No Happy Endings: City of Nets by Otto Friedrich

City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s by Otto Friedrich

City of Nets begins with Sid Grauman, ends with Ronald Reagan, and in between, drops in on nearly every historical personality, event, and movement that figured into the tumultuous and transformative decade.

The title comes from Bertolt Brecht's libretto for The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, about a town of "gin and whiskey, girls and boys" that begins as a hedonist's paradise, but ultimately falls to destruction. Brecht himself turns up periodically in City of Nets, and his own Hollywood story is detailed by Friedrich. It's a doozy -- flight from Nazi Germany, various unsuccessful turns as a Hollywood screenwriters, and finally, a summons before HUAC.

There aren't very many happy, Hollywood endings for the people Friedrich writes about, but there are some great stories -- Bette Davis running the Hollywood Canteen; Olivia de Havilland's battles with Warner Brothers; the madcap life of Preston Sturges; the sad decline of Charlie Chaplin.

The book is also packed with stories of happy accidents, near-misses, and half-truths turned legend. Casablanca became one of the best-loved pictures of all time, despite the fact that no one involved with the film really wanted to be there. George Raft's inability to recognize a good role if it bit him on the face gave us Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and Fred MacMurry as Walter Neff. And it will probably never be known who really stole the body of John Barrymore and propped it up in Errol Flynn's favorite chair, but Friedrich tells both versions of the story.

And then there's the labor battles and the Hays Office, the War and the war at home, the Red Scare and HUAC. Chandler, Faulkner, and Billy Wilder's awesome telling-off of Louis B. Mayer.

There's never a dull page, and chances are you'll be loading movies into your Netflix queue the entire time. City of Nets provided my happy introduction to Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, which is a smart-assed finger in the eye of the Hays Code and just about the funniest thing I've ever seen besides.

The Extemporaneous Poetry of Vin Scully

We've been slack of late, I know. The reason? The Dodgers.

Apropos of the playoffs, the other night Mary and I were discussing whose jersey we would purchase, were we so inclined (and moneyed - those things are like 200 bucks, and that's cash that could be better spent on tickets). Mary was leaning towards Garciaparra - a classy guy, indeed - but there's only one name I'd want on mine: Scully. He is, after all, the poet laureate of baseball and one of the patron saints of this blog.

Seriously, imagine for a moment the yarns that would be spun at a dinner party made up of Vin Scully, Eugene Walter, Everette Maddox, and Elaine Dundy. The mind boggles.

Some might deride ol' Vin for rambling on at times, being too "flowery", or talking too much.

Heathens, all.

Consider this, from the third and final game against the Cubs last week:

(transcript via LAist - we were too busy gnawing our fingernails off to take such good notes)

"And the Dodgers are one out away. One sweet beautiful marvelous out away. They will take it any way shape or form. Strike out, ground ball, fly ball, fair ball, line drive, any way they can get their hands on it. That precious thing called the final out.

Broxton delivers, swung on and missed. And now it’s not one sweet precious out, it’s one sweet precious pitch. Listen to this crowd.

No balls and two strikes to Soriano. Broxton ready. Half swing strike three called and the Cubs are dead! [...]

And as the Dodgers mob each other traditionally out in front of the mound, the lost Cubs - a lot of them, Aramis Ramirez, Derrek Lee - sitting motionless in the dugout, just staring like kids outside a candy store or like the uninvited to the party. Just staring, waiting, watching, knowing there’s nothing left but go back to the dressing room and fly back to a disappointed Chicago."

I swear, the man's voice is a time machine that takes me back to the years before steroids, ridiculous salaries, and the @)#&^% designated hitter.

So in the spirit of October goodness, here's Vin Scully's play-by-play for Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965 against the Cubs.

And better still, here's audio of Vin calling Hammerin' Hank Aaron's big hit - he starts at about 54 seconds in, after two lesser broadcasters whoop it up for a bit.

Last of the Love Goddesses: The Zany Adventures of Liz Renay

My Face for the World to See (1971)
My First 2,000 Men (1992)

In most people, self-awareness is a good quality, but thankfully for us, and probably for her as well, Liz Renay never believed herself to be anything other than a fabulous glamour girl just on the verge of becoming the next big thing. Until her death in January 2007, Renay frolicked through life with happy-go-lucky aplomb, even after a series of setbacks -- treacherous husbands, bad boyfriends, gangsters, grand juries, jail time, a thwarted film career, and family dramas -- that would have sent most people spiraling into depression and self-doubt.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. For those who don't yet know Miss Liz, a little background, described far more colorfully in My Face for the World to See. Born Pearl Dobbins in Chandler, Arizona, our young heroine was raised by strict evangelical parents, but fell away from the church at an early age after her first visit to the local skating rink, which she's been told was "Satan's palace." Renay writes, "In one wave of nausea, my religious belief was swept away. Every value the church had taught me was crushed under the rolling wheels of those innocent skates.... This place was not evil or sinful or wrong. Common sense made that obvious."

