This week’s mystery movie was the 1929 First National picture Weary River, with Richard Barthelmess, Betty Compson, William Holden, Louis Natheaux, George Stone, Raymond Turner and Gladden James.
Story by Courtney Riley Cooper. Screen version by Bradley King. Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2012.
Though card games had been around for centuries, auction bridge was developed in 1904 as an alternative to whist. In 1925, Harold Stirling Vanderbilt developed rules, particularly for scoring, creating contract bridge. Contract bridge involves four people sitting at the four sides of the table, corresponding to the directions, North, South, East, West, paired into two teams. Each person in a team sees their hand and bids as to what they think they can score with face cards. Each side then plays off with the highest card in a suit taking the hand. The lead team has one member that plays while the other watches. The team with the highest number of points after a certain number of games wins the rubber. Continue reading
Pier Angeli and her little friend remind Daily Mirror readers to turn back their clocks this Sunday.
I’m told that Steve Hodel has published the last two volumes in his life’s work of accusing his father, George Hodel, of every unsolved killing between 1907 and 1999. The Black Dahlia Avenger has gone through countless revisions and updates in which the Black Dahlia Avenger was meeting Billy the Kid Jr. and battling Mothra. Then there’s the Zodiac book. And even a play in which George Hodel poisons his secretary, Ruth Spaulding. (Reality check: She committed suicide). In hailing Steve’s final efforts, here’s a title that he may have overlooked. Or not, since I haven’t read the books and don’t plan to. You won’t find this on Goodreads anytime soon.
Long before becoming synonymous as one of the world’s top designers of haute couture footwear, Salvatore Ferragamo gained fame as shoe designer to Hollywood stars. Creating gorgeous and unique designs that also comfortably fit the wearer’s foot, Ferragamo put Hollywood on the map as a design capital for couture in the 1920s.
Born June 5, 1898, in the tiny town of Bonito, Italy as the eleventh of fourteen children to a poor farming family, young Ferragamo left school at 9 to begin working to help support them. Though he worked for short times for a tailor, barber, and carpenter, the inquisitive, observant youngster found himself drawn to shoemaking, realizing immediately that he “was born to be a shoemaker.” When his sister needed a pair of white shoes for confirmation, the 9-year-old purchased materials, secretly stayed up all night, and created an elegant pair that impressed everyone. Continue reading
This week’s mystery movie was the 1951 Twentieth Century-Fox picture Take Care of My Little Girl, with Jeanne Crain, Dale Robertson, Mitzi Gaynor, Jean Peters, Jeffrey Hunter, Betty Lynn, Helen Westcott, Lenka Peterson, Carol Brannon, Natalie Schafer, Beverly Dennis, Kathleen Hughes and Peggy O’Connor.
Screenplay by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein. Based on the novel by Peggy Goodin.
Continue reading
To the Oct. 26, 2021, audience at the Council Bluffs, Iowa, Public Library who attended Duffy Hudson’s performance delivering the words of Steve Hodel: You should know that virtually everything you heard was a lie.
The fault is not necessarily with Hudson, except for his lack of skepticism. He transformed himself into a human tape recorder and delivered what appeared to be a flawless repetition of what Steve Hodel told him. The responsibility is with Steve Hodel and his rather incredible gift for making up new lies and embellishing his old ones.
Hudson spoke for 90 minutes, including a question-and-answer period, and it would be humanly impossible to catalog all of the fiction. But here’s a few tidbits:
This week’s mystery movie was the 1951 Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger production of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, with Moira Shearer, by permission of the Covent Garden Opera Trust, Ludmilla Tcherina, Ann Ayars, Pamela Brown, Leonide Massine, Robert Helpmann, Frederick Ashton, Mogens Wieth and Robert Rounseville with Lionel Harris, Philip Leaver, Meinhart Maur and Edmond Audran.
English libretto by Dennis Arundell from the French text by Jules Barbier.
Image: Lobby of the New Rosslyn Hotel, showing murals by Einar Petersen.
Note: This is an encore post from 2011.
Fame is an odd thing. An artist might be successful and popular in his lifetime and forgotten with the decades, while other artists receive little or no recognition in their lifetimes, only to become household names later. For example, painter Vincent Van Gogh was virtually unknown during his life and sold only one painting during his career, but within decades of his death, was recognized as one of the world’s greatest painters.
Muralist Einar Petersen, on the other hand, was a well-respected and successful artist during his life. He created many elegant and beautiful murals in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 1910s and 1920s, only to drop into obscurity within a few decades. Not only was he forgotten, but most of his work was also destroyed.
If you’re missing the mystery movie, here’s something to occupy your time. It’s a movie crossword puzzle. From 1933! If the clues are too small, here’s a link to the original. Good solving to you!
I was going to take the mystery photos dark this week as I’ve been traveling and unable to preview a mystery movie. But I decided to run this historic photo for the week.
Brain Trust roll call: Mary Mallory has identified our mysterious motorman.
Update: This is a behind the scenes shot from filming the 1927 Fox film Is Zat So? directed by Alfred E. Green. For this sequence, Fox borrowed a streetcar and built an exterior set at Fox Hills. Read more in the Pacific Electric Magazine for April 1927. The film is apparently lost.
Henry Armetta, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
Note: This is an encore post from 2013.
