1941 (1940) (1942) (1930-40) (1940-50) Table of Contents
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1943, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1933, 1921, 1913, 1912 See Text
Alyssa Navapanich* Emile Pourroy*, Dalila Pourroy*, and the McGinley* Estate, Oceanpark.ws, 2005, 2005a, 1941, 1919 See Text
Kenneth Patchen The Journal of Albion Moonlight, Padell: New York, 1941, (Fifth Edition, 1946), 313 pp. See Text
James Pritchett The story of John Cage's The City Wears A Slouch Hat {Kenneth Patchen's 1941 CBS Radio Drama} Liner Notes for Mode Records 55 John Cage's Undiscovered Works, 1995, 1960s, 1948, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1937, Bibliography See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1941 See Text
Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams California in War and Peace 1940-1950, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2002, 386 pp., 2002, 1947, 1944, 1943, 1941, 1940s, See Text
Documents
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1943, 1942, 1941,1940, 1933, 1921, 1913, 1912
"15. Santa Monica High School, 601 Pico Boulevard. The cornerstone for the high school was laid on April 11, 1912, on what was once known as Prospect Hill; the campus has expanded over the years to its present size by incorporating the former Santa Monica College site.
"The high school contains a great many points of interest, especially the Memorial Open-Air Theater dedicated in 1921; Barnum Hall, dedicated to William F. Barnum*, who served as principal from 1913 to 1943; a senior bench donated by the Classes of 1940 to 1943; an imposing Athletic Hall of Fame in the Men's Gymnasium; a trophy collection; the Freedom Shrine in the Administration Building; and the Hall of Fame in the History Building. Two special items of interest in Barnum Hall's lobby are a mosaic-tile mural depicting the landing of the vikings and a four-foot-tall concrete owl that stood atop the original high school from 1913 until 1933, when an earthquake caused its removal."
Alyssa Navapanich* Emile Pourroy*, Dalila Pourroy*, and the McGinley* Estate, Oceanpark.ws, 2005, 2005a, 1941, 1919
"My Great grandparents worked for the McGinley*s and lived on the estate until my Great Grandfather died in 1941. My understanding is that [Walter McGinley] purchased land from "Lucky" Baldwin's relatives [near Montebello], struck oil and became very wealthy. My Grandmother told stories of getting a spoonful of brown sugar from the kitchen during the depression. My Great Grandfather was the grounds keeper for the McGinleys and planted most of the trees that are still there at Joslyn Park. His name was Emile Pourroy*. My Great Grandmother worked in the house and cooked making fancy cakes, preserves and such. Her name was Dalila Pourroy*. My mother remembers the McGinley* Estate as all of my family has called it with fond memories. My Grandfather, Karl Rydgren*, still lives in Santa Monica on Fifth street in a colonial that was built by Haas-Baruch of Iris Foods. He has been living in Santa Monica since 1919 and can tell amazing stories about his life. My grandfather remembers everything including addresses of places that have been torn down. He is a treasure trove of Santa Monica trivia. Make sure you ask him about his house. It is the only house to go up the California Incline...."
Kenneth Patchen The Journal of Albion Moonlight, Padell: New York, 1941, (Fifth Edition, 1946), 313 pp.
[p. 200] " . . . It was true. Coming down the coarse hills in a great tide the river of blood rushed upon us. There was no escape. We were drowned in that awful bath. Indeed, my friends, we are all drowning-it covers our faces, it drips from our hands . . . O Jesus! Jesus! Lord have mercy on us . . . Lord have mercy!
