Author: Kim Cooper

Kim Cooper is the creator of 1947project, the crime-a-day time travel blog that spawned Esotouric’s popular crime bus tours, including The Real Black Dahlia. She is the author of The Kept Girl, the acclaimed historical mystery starring the young Raymond Chandler and the real-life Philip Marlowe, and of The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles. With husband Richard Schave, Kim curates the Salons and forensic science seminars of LAVA- The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. When the third generation Angeleno isn’t combing old newspapers for forgotten scandals, she is a passionate advocate for historic preservation of signage, vernacular architecture and writer’s homes. Kim was for many years the editrix of Scram, a journal of unpopular culture. Her books include Fall in Love For Life, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, Lost in the Grooves and an oral history of Neutral Milk Hotel.

Larry Harnisch: Futurist!

Some of you have been asking, since we made the leap from 1907 to 1927 last month, "hey, what happened to Larry?" And because the answer was top secret, very hush hush and on a need-to-know basis, we’ve been unable to answer. Until now.

Click on over to the L.A. Times’ blog section, where you’ll discover Larry Harnisch’s brand new Daily Mirror Blog, a study of the crime and culture of 1957 Los Angeles. The new blog launched yesterday, but already features a backlog of tales, including the baffling (for 1957) death-by-starvation of Buster Crabbe’s daughter, a first-person piece by musician Dave Pell on the Sunset Strip scene, reprints of vintage Paul Coates columns and today’s post, a nasty little story of lust, blackmail and murder in a glass walled house where nobody locked the doors.

The Times has been experimenting with blogs for a while. And while we’re sorry to lose him, we’re glad they finally noticed the ace blogger toiling away in their copy edit department, gave him a byline, and are letting him work his archival magic. 1957 seems rather a florid time from the tasteful vantage of 1927, but we’ll be cocking an eye in its direction regularly. After all, as Criswell liked to remind us, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives!"

Best of luck to Larry in this and future endeavors.

News of Dissolutions

April 12, 1927
Los Angeles

Ah, Spring! The time when a man’s thoughts turn to trading in his bride for a younger model, and a woman considers murder. Let’s see what’s happening in the family courts today.

Juanita Fletcher Crosland was granted a divorce from her film director hubby (Frederic) Alan Crosland (The Jazz Singer) on grounds of cruelty and intemperance–she claimed he would stay out until 4am for weeks at a time, and then scream vile, drunken epithets on his return. The couple married in 1917, and resided at 626 North Palm Drive, Beverly Hills. Frederic is keeping the Palm Drive home and a car, while Juanita walks with $500/week alimony, property in Westchester N.Y. and a promise that Frederic Junior’s college bills will be paid. (Gaze into the crystal to see where Alan Crosland is today.)

Helen Griffith has been freed of her Oran after telling Judge Summerfield that Oran’s language was so foul, the neighborhood ladies slammed their windows and pulled their children inside when he was strolling, and sometimes called the cops.

And in Highland Park, Judson Studios patriarch William Lees Judson, 84, sought to be severed from Ruth Seffern (or Suffern) Judson, described in court as a virago who rented rooms in the family manse to liquor sellers, and who was so abusive to William’s students that he was compelled to shut his College of Fine Arts (part of the University of Southern California, founded in 1901). William, who came to California for his health in 1893, would die in October 1928 in his Highland Park Studio, which continues to be run as a family stained glass operation and art gallery today.

No Mermaid She

April 10, 1927
Venice

It was motorist S.H. Henry who saw it first, bobbing in the Grand Canal with slow, horrible motions. He leaned in and saw a middle aged woman’s body, fully clothed save for her hat, bound round with rope. He ran for the cops. When they hauled her out, they found there were no ropes, but long strands of seaweed that had caught round the body as it floated through the gentle waterways.

A bruise on the brow suggested violence, but ultimately it was determined that the victim, Mrs. Margaret Kelly of Chicago, had killed herself after long despondency over ill health. Perhaps she vainly hoped the balmy winds and lovely vistas of Venice-by-the-Sea would sooth her worries. She had $207 cash when found, more than enough for her passage first to Sharp & Nolan undertakers (beachside specialists in these messy water cases), thence to Chicago and the afterlife.

