June 2007 – Page 3 – 1947 Project

Vive Calle Principal

June 13, 1927

Today, Los Angeles’s Main Street extends over 20 miles from Lincoln Heights to Wilmington. But in 1927, Main Street almost wasn’t.

A group of the city’s business interests, bonded together under the name of the Central Improvement Association, petitioned the City Council to change the name of Main Street to Huntington Blvd., in honor of the recently deceased Henry E. Huntington. But they had other reasons as well.

The name change would have created a continuous thoroughfare from Pasadena to the Los Angeles Harbor. It would be good for business. It would be good for property values. Plus, Main Street evoked images of a one-horse town; it was a name that belonged to a pueblo, not a thriving, young metropolis. Even the Times reporter covering the story (who was almost certainly reincarnated as a writer for Gilmore Girls) summed up the proposal as a desire to change the street name "to something less Sinclair Lewisy."

So, who comes out of the woodwork to defend the name of Main Street? Preservationists, that’s who.

Among them, Joseph Mesmer of the Los Angeles County Pioneer Society complained to the Council that too many historic city street names were in danger of being discarded. Florence Dodson Schoneman, a member of the Sepulveda family and chairman of History and Landmarks Committee for the Native Daughters of the Golden West, suggested that the city revert Main Street to its original name, Calle Principal.

In the end, however, it was bureacracy that saved Main Street. The City Engineering Department informed the Council that a name change would significantly delay road-widening projects, since "Main Street" was designated as the area to be improved on all the relevant ordinances, notices, and triplicate forms. These would all have to be changed, to say nothing of the cost involved with changing maps and street signs.

The proposal died a quiet, bureaucratic death, but rumors persisted that the City Council had actually passed the measure and suspended it until the roadwork was completed. J.A. Graves, president of the Farmers’ and Merchants’ National Bank, collected over 1500 names in a petition to repeal the non-existent ordinance, including many notable citizens.

With his signature, Reverend John J. Cantwell, bishop of Los Angeles and San Diego, wrote, "The tendency of the present day to change street names as a means of paying tribute to the memory of some distinguished citizen tends to mar the historic connection between the old and the new."

Graves’s petition ended with these rousing words: "Leave us something of the flavor of the original pueblo for all the years to come… With the cry, ‘Vive Calle Principal‘ on our lips, we submit this petition to you, hoping that you will give it your earnest consideration."

In closing, some images from the Los Angeles Public Library photo collection of bustling Main Street as it appeared in 1870 and in 1926.

Houdini’s Widow to Receive Settlement

June 13, 1927
New York

houdini Famed illusionist Harry Houdini died October 31, 1926, but until today, his widow, Bess, didn’t know whether she’d see any of the insurance money. After months of investigation, the New York Life Insurance Company decided to accept the claim that Houdini died as the result of a blow struck by J. Gordon Whitehead, a McGill University student. Bess Houdini would receive a settlement of $25,000 ($296,962 USD 2007).

Of course, New York Life had good reason to be confused. Even today, Houdini’s death is surrounded by uncertainty. Some accounts say that Whitehead challenged Houdini to take the punch fair and square, while others claim that he and his buddies lambasted the illusionist while he reclined on a sofa. According to some, the blow to the abdomen could have ruptured Houdini’s appendix, while others today say that this would only have aggravated a pre-existing condition. Still others speculate that he was actually poisoned by the angry Spiritualists he’d discredited. As recently as March of this year, Harry’s descendents were seeking to have the body exhumed, while Bess’s sought to block it, claiming that the whole thing reeked of a book promotion stunt.

What’s a humble claims adjuster to do?

Whistle While You Work

June 12, 1927
Los Angeles

Is there anything more quaint than a peanut wagon, its operator on life’s downward slope yet cheerfully awaiting only a word from you to scoop up a paper sack of delicious, salty goobers? This was the face that 72-year-old Victor Tartas presented to the world—-until recently.