Heady with freedom, Renay went a little wild, running around with soldiers stationed in the area, marrying two of them, and giving birth to two babies before the age of 18.

However, Renay's love affair with notoriety began in earnest in the 1950s when the newly single mother began dancing burlesque in New York City to pay the bills, and caught the eye of Tony "Cappy" Coppola, bodyguard for Murder Inc. head Albert Anastasia. After letting Cappy down easy, Liz hoped to break into the movies, and headed to Los Angeles where her gangster buddies arranged for Mickey Cohen to help her settle in. The two hit it off immediately, and Liz got off to a promising start, captivating no less a person than Cecil B. DeMille.

Unfortunately, Liz made the mistake of loaning Mickey Cohen some money, which landed her in front of 13 grand juries on both coasts and into the headlines of national newspapers as "Mickey Cohen's girlfriend." Eternally naive, she enjoyed the attention and photo ops, but got her testimony mixed up in front of one of those juries, and found herself pleading guilty to perjury. She was given probation, but wound up having to serve a three year sentence at Terminal Island after pleading guilty to an unrelated charge of disturbing the peace*.

Between the jail time, the mobster associations, and the fact that she was pushing 40 by this time, no major studio would touch Renay. Undaunted, she went back to dancing burlesque, painting, appearing in B-movies like The Thrill Killers and Blackenstein, and her favorite pastime, men.

My Face for the World to See was published in 1971, but germinated during Renay's prison term. In fact, the portions of the book devoted to this period are the high point, as we see Renay leading the prison's theatre and art classes, painting portraits for her fellow inmates, fighting off the attacks of the "Butch Broads," and getting locked in solitary over a fight for religious freedom behind bars (Renay does apologize for her harsh words against homosexuality in My First 2,000 Men).

Renay's second memoir is just as entertaining as its predecessor, but only if you skip the chapters where she's giving romantic advice and stick to the ones where she's telling tales about her lovers. Another reason I find myself utterly enchanted by Renay is that, although she certainly bedded a number of celebrities, and even devotes a chapter to them, she's no groupie and no star chaser. She writes about the men who treated her best, were most generous, most bizarre, most exciting, and a few who were just oddballs and perverts, and fame or lack thereof seems to play no part in how Renay feels about her conquests.

And how can you not love a book that begins, "There've been so many talented, charismatic men in my life, it's hard to know where to begin. I'll start with Burt Lancaster."

Though self-absorbed and unselfconscious, Liz Renay was a giddily irrepressible barrel of fun, and her memoirs are, too. Definitely worth a skim.
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* Renay really got a bad deal on this count, and again, her naivete got her into trouble. She went to a hotel for what she believed to be a "photo shoot," and discovered that the photographer had ulterior motives. There was a ruckus which drew the police, and Renay was charged with disturbing the peace. Bobby Kennedy was under some pressure to get mobster convictions and harsh sentences, and though Renay's actual involvement with the mob didn't go beyond dating its membership, she got three highly undeserved years in the pokey.

I was reading these books around the time that the 40th anniversary of RFK's assassination was being commemorated, so it was rather a surprise to come across sentences like, "My greatest contempt was for hypocrites like Robert Kennedy," and "It sure is awful about poor Marilyn. I'm sure that jerk Robert Kennedy had something to do with this."

A Quick Detour Into the Exciting World of Exploitation Film: She Shoulda Said No!

After reading about Evelyn Nesbit in American Eve, her story reminded me of another beautiful young woman sacrificed on the altar of fame and celebrity scandal, Lila Leeds.

At the beginning of 1948, Leeds was poised to take Hollywood by storm. She'd had a small role in Lady in the Lake, and her looks drew comparisons to Lana Turner and Jean Harlow.

But then police busted up a marijuana party at her Laurel Canyon cottage, hauling in Leeds, and much to their delight, Robert Mitchum. Mitchum and Leeds were both convicted and sentenced to 60 days in prison. Both feared their careers were over; when Mitchum was asked to state his occupation for the police report, he replied, "Former actor."

However, Mitchum's studio rallied around him, and though some disapproved, the arrest gave his bad boy reputation even more cred.

Things would not go so well for Leeds, who was thrown under the proverbial bus. Even her agent, Louis Shurr said, "She had a promising career and was headed for success, if she had only behaved differently. It looks now as though she's blown her chances sky high."

