It’s fundraising time for the Long Beach Public Library, and Esotouric is there, with a pair of tickets good for our upcoming Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles tour (July 21st) or any of the Esotouric Bus Adventures tours. The opening bid for two seats is a bargain at just $37, so why not raise your paddle, and help out a great local library?
Category: Kim Cooper
Diver Down
April 20, 1927
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
When evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, the anointed queen of Echo Park’s Angelus Temple, went to Ocean Park Beach last May 18 and faked her own disappearance so she could run off with a boyfriend, even she could not have anticipated the hysteria that followed. For while her theological appearances were occasion for outpourings of public adoration, in vanishing, she moved into a new realm of fame.
Congregants promptly offered a $25,000 reward for the return of their favorite alive, though she was widely presumed drowned. Word of the reward passed like quicksilver among the community of professional divers, perhaps without the "alive" clause appended. One of these, Edgar Harrison, was already in town from Catalina to testify in an insanity case, and stopped off on his way home to take a dive off the end of amusement laden Lick Pier on May 25, where no sign of the missing woman was found. The water pressure exacerbated an attack of appendicitis, and Harrison died in agony. By the time Aimee stumbled out of the desert crying kidnap (a lie that was soon exposed), Edgar Harrison was in his grave.
Today, his widow Edna sat in court seeking $500 in death benefits that had been denied by the State Industrial Accident Commission, which claimed that Harrison was acting as a private citizen when he went diving for Aimee’s reward. Edna countered that her husband was operating under orders when he received his injuries, and further that she had been receiving threatening letters, ostensibly from the City of Los Angeles, suggesting that she seek payment from McPherson and Angelus Temple, and leave the city out of it.
McPherson’s mother Minnie Kennedy took the stand, and said she had known nothing of Edgar Harrison’s dive until she was invited to attend his funeral, and that she had sent flowers and $500 to the widow, the latter which was returned. Edna countered that indeed $500 had been proffered, by two "impudent" representatives of the Temple, but that when she suggested they talk with her lawyer they had snatched the money away, called her "a bitter woman" and stalked off.
Edgar Harrison was survived by two young children, Edgar Jr. and Lois.
Silk Stocking of DOOM!
April 19, 1927
Pasadena
Yee-ouch! Mrs. Fred Anderson, Pasadena matron of 1304 North Catalina Ave., was dressing this morning when she slid one shapely foot into a stocking she’d last worn several months back on a visit to the remote Imperial Valley.
It seems she picked up a hitchhiker on that trip, for inside the toe wriggled one very annoyed small scorpion. It struck the lady thrice, and off she hopped to Emergency Hospital, where Chief Surgeon Clement C. Troensegaard told her how lucky she was to have been foot-stung and not tongue-stung, for only on especially tender spots are scorpion wounds fatal.
Still, we bet this is one gal who will never put on a pair of hose again without checking them very, very carefully for unwanted guests…. as should we all.
The Snake and She
April 17, 1927
Hollywood Boulevard
That’s actually Sue Carol, 5’3", Fox Films player and daughter of late "Chicago capitalist" Samuel M. Lederer (and later, the agent who discovered, married and buried Alan Ladd), modeling the reversible panne velvet-lined rattlesnakeskin coat her mama sent from home. 64 snakes, averaging more than four feet each, went into the garment, which some are calling Eve’s revenge. Miss Carol is currently appearing in Slaves of Beauty, a satire of the beauty parlor scene featuring some wacky business with a magical clay that leaves the skin under it lookin twenty years younger. Wonder if it works on rattlesnakes?
Not Exactly the Welcome Wagon
April 13, 1927
Pasadena
Col. Frank Benedict is moving up in the world. Recently named one of six "minute men" prohibition officers and presented with a patrol car capable of hitting 80 mph (!) for late night liquor hunts, he’s also taken possession of a new home on exclusive Terrace Drive in Pasadena, just a jig from Millionaire’s Row.
In the evening, the gentle scents of jasmine, orange blossoms and datura perfumed the air… but beneath them, Benedict detected a heavy, sweet and larcenous odor, the unmistakable tang of sour mash a-brewing. Sniff, sniff, sniff went the revenue man, until he found himself three doors down, outside #146. Local and federal agents were called, and the raid that followed netted Frank Meyers (real name Joseph Mendella) in the act of tapping a 300 gallon still, 140 gallons of steaming mash and equipment valued at $50,000.
Mendella must have had juice, and we don’t mean joy juice. The case lingered until March 1928, when he was convicted of possession of a still and the mash, fined $500 and sentenced to just thirty days in jail.
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!