Dear Los Angeles
Page 25
I took poor old Amate in to-night to surrender himself to the police; and the dead wagon has just gone away with what is left with Procopio….
I have seen a good many killings of various sorts and have been mixed up in some of them and have the autographs of several; but I don’t think any has saddened me as much as this. Nobody else could get along very well with this boy, who had a beautiful poetic face and would do anything for me but had constant wheels in his head—one of the most neurotic types I ever saw. And the little old man who had to kill him to keep from being killed, is this old troubadour who has delighted so many hundred of our friends.
I think there is really no way to arrange these things right until all such disputes are put in the hands of the Czar—I of course being Czar.
CHARLES LUMMIS
1934
What I did on arriving at this remarkable burg via Ford trimotor somewhat gone with vomit, was to take one look at Mr. von S[ternberg]…and dive into bed with an attack of rheumatic fever.
I’ve been so thoroughly in bed that I’ve seen nothing of Red raids or the Epic campaign. The odds are 2 to 1 in favor of Upton Sinclair getting the Democratic primaries, but everybody thinks the conservatives will gang up on him and elect Haight in November. However one should point out that three months ago the same everybody was poohpooing the Epic business….
…This is my last emergence into the big money.
JOHN DOS PASSOS, to Edmund Wilson
1935
At the Writers’ Club Robert Cromie of Vancouver delivered a lecture using a huge map of the world. After the lecture Will [Rogers], fascinated by the map, went up and began to point out the spots where he had been. They included about everything this side of the Arctic Circle. Apparently that was the one place he hadn’t seen.
ROB WAGNER
1969
I forgot to mention how, when we left Acres of Books and were on our way home, we noticed one of the two very impressive bridges—much more impressive than Sydney Bridge, I think, and outrageous looking too, like roller coasters—between Long Beach, Terminal Island and San Pedro. I had never seen them before. Neither had the boys. So of course we had to drive over them. All around was this almost comically ghastly junk-landscape, reeking of oil.
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
AUGUST 25
1929
Met Bobby Jones and had a chat with him about Peachtree Street. I know nothing about the game, but he strikes me as being a man that would be mighty discouraging to play against. There was 6,000 watching him play golf. Shows you the advancement that game has made. Why, six years ago there wasn’t fifty pair of misfit knee breeches in this whole State, and ten years ago there wasn’t 6,000 folks in Los Angeles that would lie to you about anything but real estate.
The Zep lands here tomorrow. We was the only town that would go out and get a hitch rack to tie the thing to.
WILL ROGERS
1993
She managed Erik [Menendez]’s money for him and says he had no interest in it. The things he did spend money on (apartment, furniture, Jeep) were in keeping with his parents’ lifestyle.
HAZEL THORNTON
AUGUST 26
2013
Chilling at Melissa’s house after spending all day tending to business. While watching Congress on C-SPAN tonight, I had a revelation. (I don’t normally watch C-SPAN but my remote froze while I was changing channels trying to find Animal Horror Stories and Pets Who Kill.) The revelation is this: When a member of Congress refers to another member as “my distinguished colleague,” what he means is “that dim-witted asshole,” and when he says “with all due respect,” he means “fuck you and the lobbyist you rode in on.” I love America.
JOAN RIVERS
AUGUST 27
2012
Today it is official, I guess, that I am old….
I saw Sandy Koufax pitch from the dugout boxes, saw that rising fastball and the 12 to 6 curve ball that was impossible to hit. I personally remember my team winning five gonfalons and was curbside at every Laker parade since 1980. I sold programs at the Memorial Coliseum as a kid and saw every Ram home game for over thirty years. I went to UCLA when the village was all Mediterranean pink and Coach John Wooden made me think the Bruins would always win every game. I drove an Impala when it was new and tasted a chubby champ handed to me by a car hop at Harvey’s broiler when boys put Butch wax in their pompadours to make them stiff. I was at Disneyland when it opened and remember running on the spongy asphalt down Main Street and once rode the Matterhorn behind Walt Disney. I parked cars in the 60’s and had my hands on all the grand muscle cars when they had that new car smell. Oh man.
…When transistor radios were introduced it seemed this was the greatest technological advance ever, especially when I heard Vin Scully announce a game like the greatest poet who ever lived. Last week, I listened to him on my iPhone….
Above all else, in my adult life I owe the Los Angeles Public Library almost everything. When I started to work as a librarian I was able to compare dirty old Central to being a janitor, a salesman, a ticket broker, a newspaper drudge and a parking lot attendant and I felt like a King. When I started I sat at a reference desk with rotary phones that were connected to a switchboard operator, put periodical requests into Lampson tubes, searched a card catalog and met the most interesting people in my life, including the mother of my daughter. From that desk I have seen the world turn and things happen that I could never have dreamed….
