So I’ve seen little of Los Angeles, which the unkind satirist claims to be so boastful a township that they had to christen the huge U.S. dirigible after it, because that was the only name they could give to the biggest gasbag in the world.
GILBERT FRANKAU
1938
Worked at Billy’s all morning completing the script by about 1:00. Went to Universal and read the last forty pages….Afterwards Hugh made a rather uncomfortable demand that Joe [Pasternak, the producer] say what the credits were to be. Joe said if our script were used as was, “Original Story by F. Hugh Herbert—Screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder.”…Hugh sulked.
CHARLES BRACKETT
JUNE 5
1912
It seems to me that we had more pleasure in those days than we do now. We were not driven from morning till night. We felt more at liberty to take a day off, to go into the woods picnicking, trout-fishing or hunting. Our pleasures were simpler than they are today. There was less artificiality, less style. In 1875, everybody in Los Angeles knew everybody else. There were no such class distinctions as we have today. The people here had grown up together. Some of them had gotten rich and others had remained poor, but the rich and the poor were still friends.
JACKSON ALPHEUS GRAVES
1939
The dinner Saturday night had Walter Conrad Arensberg (his poems are in the first edition of the Monroe anthology) among the guests. A curious man. Completely German in appearance. Al tells me he is busily engaged in proving Bacon wrote Shakespeare and employs five secretaries for the purpose. Has a three-story house full of modern paintings—a very large Rousseau, the original “Nude Descending the Stairs,” Brancusi sculpture. Has a mild gleam in his blue eyes somewhat like a madman and sometimes spoke in a little voice, sentences that were uttered like maxims and which I did not understand, although I tried to appear intelligent.
…And Arensberg told the excellent story of the little girl who saw “sky writing” and rushed into her mother with the cry that “God is doing his home-work!”
CHARLES REZNIKOFF
JUNE 6
1925
I’m stuck in the office waiting for a phone call from Sid Grauman (owner of all the big theaters in Los Angeles, also the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood) and have nothing to do.
…Last night the motion picture industry gave an electrical pageant which was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Magnificent floats all lighted in stunning effects and all the stars in Hollywood were there….My boss was in the first car with Mr. and Mrs. Harold Lloyd and Norma Talmadge. By the way I had to pull strings to get him there, but I succeeded so he was quite pleased with me.
…There were more than 100,000 people outside of the Coliseum who couldn’t get in, and cars were parked for blocks and blocks around the place. I don’t think I have ever seen so many cars in my life before.
…One day of the week it rained all day and the Shriners sure did razz the Californians. Most of the natives couldn’t understand why it should rain at this time of year, as it is very unusual….Others were standing on the policemen’s boxes in the middle of the street in their bathing suits with fishing rods.
VALERIA BELLETTI
1948
Up here in the breath-taking mountain spring, I can but feel a twinge of sympathy for all you money-grubbing bastards in Hollywood as you struggle against falling box office and recalcitrant studio treasuries. It’s much simpler to borrow money and live graciously.
DALTON TRUMBO, to his attorney
JUNE 7
1927
School. Made fire by friction.
GLENN T. SEABORG, co-discoverer of plutonium
1940
Here the term fifth-column activities is already so overworked as to be nauseating, and the air is full of spy scares and rumors of armed invasions. This noon we hear over the radio that the veterans of the last war are trying to raise a volunteer army of 100,000 men in Southern California to combat foreigners. It is sickening.
Two new air schools are to be started in the valley, it seems, to turn out a hundred pilots every ninety days. That seems a terribly short course to me, but I suppose it’s not much harder to handle a plane than an automobile, and I’m pretty sure I could learn the mechanics of a car in less than ninety days.
The siding is almost up, and the house looks fine and solid, although much yellower than we’d thought. It will darken with time. I hope we’re here to see it when it’s chocolate black.
M.F.K. FISHER
1943
At 12th and Central I came upon a scene that will long live in my memory. Police were swinging clubs and servicemen were fighting with civilians. Wholesale arrests were being made by the officers.
Four boys came out of a pool hall. They were wearing the zoot-suits that have become the symbol of a fighting flag. Police ordered them into arrest cars. One refused. He asked: “Why am I being arrested?” The police officer answered with three swift blows of the night-stick across the boy’s head and he went down. As he sprawled, he was kicked in the face. Police had difficulty loading his body into the vehicle because he was one-legged and wore a wooden limb. Maybe the officer didn’t know he was attacking a cripple.
At the next corner, a Mexican mother cried out, “Don’t take my boy, he did nothing. He’s only fifteen years old. Don’t take him.” She was struck across the jaw with a night-stick and almost dropped the two and a half year old baby that was clinging in her arms….
