by James Roman
Mickey Cohen and his bulletproof car
What business? Cohen learned an effective swindle from Bugsy Siegel: Using oblique threats of blackmail or violence, he simply told local merchants that he wanted “a loan” that he never intended to repay. His team (known as the “Seven Dwarfs” to law enforcement) collected that cash, plus the winnings from an estimated network of 500 bookmakers in the area; they delivered supplies to local drug dealers, and escorted beautiful women for big-money sex and blackmail schemes.
Next, Cohen entered the publishing industry to establish a network of contacts with the press and the movie studios. Hollywood Nite Life was a scandal sheet (with the name of Frank Sinatra’s manager appearing atop its masthead) that was delivered to every studio boss and producer. Its intimate disclosures sent shock waves through Hollywood. Then, Cohen’s well-tailored team (now poised as “salesmen”) would follow up to extort cash from the celebrities who might appear in the next issue, threatening to turn their indiscretions into career-crashing exposés. Judy Garland allegedly paid off Cohen four times to keep her troubles out of the press. Even Sinatra paid to hide his extramarital affair with Ava Gardner. When movie star Robert Mitchum was arrested at “a marijuana party” and sent to jail in 1948, the scandal was published around the world. Not noticed: the other guy at that party, Sir Charles Hubbard, a wealthy Englishman who paid Cohen $85,000 (that’s about $800,000 today) in hush money. The Englishman’s arrest went completely unnoticed thanks to Cohen’s muscle with the rest of Hollywood’s publishers.
From left: Judy Garland and Humphrey Bogart at Ciro’s, 1955; Robert Mitchum in jail in 1949; Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner
This couldn’t go on forever. Cohen was squeezed from every direction. The Italian Mafia tried to seize control of the wire racket; law enforcement bugged his house on Moreno Drive; a New York Mafioso bombed the house with 35 sticks of dynamite, and the IRS finally closed in with warrants for tax evasion. Cohen went to Alcatraz, then Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Released in 1972, he died of stomach cancer in 1976 and was buried in LA’s Hillside Memorial Cemetery (as Meyer H. Cohen, in a wall crypt beside Moe Howard from The Three Stooges).
And those fancy nightclubs on the Sunset Strip? They were no competition for America’s new pastime: television. The Strip fell into decline for years, only to be reconfigured in the 1960s for rock bands like The Doors at the Whiskey a Go-Go and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club at 8560 Sunset Boulevard. As the Strip turned into LA’s site for love-ins and anti-war protests, traces of Mickey Cohen’s gang faded fast.
There was another group of outlaws that needed to remain under the radar in West Hollywood: gay men and lesbians. Unincorporated West Hollywood provided a relatively safe haven in the decades when having a gay orientation was a crime. With little surveillance on the residential side streets, gays and lesbians could cohabit and commingle without fear of entrapment, blackmail and the brutality that often came from policemen and detectives.
In 1950, neighborhood activist Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society, the first-known gay rights group in the U.S. The underground movement gained tremendous support when member Dale Jennings was arrested for “lewd and dissolute behavior” in February 1952. Jennings took the courageous action of acknowledging his homosexuality in court, then pleaded innocent to the charges against him. His precedent forced authorities to draw a distinction between being guilty of illegal activities or simply being a homosexual. When the district attorney’s office dropped all charges, the event drew great (though quiet) support, and national membership in the Mattachine Society grew by several thousand in the succeeding weeks.
At about the same time, just a few short blocks from the Sunset Strip, cars and buses were replacing the antiquated Red Cars on Santa Monica Boulevard. When the giant depot in the heart of West Hollywood was finally closed, and the tracks were paved over that stretch of famous Route 66, Santa Monica Boulevard assumed a new prominence. Although the Sunset Strip was a destination for many, Santa Monica Boulevard became the new main street for residents in the expanding “WeHo” neighborhood. An even bigger change awaited.
Members of the Mattachine Society: Harry Hay (upper left), then (left to right) Konrad Stevens, Dale Jennings, Rudi Gernreich, Stan Witt, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland (in glasses), Paul Bernard
In the 1970s, as gays and lesbians asserted their rights across America, they found more than safety in West Hollywood; they discovered a welcoming community. Still governed by Los Angeles County, the neighborhood was densely populated by renters. When LA County announced plans to end its rent control provisions, many locals feared that rapid rent increases would price them out of the community they helped to build. Amazingly, gay activists who were once viewed as outlaws became the leaders who finally brought legitimacy to the neighborhood. They successfully incorporated the City of West Hollywood in 1984, then promptly enacted one of the strongest rent control laws in the nation. More importantly, they made headlines around the world by proclaiming West Hollywood to be “America’s first gay city.”
In an era when there were nearly no openly gay elected officials anywhere on earth, the West Hollywood City Council was the first in the nation with a gay majority. Valerie Terrigno, the city’s first mayor, was a lesbian. Not surprisingly, one of the City Council’s first acts was an ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals. With scores of gay men battling the AIDS epidemic, the young city government launched one of the first AIDS education campaigns in the nation.
