Blaze (in Los Angeles) threatens to leap highway near densely populated regions

A headline in the Tribune this morning.

The tragedy we're seeing here is indescribable.  Truly, this is one of the worst disaster in American history.

Friday, May 27, 1774. Heading towards revolution.

The Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, dismissed Virginia's House of Burgesses due to a resolution, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, calling for a Day of Fasting and Prayer being passed.  The cause for Virginia's concern over British reaction to the Boston Tea Party, and it came on the same day that the British Navy planned to blockade Boston's harbor in punishment for the same.

The heavy-handed British reaction was propelling things in the very direction that the British did not want it to go.

The members of the House did not go right home, but instead convened as an Association, at the Raleigh Tavern, where they called for a Continental Congress.

Juan Bautista de Anza completed his overland expedition from Tubac, Mexico to San Gabriel Mission, in modern Los Angeles, California.

The Reverend Robert Newburgh was accused by a private British soldier of the 18th Regiment of Foot, stationed in the Colonies, of beggary.  He would be acquitted in a trial in June. The story was bizarre as he had invited the charge in the first instance, and coached the private on how to make it, seemingly in an effort to overall clear his name as he became increasingly unpopular.  He'd seen three soldiers tried for gossiping.

The plan would fail, and he'd ultimately be arrested after his acquittal for being disruptive, although his being accused of an "unnatural crime", the one he'd been just acquitted of, was mentioned at the time.

To the extent that this story is illustrative of anything, it's partially illustrative of the harsh discipline in the British Army of the period, as well as the somewhat junior high atmosphere that existed in 18th and 19th Century armies.  Additionally, however, it's interesting as neither the terms "heterosexual" or "homosexual" existed at the time, those being modern constructs, the latter of which did not originally apply to those who might commit beggary.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, April 5, 1774. A growing rift.

Labels: 1770s, 1774, American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin, Colonial North America, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Thomas Gage

Sunday, February 24, 1924. Machines.

Mexican Federals defeated rebels in Tamaulipas.

The Berliner gyrocopter No. 5 gave its first successful demonstration.  U.S. Army Lt. Harold R. Harris flew it for one minutes and 20 seconds at the College Park Airport, near the University of Maryland, in front of the press and members of the U.S. Navy.

Harris has been mentioned here before due to his career as a test pilot.  He lived until 1988, dying at age 92.

The Beverly Hills Speedway hosted its final race, which was attended by 85,000 automobile racing fans.  Harlan Fengler broke the world's record for a 250 mile race, averaging 116.6 mph.

Fengler would go on to be the Chief Steward of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from 1958 until 1974.  He passed away in 1981 at age 78.

Monday, January 7, 1974. Sweden rations gasoline.

Gas rationing began in Sweden, the first Western nation to do so in response to the ongoign crisis caused by the Arab Oil Embargo.

The four-year-long Gombe Chimpanzee War broke out in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park.

Margaret Queen Adams.

Margaret Queen Adams, née Margaret Queen Phillips, the first female deputy sheriff in the United States died at age 99. She had served in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department from 1912 to 1947.  She worked in the evidence department.

Monday, July 26, 1943. Martial law in Italy. Smog in LA.

Today in World War II History—July 26, 1943: 80 Years Ago—July 26, 1943: Martial law is declared in Italy; Marshal Pietro Badoglio forms a new cabinet free of fascists and bans the Fascist Party.

So notes Sarah Sundin on her blog. 

George S. Patton was on the cover of Time magazine.

On the same day, American-born poet Ezra Pound was indicted for treason for making radio broadcasts from Italy for the Axis powers.

Indicted on the same day, for the same reason, were Robert H. Best, Fred W. Kaltenbach, Douglas Chandler, Edward Delaney, Constance Drexel, Jane Anderson, and Max Otto Koischwitz.

Los Angeles received its first big smog.  Some residents of the city believed that it was under Japanese attack as a result.

Thursday, July 8, 1943. The execution of Jean Moulin, Looming Operation Husky, Stalled Operation Citadel, Bombing Wake, Smog in Los Angeles.

Jean Moulin.

Jean Moulin, the first President of the National Council of the Resistance, but for less than two months, was executed by the Germans.  He had been arrested due to a betrayal that's never been solved. He was one of the individuals who was tortured under Klaus Barbie.

General Eisenhower arrived in Malta in anticipation of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.

By this point, it was obvious that an imminent invasion of Sicily was coming. The Allies were bombing it heavily.  Nonetheless, German attention was focused on the East, at Kursk, which had entered its fourth day of fighting.  In the north, Ponyri station switched hands back and forth.  The 9th Army attacked the second Soviet line, which featured defense in depth, a Soviet tactic, and failed to breach it.  The 9th Army was in turn suffering critical losses.  Model was forced to commit the last of his armored reserves.

