Officer-Involved Shooting

Posted on April 8, 2007 by lmharnisch


April 8, 1957

Los Angeles

 By Larry Harnisch

Off-duty Police Officer Dallas W. Walters, 32, was leaving a Wilmington liquor store at 2 a.m. after visiting the clerk when two young gunmen stepped from the shadows at 1109 W. B St. and ordered: "Back into the store. Both of you."

"Oh no, we won’t," Walters replied, and as clerk Albert Estrada, 19, of 1522 Island St., dropped to the pavement, the officer drew his pistol and fired.


In a moment, Walters, of 3250 N. Woodruff Ave., in Lakewood had been shot in both legs and one arm, Lucious Claude Williams, 21, of 150 E. 108th St. was dead and Charles Hawkins, 18, of 4511 Staunton Ave. had been shot in the chest.

The apparent getaway driver, Sonjalee (or Sonjale) Whitmore, 21, of 1192 E. 43rd St., picked up Williams’ gun, carried Hawkins to a car and sped to Harbor General Hospital, where he left his wounded companion, The Times said. Whitmore fled from the hospital but ran the car into a ditch at 66th Street and Arlington Avenue.  He  went to Hawkins’ home and told the family that Hawkins was in Harbor General. The family and Whitmore returned to the hospital and while the family was looking for Hawkins, Whitmore hid in the trunk.

Police eventually found Whitmore and took him and Hawkins to the prison ward of General Hospital. In the meantime, doctors at Good Samaritan Hospital grafted an artery into Walters’ leg in an attempt to save it. Investigations were planned to determine whether Walters killed Williams or if he had been killed by gunfire from his companions, police said.

My big question was whether Williams, Hawkins and Whitmore were black. In the 1940s, the newspapers referred to African Americans as "John Jones, Negro," so there was never any doubt. But by 1957, this practice seems to have disappeared.

Figuring that other newspapers might shed some light on the question, I looked up the killing in the morning Los Angeles Examiner and the afternoon Herald-Express.

The Examiner had a few more details (Walters had diabetes and was the father of four children: Sharon, Larry, Pamela and Peggy), plus a photo of  officers standing next to Williams’ body sprawled on the pavement and Bill Brunk’s picture of Walters and his wife, Eulyne, at the hospital. Det. Lt. Ralph Weyant told the Examiner that the three men were suspected of other holdups in the Harbor area.

Then, out of curiosity, I pulled the Los Angeles Sentinel, the weekly serving the African American community. Although the Sentinel didn’t identify the men as being black, the treatment of the story is a fair indicator that they were. The Sentinel noted that Williams was "still clutching a .25-caliber revolver [probably a semiautomatic-lrh] in his right hand."

Interestingly enough, the Sentinel led its front page with a story about the fatal stabbing of Ola Williams, whose body was found in the offices of Jimmie’s Transfer and Storage, 1720 W. Jefferson.  And no, The Times didn’t even cover it.

Police Chief William Parker presented Walters with the Military Order of the Purple Heart in 1959 for his actions during the botched robbery. Records show he retired from the LAPD on Jan. 3, 1965 and died March 21, 1983. There was no further word in The Times on the fate of Hawkins or Whitmore.

Rest in peace, Lucious Claude Williams, above left, who was born March 11, 1936, in Louisiana, and died in the streets of Wilmington, April 7, 1957, with a gun in his hand. He had just turned 21.

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Deal Me a Card, HAL

Posted on April 7, 2007 by lmharnisch

April 7, 1957
Los Angeles

By Larry Harnisch

In a gathering for newsmen, Caltech staged a demonstration of its "electronic brains." Charles Ray showed off the Royal Precision Electronic Computer LGP-30, a 740-pound "desk computer" with 113 vacuum tubes and 1,350 diodes.

Reporters also saw the enormous direct electric analogy computer, which was being used to simulate a DC-8 jetliner.  

But the star of the show, as displayed by Joel Franklin, was a ElectroData Datatron 205, which, like the LGP-30, had been programmed to play games, in this case, blackjack.

After running through the calculations for a nuclear reactor, Datatron asked: "How many suckers–I mean players?" "The machine dealt four hands by marking the names of the cards down on its typewriter," The Times said. To help the humans determine whether they should ask for another card to fill out their 21, Datatron politely–and without being asked–told them their chances of drawing a card and not going over 21."

Like the serious student who becomes a handsome movie star by removing his horn-rim glasses, the Datatron computers found real fame not by their work in the Boston Navy Yard or a drab insurance office in Minnesota, but on TV and in films.

