Category: Kim Cooper

The House of Bosko Goes Boom

September 7, 1947
Beverly Hills

A smoldering fire in the basement of a motion picture stock storage house burst into open flame yesterday, blasting out a fire door and injuring six men, among them city firemen. The blaze, beneath the Harman-Ising cartooning studio at 9713 Santa Monica Blvd., caused acculumated gasses to explode even as firefighters attempted to break inside to quash it.

The fire made multicolored smoke to pour from the building’s vents, causing traffic policeman C.J. Verhaar to quip it was the first Technicolor fire he’d ever witnessed.

Firemen wore gas masks as they fought the acrid flames.

Meanwhile, out on the sidewalk, displaced alterations gal Mrs. Natalie Nikitin calmly mended some trousers, which she said she had promised to a nice man whose name she did not know.

Smoke and water damage to the first floor shops has yet to be calculated, but appears extensive.

Recommended cartoon viewing: Uncensored Bosko Vol. 1

No deposit, no return

September 6, 1947
El Monte

Bicycling home with a basket full of pop, 10-year-old David Jensen wiped out in front of 3353 S. Double Drive, a couple blocks from his home at #3502. The bottles broke in the fall, and punctured David’s belly, prompting Sheriff’s deputies to drive him to Alhambra Hospital for an emergency operation. The boy is in satisfactory, but serious, condition at press time.

Further research: Petretti’s Soda Pop Collectibles Price Guide: The Encyclopedia of Soda-Pop Collectibles

It’s really hard to quit

September 5, 1947
East Los Angeles

It was midnight when 24-year-old Richard Durant of 340 1/2 N. Kern Street sent wife Mary, 25, out for cigarettes. When she returned, she found him making love to her younger sister, Marjorie. Afraid of what she might do, Mary called the sheriffs. And waited. Waited…

And after a while, she got out an icepick and stabbed Richard just beside the heart. So Richard spent the rest of the night in General Hospital and Mary in custody, while the luckless Marjorie watched the Durants’ four kids.

When Richard realized his wife was in stir, he checked himself out against doctors’ orders and went to the Sheriff’s Station, where he told officers he didn’t intend to file charges. And the Tiger Lady wants her man back, so it seems like it’s going to be all sunshine back on Kern Street, at least for the moment.

Recommended reading: Not “Just Friends” : Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal

It’s not all failed chorines and dancing boys

September 4, 1947
Detroit

It was a year ago that prosperous dentist Jules Goldsmith, 42, packed up his wife and three kids and moved them to 201 S. Hamel Drive, Beverly Hills. The good DDS wanted to be not dentist to the stars, but a star himself.

And so he burned through the family’s savings, returning to Detroit alone several weeks ago, when he saw how dire circumstances had become. His sister’s maid found him hanging from a basement beam, with a note that read: “Big mistake in leaving hometown and all my friends. Lack of work all my fault. Motion pictures just a gag. We have good children. Betty should remain on the coast.”

Betty and the children were on their way to Detroit at last report.

Suggested reading for starstruck fang-polishers: How to Make it in Hollywood : Second Edition

Family Food Costs Double Since 1942

September 3, 1947
United States

Based on three polls conducted over the past five years by Princeton, N.J. based American Institute of Public Opinion, non-farm families are spending nearly twice as much on their weekly food budgets as they were in 1942 (national median has risen from $11 to $21). However, professional and business class families are spending more than both white collar and manual laboring ones ($24 versus $20), suggesting that some of that increase is by choice, not necessity.

Hmm, honey, how about we send the kids to the movies, you grill a couple steaks and I’ll mix up a pitcher of mai tais…?

Further reading: Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log and The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipies of the 20th Century

A Flood of Youths

September 2, 1947
San Francisco

According to a poll conducted by the California Committee for the Study of Transient Youth at the state borders and in 15 California cities, up to 400 young people, 18-22, are entering California each day without their families. Most have left jobs in their home states in the belief that prospects for employment are better in California, and are “puzzled and resentful” to find this is not the case.

