1947 Project

Stay Away from the City Hall in 1967

fortyyears New York
December 8, 1927

From the Great Men Saying Great Things file…none other than the esteemed Sir Edwin Lutyens, Greatest of British Architects, has asserted that our sky-scrapers will, with certainty, in forty years, tumble. According to Lutyens, the methods employed in structural steel construction of giving the steel only a “coating of paint or one of mud and water” allows our edifices scant protection from atmospheric penetration.

And boy, was he right. Who can forget the terrible collapsings of Berg & Clark’s Gillender Building, or Burnham & Root’s Ashland Block or Masonic Temple, or Flagg’s Singer Building, et al? Damn that atmospheric penetration! (For more on victims of atmospheric penetration, go here.)

Here in Los Angeles of the future, of course, the atmosphere laughs as it burns paint and mud and water right off our tall buildings. But stand tall and proud still, they do!

Stars That Shine and Smolder

December 6, 1927
Los Angeles

Calling all cars! Calling all cars! Be on the lookout for two easily-recognized scofflaws, film stars Reginald Denny and Hedda Hopper. She’s wanted for speeding at about 34mph around Melrose and La Brea, he for setting a similar pace in the 20mph zone at Sunset and Vine, and without a valid operator’s license, on November 28.

But that’s not all! Denny is also wanted for questioning in the origins of the massive forest fire which began near his cabin near Running Springs Park in the San Bernardino Mountains two nights ago, and which hundreds of men are fighting, with 50 to 75 summer cabins already destroyed.

What shall we do with these antisocial celebrities? Perhaps we should just drop by their homes and have a talk with them. Miss Hopper is reported as residing at 1416 Fairfax Avenue, Mr. Denny at 2060 North Vine.

Little Girls Lost

December 5, 1927

june Mr. and Mrs. Jack Laughlin of 2115 S. Harvard departed for a weekend getaway in San Diego, leaving their daughter, June Blossom, 14, in the care of their housekeeper and family friends. After saying goodbye to her folks, June invited her friend Mary Jane Carroll, 13, over for the weekend.

Sunday afternoon, the girls went outside to play, and vanished. Shortly after their disappearance was noticed, the blue dress and sandals that June had been wearing that day were found in a nearby vacant lot. When the Laughlins returned, they found that in addition to a missing daughter, about $4000 worth of clothing and tapestries were missing from their home.

So sinister-sounding were the facts surrounding the disappearance of Mary Jane, and June that it seems impossible that the incident wrapped up as happily as it did. As it turns out that the whole thing could be chalked up to a case of "girls will be girls." maryjane

On December 6, Mr. Laughlin and Mr. Carroll set out to pick up their daughters from a San Diego hotel. The girls had skipped town on a lark with the intention of surprising June’s parents in San Diego. Unfortunately, they’d left around the same time that Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin had started home.

No word on how June’s clothes turned up in the lot, or the whereabouts of the missing tapestries; however, the most precious cargo was accounted for, albeit in deep, deep trouble.

Starlet Boo-Boos

December 5, 1927

clarabow Some minor cuts scrapes for Clara Bow today, but that’s what happens when you take on the USC football team.

No, no, it’s nothing like that.

Ms. Bow hosted a garden party, to which she invited a few members of the victorious Trojans. The glamorous hostess revealed herself to be an avid fan of the sport, and asked quarterback and future College Football Hall of Famer Morley Drury how the team managed "those end-around plays." The Trojans were only too happy to demonstrate on the lawn. Caught up in the spirit of things, Ms. Bow drew too close to the "Thundering Herd," and was pommelled to the ground. Fortunately, she suffered only a bruised thumb.

dolores And what started as a few pesky mosquito bites turned into a near-miss disfiguring for Dolores Del Rio. While vacationing in Soboba Springs, Ms. Del Rio treated the bites with an acid-based ointment. Today, she was treated by a physician for burns and "skin poisoning."