In the south, the Germans broke through the second defense line in the Oboyansk direction, but then withdrew after a strong counterattack.

B-24s operating from Midway bombed Wake Island in the first land based strike on Wake.

The escort carrier USS Casablanca was commissioned.

Smog became a problem for LA.

Thursday, June 3, 1943. Zoot Suit Riots, Comité Français de Libération Nationale, Pocket Protectors,

This is the 80th anniversary of the start of the Los Angeles' Zoot Suit Riots. They'd continue through the 8th.

With tensions dating back for months, the event saw an outbreak of white servicemen attack Hispanic Angelinos wearing Zoot Suits, in part for revenge over an incident that had occurred several days prior, but largely due to racist animosity.

The initial confrontation on June 3 was between a party of sailors and Zoot Suiters, which isn't surprising given the injury of  a sailor several days prior.  As the attacks grew the servicemen were supported by the press and the Los Angeles city council announced efforts to curb the manufacture of clothing in excess of wartime regulations, thought to be part of the problem as it was part of the excuse.  By the 8th, the attacks had spread from Hispanic districts to African American ones, where Zoot Suits were also popular.

Arrested Angelinos.

On the 8th, the Department of the Navy declared Los Angeles off limits and confined servicemen to their barracks.

The Battle of West Hubei, which had gone on for about a month, ended in a  Chinese tactical victory, although Chinese losses exceeded Japanese ones, and there is some evidence that the Japanese used the battle as a battlefield training exercise.

The French Committee of National Liberation,  Comité Français de Libération Nationale, was formed with those senior officers of the former Vichy command in North Africa and the Free French who had been technically in rebellion against Vichy, in Algiers.  It had a committee leadership at this point, although by November DeGaulle would be the leader.

The pocket protector was patented on this day.

Sunday, May 30, 1943. Clash in Los Angeles.

A clash between servicemen and Mexican American Zoot Suiters set the stage for the Zoot Suit Riots that would erupt several days later.

The conflict, like so many over the centuries, erupted in a contest for the potential affection of women who were nearby.  They commenced when a sailor, fearing he was going to be attacked, grabbed the arm of a Zoot Suiter and was badly attacked himself.

The All-American Girls Baseball League began its first 108-game season with four teams (Rockford, Kenosha, Racine, and South Bend).

Tuesday, May 1, 1923. When LA had derricks.

Signal Hill, California.   May 1, 1923.  It's part of Los Angeles.

Photo taken at, or of members of, the American Forestry Association, May 1, 1923.

1923   Frances Beard became State Historian.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Wednesday, January 13, 1943. Germany enters Total War.

Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter, looking a lot like the Blue Max.

Adolf Hitler decreed that the "Führer decree on the full employment of men and women in the defense of the Reich", bringing total mobilization into effect, but rather late, given that the war had been going on since 1939, and that the struggle with Russia had been going on since 1941.  

The act was designed to bring adult German women into the industrial work force, thereby relieving men to fight in the Wehrmacht.  It would only allow, however, for an additional 500,000 men to be mobilized, which in the context of the war was telling as that frankly wasn't that many.  The act had been designed to apply to women from age 16 to 50, but Hitler insisted on upping the lower age limit to 17.  Soon thereafter, the upper age limit was depressed to 45.

Deutscher Frauenarbeitsdienst service flag.

As perhaps that short history reveals, the Nazis were very reluctant to fully mobilize their adult population to the extent it required mobilizing women.  The party had always had the view that women's roles were solely familial and domestic, and had discouraged female employment and involvement in civil life in every fashion.  While exceptions occurred, women were not supposed to be allowed to join the Nazi Party.  Indeed, Nazi fascination with the female reproductive role descended right down to the perverse level in some instances.

With the arrival of the war, therefore, the Germans effectively sidelined its female population until forced to mobilize them due to the inescapable manpower needs of the war.

This contrasts dramatically with the Allied powers. The UK, US and Canada had all encouraged women to work in factories and fields since the onset of the war, and had taken women into non combat military service early on. The Soviet Union went one step further, not only taking women into service, but also allowing small scale use of female combatants.  The UK had required women by this point to register for some sort of war support service.

By this point in the war, of course, the Germans were resorting to slave labor for the same purpose.

Some interesting ones from Sarah Sundin for today's date:

Today in World War II History—January 13, 1943:Students at the University of Munich riot after a Nazi speaker blames the German army’s dire situation in Stalingrad on student malingerers.

 and

In “Sleepy Lagoon” case in Los Angeles, 17 Mexican-Americans are wrongly convicted of murder; convictions will be overturned in October 1944.

The wrongfully convicted upon being released.