To the untrained eye, the steady stream of customers at the peanut stand bore testimony only to the elderly Tartas’s business acumen and pleasant personality. But Sergeant Adams of the Los Angeles Police Department detected something peculiar in the peanut vendor’s manner: if an approaching customer whistled once, Tartas responded with a single blast of the peanut cart’s horn. Two whistles were met with two toots on the horn. A quick investigation revealed several pints of whiskey nestled beneath a false bottom in the wagon.

Despite evidence to the contrary (twenty gallons of moonshine, a small still and a “quantity” of mash were found at the peanut vendor’s home at 2118-1/2 Brooklyn Avenue), Tartas pleaded not guilty. Jury trial was set for September 13, 1927. Bail was fixed at $1,000–which, it must be stated, wasn’t peanuts.

In memory of Earl Ma, 1971-2007

It is with great sadness that I announce that Earl Ma has died after a long battle with cancer. In addition to being a lovely guy with vast stores of energy and passion, Earl was instrumental in the campaign to save his beloved 76 Balls.

It began with his interviewing Nathan Marsak and myself for a feature in Check the Oil! magazine, but he soon became the go-to guy whenever another journalist covering the campaign needed to put Union 76 into its proper historical context. Earl knew everything about the brand, and was always generous responding to anyone’s questions. And in his spare time, he made an effort to videotape every 76 Ball, ideally spinning, that he could find and shared those tapes on Youtube so future generations could see lost balls in situ.

I only met Earl once, for a breakfast and Philippe’s in downtown LA with fellow 76 Ball geeks J. Eric Freedner and Nathan, but recognized him immediately in his Union 76 regalia. We all had a great visit, with no idea it would be our last.

I greatly appreciated Earl’s intelligence, kindness and reliability. He was a true gentleman, and it’s some small consolation to know that he left this plane knowing that the 76 Ball lives on in large part thanks to his efforts.

Godspeed, Earl, and thanks for all your good work and friendship.

Back from R’lyeh

June 10, 1927
Santa Monica

lonchaney

His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn. Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds. His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth. Strength resides in his neck; dismay goes before him. The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. His chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone. When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing. The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin. Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. Arrows do not make him flee; slingstones are like chaff to him. A club seems to him but a piece of straw; he laughs at the rattling of the lance. His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair. Nothing on earth is his equal—a creature without fear. He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.

—The Lord to Job, on his buddy the Leviathan

Harry G. Cole, special police officer and deputy sheriff of Santa Monica, was walking along that part of the map generally marked by wind gods and sea-serpents, you know, Santa Monica, when he chanced upon a great and insolent rahab, if not the very World Serpent, Mr. Kooky Quinotaur, yep, that Time-to-Come feast-tent leviathan of a Leviathan himself. (Oh, for the life of the Leviathan, roaming the watery abyss, romping with daughters of Canaan, siring Merovingian kings, cavorting with Atlanteans and generally making mayhem on the seashores of California!)

seamonster

Let’s hear Harry tell of it:

“As I was coming by the Sea Breeze Club the watchman was out spraying the dust down. I stopped long enough to pass the time of day and started south to finish my night work. When about one-eighth of a mile south of the clubhouse I notice something out about where the swells break, and at first thought it some kind of wreckage, but soon discovered it was a live thing. At first I thought it was a mammoth shark with a fin about three feet sticking out of the water and the top of its tail about twenty feet back, also sticking out. But soon a head about the size and shape of a seal’s appeared about ten feet ahead of this fin and then its neck.
“’Well, Mr. Cole,’ I says, “you and your dog are surely seeing things.’ Mike, my dog, had discovered it too by this time. I left my car and ran back—yelled to the watchman, ‘Come here quick! What is that out there?’ It was going north as fast as I could run. Then up came the head about three feet out of water…as near as we could guess it showed from thirty to forty feet, and whet it turned seaward we could see there were two of those big fins, or sails, about two feet apart and exactly abreast of each other.
“Last year several of the men working on the Gables Club said they saw an immense sea monster just off shore—four or five saw it. But I thought they were seeing things and let it pass my mind. But now I know that such things do happen in that old pond.”

seabeastpic

The press wryly noted that perhaps the seabeast was screen bogeyman Lon “Man of a Thousand Faces” Chaney. This is unlikely, as Chaney was busy over at Metro where in fact, on this day of 10 June, it was announced by Thalberg that Chaney would pair with Tod Browning (yet again) in The Hypnotic, whose plot would hinge on science’s strange new discoveries in the realm of mesmerism and mental waves; this picture would go on to become famous “lost” film London After Midnight.