A Most Impressive Fellow

April 6, 1927
Redlands

CONfidential to all garage managers: be on the lookout for a swell-looking swell of about 40 sporting diamonds on his fingers, checkered suit and a loud necktie, who pulls up in a swishy wagon spilling tales of his string of racehorses in TJ, the barn he’s rented for them in town and how he’ll be bringing the ponies up presently, and in the meanwhile, his car isn’t running great, so can he hire a car and chauffeur to drive him back to LA, and meanwhile, can you cash this $135 check?

When this charmer stopped by Charles Maynard’s Pioneer Tranfer Company garage, Maynard was dazzled by his line and said yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Now he’s got a stolen car on his lot, a bad check in his register and a cranky chauffeur who, after waiting four hours for his client outside a Los Angeles hotel, drove back to Redlands to tell Maynard just what a dope he’d been. All that glitters, etc.

A Professional Man Ought Not Dally

April 5, 1927
Santa Monica

Serial burglar E.M. Peterson is presently cooling his heels in Santa Monica Jail, having carelessly cooled his tonsils in the course of knocking over the Radio Pharmacy on Washington Boulevard recently. Fingerprint man Barlow discovered an incriminating imprint on a silver sundae cup at the soda fountain, and when confronted with the stain, Peterson admitted both to stealing an icy cold confection, and to no less than fifty Westside burglaries and seventy in Los Angeles. This is once again, proof positive that between meal snacks are bad for a bad man’s health.

But enough about crime. Please join us, gentle reader, in wishing a most joyous 95th birthday to the beaming gentleman at left, Mr. Harry Cooper, my grandpa. Born in Philly in 1912, he served in Havai’i (as he pronounces it) during the early 1930s where he saved a fellow soldier from a riptide, came out to LA and drove a pickle truck, met and wooed my grandma Barbara on the tennis courts, and together they briefly ran a chicken ranch, then were for many years in the discount shoe business at the Beverly Bootery, a shop located where the El Coyote parking lot is today. Harry is a gentle fellow with a passion for tinkering in his garage workshop (ask him about his moss topiary projects or the steering wheel shelf he made so he can read National Geographics in the car while Barbara is shopping), odd scientific and natural history facts, golfing and exotic foods. Here’s wishing a perfect day to a lovely fellow!

Noir City: Los Angeles vs New York at the American Cinematheque

The 8th Annual Festival of Film Noir is coming to the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian from April 12-May 2, and getting discount tix for the whole series is a fine reason to become a member. Each screening includes a film set in Los Angeles set against one in New York. What burg will be the winner in this battle of mood, nuance, betrayal and pain? I think you know where our bet is laid!

We’d like to especially pull your sleeve to the rare Leonard Maltin-introduced 35mm screening of He Walked By Night on April 22, based on the unbelievable-yet-true Erwin Walker case (more here)–as seen on our Halloween Horrors crime bus tour, where we share startling, little-known facts about the crime spree, graciously provided by Walker’s stepson. Sure, you can pick this public domain flick up on DVD at the 99 Cent Only Store, but you really want to see John Alton’s beautifully shot scenes of that L.A. River sewer escape bigger than life.

For more info on the Festival of Film Noir, please visit the series webpage. And do come by and say hello at the reception on opening night, April 12, when some of the 1947project gang will be in attendance to answer your questions about the upcoming Esotouric bus adventures, including the noir-heavy Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, and editor Denise Hamilton and contributors Jim Pascoe, Diana Wagman, Christopher Rice, Neal Pollack, Patt Morrison, Emory Holmes II, Gary Phillips, Lienna Silver and Naomi Hirahara will be on hand with copies of the brand new Los Angeles Noir anthology. This is the second of a slew of Los Angeles Noir events 1947project folks will be attending.

Innovation – Yay or Nay

April 3, 1927
America

The world is changing, sometimes for better, others for worse. In Chicago, the Western State Bank has responded to the concerns of its late night poker playing constituency by installing an ingenious device in the wall of their newest branch. This gadget permits an account holder to relieve himself of his attractive burden by way of a secure "cash chute," a heavily armored tube alarmed with electrical and radio wave protection, thus protecting his winnings from street thug or wife alike.

But in the nation’s capitol, the baggage handlers of the Union (Station) Transfer Company are crying poverty, blaming the flimsiness of fashionable ladies garb for the reduction in trunks being shipped ahead. Why, travelers simply stuff their wardrobes into suitcases and pack them in their cars! Accordingly, UTC is requesting permission to apply a rate increase to those sad saps who didn’t get the suitcase memo… but while they can gouge their customers, they can’t hold back the sands of time.