The Bat Computer? A Datatron. "Lost in Space?" A Datatron. "Angry Red Planet?" "Fantastic Voyage?" "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes?" All the Datatron. And don't even ask about "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine."

Vincent Price, as Dr. Goldfoot, with tape drives from the Datatron, later renamed the Burroughs 205.

One of the Datatron's latest screen appearances? Some of the tape drives turned up in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me."

Read about Caltech's Computer Center here.
Here's the manual, in case you have a B205 in the garage.
And here's the handbook.
Thanks to Burroughs 205 website for some of this information.
ps. I dropped a note to Joel Franklin at Caltech to see if he'd like to share some recollections of the Datatron. I'll let you know what he has to say.
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Silk-Stocking Slayer

Posted on April 6, 2007 by lmharnisch


April 6, 1957
Los Angeles

By Larry Harnisch

Ruth Newgarden Goldsmith, 52, a New York fashion designer, had been dead about 12 hours when she was found after 3:30 p.m. by two maids in a $25-a week room at the Hollywood Algiers Hotel, 445 N. Rossmore Ave. on the edge of the Wilshire Country Club.

Goldsmith, a widow who gave her address as 15 Christopher St., New York, N.Y., had checked into the Algiers a month earlier. According to police, she made frequent business trips to Los Angeles, selling belts out of her hotel room. Her hands were tied with a silk stocking and she apparently suffocated on a washcloth forced into her mouth and held in place with another silk stocking.

The Hotel Algiers, formerly the Casablanca and the Country Club Hotel


There were traces of cold cream on her face, leading authorities to believe she was getting ready for bed when she was killed. Her light green negligee was "disarranged," but there were no outward signs of a "criminal attack," The Times’ delicate term for a brutal crime. The only sign of a struggle was shoe prints on the rumpled bed, Detective James Close said.

Investigators found that her wallet was empty and although acquaintances at the hotel said she had expensive-looking jewelry, nothing was found in a search of her room. Her bank books showed that she sometimes withdrew as much as $2,000 ($14,330.57 USD 2006). Police said she had frequent business callers and kept a display of belts in her room.

Marine Pvt. Brad Arnold and his father, Charles, who had a room a few doors down, said Goldsmith was a quiet woman of excellent character.  In an interview, Charles Arnold said Goldsmith was trusting and "took everyone at face value. If someone came to her door she would have let them in." He added, "She had no enemies and lived very quietly. She usually went to the movies by herself."

Her only apparent survivor was a son named Walter, described as a Korean war veteran who was studying law at New York University.


The Internet can tell us a few more things about Goldsmith. She was born Dec. 28, 1904, her father’s last name was Newgarden and her mother’s maiden name was Schwartzenberg. The New York Times appears to list an engagement announcement of Walter George Goldsmith and Ruth Newgarden, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Albert Newgarden, 151 W. 86th St., on Oct. 4 and Oct. 11, 1925. The New York Times also shows a company called Coordinated Accessories of 15 Christopher dealing in belts and accessories declaring bankruptcy in May 1957 under the name Benjamin Weintraub.

A little more digging shows that Albert Newgarden had a brother George J. Newgarden, whose obituary appeared in the New York Times on June 5, 1931. According to World War I draft records, a man named Walter George Goldsmith lived in Essex, N.J., but it’s unclear if was her husband.

All right, armchair sleuths, there’s a real unsolved case from the archives with everything available from the initial reports in The Times and the Mirror.

Maybe it’s just me, but something doesn’t add up here. We have a quiet, well-behaved woman of excellent character who goes to movies by herself and yet has an extraordinary number of business clients who visit her hotel room ostensibly to buy her custom-designed belts. I would suspect something else, but according to the bankruptcy filing, there was a belt company at the address she gave.

One curious note: In 1950, a judge ruling in a case brought over alterations done without the proper permits said the Algiers looked like "a glorified quickie motel."

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April 5, 1957: Twice Burned in Club Mecca Firebombing

Posted on April 5, 2007 by lmharnisch

April 5, 1957: Club Mecca bombing
April 5, 1957
Los Angeles

By Larry Harnisch

They were a six-pack of juiceheads, daddy-o. Human-torched by lowlifes that wildfired the imagination of young, L.A. bike-roaming James Ellroy, demon dogging the pulp novel city in type-O scarlet and memory napalm.

Six juiceheads: That’s how they’re cast in our film noir tale about one of the biggest Los Angeles crimes of the 1950s. But it’s not that easy. History never is.

