October 2007 – 1947 Project

Death Tees Off

October 30, 1927
Los Angeles County

What should have been a happy father-son bonding session ended in tragedy today at the Fox Hills Country Club. Forty-year-old Ben H. Wesley was helping his 12-year-old son on the practice fairway when young Donald accidentally clipped his father on the neck with his club. The blow caught the elder Wesley just below the base of the left jawbone; police speculate he was either standing "at the left and slightly to the rear or directly in front" of his son, or perhaps was bending down to reach for a ball rolling from the tee. Country club attendants and players ran to Wesley’s aide upon hearing his son’s screams but he died a few moments later. Donald was rushed home by friends.

A coroner’s inquest is planned, but all are certain Wesley’s death was but a cruel accident.

Give Us Some Candy, or We’ll Blow You Up!

Give Us Some Candy Headline

October 29, 1927
Beverly Hills

Police seized 300 pounds of dynamite, black powder, cellulose, and 1000 fulminate of mercury capsules which had been concealed in a garage at 1201 Kalamazoo Street in Beverly Hills. The garage is at the home of Dick Baird, one of three high school students who had planned to use the explosives to celebrate Halloween with more than just costumes and masks. Beverly Hills High

The police were first notified of suspicious activity by the principal of Beverly Hills High School. He complained that several powerful firecrackers had recently been exploded on school grounds. The subsequent search revealed that three boys: Dick Baird, Cecil Merritt, and Joel Smith had been carrying dynamite caps and short fuses in their pockets, and then pitching the small bombs from classroom windows.

The source of the dynamite was found to be in Higgins Canyon west of Beverly Hills, where it had been stored by the Beverly Hills Road Company since completing a project in 1925. One of the youths admitted that he had rolled down a seventy-five foot embankment clutching a box of the stolen dynamite, which he then transferred to a waiting automobile!

Explosives experts told police that if the dynamite had been ignited it would have jolted the entire city of Beverly Hills, leveled a whole residential block, and would probably have resulted in many deaths.

The boys will not be prosecuted; however, police are extremely interested in speaking with those persons responsible for abandoning the dynamite.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

if you don't succeed headline

October 29, 1927 garrote
Cuba

Convicted murderer Baldomero Rodrigues was legally executed twice today in the Pinar del Rio prison. The means of execution was the garrote, a macabre relic from the Spanish colonization of Cuba. The prisoner was shackled hand and foot, and then placed in the device which would strangle him to death. At least that was the plan.

Following the initial garroting the supposed dead man was laid on a stretcher to be borne to his grave, when he suddenly sprang to life! With no thought of sparing the resurrected felon, prison officials overpowered the struggling man and forced him once again into the death machine. The strangulation band was adjusted more carefully this time, and Rodrigues remained on the machine for twenty-two minutes before he was officially pronounced dead.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

if you don't succeed headline

October 29, 1927 garrote
Cuba

Round ’em Up!

folliesfacade

October 28, 1927
Los Angeles

hotmamma The vice bulls had a titillating time on Main Street tonight as they swooped down on the scantily-clad hot mammas of “Hot Mamma” at the Follies Theater, grabbing twenty-seven of the tiny-leaf’d gals and loading them into paddy wagons. Also arrested were twelve chorus men of the Hot Mamma show; further pinched were four tattooed women in their work clothes, and of course Ili Ili, the untamed tree-climbing South African pygmy (this last group in violation of Ordinance 6859, aka barking a show on the sidewalk, outside the Dreamland Palace at 539 South Main).

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fightinpriests What gives? Well, it’s 1927, and saucy soubrettes kicking up their heels (oh you kid!) in the undesirable theaters of Street Main was too much for the dogooding Men of the Cloth, who remembered a time when there was no such flapping, before ladies in their runabouts had bathtub gin on the breath of a mouth slathered in kiss-proof lipstick and the men who love them, and so forth, and it was time to put a stop to it. On October 27, pioneering radio evangelists Dr. Gustav Briegleb and the Rev. Robert P. “Fighting Bob” Shuler took in the show at the Follies, and called in the coppers to shut it down tonight. On November 29, Shuler and Briegleb were called to the stand to testify as to the show’s indecency. Follies showgirls put on a good show at the Hall of Justice, too, as they loudly hissed the ministers. (Of course they hissed! Are they not serpents leading men astray as She did at the Fall of Man?!)

blushing It’s a good thing counsel made a point of selecting an all-male jury, as the vivid descriptions of indecent dances, songs, jokes and costumes brought blushes to the faces of jurors, court spectators and court attaches during the trial. The highlight of the trial was Rev. Shuler himself, who read from his copious, filthy notes, which recounted a lewd performance between two girls playing the parts of deserted wives looking for their husbands in the barroom of a ship. And Shuler’s dead-on imitation of a “licentious smile” which he asserted to be part of the dancers’ repertoire brought such an outburst from the crowd of spectators (and the Hot Mamma girls) that the bailiff threatened to clear the courtroom.