Further reading: A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970

Everybody’s in Showbiz

September 1, 1947
West Hollywood

Yesterday, Marguerite Kelly’s apartment door, at 1334 Olive Drive just off the Sunset Strip, was framed with fragrant honeysuckle. Today, the County Coroner defaced it with a sticker meant to seal the contents until her next of kin could be notified.

Marguerite, 29, was a blues chanteuse who never quite made it. After seven years in Hollywood, her small trust fund was nearly depleted and occasional cafe gigs weren’t replenishing it. Her longtime friend Charles T. Young, 59-year-old retired market exec, took her out to fancy dinners, but seemed disinterested in making things more permanent. She began making notes to herself, analyzing her sad situation.

So after one such evening out with Mr. Young, Marguerite topped off the champagne cocktails with a shot of gas from the stove. Arriving the next morning, Young smelled rotten eggs mixed with the floral vines. With the aid of apartment manager W.J. Ferry, he forced the triple-locked and bolted door.

Inside lay Marguerite, nude, tangled in her blankets, nearly dead. Beside her, a note to Young, calling him the greatest man in the world. It begged “don’t cut my hair, just cremate me.”

Young expressed surprise that his ladyfriend had felt so strongly for him, and suggested that had he known, he might have done something about it. Too late now. She died and was taken to Utter-McKinley mortuary.

Marguerite has a sister in Milwaukee who may come and claim her sheet music and other remnants of life in Los Angeles.

Suggested reading: Hollywood Babylon : The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood’s Darkest and Best Kept Secrets

Careful Who You Stop For…

August 31, 1947
Baldwin Hills
When electrician Walter Haselbuch saw two men waving red-bulbed flashlights at the intersection of Jefferson Blvd. and Harcourt Ave., he assumed they were police officers, perhaps operating one of the LAPD’s celebrated (and ACLU-defying) crime-stopping blockades. But when he pulled over, the men robbed him of $186 in cash, a $150 watch and a ring valued at $1700.

Suggested listening for prospective flashlight bandits: Waiting for the Electrician Or Someone Like Him (Firesign Theater)

Incident on Primrose Ave.

August 30, 1947
Hollywood

18-month-old Robin Maria Dier found a little piece of metal, a bolt or a screw, at her home at 6323 Primrose Ave., and playfully stuck it in her mouth. Her mother saw her do it, and tried to take it away, but the child toddled off without releasing her prize.

A few moments later, she was gasping and turning blue. The Fire Department inhalator squad arrived and fed oxygen to Robin for 90 minutes, while Dr. Nicholas Mamulario of Hollywood Receiving Hospital performed a tracheotomy. Her condition appeared to be improving, so the technicians prepared the child for the trip to Children’s Hospital. Then she died.

Suggested reading: How to Baby-Proof Your Home

Et in Ann Arbor Ergo

August 27, 1947
Arcadia

She’s home!

Ruth Alice McLaren, 15-year-old runaway, has turned up in Ann Arbor, Michigan after her overly generous tips to a beautician raised the snipper’s suspicions. Now her mother is heading East to reclaim the young lady from the local juvenile hall, while Ruth’s invalid father Russell steams at home at 23 Fano Street.

What of the $2400 in cash (meant for the girl’s college education) that she pinched from the fruit jar last time she left the house? While the girl initially told officers she was a war widow on the run from her in-laws, she quickly ‘fessed up. Seems she met a man in a Pasadena movie theater, and agreed to pay both their ways to Ann Arbor, where her friend said he planned to enroll at the University.

Ruth was a big spender-but mainly on herself. In addition to visiting the beauty parlor, she bought a fur coat, flashy duds and a radio. So who can blame her pal for taking a powder with $1000 of the fruit jar bounty soon after they reached the Mitten State?

But there’s $402 left in the kitty. Which should be just about enough, after travel expenses, to pay Ruth’s way through beauty school, where if she’s very lucky she’ll run into tippers as big as herself.

Suggested reading: Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Cultures