Month: January 2006

Welcome, L.A. Times readers

It was our pleasure to host the Times’ intrepid Cindy Chang on our Dahlia Day Crime Bus tour to sites macabre and fascinating. Her story is a terrific snapshot of the mood of the tour and our aims in writing the blog and dragging folks around the city.

We were thrilled to discover we could sell out two full sized tour busses with only minimal publicity on this and other blogs, and in the L.A. Alternative, and are already planning future Crime Bus and Crime Walk outings to introduce more retro gore hounds to the forgotten weirdness of our city. So sign up for the mailing list* if you’d like to be informed when reservations open for the next tour, and check out this podcast, a sampling of the Dahlia Day route. But be warned: there’s a lot of humor, but it is not for the squeamish.

yours in darkest noir (with a cherry on top),
Kim

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A Woman’s Home Is A Dentist’s Castle

January 24, 1947
West Hollywood

Two days after Eviction Day at the fabulous Mount Kalmia Castle, fancy flophouse at 8311 Sunset Blvd., the 38 hapless lodgers of ex-Follies star “Queen” Patricia Noblesse Hogan continue to hustle for new homes. Back in February, the grand, turreted residence overlooking the Sunset Strip was sold to dentist Manuel H. Haig at auction for $83,000, but Her Majesty had nimbly ignored every order to quit the premises.

Until four days ago, that is, when the Sheriff arrived with a twelve-hour notice to vacate, which was the first any of the tenants–from the $300 a month suite men to the gals who shared the basement barracks for $85/per–heard about the sale. 29 hours after the deadline, moving vans still crawled up and down the hill like ants, bearing away segments of the Queen’s $300,000 trousseau, while the tenants sat glumly on hastily-packed trunks awaiting taxi cabs to who-knew-where. And on the driveway, Tootsie Berry, Hogan’s daughter, tried to calm her boxers Major and Colonel. Tootsie wasn’t worried; the Queen would always land on her feet.

8311 Sunset Avenue To-day

(Since there’s so much to go on [and on] about Mt. Kalmia, check out the comments section for all the fine print.)

When I read that there was a twenty-room Norman castle fronting Sunset Boulevard, of course, I knew it was gone.

1933:

And 2006, same view…wait…could something be lurking behind that fifty-foot-high frontage of foliage?

A-HA! Mt. Kalmia lives!

But back to 1947–here are the Sherriff’s knights storming Mt. Kalmia Castle, armed with their 12-hour notice, herding evictees to outside the walls:

Two of the Queen’s abject subjects, Ann Phill and Bernard Epstein, getting the royal boot:

As I approached Mt. Kalmia’s stately gates–

–one of those round portions opened up. A face appeared. It was a a very well-spoken, and very large, African-American gentleman who asked if there was anything he could help me with. I explained, you know, architectural, with the old houses, you see, in what must have sounded like befuddled mid-70s Woody Allen meets Jerry Lewis doing the nebbish. He considered this for a while before closing the little door.

He gave away nothing, but I knew, behind those gates…

1947project in the news

Tomorrow (Wednesday) night, Fox-11 News in Los Angeles features the 1947project Crime Bus Tour during the 10pm newscast. And on Thursday, pick up the L.A. Times Calendar section to read all about the Dahlia Day tour and the folks behind the blog and Crime Bus.

We anticipate a lot of interest in seats on future Crime Bus tours, so please remind your friends who are interested in riding to subscribe to our mailing list, so they’ll be among the first to hear when a tour is announced.

yours noirishly,
Kim

A contemporary pop interlude from the editrix

Taking a momentary break from historic gore and wackiness, I’d like to extend an invitation to SoCal readers to join me at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip on Weds., February 8, at 7pm for a reading, book signing and q&a for my 33 1/3 book “Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.'” This is the oral history of a fascinating and influential psychedelic rock band of the nineties who spun out of a wonderful creative community called Elephant 6.

WHAT: Kim Cooper reads from Neutral Milk Hotel band bio
WHERE: Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., WeHo CA 90069. Free lot parking.
WHEN: Weds., February 8, 2006, 7:00pm

More info.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled noir.