At 20 minutes to midnight, four men who had been thrown out of the Club Mecca, 5841 S. Normandie Ave., came back with an old five-gallon paint can full of gasoline. One of them, an ex-convict, threw the gas into the bar like a cleaning lady pouring out her mop bucket; another, a delivery driver for a bindery,  lit a matchbook and tossed it onto the gas-soaked carpet. The small neighborhood bar, 25 feet square packed with 21 people, exploded in flames.

Firefighters found one victim still sitting on a bar stool, so badly burned it was days before he was positively identified. Four other men and one woman died, and the rest survived, one of them with severe burns.  At the time, police called it the biggest mass murder in Los Angeles history.


Detectives found one of the killers, Clyde Bates, 36, and his companion, Oscar Brenhaug, 44, sleeping off a drunk in a blue Plymouth sedan parked in the driveway of Bates’ home at 1623 S. Menlo Ave. Investigators eventually arrested the other two men, Manuel Joseph Hernandez, 18, and Manuel Joseph Chavez, 25.

Of course, they all had alibis. Chavez said he went home from the bar and didn’t know anything about the fire until he read about it in the papers. Bates and Brenhaug said they were at another cocktail lounge until it closed at 2 a.m. Hernandez said he couldn’t get served because he was underage. Otherwise, he couldn’t remember what happened.

Joyce Chapdelaine, 22, a Mecca waitress, said she danced with Bates briefly while Hermina Morales, 28, danced with one of the other killers. The men became abusive and after a brawl with two bar employees and a customer, three of the suspects were thrown out. In the brand of logic known only to drunks, they returned to the bar to insist that a fourth companion also be thrown out and bartender Larry Fenton complied.

The men went to a Union Oil station at 5720 S. Vermont Ave., filled an old, dirty bucket with gas, then returned to the club. Bates pitched $1.43 worth of high-octane revenge into the bar and Chavez lit the matchbook.

“I was sitting on the third stool near the door,” Joseph James Marriott said, “when I felt something hit my pant leg and run down into my shoes. I thought it was a friend playing a joke—squirting me with a hose.

“My leg and shoe were saturated. I turned and saw the guy striking the match. It was a book of paper matches and he struck the match two or three times. That’s all I remember—I had troubles of my own after that.”

So who were Ellroy’s juiceheads?

  •   Gilbert J. Gonzalez, 20, an apprentice cook at the Scandia restaurant in North Hollywood. “He didn’t go in for heavy drinking,” his sister Helen Brahim said. “He just liked to drop in and chew the fat with a few of his friends.”
  • Jose Maytorena, 20, a San Pedro market checker whose burned body was found sitting on a bar stool. His father, Angel Luis Vallejo, warned the suspects at the 77th Division station: “All I can say is you guys better not get out on bail.”
  • Jacqueline Agnes MacInnes, 21, who had just arrived with Barbara Spinelli, a secretary at a nearby plating company. MacInnes had been babysitting for Morales, her roommate, who went home before the fire started. Spinelli, a divorcee with two young children, had been dating Fenton, the bartender, and was returning his car. MacInnes, who was waiting for her fiancee, Chuck Westbury,  to get off work at another bar, died en route to the hospital; Spinelli survived but was burned on her hands, face and legs.
  • Anthony M. “Tony” Smaldino, 27, an assistant pressman, Korean War veteran and former Golden Gloves contender.
  •    Phillip E. Crawshaw, 28, described by friends as “a very quiet, a very likable boy.”
  • Harry Leslie Robinson, 64, who liked to putter in the yard. Robinson and his ex-wife had been divorced for many years and each lived with one of their children. One of them would spend a month with their daughter in Pico Rivera while the other stayed with their son Alfred at 3704 Hillcrest Drive. “He avoided fights,” his daughter said. “He was a quiet man who liked to sit around and talk in the bar. It was nice and friendly for him.”

  Crawshaw’s services were held in Seattle and Robinson was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery. Gonzalez and Maytorena received Requiem Masses at St. Vincent’s Catholic Church and were to be buried next to one another at Calvary Cemetery. MacInnes’ Requiem was held at Nativity Catholic Church and she was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, The Mirror said. After rites at St. Brigid’s Catholic Church, about 300 people attended Smaldino’s burial at Calvary Cemetery, with several of them surging forward to restrain his mother as she threw herself on his casket.


Now for the lowlifes.

Claiming that he was too drunk to have helped plan the bombing,    Brenhaug turned state’s evidence and the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence. Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison and vanished from the pages of The Times a few years later.

Bates and Chavez were sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin, and in 1960, they got into a Death Row brawl with Red Light Bandit Caryl Chessman and convicted killer James Merkouris over watching the Rose Bowl on TV. But in 1966, Gov. Pat Brown commuted their sentences, giving Chavez life in prison and Bates life without the possibility of parole.