Since then, Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood has been the site of AIDS vigils, gay rights protests and political celebrations. It hosts the largest annual Halloween celebration in America. Its annual Gay Pride Parade and the vibrant nightlife scene along Santa Monica Boulevard prompt many to refer to today’s West Hollywood as “Boystown.” (The census confirms: Almost 90 percent of gay residents are male.) The rainbow flag, representing the gay community around the world, is flown beside the American flag in traffic islands; it is paved into the crosswalks, and its rainbow colors are embedded in the city’s logo.
The gay elected officials proved to be effective legislators. West Hollywood operates in the black while the City of Los Angeles (like most major cities) struggles to get out of the red. It is home to many power players in entertainment, and some of the most celebrated restaurants in Southern California. WeHo remains a hip address thanks to new construction that augments the classic supply of rent-controlled apartments. And it is one of the few urban environments in LA where people actually walk to shops and businesses.
Just like the gay community, the neighborhood continues to evolve. In addition to the prolific nightclub scene, West Hollywood is also a place for gay residents to get married and raise children. In fact, it’s one of California’s most popular destinations for gay weddings. Still, activism remains the unifying force in West Hollywood. One large and popular club prohibits “every legislator in any state that supports discrimination against LGBT people,” and provides headshots of those legislators to the club’s security guards.
Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood
Although West Hollywood has transitioned greatly from the days of gangsters, bookies and blackmail, its bohemian culture remains intact. In the twenty-first century, there’s no reason to remain under the radar.
IN THE MOVIES:
West Hollywood is one of the most frequently seen neighborhoods in films and television. Some popular titles include The Blue Dahlia (1946), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Chinatown (1974), Annie Hall (1977), Scarface (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), The Doors (1991), LA Confidential (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Hangover (2009) and many more.
CHAPTER 14.
PENTIMENTO
THE CONTROVERSIAL ART OF DAVID SIQUEIROS
1932
With more than 1,500 murals glowing in the Left Coast sunshine, Los Angeles holds the distinction of displaying more public art than any other city. (No city sprawls over so many streets either.) These bursts of co
lor on LA street corners and freeways also mark eras in the city’s history, like the additions for the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics, and the images in Hollywood that celebrate a century of memorable actors.
Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros imagined public walls as sites to encourage debate. Renowned today along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, the Tres Grandes advanced the idea that art in a public forum should provoke and educate. The concept wins them respect now, but their convictions forced them to lead confrontational lives. Siqueiros was apparently the firebrand: President of the Communist Party of Mexico, he was jailed in Mexico, deported from Argentina, and he was even arrested for attempting to assassinate Leon Trotsky. Siqueiros the artist lived like a warrior.
Tres Grandes—David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, 1949
In 1932, he was commissioned to install a mural on a second floor façade near the historic Plaza. He was teaching fresco painting at the Chouinard School (now the California Institute of the Arts) at the time. F. K. Ferenz, the director of the Plaza Art Center, sponsored the project where, true to his communist convictions, Siqueiros could employ twenty workers, his students. Ferenz got to pick the title and, hence, its theme: América Tropical.
The second-story wall extends for 82 feet, straddling Main and Olvera Streets. Since the mural would be seen primarily from street level, Siqueiros drew clever shadows that accommodated the visual range of pedestrians from either parallel street. As he put it, the mural “must conform to the normal transit of a spectator.” His workers applied new sciences to their art, working quickly on wet cement instead of conventional plaster. América Tropical is one of the first murals to be created with electrical equipment: They worked at night, tracing the mural from a projected image, then painted it with car enamel loaded into a spray gun, the first air brush. The work was completed in two weeks, and its unveiling was scheduled for October 9, 1932.
Fortunately, it rained. If a larger crowd had been present, Siqueiros might have been bloodied, for the artwork he unveiled was a brazen, anti-American affront, an embarrassment to Ferenz and a finger in the face of the art elite assembled. Ferenz got his América Tropical, with lush sinewy branches of a tropical forest. But at the top of this forest is an American eagle with its wings spread, hovering over a crucified, spread-eagled peon that is the focal point of the mural. In one corner, stealthy revolutionaries sight their rifles at the eagle, aiming to shoot down imperialism.
Siqueiros was deported five weeks later. The stealthy revolutionaries were covered within weeks and, in 1938, América Tropical was whitewashed into oblivion.
Or was it? When an artist brings a new creation into the world, it can never vanish completely, even if it only survives in memories. For centuries, artists recycled their canvases by painting over earlier artworks that fell out of favor. Eventually, the paint from that lowest level bleeds to the surface, exposing the history underneath, a process called pentimento. In the twenty-first century, you could say that pentimento transfused new life into América Tropical.
It wasn’t a romantic masterwork oozing to the surface. It was merely whitewash that cracked and peeled after decades of sunny neglect, revealing hints of the angry artwork pulsating underneath. Siqueiros was world famous and dead for decades when a new generation of City officials pondered whether to resurrect the only outdoor mural Siqueiros created in the U.S. The Getty Conservation Institute signed on to oversee the restoration and cover part of its costs, but also to give Siqueiros his public dialogue, addressing two questions posed by América Tropical:
If there is a line between art and propaganda, on which side does América Tropical fall? Answer: Instead of propaganda, América Tropical earned its reputation as a symbol of suppression, censored by the same imperialists Siqueiros suggested in his painting.