Still, Leeds got one little break after prison - the chance to star in a sensationalized anti-drug movie in the spirit of the oft-mocked Reefer Madness. There was some trouble settling on a title. It was initially called The Devil's Weed, and for its Los Angeles premiere, it was titled Wild Weed, but the title was eventually changed to She Shoulda Said No!.

And sure, it bears many classic marks of the anti-drug exploitation film: teens smoke a little pot, get frisky, and smash up their cars; people go into marijuana "withdrawal," and a jittery fellow tries to throw himself out a window. However, She Shoulda Said No! is actually a pretty little terrific film, mainly because of Leeds's performance.

Leeds plays Anne Lester, a good girl working as a dancer to put her lazy, mooching brother through art school. Of course, the friendly neighborhood drug dealer, Marky, stops by the dressing room to give the girls their fix, and wants to meet Anne the moment he lays eyes on her. One of Anne's dancer friends throws together an impromptu party, Marky gets Anne high, and before you can say Jack Robinson, she's his drug-dealing sidekick.

Leeds is perfectly lovely as a good girl, but it's once Anne Lester turns bad that the character really starts to shine.

When the cops try to pressure her into giving up Marky, Anne tells them where to stick it with such venom and contempt that it's almost like watching an interrogation scene from The Wire. Obviously, Leeds's memories of prison are still fresh here, but it's also clear that the gal has some acting chops.

In most movies like this, the Anne Lester character winds up a martyr, a junkie, a jailbird, or a repentent, wounded little sparrow, but She Shoulda Said No! avoids resigning her to any of these fates. And that's the best part of all.

Unfortunately, Leeds herself wouldn't be so lucky. Shortly after the release of She Shoulda Said No!, all the acting jobs dried up, and Leeds left California for over 15 years, during which time she was repeatedly arrested for drug possession and soliciting. For a time, she found an unlikely savior in the figure of Chicago madam Kay Jarrett, who helped Leeds hide from the press and care for her infant son shortly after she'd been abandoned by the child's father.

The story has a semi-happy ending, though I haven't yet uncovered the bulk of it. In the 1960s, Leeds returned to Los Angeles, sober and working as a minister with an evangelical church. She died in Canoga Park in 1999, and I'm still trying to fill in a lot of those missing years.

But in the meantime, add She Shoulda Said No! to your Netflix queue. You won't be disappointed.

Gary Phillips At the Memorial Branch Library

The Memorial Branch is one of the Los Angeles Public Library system's smallest, oldest, and most beautiful branches. But lately, they've been pulling out the big guns for their "Meet the Author" series, and proving that you don't need the Mark Taper Auditorium to host a great talk.

We just got back from a Q&A with Gary Phillips, author of The Underbelly, Politics Noir (ed.), Monkology: the Ivan Monk stories, Bangers, Shooter’s Point, The Jook and too many other projects to name.

Phillips discussed his writing process, how he keeps the language and tropes of noir fresh, and Citizen Kang, the political suspense serial he's currently writing at The Nation to an audience that included a group of students from Los Angeles High School.

I'm told that in upcoming months, the Memorial branch library will be hosting talks with writers including Paula Woods, John Shannon, Denise Hamilton, a line-up that should have any fan of L.A. crime fiction doing the happy dance.

I'll post more details when I get the dates, but in the meantime, I can't say enough nice things about the Memorial branch library, and their ability to drag a girl out of her house on a Monday night and show her a nice time. I'll definitely be going back.

Calling All Library-Loving Angelenos

The Los Angeles Public Library has been hit hard by the City budget shortfalls, and already, approximately $2 million has been cut from the budget for new materials. Additionally, the Board of Library Commissioners recently approved new fees for basic library services.

Starting July 1, LAPL users will be charged $1 for inter-branch loan requests. In a city the size of Los Angeles, the holds service is the only thing that makes the amazing resources of the library system accessible to everyone.

You can help by writing a letter to Mayor Villaraigosa, the Board of Library Commissioners, and City Librarian Fontayne Holmes asking them to keep library use free for the people of Los Angeles.

If this system isn't free, many people in Los Angeles will be unable to afford access to the library books they need.

And if you'd like to do more than just write a letter, you can submit suggestions to raise money for the library without taking free services away from those who need them most.

Visit the Save the L.A. Public Library website for more ideas about how you can help.

My New Favorite Author: Southland by Nina Revoyr

Southland by Nina Revoyr

In the wake of the Margaret Seltzer faux-gangster memoir scandal last month, novelist Denise Hamilton wrote a column for the Times recommending a book to wash away the bad taste of that whole mess: Understand This by the wonderful Jervey Tervalon. The book focuses on the lives of eight teens living in South Central Los Angeles, and is, Hamilton writes, "as haunting and painful and tough and tender and true as Seltzer's memoir is false."