Two Strikes – And The Wife Steps In

December 4, 2007
Los Angeles

Like many people, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Franklin of 181 Griffith Avenue like to have a little nip now and then, a simple pleasure made exceedingly difficult these dry days. Of course, there are ways of getting around the Volstead Act, but these often prove risky. Just what the cops were doing in the Franklin family bathroom on November 2, the Times didn’t reveal, but the lawmen discovered eleven pints of whisky there.

This week, the Franklins came before Municipal Judge Sheldon. In an unusual move, Ludie Franklin, Harry’s wife, asked to be substituted for her husband as the defendant in the case. Harry, it seems, had already been twice convicted on liquor charges. If found guilty a third time, the judge could send him up the river for year or two. Judge Sheldon agreed to this novel plan and Ludie went before the jury, who found her guilty as charged and sentenced her to forty days in the clink. Let’s hope Harry had a nice, dry celebration for her when she got out.

Our Seasonal Gift Selections

Gentle reader,

Comes the season when the people who put up with you all year begin to make subtle and not so subtle suggestions that they expect to be compensated for this. Are you going to be one of those bad dads or dull honeys whose gifts end up in the hall closet, only to be regifted in some humiliating Secret Santa scenario? Or are you going to listen to your pals from 1947project, and make the holidays a little more interesting?

Does your beloved enjoy tales of historic American misery and death? Why then, they’ll be wanting the gorgeous new box set compilation People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938. It’s packed with ships a-sinking, trains derailing, prisons a-burning, mines a-blowing, rain not falling, weavils munching, fiends, quakes and nightmares galore.

Or do their tastes run more towards Continental miseries? If so, Luc Sante’s new translation of Felix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines will pique their schadenfreude. Fénéon was a fascinating Parisian character who, as a sideline to his involvement with bomb-throwing anarchists, editing of Rimbaud and Lautréamont and discovery of Georges Seurat, contributed an extraordinary series of brief criminal and oddball news stories to the daily paper Le Matin in 1906. Imagine one of the more complex 1947project tales compressed down to its suggestive essense and you have Fénéon’s evocative and poetic formula. Sante’s elegant translation captures the poignancy, mystery and eternal grace of the otherwise forgotten traumas of one hundred years ago.

Cuddle up together and cock yer ears to the sounds that made great-grandad guffaw: Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s, featuring "The Tapeworm Story," "The Virtues of Raw Oysters" and "Learning a City Gal How to Milk." Or read aloud from The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age, The ’20s, ’30s & ’40s, which has short stories by recognized masters Chandler, Hammett, Cain, Gardner and Wollrich, and some newly unearthed rarities.

If it’s images of early Los Angeles that scratch your dear one’s itch, there are some fine new books to suit, among them Marc Wanamaker and Robert Nudelman’s Images of America compilation Early Hollywood and Sam Watters’ two-volume Houses of Los Angeles, for which you can pick your period poison: 1885-1919 or 1920-1935. (And you already gave ’em a copy of California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, right? Of course you did!)

Then, too, you might wish to patronise the works of our 1947project contributors, like Nathan’s Los Angeles Neon or Lynn’s College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-Eds, Then and Now or Kim’s Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.’ Or get two of us in one go by picking up Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance, Josh Glenn and Carol Hayes’ anthology of things and their stories from the collections of Kim, Lynn and 73 other deranged hoarders, among them Bill "Zippy" Griffith, James Kocholka, Lisa Carver, Thomas Frank, Tony Millionaire and Luc Sante. None of whom is the owner of the book’s most popular object, Christopher Walken’s bagel.

Or give ’em an Esotouric gift certificate, one, two, three or four seats aboard the most interesting bus tours in the Southland, and a Raymond Chandler Mystery Map by which to plot noirish adventures of their own. Or engage Crimebo to Clown to come over and put on a "private" show! And if you’ve ridden the Esotouric bus this year, don’t forget we’ve got a 2-for-1 seat offer on the James M. Cain tour on 12/15.

But whatever objects or adventures you exchange this season, it’s our sincere wish that the year’s end ushers in a time of peace and contentment for you, yours and all of ours. Thanks for reading, and take good care.

Caution, Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health

Caution headline

December 3, 1927
Long Beach

Financial woes had driven 23 year old Clarence Martin to his breaking point. He rented a room at 555 East Seaside Blvd. in Long Beach, and resolved to end his life.

