Sources of info for 50s Los Angeles

[Olgar Shiverstone]

American Graffitti

Rebel Without a Cause

Though you'll have to add a Spanish Accent.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Organized crime is king. Street gangs are still basically just bored boys.

Everyone loves Lucy - 70% of America gets in front of a TV to watch the latest episode - which kinda makes you wonder just how big the supposed big contriversy of the show was.

Everyone who isn't highly religious smokes cigerettes. Cigerettes are available for sale to minors - they often have baseball cards packaged with them.

This is useful stuff to me

Organised crime - if I understand, LA wasn't a stronghold like, say, Chicago or New York, right? It was basically just Mickey Cohen?

What was the Lucy Controversy?

-Hyp.

 

[Hypersmurf]

So on the fiction front, 'Read Ellroy' is a good start?

I'll try grabbing Mulholland Falls out, as well.

Rebel Without A Cause - believe it or not, I've never seen it, but the synopsis sounds promising. American Graffiti is set a decade later, isn't it?

-Hyp.

 

[hong]

No colour TV, so everything was black and white.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Organised crime - if I understand, LA wasn't a stronghold like, say, Chicago or New York, right? It was basically just Mickey Cohen?

Seems like Jack Dragna controlled the Los Angeles scene by the mid-Fifties - when Mickey Cohen was in prison. He died in 1956 - either of suicide or natural causes - and Frank DeSimone took over. He was arrested at the Appalachin conference the next year, but stayed in power until 1967 when he died of a heart attack. DeSimone was the uncle of Tommy DeSimone, the inspiration for Joe Pesci's character (Tommy DeVito) in Goodfellas.

One good source for the L.A. organised crime scene in the 1950s is Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno's book The Last Mafioso, written with Ovid Demaris and apparently out of print - but you can get it through Amazon.

I've read part of it and Fratianno is mentioned in Ellroy's later novels - he ascribes a killing committed by Fratianno to one of his main characters, Dave Klein (in White Jazz), and later in The Cold Six Thousand another character comments that the murder was either committed by Fratianno or Klein.

 

[Relique du Madde]

There was Racism lots of it. Hispanics had to deal with the INS's Opperation Wet-Back (and yes, that WAS the name of the opperation) in 1954 which was reaction to growing population if illegal immagrants from Mexico which lead to the forceful deportation of about 100,000 imigrants, and the departure of about 500,000 - 700,000 mexicans who feared persecution from the INS.

 

[Hypersmurf]

There was Racism lots of it. Hispanics had to deal with the INS's Opperation Wet-Back (and yes, that WAS the name of the opperation) in 1954 which was reaction to growing population if illegal immagrants from Mexico which lead to the forceful deportation of about 100,000 imigrants, and the departure of about 500,000 - 700,000 mexicans who feared persecution from the INS.

Ooh - yeah, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm after. It looks like the game will be set somewhere in the leadup to this - so Eisenhower will have just been elected, and I guess there'll be rumours about what he and Swing have planned... a climate of uncertainty and worry.

Thanks!

-Hyp.

 

[Gilladian]

If possible, see if you can get access to Sanborn Maps from an online database company called Proquest. These were fire insurance maps of cities done from the 1890's up through the 1950's. They show TONS of detail on city business districts (right down to where fire extinguishers were located and what businesses stored flammable chemicals).

Many university and public libraries have subscriptions at least to their state's maps. Possibly a friend could print some for you if you don't have access yourself.

Proquest also has a database called Heritage Quest that focuses on publishing family and community history texts online - keyword searchable! I'd imagine that could turn up some very interesting source material.

Finally, I'd suggest trying the Library of Congress (especially the American Memory project) at www.loc.gov. They have a wealth of primary source material on American History and much of it has been digitised (I'll never forget finding an image of a menu from a civil-war era steam paddleboat on the Mississippi River - really cool!)

Hope this helps!

PS - I'm a Librarian, so I hope I didn't go overboard in my natural enthusiasm for assisting with research.

 

[Hypersmurf]

So, the 38th Street Gang and the Maravilla are around, but the Mexican Mafia doesn't eventuate until '55; most gang violence is fists, knives, and clubs, not firearms.

East LA has tight-knit communities and barrios, where most people know each other and outsiders are regarded with suspicion.

Caló is used, but isn't as prevalent as it will later become.

-Hyp.

 

[Celebrim]

Organised crime - if I understand, LA wasn't a stronghold like, say, Chicago or New York, right? It was basically just Mickey Cohen?

Mickey Cohen was with the Los Vegas mob under Bugsy Seigel. Jack Dragna led operations in Los Angeles during the period in question. When I say that organized crime was king, I meant it. The combination of the Jewish, Irish, and (most famously) Italian mafia controlled most any criminal activity that was profitable anywhere in the US.

What was the Lucy Controversy?

-Hyp.

It's mostly invented. This will border on the political, but I have to explain a little quirk of American character at the moment to explain. In the post racist environment, racism is such a venal sin and its opposite such a virtue, that if you want to suggest that anything or anyone is 'good' in some fashion you have to praise it for opposing racism, in thereby in the process racism gets invented where it didn't really have much influence. In this case, its largely invented that the 'I Love Lucy' show was extremely contriversal because Lucy was married to a Cuban (Desi Arnez). I'm sure it bothered someone somewhere, but it must not have bothered many people or at least none with TV's. Similarly, I've heard it said that Lucy's character - which is in many ways a sterotyped air-headed female - was somehow stereotype shattering because she wasn't demure and modest or something - this I think just so as to have something good to say about Lucille Ball as if she needed something invented. Again, this is why you have to go back to the newspapers of the time and not trust the retroactive myth built around the show.