In 1972, the state Supreme Court scrapped the death penalty, further reducing Bates’ sentence to life in prison. A final Times story says Bates was scheduled to be paroled in March 1977. Chavez had already been freed and was working in Sacramento as a counselor for ex-offenders.

A year after the fire, Spinelli and Fenton were married. In 1959, she and the survivors of several victims won a lawsuit against Union Oil and the men who sold the gasoline to the killers, but it was overturned on appeal. Times reporter Gene Blake, writing a postscript in 1976, noted that he was unable to locate Barbara Fenton, but quoted her reaction to Brown’s clemency ruling: “I really feel that they should have been given the death penalty.”

Blake also noted that the Club Mecca had been torn down to make a parking lot for a liquor store–a liquor store that was a mile north of Florence and Normandie, the flashpoint of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when most of South-Central was in flames.
Today, 5841 S. Normandie Ave. is nothing but a pockmarked concrete slab surrounded by a strong metal fence. The only thing left is a sign. Most of its letters are missing, but it looks as if it once said: “Lee’s Liquor. Hamburgers.”


There is no happy ending in this story, no stern-voiced narrator intoning the prison terms of the guilty as there was in “Dragnet.” Six people died and the killers got out of prison. Memories fade, but as Barbara Fenton said: “I still have a few scars and I’m a little self-conscious about them. The scars will remain the rest of my life.”


Woof, daddy-o.
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Posted in #courts, 1957, Homicide, LAPD | Tagged , | 18 Comments

Sorry It Had to Happen This Way

Posted on April 4, 2007 by lmharnisch

April 4, 1957
 Los Angeles

By Larry Harnisch

Sometime in the night, Robert Tunis Palmer, a 27-year-old meatpacker from Marysville, Ohio, sat on the steps of the church at 14th and Union, finished his can of beer, put the muzzle of a .45 revolver to his forehead and pulled the trigger.

A neighbor who was walking his dog found Palmer at dawn, sprawled next to the Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church, 1575 W. 14th St. There was a note beside the beer can: “I’m sorry it had to happen this way.”

At 5:30 that Thursday morning, Clara Barnes, the landlady at Palmer’s apartment house next to the church, discovered a note pinned to the telephone in the hallway: “Please contact Mary at once. I’m sorry it had to happen this way.”

There was another note to Barnes in Palmer’s room. Please send his service discharge papers and birth certificate to his mother back in Ohio. Have his TV set repossessed and give his alarm clock and “other possessions” to Mary. Since he went to the trouble to mention what he wanted done with his TV and alarm clock and said nothing about a car, I assume he didn’t have one.

A .45 is not a delicate weapon, nor does it make a modest sound, but if anybody heard the gunshot, nobody called the police. I wonder if Mary was supposed to get his gun too. I wonder if anyone claimed the body or if he just lay there, waiting.

Most of all I wonder whom he was addressing when he said he was sorry. And what was the “it” that had to happen? His suicide? All the loose ends that had to be tied up now that he was gone?

On a bright, sunny Saturday 50 years later, I drove down to the little corner of Los Angeles to see where Robert Tunis Palmer, 27-year-old meatpacker from Ohio, sprayed his brains all over the concrete.

14th Street and Union is a block south of Pico, the heart of Mara Salvatrucha country in one of the poorest areas in Los Angeles. On my way, I got lost in one of the neighborhoods that’s closed off to the outside world—or at least the MS-13s.

Palmer’s apartment house, 1352 S. Union, is still in business, an off-white two-story building that looks like it’s from the 1920s. Back in the 1940s it was the Del Rio Hotel, DRexel-0342.

What was once the Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1923, has become the Iglesia Evangelica Missionera. While I was taking pictures of the steps where Palmer killed himself, I met the minister, Pastor Rodolfo, who was picking up trash along 14th Street.

Pastor Rodolfo is gentle man, with liquid eyes, a quiet voice and a soft handshake. Could I see inside the church? Of course. The congregation bought the building from the Methodists a few years ago, he says.

He explains the red flag on the altar, with the star and crescent, by saying that the church sponsors a family of Salvadoran missionaries who are serving in Turkey. Because Turkey wants to join the European Union, they are open to Christianity, he says.

When I comment on the beauty of the stained-glass window facing Union, Pastor Rodolfo voices an almost physical pain. He wants to get the window repaired because unbelievers in the neighborhood have thrown rocks through it. He had a phone number for someone who could fix the window but lost it.

