Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is CITY OF FEAR starring Vince Edwards, John Archer, Patricia Blair, and Steven Ritch. In 1961 Vince Edwards hit the small screen as doctor Ben Casey.
Strictly speaking this isn’t a film noir (see below description from TCM). I think of this as apocalypse noir. Is that a thing? Anyway, that said, I don’t think you’ll mind too much. It is a wonderful copy, and there is some glorious footage of SoCal from the late 1950s.
Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
A low-budget programmer from Columbia Pictures, the crime thriller City of Fear (1959) is sometimes classified as a Film Noir, although it is probably too conventionally executed and arrives a bit too late to be considered a part of the Noir cycle.
The plot is promising enough. At the San Quentin Federal Penitentiary, convict Vince Ryker (Vince Edwards) and a fellow inmate make an escape after stabbing a physician and stealing an ambulance. Upon his escape, Ryker grabs a metal container that he believes contains a large and valuable amount of heroin. In disguise and with a different car, Ryker approaches Los Angeles in hopes of selling the drugs. The police know that Ryker is in the city he has killed his fellow escapee and the body has been discovered.
Chief Jensen (Lyle Talbot) and Lt. Mark Richards (John Archer) consult with Dr. John Wallace (Steven Ritch) about the stolen materials in the criminal’s possession. In a surprising revelation, Wallace identifies it as Cobalt 60 a deadly radioactive material that slowly poisons those who are exposed for long periods to the container, and that if the container were to be opened, thousands in the Los Angeles may die.
Johnny Hawkins had the college sports career one can only dream of. He was a gridiron hero who was equally skilled at basketball and baseball. During the 1924 season, Hawkins was quarterback and captain of USC’s football team.
Despite his sports successes, Hawkins found the transition from Big Man on Campus to Joe Everyman a difficult one. Following his graduation from USC, he bounced from job to job.
By 1926, Johnny had settled into a career as head coach the South Pasadena military school, the Oneonta Academy. It thrilled Oneonta to have Hawkins on their coaching staff. They were so proud they took out a half-page ad in the L.A. Times to announce his hiring. But Hawkins’ career took a downturn that same year when the Hollywood Generals, a Pacific Coast Football League team he organized and played with, failed.
The death knell for Johnny’s post-college dreams of success came on an evening in mid-June 1928 when he was busted in the home of Earl Burtnett, leader of the Biltmore orchestra.
Clarence Thomas, a houseboy at the Burtnett home on South Catalina Street, spied a man entering the rear door of the house and promptly called the law.
LAPD Detective Lieutenants Steed, Green, and Mole of Wilshire Division answered the call and found Hawkins sitting in the living room listening to the radio.
Portrait of Earl Burtnett, director of the famous Los Angeles Biltmore. Photograph dated February 16, 1929. [Photo courtesy of LAPL]
Hawkins wasn’t a hardened criminal, and he confessed to dozens of burglaries. He told his interrogators that he desperately needed to raise money because his recent career as a real estate salesman had gone to pieces and his wife, Thelma (his college sweetheart), needed major surgery.
Hawkins said,
“I know I’ve got it coming to me, but what torments me the most is the thought of my family and my wife’s family. I was driven to desperation by financial troubles.”
Johnny was with his parents in their Fullerton home while his wife was in Vancouver, Washington, for treatment. He said he waited night after night until his parents were in bed before going out to commit the burglaries, then returned home to stash the loot in their attic.
Police valued the recovered property at more than $35,000 ($622,482.16 in 2023 USD). It surprised them that Hawkins had stolen such a hodgepodge of high and low dollar items, including furs, old silverware, gowns, blankets, percolators, typewriters, lingerie, and jewelry.
According to Johnny, he never carried a weapon, a fact borne out by the arresting officers. Johnny had a flashlight, jimmy, ice pick, pass keys, and was wearing white gloves when the police found him in the Burtnett home.
It was strange enough that the football idol had perpetrated a series of at least 25 residential burglaries, but it was stranger still that never attempted to dispose of the loot. He purportedly committed the thefts for a few months, but all the items, except a suitcase full of “presents” for his wife, were traced.