"To tell the truth, I have lost the way. I want to destroy all these stupid pages-what a miserable, broken-winded hack I am! What remains? Be assured-whatever happens, I won't lie to you. One ends by hiding the heart. I say here is my heart, it beats and pounds in my hand-take it! I hold it out to you . . . Close the covers of this book and it will go on talking. Nothing can stop it. Not death. Not life. Draw in closer to me. How small and frightened we are. Our little fire is almost out. What do we seek? I am smiling now. You will be told that what I write is confused, without order-and I tell you that my book is not concerned with the problems of art, but with the problems of this world, with the problems of life itself-yet of life itself. Does this astonish you? If you will listen to me, you will learn to create laws. You have none, you know. What did you get from Shakespeare's hooting and howling? A bit of stuff about an idiot and a king. And you threw up in sheer ecstasy. That won't do. The noble speeches aren't enough. The thread-bare and ridiculous plots aren't enough. Men were made to talk to one another. You can't understand that. But I tell you that the writing of the future will be just this kind of writing-one man trying to tell another man of the events in his own heart. Writing will become speech. Novelists talk about their characters. This is because they have nothing to say about themselves. You will ask, was this true of Dostoievsky? and sadly I must answer: yes. Dostoievsky made this stupid mistake-but I am wrong! I am right in what I want to say, but it doesn't make sense, it doesn't tell you what you shouldn't know. We must keep Shakespeare and Doestoeievesky, because they talked above the clamor of their characters-they poked their bleeding heads through the junk-pile of literature, and we saw their white, twitching faces. We saw their lips moving. We heard their grunts and their sobs. Ah, but who did! I am full of anger when I think of the smug pigs who call themselves writers-the dirty white-livered fat boys fingering their mother's love letters off in the attic somewhere. What luck! Get that rubbish out of my way . . . you're damn right there, I am stewing in my own juices . . . Hm-unmmh! I can still remember my first pair of roller skates . . . hot-assing it down Morrison Avenue with little pork sausages held fast in our mitts . . . I never have enough money. I have no trade. There is money in novels, but none at all in writing. Money is a necessity. Without it one starves. Then there is the matter of the landlord. Landlords care even less about writing than novelists do. It is hard to write in the street. People get the idea that maybe you are crazy. Writing is a difficult job. There is no trouble at all in knowing what you want to say; the trouble begins in keeping out the rest of it. I'd like to talk about God all the time. I know less about this than anything else; I know that you encourage me to show my heart. I have never belonged to a political party. Please tell all your friends to read my journal. I have spent many lives learning to write. It would be a pity if no one bothered to read this, wouldn't it? I feel that I have somebody to write to. I am not evil. I want to be saved. Does that amuse you? Perhaps I have been too kind to you. We are not alike you know. I have much more to give you than you could ever give me. I have stepped onto a new planet, I have a cold wind on my face. The dear old horrors bore me. Do you see me at all? Does my voice come through to [p. 202] you? How soundly you sleep? Do you hear the feet of an angel on this page? I am crying-do you know at least that? I want to leave you now for a little time.
"I have prayed. Let us go on.
"I work in the shadow. I stab out and many words fail to land on the paper. I bang away at the stone. Nothing but the essential must go into writing.-but everthing is essential. I take you into my confidence. I told you that I hated novels. This is only partly true, for I also love novels. I love even the cheapest, most debased novels. You make a mistake in thinking that I demand purity in everything. Don't forget that veterinaries have their place in the world. And pimps too. Even people who send schoolboys up in bombing planes. There is a spot for everyone and everything. But this was nothing of my doing. Why shoould I exhaust myself shouting at a wooden Indian.? Why should I care that there are no artists in America? What am I? a newspaper reporter? Why make a record of something that no one can use? It is clearly my duty to come just at the right time, saying exactly the right thing. You have read many books. This book is reading you.
