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.

Saturday 9/29 – Explore the San Gabriel Valley’s legacy of weird crimes, sea monsters and great eats

Gentle reader,

What are you doing Saturday afternoon? Will you be among the lucky citizens exploring the strange secrets of the San Gabriel Valley and feasting on juicy dumplings on a concrete sea monster, or will you bored and kicking yourself for not getting on the Crime Bus? Read on for all you need to know to avoid that sad fate.
 
For this Saturday, September 29, Esotouric’s Crime Bus offers a rare edition of its wackiest true crime and history tour, Blood & Dumplings. Tickets for the four-to-five hour luxury coach tour, including dumplings, are $60. Heading due East out of downtown for points rarely seen, the tour explores several historic communities that reflect the growth and eccentricity that are hallmarks of 20th century Los Angeles.

Crime Bus passengers will be treated to detailed descriptions of some of the most notorious, strange and fascinating forgotten tales from the past hundred years, each told at the scene of the crime. They’ll thrill to the freakish case of the Man from Mars Bandit who stalked area supermarkets for months in 1951 before meeting his match in a police sharpshooter, shock to discover the deadly infighting among El Monte’s American Nazi Party members, mourn the Case of the Buried Bride dragged beneath her home on her wedding day by her secret lover, gnash teeth at the weird lion farm (home to every MGM lion) that served lion meat barbecues on special occasions, and visit scenes of notorious cases including Phil Spector’s spooky hilltop castle, James Ellroy’s murder victim mother Geneva (the true-life inspiration for his Black Dahlia novel), neglected Manson victim Steve Parent and even an obscure East LA link to the JFK assassination.
 
And since no visit to the San Gabriel Valley is complete without a delicious Chinese meal, the Crime Bus will stop at 101 Noodle Express (one of Jonathan Gold’s picks for 99 L.A. restaurants not to be missed) to pick up a dumpling feast, which will be enjoyed picnic-style at Monster Park, a remarkable sea-themed folk art environment recently saved from demolition. There passengers can enjoy their snack in the mouth of a concrete whale, or under a grinning octopus, then pose for photos with the creatures.

All this, plus stunning mid-century trailer parks, subterranean Black Panther hideouts, wild shootouts, dope-dealing druggists, missing Salvador Dali paintings, the original  "little girl down a well" television sensation, and a very strange story about ducks.

This tour is my personal favorite of all our tours, packed with more offbeat history, horror, roadside architecture and fabulous Route 66 vistas than any other. We don’t offer it very often, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has been thinking about getting on the Crime Bus.

And don’t forget, we offer 15% discounts for KCRW members, gift certificates, and Season Pass deals ($30 off four tours for one person) that can be applied retroactively for recent passengers.

For more info on Esotouric, or to reserve your seat, visit
https://www.esotouric.com
 
Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule:
Sat Sept 29 – Blood & Dumplings (San Gabriel Valley true crime tour)
Sun Oct 7– Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (architecture/urbanism tour)
Sat Oct 20– The Real Black Dahlia tour
Sun Oct 21 – Where the Action Was (rock history tour)
Sat Oct 27 – Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski’s LA
Sun Oct 28 – Hallowe’en Horrors featuring Crimebo the Clown

AKA Hydrochloric Hattie

September 21, 1927
West Los Angeles

Oh, Officers? When you decide to go out and arrest a lady who’s been threatening to chop up her neighbors with a carving knife, you might not want to knock on her door and stand there like waiting until she sprinkles your faces and ears with acid from a bottle. Eventually, Mrs. Mary L. Ward of 11014 Santa Monica Boulevard was captured, halted by the effects of tear gas as she prepared another acid bomb from the large store in her bedroom. She’s in the psycho ward at County General tonight, which has a special program in becoming a better neighbor.

Death Train

September 20, 1927
Los Angeles

We don’t know why high school student Albert A. Benavides of 1139 East 55th Street was saving car fare by clinging to the outside of the rail car rather than buying a ticket. Maybe he had a date and wanted to buy her a cream soda, or was obsessively collecting pulp magazines, or simply couldn’t afford the fare. What we do know is that at Santa Barbara Street and Vermont Avenue, his skull connected with a telephone pole and he fell beneath the car, where his legs were neatly severed. It was a horror for the passengers, one of whom leapt from the window and extricated the youth. Taken to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, his smashed limbs were amputated. They think he’ll live.

Esotouric Tours in the coming weeks

Gentle reader,

Shall we see you on the Crime Bus or a bloodless Esotouric bus adventure soon? There are some doozies coming up, and you can learn more or buy a ticket at the Esotouric website. We hope you will.

ESOTOURIC SCHEDULE 

Sat Sept 22 – In A Lonely Place: Raymond Chandler’s LA tour
Sat Sept 29 – Blood & Dumplings (San Gabriel Valley true crime tour)
Sun Oct 7– Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (architecture/urbanism tour)
Sat Oct 20– The Real Black Dahlia tour
Sun Oct 21 – Where the Action Was (rock history tour)
Sat Oct 27 – Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski’s LA
Sun Oct 28 – Hallowe’en Horrors featuring Crimebo the Clown

Of scarves and buds

September 14, 1927

The ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel is being readied for the annual Southern California Dahlia Society exhibition, which is last year drew 7000 people. There’s just something about the Biltmore that attracts Dahlias, and Dahlia lovers.

In Nice, France, San Francisco girl Isadora Duncan — that free spirit danseuse whose corsetless physique and offbeat theories of health, movement and social mores made her at once the darling and the shame of thousands  — perished in a grisly accident when her long scarf became entangled in the wheel of an open automobile. Duncan was pulled into the road, and died instantly of a broken neck. She was 50.