In any event, Chaney does not appear in the greater list of cryptids. As to whatever type of yet to be catalogued by the piscatorial expert seabeast Cole saw, he said "If I didn’t have a witness to this I never would have never enough to tell what I saw. I have been night patrolling in that territory for six years and maybe it is time I was getting goofy.”

A Streetcar Named Detention

bandit captured

June 11, 1927
Hollywood

A man entered the Hollywood branch of the California Bank at 3900 Sunset Blvd. early this morning to make a withdrawal – at gunpoint. Brandishing a revolver, the robber forced bank manager P.A. Beaton, assistant manager C.R. Gray, and Deputy United States Marshal Dave Reynolds into a back room, locked them in, and then stuffed a sack with $4000 ($47,514.02 USD 2007) in cash.

At the same time the bandit was hurriedly jamming money into a bag, Marshal M.A. Duarte was waiting outside wondering what was keeping his fellow U.S. Marshal from their meeting. Much to Duarte’s shock, a few moments later he encountered a man exiting the bank clutching a bulging sack of money in one hand and a revolver in the other.

streetcar

For a split second their eyes locked – and then the thief saw Marshal Duarte reach into his pocket. He quickly realized Duarte’s intent and fled down the street with the marshal in hot pursuit. Midway down the block Duarte began to tire. Huffing and puffing, he sputtered to a stop and fired two shots. At the crack of the first shot the bandit flung his booty to the ground. When the second shot whizzed past his head he threw down his gun. Duarte fired a third shot just as the fleeing felon was about to board a streetcar and escape. This time the man raised his hands to surrender.

The suspect gave his name as Gus Palovack aka F.J. Palivas, of 1017 Monterey Road.

Gus Palovack One of the most perplexing aspects of the case, other than why he chose a streetcar as his means of escape, is what drove Gus to bank robbery. Known about town as a realtor with political connections, Gus owns property and has several accounts in a number of downtown banks.

Hard work and a knack for saving money may be the reasons for the bank accounts and real estate holdings – but police don’t think so. They believe that Gus has recently made similar withdrawals from other local banks. Gus is charged with the robbery of the California Bank, and two robberies of the same branch of the Commercial National Bank located at 1572 Sunset Blvd. Bail is set at $25,000 ($296,962.64 USD 2007).

Gus either abandoned his brief career as a bank robber or became more adept at it, because there are no further mentions of his exploits in the Los Angeles Times after June 1927.

June 23: Esotouric Weird West Adams vintage dress-up tour

This is a special edition of Esotouric’s rarely-offered Weird West Adams tour dedicated to our friends at the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles and the West Adams Heritage Association. Passengers are encouraged to dress in whatever period attire best suits them. Current (or brand new!) members of WAHA or ADSLA can reserve seats by phone (at 323-223-2767) or email (via our contact form) and save $5 off the $55 ticket cost, provided they pay by check. Non-members are also welcome, and can either pay by check or online using the link below.

https://www.esotouric.com/adams-6-23-07

The tour will end around 3pm, and be followed by a reception with refreshments at the Susan Wilshire Residence, a private historic home nearby. The reception precedes WAHA’s Preservation Meeting on the topic of "Local History: Visual Storytelling," demonstrating the new Powerpoint narratives the city requires along with landmark applications. See old photos and ephemera related to Felix Chevrolet, the first (1878) farmhouse in Jefferson Park, a 1902 Tudor mansion on what was then Bankers’ Row by USC, and a fab Craftsman/Art Nouveau mansion in Victoria Park built by Michael Shannon, LA’s first traffic cop.