Preacher Briegleb minced no words: “They didn’t have enough clothes on to flag a handcar,” said he, and described the activities of the chorus as “a moving sea of contortions of all that was low and vile.” Defense counsel asked that the good minister confine himself to the facts, but what fun is that? In the dancers’ defense, Dorothy Walton, the blonde “Cleopatra” of the play, described her dancing as being “combinations of modern and classical steps” in which, she admitted, did in fact move every part of her body.

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Which seemed hunky-dory with the aforementioned all-male jury, who set the lot free, save for four defendants—Tom B. Dalton, Robert Whalen, Harry Graves and Charles B. Dameron—found guilty based on their admitted connection with the management of the show and their writing of the dialogue. These Hot Papas were sentenced by Municipal Judge Frederickson to serve 150 days in the City Jail in addition to $500 ($5,515 USD2006) fines each: “It is my clearly defined duty to impose the severest sentence possible upon these defendants in order that such performances will not continue in this city…certainly the dances staged with their help were not artistic as claimed by them. The defendants have had a fair and unbiased trial and convicted of a most serious offense to society.”

folliesad1939 Needless to say, the Follies soldiered on. It was remodeled by S. Charles Lee in the 1930s, and thereafter saw many decades of shimmy-shammyin’ by Lili St. Cyr, Ann Corio and Betty “Ball of Fire” Rowland. Eventually girlesque went the way of vaudeville, and the Follies became a skin-flick house. In 1968 Eleanor Chambers, executive assistant to Mayor Yorty, led the fight to have the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board add the Follies to its list of culturally significant buildings (who had just added a theater and something art deco). The board nixed that idea as beneath them (rejecting the Burbank/Burlesk at 548 South Main as well).

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And then, in May of 1974—the month that the House of Representatives opened its impeachment hearings against President Nixon, the Follies was razed, and now, in its place, stands the Ronald Reagan building:

barc-follies1 barc-follies2

klanman

And oh yeah, for more on Revenend Shuler, go here…

…of course, they leave out all the obvious stuff…

Hair Today…

October 27, 1927
Los Angeles

naughtygirl

Of course we know that pigtails have gone the way of the dodo for the li’l ‘uns, torn asunder by the terrible rake of modernity, but we never thought the bob would be stomped extinct by carnality and venality, modernity’s ugly little twins. But the bob is gone! Long live the permanent wave!

Here, five year-old Dottie Landvogt, of the Seventy-Sixty Street Landvogts, sits at Johanna’s Permanent Wave Shop in the Pantages Building on Broadway. She’s hooked up to one of those Charles Nessler contraptions—a crazy of octopus holding two-pound brass rollers on a system of counterweights, suspended from a chandelier; the curlers, filled with a Borax paste reagent, are electrically heated to 200+ degrees to boil and steam the hair and, because Nessler didn’t have a shop in Los Angeles, this was probably one of the many cheap knock-off machines. Which meant Dot likely ended up with a nicely burned scalp to match her ‘do.

But such is the price of beauty.

By the time Dorothy is ten, heatless waves will be all the rage, so we wish her the best of luck in still having hair.

1947project Podcast #9: Halloween Episode, October 26, 2007

Kids are running amok in 1927 Los Angeles, setting fires, eating razors, crawling under fumigation tents and stealing babies from their mothers. And the adults aren’t behaving much better, what with the married guys conning nice working girls into bigamistic unions and the guy what found the fountain of youth and knows where the Czar’s fortune is banked, and all he needs from you is $25,000 and a nice spot to rub his mystic peapod paste.

Then there’s our own Crimebo the Crime Clown, and he is in a funk. There are so many things he hates about Halloween, can he count the ways? You bet!