If he was in dire need of cash, as he’d said, then why didn’t he borrow money from his folks or his in-laws? Perhaps the former gridiron star was too proud to ask for help. The alternative, having his name splashed all over the local newspapers, was even more humiliating.
What was going on with Hawkins? Why would he jeopardize his freedom and his reputation in such a stupid way?
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.
Tonight’s feature is FORCE OF EVIL, starring John Garfield, Marie Windsor, and Beatrice Pearson. Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
Joe Morse, an attorney for racketeer Ben Tucker, realizes that thousands of people select the number “776” in the lotteries on Independence day and conceives of a clever scheme to fix that as the winning number on the Fourth of July, thus bankrupting the numerous numbers banks operating in the city and enabling Tucker to gain a stranglehold on the racket. Joe is motivated by Tucker’s promise to consolidate the new syndicate under his brother Leo’s small-time numbers operation.
NOTE: Per YouTube, portions of this film are blocked due to copyright issues in some countries.
On May 2, 1953, fragments of love letters written by Joyce to Richard during the previous summer when Joyce and her husband Robert were in Alaska, were read aloud in court. Richard told the truth about the existence of the letters.
Did Robert know anything about her affection for his friend? On the witness stand, Robert admitted he knew Joyce had deep feelings for Richard and he had “turned-the-other-cheek.” Joyce said she wrote the letters (26 of them, each at least 20 pages) to cheer Richard up and, “to keep him from committing suicide.” Joyce denied Richard’s claim that he was the father of her unborn child. Joyce responded to his claim, “Hearing that read in court from his confession didn’t surprise me–or Robert, either. We’d read it before. Richard is like that, always imaging things. He’s making all that up.” But was he? He didn’t lie about the letters.
Whether the jurors would hear the contents of the letters was up to Superior Judge Mildred L. Lillie. One important question about the letters was whether they were Joyce wrote them. Had Richard forged or tampered with them? Joyce was sworn in and handed a bundle of letters. She gave them a cursory look and then said that she didn’t think all of them were in her own handwriting. “I’d have to read them all,” she said. “There’s been all kinds of stuff added,” although she finally conceded that “basically” she was the author. Judge Lillie instructed Joyce to go through the letters and delete whatever was not in her handwriting. Then Judge Lillie allowed the letters to be entered into evidence. Maybe the letters would reveal the truth about Joyce and Richard’s relationship.
On June 3, 1952, Joyce wrote to Richard telling him she received two letters which were delayed by a storm. She said she went off by herself to read them. “Anyway, I got to sit down–all by myself–in the ‘Garden’ (we know nothing will grow before we leave) and read them–which made me very happy.” She continued. “The only time I can really be alone is when it’s nice, so I can go outside and at nite after everyone leaves and Robert is asleep. And then I am not only alone but lonely. Richard, don’t worry about if I’ll be interested at least a little bit–I am interested very much in everything you write and do, so make it a problem to write me, just write exactly like you have been and tell me anything or everything you think, do or feel and I’ll be very happy. OK?”
Joyce asked Richard to take the time to sit down and write her a long letter. She wanted to know how he would have planned his life if he had done anything he wanted “from grammar school on.”
On June 6, Joyce wrote, “What I said about all the hours we spent–I didn’t mean wasted. I just was thinking how nice a few of those hours would seem now and it seems like there is so much to be said that could have, but really, I guess it’s like you say, there are better ways of saying things than words. That’s what is lacking because we can use all the ‘words’ we want now — and nothing else! But I do remember, too, surely you expected me to. And it makes me very happy, but I can’t keep from thinking–then what!”
In one of her letters Joyce talked about marriage: “You ask if I would have accepted to marry you–yes, I would and it seems, Richard, that our dreams are very similar.” Joyce signed most of her letters “All My Love.”
Was Joyce in love with Richard? She described her loneliness to him in many of her letters. She may have sought the attention she felt Robert didn’t give her. No matter how sophisticated the situation seemed, it is important to remember that each of the principal players was only 19-years-old. The extreme emotional highs and lows of teenagers are well documented.
