For a shockingly reasonable fee, Crimebo the Crime Clown will come to your party and read from his Big Book of Terrible Crimes about all the ghastly things that happened on your special day. Click the contact link for more info.
Gorgeously lurid... with an introduction from James Ellroy.
Collection of photos from the tabloid Herald-Express.
A deft fictional imagining of the dark circumstances behind starlet Jean Spangler's unsolved 1949 disappearance.
Widely recognized as the best non-fiction book written about Southern California for the period 1920s through the 1940s... packed with fascinating material on the region and its galaxy of personalities.
an exceptionally well-done resource, and a welcome addition to the shelves of any Los Angelaphile, scholar, or visitor who seeks a self-guided tour.
An elegant, A to Z compendium of Marlowe's ever-more-relevant observations about crime, women, work, sex, good, evil, and life in the big city.
In 1949, photographer Don Normark walked up into the hills of Los Angeles, looking for a good view. Instead, he found Chavez Ravine, a ramshackle Mexican-American neighborhood tucked away in Elysian Park like a "poor man's Shangri-la." Enchanted, he stayed for a year amidst the wild roses, tin roofs, and wandering goats of this uniquely intact rural community on the city's outskirts. Accepted by the residents, Normark was able to photograph a life that, though bowed down by poverty, was lived fully, openly, and joyfully.
"Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles"
Jim Heimann is the man to see in Hollywood if you are making a movie that is set in Southern California in bygone times--he combines the skills of an archivist, a cultural anthropologist, a designer and a historian, and he knows where to look for a dusty photographic relic that shows what any corner of byway of Los Angeles looked like on a particular day in the past. Heimann's remarkable skill set is put to good use in this beguiling collection of black-and-white photographs that depict the demimonde of Los Angeles from the '20s to the '50s. What the photographer Weegee did for New York in his classic "Naked City," Heimann now does for Los Angeles.
"Brilliantly, unhealthily obsessed... We can't imagine our daily routine without it." -LAist..."Imaginative and ambitious." -Rodger Jacobs... "L.A.'s best blog-noir." -LAVoice... "1947project is much more than just a blog. It is fantastic literature which just happens to be presented in the blog format. If you're a fan of noir, or just a proud Angeleno, you're going to love it." -Wil Weaton
photo: Mark Edward Harris Buy 1947project T-Shirts
Until we migrate all the old posts to the new site, visit the 1947project archives here
Kim edits Scram, a journal of unpopular culture Nathan'sbook, "Los Angeles Neon" Larry has a pretty good idea who killed the Black Dahlia... and an even better idea of who didn't
Joan has a nicer collection of vintage cosmetics than you'll ever find, so don't even try.
Mexican hopping beans
They each have a worm in them, which is kind of like a maggot... the implication is that they were in stock for eating purposes. Could that be?
Further delving in proquest
Further delving in proquest is clearly in order. I'll hop to it.