Tune in to hear about how Peter Pan tried to kick Crimebo’s ass at the Chinese Theater, how the apocalypse is coming with a rain of cheese and Nathan’s love letter to crude oil. It’s all here on the 1947project Podcast, featuring Crimebo, Kim Cooper, Nathan Marsak, Mary McCoy and Joan Renner.

So give it a listen, won’t you?

Here is the Ourmedia link, where you can stream or download.

The podcast is also available on Moli, and on itunes.

The Case of the Randy Chaplain

October 25, 1927
Culver City

Orville Clampitt cannot, it seems, stay out of trouble. First there was that business last year with the euphoniously-named Miss Lucille Swallow out Kansas way, and the San Francisco court martial the then-Army Chaplain (and "Beau Brummel of the Presidio") endured over accusations of "objectionable conduct" in violation of three of the articles of war. These charges were brought by the lady after she discovered that Clampitt, who was otherwise a delightful companion, was married with a quartet of kids.

"I forget when I first met Capt. Clampitt," Miss Swallow told reporters after eluding Army minders, "But he was awfully nice. He used to take me out for walks and to picture shows and to dinners. The question as to whether he was married never came up."

During the court martial, Miss Swallow produced love notes from the accused, and there was testimony that he had deliberately disguised his handwriting. But then several surprise witnesses appeared to claim Miss Swallow was "out to get" Mr. Clampitt because he’d refused her demands for money, and he was found not guilty.

He promptly retired to Santa Cruz, where he registered as "William Jones" in a hotel where a "Mrs. Jones" was also staying. It was bad publicity over this indiscrete act that resulted in Clampitt being dismissed from Army service, and the offer of a $50,000 motion picture contract for himself and his photogenic horse Red Head.

But no, said Clampitt, he wished only to return to Vancouver, where his wife and children waited. That was April. And today, he was picked up by Culver City police, following the arrest of boy burglar Spencer Farley, discovered in the act of looting the Schwartzkoph manse at 1725 Gardena Street, Glendale.

Farley told officers that his home address was Orville Clampitt’s car, in front of Clampitt’s home at 215[?] Silver Ridge Avenue, and that he was stealing so he could give gifts to Clampitt’s 13-year-old daughter. It seems the whole family has relocated, in hopes of starting a new life. Clampitt stated he’d been hired as actor John Gilbert’s double, a claim denied by Gilbert’s studio.

When questioned, Clampitt admitted he was allowing Farley, 15, to live in his car, because the boy claimed his mother threw wild parties and refused to let him sleep at home. While he thought it weird that Farley wouldn’t tell him where he lived, he was sympathetic to the boy’s plight… at least until he discovered that the kid was taking his car out at night! Stolen golf clubs and various trinkets were seized from the Silver Ridge address.

Clampitt will be released tomorrow when it’s determined he knew nothing of Farley’s thefts. Henceforth he disappears from the public record save for an April 1929 theater review of his cameo in Edward Horton’s play "The Hottentot," at the Majestic Theater. Red Head the horse had a leading role as the comic foil to Sam Harrington, who masquerades as the famous jockey who shares his name, and eventually must ride the fearsome Hottentot in a race. After each show, crowds gathered on Broadway to watch Clampitt ride Red Head, now mild as a merry-go-round pony, away from the theater and, we hope, home to his wife and kids.

License to Ill

Rex H.W. Albrexstondare was not a doctor, but he played one in Southern California.

The pseudo-scientist claimed that he’d discovered the fountain of youth through proper diet and treatment, and had been restored from a 90-year-old man to a young man with a thick head of black hair. He said he’d grown four sets of teeth in his life. He was associated with a scheme to create a human body, saying he’d once crafted a 6 inch body, but had been unable to vivify it. He said he’d discovered a medicinal herb that could rejuvenate human life. And he claimed to be a Russian prince who had made millions during the regime of the Czar by devising a system of hydrating food.

Yes, Rex H.W. Albrexstondare said a lot of things, and oddly, some people believed him.

Unsurprisingly, the "doctor" made his living by preying upon women, preferably of the wealthy and lonely variety, and supposedly treating them for vague medical complaints, such as headaches and rheumatism. However thin his ruse may seem, the doctor found plenty of willing customers until 1923, when he hit a patch of very bad luck.