From that humble perch in the heart of Los Angeles I met movie stars, a presidential candidate, famous writers, and hundreds of really incredible librarians who taught me everything I know. By a set of incredible strokes of good fortune I actually wrote a book that is in the Library of Congress. Thank You so much LAPL.
While I might groan when I stand and get up too many times in the night to whiz and can’t see fine print too well or need a pinch runner in softball I am still filled with hope for tomorrow, for a new adventure that might surprise me almost as much as falling in love in the Autumn of my years, which already happened once. So, today I am old but I still don’t need no rocking chair.
GLEN CREASON
AUGUST 28
1929
The Zep, in taking off here in Los Angeles, just missed spoiling a great trip and killing everybody by missing a high tension line surrounding the field. Towns bury their dead but they never bury their electric lines….There is one sure fire recipe for a pilot in a strange town, that don’t know where the field is located. Locate a high tension line, follow it till it crosses another higher tension one. There is almost sure to be a field there. If not, follow it till it comes to an intersection of three or more lines and there will be located the city’s municipal field. It’s as sure as the sure fire method of locating a speakeasy by following the town’s leading citizens.
WILL ROGERS
1937
I have prepared what I call an Outline of Eccentricity….
Hawthorne always washed his hands before reading a letter from his wife.
George Moore owned a pet python.
James Fenimore Cooper could not write unless he was chewing gum.
IRVING WALLACE
AUGUST 29
1907
E. L. Doheny’s $150-a-plate banquet to [meet the] Mexican Ambassador to U.S.; at the Alexandria. I sit next to E.T. Earl—the hated owner of “the Express.” Bad month for me with angina.
CHARLES LUMMIS
1936
American Fascism will get nowhere without a dictator. Somewhere he exists; somewhere in the murky valleys of politics lurks the American Hitler. Soon or late, he will appear. Let us pray that when he comes, he will have the mark of the beast set on his brow, so we shall know him.
PHILIP DUNNE
1969
I had gone into this d
ress shop and inside it was freaky everywhere. Mirrors and silver shining areas and sales people with long hair and the clothes were all “groovy,” fancy with gimmicks in imitation of our spontaneous fantasy of dress. The place was loud with earblast rock and I stood there feeling paranoid watching the rich kids from Brentwood and Beverly Hills buy “our” clothes for $40 a dress. I got out of there fast.
LIZA WILLIAMS
1970
Ruben Salazar, the prominent “Mexican-American” columnist for the Los Angeles Times and news director for bilingual KMEX-TV, walked into the place and sat down on a stool near the doorway to order a beer he would never drink. Because just about the time the barmaid was sliding his beer across the bar a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy named Tom Wilson fired a tear gas bomb through the front door and blew half of Ruben Salazar’s head off. All the other customers escaped out the back exit to the alley, but Salazar never emerged.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
AUGUST 30
1910
From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in a carriage going up Mt. Wilson. Several dangerous turns in the road, at one of which we all had to get out. Road so narrow that there is no chance for teams to pass. Outer wheels within a foot of the edge (and death) for a large part of the way.
EDWARD CHARLES PICKERING
1942
Lubitsch is a very good mind, and the first man who seems to feel as I do about Hollywood—commenting that he felt it disgraceful that people put on glaring expensive clothes to attend special openings and dinner dances for sweet charity, while gaping crowds stand round for hours to see them pass into a place, and while the poor gink who married Norma Shearer has to stand there and hear the public speaker call: “Miss Shearer’s car, please—Miss Shearer’s car!”
No one else thinks this is bad, and to mention it is to be a vicious attacker of a noble industry that is giving its all—or at least ten per cent of its all—for the patriotic effort. Patriotic efforts are phooey, and designed for people who have no patriotism. For if a man has patriotism he is giving everything he has and can’t go anywhere to give another ten per cent.
But it was nice. Lubitsch is to do the Germany (Enemy Series) film for us, but his outlined opening starting with Wagner and the Schiller theory just is going to get wiped out when the organization gets going on it. It’ll never go, boys.
ERIC KNIGHT, to his wife
AUGUST 31
1937
Sat around again and filmed the ending of Juliet, where I had to execute sixteen coquettes six times from different angles—that makes ninety-six fouettés. Afterward my knees felt like macaroni.
VERA ZORINA
1959
The day before yesterday we moved here—to 145 Adelaide Drive. We are both still in the first delight of being here. Principally, it’s the view—being able to see the sky and the hills and the ocean. We can see the hills from our bed. Don is so delighted, it warms my heart. But this is a real house, a long in-and-out place of many rooms and half-rooms, passageways and alcoves. And, in spite of the power pole and power lines and TV aerials, there really is a hillside privacy and snugness—something that suggests a run-down villa above Positano.