The young man turned on the gas and waited in the dark for the Big Sleep. Moments before he lost consciousness, he had a sudden change of heart and shut off the lethal fumes. Was Clarence’s epiphany the result of a glimpse into his family’s future without him, such as George Bailey experienced in “It’s a Wonderful Life”?

Did Clarence breathe a sigh of relief at his escape from death and begin to make plans for the upcoming holidays? Did he think about the wife he’d left in Gardena? She was probably worried sick because he hadn’t come home. Maybe he was going to phone her and let her know he would be with her soon, but decided to sit and smoke a cigarette first.

Lighting the cigarette was Clarence’s last act in this world. There was a terrific explosion which blew the door and windows out of the room. He was horribly burned, and later succumbed to his injuries at Seaside Hospital.

Good Find is Hard to Help

December 2, 1927
Hollywood

theclimax Mrs. Margaret Pumphrey, 27, of the Milner Road Pumphreys, was standing in her bedroom of her hillside home, preparing to go downtown, when she was approached by her white-jacketed butler. He asked if there were any further orders. Mrs. Pumphrey said there were none.

With that, her servant—Richard R. Ewell, 30—developed an “insane gleam” in his eye and approached further…whereupon Mrs. Pumphrey noticed the .45 automatic in his hand.

The chase—and fusillade of shots—began! Mrs. Pumphey fled through a bathroom and into an adjoining bedroom, through a hallway and down the stairs, but there’s no running from the staff. They know the house better than you do.

The mad pursuit and firearm blasts continued from room to room to room until Margaret managed to lock herself into a downstairs bedroom. Ewell fired several shots into the door to break the lock, but once he heard the window open, he ran around the house to catch her escaping. And catch her he did—as he climbed into the window, he shot her in the side as she ran screaming out the door.

The screams alarmed neighbor Mrs. Johnstone, who came running (with her two maids in tow [also suitably armed?]) and Ewell fired upon them from the home’s entryway—but Ewell, realizing that the alarm had been raised and his game discovered, put the barrel to his head and sent his brains all over the foyer he’d kept so spotless the three months he’d been under the Pumphrey’s employ.

Mrs. Margaret Pumphrey (could Kaufman & Ryskind have scripted a name of greater puffery?) suffered more from shock and fright (as visions of FLW’s former servant surely flashed through her head) than from her injury; she was rushed to Hollywood Receiving and was treated for the superficial wound and released.

According to LeRoy Bird, with whom Ewell lived at 4307 Hooper Avenue, Philadelphia native Ewell was an industrious man of good character and habits and never had any previous trouble. Detective Lieutenant Mahoney contends that Ewell had probably been crazed by dope, especially as he’d been out the night before and had acted strangely in the morning.

Ewell leaves a widow, Inez Ewell, in Kansas City. Because his death was self-inflicted, there was no inquest over the body. A small notebook was later found in Ewell’s possessions, and it was greatly hoped by Captain of Detectives Slaughter to contain names of prominent Hollywood people and information about dope trafficking; but sadly for Slaughter, “the only names in the book, the officer declares, are those of negresses and it is devoid of anything referring to narcotics or trade in the drugs.”

So why did Richard Ewell snap? If only we had some sign.

Whew, THAT’S a Relief!

cityfoundsafe!

December 1, 1927
Los Angeles

A couple decades ago there was the great quaking of earth up in San Francisco—that couldn’t happen down here? Could it? Could it?!

World Authority Doctor Robert T. Hill, geologist of International Repute, has spent years investigating the seismicity of Southern California, and today made public his findings. The business and financial leaders of Los Angeles thronged to the Alexandria Hotel, as guests of Eli P. Clark, director of the Building Owners’ and Managers’ Association, and sat in rapt attention and feverish anticipation of what Hill, Eminent Authority, had to say after his exhaustive study.