In many films of the 1930s and 1940s, what audiences remember most are the one-of-a-kind supporting players, with vibrant personalities, colorful ways of talking, recognizable tics and dramatic looks. Many of these people came to be called “picture stealers,” because their antics stood out in entertaining ways.
As an April 7, 1935, Los Angeles Times story put it, “Many of these men are middle-aged and so true to a “type,” according to movie standards, that they will continue to enact typical roles until they pass from the scene. They command good salaries, may only work a week on a picture, but are considered indispensable by casting directors.” One of these popular actors was the frantic and excitable Henry Armetta.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” for the Kindle is available from Amazon.
Eugene Plummer holds what he claimed was Joaquin Murrieta’s 12-shot pistol, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 5, 1938.
Virtually forgotten today, Hollywood pioneer Eugene R. Plummer preserved many romantic traditions of old Los Angeles throughout his 91 years. Generous to a fault, he arranged the sale of the last few acres he owned to Los Angeles County to establish a park honoring the area’s rural and Spanish past. As much raconteur as historian, Plummer propagated stories and events honoring the area’s vaquero and Spanish land grant days, sometimes embellishing the facts.
Plummer helped keep alive the memory of the Spanish land grant Rancho La Brea, 4,444 acres given by Mexican governor Jose Maria de Echeandia in 1828 to Antonio Jose Rocha and Nemesio Dominguez. Henry Hancock served as the Rochas’ surveyor, helping them defend and prove their claims after years of legal fighting. Broke after all these expenses, Jose Jorge Rocha deeded the rancho land to Hancock in 1860, with his family later subdividing and selling the property.
For Monday, we have a dapper mystery gent.
Note: Many responses went into the spam folder this week, my apologies.
And no, not all the judges on Perry Mason were men, so I’m closing out a week of jury duty with a mystery woman judge.
Update: This is Lillian Bronson from The Case of the Shattered Dream. She was the model for Kent Twitchell’s Old Woman of the Freeway.
I’m on jury duty this week, so in that theme I’m posting mystery judges from Perry Mason.
Update: This is Frank Wilcox from The Case of the Treacherous Toupee, as seen in the Mystery Movie ’Til We Meet Again.
Brain Trust roll call: Michael Ryerson, Sarah, David Inman, Howard Mandelbaum, Mary Mallory, Beach Gal, Tucson Barbara, Sylvia E., Jenny M., Mike Hawks, Anne Papineau, L.C., Patrick and Bobby Sulecki.
I’m on jury duty this week, so in that theme I’m posting mystery judges from Perry Mason.
Update: This is Jason Johnson from The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife.
Brain Trust roll call: Beach Gal (Wednesday’s mysterious jurist), Michael Ryerson (Wednesday’s mysterious judge), Sarah (Wednesday’s enigmatic justice) and Tucson Barbara (Wednesday’s mystery judge).
I’m on jury duty this week, so in that theme I’m posting mystery judges from Perry Mason.
Update: This is Grandon Rhodes from The Case of the Restless Redhead.
Brain Trust roll call: Michael Ryerson (Tuesday’s mystery judge), Howard Mandelbaum (Monday’s and Tuesday’s mystery judges), Beach Gal (Tuesday’s mysterious judge), Mary Mallory (Tuesday’s mystery judge), Tucson Barbara (Tuesday’s mystery judge), Patrick (Tuesday’s mystery judge), Sheila (Tuesday’s mystery judge), Sylvia E. (Tuesday’s mysterious judge), Jenny M. (Tuesday’s mystery judge), Sarah (Tuesday’s mystery judge), L.C. (Tuesday’s mystery judge) and Thom (Monday’s and Tuesday’s mysterious judges). Adding Mike Hawks (Tuesday’s mystery judge).
I’m on jury duty this week, so in that theme I’m posting mystery judges from Perry Mason (yes, another TV show).
Update: This is S. John Launer from The Case of the Golden Fraud, starring Mystery Movie veteran Arthur Franz of The Atomic Submarine, The Sniper and The Wild Party.
Brain Trust roll call: Michael Ryerson, Alexa, Beach Gal, Robert Morrissey, Tucson Barbara, Mike Hawks, Sarah, Rain on the Roof, Patrick, Jenny M. and Funky PhD and Mary Mallory. Adding L.C. and Johnny Yuma in The Case of the Spurious Spam Folder.
A postcard of the Avila Adobe, listed on EBay for $1.89.
“A people that has lost touch with its historical past, forgotten its traditions and wasted its heritage is as unfortunate as a man who has lost his memory. Without knowledge of the past, both the present and the future are meaningless.”
Harry Chandler, Olvera Street News, December 1933
Note: This is an encore post from 2019.
Long before Los Angeles or Hollywood possessed any historic preservation organizations fighting to save architectural, cultural or historically significant buildings, Los Angeles Times Editor and Publisher Harry S. Chandler astutely summed up what preservation is all about: saving structures that help define a sense of identity and place, showing where we as a society and people come from.
Throughout its history, the city has often turned a blind eye to its past, demolishing buildings reflecting the daily lives of both ordinary and powerful citizens trying to make an impact on their own time and place. These sites and buildings often reveal the history of less powerful citizens of the time, those of other races, cultures, and orientations that are often written out of historical texts.
Mary Mallory’s latest book, “Living With Grace: Life Lessons from America’s Princess,” is now on sale.
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