On this tour through the Beverly Hills of the early 20th Century, passengers thrill to the carjacking horror of silent film starlet Myrtle Gonzalez, shiver as Dream Killer Otto Parzyjegla chops his newspaper publisher boss to pieces with the paper-cutting blade, shudder at the pickled poignancy of the murder-by-brandy of Benjamin Weber, then gag at terrible fate visited on kidnap victim Marion Parker by The Fox. There will be some celebrity sites along the route, including the death scenes of Motown soul sensation Marvin Gaye and 1920s star Angels baseball catcher Gus Sandberg. And the architecture too is to die for.

Hope to see you there!
Kim

The Monkey Trial

June 9, 1927
Hollywood

brandingstory Readers may remember this recent post about an animal-mauled Hollywood boardtreader. Now, encounter another actor attacked by beast—just as Bela Lugosi would one day meet a Brooklyn gorilla, 21 year-old actress Doris Williams (known on the stage as Doris Dore) has met her own New Yorker.

The anthropoidal New Yorker in question, all simian of structure and with “arms like a gorilla," broke in and attacked Doris this morning at her 1924 North Argyle apartment, who when she fought back, began slashing at her. She fainted, and awoke in a pool of blood, to find the prehuman had carved seven examples of the letter “K” on her person.

Ms.Doris

Doris met this preadamite character at a wild party in New York, where he forced her to sign some sort of “mysterious paper.” Mr. Missingus Linkus then followed Doris across the continent, annoying her with threats and anonymous letters.

Doris had come to out West to portray Hester “Pregnant Out of Wedlock” Griffiths in Dreiser’s “American ‘Filthy Bedroom Scene’ Tragedy” in its Hollywood premier at the sunarc-laden January 17 grand opening of the Wilkes’ Vine Theatre.

stumpspolice Which she did, her monkey-man close at heel, and after the show ended, knocked around and did whatever it is young ladies do in Hollywood. Captain of Detectives Slaughter has been busy trying to piece the events of the evening of June 8/early morning of June 9 together: Doris had been out with two married men (now sought for questioning), drinking it up at a local Italian place—she admitted to “feeling pretty good” when she returned but denied that these gents came back to her apartment with her—although other residents had complained to building manager Mrs. A. C. Black that they were disturbed by the loud noise and laughter emanating from within. Doris’ neighbor describes that later, she heard Doris telephone in a local Western Union call: “Come on over in a hurry. Door unlocked.” Said neighbor then recounts assorted door slammings, water runnings, medicine cabinet openings, and: “I heard her put down the folding bed. I next heard her walk out of her apartment and go down the stairs and open the front door. A few minutes later I heard her running very fast back to her apartment. Within a short time I heard a man talking with her. His voice sounded to me like he was angry with her. They remained there for a while and finally went out together. I went back to sleep.” argyle

(Above, Doris’ apartment building, top center, across from the Castle Argyle.)

All grist for Detective Slaughter’s mill—the only thing lacking being corroborative evidence regarding Doris’ New York Gorilla story. Compounding Slaughter’s doubts thereof is information received from Doris’ friend George Lamont, who told detectives that last week, out-of-work Doris wished to arrange some daring publicity stunt (which George had sagely advised against).

Despite his misgivings, Detective Slaughter declared “We are giving Miss Williams the benefit of the doubt until it is proven otherwise. If she was attacked as she says she was we will do everything within our power to bring the guilty party to justice.”

It is of course not our place to judge whether she was in fact visited by a penknife-wielding primate from the Empire State, or this was a case of Morton Downey swastika prefiguration. Rather, we will leave it to our able readers to gaze at Ms. Williams’ visage and discern for themselves probable likelihoods.

gorillafear

Lady drivers and presidential pets

June 8, 1927
Alhambra

Car dealer R.C. Kane thought he was about to close a sale, and perhaps was leaning back with an air of satisfaction when the would-be buyer, Mrs. R.N. Upton, became startled at an intersection as another car approached.

She went for the brake, but hit the gas, and the car careened into Judge F.W. Houser’s yard and smacked into a concrete post. Kane and Upton, in the front seats, both went through the windshield and were severely cut and lacerated. In the back, Kane’s wife went out the window, and like Dwight Lesley was cut and bruised. The car was wrecked: NO SALE!