Alongside Tervalon's book, I'd also suggest Nina Revoyr's Southland, which captures an altogether different, and seldom examined side of South Central -- its history as one of Los Angeles's first racially mixed neighborhoods.

The book's main character is Jackie Ishida, a fourth generation Japanese-American woman whose parents' drive towards assimilation and upward mobility have effectively divorced her from her family's past. Though she's a UCLA law student and her parents are doctors, her grandfather, Frank, owned a grocery store in the Crenshaw district and raised his children there until the 1965 Watts riots.

When Frank dies in 1994, Jackie discovers an old will among his papers, leaving the store to Curtis Martindale, a man she's never heard of. A little investigation leads her to Curtis's cousin, Jimmy Lanier, who gives her some shocking news. Curtis Martindale was one of four African-American boys found locked in Frank's walk-in freezer after the riots. The murders were never reported to the police, since the neighborhood's beat cop, a white officer who frequently brutalized the black and Japanese residents, was seen leading the boys inside the store. Jackie and Jimmy decide to put together enough evidence to bring a case against the white officer, and begin tracking down people from the old neighborhood.

Revoyr intertwines this search with flashbacks spanning six decades, and told from a variety of character POVs. We see the Japanese-American interment camps of World War II and the segregation that exists for black workers in the Long Beach shipyards. But we also see the Family Bowl, frequented by Japanese and African-American Crenshaw district residents alike, and racially integrated neighborhoods where people are genuinely neighborly.

Revoyr doesn't view the past idyllically, but she's able to see a brief moment in time where Los Angeles could have moved in a much different direction. Here, and in her equally terrific The Age of Dreaming, she provides devastating historical accounts of racial prejudice in Los Angeles's sometimes white-washed past.

Although I've come to Revoyr's writing only recently, I can't recommend her enough. She's too good to miss.

Not Shocking

Pastrami vs. knowledge? In Los Angeles, pastrami wins.

Langer's ousts Central Library in LA Magazine's kinda weird "64 Greatest Things About L.A." showdown.

The 1947project Is Dead!

Long live the 1947project!

The L.A. historic true crime-a-day project has morphed into something new and wonderful, a house-by-house exploration of a lost Angeleno neighborhood:

"For the next year, we will be exploring the lost neighborhood of Bunker Hill in all its permutations. Yes, we'll be reporting on the crimes upon the hill, but we'll also look at architecture, social life, notable residents, transportation, redevelopment, its mysteries and what small survivors remain from the glory days. With this project, we intend to shine a light on a community that was displaced by a well intentioned but misguided slum clearance plan that tore the heart out of L.A.'s downtown, a blow the city still staggers from."

Swing by the new digs.

Beyond Words: The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr

The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr

"There was a purity to silent films that can never be recaptured in this clamorous age of sound effects and talking. We who made them knew that the most vital parts of the stories -- as of life -- can never be reduced to mere words. We understood that moving images are the catalysts of dreams -- more eloquent when undisturbed by voices."

During a time when Japanese Americans living in Los Angeles could only live in a few designated neighborhoods, and whites agitated for a Constitutional amendment to bar Japanese immigrants (and their American-born children) from attaining citizenship, Jun Nakayama becomes one of Hollywood's biggest and most unlikely stars. He appears in over 60 films, tours cross-country selling war bonds, appears on the cover of Photoplay, and makes women swoon in the theatre aisles.

But then in 1922, shortly after the murder of acclaimed director Ashley Bennett Tyler, Jun's career suddenly, mysteriously ends. Jun becomes a recluse, his old friends abandon him, he never appears in another film -- and he never tells anyone the reason why.

When the book begins, it's 1964, and little has changed for Jun; however, everything is about to. A silent movie theatre is opening on Fairfax, and an eager reporter named Nick Bellingham approaches Jun for an interview about the old days. Jun refuses outright, but Nick is persistent. Eventually, he reveals the real reason he's been pursuing Jun -- he's written a screenplay, has a studio interested, and wants Jun to star. The role is exactly the kind that always eluded Jun during his film career -- dignified, complex, sympathetic -- and he's intrigued enough to sit down with Nick.

The silent film historians who have written about Jun by 1964 blame his disappearance from the screen on a lack of good roles for Asian actors. However, no one knows the truth, and when a studio head begins digging up dirt, Jun realizes he can't relive his glory days without revisiting their darker moments.

Discovered in a theatre in Little Tokyo, Jun quickly becomes a sex symbol, enjoys the company of white starlets, and frequently plays villainous characters that offend the Japanese-American community.

