Kim Cooper – Page 10 – 1947 Project

Podcasts now on iTunes

The first three of our more-or-less bi-weekly podcasts are now available through iTunes. Kindly click this link to launch iTunes and listen or subscribe.

Quick, fellas, hop in the car! We gotta get out to El Monte pronto, or there won’t be any of the main course left. What, you mean you call yourself a Lion and you don’t want to sample a hunk of barbecued adolescent lion meat, personally prepared by the King of Beasts’ best pal Charles Gay out at his Lion Farm, as part of the celebration of the charters of the El Monte and Alhambra clubs? Getouttahere! Of course you do!

Ah, don’t be a stick in the mud! We’ll sit at the big table in the middle of the lion cages, drink up some hooch and gnaw on a cat bone while telling dirty jokes and practicing our roars. And then, when we’re all good and lit up, Gay’ll bring Numa, his biggest and friendliest lion out to walk the length of the table, and we’ll toast that kitty as he’s never been toasted before.

That’s the spirit, fellas, out we go. This is a big day for the Lions of Southern California, one we’ll tell our grandkids about!

(For more about Gay’s Lion Farm, please visit the Wikipedia page or join us on a future edition of the Blood and Dumplings Crime Bus Tour.)

The Ballroom Blitz downtown swap debuts on Beth Short’s birthday 7/29

Gentle reader,

I’m writing to pull your sleeve to a wonderful event organized by Nico Bella, co-host of our upcoming Charles Bukowski tour and collaborator on many Esotouric projects. It’s the Ballroom Blitz, an indie swap meet and art fair in the exquisite Palm Court at the Alexandria Hotel on Sunday, 7/29… which just happens to be Elizabeth Short’s birthday. Hard to believe the Black Dahlia would only be 83 had she lived. Anyhoo, Richard and I will have a table of gewgaws, and I’ll be DJing a set, so let’s hope that nutty bubblegum music doesn’t bring the Tiffany ceiling down. It’s free and promises to be a ball, and we hope to see you there.

yrs, etc.,
Kim

Bargain Hunters of Los Angeles…

Fleur De Lethal Productions
in co-operation with
The Alexandria
is delighted to announce the launch of
"The Ballroom Blitz"
an indie swap meet and art mart in the historic
Palm Court Ballroom of The Alexandria

We will have DJs (including Teenacide Records mogul Jim Freek, Scram and 1947project’s Kim Cooper, Greg Belson and Andy Cobb of The Hogwash Jump Joint @ Bordello, Jason 71 – Downtown Luminary & member of the band Eskimohunter, DJ Alexander Lawrence – Music is My Boyfriend @ Bar 107 & Safari Sams, Disc Jockey Full of Bourbon – Raindogs and Bluebirds ) spinning under the Tiffany glass ceiling and our in-building bar Charlie O’s will open at 12pm, providing deluxe Bloody Mary’s and Mimosas to limber up your shopping tendencies!

There will also be raffles every hour for gift certificates, goods and goodies from swap-o-riffic vendors and
downtown businesses. Raffle tickets will sell for $1 with all
proceeds going to support The National Night Out on August 7th

The Ballroom Blitz launches
On Beth Short’s birthday
Sunday July 29th
The Alexandria (in The Palm Court off the main lobby)
501. S. Spring, Los Angeles, CA 90013

Doors open @ Noon and we will be
shoppin’, swappin’, sippin’ and rockin’ til 7pm!

For more information on The Ballroom Blitz or to book a table (just $10) please contact event organizer Nico Bella
213.325.0907 or via email royalpain@fleurdelethal.com

Links
https://www.fleurdelethal.com
https://www.thealexandria.net

1947project Podcast #3, July 6 2007

Here’s the latest edition of our podcast, a little belatedly due to holidays and bear attack.

This time ’round, the giddy and peculiar show features Joan, Mary, Nathan and myself, and our clown pal Crimebo, riffing on some of the more interesting cases from the past couple weeks of 1947project, and is brought to you by our newest sponsors, Floyd Elberfeld’s Lilli-puttian Mini Stroke Tiny Golfatorium and Ku Klux Klams. Patronise both today!

Have a question for Crimebo the Clown’s advice column? No inquiry is too personal. Merely contact us with your message to Crimebo, and you might get your answer on a future podcast.

New Swag

The 1947project elves have been hard at work, updating our Cafepress shop with a delectable assortment of swag and oddities certain to enliven your life and spark conversations with local crazies.

Surely, your Gremlin would be racier still were its bumper decorated with this jaunty slogan (also available as a license holder):

And for that little tyke in your life, perhaps a Beth Short bib? (Also available as adult and kid Ts)

The tyke’s not out yet? How about a maternity T featuring our very own Nathan Marsak in a pensive pose. Let your friends speculate about the significance of the imagery, which is also available in a more discrete edition which we like to call "The Betsy."

Also in stock: Tooth Decay Fiend Ts and treasures.

Suffocution Device throw pillows.

And of course lots of lovely 1947project gun logo items, too. We hope you’ll drop by and have a look and decide if "The Betsy" is right for you.

Unclear on the Concept

July 6, 1927
Los Angeles

Memo to Officer Fritzler of the Los Angeles police: next time you pull a guy over at Twelth and Main because you think he’s driving drunk, don’t tell him to drive you over to headquarters so you can throw him in the pokey.