The victims were sent to Alhambra Hospital for treatment—all save Mrs. Upton, who insisted on seeing a Christian Science practitioner.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., President and Mrs. Coolidge’s pet raccoon Rebecca, a beloved pardon case from the White House larder one Thanksgiving, escaped and led staff on a two hour spree around the trees of the temporary White House, before climbing down and nonchalantly returning to her stump behind the residence. For more about the Coolidge’s interesting pets, see this article, with much on Rebecca towards the end.

Dirty Books and Lost Films

June 7, 1927
Hollywood

Book dealer P. Gordon Lewis, 39, has been arrested on a charge of attempting to provide obscene works through the mail, following a correspondence with a rat fink in Lakeland, FLA named Mrs. Collins B. Whiting. Whiting initiated the exchange when she wrote to inquire if Lewis could provide certain "erotic works," to which he replied that he had "several excellent examples of amatory works." This was sufficient to bring down the hammer of the United States District Attorney, which charged Lewis with using the US mails to sell obscene literature. He was arrested at his home at 2033 ¼ Vista Del Mar Street and held on $5000 bail.

Two years ago, Lewis was arrested on a similar charge at his shop at 1817 Ivar for mailing a copy of his sister Gladys Adelina Selma Lewis’ (pen name Georges Lewys) privately printed The Temple of Pallas-Athenae (1924). The book, financed by subscribers and printed in a run of 995, is the story of an ugly Greek princess who establishes a human stud service by which to test her theories of eugenics.

While President Coolidge was a fan and she was decorated by the French government for her war poem on Verdun, Georges Lewys is perhaps more notable for her legal battles than for her literary achievements. In 1927 she was subject to an injunction from her one-time friend Erich Von Stroheim over a privately printed fictional volume closely based on his scenario for the film Merry-Go-Round, from which he was removed as director by producer Irving Thalberg (supposedly after he learned that Stroheim wanted his extras to wear silk underwear embroidered with the Austro-Hungarian crown). She responded to his $50,000 suit with one for $100,000, and also sued Universal for the entirety of the film’s $3,000,000 profits. Lewys’ book, dedicated to Stroheim and blithely noted to be "from the Austrian" is considered by Stroheim scholars to be the key to understanding the director’s intentions for his film of pre-War Viennese life and love, with its scenes of voyeurism and sadomasochism. The New York Times reported that Miss Lewis received an out of court settlement–perhaps to hush discussion of the book and its racy subject matter.

In 1929, then 30 and living with her mother in the Belnord Apartments at Broadway and 86th Street, New York, Miss Lewis unsuccessfully sued Eugene O’Neill in Federal Court for $1,250,000, charging plagiarism of her characters in The Temple of Pallas-Athenae for his play Strange Interlude. She said she wrote the story in 1917, and that it had sold for $20. O’Neill claimed never to have heard of the "crazy" authoress, who erupted with some unintentionally hilarious remarks about her artistic character while on the stand, and Judge Woosley declared that while there might be some similarities between the characters, character types could not be owned by any author.

“It is true that there are old and young people in both plots. It is true that there are fathers and mothers and daughters and sons. But, after having carefully read both books more than once, I think it is fair to say that in the plaintiff’s book the characters are merely types — the socially ambitious mother and daughter, the obtuse but successful American business man, the dissipated foreign nobleman, the middle aged English philanderer, and the fabulously rich Russian princess. None of these types is individualized sufficiently to make the characters of the defendant any possible infringement of the plaintiff’s copyright.”

In 1931 Miss Lewis was ordered to pay O’Neill and his associates $17,500 in damages that she did not have, and there the matter rested. Later, she wrote a biography of the coloratura soprano Adelina Patti, her godmother and her mother’s dear friend.

The Lewises are native Angelenoes whose late father Meyer was a leading shoe retailer in the 1880s at 101 and 103 North Spring Street, with a fabulous home on Grand Avenue (A.M. Adelman, 1890). Their mother is author Selma Lewis.