Though he prides himself in avoiding the worst kinds of "houseboy" roles, his career stands in sharp contrast to his friend and foil, the Japanese actress Hanako Minatoya. At first, Hanako is his idol, then his mentor; however, their friendship becomes strained as the anti-Japanese sentiment in Hollywood grows more virulent. Hanako knows the score, and isn't afraid to stand up to the studios, while Jun lives in a state of denial, believing that his stardom will spare him.

In the end, though, it can't. And while many clues signal the cause of Jun's downfall in advance, his inability to see them for himself make the eventual revelation as shocking for readers as it is for Jun.

The narrative voice Revoyr creates for Jun is masterful, stretched taut with restrained emotion, longing, and lost opportunity. Revoyr also depicts early Hollywood with exquisite detail, rendered even more so by Jun's attempt to revisit some of his old haunts only to find them turned derelict. Though the book is many things -- an examination of racial prejudice, a murder mystery, an account of a too-forgotten era of moviemaking -- each element of the story fits together seamlessly.

And although it's the story of a man who has lost nearly everything, it's not a book that dwells in shadows and loss; the resolution is such a piece of beauty and four-square perfection, it will take your breath away.

If you liked...: The Remains of the Day, this book is for you.
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Note: The character of Jun Nakayama is very loosely based on the actor Sessue Hayakawa, who was also "discovered" performing in a Little Tokyo theatre, and had a successful silent film career. However, unlike Jun Nakayama, Hayakawa transitioned to the talkies, and in response to a lack of roles for Japanese actors, formed his own film production company. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1957 for his role in Bridge on the River Kwai.

Farewell, My Lovely: The Long Embrace by Judith Freeman

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman

A few months ago, I went to visit the duplex on Highland Avenue where Raymond and Cissy Chandler lived in 1929 (though I called her Pearl, her given name). After reading Judith Freeman's The Long Embrace, a highly intimate biography of Ray and Cissy, I learned that, of the approximately two dozen homes they shared in Los Angeles and Southern California, this one may have marked the lowest point in their marriage.

During the years this was listed as their address in the Los Angeles city directories, Ray rarely lived there. Instead, he was in the process of drinking himself out of a job, dividing his time between a room at the Mayfair Hotel, and an apartment he'd rented for a secretary at Dabney Oil, with whom he was having an affair.

Finally, the affair and the job came to a nasty end, and Ray returned home. He would spend the next few years learning how to be a writer, and trying to make it all up to Cissy.

Before Freeman's book, little was known about Cissy, other than the fact that she was 18 years older than her third husband. And only a few tangible scraps remain of her -- Chandler insisted that all their letters be destroyed (Ray hinted that a few of them were "rather hot"). However, Freeman embarked on the book hoping to piece together what little remained, and to discover something about what Cissy was like.

The result is as much an account of Freeman's literary sleuthing as it is a biography of the Chandlers. At first, I bristled at Freeman's insertion of herself into the story, her accounts of the places in Los Angeles where she'd lived, the apartment buildings and bungalows she visited while tracking down the elusive Cissy through the homes around the city where the Chandlers lived.

However, it was in a passage about an evening Freeman spends at the HMS Bounty, my favorite bar in Los Angeles, that I realized what she was up to.

Not only was her description of an elderly waitress who worked at the bar when I began going there (and who was rumored to have once roomed with Jane Russell) entirely accurate, it was also reminiscent of Chandler in one of his careful, incisive character studies, given to even incidental characters. And suddenly, I realized that Freeman's trips back and forth across the city, and her descriptions of them, mirrored Philip Marlowe's own.

Of course, this is the only way the book could have been written. And of course, it works beautifully -- it just took me a little time to see it.

And Freeman does find Cissy, in a manner of speaking. She was beautiful, sensual, charming, and gracious. She read Ray's books and stories, and made notes on them, but wasn't really a fan. After a happy and relatively sober decade with her husband in the 30s, her health began to decline; however, shortly before her death in 1954, she mustered the strength for a trip with Ray to England. She may have enabled his drinking to a certain degree, but in this trip, she also enabled him to leave California after she died -- which I suspect is what allowed him to live as long as he did without her (even so, less than five years).

But more than anything, what comes across is that the Chandlers' marriage was a complex one. It was like nothing out of a storybook, the couple had their troubles -- the age difference between them, their reclusive habits, the moves from one furnished apartment to another, Ray's drinking and Cissy's health problems, and Ray's movie work, which probably took a steeper toll on the marriage than even his days with the Dabney Oil Syndicate.

Still, through Freeman's research, we also see a portrait of a couple who loved, understood, and nurtured one another very deeply throughout their 30-year marriage. Their need for one another is both touching and terrifying.