Oh, everything might go just find as far as the police are concerned, but when you show up in Judge Wilson’s court to defend the arrest, you’ll be roundly chastised for letting someone you believed drunk remain in his car, because… Officer… the point of the drunk driving laws it to get drunks out from behind the wheel, not to turn them into chauffeurs for cops!

Since Fritzler clearly believed Fred Heegal was capable of driving safely through downtown traffic, and no test of drunkenness was given, the charges were dismissed, for this case and a similar one involving Officer Neff against C.A. Peterson.

Nancy Drew in Venice

July 5, 1927
Venice

It was April 12, 1924, south of the border down Mehico way, when two brigands confronted Fedosis Alvarado on his ranch near Monte Escobeda, stole $2400 and shot him dead when he tried to defend his property. Arrested for the crime, Santiago Figueroa used the victim’s money to avoid prison time.

Fedosis’ daughter, Maria Alvarado Gomez, was not satified with the verdict, and when she heard her father’s killer had moved to the beach at Los Angeles, she followed, taking a home at 1508 Pennsylvania Avenue, Santa Monica. She haunted the public spaces along the shore, not in a spirit of seaside pleasure seeking, but in single-minded pursuit of the man whose face was burned into her brain.

Last night, as crowds packed the streets of Venice for Fourth of July revelry, she finally saw him and cried out to her friends, "There he is, the murderer of my father, hold him, don’t let him get away!" But in Spanish, because, you know, everyone involved spoke Spanish.

Traffic Officer Carter happened on the scene and took the players into custody, calling in auto camp manager Howard Wesson to translate. Once the story was explained, an envoy was dispatched to the Mexican Consulate, to determine if Figueroa was wanted in his homeland.

Obviously not, since there was no follow up story on the incident. Poor Maria. Should there be a next time, may we suggest she be prepared to exact her own swift justice on her prey, and not make the mistake of trusting law or nations to supply a daughter’s long overdue justice.

Now in Phantomscreen

June 29, 1927
near Cordova, Alaska

Hollywood death came to the far north today, in the loss of stuntman Ray Thompson, 29, a player in a white water rapids stunt gone wrong on the roaring Copper River in remote Abercrombie Canyon. Thompson was on location for the new M-G-M picture Trail of ’98, starring the fiery Dolores del Rio, under the direction of assistant director Harry Schenck. Numerous small boats were in the stream packed with stuntmen and cameramen shooting a thrilling scene of Gold Rush-era peril, when Thompson and F.H. Daughters of Spokane fell into the water. Joseph Bautin of Juneau jumped in to try to save the men, and joined them in death; his was the only body recovered. Also in the water that day, stunt man Gordon Craveth, who managed to swim to shore.

Motion Picture News previewed the film and its innovative projection technique, but made no mention of the blood shed in its production:

"A big picture, easily of roadshow size, and big because of spectacular sequences this is our opinion on The Trail of ’98, directed by Clarence Brown for M-G-M. More pointedly, it is a presentation of the right sort, by which we mean that the presentation is the picture itself, through the "Fantomscreen," of which more later.

As to the artistic greatness of The Trail of ’98, we don’t know. Who does? But big at the box-office it will certainly be, unless we miss our guess.

The story is the Klondike Gold Rush, and is of epic dimensions. The cast- Dolores del Rio, Ralph Forbes, Tully Marshall, Karl Dane, Harry Carey, George Cooper, and others- is, excellent, with Carey in the forefront as to honors, and Dane and Cooper mostly carrying the

The frenzied rush to the Klondike from all corners of America, and what happened to the individual in his or her fight against the perils of the North, form the story background.

The handling of the characters in this screen version of the Robert W. Service story is dwarfed by the spectacular features. These are four in number: a breath-taking snowslide; the running of the rapids in frail boats; the Chilkoot Pass stuff, with big panorama shots; and the burning of Dawson City.

For the snowshoe sequence, the screen is suddenly enlarged to twice normal size, and moved down to the curtain-line. The effect is, of course, electrifying and carries a big punch. The same method is used with the running of the rapids, a remarkable spectacle. The "Fantomscreen" device, which moves the screen forward or back without interrupting the picture, is a great piece of show manship.

The picture will be roadshowed by J.J. McCarthy, who handled the six great roadshows of the industry’s history: The Birth of A Nation, Way Down East, The Ten Commandments, The Covered Wagon, The Big Parade, Ben Hur."

The Mad Gasser of… Fullerton?

June 28, 1927
Fullerton

Scholars of the unexplained in America will be familiar with the legend of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, a possibly imaginary figure who gassed his way across two communities over a decade and thence into the spooky books.

But we’ve found a precedent in the Los Angeles area that beats the first Mad Gasser attacks by six years! This very evening, garage operator Alois Sabinski was asleep in his home at 111 North Nicholas Street when his wife was roused by the distinctive odor of chloroform, and discovered her husband in a swoon. The clever lady threw open all the windows to disperse the poison before she too was rendered insensible, and peeked outside to see a man running away carrying what looked like a bicycle pump. A bicycle pump of doom!

Officer Roy Mills, called to the scene, found footprints under the window and on the porch, and evidence that the gasser had launched his fumes through the open transom. So close those transoms, kids, and beware strange men bearing pumps.

A Short Film About Scoops Gelato