I vaguely recall this story featuring in the movie Zoot Suit.

Tuesday August 9, 1921. Skylines, Swearing Ins and Disasters.

Los Angeles skyline, August 9, 1921

Rif forces took Monte Arruit after a negotiated surrender.  For reasons that remain unclear, including confusion or just a disobeying of orders, the Riffians then killed all about 400 to 500 of the 2,000 prisoners, keeping those who remained for bargaining purposes.

Charles R. Forbes was sworn in as the head of the U.S. Veterans Bureau.

The Scottish born Forbes had an unusual personal history and should have been suitable for his appointed role.  He had joined the Marine Corps as a musician at age 16.  Upon leaving the Marines, he attended university and graduated with a degree in engineering.  In spite of that, however, he then enlisted in the Army in 1900 at age 22, overcoming an early charge of being AWOL at one point early in his service to leave the Army as a Sergeant First Class in 1908.  He entered the Army again in 1917 and was a Lt. Col. by the end of his World War One service.

His period of leadership of the Veterans Bureau was marked by corruption and his divorce from his wife, who accused him of neglect.  He didn't finish his full term and resigned in 1923.  He was charged due to his activities with crimes which lead to a conviction, and an eight-month period of incarceration in Leavenworth.

Saturday, June 25, 1921. Peace feelers.

 

On this day in 1921, Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent an invitation to Eamon de Valera, putative president of the self declared Republic of Ireland, to discuss peace.  De Valera would accept the following day.

Oil production commenced in the Los Angeles Basin.

Perry Mason, Season 1.

I have no first hand recollection of the Perry Mason television show which ran from 1957 to 1966.  of course, when it went off the air in 1966, I was three years old.  Still, I know that it ran in syndicated reruns but I never watched it for more than a few minutes, and it always appeared rather boring.  To a kid, it probably would have been.  I didn't know until recently that the Mason character was based on a series of books that first came out in 1933.

I know that now as HBO has put out a new Perry Mason series that just premiered this year.  This entry is a review of that series, not the television series.

Still, because the television series is so famous, it's not really possible to deal with the new HBO series without dealing with the tv series, and indeed, the HBO series basically acknowledges that.  Taking off before the legendary Los Angeles trial lawyer's career is supposed to have started, Mason is uniquely suited for this treatment as apparently lawyer, turned author, Earl Stanley Gardner, never bothered to fill in the background details of his character.  In very early novels, apparently, some slight clues to Mason's past were inserted, but that's about it.  In later ones, people just took it for granted that Mason was a solo practitioner super trial lawyer with a strong investigative streak and didn't look for more.

If that seems odd, modern television shows often don't offer more than that either.  Some do, but many do not.

Anyhow, there were a huge number of Perry Mason novels written by Gardner, followed by movies, and then ultimately the television series, all set in the time in which they were written or filmed.

HBO's series takes the opposite approach, putting the character back into the early 1930s in the depth of the Great Depression, just as prohibition is about to end, and introduces us to a disaffected, not yet lawyer, Mason played by Matthew Rhys.  It's done brilliantly.

Rhy's Mason isn't yet the super lawyer.  Rather, he's a Depression era dairy farmer turned private detective.  He's also way down on his luck. An air strip is crowding his farm, which is down to two cows.  His family has left him.  He's a heavy drinker who has a "blue discharge" (a discharge that simply discharged from the service, usually given due to morals charges that weren't developed) from the Army in World War One.  He's suffering from PTSD, as we'd now term it, and early on we learn why.

He's working for an elderly Los Angeles lawyer who has practiced a bit beyond his mental acuity who is assisted by an extremely able Della Street (Juliet Rylance).  The series takes us to a complicated story involving the kidnapping and murder of an infant in which the mother is accused.  I'll not get into the plot beyond that except to note that the plot informs us on how Mason becomes a lawyer.  

The entire season one (there will not be at least a season two) is excellently done. The plot is extraordinarily complicated but not so much that it's impossible to follow.  Fans of Foyle's War will find a similar approach in that regard except that the pacing is blisteringly fast (I actually had to watch a couple of the episodes twice in order to figure out what was going on with all of them).  Like Foyle's War the series has a sense of reality about it which is achieved in part by either making reference to actual events of the time.  The Ludlow Massacre is a frequent and surprising reference. The Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany) subplot draws loosely on an actual California female evangelist of the period.  A fan of history will catch these references but the non student of history doesn't need to know of them to view the series. Still, such details is unusual and captivating for a history fan.

One thing that I should note is that, like Babylon Berlin, set in a similar time period (1920s Germany) the HBO series isn't shy about nudity at all, and likewise it's really gritty in its portrayal.  Prostitution is a feature of both series but in Perry Mason its given a really dark unattractive edge it deserves.  Indeed, while nudity and sexual portrayals occur throughout the film, much of the nudity in Perry Mason is far from erotic.  Parents, however, should be cautious and likely not let younger people watch the series.

