 Geez. They're all about me again. 
Philippe Halsman shot this sly commentary on fame featuring one of the most famous women in America, Marilyn Monroe, as his subject. She checks out a newspaper, and next to her you can see machines for the afternoon tabloids Mirror, Daily News, and Herald-Express, the latter of which is a publication we've mined often for historical crime photos. In that issue the front page says, “Fight Grows to Keep Chaplin Out of U.S.,” a headline that dates the photo to sometime in late 1952. Why was there a fight? People had been led to believe Chaplin was a communist theat to America for saying things like he wanted every person to have a roof over their heads. He wouldn't return to the U.S. for twenty years. So, the tabloids weren't all about Marilyn every issue. Just mostly. Even gossips need a little variety.
 Wronged husband takes a shot at his rival. 
Above is an interesting composite photo of the style that was sometimes produced by newspapers during the mid-century period. These old composites are pretty cool. We can imagine a museum or gallery exhibit of them. We've seen many, but have only featured one other, which you can see here. This one came from the Los Angeles Herald/Examiner archive and shows Jennings Lang, Walter Wanger, and Joan Bennett in 1951, and was made after Wanger shot Lang. What was it all about? Wanger and Bennett were married to each other, and Wanger thought Lang was trying to get in Bennett's panties. Some sources say an affair was never consummated, but we think it was—and Benett was an expert at attracting men. The shooting happened today, with the news coverage running through the event, immediate aftermath, and sensational trial. You notice the composite also features a gun? That's the real gun Wanger used. We talked about it last year, and the short version is: the fact that the shooter is named Wanger is ironic in the extreme. Below you see Lang's wife, at her husband's hospital bed, and we imagine her saying, “You're thinking about that fucking actress again, aren't you?” And Lang is thinking, “Switch two of those words and you're absolutely right, baby.” The previous bit we posted on their love triangle with Lang is at this link, and if you venture over there, take a look at the last photo and ask yourself if Wanger is a guy you'd want to cross. We think Lang had a death wish. 
 Yep, this guy's dead as hell. Too bad. He could sue the beer company for false advertising. 
This photo, which is part of the archive of mid-century Los Angeles Herald press shots maintained by the University of Southern California, shows a suicide at the front entrance of Temple M.E. Church at 14th and Union in Los Angeles. The man was named Robert Palmer, and you can see that the poor guy shot himself in the middle of the forehead. You can also see that he bled profusely, which suggests his heart pumped for a bit before he finally died. L.A.P.D. detective Hugh Palmer (no relation) stands over him. Like many suicides Robert Palmer had a final drink before doing the deed. His choice? As you see in the zoom below, it was Lucky Lager, which conferred no benefits whatsoever. Maybe a rabbit's foot or a horseshoe would have been more effective. Or not. The photo is from today in 1957.  
 He says he remembers nothing, sir, except he needs to return the dress within 72 hours to get a full refund. 
There's nothing new under the sun. And there's certainly nothing new under the Los Angeles moon, as proved by this photo of a man who was arrested late at night in Hollywood. He can hide his face but he can't hide the fact that he's wearing a dress. We're thinking prank, costume party, activities along those lines, but really anything is a possibility. We know because we've personally explored most of them ourselves, and ending up in a dress was also one of the results. Still though, it's sad we'll never know precisely what happened here. No details were provided with the shot except that it comes from the collection of Los Angeles Herald photos held by the University of Southern California, and the year on this one was 1948.
 Yeah, I'm drunk. And I'm just old enough not to give a fuck.  
You plan to weave your car quietly home from the bar and not only do you get stopped and arrested, but immortalized by the press. This image, another from the University of Southern California archive, was shot by a Los Angeles Herald photographer and shows motorist Edna Benton failing a field sobriety test administered by highway patrolman M.G. Gaskell. Herald photographers were often on the scene after murders and suicides, but this image shows just how quickly they could be on the scene to shame even the most unimportant of people. We're curious when this type of photo-journalism went out of style. In this case the shame aspect didn't work, as Benton's smile in image two shows. These date from today in 1951.