"I exaggerate nothing. I am not a dealer in distortions. This is precisely the way I found the world. Imaginative people end by becoming tongue-tied. They talk about things. I operate from the inside. My feet never leave the ground. It is not my business that now and then the ground sinks away. I am heavy with the stars in my cap. I bring the sea in. I do no research whatever. Every problem to me is a problem of living. I make no attempt to translate. My speech is as much a part of my body as my arms and legs are. What have I to do with the cult of hallucination? Derangement is for the too-sane-everything under heaven cries to be arranged; I demand order and precision in what I do. The supreme cultivation of chaos has already been done. That is what I am talking against. The world is drunk on pig-piss . . . power! power! You need nothing of the kind., What is powerful? A gun is. A battleship. But we are weak. We are stumbling around in the dark. War is endured because it offers [p. 203] up as a spectacle . . . a better and bigger kind of fireworks. It scares the hell out of us. It rurns us inside out. There is its hold, its fascination. Nobody can understand how year after year and age after age war is put up with. It's because everybody wants to see what it's really like. Everybody is secretly proud of it. We put that on. God! nothng like this ever before. Did they think they had a war . . . watch this one! But the real secret lies in property. These are our guns, this is our fleet, this is my country, My country! Now you are beginning to watch me closely. I won't let you squirm out of it! You poor little creature . . . what is yours? Your house . . . your job . . . your kitchen chairs and the number plate on the door . . . ah! but these don't belong to you. Where did you get them? By what right did they come to you? You worked for them? Worked . . .? What did you do? Oh, you sat in an office and put figures in a book. You even dug in a cold, water-filled ditch. But I have already told you that property is murder. Because of property people starve to death and are beaten by the police. Because of property millions of men are blown into bloody pieces. Every Negro who is lynched has your rope around his neck. Because of property every good impulse of mankind has been defiled and lost. Your property? The butchering of Jews in Poland . . . the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti . . . the blood-drenched monster called Hitler . . . yest, these belong to you. These are your property. Indeed, this is your country. A country where systematic murder is the one function of the State. At the last your only property is murder. Refuse to murder in hte name of the State, and you will find yourself behind bars-your house, your job, your kitchen chairs and number plate over your door . . . kicked into the ditch you spent your life digging, your death but another figure you entered into the monstrous book of Capitalism. I ask for an unconditional overthrow of every last vestige of the world you will risk your life for tomorrow. Don't attempt to conceal the truth from me. You will fight because you are stupid, brutal and cowardly. And a fool as well. But this is your role. Why should I expect a monster to give birth to an angel? The [p. 204] State has no misgivings about you. You will be in the kill with the rest of your kind. You will march uprightly along at the very head of the paid assassins-stepping like a brainless goose away out in front of everybody. What does your death matter to me? It is the living who matter-those who will struggle with thier last ounce of strength to live, not die for a crew of soft-handed gangsters. What matters to me is the heritage of creation which a few brave men have managed to keep inviolate from the destroyers-it is their courage and purity, their faith and idealism which moves me to take heart and to speak out now. I am not alone. I have no wish to become a murderer. I do not choose my truths. I am not concerned with what appears to be true. I do not play a dozen parts at once. I am not caught off guard. I don't make judgements througth casual reading of Manifestos. I say that it is almost inconceivable that I should be rejected for the phlegmbags of the marketplace. Doubtless I will be. To live honestly. To be loved honestly. Am I such a criminal? Am I not to be given a moment before the quaint ritual at the stake? Thus, against murder, against hypocrisy, and for life, for all that is most beautiful and noble in man, for the immense joy of being alive, do I speak. I am an island in a cess-pool called History. A strange feeling comes over me. I seem to be addressing a dead man. A dead world. A dead sun. The angel has gone. I am ringed in by a circle of mocking mcking savages . . .
"[p. 205 ] . . . The power of an empire rests in the threat of its poor, half-starved subjects to take up arms against it. For that reason fleets are built and armies are trained. Wars are conducted that the people may lose sight of their own need to wage war. The people always fight for the cause which enslaves them; that is, the cause of their rulers. A monstrous game is played. Not content with condemning their subjects to a life of hunger and slavery, the powers that be craftily call in the wretched subjects of a foreign murderer to complete the job. This is done for the sake of trade and markets, mind you. It would be an unforgiveable impertinence to ask: whose trade? whose markets? Your, perhaps, Or mine. Then, when the paint wears thin on the mask, they just haul out a new set of labels and begin all over again; they say, "Horror of horrors, what is this ghastly thing? Look what it say there! Fascism. Now isn't that barbarous! Surely you'll fight against that! The world must be saved from Fascism." And they [p. 206] are right. It must. But it should have been saved from Fascism before some clever butcher thought up the word. For it is only a word. It differs from what we have known by only a word. Make no mistake. If Capitalism is wearing a new mask in Europe, we'll get a bigger and a better one ourselves tomorrow. The styles of Imperialist murder must change as Capitalism draws nearer to its death . . . In our cities we have tolerated noise and dirt that would sicken a half-witted ape; we have deliberately sought out the ugly and the deformed; we have done everything in our power to stamp out the merest hint of that which has grace nnd beauty. We have behaved as though only the taste of the most depraved and besotten had any claim to gratification. We have pushed the nose of our culture into the shit of our self-interest. For all this is done that, of all things! we may enjoy ourselves . . . the moron-minded radio; the literature which exploits the sufferings of the migratory worker; the music which stinks of Hollywood-here we are!! . . . the greatest nation on earth . . .