On material details, the show is excellent.  The early 1930s, which is a lot of ways harkened back to the late 1920s, is well depicted and no errors were detected.  The racism of the period is well dealt with.  

An oddity of the show, although not an enormous distraction in it, is the unusual focus on homosexuality.  Della Street, who appeared in the television series as Mason's assistant, shows up in this series as well, in her early days as the assistant of E. B. Jonathan, the older lawyer that Mason is working for.  In the television series viewers were always left wondering if there was a romantic relationship between Street and Mason that was just under the surface, and viewers here might somewhat wonder if that's a possibility in future episodes as well, but here Street's character is really developed and we learn that she's a well educated woman in a homosexual relationship with another woman.  The story line isn't necessary for the plot, but it isn't a huge distraction either.  We also learn, however, that Mason has a "blue discharge" from the Army, in which he was a World War One era captain, and it's hinted at that it was for a homosexual act, although we know that he's been married and has a son.  We also learn in the series that Ivy League educated future District Attorney (he's an Assistant DA here) is also a homosexual.

The list of characters above does indicate, we should note, that fans of the 1950s/60s television who will recognize some characters, but they may not be identically portrayed.  Street, in this HBO series, may be on her way to becoming a lawyer.  Burger is on his way to becoming the DA.  Paul Drake was apparently an investigator for Mason in the series, and we are introduced to him here, but he's an African American in the HBO series, which is critical to the plot.

Probably the only thing that the series could be criticized for is a loose treatment of courtroom procedure from time to time (but not consistently), but all in all, it actually does better with that than most legal dramas.

The Aerodrome: Grousing over an airport name. John Wayne Airport...

The Aerodrome: Grousing over an airport name. John Wayne Airport...:

Grousing over an airport name. John Wayne Airport, Orange County, California

Let me start off by noting that I'm not really a John Wayne fan.

I'm not a John Wayne anti fan either.

As I've stated on one of our other blogs, I don't really get hero worship in regard to actors and actresses, or other entertainers.  I don't expect actors in particular to reflect the characters they portray in any fashion whatsoever.  Many, I'm sure, are the very antithesis of the characters they portray and as a general rule, actors and actresses (which I'll henceforth condense into "actors") are among the most screwed up demographic that exists.*  This doesn't apply to all of them, by any means, but as a demographic they're genuinely pushing the envelope on odd and I've sometimes wondered, indeed I'm convinced, that quite a few actors take up that occupation to compensate for not feeling real, and then go on to adopt the cause de jour to try to give meaning to lives that otherwise lack them.

Now, I'm not saying that any of that applies to John Wayne.  Wayne came up in the days of acting when a lot of early actors actually came into it through some other movie industry role.  In Wayne's case he was an actor in Hollywood from the start, following a (fairly rare at the time) college career in which he played football.

I frankly don't think that Wayne was the greatest actor in the world either, or although I also think that he was a better actor than his detractors would have it.  His greatest role was in the John Ford film The Searchers, in which he doesn't play to type at all.  His portrayals in the John Ford Cavalry Trilogy films, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Sands of Iwo Jima, and The Cowboys are all also excellent.  His late film The Green Berets, in contrast, is horrifically bad and I don't even think Stagecoach, which is widely beloved and celebrated, is all that good.  So my views are mixed.

Just because Wayne played a military man in a host of films in which all the portrayals were heroic doesn't make him a military man.  When his time came, during World War Two, Wayne agonized over joining the service and didn't. His career was just taking off and he worried about serving wrecking that.  He made, in my view, the improper choice.**

I know that his defenders here will cite a football injury but I just don't believe it.  By the end of the Second World war American manpower was in such short supply that men were taken into the Army who were basically blind in one eye and had border line mental psychosis.  With Wayne's connections, even if he had an injury, he could have gotten in.

So with all of that, I just regard actor John Wayne as an actor.  He had some admirable qualities to be sure.  He was apparently personally courageous in confrontation and even waded into a group of Vietnam War protesters to quiet them when he was somewhere with Jimmy Stewart, whose son had just been killed in Vietnam.*** That took guts.

Anyhow, I think it's silly in the first place that Orange County renamed their airport after John Wayne in 1979.  I wouldn't have done that. 

Indeed, I think airports that are named after people, generally ought to be named after somebody of significance, and I don't place actors in that category.  It makes no more sense, in my view, for Orange County to have renamed their former military field after John Wayne (indeed, there's some ironies in that) than it would make for the Port of Port Arthur, Texas to rename that facility Janis Joplin Port.  Indeed, the latter example might make more sense as Janis Joplin was actually from Port Arthur.

