noirish Los Angeles

[ethereal_reality]

Today's Hollywood Reporter has an excellent article written by James Elroy on the murder of Sal Mineo.



GO HERE

[ScottyB]

I've been poring over some of Carleton Watkins' mammoth plates ....so good.

Here is Willow Dale, the home of Nathaniel C Carter, located just south of the Langham nee Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. He would eventually become the founder of the city of Sierra Madre. He operated railroad excursions in the mid-1870's bringing Easterners to visit the wonders of Southern California. (And then sell them land.)


HDL

He and his wife were little people (I jest)


HDL

My favorite view, showing some of the landscape of Oak Knoll.


HDL

interesting "for sale" ad

(lost link- mea culpa)

[Tourmaline]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Here's a

close-up

DETAIL

Anything look familiar?

__

A F C KIRCHHOFF
FAMILY LIQUOR DEALER

[Martin Pal]

You can tell the Hollywood Reporter's James Ellroy article about Sal Mineo was written by Ellroy.

"He (Sal Mineo) grokked male Caucasians between 16 and 20. He chased quiff at Lillian’s and the Hub Bar. He habituated West Hollyweird. He frequented the Garden District and the Posh Bagel."

I had to look up words (grokked and quiff) and wondered where these places were? (I'd heard of the Garden District, a restaurant on La Cienega.)

There was a rather recent movie James Franco had a hand in about Sal Mineo, titled Sal. It's rather hard to locate, but I did see it a couple years ago. I found it worthwhile, though most folks probably would like this more titillating article better.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

GO HERE
_________________________________________________________________

8567 Holloway Dr.

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Today's Hollywood Reporter has an excellent article written by James Elroy on the murder of Sal Mineo.



GO HERE

There is one acidic line in the Elroy article that stands out...."He was a half-assed movie star." Really? Two Oscar nominations. Most actors consider even a Nomination as a blessing.

Elroy's style of typing is nasty homophobic boilerplate.

*Oscar Nominations:Rebel Without a Cause and Exodus


pinterest

Sal played the lonely rich boy who was desperate for a friend.....Dean did his best to accommodate. both on and offscreen.

[riichkay]

Vincent Price and daughter Victoria shopping for an Xmas tree, late '60's...that's the Barrington Plaza apartments in the distance, so this is clearly on Wilshire Blvd., west of Barrington and on the south side of the street...I lived in Brentwood for 30 years so I tried to find the property, see if the laundromat building was still standing.


I took the Googlemobile about a mile west of Barrington, and came up with this building (11918 Wilshire) next to the McDonalds...





In the Price photo there is a sliver of a building to the right behind the laundromat....I then came up with a companion photo that showed more of that structure...white building with a greyish roof, and a window in the extreme upper right corner...





Armed with the 2nd snapshot I took a tour down the alleyway behind 11918....and came up with a building that I thought was a possible match...if I am right the "Nails" signage would have been above the rear door of the laundromat...





A closer view of the white building...it appears that the downspout has been relocated from the date of the Price picture, otherwise I think a match...





For further confirmation I went to Building & Safety's permit search and ran 11918 Wilshire, unfortunately there were no '60's permits where you could actually bring up the image of the document, so I could not confirm laundromat usage that way....I then searched the adjacent parcel (where the McDonald's is today), that address is 11920-26 Wilshire....turns out that there was a structure on that property that was demolished in 1959, and the site was vacant for the next decade....with the exception that every November a permit similar to this (from 1967) was issued....








Barrington Plaza is largely hidden today by the subsequently constructed office buildings.

A permit was issued in April 1969 for the construction of a take-out chicken place on the Xmas tree lot, so 1968 was the last year the property was vacant...Victoria Price would have been age 6 that year...add in the period attire, my guess is that the snapshot just turned 50.


In researching this little project I discovered that Mr. Price was something of an authority on Christmas trees and their decoration....this from a Sears catalog, 1964....

[Earl Boebert]

^^^
Yeah, Ellroy's a piece of work. Grievously hurt as a child, so entitled to sympathy as a person but not as a writer. I grew up listening to cop talk around the dinner table, had occasion to work with law enforcement before retiring, and I never heard anybody talk even remotely like that article. "Brace" for interview? It's a military term. "Wits" for witnesses? And I'm to believe somebody used the term "reefer" in the 1970's?