 Don't worry, baby. What we have'll last forever. 
The above image from the University of Southern California collection of Los Angeles Herald photos dates from 1952 and shows sixteen-year-old Marlene Eason visiting her jailbird boyfriend, nineteen-year-old Eddie Christianelli, who was under arrest for robbery. In response to Christianelli's marriage proposal Eason agreed to wed him in jail. At that moment somewhere across town Eason's father swooned, and when his wife asked what was wrong he said, “I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if all our daughter's hopes and dreams were suddenly ruined.” Young love. Whaddaya gonna do?
 Were two unsolved murders the work of one killer? 
When it comes to mid-century murders in Los Angeles, the Black Dahlia gets all the ink, but during that same winter of 1947 another woman was slain. Like Elizabeth Short, she was found dead in a vacant lot, nude, with massive pre- and post-mortem injuries. Her name was Jeanne French. She had been stomped to death, and her killing became known as the Red Lipstick Murder because of a cryptic message written on her abdomen. It read: “Fuck you B.D.” Next to that it said: “Tex.” The Los Angeles Herald-Express ran a banner headline: “Werewolf Strikes Again Kills L.A. Woman Writes B.D. On Her Body.” By Werewolf, they meant the Black Dahlia killer—the Herald-Express and other papers believed the initials B.D. were a reference to the Dahlia. Above and below are two crime scene photos of police gathered around Jeanne French the morning she was discovered, and below is a close-up of the message scrawled on her skin. Though the killer had left shoe impressions all around—and on—French’s body, police were   never able to generate any significant leads, and the case went unsolved. They were not sold on the idea of Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French falling victim to the same killer, but many others were convinced. Decades later, a handwriting analysis initiated by writer Steve Hodel tied the Red Lipstick killer and the Black Dahlia killer together. The suspect? Hodel’s father. But the evidence was not considered conclusive enough by police to pursue, and both murders remain officially unsolved. Jeanne French was found dead sixty-six years ago yesterday.
 Nobody knows what it was, but they tried like hell to kill it. 
This photo appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers this month in 1942 after West Coast anti-aircraft batteries opened up on a mysterious aerial object supposedly seen hovering in the skies above L.A. The object was sighted in the early morning of February 25 and fired upon for about two hours. The next day Army spokesmen said the barrage had been the result of a false alarm caused by war hysteria, which leaves you to wonder what sort of non-existent object could be pinned by multiple searchlights as it moved across the sky. Another official explanation was that the object was a weather balloon, which of course raises a completely different question, namely, how did more than 2,000 exploding artillery shells fail to bring down something so flimsy? These shells caused three deaths on the ground, and they weren’t even aimed there. UFO aficionados, of course, say it was an alien craft. That’s debatable, not for any scientific reason, but based on simple logic. Consider: we puny humans have already made major advances in stealth tech, yet we think we’d be able to detect an alien craft that came from the gulfs of space to observe us? That’s called pure hubris, and we don’t subscribe. So that leaves one other explanation. It was a deliberate Army drill involving a weather balloon, an exercise designed to test anti-aircraft capabilities, shock Los Angeles residents and thus gauge the potential for mass panic, and ram home the idea to the masses that the Japanese were lurking out there somewhere. In order to believe this scenario one has to assume the anti-aircraft gunners had the shittiest aim in the history of hurled projectiles, however the three obvious benefits we’ve listed for conducting such a drill make this by far the most logical scenario. Of course in the end, we weren’t there, so we’re only speculating about this obscure historical event. We can be sure of only thing—there will never be a definitive answer.
 The standing group will be reduced to ashes, while the kneeling group will experience slow and horribly painful radiation deaths. Any questions? 
Telling children to kiss their little rear ends goodbye in the event of a nuclear attack was considered too harsh, so instead these Los Angeles gradeschoolers are being taught how to survive the A-bomb by taking shelter under their desks. They’ve been told that a nuclear bomb “blows up houses and makes the earth wiggle.” The shot dates from 1950 and comes from the Los Angeles Public Library’s collection of mid-century Los Angeles Herald Express photos.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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