Of Southern California, Hill declared: “no other section in the United States enjoys greater freedom from major earthquake perils.”

strataperilfree! Whew indeed! It seems that the menace of an earthquake disaster is greatly exaggerated, and we’ve erroneous data to thank for that (usually from the prophesies of Stanford’s Dr. Bailey Willis, who, Hill feels, is full of hooey)—and which is responsible for the marked rise in earthquake insurance rates. Dr. Hill was corroborated in his assertions and supported with geological data by one Ralph Arnold, also a geologist of wide reputation, who went on to say that we have no need whatsoever for earthquake coverage at all in these parts.

Hill spoke long and hard about how the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey conclusively proved that Willis’ predictions regarding the movement of Gaviota Peak vis-à-vis the San Andreas rift are all wrong: so there. Moreover, Southern California belongs to the earth structure of Northern Mexico, and, as wholly dissimilar from Northern California geologically, whatever release of earth strain from Santa Barbara upwards has nothing to do with this part of the world. And so forth.

And who is this Robert T. Hill? Well, his paper on the Comanche Cretaceous is the foundation of our geological knowledge of the Southwest, and his studies of the Panama Isthmus were responsible for the location of the Panama Canal. And he was certainly on target with the whole “free from major peril” thing.

As one of the great geologists of our or anyone’s time, there’s a middle school named after him. Which is, by all accounts, a really weird place.

The Weird Tale of the Wig Lady

November 30, 1927
Alhambra

Meet Nona Lesher, the cool 20-something check kiter whose arsenal of multi-hued hairpieces helped disguise her during a spree of bad paper pushing, busted in a market at 305 East Valley Boulevard.

But the wigs are only the tip of a hairy iceberg. For among the suspicious items discovered in the room shared by Nona, hubby Harvey (or Harry), half-brother Phil Rohan and pal Mike Garvey at 2048 West Twentieth Street were an unheard of 61 pairs of shoes and twenty hats, plus Harry, Phil and the aforementioned wigs.

The men soon became suspects in the November 1 drug store beating death of proprietor A.R. Miles (or A.M. Miller) at 2329 West Jefferson after Lesher allegedly confessed to friend H.S. Walton, "I pulled that West Jefferson job—I hit Miles over the head and when he came to and called me ‘Heinie’ I finished him with my feet." However, Walton later said he had been so drunk that night, he might have imagined the whole thing, had only spoken out because he’d been told charges against him would be dropped if he did, and anyway, he believed the trio was innocent.

Still, 10-year-old witness Eddie Yates ID’d Phil Rohan as the youth in a snazzy blue and white sweater who he’d seen dashing from the crime scene. Lesher and Garvey also looked familiar to the boy. Roberta Scriver, sitting in a car outside the drug store, also identified the trio. Simple robbery-murder case with eyewitnesses, eh?

But then a cop’s badge was found in Mike Garvey’s possession, leading to the arrest of 77th Street Division policeman George H. Foster, the Wig Gang’s next door neighbor, on charges that he’d used the badge to shake down bootlegger John Sykes for $57 in exchange for not noticing a quantity of liquor stored in a vacant house; Rohan and Garvey supposedly served as muscle on the robbery, and somehow Garvey ended up with the badge.

By January, the male members of the Wig Gang had been convicted of murder and sent to San Quentin for life, while back in LA, Officer Foster was thrown off the force and tried on a series of bootleg shakedown charges.

But come December 1928, witness Roberta Scriver testified that she’d seen someone else leave the murder scene, one Harry Rosenfeld. The Grand Jury reopened the case, it was noted that the 10-year-old witness was actually watching a movie during the crime, and after begging San Quentin ex-con Rosenfeld to tell all he knew (he snarled he wouldn’t do it, lest he get a knife in the back from breaking the criminal code), the hapless Wig Gang was released after two years and eight months.

Once freed, the trio sought $5000 each in payment from the state for their ordeal, while Lesher and Rohan’s mother Carrie testified she’d spent $6000 on their defense and appeals. During this hearing, which was ultimately unsuccessful, an Alhambra Detective offered the hitherto unknown information that their arrest had resulted from a tip from the Wig Lady herself, Nona Lesher. It was unclear if she had remained true to Harvey during his incarceration, but one assumes the marriage didn’t survive this revelation. At least their mother still loved ’em!