by Donis Casey
There really was a movie called Stella Maris made in 1920, starring Mary Pickford and Conrad Tarle, and The Three Musketeers in 1921 with Douglas Fairbanks. The Three Musketeers was a blockbuster in its day, but there was no scene of a young woman swinging on a curtain from the balcony. Perhaps it was cut. None of Bianca’s movies were ever made—Palace of Intrigue, Handsome Stranger, or Zanzibar Gold. They should have been, though.
Bay Cities Italian Deli has stood on the corner of Broadway and Lincoln in Santa Monica since 1925.
A restaurant called Philippe was established in 1908 in Los Angeles. I needed a fancy restaurant in Hollywood, so I moved Philippe to Santa Monica and classed up the joint. As of 2019, the Original Philippe still exists, now located at 1001 N. Alameda in Los Angeles.
By 1926, an effective type of listening device called a “Detective Dictograph” was readily available. It was an intercom-like gadget with a sensitive microphone that could be hidden anywhere in a room, such as inside a clock or a lamp. It was intended for surveillance work, and during the 1910s and 1920s, law enforcement and detective agencies often used it to gather evidence in quite a number of criminal cases.
About the Author
Donis Casey is the author of ten Alafair Tucker Mysteries: The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, Hornswoggled, The Drop Edge of Yonder, The Sky Took Him, Crying Blood, The Wrong Hill to Die On, Hell With the Lid Blown Off, All Men Fear Me, The Return of the Raven Mocker, and Forty Dead Men. This award-winning series, featuring the sleuthing mother of ten children, is set in Oklahoma during the booming 1910s. Donis has twice won the Arizona Book Award for her series, and been a finalist for the Willa Award and a nine-time finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Her first novel, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, was named an Oklahoma Centennial Book in 2008. Donis is a former teacher, academic librarian, and entrepreneur. She lives in Tempe, Arizona.