1730 Keeler To-day

1947 is best known to the Angeleno for the Dahlia, and on the world stage there’s-what-the War for Hebraic Self-Determination, or the Kon-Tiki sailing about, but for America-at-large, 1947 means Roswell.

Crazy things were flying around in our skies all the time, which, fans of little green men will be sorry to hear, were most likely secret US military whatnot. And radio controlled bombings of Burbank were part of that scenario.

(We like to drop bombs. Anglo-Americans killed an estimated 400,000 German civilians with plain ol’ bombs; 40,000 in Dresden town in just a day and a half.)

Here’s one now!

And here’s the house in question, as menaced by jetpack-wearing members of Paperclip, and Parsons’ OTO rays, and reversed-engineered alien Buicks, and for our purposes here, radio-controlled Project Sign woefully non-guided torpedos.

The adjacent lot behind 1730, where the damn thing came to earth, has had constructed upon’t the 1979 98-unit Villa de los Reyes condoplex-

-wherein the missle landed right about here.

Culver City Copy Cat

February 4, 1947
Culver City

Miss Isabel Foster feels lucky to be alive tonight after being accosted by a man in a 1940 sedan while she was waiting for a bus at West Adams and Redondo Blvd. He asked if she needed a ride, and when she demurred showed a butcher knife and demanded she climb into the passenger seat. Terrified, she complied.

“Where’dya live?”
“3-3-3-3895 M-m-m-main Street.”
“Stop blubbering!”
“I… can’t…”
“Shut up, or I’ll give you what I gave the Black Dahlia!” And with that he cut her across the knuckles. The man drove closer to Isabel’s home. When they were a block away, she opened the passenger door and ran.

Her attacker is described as, slim, dark skinned, late 20s, about 5’8″, wearing dark work clothes and a “ridiculous” stocking cap.

And in mid-city Hermenegildo G. Robles Jr., 25, shot his estranged, pregnant wife Guillermina in her mother’s house, goes to church and inflicted on non-fatal wound on himself.

Who Killed Elizabeth Short?

February 3, 1947
Los Angeles

More than two weeks after the body of Elizabeth Short, 22, a Massachusetts-born transient, was discovered cut into two halves in the weeds in a Leimert Park lot, homicide detectives continued beating the pavement seeking clues to the baffling and gruesome crime.

On the town’s west side, a search was on for a young blond man seen driving an unlicensed coupe with a stained blanket on the passenger seat, as well as for another vehicle possibly seen pulling away from the Norton Avenue crime scene.

Acting on reports that the victim had used candle wax to fill untreated dental cavities, and noting the presence of two votive candles in her checked luggage, detectives inquired with the bathroom attendant at the Biltmore to discover if anyone had seen Short tending to her teeth there on January 9. No one had.

Most pressing was the need to find the murder site, which was perhaps a private home located some distance from its neighbors… or maybe a trailer, one of hundreds being used as homes in the overpopulated city. And if it was a trailer, what’s to say the fiend hadn’t already moved away in it, taking the evidence and his wickedness far from the men of law who seek him?

Two questions remain in the forefront of every L.A. cop’s mind, and those of the citizenry: who killed Elizabeth Short, and would he strike again?

Fink Alert

February 2, 1947
Los Angeles

The Better Business Bureau has issued a public service warning about three bold swindles perpetrated against city residents in the past week.

BEWARE: the door-to-door baby shoe bronzer, who will disappear with mama’s deposit and baby’s footwear, never to be seen again…

DON’T PAY: the frantic “exterminator” who rushes into a business with a sack of “the DDT the boss ordered,” demands prompt payment, and flees, leaving his hapless victim with a sack of ordinary flour…

AND TURN AWAY: the seller of off-brand vacuum cleaners, which are often not just unfamilar, but second-hand and overpriced.
Medium Image

A letter to the editor

Dear Editor of the Woburn (MA) Advocate:

As one of three (not two) hosts of the 1947project Crime Bus Tour savaged by Jon Hartmere in your pages recently, I’d like to ask why he felt compelled to so thoroughly fictionalize his experience while maintaining the pretense of reportage? The tour guides were myself (Kim Cooper), Nathan Marsak and Larry Harnisch, and we have the reasonable expectation that anyone who rides along on our tour with the intent of reporting on it would call us by name, and not conflate the three of us into “Ned and Jane.” The L.A. Times, Fox News and CBS News reporters on the bus all followed that basic journalistic rule.

Perhaps his last minute gift of the seat (on the weekend’s second sold-out bus) precluded his doing any research. Had he made a cursory web search, he would have discovered that the Crime Bus was developed by the bloggers at 1947project, a popular website that revives forgotten L.A. crimes of that year and pays visits to their scenes today, with side trips into subjects of historic preservation, local weirdness and yes, neon signage. These subjects are all familiar to and enjoyed by our readers, and the other passengers on Jon’s bus are already clamoring to attend the next tour.

The 1947project Crime Bus Tour exists for a very different audience than your reporter. Our riders know who James Ellroy is, are excited to explore unfamiliar neighborhoods, and could care less about visiting a recent, familiar crime scene like O.J. Simpson’s or the Menendez Brothers’. We wish he had asked a few questions before accepting the extra seat his friends offered, because there were a dozen people on the waiting list who would have loved to have his spot.

SCREEEEEEEE–CRASH!

February 1, 1947
Downtown

Tearing down Bixel Street towards Seventh came death in the shape of two teenage boys in a Jeep. Richard McCrary, 16, 1317 Connecticut Street, missed his turn and careened into a fire hydrant, then two pedestrians. Water gushed out over Cornelius Enright, 50, of 121 Manhattan Place and Camille Tendeza, 61.

Enright died at the scene, while Camille was rushed to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital in critical condition with head injuries and possible chest fractures. McCrary and his passenger, 15-year-old Fred Landerstein of 1260 Miramar Street, were unhurt.

Recipe for Marital Success

January 30, 1947
Hollywood
Get miffy at tennis pro hubby when a lady tennis player calls to suggest they team up in a tournament match, cry as he splits for the L.A. Tennis Club, drink a shot of iodine, follow it up with an antidote of flour and eggs, then telephone sweetums to tell ‘im what you’ve done. He’ll race home and speed your upsy tummy to Hollywood Receiving Hospital for emergency treatment. Game, set and match to wifeypoo.

This is the scenario played out in the third week of marriage by tennis star Tom Falkenburg and his 21-year-old model bride, Bernice Allred Falkenberg, in their home at 523 N. Cahuenga. BTW, fellas, it’s a big red flag when your sweetie doesn’t just try to poison herself, but administers her own antidote!

Watch Tom’s sister Jinx with Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl.

523 N. Cahuenga Avenue To-day

Awwww. The happy couple.

Bernice and camera lock unblinking eye: this is the happiest day of my life, and everything is going to be perfect from hereonin. Tom, he’s espied some other skirt already.


Of all the houses on the block-that one on the left a typical example-only the Falkenburg home, right, has a giant wall of flora shielding it from the eyes of man. What are they hiding? The shame, apparently. That energy born and borne as opprobrium’s heir.

Dames sure are dizzy in this town.