James
Pritchett The story of John Cage's The City Wears A
Slouch Hat {Kenneth Patchen's 1941 CBS Radio Drama}
Liner Notes for Mode Records 55 John Cage's Undiscovered
Works, 1995, 1960s, 1948, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1937
"The City Wears A Slouch Hat is a piece with a history . . . It is a story about a young composer with a fresh idea and his encounter with The Establishment; it recounts his brush with fame and money, but leaves him a poor artist alone in the big city . . . But the truth is that the piece came at a critical juncture in Cage's life, and its failure-and The City Wears A Slouch Hat was mostly a failure-permanently affected his work. The John Cage of the Sonatas and interludes, and 4' 33'' would not have existed had this piece been a success.
"Although The City wears A Slouch Hat was written in Chicago, its story begins in San Francisco and ends in New York City. San Francisco was Cage's home base in 1941. Together with Lou Harrison, he had established a percussion ensemble there and was beginning to achieve some recognition as a promoter of music for percussion instruments. Like all successful promoters, Cage had the ability to articulate the big idea-he was not just interested in performing and composing, but in leading a campaign "for more new sounds" (the title of one of his articles at that time). He had a knack for generating excitement about the musical possibilities opened up by the use of sounds previously relegated to the category of noise. "I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase," his 1937 credo on the future of music began, "until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
"Cage was ambitious. His vision of the future of music and the role he could play in it evolved into a plan to create a "Center for Experimental Music." "This Center was to be a place where the work with percussion could continue," he recalled later, "and where it would be supplemented by the results of close collaboration between musicians and sound engineers, so that the musical possibilities might be continually refreshed with new technological instruments." Developments in audio recording fired his imagination, but to be practically involved in creating the sound world of the future Cage needed access to equipment and technical expertise. In short, he needed money. He devoted himself to contacting possible backers for his plan -- corporations, movie and radio studios, wealthy arts patrons-but no one took him seriously. A particularly poignant moment in his own telling of this tale concerns his meeting with the head of the Sound Department at MGM: He showed me a room provided with a library of sound recorded on film and all the auxiliary equipment: light tables, film recorders and film phonographs, equipment with which a composer could compose music exactly as a painter paints pictures, that is, directly. I begged to be allowed to use this room for a few hours a day. But that was impossible, considering the objectives of Hollywood: the doors were closed. If the doors were closed in California, Cage thought that they might be opened in New York City. In 1941 he headed eastward with his percussion instruments.
"Cage did not go directly to New York; he stopped in Chicago. The opportunity had arisen to teach at Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's School of Design (Cage gave a class in "sound experiments"), and so he stayed in Chicago for the fall term. But although he had not yet reached his destination, things seemed to be happening quickly. He gave a concert at the Chicago Arts Club that attracted the attention of the press ("People call it noise-but he calls it music," was the Chicago Daily News' account). He met various influential people, no doubt trying to sell them on his plan for the Center for Experimental Music. He was introduced to the famed surrealist artist Max Ernst and his wife Peggy Guggenheim; their interest in Cage's work had the potential of resulting in the financial backing he needed. "Come stay with us when you get to New York," they told him.
"Since moving away from San Francisco, everything was going Cage's way. Thus, when the Columbia Broadcasting System approached him to write a score for to accompany a radio play by poet Kenneth Patchen, Cage must have thought that his quest was over. Without his having to beg for it, Columbia was offering him the opportunity to work with sound technicians, to have access to equipment, to have the backing of a large corporation to produce innovative music. The Columbia Workshop commission was the key to obtaining his dream: if not his Center for Experimental Music, then at least the platform from which his center could be launched.
"Cage's idea for The City Wears A Slouch Hat came straight from his vision of the technological future of music. He would write a score exclusively for sound effects-"to use them not as effects, but as sounds, that is, as musical instruments." Patchen's script accomodated this vision with its liberal use of sonic imagery. Every scene in the play has some reference to the aural imagery surrounding the characters: music, street noises, telephones, ocean waves. Indeed, the main character of the play is simply "The Voice", and his magical freedom of movement throughout the play suggests the permeation of space by sound. The sweep of the action around the city, up to the sky, and out to the sea could best be put across to an audience through the manipulation of sound. When told by the sound effects engineer that "anything was possible," Cage let his dreams take over: "I wrote 250 pages of score for instruments, the timbre, loudness, and relative pitch of which I described, but the existence of which I only guessed." He composed the sounds of his imagination, confident that the technical know-how of the radio sound engineers could turn them into reality.