Rushing back to the east side to make sure that things were quiet here, I came upon a band of servicemen making a systematic tour of East First Street. They had just come out of a cocktail bar where four men were nursing bruises. Three autos loaded with Los Angeles policemen were on the scene but the soldiers were not molested. Farther down the street the men stopped a streetcar, forcing [the] motorman to open the door and proceeded to inspect the clothing of the male passengers. “We’re looking for zoot-suits to burn,” they shouted. Again the police did not interfere….Half a block away…I pleaded with the men of the local police substation to put a stop to these activities. “It is a matter for the military police,” they said.
AL WAXMAN
JUNE 8
1847
Got the blues very bad indeed in consequence of Isidora having jilted me She appears to have forgotten me entirely during my short absence.
LIEUTENANT JOHN MCHENRY HOLLINGSWORTH
1927
Last evening I had printed, and ready to show, all shell negatives: two “interested” girls….
Of course, they were “interested,”—“thrilled”—but not to the point of spending money, yet they were wealthy girls. Do they think I show my work to be flattered?—That I am hungry for praise? Well I’m hungry for money and discouraged….
I have to show my prints so often that I detest every one of them. I suppose this is all right if I am forced by my reactions to create new.
EDWARD WESTON
1937
Chan and Edward to Griffith Park…and they almost get hoosgowed because you cant photo in the park without a permit.
CHARIS WILSON
1954
One moment of tenderness and a year of nerves and intelligence, one moment of actual fleshly tenderness….
As of now I am 28, for the first time older than I dreamed of being. The beard a joke, my character with its childish core a tiring taste….I am saddled with myself.
ALLEN GINSBERG
JUNE 9
1921
At meal Helen taken with a violent attack of gastritis. We try milk of magnesia….Then I think of the electric vibrator and that relieves her. Very much relieved myself. Such fierce onslaughts make me very sad. To bed and I read for awhile in Old College Towns.
THEODORE DREISER
1968
The Am
bassador, a venerable hotel miles away on Wilshire Boulevard, was the Kennedy headquarters and that was the place to be….
It was about eighteen minutes after midnight, a few of us strolled over to the swinging doors that gave on to the pantry. They had no glass peepholes but we’d soon hear the pleasant bustle of him coming through as the waiters and the coloured chef in his high hat and a bus boy or two waited to see him.
There was suddenly a banging repetition of a sound that, I don’t know how to describe, not at all like shots, like somebody dropping a rack of trays. Half a dozen of us were startled enough to charge through the door, and it had just happened. It was a narrow lane he had to come through, for there were two long steam tables and somebody had stacked up against them those trellis fences with artificial leaves stuck on them, that they used to fence up the dance band off from the floor.
The only light was the blue light of three fluorescent tubes, slotted in the ceiling. But it was a howling jungle of cries and obscenities and flying limbs and two enormous men, Roosevelt Grier the football player and Rafer Johnson, I guess, the Olympic champion, piling on to a pair of blue jeans. There was a head on the floor, streaming blood, and somebody put a Kennedy boater hat under it and the blood trickled down like chocolate sauce on an iced cake.
There were flashlights by now and the button-eyes image of Ethel Kennedy turned to cinders. She was slapping a young man and he was saying, “Listen lady, I am hurt too” and down on the greasy floor was a huddle of clothes and staring out of it the face of Bobby Kennedy. Like the stone face of a child, lying on a cathedral tomb….
A dark woman nearby suddenly bounded to a table and beat it and howled like a wolf, “Stinking country, no no no no.”
ALISTAIR COOKE
JUNE 10
1847
I fear you are deceived in your good opinions of American rule. If they continue as they have commenced, it will be bad indeed for they acted till lately in a most scandalous manner. Their credit is now lower than the Mexicans in many points. They do not manifest honest principles.
HENRY DALTON
1942
Thank you very much for your note. I am all right now, but so far, I’ve been ill for four days here. It’s from the food, but the food is getting better.
Don’t work too hard to end the semester! I really feel like a dope for not going to school. I miss it, believe it or not.
Sa-yo-nara is written: [Japanese characters]. Don’t forget it now! Please write again.
TOMOKO IKEDA, to a school friend
JUNE 11
1847
Col. Mason now Governor of California. One of the orders was relating to the case of John Allen, alias—who belonged to Co E of the Mormon Battalion and who had been in the calaboose some several weeks for desertion of his post as a picket guard. He did not belong to the Church….Joined the Battalion at Fort Leavenworth and never was a Mormon, manifesting a very ungovernable spirit throughout the whole of the journey. His sentence is to have half of his hair shaved and to be drummed out of town.
HENRY STANDAGE
1919
The players selected [for the first L.A. Philharmonic] number among the best instrumentalists to be found on the Pacific Coast. They are all salaried men, removed from any participation in cabaret work, parades or the fatiguing engagements of five or six shows a day.