Joyce’s denial of loving Richard stung. A Los Angeles Times reporter observed the defendant lower his head when he heard the love of his life testify that once she and Robert arrived home from Alaska, her feelings for Richard changed. “He hung around too much, and he was very moody. I was a little tired of him,” she said.
During the middle of the trial, a note from Joyce to Richard written prior to the 1952 Alaska trip surfaced, and it shed some light on the relationship. Joyce and Robert were married for only a year when Richard confessed his love for Joyce in a letter. Joyce confessed she loved both Robert and Richard, but she felt she was better suited to Robert. She said, “Richard, you and I–I feel are really genuine friends and I feel will always be, even now, but it’s horrible to ruin a beautiful friendship.” She encouraged him to find someone who would make him happy.
What would the jury of eight women and four men make of the case? Was Richard’s testimony that he and Joyce were intimate credible? And what about the suggestion that Joyce, and not Richard, tried to poison Robert?
The jury failed to reach a verdict after the first four hours of deliberation. They returned to the jury room and at last decided Richard’s fate.
They acquitted Richard of attempted murder, but found him guilty of mingling poison with beverages with intent to harm Robert.
When she heard the news, Joyce said, “We are going to try to forget we ever knew Richard.”
EPILOGUE: I always try to find out what happened to the people involved in a criminal case–and this one is no exception. Joyce and Robert’s teenage marriage survived for nearly twenty years before they divorced in 1970. Joyce may have remarried, but I don’t know if Robert did.
Richard LaForce earned a Ph.D. He moved to Modesto in 1986, and died there in 1992 at 58. His obituary names his children, and a brother. No spouse is mentioned, so he was probably divorced or widowed.
Joyce found Richard peering into her refrigerator and he seemed startled when she spoke to him. Joyce couldn’t tell what Richard was doing, but she wasn’t alarmed. Richard visited Joyce and Robert so often that it wasn’t surprising to find him searching the fridge for a snack.
The refrigerator incident took on a more ominous aspect when Joyce and Robert noticed a “funny taste” in their water and milk. Then they recalled how ill Robert became after he and Joyce paid a visit to Richard at Caltech. They didn’t want to think the worst of Richard, but it got harder to believe the best.
Joyce and Robert went to the L.A. County Sheriff’s substation and told the deputies of their suspicions. They brought a bottle of milk with them that they suspected was tainted. Sure enough, an examination of the contents proved that someone had tampered with it.
On February 6, 1953, Sergeant Bert Wood and Detective A.S. Martin sent the couple out for the evening and then waited in the dark outside their home to see if Richard would turn up. He did.
Joyce and Robert routinely left their door unlocked (hey, it was Downey in 1953). The two cops watched Richard let himself in and then waited for him to come out. Sergeant Wood and Detective Martin stopped him as he exited and found two half-pint bottles of arsenic trioxide in his possession. Enough poison, said one investigator, “to kill off a whole town.”
Richard confessed he had put some of the arsenic into a water bottle in the fridge. When asked if he was trying to kill both Joyce and Robert, Richard said no. He knew Robert was the only one to drink from that bottle. He also confessed to poisoning Robert’s soft drink at Caltech and said that he tried at least five times over several weeks to kill Richard.
Why had he tried to poison his friend? He said, “I have always wanted Joyce for my wife and I felt that if my plan to poison Bob was successful, I would have a chance with her.” He continued, “I’ve never been out with any other girl–she’s the only one I loved.” Richard said he had chosen poison to kill Robert, “Because of its convenience.” He could acquire the poisons at school. He admitted that, “It could have been done in a more perfect way, but I got to where I had to do something.”
What made Richard think he had a chance with Joyce at all? According to him, he had visited Joyce many times in her home when Robert was away. He told investigators that he and Joyce had taken long car rides and walks. During their time together, Richard said he and Joyce, “talked a lot about love and marriage.”
On February 10, 1953, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury indicted Richard on two counts of poisoning with intent to kill. Each count carried a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. Joyce and Robert told reporters they bore their former friend no ill will. They felt sorry for him.
Psychiatrists Dr. Frederick J. Hacker and Dr. John A. Mitchell examined Richard. The doctors said they found indications of, “a thinking disorder, in the direction of schizophrenia.” According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “schizophrenia can occur at any age, the average age of onset is in the late teens to the early 20s for men.”