Port Arthur, Texas.  Should it be renamed Port Janis Joplin?

Indeed, if there was a desire to name the airport after a movie industry figure with a real role in aviation, it would have been Howard Hughes Airport.****

But that's impossible to imagine.

Anyhow, I also think it's silly that the Los Angeles Times has started a debate over renaming it, which they recently did with this item by columnist Michale Hitzik:

Column: It’s time to take John Wayne’s name off the Orange County airport

Most people familiar with the life story of John Wayne are aware that the late movie star was a dyed-in-the-wool right-winger — after all, he was still making a movie glorifying America’s conduct of the Vietnam War (“The Green Berets,” 1968) well after the country had begun to get sick of the conflict.But the resurrection of a 1971 interview Wayne gave to Playboy magazine has underscored the sheer crudeness of the actor’s feelings about gay people, black people, Native Americans, young people and liberals.This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s impossible or immoral to enjoy westerns and war movies starring John Wayne; that’s a personal choice. But it certainly undermines any justification for his name and image to adorn a civic facility.

Okay, anyone familiar with John Wayne is likely already familiar with his 1971 interview with the pedophilic, pornographic smut magazine Playboy.   1971 was about the high water mark of the detestable Hugh Hefner's objectification of women, although we certainly haven't recovered from that, and part of its cover for barely disguised misogynistic pedophilia was to run serious interviews with people.  Next to Wayne's perhaps the most famous one came out a few years later when then Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter was so unwise as to allow himself to be interviewed by the rag.

Wayne's interview became famous, or perhaps more accurately infamous, due questions asked of him in the rag regarding race and other matters.  Wayne didn't hold back on his views on various things in the magazine at all.  The columnist repeated some of them in his article, in order to make his point.  And indeed, Wayne made comments about homosexuals (Hitzik uses the term "Gay people", which isn't how I think they'd probably prefer to be referred to in this context), blacks and Indians.

We might note here from the onset that it's always baffled me why anyone cares what actors think about anything at all, and for that matter, any category of entertainer. Actors act.  They aren't those real people.  Who cares what they really think on any societal issue? And if people feel that's an excuse for excusing Wayne's comments, which I'm not going to do, I'll note that this extends out to every single topic that people ask actors to comment on. Whatever it is, if you are for it or against it, there's some actor you can get to comment on it, but why?

Anyhow, as we're opining on this, we'll take a look at Wayne's comments as well, although not in the order that Hitzik did, which probably wouldn't do them justice in context, and which isn't what made them initially controversial, which in fact they initially were.  More on that in a moment.

Usually, you only hear about his comments on blacks, which were:

WAYNE: With a lot of blacks, there’s quite a bit of resentment along with their dissent, and possibly rightfully so. But we can’t all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people. 

PLAYBOY: Are you equipped to judge which blacks are irresponsible and which of their leaders inexperienced? 

WAYNE: It’s not my judgment. The academic community has developed certain tests that determine whether the blacks are sufficiently equipped scholastically. But some blacks have tried to force the issue and enter college when they haven’t passed the tests and don’t have the requisite background. … But if they aren’t academically ready for that step, I don’t think they should be allowed in. Otherwise, the academic society is brought down to the lowest common denominator. … What good would it do to register anybody in a class of higher algebra or calculus if they haven’t learned to count? There has to be a standard. …I think the Hollywood studios are carrying their tokenism a little too far. There’s no doubt that 10 percent of the population is black, or colored, or whatever they want to call themselves; they certainly aren’t Caucasian. Anyway, I suppose there should be the same percentage of the colored race in films as in society. But it can’t always be that way. There isn’t necessarily going to be 10 percent of the grips or sound men who are black, because more than likely, 10 percent haven’t trained themselves for that type of work.

Wayne was out to lunch in his comments and most particularly in his "white supremacy until the blacks are educated to the point of responsibility". These came in 1971.  But they aren't unusual for the time.  Indeed, because they weren't unusual, blacks of the era reacted less than a person might suspect, much less, as they were used to such arguments being advanced.  Today the opposite is very much true, and no wonder.

They were clearly racist and a person who stated them held undoubtedly racist views.  No doubt about it. And the old line about educating them up until . . was as old as the sun.  Indeed, it dates back to slavery.  No doubt in 1971 the percentage of college educated blacks was lower than it is now, but the overall American population in general was less educated in 1971.  It wasn't until after World War Two that high school graduation became an absolute norm and college education became societaly common.  The comment was absurd.