Of Cissy's last year, which he spent mostly caring for her in their La Jolla home, Ray wrote,

I watched my wife die by half-inches and I wrote my best book in the agony of that knowledge, and yet I wrote it... And late at night I would lie on the eight-foot couch reading because I knew that around midnight she would come quietly in and that she would want a cup of tea, but would never ask for it. I always had to talk her into it. But I had to be there, since if I had been asleep, she wouldn't have wakened me, and wouldn't have had her tea.

Do you think I regret any of this? I'm proud of it. It was the supreme time of my life.

Judith Freeman recently spoke with Denise Hamilton as part of the ALOUD series at the Los Angeles Central Library. Although it's not up as a podcast yet, it should be soon, so keep checking.

She's Not There: Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique

Gilded Lili: Lili St Cyr and the Striptease Mystique by Kelly DiNardo

As I sit here, writing and half-watching the Oscars, I'm struck by the irony that the subject of this book herself never bought into the mystique of the silver screen. Lili St. Cyr only did movies when the money was good and the work was easy; otherwise, she'd rather be dancing at Ciro's. And although she turned the heads of Humphrey Bogart and Anthony Quinn, she never aspired to appear alongside them onscreen.

Alongside the poetry-reading Gypsy Rose Lee and fan-dancing Sally Rand, Lili St. Cyr was one of the last queens of burlesque, dancing in theatres across North America from 1940 until 1970. Her stripteases tended to tell stories, often plucked from mythology, literature, and even religion -- Salome, Cleopatra, and once, even The Picture of Dorian Gray served as inspiration for her acts.

In an increasingly youth-besotted culture, it's amazing to realize that St. Cyr's career didn't really take off until she was in her mid-30s, and that she really hit her stride, headlining in Los Angeles, Montreal, and Las Vegas, in her 40s, finally hanging up her G-string for good at the age of 53.

Despite a compelling subject, DiNardo's Gilded Lily never quite compels, hampered by dry writing and padded with a rather shallow analysis of 40s and 50s American society. However, the book's biggest problem is that DiNardo never taps into Lili as a person, much less an interesting one.

In the book's epilogue, DiNardo writes, "Lili was neither Madonna nor whore, neither saint nor sinner, neither exploited pinup nor scheming gold-digger. She was neither mentally shallow, nor intellectually subversive, neither socially unimportant, nor dangerously vital." DiNardo says who Lili St. Cyr was not, but never manages to capture who she was. Perhaps in life, St. Cyr was one of those elusive shapeshifters, unknowable by even her friends and lovers; however, what we see of her here is a benign, flat arrangement of names, places, and dates -- more an itinerary than a life.

Still, the book provides detailed information about relatively unmined territory, particularly in its descriptions of early days on the Vegas strip, nightlife in Montreal, and the shticks and calling card performances of famous stripteasers. Although it falls short, Gilded Lili will be indispensable to aficionados of burlesque history.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find video of Lili's most famous performance, wherein she took a bubble bath onstage. But along those same lines, here's another, billed as "spectacular, erotic, and slightly shocking," a slightly NSFW promo for Lili's Bedroom Fantasies.

Weekend Curiosities and Wonders: B is for Bud and Beulah

Here's your bit of odd text for the weekend.

I've recently been preparing for another Los Angeles true crime program at the library focusing on historic crimes of passion. And it's hard to talk about L.A. crimes of passion without spending some time on the lurid, notorious, god-awful trial of Bud Gollum and Beulah Louise Overell, never mind the fact that the pair were acquitted and that the trial took place in Orange, not L.A., County.

It is the quintessential big nasty of love gone bad.

To sum up, on March 15, 1947, a yacht belonging to Beulah's parents exploded in the Newport Beach Harbor while the teenager and her boyfriend, Bud, sat ashore eating hamburgers. An investigation revealed that the adults were beaten to death before the explosion, and dynamite was rigged aboard the yacht. Bud and Beulah were charged with the murders (a brief, but informative summary is available here).


While the pair awaited trial in their respective prisons, they exchanged a series of sometimes steamy, mostly hysterical, melodramatic letters, which were subsequently snatched up by prosecutors and leaked to the now-defunct Los Angeles Examiner. Other L.A. papers quoted the juicy bits (e.g. "If necessary, I'll kidnap you and carry you off somewhere so that no one will ever be able to find us and there I'll make passionate and violent love to you," and "Oh my darling, oh my Pops, Popsie, darling, my beautiful, handsome, intelligent Pops. I adore you, always, eternally. Your slave, Louise"), but the Examiner actually printed images of the letters.

Well, I had to see that. So, I rolled up my sleeves, dug out the microfilm, and went to town.