The Imaginary Friends of the Monkey Mask Bandit

March 30, 1927
Los Angeles

Afterwards, when they examined the attic, they found evidence that he’d hidden for days up there, nourishing his evil plans with a diet of orange juice and liquor, quietly scheming during banking hours, constructing his army of robot helpers after everyone went home.

Ah, yes, the robot helpers. These were artificial arms with toy guns in their “hands,” constructed with ropes and weights to smash through the ceiling of the Merchants’ National Trust and Savings Bank branch at 24th and Hoover just as the robber, clad in a hideous monkey mask, confronted his prey. Who would dare take on the robber while unseen, if strangely still, friends held the room at gunpoint?

And so it was that the robber, Luger in one hand and .22 in the other, held up Manager Philip Simon and five employees and relieved Simon of about $8400 in bills prepped for the day’s banking. He was hard to ID beneath the gruesome cheesecloth monkey mask covering the upper portion of his face, but his victims noted that he was a small man, with a distinctive jaw and thick foreign accent with which he called some of them by name, apparently having spied on the workers during his time above.

This was the second peculiar robbery to befall Merchants’ National in less than a week; on March 25, two cliche Old West cowboys armed with .45s ambled into the branch at Jefferson and San Pedro and courteously relieved the cash drawers of about $2000 after suggesting customers and staff find comfy spots on the floor.

As for our mad attic genius, he made a clean getaway, and his identity remained mysterious until November 2, 1929, when officers stopped a man named Pete Marzec (aka Pete Nanzec), 33, while he was walking near Seventeenth and Main. They asked if they could open his suitcase, and Marzec obliged, but around the time they pulled out his gun, rope ladder and mask collection, he made a dash for a nearby fence. He didn’t make it; a bullet through the gut sent him to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital in critical condition. Later, more burglary tools and guns were found in his room nearby at 1622 Santee Court.

Marzec recovered in time to be indicted on the 1927 job and an earlier bank robbery that netted $12,600. Despite the claims of a confederate that he was in Kansas City at the time of the crimes, Marzec was damned by the discovery of guns recognized by his victims, masks matching those worn in the robberies, and a notebook in which the dates and amounts taken from the banks was noted in Polish.

Marzec was a three time loser who as Michael Blevika had escaped from a New Mexico Prison in 1922, so his conviction came with a minimum sentence of 14 years in Folsom Prison. Superior Judge McComb, perhaps in recognition of the extra robbers unable to be tried for the crimes, doubled the sentence to 28.

Marzec appealed on the grounds that it was unfair to convict someone of both burglary and robbery for the same crime, but was denied, and shuffled off to prison, where we trust he built many imaginary friends to protect himself and keep off the lonelies in the long, dark nights.

Odd Masher Nabbed In Expo Park

March 29, 1927
Los Angeles

Busted in Exposition Park on a vagrancy charge after aggressively flirting with passing fillies, licensed chauffeur (read: cabby) Jerry McFarlane was dumped in the men’s tank at the Central Jail, where fellow inmates quickly noticed what booking officers had not: trash-talkin’ "Jerry" was actually Grace Kenny McFarlane, 22, blonde and biologically female.

She was promptly pulled from the cell and plopped in front of an L.A. Times photog, who snapped a pair of mirror image pix highlighting the two sides of fair McFarlane, and a reporter whose all-too-brief interview revealed the unique philosophy of the Jazz Age youth.

"It’s much more fun to be a man. Besides, I get along better, too, and the life is freer and easier." Except, of course, when it lands one in the pokey. "I wish I could get out and get back with the gang. I was going to take a frail out the night I was arrested. It’s lots of fun to take a girl to a dance or a show and not have them get wise." And even more fun, we’d wager, when they do.

For more on the secret homosexual shadow worlds of early 20th century Los Angeles, see Daniel Hurewitz’ Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics or Faderman and Timmons’ Gay L.A.

Blood & Dumplings Crime Bus Podcast

Jacob Adelman of the venerable AP rode along with the gang on the Blood & Dumplings Crime Bus Tour on St. Patrick’s Day, and produced a delightful little audio document of the day for the AP’s youth-oriented asap section. It includes an overview of the tour, some excerpted crime stories from the tour, and interviews with a few of the delightful passengers. Why would otherwise normal people choose to spend their Saturday hearing tales of mayhem and horror? Click slowly and see….