It's usually pointed out that Wayne personally had good relationships with black actors of his era, but that's hardly a defense to this.  A person being personally nice to people he's biased against doesn't make him unbiased.  Wayne was living in the past with these arguments, which were never valid, but that's part of the point.  A lot of Americans of that era were and these views were surprisingly common.  That's not a defense, it's just a fact.  The politics of the early 1970s still reflected this.

Indeed, Wayne's interview is just two years prior to Lynrd Skinner releasing Sweet Home Alabama, which is a reaction to Neil Young's Southern Man.  Almost nobody considers this, but Sweet Home Alabama excuses the same sort of views, with the lyrics noting that they hadn't supported Wallace for Governor of Alabama but that a Southern Man didn't need Neil Young around.  That's very close to the same view, as what the Playboy interviewer was suggesting was the view that most Americans had but still had to argue, the time for waiting was over.

Put more bluntly, Sweet Home Alabama is also subtly racist.  Consider the lyrics:

Well I heard Mister Young sing about her

Well I heard old Neil put her down

Well, I hope Neil Young will remember

A southern man don't need him around anyhow

That's also a "we can take care of it" type of excuse, quite frankly.  But nobody gets too up and arms about the song and there's even been a movie in recent years that took its title from it.

Maybe they should.

Do these statements make Wayne a racist?  Yes, but in the very common society wide manner of the era.  That's not a defense to it, but it's also not a reason for the Los Angeles Times to reverse Orange County's 1979 decision.

It might have been a reason not to name the airport after Wayne in 1979, but a better reason not to name it after him is that he was an actor, and an actor with no connection to aviation.

Well, maybe the other things that Wayne said are.  Let's take a look at them, going next to his comments about Indians.

PLAYBOY: For years American Indians have played an important — if subordinate — role in your Westerns. Do you feel any empathy with them? 

WAYNE: I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that’s what you’re asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves. … 

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about the government grant for a university and cultural center that these Indians [then encamped on Alcatraz Island] have demanded as “reparations”? 

WAYNE: What happened between their forefathers and our forefathers is so far back — right, wrong or indifferent — that I don’t see why we owe them anything. I don’t know why the government should give them something that it wouldn’t give me. 

PLAYBOY: Do you think they’ve had the same advantages and opportunities that you’ve had? 

WAYNE: I’m not gonna give you one of those I-was-a-poor-boy-and-I-pulled-myself-upby-my-bootstraps stories, but I’ve gone without a meal or two in my life, and I still don’t expect the government to turn over any of its territory to me. Hard times aren’t something I can blame my fellow citizens for. Years ago, I didn’t have all the opportunities, either. But you can’t whine and bellyache ‘cause somebody else got a good break and you didn’t, like these Indians are. We’ll all be on a reservation soon if the socialists keep subsidizing groups like them with our tax money.

Shocking?

Yes, for sure.

Be that as it may, I still find plenty of people who, if you really know them, hold a basically similar view, and it was only in the 1960s that any other sort of view became widely held.

Indeed, the first time I heard it suggested that European Americans "stole" Indian lands was in the 1970s, when I was a kid and overheard it as part of a silent third party between my father and a colleague. The colleague mentioned that off hand.  This comment really surprised me at the time and I later asked my father if a theft had really happened.

He answered no, but his view was really more nuanced than that in that he regarded the pre 20th Century clash of cultures as inevitable, which is different from giving it virtue.  Plenty of people gave it virtue.  In my grade school library at the time I recall there was a book on Custer I read, written I think in the 1950s, that was practically a hagiography.  That sort of view had been extremely common into the 1960s and while there were those who swam against that current the entire time, it wasn't really until people like Mari Sandoz began to publish that there was any sort of wider reconsideration. By the 1960s the reconsideration had become widespread and was part of the era, and Indian activist movements developed and were in the news.

Wayne was still an active actor in the 1970s, to be sure.  Perhaps his most famous movie, The Cowboys, was yet to come, being released the year after this interview in 1972.  The interview obviously didn't impact his popularity much, if at all.  But here its important to remember that he was really an actor from the 40s and 50s who was the exception to the rule as he managed to age into later roles in the 60s and 70s.  By the late 60s his movies themselves, with the exception of The Cowboys, seemed to look back and Wayne was on record as hating some later Westerns, such as The Wild Bunch.  1971's movie, Big Jake, which I like, very much has that sense to it, amplified by the fact that it is itself a fin de siecle movie.  Coming after Peckinpah's violent masterpiece, the latter film seems to be from a much earlier era.

It isn't surprising, therefore, that Wayne's views were completely anachronistic.  Playboy likely knew that, and so Wayne was set up to look like a fool. Playboy itself is now a creepy anachronism and its only a matter of time until the Me Too era blows up all over it.  Unfortunately the creep who created it is dead and won't be round to take the brunt of the inevitably coming blows.