Florence–change the locks!

January 23, 1947
Bell

Theodore K. Oakvid, now 64, was young and spry in November 1928, when he murdered his 12-year-old daughter Sophia with a hammer, then slashed his own throat in a failed suicide attempt. The victim was found by her brother Algird in her bedroom at 7026 Flora Avenue when he went to wake her up.

When revived, Oakvid explained that he had feared for the child’s sanity, and had killed her because she would have been unable to navigate the rough waters of adulthood. But Algird told police that his father had first tried to kill Sophy when she was an infant, and over the years and his many comings and goings in the family had constantly harped on the inferiority of girl children.

Alienists declared Oakvid insane and shipped him off to Mendocino and Patton State Hospitals, from which he now re-emerges, having, it is said, been cured. He told reporters that it had been 14 years since he’d seen his wife or son, and that he reckoned he’d head out to San Berdoo to look up some relatives, among them Florence Powell.

7026 Flora Avenue To-day

Oakvid feared his child was not sane. Sometimes we see too much of ourselves in our children.

Theodore Oakvid and his little Sophy:

Apparently Theo was under the thrall of Social Darwinism, but took it a little too far. Contemporary accounts note “the patient asserted he sincerely believed that only the fit should live and that his daughter was among those unfit.”

Those who take their Herbert Spencer way too seriously end up in San Bernadino:

…at the Patton State Hospital.

At some point the beautiful 1925 Bell High School enlarged itself to the south and a playing field ate up the east side of Flora.

But the field didn’t stretch all the way down to Florence Avenue, leaving this little house intact. Imagine a collection of these running up the street.

Or perhaps the Oakvid residence looked something like its one-time ‘cross the street neighbor.

Newspaper accounts place Mrs. Florence Oakvid as outside milking the cow during the time of Theodore’s murderous attack. Not so many cows in the hood today.

And you think you’ve got neighbor troubles!

January 22, 1947
Los Angeles

18 months ago, the tensions between Mrs. Lillian Goldberg, 1921 Garth Ave., and Mrs. Martha Kelly, of 1917, exploded. For more than a year, the families had endured mutual accusations of destroyed fences, ripped up landscaping, tossed rocks and ill-aimed hoses.

Then, under the pretense of making peace, La Goldberg asked La Kelly over to meet a prospective buyer for the Goldberg manse, and share a pot of tea… but as they walked together to 1921, according to La Kelly, La Goldberg grabbed her around the throat and chortled “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time!” Soon the two women were rolling around in the flower bed. The residents of Garth Ave., by now used to such hijinx, gathered around to watch the fun.

Then from the Goldberg house emerged a man dressed like a cowboy–actually R. G. Hampton, a private detective hired to stay in the home and observe such incidents–firing a gun and demanding the fighting stop or he’d shoot the combatants! Mrs. Goldberg was arrested for disturbing the peace, with Hampton charged for firing a gun within city limits.

During court time soon after the incident, La Kelly acknowledged that she washed her sidewalk whenever La Goldberg passed over it, telling neighbors that this was a necessary chore whenever “that dirty rat” passed by. But she refused to admit to throwing rocks at the Goldberg house, and painted herself as the innocent victim. This tone continued in today’s court session, as she elaborated on the tale of assault, including the allegation that Goldberg’s husband David and 16-year-old daughter Norma assisted in the beating.

Mrs. Goldberg is seeking $201,000 damages for malicious prosecution, while Mrs. Kelly considers her own damages worth a comparatively paltry $200,200. The trial continues tomorrow.

L’affaire Garth Avenue

The age-old battle between the Papacy and ZOG for world domination takes many forms, this gladiatorial duel a footnote in that long and terrible struggle.

Each woman’s domicile, Kelly house in the foreground.

And it was here, at the Goldberg’s, where ladies battered each other, a cowboy emerged to fire his six-gun, and a flower bed was assaulted.

The vicissitudes of the wrestling match had been explicated for four days when Judge Alfred E. Paonessa termed the suit “a travesty on justice and fruitless expense to the taxpayers” before throwing both parties out of his courtroom.