The mural portion visible from Olvera Street was promptly whitewashed; eventually the entire mural was hidden under white paint.
And, are government officials ever justified in censoring an artist’s work if they don’t like the message? Not on the Left Coast! Championed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the City invested $5 million to make things right with Siqueiros. On October 9, 2012, 80 years to the day after América Tropical was first unveiled, a new art elite assembled for the unveiling of its restoration, now a symbol for free speech, pentimento no more.
Colorized rendering of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ América Tropical, 1932
América Tropical is on display, for free, six days a week. Enter through the América Tropical Interpretive Center on Olvera Street, in the Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument.
See: www.americatropical.org
THE WINDSHIELD PERSPECTIVE
Siqueiros spawned generations of artists who turned today’s Los Angeles into the mural capital of the world. “Outdoor walls are the new gallery space. We live through our windshields in this city,” explains one contemporary muralist. And he’s right. More than 1,500 works of art, spanning decades, are registered with the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, with more permits issued every year.
The Conservancy also enforces the rules that every artist knows: no guns, no drugs, no nudes. With those basic guidelines, a vast array of styles emerged over the years. Here’s a selective sampling.
Murals (detail) in Los Angeles (clockwise from top left): Dolores del Rio (Hudson Ave. and Hollywood Blvd.), Alfredo de Batuc, 1990; You are the Star (Wilcox Ave. & Hollywood Blvd.), Thomas Suriya, 1983; We Are Not A Minority (3217 W. Olympic Blvd.), Mario Torero, 1978; Venice Reconstituted (25 Windward Ave., Venice Beach), Rip Cronk, 1989
WATTS TOWERS
As Calvin Trillin explained in the New Yorker in 1965, “If a man who has not labeled himself an artist happens to produce a work of art, he is likely to cause a lot of confusion and inconvenience.” Simon Rodia was that artisan. His sculpture, known today as the Watts Towers of Simon Rodia, is an American Naïve masterpiece, reminding visitors that art can be created anywhere, and by anyone.
Simon Rodia
On a small triangular lot that he purchased in Watts, a neighborhood in East Los Angeles, the barely solvent Italian immigrant fulfilled his passion on weeknights and weekends, building a tribute to his adopted country that he lovingly named Nuestro Pueblo, or “our town.”
For 34 years, from 1921 to 1954, Rodia constructed a cluster of 17 lacy columns made of scrap rebar that he twisted into gigantic spirals. He encrusted the framework with mortar and embedded it with a pop-culture mosaic of found objects: more than 70,000 seashells, pebbles and discarded artifacts like chunks of broken pottery, broken bottles and beads. Working alone without scaffolds, bolts, rivets or power tools, Rodia relied on his own ingenuity and the simple hand tools of his trade—plus a window-washer’s belt and buckle for safety when he scaled the Towers’ heights. With no predetermined design, he slowly and painstakingly created the whimsical, multi-colored towers that sparkle in the California sun, even including a gazebo and three birdbaths. The tallest tower stands 99-and-a-half feet high.
The neighbors absolutely didn’t get it. They frequently vandalized Rodia’s work and made him feel unwelcome. Some locals even rumored that the Towers were antennae communicating with enemy forces during World War II. Despite the disrespect, Rodia persevered.
The city’s administration didn’t get it, either. The Department of Building and Safety eventually ordered the Towers to be demolished. At age 75, weary of defending his efforts, Rodia deeded the property to a neighbor. He turned away from his 34-year obsession and never returned. Hounded out of the neighborhood in 1954, he relocated nearly 400 miles away in Martinez, California, north of Berkeley, where he died, still penniless, in 1965. As he stated before he departed, “I had it in mind to do something big, and I did it.”
To save the structure, a group of concerned citizens collected signatures and money to battle the Buildings Department. They convinced the city to perform a stress test before dismissing the work as unsafe. With live TV news cameras
rolling, Rodia’s construction resisted the strain of steel cables pulled by a tractor. That was the turning point in the Towers’ survival, finally winning overdue recognition. The property was eventually deeded to the State of California, which created the Watts Towers of Simon Rodia State Historic Park.
Today the Towers are a National Historic Landmark, a California Historic Park and a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. Now supported by a half-million dollar grant, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art conserves and promotes the Watts Towers.
No longer a work of “confusion and inconvenience,” Rodia’s single-handed labors capture the imaginations of students and visitors all year long. It’s also the site of the annual Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival and the Watts Towers Day of the Drum Festival. The Towers can be viewed from behind its protective fence at any hour, and tours are offered through the adjacent arts center on sunny days.
The Watts Towers of Simon Rodia are located at 1765 East 107th Street.
IN THE MOVIES:
The Towers can be seen in Colors (1988), Ricochet (1991), Hit Man (1972), and on television in Six Feet Under (third season, 2004) and animated on The Simpsons (season 22, episode 14).