"The 250-page score was as far as the dream went. When Cage, a mere week before the performance, delivered his score to the station, he was told that it was impossible to play. No doubt the engineer, in telling him that anything was possible, was not counting on the fantastic imagination of a composer devoted to musical experimentation. The visions that Cage had created in his mind-of a sound effects score, of the instruments that would play it, of the Center for Experimental Music that would result-these were all built on nothing more than a misunderstanding; when he arrived at the radio station they all collapsed. Cage must have been crushed. However, consummate professional that he was, he immediately began work on a substitute score, one more modest in means and using only percussion instruments, recordings, and amplified "small sounds." Working around the clock he was able in only one week to write the score, copy it, and rehearse it with the players. The play was broadcast with this percussion music, the music recorded here on this disc.
"The reality of the Columbia Workshop production, then, hardly resembled Cage's dream of a center for technological experimentation in music. The percussion score was nothing but a compromise, quickly assembled to cover the shambles that was left of his original conception. But despite the failure of the production to match Cage's ambitions, it fueled his dreams. From what he was told about letters received by the radio station, it appeared that The City Wears A Slouch Hat was a success. Thus, Cage reasoned, although this particular production fell short of his artistic goals, it could be the gateway to bigger things. In particular, it gave him a valuable credential to take with him to New York. "I came to New York expecting to be received with open arms by the highest officers of the Columbia Broadcasting System." Full of confidence in the future again, he spent literally all his money on the bus fare to New York.
"Life in New York boosted Cage's morale. He and his wife stayed at the home of Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim, where they were introduced to some of the most famous artists of the day: Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, Virgil Thompson, Gypsy Rose Lee. Guggenheim began arranging for a concert of Cage's percussion music to open her new art gallery. Cage was able to interest the Museum of Modern Art to host a concert. Together with his Columbia connections, all this publicity would surely result in the backing necessary for Cage's center.
"But just as in Chicago, Cage's dreams were founded on misunderstandings. When he went to the Columbia Broadcasting System offices he found that, contrary to his impression, the Chicago broadcast had not been successful at all; they refused to do any further business with him. When Guggenheim found out about the Museum of Modern Art concert she was furious. She refused to pay to have his percussion instruments shipped from Chicago and kicked Cage and his wife out of the house. Other financial support was not forthcoming; he made ends meet by writing to friends and asking for money and by doing research work for his father.
"Cage had left San Francisco in search of his dream, his Center for Experimental Music. Two years later his quest had left in New York with no money, no instruments, and no real prospects. The promise of The City Wears A Slouch Hat-ts intimation of the "all-sound music of the future", supported by radio studios and lifting John Cage to new musical heights-was all a mirage."
Kenneth Patchen Patchen's Lost Plays (Ed. and Introduction: Richard G. Morgan) Capra Press: Santa Barbara, CA, 1977, 93pp. (There are two plays: Don't Look Now (1967) and The City Wears a Slouch Hat (1941)
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990.
Chapter 5: Santa Monica Pier on the Skids (1941-1974)
" . . . Sunday, December 7, 1941 . . .
"Sam Reed, the city's harbor master, . . . the following morning refused to allow several boatloads of Japanese fishermen to put to sea. The harbor had become home base to 46 mackeral fishing boats when naval activity in San Pedro caused them to relocate to Santa Monica. . . . [instructed by] the 11th Naval District Headquarters, he prohibited any boats from leaving the harbor and that afternoon a naval patrol was established . . .
" . . . FBI arrested suspected [people] Forty-five Japanese were arrested in Venice and West Los Angeles on Dec. 8th, and hundreds more the following day.
" The harbor fog horn was mounted atop city hall . . . The city was blacked out at night . . . The first black out Dec. 11th at 9:50 p.m. . . . When neon signs and other lights continued to illuminate downtown buildings, angry citizens moved through the streets and smashed dozens of lights that had been left on when store owners closed for the day." p. 100
Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams California in War and Peace 1940-1950, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2002, 386 pp., 2002, 1947, 1944, 1943, 1941, 1940s
[p. 112] "On 28 June 1941 Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, mandating fair employment practices in all war industries and the situation slowly improved . . .