I reassure him that my church just had its windows repaired and I’ll find out the number so he can the work done. Please do, he says. When I finally get the information I struggle with calling him. I attend a wealthy church in Pasadena with an annual budget of nearly $5 million. I suspect it might cost more to fix the window than it does to send Iglesia Evangelista’s family of missionaries to Turkey.

Someone long ago and far wiser than I said suicide is permanent answer to a temporary problem. If Robert Tunis Palmer hadn’t pulled that trigger, he would be 77 now, maybe playing golf or heading to Laughlin in his RV. What was he looking for at the church that night? Sanctuary? Salvation? A place to pray? Or just a good spot to drink a beer and kill himself? And for the moment, I too am sorry it had to happen this way.

ps. I finally called the church with the phone number of Judson Studios, which specializes in repairing stained-glass windows. Pastor Rodolfo was busy so I left the information with someone. Then I wrote out a check, in memory of Robert Tunis Palmer, to Iglesia Evangelica Missionera, 1575 W. 14th St., Los Angeles, 90015. It seemed like the least I could do.

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Posted in 1957, Pico-Union, Suicide | 3 Comments

Ovation for Ollie

Posted on April 4, 2007 by lmharnisch

April 3, 1957

   

If you haven’t taken a look at the Civic Center scenery lately—and many longtime residents boast they haven’t been downtown for years—a surprise awaits you.

Except for the public buildings and a few others, it’s hardly there anymore.   

Where remembered buildings used to be, there are now great leveled places. Soon new structures will rise out of the debris. Already the handsome new County Courts Building has taken its place in the revised landscape at the northwest corner of 1st and Hill.

All this brings us around to a letter George Smedley Smith, who has operated a modern apartment house at 2nd and Grand for 18 years, has written to Councilman Ed Roybal.

Smith, who by the way composes brilliant plays which get published, wrote: “During those long years of observation we have become aesthetically appreciative of the wayward and mystic passes, the eye rollings, knee bends, lamp-post leanings, the vague and occasional (sometimes stratospheric) swishes made by the street cleaners in the manipulations of the tool of their profession.”

He continued, “At the moment we are being kicked out of this location by the county, which has purchased this building. Before putting out the cat and the fire for the last time, we would like to record our appreciation of the contemporary street cleaner at the crown and apex of this old quarter. He has done more to keep the streets of this acropolis tidy in the last year or so than all the efforts of his predecessors lumped together.” 

 

Smith concluded, “Perhaps you would pause in your heavy schedule to point this letter to the proper authority in favor of a conscientious public servant, the contemporary street cleaner of Bunker Hill—Mr. Ottie Phine.” 

 

Let’s go all the way and declare Ottie Street Cleaner of the Week.

Note: The Daily Mirror is pleased to introduce a new generation of readers to Matt Weinstock (1903-1970), the author of "My L.A." and "Muscatel at Noon,"      and a columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News, the Mirror and The Times.

 

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Postcards From the Past

Posted on March 16, 2007 by lmharnisch

The Hotel Green, Pasadena
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The Bridge

Posted on March 15, 2007 by lmharnisch

March 15, 2007
South Pasadena

Here’s the Gold Line, its passengers mercifully unaware that they are zipping along to Pasadena in the “Gorge of Eternal Peril” beneath “The Bridge of Death.”

Here’s a close-up of a patch made to fix one of the 1907 cracks in the bridge. And yes, the darn thing is still standing. Hm. Maybe I should call it “The Bridge of Hope” instead.

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In Which a Ghostly Visitor Returns

Posted on March 15, 2007 by lmharnisch

March 15, 2007
Los Angeles

“Well, dear boy, I suppose you thought you were through.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And?”

“Good grief! Do you see this bridge over the Gold Line? It looks like it’s held up with hairpins and spit!”

“Saliva, dear boy. And what is the Gold Line?”

“Well, it’s sort of a streetcar, except it doesn’t run on the street.”

She leaned back in her ghostly chair. “And what did you think of our little year?”

“I was quite wrong, wasn’t I?”

She merely nodded.

“You could have at least told me.”

“Dear boy, you needed to find out for yourself.”

“OK, so there were movie theaters in Los Angeles.”

“Yes.”

“And there were comics in the paper.”

“Little Nemo is one of my favorites.”

“I couldn’t believe all the domestic violence. Awful stuff.”

“It was terrible,” she said.

“And getting a divorce was so difficult.”

“That was horrible,” she said.

“And the rotten doctors, the fakes and charlatans, dirty restaurants, the drinking and alcoholism. The exploding gasoline stoves.”

“Well,” she said chidingly, “you didn’t write very much about people who were nice. You newspaper folks never do.”

