How to announce your candidacy for public office
Step one, if you’re Ivy Baker Priest, the former U.S. treasurer: Wear a money hat made out of 100 silver certificates, seen above in 1965.
Priest eventually won her bid for California State Treasurer and served two terms as State Treasurer until her death in 1975.
The brave new world of…2013
You may not have a robot dog, techno-comforts or kids listening to “futura-rock.” But some of the predictions in this recently-rediscovered issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine largely hold true.
Predictions about the increased prevalence of telecommunication, smarter cars (though ours don’t look as funky as the ones seen above) and globalization all seem to be rather spot-on, considering they were made in 1988!
That said, there’s no way your morning starts out like this:
With a barely perceptible click, the Morrow house turns itself on, as it has every morning since the family had it retrofitted with the Smart House system of wiring five years ago…in the study, the family’s personalized home newspaper, featuring articles on the subjects that interest them…is being printed by laser-jet printer off the home computer – all while the family sleeps.
Read through the full article here.
Photos: Los Angeles Times
July 20, 1949: Mickey Cohen, right, and Harry Cooper, a body guard provided by the California attorney general, leave the Continentale Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard. An hour later, at 3:55 a.m., the two and two others in their group were shot outside Sherry’s Restaurant, on Sunset Boulevard.
The photo, by Clay Willcockson, led the next day’s paper.
From our Framework photo blog:
This was the second of three attempts on Cohen’s life. In the first, on Aug. 18, 1948, gunmen armed with shotguns killed Harry (Hooky) Rothman, a Cohen associate, at Cohen’s haberdashery on Sunset. Cohen was unhurt.
After avoiding jail for years, Cohen was convicted of tax evasion in 1951 and again in 1961. Cohen died at the age of 62 on July 26, 1976.
In 1950 – covered in a previous From the Archive post – Mickey Cohen’s home was bombed. Again, Cohen survived. …
After the 1949 shooting, The Times went all out in its coverage. Two pages were devoted to photos – many included in the above photo gallery.
On the lower right corner of the front page, The Times published an account of Cohen’s fears:
Wounded Gang Leader Admits He Is Scared
Mickey Cohen, wounded mob leader, gazed at the ceiling of his heavily guarded room in Queen of Angels Hospital last night and frankly admitted he is scared.
“I’m scared not only for myself, but for everyone around me — my wife, my friends, and even the law,” he declared. “I don’t know what to expect next. I wish I did.”
Asked what he will do when he is able to leave the hospital, Cohen said he has no plans.
“I don’t know what people want from me. Every time I’ve been shaken down lately I’ve had the feeling I was a ‘sitting duck.’
“It would have been so easy for someone in a car to drive by and move us all down.
“I hope I don’t come any closer to death than I did this morning.”
Read more about L.A.’s underworld history in former Times writer Paul Lieberman’s 2008 series: L.A. Noir: Tales from the Gangster Squad. A movie based on the series, “Gangster Squad,” starring Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen, opens next Friday.
On Dec. 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, L.A. had its first blackout of World War II. This photo shows Times editors working by desk lamp — the only light they were allowed.
Here’s the front page of the paper that came out the following day. (You can zoom using the scroll bar at the top right of the page.)
Photo: Los Angeles Times
Our front page from Dec. 8, 1941.
In the lead story, the Associated Press reported:
Japan assaulted every main United States and British possession in the Central and Western Pacific and invaded Thailand today (Monday) in a hasty but evidently shrewdly-planned prosecution of a war began Sunday without warning.
Her formal declaration of war against both the United States and Britain came 2 hours and 55 minutes after Japanese planes spread death and terrific destruction in Honolulu and Pearl Harbor at 7:35 a.m. Hawaiian time (10:05 a.m., P.S.T.) Sunday.
Later on Dec. 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt started his famous speech:
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: Yesterday, Dec. 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
Our Framework photography blog has photos from the day.
Today on the 71st anniversary of the bombing, the nation pauses to remember.
“The fact is that jazz is welcomed, not simply accepted, without reservation throughout the world. It is felt to be the most authentic example of American culture.” —Dave Brubeck
This article appeared in The Times on May 31, 1960, about six months after the release of Brubeck’s Time Out album.
More on Brubeck, who died today at age 91 (just one day shy of 92): Our obituary, an appreciation from Times jazz critic Chris Barton, a 2010 interview and photos spanning his long career.
Happy birthday, Walt Disney. Here he is behind the camera when he was just 21. He was born 111 years ago today.
To commemorate the 110th anniversary of Disney’s birth last year, filmmaker Jon Favreau wrote a guest essay called “Walt Disney, the Maverick” for The Times; it’s well worth a read. And while we’re digging through our archives, here’s a neat old photo of Disney with some pirate works-in-progress before the Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened and more vintage Disney photos.
Prohibition ended 79 years ago today (Dec. 5, 1933) with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. This article, published in The Times the following day, noted, “It appeared that the crowds took the death of prohibition as a matter of course and drank in the usual way.”
131 years ago today, the Times published its first edition.
Click through for a larger image of the Dec. 4, 1881, front page and gallery of other notable Times A1s: http://graphics.latimes.com/latimes130/
It’s not only Winston Churchill’s birthday today, but Mark Twain’s as well. (Churchill was born in 1874, Twain in 1835.) This report on an event at which the latter introduced the former appeared in The Times on Dec. 14, 1900. Churchill wouldn’t become Britain’s prime minister for nearly four decades.
Winston Churchill was born 138 years ago today, on Nov. 30, 1874. We thought we were reasonably well-versed in Churchill trivia, but this tidbit about his “painstaking neatness” was new to us. This Reuters article ran in The Times on March 20, 1955.
This article appeared in The Times on Thanksgiving Day, 1911. “One doesn’t cease to wonder where the wonders of our fruit kingdom will cease.”
“The Sound of Music” debuted on Broadway 53 years ago today. This story (click to enlarge) appeared in The Times two days later, November 18, 1959.
Our favorite line (though there are many great ones to choose from!) is the one about reaping “garlands galore from the gala audience” — you don’t read much about “garlands galore” anymore, and that is a shame.
Bragging rights if you can pick out the little mistake in this story.
March 10, 1982: Chris Burden in his “participation piece” artwork titled “The Flying Kayak,” on display at the Rosamund Felsen Gallery.
Burden is the artist behind the famous “Urban Light” installation at LACMA. Read more about “The Flying Kayak” on Framework.
Photo credit: Mary Frampton / Los Angeles Times
From the little-known fact department: In 1935, Mae West was the subject of an extortion plot — someone threatened to throw acid in her face if she didn’t pay $1,000, which she was told to leave at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Bronson Avenue in L.A.
The money was dropped at the spot. A man who picked it up was detained, but he insisted that he’d only happened upon it and had nothing to do with the extortion case; he was later released. Six “suspicious characters” that were taken to the D.A.’s office for questioning were released as well.
All that brings us to the photos above, the back story for which was detailed in a Times story published Oct. 10, 1935:
Before the release of the suspects, Harry Dean, District Attorney’s investigator who, dressed in feminine finery, impersonated Mae West while placing the pocketbook on four attempted contacts with the extortionists, received acclaim from his fellow-workers.
He arrived at his office to find the telephone decorated with bits of ribbon, on the desk top an array of flowers from sweet peas to pansies, and the room sprayed with essence of hyacinth.
And now you know.
Photos: Andrew H. Arnott / Los Angeles Times