It was then that Albrexstondare treated two Orange girls, Myrtle Thompson and Evelyn Rohrs, who suffered from congenital heart disorders. He gave them a paste made of mashed vegetables, alfalfa, and pea pods, which probably did the girls no direct harm, but certainly did them no good either. Albrexstondare was charged with practicing medicine without a license.

doctor2 Around the same time, a suit was brought by Jennie McFadden, a wealthy Altadena widow, who claimed that Albrexstondare had failed to repay over $20,000 in loans she’d given him over the space of a few months. He had befriended her, announced plans to embark on a course of scientific research, and set up a lab in her home. She periodically loaned him sums of money, which he perceived as gifts; he also claimed that during his stay, the 70-year-old McFadden made passes at him and tried to get him to marry her, as did her daughter.

Others came out of the woodwork, and by the middle of 1924, Albrexstondare had three suits filed against him totaling over $35,000.

But first things first. He was found guilty of the case involving the Orange girls (the jury’s deliberation took only 5 minutes), and was sentenced to 180 days in prison. He promptly set about raising the $3000 bond for his release. There was no mention of the party who’d finally given Albrexstondare the money for his bond, but he or she must have been too embarrassed to make a stink about it when he failed to appear for his sentence in May of 1925. On the lam for three months, he was finally apprehended in Ensenada and dragged back to Orange County to serve his sentence.

Then in December 1926, things took a turn for the weird. Socialite and pianist Ruth Shaw, one of the women who’d previously filed suit against Albrexstondare back in 1924, pledged her loyalty to him and agree to help him with his legal troubles. This would mark the beginning of Shaw’s second career as a professional swindler and full-time accomplice.

For reasons that were not specified, Jennie McFadden’s case did not come to trial until October of 1927, but Albrexstondare’s performance there may have been worth the wait. Prior to the trial, he and Shaw had hinted that they had some surprises up their sleeves, and today, the doctor let out all the stops.

He claimed that he was beaten so severely in prison that he lost his hearing, memory, and consciousness of his surroundings for nine months. He said that Jennie McFadden and her daughter had threatened to use their wealth and influence to have him arrested, and that McFadden herself had engaged the agents who followed him from San Diego to New York City and finally, to Mexico while he was a fugitive (although he never saw himself that way).

The judge didn’t see it this way, however, and ordered that Albrexstondare repay Mrs. McFadden’s money with 7% interest, as well as all court costs. You might that all of this would teach the doctor a lesson, or at least slow him down; however, Albrexstondare continued his schemes in Los Angeles with little variation or discretion for at least the next seven years.

In May 1930, he was in trouble again, accused of swindling a woman who said she’d paid $275 for a medical treatment that she never received. Ruth Shaw, who’d lined up a string of gullible female clients for the doctor, was charged as an accomplice. Last heard from in 1934, the pair were still up to their old tricks. They were again charged with swindling for their efforts to separate L.A. residents from their hard-earned cash, telling them that they were raising funds to file a federal suit — allegedly, the $43 million fortune of the deceased Czar had been deposited to a San Francisco bank.

And is it just my imagination, or does our own Nathan Marsak bear some small resemblance to the good doctor? Watch he doesn’t slip you any vegetable paste!

Lacy Underthings and Seagull Wings

October 23, 1927
Los Angeles

John A. Horn was born to be a poet but Fate (O! cruel mistress she!) decreed he make his living as a lingerie salesman. Worse, he was married to a woman who did not understand the lyricism of his delicate artist’s soul. So he left his wife—but not before explaining himself in verse.

Martha Horn, seeking a divorce upon the grounds of desertion, recently handed her errant husband’s scribbled magnum opus to Judge Gates:

"I’ll wait here ’till the sun sets," I told her
"If you are hungry, there’s a stand upon the pier."
She nodded. "You can wait. I won’t be long."
And saying this, she left me with the sun.
I sat upon the sand and watched the gulls
Skimming the restless water striped with gold.
The rolling waves tossed foam upon the beach;
"The lacy underthings the Old World wears,"
I told myself, then smiled quite satisfied:
Not many a clerk in a department store
From seven to six could say such clever things.
. . . . the sun
Was almost gone, the rounded golden edge
Was sinking out of sight when my wife called
"John." I saw her coming down the beach
Munching a bun. "I’ve one for you," she said.
I turned. The sun had sunk into the sea.

"And when I gave him the hot dog, he got sore," Mrs. Horn clarified for the court.

"This is just another example of the ancient controversy between rhyme and reason," chortled Judge Gates before granting a divorce to the long-suffering Mrs. Horn.