Was Richard schizophrenic? The doctors didn’t offer a firm diagnosis and, despite their concerns, they declared Richard was sane at the time of the poisonings and was sane enough to stand trial.
Interestingly, Dr. Hacker said Richard told him he, “wanted to take suspicion of poisoning attempts from Joyce.” Was Richard falling on his sword to protect his lady love, or was his statement a calculated move to shift blame to Joyce?
By the time his trial began in late April 1953, Richard claimed he and Joyce were having an affair. In fact, he figured that her unborn child had an 80% chance of being his and not Robert’s. In 1953, when DNA tests were decades in the future, a blood test could rule a person in or out, but that was it. No definitive test for paternity.
Joyce vehemently denied that she was romantically involved with Richard. But rumors surfaced that Richard kept over a dozen love letters written to him by Joyce while she and Robert were in Alaska. If the love letters existed, they could turn the case on its head.
NEXT TIME: A few more twists in the Love Poisoner case.
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.
Tonight’s feature is NANCY DREW, DETECTIVE. Sometimes I need some good old-fashioned escapism, and this movie fits the bill. I fancied myself a girl detective back in the day. Honestly, I still have detective aspirations.
TCM says:
Wealthy, elderly Mary Eldredge plans to donate a large sum of money to her alma mater, the Brinwood School for Girls, at which teenager Nancy Drew is a student. She arranges to deliver the check to lawyer Carson Drew, Nancy’s father, at his office the following day, but she does not appear. Hollister, Miss Eldredge’s business manager, explains that she left town suddenly. Nancy, who does not believe that Miss Eldredge would act that way, determines to discover what happened.
Current thinking about the teenage brain is that it’s a work in progress. Intellectually, teens can be a match for adults, but emotionally it is a different story. A teenager’s moods are the emotional equivalent of a world class chanteuse’s five octave range. Teenagers are mercurial. A potentially deadly trait when mixed with a love triangle involving nineteen-year-olds.
Downey residents Richard LaForce, Joyce Salvage, and Robert Hayden had been friends since middle school. During the war years, while they were growing up, the aircraft industry established deep roots in the town and had an enormous impact on the area. The postwar years saw the three friends enter high school and the town’s close ties to the aircraft industry likely resulted in the establishment of an aviation club at Downey High School–Joyce and Robert were both members. Surrounded by engineers and aircraft workers may have inspired Richard’s keen interest in science; with his high IQ (estimated to be 150) he hoped to pursue physics in college.
Robert Hayden (4th from the left, top row), Richard LaForce (far right, top row), Joyce Salvage (5th from the left, middle row).
Physics wasn’t the only thing Richard hoped to pursue into adulthood. He had loved Joyce since they were sixth graders and he hoped that one day they would marry. Was Richard surprised when, on May 12, 1951, at age 17, Joyce and Robert married?
If it shocked or hurt him, he kept his feelings to himself. At least the marriage didn’t end his friendship with the couple. Richard was a frequent guest in the Hayden’s home at 8558 Firestone Boulevard and he could still spend a lot of time with Joyce.
Aviation Club, Downey High School [1950]
The day after Joyce and Robert’s first wedding anniversary, and the day before they were scheduled to depart for a couple of months in Alaska visiting Robert’s older brother George and his sister-in-law, Charlotte, Richard took Joyce to a movie ostensibly at Robert’s request. Joyce and Richard were out together until 4 o’clock in the morning. Suspicious behavior for a married woman, but not so odd for a teenage girl. However, Richard complicated the evening by admitting in a note, just days before, that he loved her. He didn’t plan to act on his declaration of love. He doubted Joyce reciprocated his feelings, but during their evening out, he got the impression that Joyce loved him too. There wasn’t enough time to talk about the change in their relationship before Joyce and Robert left for Alaska.
Richard and Joyce corresponded regularly, some would say obsessively, during her absence. Robert was well aware of the exchange of letters between the friends but seemed unconcerned about them. When Joyce and Robert returned in late 1952, the three friends had quickly reestablished their former routine of spending at least two or three evenings together every week. Because the trio knew each other so well, both Joyce and Robert noticed Richard appeared to be distracted and he seemed to be depressed, but since he hadn’t confided the reasons for his melancholy in either of them, they could only stand by and wait.