I particularly admire Bud's sketch of a proposed jailbreak route, as well as his turn of phrase: "Please draw the route to your cell from the elevator. I love you, my dear. I adore you."

Unsurprisingly, the couple's love affair did not survive the trial.

In most cases involving grisly death, I refrain from making light. However, the sensational trial, and even more sensationalized news coverage it received make it hard to take seriously. Additionally, without reasonable guardians to keep a lid on her, the behavior of the teenage Beulah Louise was frequently shocking. She somehow seemed to interpret all the attention as "good" attention, and flirted shamelessly with the press and signed autographs. Other times, she had odd emotional responses, like this picture, taken while she views the site where her parents died.

A guilty party, or merely a 1947-era Britney?

I've added other selected portions of the letters on Flickr for interested parties. Honestly, if the circumstances surrounding them weren't so grim and awful, they'd fit right in at Mortified or PostSecret.

Girl Friday Takes the Case: Death Was the Other Woman by Linda L. Richards

Death Was the Other Woman by Linda L. Richards

Katherine Pangborn can host a dinner party, play the piano, ride a horse, and coordinate a wardrobe for any occasion. But after the stock market crash of 1929, and her father's subsequent suicide, she's reduced to living as a boarder in her childhood home on Bunker Hill. Desperate for money, she lands a job working as a secretary for Dexter Theroux, a boozy Los Angeles PI, and spends most of her workday trying to make his operation look semi-respectable. No longer Miss Katherine, she's Kitty now, and Kitty takes the Red Car.

When the book begins, the voluptuous red-haired Rita Heppelwaite strolls in, and pays Dex to tail her married boyfriend, the newly moneyed Harrison Dempsey. Dex and Kitty find a body in Dempsey's tub, and assume the worst. But when the body disappears, and Dempsey's widow tells them that their supposed corpse was in San Francisco at his estimated time of death, the plot thickens considerably.

The lit, though likeable, Dex is no match for this case, and Kitty shakes loose the vestiges of her finishing school upbringing to reveal a woman capable of wily and resourceful detecting.

In a recent interview, Richards said:

“I spent a chunk of time a few years ago reading a lot of the classics of noir fiction. Hammett’s work from the 1930s. Chandler’s early stuff. Even some Damon Runyon and some Ross Macdonald. And I lifted my head from it realizing that the lifestyle described was completely impossible. The way those guys drank and carried on – especially Hammett’s detectives, and Chandler’s – it was simply not possible for them to have solved any of those cases on their own."

And it's true. Boozing aside, Philip Marlowe spends a good hunk of each Chandler novel getting knocked out. There had to be some plucky young assistant out there digging up the hot leads while our hero sat in the office nursing an Alka-Seltzer with a steak on his eye.

When she's not trailing shady broads through underground casinos, Kitty is also a captivating and insightful narrator. Though saddened by what the Depression has cost her, she is also aware that it's provided her with a unique opportunity to forge a life outside the constraints of the upper classes. Her finishing school classmates may be jaunting off to Europe, but their lives aren't half so exciting as Kitty's.

Despite its fair share of gangsters, gun shots, and jaded dames, Death Was the Other Woman doesn't have a gritty neo-noir feel. It's a caper story, more Nick and Nora than Sam Spade. But what it sacrifices in dark gloom, it makes up for in good fun.

If you liked...: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett or Die a Little by Megan Abbott, this book is for you.

Bits and Pieces

The always incredible "David House" in Hancock Park is aglow in all its holiday splendor.

The 1947project offers a selection of gift ideas for the criminally minded.

In a rant against the wussy, oversexualized Disney Princesses, Barbara Ehrenreich stops just short of calling the Disney Corporation a bunch of pederasts.

And finally, Arthur C. Clarke reflects upon the space age, extraterrestrial life, his 90 orbits of the planet here.

Bits and Pieces

From Judith Freeman's excellent-looking The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, a map of Chandler's 35 homes, 24 of which were in Los Angeles, and one of which I recently visited.
(Via LAist)

And from today's recipe round-up:

Christmas Cookies from Around the World: Food Blogga's diabolically clever scheme to acquire cookie recipes. I feel strangely compelled to make Finnish Christmas Tarts.
Sweet Potato Scones
Shrimp and Grits (and they're cheese grits, too!)

Los Angeles Field Trip

This afternoon, I went to Hollywood in search of literary history and snacks, and found both.

First, I drove up to 1817 Ivar St., a little Tudor-style apartment building best known for being the hole where Nathanael West shacked up to write The Day of the Locust. Back then, it was called the Parva-Sed-Apta (translates to "Small but Sufficient"), and was inhabited by failed actors, prostitutes, eccentrics, and vaguely criminal types.

