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.

Dead Babies, Death and Dissolution

August 23, 1927
Los Angeles

The news of the day is not especially happy. Film director Josef Von Sternberg’s marriage to assistant director/actress Riza Royce has ended after a year following an disagreement over Miss Royce’s determination to have a nose job. Miss Royce had her nose straightened and collected cash and a car, while Mr. Von Sternberg kept their home at 6252 Drexel.

The first anniversary of the death of screen sheik Rudolph Valentino was occasion for a Catholic mass at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament attended by family and a few friends and fans, in stark contrast to the mob scenes that accompanied his burial. Following the service, the worshippers visited Valentino’s crypt in the Hollywood Mausoleum and strewed flowers around the aisles.

And down at a flophouse at 1104 South Main Street, after a day’s posting, the sign on a door warning the residents not to disturb the baby became an object of curiosity, and the door was opened. Inside, a tiny redheaded boy babe of perhaps 14 months, quite dead, with cotton stuffed in his mouth and nostrils, a bloody nightgown and signs of strangulation on the child’s neck. Police have taken fingerprints from the room and handwriting samples from the note and hotel register, and are searching for a Mrs. W. Howard of Los Angeles. The nameless infant now rests in the County Morgue.

The Historic Brick Streets and Curbs of NE LA

Nick Santangelo saw my post about the historic cobblestones exposed when Lincoln Heights was getting its roads repaved, and wanted to share photos of some of the brick streets and gutters in Highland Park and near Union Station. Some of these have already been covered over by insensitive city workers.

Nick says: The brick gutters on Avenues 41 and 45 (on North Figueroa) reminded me of Kim’s post. I have tried to get public works to stop paving over them as they are unique and historic but have not had any luck. I even sent some pics to the Highland Park Historical people but I never got a response. The new Homeboy Industries building near Phillipes sits next to a cobblestone street (Bruno, I think).

Sure, on a well travelled street it’s probably unreasonable to ask that archaic building materials bear the brunt of multi-ton SUVs… but can’t we somehow save the brick gutters in places where they’re still holding up so nicely?

Only in LA: Peat Fires, Mature Mermaids and Baboon Co-Pilots

August 10, 1927
Los Angeles 

At Hauser and Jefferson today, Vernadine Burke and Margaret Goesman, both 16, sank up to their ankles in the burning peat that was combusting merrily away beneath the surface. In trying to extricate themselves, the horrified girls also scorched their hands. They were treated at Receiving Hospital and released.

At the Biltmore, manager and VP James Woods was deftly fending off the insistent demands of Captain J.M. Burman, mariner, aviator and San Pedro resident, that the hotel back his scheme to fly from Japan to Los Angeles with his pet baboon as his co-pilot. Burman states he is ideally suited for such a flight because he knows all the Pacific mountain peaks by which he and his monkey pal would steer.

And in Venice, Mrs. Anna E. Van Skike was planning to celebrate her 67th birthday with a 25-mile swim from Point Dume back to her home shore, in recognition of the good health that regular swimming has brought her. Her doctors declared she had tuberculosis at 55 and would surely die, but swimming chased the lung blots away for the Oklahoma native. Hundreds turned out in 1924 to watch the lady dive off the Venice pier, swim ten miles along the shore and sing the "Star Spangled Banner" from the waves on her return.

This is Van Skike’s seventh birthday distance swim, and her longest, and will be done with the support, encouragement and liberal doses of hot coffee from lifeguards Slert and Kinney, who will row their boat in the wake of the olive oil-coated "aged mermaid." She’ll begin the feat at 2am and hopes to be home in time for dinner, though she often quips she would "rather swim than eat" and avoids fried food and pastry for their waterlogging effects. She prefers the pre-dawn hours for her feats, as the water is calmer then, and she is subject to seasickness in heavy surf. She has founded a distance swimming club, and recommends the activity to all.

anna e van skike

And in cultural insensitivity news…

August 9, 1927
Los Angeles 

The Mexican Consul, F.A. Pesqueira, today filed a complaint against the Los Angeles Police Commission, objecting to the recent arrests on charges of vagrancy of a large number of Mexican men who had been congregating in the Old Plaza near Olvera Street, as their countrymen have been doing since the founding of Los Angeles.

