a
hemorrhage due to the cuts on his head and alcoholism.

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USC rites

Posted on May 26, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

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May 26, 1957
Los Angeles

All right, you sociologists at USC (and you know who you are) let’s aim
our microscopes close to home, shall we, and examine an apparently
forgotten campus rite: the Tri-Delt’s pansy ring.

The rite of the pansy ring was conducted by the Delta Delta Delta
sorority in May to honor young women who were engaged or had recently
gotten married and apparently began in 1923, although The Times failed
to record its birth–or death.

 

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Like many ceremonies, it changed over time, but at its most elaborate,
the pansy ring featured a breakfast on the lawn of the sorority house
and a fashion show of the modern bride’s trousseau from a store such as
Robinson’s (the engaged woman’s sporting wear, evening outfits,
something called "going-away clothes," etc.) culminating in a procession of
young women in bridal gowns. 

There were speeches on the importance of marriage and home, an
increasingly elaborate "mock wedding" with pretend couples, a thrown
bouquet "and a fast getaway in a convertible by the make-believe
newlyweds," The Times said.

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The key moment came when each of the young women stepped through a
six-foot ring of pansies as their names and wedding plans were
announced and a bride from the fashion show tossed a bouquet to them
(white tuberoses and sweet peas, in case you’re planning to revive the
affair).

The most troubling aspect of the pansy ring is the attitude expressed
in the society columns and reminds me of the old (and I hope forgotten)
joke about women going to college to get an "M-R-S."

Here’s a quote from 1927, for example:

"When 14 co-eds from the graduating class at the University
of Southern California stepped through the traditional pansy wreath of
good luck at the annual pansy breakfast yesterday at the Delta Delta
Delta sorority house, the theory that college has its matrimonial
advantages was given considerable confirmation."

If that doesn’t raise some feminist hackles, how about this excerpt
from a 1955 speech by Mrs. Edwarda W. White, counselor of women at
USC who was announcing her own engagement?

"In a brief talk to the girls before the ceremony, Mrs.
White told them they were assuming an exacting, challenging role in
becoming housewives," The Times said.

"It’s one of the most important jobs there is," she said. "For when
there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the world. And
when there is order in the world, there will be peace."

You got that, ladies? The key to peace in the world is having a pot
roast on the table when your husband hits the door. None of this stopping
at Trader Joe’s on the way home to pick something up, either.

Changing times and attitudes seemed to have resulted in the demise of
the pansy ring, which vanished from the pages of The Times in 1968.

ps. I can guess what "going-away clothes" are but if anyone can elaborate on this fashion matter, I’d be pleased to hear from you.

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ABC apologizes

Posted on May 26, 2007 by lmharnisch

Page 1, Los Angeles Times

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Page 6

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Neumann on the Mideast, Part 18

Posted on May 25, 2007 by lmharnisch

Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann
on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his
return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Part 18, March 29, 1957

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Network to apologize

Posted on May 25, 2007 by lmharnisch

ABC agrees to make a formal apology for Mickey Cohen’s comments on the "Mike Wallace Interview."

The Mirror, May 25, 1957

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Page 2

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