Sigh. But 'tis the Season, so let's give Ellroy a pass. Best Wishes for the Holidays to all the Noirishers

Cheers,

Earl

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

There is one acidic line in the Elroy article that stands out...."He was a half-assed movie star." Really? Two Oscar nominations.
Most actors consider even a Nomination as a blessing.

I was startled by the callous "half-assed movie star" comment as well CBD. ---so I tried to understand it:
In 1976 Mineo's Oscar nominations were already well in the past---
21 yrs [in the past] for his Rebel Without A Cause nomination and almost 16 yrs. [in the past] for his Exodus nomination.

Since Elroy is using (manipulating?) the speaking 'voices' of the policemen in 1976...
I think it's conceivable the policemen were [initially] unaware of Mineo's pedigree as an actor.

As for Elroy's patois:
This Hollywood Reporter piece wasn't nearly as bad as some of Elroy's past writing. (some of his writing is unbearably bad)
BUT I must admit-- I got extremely tired of Elroy using the term Hollyweird. (he used it three or four times just in this relatively short article)
Hollyweird is such an easy put-down, and at this point, so overused that it has practically become meaningless. (almost as bad as "The Land of Fruits & Nuts")

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

Elroy's style of typing is nasty homophobic boilerplate.

I can regrettably give this a pass. As I said earlier, the article is written in 1976 'speak' when homophobia was rampant.
In reality, the homophobia was probably much worse.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

I had to look up the words grokked and quiff

I was afraid to look up quiff. I had it confused with queef)


p.s. I just looked up both grokked and quiff..and I still don't understand.

[ethereal_reality]

I loved the bucolic photographs of Willow Dale ScottyB.


I'll add this image of N. C. Carter and his wife (daughter?) on the front porch at Willow Dale.


carletonwatkins

_

[ethereal_reality]

..and this.


so N.C. Carter was gone by [at least] 1884.

sold by Captain Ellis..but it doesn't say who purchased the property.

[nealberke]

[QUOTE=ethereal_reality;6466403]

I think I’ve solved the Anamorphic, Panoramic, Stereophonic and George! mystery.

Strip City’s ad loosely refers to the 1955 musical “Silk Stockings” “Silk Stockings is a musical with a book by George S. Kaufman, Leueen MacGrath, and Abe Burrows and music and lyrics by Cole Porter”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Stockings)

Cole Porter wrote the song Stereophonic Sound. Over again, he reminds the listener that to have a successful motion picture “You've gotta have glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and
Stereophonic sound”. Let’s break this down.

ANAMORPHIC: According to Wikipedia “Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted image is "stretched" by an anamorphic projection lens to recreate the original aspect ratio on the viewing screen”. Wikipedia cites Cinama Scope as a type of anamorphic format. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format)

I suspect Strip City didn’t want to be sued by Cinema Scope for misappropriating a trademark so they used the generic “Anamorphic”.

PANORAMIC: Likely just thrown in for effect or to mean the audience will get an all around view of the performers.

STEREOPHONIC: The club installed a stereo sound system. Again, what Cole Porter says audiences demand in a modern motion picture. (http://www.lyricszoo.com/hildegarde-...ophonic-sound/)

GEORGE: I’d guess this is a reference to George S. Kaufman who started work on Silk Stockings but didn’t complete the “book”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Stockings).

Here are three excerpts from Cole Porter’s “Stereophonic Sound” as Porter wrote it and before it was “cleaned up” for the motion picture. Source is LyricsZoo.com. (http://www.lyricszoo.com/hildegarde-...ophonic-sound/)

“If Zanuck's latest picture were the good old-fashioned kind,
There'd be no one in front to look at Marilyn's behind.
If you want to hear applauding hands resound
You've gotta have glorious Technicolor,
Breathtaking Cinemascope and
Stereophonic sound”.

“The customers don't like to see
The groom embrace the bride
Unless her lips are scarlet
And her bosom's five feet wide.
You've gotta have glorious Technicolor,
Breathtaking Cinemascope or
Cinerama, Vista Vision, Superscope or
Todd-A-O and
Stereophonic sound,
And Stereophonic sound”.