“Most of all, we haven’t changed very much, have we? I mean, look at our problems with transportation… with sanitation… with growth… with housing… immigration… ethnic discrimination… education… polluting the ocean. A century later, the Police Department is still pleading for more officers. It’s the same story, with different details, that we had in 1947.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“Ma’am, that’s a short question with a long answer. You could tell me, couldn’t you?”

“I could.”

“But you’re not going to, because I have to figure it out for myself, is that it?”

She nodded.

“I’ll miss all of you so much.”

“You know where to find us,” she said.

“Was it a kinder, simpler time?” I asked.

“Maybe in some ways, but mostly no.” And then she paused for a moment. “Go take a picture of your bridge. It hasn’t fallen down yet, has it?”

“Nope, it’s still there. Or at least some bridge is still there.”

I didn’t know what else to say: “Thanks for everything.”

“You are most welcome. And thank you.”

And then she was gone.

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Posted in 1907, 1947, Black Dahlia, Books and Authors, Comics, Education, Immigration, LAPD, Streetcars, Theaters, Transportation | Tagged | Comments Off on In Which a Ghostly Visitor Returns

The Celebrity Inteview

Posted on March 14, 2007 by lmharnisch


March 14, 1907
Los Angeles

Harry C. Carr, future author of “Los Angeles: City of Dreams,” visits Fely Dereyne, who is starring in the San Carlo Opera Company’s touring production of “Carmen.”

Accompanied by Times artist Harold R. Coffman, who sketched the singer, Carr conducted a backstage interview with Dereyne with the help of two opera company members who served as translators. As an interview, it is disjointed, poorly organized and frustratingly incomplete; the early work of a green but talented writer who is somewhat smitten with his subject. And yet it is fresh and immediate.

“Dereyne dutifully remarked that she didn’t study Carmen” as a character, Carr says.

“Just natural,” she said in French. “I am just like that myself.”

“Gee,” said the artist, uneasily, “have you really got a temper like that?”

“Sometimes,” she said, with dancing eyes.

“Well, then, I hope you like this picture.”

“Oh,” she said airily. “Sometimes I am ver—how do you call it? Ver’ nice.”

“Like the little girl that had the little curl?”

Dereyne looked troubled. “I don’ know zee ladee; who is she, please?”

“This was a great moment in Dereyne’s career,” Carr wrote. “She was about to learn the tragedy of the little girl who had a little curl. It took two newspapermen, an opera manager and a second tenor to do it.”

Dereyne, an incredibly obscure figure today, was described in The Times as “one of the best Carmens who has ever been seen upon the local stage, for with her vigor and vivacity she never loses sight of the vocal demands of the role. At all times she sings. Her stage work and byplay are constantly assertive.”

She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in November 1907 as Musetta in a performance of “La Boheme” with Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso. Her last Met performance was in 1908 as Nedda in “Pagliacci.” After that she seems to have vanished from the stage.

And there you have it; a moment backstage in a theater (Philharmonic Auditorium) that is gone with people who are, except for Carr, entirely forgotten. That’s what I love about research.

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Farewell, Faithful Companion

Posted on March 12, 2007 by lmharnisch


Feb. 12, 1907
Whittier

Don had rushed up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders, fearless in the face of enemy fire. But he could not survive a speeding driver on the otherwise placid streets of Whittier.

A present from Teddy Roosevelt to Hamilton Fish, Don was the mascot of Company B of the Rough Riders. Don was given to Col. William Wallace. When Wallace died in Whittier, Don was given to Wallace’s physician, Dr. Hadley.

“Since that time the big dog had had the freedom of the Quaker town and had never walked through the streets without receiving much attention from small boys and girls to those of larger growth,” The Times says.

Death came from “a big touring car containing four persons, going around a corner at so high a speed that the old dog, which was walking quietly along, could not get out of its way.”

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Los Angeles Has No History

Posted on March 11, 2007 by lmharnisch

Feb. 24, 1907
Los Angeles

Google Earth, 2007

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A Tumultuous Season

Posted on March 10, 2007 by lmharnisch


March 10, 1907
Los Angeles

Someone who opened the Los Angeles Times on this Sunday might be forgiven for wondering what had become of the world, for Page 1 was full of news about the demise of two religious leaders.

The first was the death of John Alexander Dowie, the founder of Zion, Ill., who considered himself the reincarnation of the biblical prophet Elijah. The second was the decline of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science.

The Times published some of Eddy’s letters to her son, saying: “These Eddy letters, now carefully guarded in a safe deposit vault at Washington, are confidently expected to invalidate every transaction made by Mrs. Eddy in the last 15 years.”

