Month: September 2005

Those are wedding bells you’re hearing for hard-boiled pen-man James M. Cain, who took the occasion of the granting of Aileen Pringle’s divorce petition to announce that he intends to wed singer Florence MacBeth in October. The bride, widow of Captain Edward Whitwell R.A.F., has had a succesful stage career with the Chicago Grand Opera, despite sporting so dangerous a name. Post-nuptials, the lovebirds are off to Louisiana, where Cain intends to research a civil war novel while Flo begins her memoirs.

All Betty Rockwell MacDonald, the pretty, poised and wealthy 24-year-old wife of Robert MacDonald, wanted was for her husband to stop threatening her. And for him to get a job. He hadn’t worked since 1945.

Robert, 27, a former Lt. who received three Purple Hearts, a Silver and a Bronze Star in the European theater, has been receiving psychiatric care at the VA. This may have helped when Betty filed for divorce five months ago, agreed to reconcile, and recently began making divorce sounds again. Unfortunately, Robert’s shrink didn’t insist he remove his collection of war weaponry from the family home at 822 Warner Ave.

Last night, Betty phoned her attorney and insisted on revising her will. Now. She was not, she claimed, being threatened, but nonetheless she could not wait. And so her $100,000 fortune was to be shared by the MacDonald children, John, 6, and Eilen Gay, 11 months, with Betty’s mother as executrix.

Robert slept in the den last night, and was surly when Betty woke him to move his car so she could take little John to the dentist. The couple ended up in their upstairs bedroom, where they scuffled and argued. Nurse Constance Baker ran upstairs and saw John come hurtling out of the room as if tossed. Then gunshots: chest and head for Betty, mouth-shot for John. Both DOA, a sad finish to the story that began with the pair’s elopement in 1940.

Suggested reading: Surviving Domestic Violence: Voices of Women Who Broke Free

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You can tune into BBC 5’s bogging and podcasting show Up All Night this evening at 6:50PM PST to hear an audio tour of downtown Los Angeles that your cranky bloggers recently gave to visiting London journalist Chris Vallance. You can listen live here, or download for later podcasting from the station’s archive here.

Chris got a ton of our blathering on tape, so I can’t even tell you what topics will be covered, but Nathan was raving quite charmingly 90% of the time, so I reckon you will hear raving. Please check it out, and put any comments on the show in this post.

Residents of the bungalow court apartments 8527-8531 West Third Street have filed a complaint with the City Attorney, claiming their landlord has cut off their electrical power in a bid to drive them out of their homes so he can rent them as business offices. For the past ten days, Dan Clough, Robert L. Springfels and Harry S. Bent have been living by candlelight and stocking their iceboxes with, well, ice.

James Hay, who lives uncomfortably close to his disgruntled tenants at 8517 West Third, previously attempted to raise their rents from $50 to $200 a month when the rent controlling Office of Price Administration (OPA) briefly ceased to exist last year. As soon as the new rent control went into effect this August, he served his tenants with eviction notices, and on August 30 turned off their power.

For nearly a week, a broken truck has been parked just off Wilshire Blvd. Inside it, always inside it, Mr. Samuel C. Pirkey and his five tots, ages 2 through 10.

The family came out from Detroit in their “covered wagon” in hopes of finding work and housing, but the truck broke down before they found either. Mom was able to get a temporary gig at a cannery in the Valley, leaving dad to putter with the truck and watch the kids all day. By night, they all cram into their wheeled studio apartment, and dream of the California paradise they imagined while on the road.