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
1967
EIGHT YEARS LATER
I am out on the deck. It isn’t too hot yet and it may not be so hot today because there are a lot of high clouds. There are bees in the grape ivy and too many helicopters in the sky; they make more noise than the jets, with their motorbike clatter.
I wish I could describe how I feel….I have such a sense of increasing pressure, the expanding population pushing us into the sea. Then why stay here? Not all places are like Southern California; indeed, if you object to population-pressure you could hardly choose a worse one. I don’t know why we should stay, except that we both love this house. We’ll probably remain in it until circumstances pitch us out. (On T.V. last night there was a documentary about earthquakes, in which it is stated that southern California must expect a major quake any time!)
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
SEPTEMBER 1
1939
At the studio almost completely kept from working by Billy’s feeling that Poland has been betrayed by England—which announced itself as waiting for a reply to an ultimatum….As we came home, we learned that the reply to the ultimatum was due at 2 a.m. our time—evidently no reply from Germany has been received.
CHARLES BRACKETT
1948
Wasted the evening with Nat. He gave me a driving lesson and then I accompanied him and pretended to enjoy a Technicolor blood-and-thunder movie.
SUSAN SONTAG
1956
Girls are what boys want, young men get, and old men think about. I have long intended to counsel with you on this matter as a father should, and will delay it no longer….
Let us assume you are at a dancing party, and a girl strikes your fancy…at some moment during the dance when the music is soft and languorous, draw your lips close to her left ear and whisper—distinctly but not so loudly that others can overhear—a sequence of lewd and obscene words. Do not weave them into a sentence, and if inadvertently you do, in no circumstances allow the sentence to conclude with a question mark. Far better the short, simple, sturdy words in artful arrangement, and nothing more….
If she turns away from you and runs across the floor to her mother’s arms, chattering away and pointing at you, put her down for a prude, and turn your eyes otherwise….The number who turn away from you may be considerable, but in them you have lost nothing. If, however, among all that company of girls, just one continues to dance with you—oh my boy, my boy!
Your mother and I send our blessings. Cherish us in your heart and honor us by your conduct.
DALTON TRUMBO, to his son
SEPTEMBER 2
1856
We have the best physician in Los Angeles, Dr. John S. Griffin, yet he relies entirely on cod liver oil. A sort of influenza is prevailing in the city, so common on this coast and so severe often at Los Angeles….
Quail-shooting is a favorite sport here, the ground simply alive with them in some parts of the county. Wiley killed 7 deer yesterday.
JUDGE BENJAMIN HAYES
1942
Sometimes here I begin to doubt myself. [Director Anatole] Litvak says, as I spoke of films: “Did it ever occur to you that you’re all wrong and we in Hollywood are all right?” And, you know, that almost gets you. For a fatal moment I believed him. And then, of course, I believed what only any man can believe—his own reason. I cannot believe that this town, its manifestations, its puny films, can be right.
ERIC KNIGHT, to his wife
SEPTEMBER 3
1932
Today, on any Atlantic or Pacific Beach…our problem confronts us—a comely, up-to-the-minute young miss, wearing one of these new streamline, backless, almost frontless, part-time strapless, 1932 bathing suits. It stands to reason that now and then the pinkish young party of the first part is a-going to get a coupla splashes too far out, and somebody’s got to bring her in….
At my swimming pool in Beverly, where once in a while I have to fish a young woman out, I’m having a net made, just like the ones the boys use for seining minnows—only bigger. I’m fitting it out with a bamboo pole and am just going to snag ’em out.
TOM MIX
1941
The old adolescent days (or nights) of lying alone looking at moonlight on the eucalyptus leaves are gone. Now when I turn off the switch, I twitch. Now I am afraid of quiet and the dark, and my mind, riddled like an old oak chest with four thousand loathsome wormholes, creaks and crunches at itself and makes insufferable such earlier pleasures.
M.F.K. FISHER
1962
Visit with Henry Miller in Los Angeles…He looked more than ever like a Buddhist monk, with the same jollines
s. He had a picture of a Buddha on his wall as if this were his model. He was the same Henry with the scrutinizing eyes and mellow voice.
He talked about his children. He loved them more than anyone (as Eve wrote me). He had not slept the night before because Val, his sixteen-year-old daughter, still had not come home at four a.m….His son had broken his ankle surf-boarding. They both came in. They looked like a million other teen-agers. I could not have said: these are Henry’s children.
“Success, oh Anaïs, success does not mean anything. The only thing which means anything are the few special letters one gets a year, a personal response.”
He was unchanged, modest, unaffected, naïve, no ego showing. The Henry who wants to be thought a saint…