So Wayne also talked about homosexuals in his interview, which the Los Angeles Times refers to as "Gay people".  The term "gay" actually has, or at least had, a distinct meaning within the homosexual community and traditionally not all homosexuals have identified with it even if they identify as homosexual.  In this instance, therefore, the columnist himself shows himself to be insensitive an uninformed.

Wayne: Movies were once made for the whole family. Now, with the kind of junk the studios are cranking out. … I’m quite sure that within two or three years, Americans will be completely fed up with these perverted films. 

PLAYBOY: What kind of films do you consider perverted? 

WAYNE: Oh, Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy — that kind of thing. Wouldn’t you say that the wonderful love of those two men in Midnight Cowboy, a story about two fags, qualifies?

I've never seen Midnight Cowboy and I don't intend to.  Wayne isn't alone in his view that it was "perverted" however and there are still those who regard the film as debased.  It was an X Rated film at the time and won an Academy Award, the first film (and maybe the only film) in that category to win one.  It came just after Hollywood abandoned the Hayes Production Code which resulted in an explosion of movies pushing the limits on depictions which indeed did result in a downward descent in what was portrayed on the screen which really hasn't ended.  1966's Best Picture went to The Sound of Music, 1967's to A Man For All Seasons, 1968's to In the Heat Of the Night, 1969 to Oliver!, and then 1970's to Midnight Cowboy.  No matter what you think of any one of those films, the 1970 award reflects some sort of shift in what was being portrayed in film.  For somebody who started making films in the 1930s, the shift would have been obvious and titanic.  Indeed, very early in the early history of film the direction was going the opposite way.

The real shocker in this comment is the use of the slur "fags".  That's an epitaph and in insulting one, and it was at the time.  Now use of that term would destroy an actors career.  Coming in 1971, however, it didn't.  That probably says something about the times.

1971 was two years after the Stonebridge Riots in New York, but it was also a time of massive social unrest.  Homosexuality may have come a bit more out in the open with the riots, but it certainly wasn't open.  Indeed, that would take at least another twenty years.  Wayne's views were probably the societal norm at the time, including a norm that was held by many others who people would regard as very liberal.  Indeed, the accusation that somebody was a homosexual was libel per se in the law and was commonly used as a smear against figures of the right and left by their enemies. 

The Los Angeles Times has been met with all of these criticisms but is sticking to its guns.  It's noted that the civil rights "revolution" had been going on for years at the time that these statements were made, which is true.  But that they were going on is different from claiming they'd been completed.  In reality they'd been gong on to some degree since the Civil War, and yet it's probable that a review of the LA Times from various years would find shocking examples of views that we'd find absolutely appalling today.  I'd be curious, for example, what its view as on Asian immigration to California?  The Times itself has acknowledged that its view on Japanese internment during World War Two was "shameful".

The Times is correct that his view was in the nature of "reacting" to the developments of the Civil Rights Era.  They were, and they were wrong.  Indeed, we might go further and hold them to be reactionary.  But they were apparently not shocking enough to keep the airport from being named for him when it was in 1979.  And they weren't so shocking to people to keep them away from The Cowboys the following year and a handful of final big films he made in the next eight years prior to his death.

In something like this, it's always popular to say "we've come a long ways", when often we really haven't.  The airport has its own problems and the naming of it after an actor in the first place is probably among the very least of them.  If anything, the naming demonstrates the vapidness of California, which takes itself very seriously on everything but which strikes many elsewhere as constantly goofy.  Celebrating an actor through the naming of an airport is just part of that.  Renaming it would likely turn into an equally odd act if not a downright circus.  Maybe if nothing else, this serves to focus on that.

If it were to be renamed, perhaps it might be time to actually consider that the figures of actors are poorly presented for anything serious.  The Times columnist suggests naming the field after guitar figure Leo Fender.  I don't know anything about Mr. Fender, but his guitars are great.  Having said that, that doesn't have anything to do with aviation.

Lots of other aviation figures who played a role in California do, however.  The Lockheeds, Donald Douglas, Glenn Martin. . .



and even Howard Hughes.

_________________________________________________________________________________



*Anyone who follows actors and actresses biographies at all can't help not only to be appalled, but also note how often their personal lives grossly depart from the people they portray.  Actresses playing nuns don't live chaste lives personally, cowboy actors who play rugged frontier individualist might very well be the polar opposite, and so on.



Occasionally the opposite is the case, but so occasionally its' often a surprise when you lean of it.



**This is noted in the LA Times op ed I'll refer to below, FWIW.



***This is omitted in the LA Times article, but it was genuinely courageous.  That courage shows how people are often very mixed in their actual characters. When it was time to serve his country, Wayne didn't. But when a friend was under a type of assault, he intervened when he didn't have to.



