1946 (1945) (1947) (1940-1950) Table of Contents
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp.,, 1946 See Text
John Arthur Maynard Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1991. 242pp., 1948, 1946, 1944, 1938 See Text
Robert Aquinas McNally Something in the Genes: Kaiser Permanente's Continuing Commitment to Research The Permanante Journal, 5, 4, Fall 2001, 1946 See Text
John F. Muller Neglected Neighborhood . . . Santa Monica Daily Press, 4 August 2004a, 1, 1992, 1946. 1906 See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1946 See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987. 176 pp., 1946, See Text
Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1946 See Text
Lawrence Weschler Vermeer in Bosnia, Pantheon Books: NY, 2004. (The chapter The Light of L.A. appeared as L.A. Glows in the 23 February 1998 The New Yorker.) 1998, 1946 See Text
544. After Sundown at Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, California Post Card, Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif. JT, 1946 See Image and Text
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1946 See Text
Notes:
The Venice Pier closed a midnight on Saturday April 20, 1946.
Lawrence Lipton* (1898-1975) is the father of James Lipton, moderator of Inside the Actor's Workshop, and Broadway writer, who grew up in Michigan after his father Lawrence abandoned that family. Lawrence Lipton was injured as a reporter for the Free Press covering the 1968 Demorcratic Convention in Chicago at which the MC5 played and for which Tom Hayden was tried as one of the Chicago 7.
Documents
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp.,, 1946
In September of 1946, the architect firm of Marsh, Smith and Powell was commissioned to draw plans for the new college, such plans to take into consideration use of existing buildings and the new ones as proposed. These plans were only in the preliminary stages when soaring postwar building costs prompted the Board to call a halt on the project. [74. Ibid., pp. 17-18.]
John Arthur Maynard Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1991. 242pp., 1948, 1946, 1944, 1938
"Time Magazine, 28, January 1946, cover story was on Craig Rice, the first woman to win a Gertrude, for having sold a million copies of a single title in paperback. Lawrence Lipton, 48, was fifty percent of her for at least the last eight years, since 1938, six of which she had been sober and two drinking again, living and working in Santa Monica. He had been doing all the writing since 1944.
" . . . a veteran of radical literary and political movements in New York, Detroit, and Chicago, and the co-author with, Kenneth Rexroth of. . . the "Escaltor Manifesto", Lipton was also a past editor of the Detroit Jewish Chronicle, a former director of national publicity for the Fox Theatre Chain, and the well-paid author of stories, screenplays, and potboiler novels that almost never appeared under his name. . . ."
"Each title normally sold between fifteen and twenty thousand copies in hardcover, . . .
"The Craig Rice titles were selling too well. Even at the rate of a quarter of a million words per year, he and Rice could not keep up with the demand. The unreasonable pace was at least part of the reason Rice began to drink again in 1944. As the pressure mounted, their marriage, anchored in work, turned destructive.
"They separated early in 1946, . . . In February 1948, the two of them signed an agreement to share the income from all Craig Rice properties . . .
". . . He moved from a beachfront hotel in Santa Monica to a cottage near the boardwalk in Venice . . .
" . . . By November 1948, he was far enough ahead to marry his former secretary, Nettie Brooks, . . ." p. 35
Robert Aquinas McNally Something in the Genes: Kaiser Permanente's Continuing Commitment to Research The Permanante Journal, 5, 4, Fall 2001, 1946
" . . .
"At the end of the war, Kaiser Permanente was following two research tracks. One track began because Henry J Kaiser's son, Henry Jr, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Paul De Kruif, best-selling author of Microbe Hunters, directed the senior Kaiser to Herman Kabat, MD, ( -1997) a physical medicine specialist who was developing a new approach to treating MS. In 1946, the industrialist and the doctor together established the Kabat-Kaiser Institute, whose purpose-among others-was to conduct medical research in neuromuscular disorders. A series of Permanente Foundation Medical Bulletin research articles began in 1947.
" . . ."
John F. Muller Neglected Neighborhood . . . Santa Monica Daily Press, 4 August 2004a, 1, 1992, 1946. 1906
" . . .
"The city's original 1906 charter mandated district representatives and the direct election of the mayor. However, a 1946 charter reform set the current system, in place, under which the seven council members are elected at large. A city-commissioned study in 1992 found that the change was partially designed to exclude a growing black population in the Pico neighborhood from political power. . . ."
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)
"Beach activities were beginning to return to normal during the spring. The Army vacated all the hotels and beach clubs . . . and those that were owned by insurance companies were sold to private investors. . . . The Del Mar Club reopened in June and both the Grand and Edgewater Hotels remodeled in time for summer reopenings as a tourist hotel and beach club respectively.
"Santa Monica scheduled its first annual Santa Monica Fiesta at the Municipal Pier . . . Hundreds of thousands . . . while fifty combat aircraft from Alamitos Bay Naval Air Station . . .
"Foremost was the bathing beauty contest to crown Miss Santa Monica. Leo Carillo, a noted Santa Monica actor was the master of ceremonies. Judges, mostly from MGM Studios, judged the thirty eight contestants and crowned eigthteen year old Mary Joe Devlin . . . Governor Earl Warren presented her with the trophy.
"The Monoa Paddleboard Club opened their show with a fifteen girl paddleboard ballet, then held races and an exhibiiton polo paddleboard contest in the calm waters north of the pier . . .