The fateful scarf was a gift of Mary Desti, Duncan’s dear friend and the mother of director Preston Sturges, who would go on to invent many a fascinating, madcap female in his motion pictures.

In Medford, Mass., Elizabeth Short, who will be remembered as the Dahlia of the Biltmore long after the flower show is forgotten, is three.

1947project podcast #7

Pull up the old easy chair, time travelers, and join in as anarchists dance the Kinkajou, homicidal neighbors ride camels, the days of prosperity are never-ending and damned souls scream as they’re cremated. Yes, friends, it’s another edition of the 1947project podcastination, and your ears are all that’s missing from this party.

Here is the iTunes link for you modern types. 

A chunk of bog and thou

September 7, 1927
Los Angeles

When, oh when, oh when will something be done to soothe the smoldering peat fires that spill noxious smoke and gas from the vicinity of Jefferson and Hauser Streets in the Baldwin Hills? For more than two years the fire has crept inexorably deeper into the peat beds, and now twelve acres are burning just under the topsoil, endangering the health of 200,000 local lungs and the ankles of any local foolish enough to tramp through the booby-trapped fields. Forget the living! What of the mummies?!

Former City Councilman Mallard has issues a plea on behalf of his neighborhood that the City Council take this "rank poison" threat seriously and extinguish the blaze immediately. He even tells them how to do it: through steam shovels that can expose the burning beds, so water can be introduced. Of course, Mallard’s suggestion that the fire be fought in the manner of William Mulholland’s aqueduct project—get it done first, then get the permits—seems in retrospect to be in somewhat less than good taste, but the St. Francis dam disaster is still six months away, and the Mullholland name an untarnished example of Angeleno ingenuity.

*

In New York City, pioneer developer Gaylord Wilshire has died. In recent years, he devoted himself to promoting an electric "health belt" of his own invention, the “I-ON-A-CO.”

Loathe Thy Neighbor

Red Wagon Murder principles Galloway & Christian

August 30, 1927
Mar Vista

Little Donald Galloway traded his red wagon to neighbor girl Naomi Christian for a bag of butter beans, but he didn’t tell his mother Madge. When she saw Naomi with her boy’s toy, she was steamed—yet another imposition from those terrible Christians, newly arrived Kentucky farm family, outsiders, interlopers. Wasn’t it enough, how they’d caused such a fuss about the pigeon coop, then insisted the Galloways keep back from the common fence? Well, she’d show Naomi Christian… and she snatched that wagon away! (She’d already cooked the beans.)

Naomi’s mama retaliated by relieving the Galloway kids of a tricycle, and the mothers met in the street and came to blows, Mrs. Galloway coming out the winner. Just another day at 3715 Barry Avenue.

When Walter Galloway, 37, came home that night, his wife had a full report on all the neighborly shenanigans. The next evening, the Galloways prepared to pick their kids up from the golf links, but first Galloway went looking for Christian, and when he couldn’t find him, used some raw language to neighbor Mrs. H.K. Cassidy. (He might have used rougher language still, had he known the Cassidys had loaned Thomas Christian a handgun, "for protection.") Mr. Cassidy objected to Galloway’s caddishness, and the two tussled in the Cassidy yard at 4040 East Boulevard.

Galloway lost. Then he rejoined Madge in the car, where upon they saw Thomas Christian, 52, stomping down the block. Galloway said they might as well see what the fellow had to say, maybe straighten everything out. Christian leaned into the car with one foot on the running board and Galloway asked, "So, Old Man Christian, who’s the boss in your house, you or your wife?"

"I’ll show you whose boss!" said Christian. That’s when he showed the gun. "I’ll show you whether I’ll shoot or not! When I shoot, I aim to kill!" And he did. Mrs. Galloway pulled her husband over to her side and bravely scooted under him and to the wheel, closer to the gunman. "Drive, honey, drive," urged Galloway, and she did, to Culver City Hospital. It took him three days to die, but he did today.

They called it the red wagon slaying, and the trial was notable for little Naomi taking the stand and swearing Mrs. Galloway had told her mother that one day she’d wake up a widow, and for the huge grin the defendant wore in the dock until the judge admonished him to knock it off.

In the end, the jury has to decide if Galloway had opened his car door and led Christian to believe he must shoot in self defense. They didn’t buy it. Or maybe they’d just had enough of the whole crazy neighborhood. The sentence: 1 to 10 years in San Quentin, and yet more ammunition for folks who believe you’d have to be nuts to live west of Western.

1947project podcast #6, August 24 2007

The 6th biweekly 1947project podcast is now online, and can be accessed at the internet archive, at our MOLI.com media page or at iTunes. So don’t say we never did anything for you.

About this episode: It’s time again to travel back to 1927 to see what hijinks our great-great-greats were up to. How’s about long distance swimming feats to celebrate turning 67, petting parties that turn into crime scenes, exploding kegs o’ wine in civic buildings and a very special kind of baked ham? Plus, Crimebo shares his favorite spots for meeting girls and advises a shy young man on how he too can be a Crime Clown,and the meat in a all-gal sandwich!

Objects of Obscure Significance

Gentle reader, Lynn Peril and I have contributed to a new anthology of stories and photographs of objects which their owners invest with meaning beyond the visible. Taking Things Seriously is edited by Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes, and includes oddities from the collections of Luc Sante, Tony Millionaire, Bill Griffith and dozens of other living magnets for interesting oddities, among them a bagel burned by Christopher Walken. For more info, or to purchase a copy, kindly click below.