Wayne struggled with certain deep personal convictions his entire life, it should be noted.  Exposed to Catholicism through director John Ford, he flirted with becoming Catholic his entire life, and ultimately did, but in his final illness.  Nonetheless, he was a frequent attendee at Mass for decades prior to that.



****Hughes, of course, was not only an early movie producer, but a giant for many years in the aviation industry.



Wayne did appear in a number of aviation related films, although I hardly think that qualifies you to have an airport named after you, and that's not in fact why it was.  He lived as an actor in the community that is just outside this airport.  Ironically, complaints from the community about the airport are constant.



Those Wayne films include the following, which I think is an inclusive list, but very well may not be.



Central Airport. (1933).


His role in this film was uncredited.  He played a co-pilot.  Until making this list, I'd never even heard of this 1933 film.



Flying Tigers (1942).



This film is famous, but in the bad category in my view.  It's about the famous American Volunteer Group of mercenary pilots that flew P40s, with the American government's blessing, in support of the Chinese Nationalist prior to the American entry into World War Two (after Pearl Harbor the unit was converted into an American Army Air Corps unit).



I'm surprised that its cartoonish portrayal of the Chinese and Japanese didn't make the LA Times op ed.  It's a typical World War Two film and is one of several in which, contrary to the myth, John Wayne's character dies.



Flying Leathernecks (1951).



This is a famous film, but I've never seen it.  It concerns a Marine Corps squadron at Guadalcanal.



I've often been surprised that Wayne's roles portraying military heroes carried on after World War Two, in which he did not serve. But in fact, most of those roles actually came after the war, and they started during the war.



Island In The Sky (1953).


Island in the sky is about a DC-3 that crashes in the Canadian wilds.  It's an excellent movie.



The High and The Mighty (1954)


The High and the Mighty was a groundbreaking film in that it was the first of a type, the on board air disaster type.  It follows the crew and the passengers that are on a plane that's failing as they crew struggles to bring the plane in safely  It's the first of its kind, and is very well done.



Wayne's aging makes an appearance here as he's cast as an aging co pilot, side lined because of his age, whose experience wars against the younger pilots education in his craft.


The Wings Of Eagles (1957)


This film is the biography of Naval aviator Frank "Sprig" Wead, an early figure in naval aviation who was severely injured in an aircraft accident.  I've seen part, but not all, of this film.



Jet Pilot (1957)


Jet Pilot is a terrible film that can only be explained by the Hollywood studio system of the time, which also explains the shear volume of the films that anyone actor made as well. In 1957 Wayne made, for example, three films.



This film was made the year after his greatest film, The Searchers, and only his being a captive of the studio could explain his being in this Cold War dog about improbable spy craft and a romance with a female Russian pilot.



The Longest Day (1962).



In this great World War Two film based on the book by Cornelius Ryan, Wayne plays airborne office Lt. Col. Jim Vandervoot.



This isn't really an aviation picture, but I've included it here as Vandervoot was a real person, of course, and a paratrooper.  To that extent, the film involved aviation.



This is a great film, but Wayne is far too old in the film for the role he occupies in it.

Mid Week at Work: Female Life Guards, Los Angeles Califorina

Venice Beach Life Guards.  No date, but probably around World War One.

Women from Los Angeles, hiking. 1915

Note all the walking sticks and the footgear.

Movies in history: Devil In A Blue Dress

There got to be enough movies that are reviewed here, in a historical context, that I began to forget which ones I had done, so I added a new page on Movies In History.  In doing that, I saw a few movies that should be added here that I've failed to include.

One of these movies is the excellent 1995 movie Devil in  Blue Dress.  Based on a novel by Walter Mosley, the film stars Denzel Washington as Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins. a recently discharged black Army veteran from World War Two.  Out of work and living in Los Angeles, Rawlins takes work as a detective trying to locate a mysterious woman who is connected with two rival politicians.

Excellently done, the story presents a really nice look at the world of African Americans in the late 1940s, a time at which they were following up on a World War Two migration out of the south and into various cities. Rawlins is shown living in a black middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles that is obviously new to him, having relocated after the war to Los Angeles from his native Houston Texas.  Most of the residents of his neighborhood are blacks who are similarly from Texas.

The material and cultural details of this film are superbly done.  Everything is period correct, including the attitudes towards blacks in this less racist, but racist still, region of the country, compared to where the residents of the neighborhood are from.

Explaining the movie in greater details would entail plot spoilers, so I'll leave it at that.  Suffice it to say, this film is excellently done.  For that matter, the story is a very good one and it's a shame that this character hasn't returned to film.

Friday, January 9, 1914. Public Defenders.

Los Angeles County, California, opened the first Public Defenders Office.  An institution now, they really haven't been around that long.