"Acrobatic and gymnastic exhibitions were featured at the playground several hundred feet south of the pier. This area that had become known as "Muscle Beach" was built in th early 30's as a Works Progress Administration "time-killer". The WPA built a weight lifting platform to provide work and recreation facilities for the crowds of unemployed and relief recipients who had nothing to do during the Depression. It was eventually taken over by the Santa Monica Recreation Department after the original users found jobs and moved on.
"These exhibitions, that were usually held on Memorial Day weekends since 1935, featured weight lifters, gymnasts, balancers, muscle control artists, and tumblers. some of the better known performers included Wayne Long, Glen "Whitey" Sunby, Pudgy Stockton "queen of the barbells" and Beverly Jochner who was known as the strongest girl in America. She could lift three people weighing 350 pounds overhead. Russ Sanders, the gymnastic coach would fill out the program with high school and college athletes. The Fiesta, however, marked the first time that they had staged a men's physique competition for the title of Mr. Santa Monica.
'Business on the Newcomb Pier increased during the first postwar summer. Band leader Spade Cooley rented the La Monica Ballroom and his style of country-western music attracted large evening crowds. Then business was also helped somewhat by the elimination of the competing Venice Amusement Pier. It had been forcibly closed down in the spring when the Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation refused to renew the Kinney Company's tideland's lease. The closing, however, deprived Walter Newcomb of much of the income that he needed to remodel his[the Santa Monica] aging pier and turn it into a modern tourist attraction. He had operated the merry-go-round and the popular Venice Fun House on the condemned pier.
"While Newcomb was preoccupied with removing his attractions from the Venice Pier, he found a buyer for his Parker carousel located in the Hippodrome building. He then moved his 1922 Philadelphia Toboggan carousel, PTC #62 from the Venice Pier into the building. He had purchased the carousel before the war for $25,000 from an amusement park in Nashville, Tennessee."
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987. 176 pp., 1946,
"The Venice Pier closed a midnight on Saturday April 20, 1946."
Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1946
"Louis J. Burke, an expert in municipal law and now a California Supreme Court Justiice [1974]. [drafted the charter] with the assistance of Royal M. Sorenson, U.S. Navy in 1946.
The new charter was approved by the voters in 1946.
" . . . [It} calls for a Council of seven members, each elected at-large, each to receive only a nominal sum to cover out-of-pocket job-related expenses.
"The Council, under the charter, employs the city manager, the city clerk, and the city attorney.
"All other department heads are appointed by the city manager, they in turn choose their subordinates.
"All city employees, with the exception of the city manager and his personal office staff, and the city attorney and his staff, are appointed subject to the merit system . . . known as civil service.
"Applicants must take competitive examinations, as a result of which eligible lists are made up, and appointment may be made only from among the three individuals at the top of the list, unless . . . one or more of the three chooses not to accept a job offer.
"The Board of Education, also consisting of seven members, is totally autonomous, except that the charter obliges the city administration to conduct School Board elections.
"Council elections are held every two years, with four positions on the ballot at one time, three the next, thus insuring against a complete change of personnel every four years, that being the duration of terms of office.
"Following each election, the council elects one of its number as mayor, another as mayor pro-tem. The mayor has no authority beyond that of his colleagues, except that he acts as chairman and also represents the city on social and ceremonial occasions."
Lawrence Weschler Vermeer in Bosnia, Pantheon Books: NY, 2004. (The chapter The Light of L.A. appeared as L.A. Glows in the 23 February 1998 The New Yorker.) 1998, 1946
"Nevertheless, the light seems more uncanny than ever-or, rather, it may simply be reverting to its original splendor. What with the thermal inversion, even as the smog has subsided a softer version of airlight phenomenon has persisted -one that Juan Cabrillo, the first European to venture into these parts, back in 1542 . . . noted, labeled the curve of shore "The Bay of Smokes." Back in 1946, Carey McWilliams, the poet laureate of California historians, recorded how, the region's aridity notwithstanding, "the charm of Southern California is largely to be found in the air and light. Light and air are really one element: indivisible, mutally interacting, thoroughly interpenetrated."
When the sunlight is not screened and filtered by the moisture laden air, the land is revealed in all its semiarid poverty. The bald, sculptured mountains stand forth in a harsh and glaring light. But let the light turn soft with ocean mist, and miraculous changes occur. The bare mountain ranges, appallingly harsh in contour, suddenly become wrapped in an entrancing ever-changing loveliness of light and shadow . . . and the land itself becomes a thing of beauty.
McWilliams went on to point out how, typically, desert light "brings out the sharpness of points, angles, and forms. But . . .this is not a desert light nor is it tropical for it has neutral tones. (Elsewhere he suggests that "the color of the land is in the light.) It is Southern California light and it has no counterpart in the world."
544. After Sundown at Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, California Post Card
544. After Sundown at Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, California Post Card, Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif. JT, 1946 "The beautiful palm-fringed shoreline of Avalon Bay forms a perfect crescent, and from this came the ancient Indian name, "Bay of Moons."Though the island is twenty-seven miles from the mainland, it is part of Los Angeles County." Franked with the green George Washington $0.01 stamp and cancelled at Avalon, Calif. 10 Sept 1946. Sent by a Mrs. Byers to Mrs. Miller and her family, 428 Altair Place, Venice, Calif.
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1946
"509 Mesa . . . Site of a house built in 1946 by Herbert Matter, a well-known photographer whose works appeared in Life magazine. As an associate of John Entenza, he was credited with redesigning the magazine California Arts and Architecture . . . . "