Apparently, it's been cleaned up some since 1935, because it looked rather lovely from the street.

West isn't listed in the Los Angeles city directories, but I found the address in Lionel Rolfe's Literary L.A., a highly entertaining read. On West, Rolfe includes the delightful little nugget that West frequently loaned his car to the prostitutes who lived in his building because it tickled him to hear their stories when they brought back the keys.

Unfortunately, I arrived at Parva-Sed-Apta to find that Potts had drained the batteries on the camera and not recharged them (lame!), so I left without photos. However, it turns out that Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) lived in the neighborhood a couple decades prior, so I'll be headed back for photos later.

After that, I drove a few blocks to the Monastery of the Angels at 1977 Carmen Ave. The cloistered nuns here operate a gift shop that sells all kinds of stuff -- everything from hand-knit baby blankets to Christmas ornaments -- but they're particularly known for their pumpkin bread and their Christmas candy.

I wanted to stock up for Thanksgiving, so I turned into the monastery parking lot, making sure to pull my skirt down to knee length and turn off the Afghan Whigs cd playing in the car (I don't know that they've come out and said it, but I'm pretty sure that Greg Dulli is considered an enemy of the Catholic Church). Then, I went up to the gift shop and rang the doorbell to be let in.

After selecting my purchases (2 loaves of pumpkin bread and a box of caramel almond chocolates), the woman who helped me said, "I'll get the Sister to ring up your items."

Now, one of my best friends lived in a convent for a year after college (long story), so I know that nuns these days don't usually wear their habits and come from all sorts of backgrounds and are generally awesome. Still, none of this had prepared me for the Sister.

She was not much older than me, had purple hair, and I totally wanted to swap outfits with her. Which maybe I could have -- she LOVED my skirt.

So, an afternoon of Hollywood food, culture, and shopping, Mary-style. Highly recommended if you're in the neighborhood.

Historic Homes of L.A. Writers: Ray Bradbury

I've called previous posts of this nature "Homes of Historic L.A. Writers," but since Mr. Bradbury is still writing, and still living in Los Angeles, I had to switch it up a bit.

In 1938, Leonard, Esther, and 18-year-old Ray Bradbury lived in this lovely home at 1619 S. St. Andrews Place.

Young Ray was a bit of a homebody, and was still living with his parents in 1942 when they moved to a house at 3054 W. 12th St., just a few blocks away.

Homes of Historic L.A. Writers: Another Black Mask Boy

He went by the name of Paul Cain for his hardboiled crime fiction, and Peter Ruric for his Hollywood gigs, but he was born George C. Sims, and that's how he's listed in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory. Today's search for the homes of historic Los Angeles writers led me to a sunny courtyard apartment just north of Sunset where I snapped some shots of 1522 N. Serrano Ave.

Cain/Sims/Ruric lived here three years before he penned the short stories for Black Mask magazine that would become his groundbreaking hardboiled novel Fast One. However, Sims spent the 1920s working as a set decorator and production assistant, and running around with an "artistic avant-garde" set that included a struggling actress named Myrna Williams.

Sims suggested that she change her last name to Loy.

Around the same time his career with the pulps was taking off, he also started to get some writing work with the local studios. During the early 1930s, he wrote The Black Cat, which paired stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

Fast One was published as a book in 1933, and featured one of the first hardboiled anti-heroes, gambler and gangster Gerard Kells. The New York Times said of it, "Publishers' blurbs are prone to overestimate the virtues of their respective products, but with the accompanying statement that 'Fast One' is 'the toughest, swiftest, hardest novel of them all,' we almost concur. It is in truth a ceaseless welter of bloodshed and frenzy, a sustained bedlam of killing and fiendishness, told in terse staccato style . . . there is no minute's let-up in the saturnalia of 'black-and-blue passion, bloodlust, death.'"

Very little is known about Sims, although it is generally acknowledged that he drank a bit. After several jaunts to New York and Europe, Sims died in Los Angeles in 1966.

Down a Not-So-Mean Street

In 1929, Raymond Chandler was Vice-President of the South Basin Oil Company, part of the Dabney Oil Syndicate (how's that for a band name), and living with his wife, Pearl at 1024 S. Highland. You can also check out their listing in the city directory.

The house is in a lovely little neighborhood called Longwood Highlands, just south of Olympic. While the neighborhood was developed in the 1920s, I'm not 100% sure this house is the actual building where the Chandler's lived. The L.A. County Assessor's Office has a listing for 1026 S. Highland, the other half of the duplex, which dates to 1947, but no listing for 1024. While I think it's likely that the house was simply hacked in two in 1947, it's possible that an entirely different building was there in 1929.

Larry, any ideas?