Pesqueira noted that many of those arrested were recently out of work, and had come to the Plaza to meet employment agents, something which was apparently not obvious to the policemen rounding them up.

Captain Hubbs of the vagrancy squad issued a statement that, in future, his men would ascertain how long a Plaza dweller had been without work before taking him into custody.

Bilingual officers wanted. 

Circus freaks and balloon walks

August 3, 1927

On this slow news day, readers of the Los Angeles Times were treated to a pair of interesting stories on page A8. The first was a five paragraph reprint from American Druggist magazine introducing Ben D. Rinehart, acting pharmacist for the Ringling-Barnum & Bailey circus. You probably never stopped to think that a 600-pound fat lady might need three times the normal dose for a sleeping potion to work, but Ben has. He’s also proud of his rickets treatments for elephants, who consume quarts of cod liver oil and are wrapped in bandages the size of bedsheets.

More whimsical still was the piece entitled "How To Walk On Air." How, you ask? Why, via that new and enervating sport of Balloon Jumping, as proposed in The Forum Magazine. Just grab hold of a big balloon with just slightly less lift than your weight and LEAP, over buildings, lakes and elephants with rickets! Mr. (wait for it) Frederick S. Hoppin is convinced that we’re at the outset of an age of shoulder-mounted gaspacks when everyone will have the ability to gambol about bearing just a portion of their natural weight. "Our whole present-day world would be turned upside-down. Legislatures will be busily engaged in passing laws prohibiting people from leaving the earth too freely, or rules for the right of way up and down and sideways, or regulations against landing on the head of a fellow citizen or planting a foot on any part of him as you rise. And then there would be the new rule of etiquette: should you pass over or around a lady?"

All right, class: discuss. 

The minute my back was turned, you drank all the hair tonic.

Two Black Crows

August 2, 1927
Hollywood 

A line stretched halfway down the block from the lobby of the Pantages Theater as eager fans waited their chance to be amused by Moran and Mack, popular blackface performers better known as Two Black Crows. Once they got inside, the audience enjoyed such trifles as a man who played Liszt on the banjo, a tap dancing sister act and the great Van Cello, who balances barrels on his feet.

Moran and Mack were a great hit, and indulged the cheering crowd with two skits, a comic boxing match and Mack’s signature "lazy shuffle." The evening closed with a screening of Colleen starring Madge Bellamy, in which Irish people were painted with a brush nearly as broad as the tar-dipped one that coats Two Black Crows. Just another night of fun and frolic in Movietown USA!  

Hear Two Black Crows in action here.

Death of the Tamale Lady

She was 52, a mother and grandmother, a vendor of tamales. She lived quietly on the east side of the L.A. River, in an ugly stucco apartment house with concrete all around. Then one Sunday night, as she came home after delivering an order of tamales, she was attacked in the street, stabbed twice and left to die just steps from her home. She was found quickly, but it was too late for any aid. Doña Rosa died, and no one but the killer knew who had done it, or why. Oh, there were rumors, there always are, but for most people on her street, life went on just as it had, just without Doña Rosa’s tasty tamales or her soft smile.

This is not a story from 1927. "Doña" Rosa Cruz, wife of Joel Mejía, mother of Nancy, native of El Salvador, was murdered in Lincoln Heights on Sunday, July 22. As of today, this crime has received no coverage in the English language newspapers or broadcast media. It has not appeared on the LA Times’ Homicide Report Blog. Detectives were in the neighborhood yesterday, asking questions and looking for an answer. And on the corner of Albion and Avenue 20, the people who loved Doña Rosa continue to gather, bringing fresh flowers and seeking comfort in community, on the open sidewalk where she walked on that last night.

On this blog we remember the forgotten dead from long ago, people who came to Los Angeles and found, not whatever improved life they were seeking, but too often an anonymous or notorious death. We should never forget that these people left families and loved ones, and that these crimes resonate in large ripples out over the decades, in those who knew the victim and far beyond. RIP Doña Rosa, and we hope peace can be found by those who loved her.

dona rosa memorial