‘If Ava Gardner played Godiva
Riding on a mare
The people wouldn't pay a cent
To see her in the bare
Unless she had glorious Technicolor,
Cinecolor or
Warnercolor or
Pathe color or
Eastmancolor or
Kodacolor or
Any color and
Stereophonic sound,
And Stereophonic,
As an extra tonic,
Stereophonic sound’.

Other evidence in the ad: It looks like the photo or cartoon shows a woman either putting on or taking off stockings. “Our girls get dressed behind a wide screen”, a wide screen anamorphic reference.

[John Maddox Roberts]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I was afraid to look up quiff. I had it confused with queef)


p.s. I just looked up both grokked and quiff..and I still don't understand.

"Grok" comes from Robert A. Heinlein's novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1961). Its meaning is something like "to fully understand" but in Martian its origin is a word meaning "to drink", water being of utost importance on Mars.

[John Maddox Roberts]

Originally Posted by Earl Boebert

^^^
Yeah, Ellroy's a piece of work. Grievously hurt as a child, so entitled to sympathy as a person but not as a writer. I grew up listening to cop talk around the dinner table, had occasion to work with law enforcement before retiring, and I never heard anybody talk even remotely like that article. "Brace" for interview? It's a military term. "Wits" for witnesses? And I'm to believe somebody used the term "reefer" in the 1970's?

Sigh. But 'tis the Season, so let's give Ellroy a pass. Best Wishes for the Holidays to all the Noirishers

Cheers,

Earl

I remember "reefer" being used in the 1950s and in every decade since, so I can imagine LAPD detectives using it in the '70s.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by Earl Boebert

.... And I'm to believe somebody used the term "reefer" in the 1970's?

In college in the '70s we were watching Reefer Madness (passing one around, of course)...released 40 years before (1936).

[GaylordWilshire]

I came across this yesterday--88 years to the day after it appeared in the Times on Dec 22, 1930. "The good old days" when the streets were safe...right.

I notice that the Lucky Spot Café on Crenshaw, mentioned here lately, was robbed...and so was a "VD" filling station (at 2401 Whittier Blvd)

[rick m]

Originally Posted by Beaudry

Wow! 2500 pages (for me, or however many for y'all)...all I know is there's been 49,995 posts, so we'll see if I end up being #50,000 by the time I finish writing this.

Here's something I found—a piece of unbuilt Bunker Hill from the Times, 11 Feb 1905.



This would plop right on top the old Bixby house. And note that it would play havoc with the views had by the tenants of the Bradbury Mansion!

That this great seven-story caravansary should look a bit like the then three-year-old Fremont down the street at Fourth & Olive shouldn't surprise anyone, as it was also designed by John C. Austin.

Hotel Fremont, Fourth Street and Olive, ca.1908 by Michael Ryerson, on Flickr

Somewhere in my research there was also a major hotel planned for area on Hope at stairway rising from Third St- then also one other set for Olive at 2nd across from the Northern Apts---- neither which got funding ...

[Earl Boebert]

Originally Posted by John Maddox Roberts

I remember "reefer" being used in the 1950s and in every decade since, so I can imagine LAPD detectives using it in the '70s.

Sorry, I was unclear. What I meant was that the term was so archaic as to be laughable in the 70's. "Joint" was ubiquitous then.

If you want to know how cops talked around that time, I suggest reading Wambaugh. He was one.

Anyhow, sorry for bringing it up. Ellroy isn't worth the hassle.

Cheers,

Earl

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I was afraid to look up quiff. I had it confused with queef)

p.s. I just looked up both grokked and quiff..and I still don't understand.
_________________________________________________________________

Yes, I didn't really understand his use of them with the meanings I looked up, either.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

BUT I must admit-- I got extremely tired of Elroy using the term Hollyweird. (he used it three or four times just in this relatively short article)
Hollyweird is such an easy put-down, and at this point, so overused that it has practically become meaningless.
___________________________________________________________________

Exactly.

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by riichkay

In researching this little project I discovered that Mr. Price was something of an authority on Christmas trees and their decoration....this from a Sears catalog, 1964....
_________________________________________________________________

Interesting post riichkay. I can't imagine getting one of those trees and telling people who visit that your tree is exactly like the one Vincent Price has. Or "Vincent Price picked out the Christmas cards we sent."

I wonder if he actually had one in his home like that or it was just what he came up with for Sears. Thinking of it more, this is all really strange.