They are too long to post, but here’s a sample:

“My Dear Son: The enemy to Christian Science is led by the wickedest powers of hypnotism and is trying to do me all the harm possible by acting on the minds of people to make them lie about me and my family.”

Dowie’s history is far more complex and even the highlights of his career defy an easy summary. He arrived in San Francisco in 1888 and moved to Chicago two years later. By 1899 he was mobbed by thugs while staging nightly crusades in Chicago after establishing a divine healing mission and opening a bank and newspaper.

In 1900, he bought the property for what is now Zion and began calling himself “Elijah the Restorer.”

Five years later, he was paralyzed in Zion upon returning from a trip to begin a colony in Mexico. In 1906, he appointed a general overseer, Wilbur Glenb Voliva, who took over the movement and repudiated him.

Dowie’s last words were: “The millennium has come. I will return in a thousand years.”

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Random Shots From Our 12-Bore

Posted on March 9, 2007 by lmharnisch

March 9, 1907
Los Angeles

The Insanity Begins

Led by I. Newerf and J.B. Dudley, the automobile owners of Los Angeles are fighting a new city ordinance that bans parking within 40 of downtown intersections. Newerf, the West Coast representative of Goodyear Tire Co., and Dudley, a car salesman, received citations for violating the law and have pleaded not guilty.

In April 1909, Dudley pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter after hitting street inspector Woodman J. Thomas on Broadway near 5th Street. He was sentenced to five years’ probation in March 1910.

Disgraced Woman

Hazel La Doux, a.k.a. Hazel Rogers, hid her face with a veil as she was tried on charges of forgery.

“Her downfall is said to be due to a man named William Rogers, an alleged Ascot tout who deserted her,” The Times says. “It is charged that Miss La Doux forged the name of Mrs. John Brink on a check for $120 and cashed it.”

La Doux told police that she and Rogers used a scheme in which she took a job with a reputable employer and passed clients’ information to lover. La Doux said she worked at a department store in Oakland and a dentist’s office in Los Angeles, turning over names to Rogers, who forged the checks.

“She had been an honest woman, she said, until Rogers’ oily tongue and smooth ways captivated her and she became his mistress and then a thief,” The Times says.

He Paid $40

Restaurant owner Frank Flood stood over his wife, Annie, as she lay on the floor of their quarters at a Spring Street rooming house and said it would be worth the $25 fine just so he could beat her up.

In testifying against him, “She recited a story of shocking cruelty, saying that she had been mistreated, scorned and finally beaten by the man who promised to love, cherish and protect her,” The Times says.

Flood did not dispute any of the charges, refused to cross-examine her (a husband’s right in those days) and pleaded guilty to battery. “He admitted that he struck her and confessed to having assaulted her with his fist as she lay on the floor,” The Times says.

He paid $40 ($837.08 USD 2005).

Flood skipped town in September 1907. “He made the acquaintance of a fast sot and spent plenty of money, too much, in fact, for a man of his means. Late suppers at swell cafes cost Flood much cash. Then he became possessed of a desire to take long journeys in touring cars. He paid his bills with other people’s money, the new restaurant manager says, by levying on the cash drawer of the restaurant, which is owned by a company,” The Times says.

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It Was a Kinder, Simpler Time…

Posted on March 8, 2007 by lmharnisch

March 8, 1907
Los Angeles

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Forget Bird Flu, This Is Serious

Posted on March 7, 2007 by lmharnisch

March 7, 1907
Los Angeles

A dreadful disease called acute glanders has been discovered in a horse and veterinarian R.J. Ramage ordered that the animal be destroyed immediately.

In addition to rapidly causing death, acute glanders can be spread from horses to humans and there is no known cure, at least in 1907. Apparently several men in Los Angeles County died of acute glanders in 1893.

Since glanders is often found in horses’ nasal passages, local veterinarians want to ban wooden water troughs from city streets, saying that they are a breeding ground for the disease.

In 1911, Pasadena authorities ordered that 14 horses owned by the Pasadena Ice Co. be shot to death because they had the disease. The county veterinarian also quarantined a stable occupied by a dozen horses and “a number of Chinese” after detecting acute glanders.

“The disease is so infectious that it can be contracted by a horse sneezing in one’s eye,” said county Veterinarian W.B. Rowland.

In 1909, Ramage, of 831 S. Los Angeles St., went on a violent rampage at the Alpine Tavern on Mt. Lowe and it took 11 men to get him under control.