EDWIN SCHALLERT, for the Los Angeles Times
1939
Rather horrible night with a picked up acquaintance Doug whose amorous advance made me sick at the stomach—Purity!—Oh God—It is dangerous to have ideals.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
1969
Hey! I have never criticized any Architects about their attitude toward California, ever. But I do criticize Eastern literary critics who, for the most part, neglected Chandler and Hammett when they were alive, and are now neglecting Macdonald.
As for myself, time and again, when I bump into New Yorkers they say, “How can you live there in L.A.?! How can you Create?” BULLSHIT!…
My own director and producer of Illustrated Man, New Yorkers both, have never BEEN to Disneyland. Pure snobbism.
RAY BRADBURY, to Esther McCoy
JUNE 12
1847
She is the most perfect coquette I ever saw. She was dressed in a rich pink and gold silk, with a shawl on worth $300! I never saw her look better. I was in full uniform and entered with her on my arm. She was the belle of the evening.
Went to take leave of Isidora She is going to the country. We parted good friends.
LIEUTENANT JOHN MCHENRY HOLLINGSWORTH
1921
How is it over there—with work? I still can’t accept the idea of spending all my life here.
RUDOLF SCHINDLER, to Richard Neutra
1954
Pershing Sq.: Suddenly in the middle of downtown black ant traffic & little buildings, the little banana grove on the corner of Hill. There is this big block park on model of Mex town—except it has green flat rectangle of grass with benches all around in the sun—hardly any shape—and an outer perimeter for walking without benches, but you can sit on concrete steps—all the old types, something different from Bryant Park, because they all look respectable & there’s no one young, all look clean & model with low palms all around & plantain leaves with bursts of tropic artichoke. Energy sprouting up on the sides—and a few high palms too.
ALLEN GINSBERG
JUNE 13
1847
Went to water my mare with only a halter on and a Spanish woman scared my mare purposely and caused me to be thrown. Thereby hurting me some…
[It] is the custom in this country to keep immense herds of all domestic animals which are reared with little or no expense as they require neither feeding nor housing and are always sufficiently fattened for the slaughter houses….
Mr. Williams kills every summer a large number merely for the hides and tallow, leaving the meat to rot on the ground. Of late years Mr. Williams had made large quantities of soap by boiling the fattest of the beef so as to procure all the grease possible. He has a kettle 10 feet deep, the upper part of which is constructed of wood 10 feet also in diameter. This is filled with meat and left to simmer down when the grease is dipped into a box or bin 10 or 12 feet square and the meat thrown away. The grease is converted into soap using a kind of earth instead of ashes or lye. The Indians do this work.
HENRY STANDAGE
1927
Started to work—interrupted at the critical moment—that is my story of yesterday….I had not met her for years, not since the night she spent here, and wanted to be seduced but wouldn’t. I’m sure she is no longer virginal! Someone had more persistence or desire than I had….
“Take off your clothes” I said. I felt not a flicker of response to her. Instead of figures I made a few heads. Her body was youthful, strong, brown from the sun, and sea winds,—yet I was repulsed.
…I’m so angry with myself for being easy.
EDWARD WESTON
1936
A brief walk to the Pacific Ocean will sharpen the dullest writer’s grammar and improve the finest stylist’s rhetoric….anyone is privileged to appear in its presence without having to pay admission….It is there, the Pacific, and a brisk walk each morning to it is one of the things a good writer must perform….There are several other rules, but they are boring. The most important rule, according to everybody, is to run like hell after the money. It helps to prolong the manufacture of automobiles….
The slickest rule of all, however, is: Don’t write. I will gladly teach anyone the fundamentals of not writing. There is no cost, no obligation. You don’t even have to clip a coupon. All you have to do is think it over carefully.
WILLIAM SAROYAN
JUNE 14
1847
Allen had half his head shaved
and at retreat was drummed out of town, being marched between 4 sentinels in charge of a Corporal. Drummers and fifers in the rear. He was marched through town at the point of a bayonet and the musicians playing the Rogues March. Not allowed to return during the present war, and liable to be taken up and kept in irons till the close of the war.
HENRY STANDAGE
1936
I had no more chance of changing Hollywood or stabbing one decent idea into its head than I have of moving these mountains around me by whistling to them to come to heel!
Now I sit in a shack, eight feet by eight, in the middle of an alfalfa field, and am completely happy and never think of films all day long. In our wide valley the mountains reach up, always changing in the light, on three sides. I cut hay and build a house. I irrigate land and make a living alone.
Let me tell you about my place. At night the oil lamp burns and the great Pullman trains go swinging past with people in them looking out. I always used to sit in trains and see a light in a shack and wonder who the person was. And now I know….
Dear Los Angeles Page 17