“At the tavern, the man created notice by talking continually to himself and created a disturbance by falling on his knees in the ashes of the fireplace; bowing his head down almost to the embers and offering violent words of prayer,” The Times says.

“Two physicians, formerly of the Southern California Hospital for the Insane at Patton, happened to be present and, taking ropes which were brought, demonstrated that they knew how to handle a crazy man.”

After being taken to Pasadena, Ramage was put in a car for the ride to the county hospital. “All the way to Los Angeles, the unfortunate man screamed and struggled, endeavoring to throw himself from the swiftly moving machine,” The Times says.

Eventually, Ramage recovered and told hospital attendants that he had suffering from mania for years. “He had only a dim recollection of the trouble he went through there.”

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Belles Are Ringing!

Posted on March 6, 2007 by lmharnisch


March 6, 2007
San Francisco (VIA Associated Press)

The Irish of San Francisco are furious over a play at the Davis Theater called “The Belle of Avenue A,” which features a character named Mrs. McCluskey who drinks a glass of beer in the first act.

“Three times, about 40 people charged the stage and the actors and actresses feared they were about to be attacked,” The Times says.

“Indignant because the woman’s part in the first act called for the drinking of a glass of beer, two score men, members of the Irish societies of this city, charged the stage and for half an hour refused to allow the play to go on.”

The riot was reported to the police and the protesters were eventually thrown out of the theater.

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Bonus shot:

Los Angeles, before the days of Google Earth, at the junction of Main Street, Spring Street and 9th Street, 1873.

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An Independent Woman

Posted on March 5, 2007 by lmharnisch


March 5, 1907
Los Angeles

What shall we do with Emma? She’s gone off to New Mexico and married a Chinaman. Her horrified mother hopes to get the marriage annulled, but Emma is an independent-minded young lady.

Emma’s mother, Mary Culver of Monrovia, says she will do everything she can to undo her daughter’s marriage to Frank Chew, which The Times describes as “a sort of missionary revivalist,” noting that “Miss Emma had longings to help the heathen herself.”

Chew asked Culver for permission to marry Emma, but “it was bluntly refused,” The Times says. “Emma had a mind of her own and her answer was ‘yes,’ regardless of her mother’s wishes.”

Even worse, Chew could be an illegal immigrant and if he’s deported, Emma says she will be willing to go to China with him. She made this vow, even though she was warned that Chew would sell her into white slavery as soon as he got her to China.

Emma isn’t the only one in trouble. Members of the Chinese Baptist Mission are equally furious, saying that Chew borrowed jewelry from members of the congregation under the pretense of defending himself against deportation when in fact he used the money for his elopement.

In August 1907, Emma sent a letter from Hong Kong to her family, saying that their fears were baseless and that she and her husband had opened a day school where they taught English.

The next year, Emma mailed a photograph of her students and tried to recruit more women to come to China.

“With her husband, Frank Chew, she has established an English school which is attended by the sons of well-to-do, educated Chinese gentlemen. The Chews have prospered beyond their wildest dreams,” The Times says.

“Every family in Hong Kong seems anxious to have its children learn English and the pupils themselves study the language eagerly.”

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A Page From the Past

Posted on March 3, 2007 by lmharnisch


March 3, 1907
Los Angeles

Stroll into the Los Angeles Public Library on Central Avenue with me for a moment, over to the children’s section. The librarian says there are about 15,000 to 16,000 books, only half of what is needed, because about third of them are checked out every month.

The most popular titles are “Little Women,” “Little Men” and “Old-Fashioned Girl,” The Times says. Although the library has 25 copies of each book, it’s rare to find them on the shelves.

Among boys, Civil War stories are the most popular, “the Henty books, Barbour’s athletic tales, ‘Tom Sawyer’ and Dunn’s Young Kentuckian series of which there are a dozen copies each in stock,” The Times says.

“The children delight to search through the card catalogue and select their books,” The Times says. “It is interesting to watch the youngsters as they stand, pad and pencil in hand, and with a grownup air of importance, write down the names of the books they want.”

The story describes several young library patrons, but this is the one that stays with me:

“One of the constant patrons of the juvenile department is a tall, pale-faced lad who walks on crutches. A cruel accident so injured him that he is unable to attend school, but he has found an excellent substitute in the serious study of electricity at the library.

“He greedily devours everything he can lay his hands on about electricity. Day after day this delicate, white-faced boy pores over the books. He talks intelligently about induction coils, ohms, volts and motors.

“ ‘I intend to be an electric engineer,’ he declares as he limps away on his crutches. And the chances are that he will be.”

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Page 1 News

Posted on March 2, 2007 by lmharnisch

March 2, 1907
Los Angeles

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