A week after Christmas, 1952, Richard invited Joyce and Robert to the Caltech campus, where he was a physics major, for a visit. While there, he suggested they stop for Cokes at a nearby refreshment stand. Robert couldn’t finish his drink. He became violently ill and vomited. Recovering quickly, he resumed his ministerial studies at Whittier College.
In late January, during one of his visits, Joyce found Richard at the refrigerator. He seemed unnerved when she asked him what he was doing.
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.
Tonight’s feature is CONVICTED WOMAN starring, Rochelle Hudson, Frieda Inescort, June Lang, Lola Lane, Glenn Ford, and Iris Meredith.
TCM says:
Jobless Betty Andrews is arrested in a department store and wrongfully accused of theft. Although Mary Ellis, a prominent attorney and social worker, comes to Betty’s defense, she is unable to overcome the circumstantial evidence and Betty is sentenced to one year in the Curtiss Home of Correction. At the reformatory, Betty discovers that chief matron Miss Brackett rules with an iron hand, and that she is aided by inmates “The Duchess,” Frankie Mason, Nita Lavore and other stooges.
At 1:30 p.m. on April 28, 1932, Mrs. Pauline Pohl pushed her hand mower back and forth across her lawn when she heard a shot. A bullet whizzed past her head. She abandoned her yard work and immediately ran into her house. She telephoned the police.
“The woman next door is trying to kill me,” she gasped. “Send somebody, quick!”
While Pauline hunkered down inside her house praying that no further shots would be fired at her, Ella May Thompson, the woman who was trying to kill her, stood in the bathroom of her small frame bungalow, pistol in hand, glaring at Mrs. Pohl’s house. She had fired a shot through her bathroom at the neighbor.
Still gripping the pistol, Thompson whirled around to face Josie Norton the practical nurse who cared for her over the past few months. Ella had a drug addiction and was also diagnosed with an unnamed incurable disease.
“You get out of here…pack your clothes and get out and stay out.”
Norton swiftly complied.
While nurse Norton ran for her life, Radio Officers Paul Donath and Percy Gunby cruised nearby. They received the relayed distress call placed by Mrs. Pohl. They sped to the address on Marsh Street and hurried to the front door of Miss Thompson’s home. Neighbor disputes were no more uncommon in 1932 than they are now. Neighbors can get on each other’s nerves and occasionally violence is the result. Officer Donath jumped out of the patrol car and rushed up to Thompson’s door and rang the bell. Peering through the glass he saw Ella raise her pistol, but he couldn’t move out of the way in time to avoid the bullet that struck him in the chest.
Donath toppled backward from the porch as his partner ran to his side and tugged him across the lawn out of the range of fire. Shooting the policeman didn’t snap Ella to her senses. Far from it. She shouted through the shattered glass in the door.
“That will teach you policemen a lesson not to come to my home without a search warrant.”
Gunby had no choice but to leave his mortally wounded partner on the lawn. He ran into Mrs. Pohl’s house to use her telephone to call for an ambulance and back-up. Within minutes an ambulance arrived and transported Officer Donath to the hospital where he succumbed to his wound a short time later. Right on the heels of the ambulance were dozens of patrol cars which decanted about fifty police and detectives. Captain Rudolph and Inspector Davidson led a squad of men to the side of Thompson’s house.
For over twenty minutes Rudolph and Davidson tried to reason with Ella. They pleaded with her to throw her weapon out into the yard and surrender, but she refused. An enormous crowd gathered to witness the dramatic dénouement. Police received a supply of tear gas bombs and, failing to convince Ella to come out with her hands up, they hurled one through a side window then they pitched two more into the house.
Officers surrounded the house with their guns drawn, and as the gas made its way through the rooms of of her home Ella appeared at the rear door. Again police pleaded with her to surrender, but without warning she suddenly fired three times and made a mad dash for freedom. A bullet from her weapon passed near Officer Cliff Trainor’s head and lodged in the garage door behind him. At least twenty officers, holding pistols and sawed-off shot guns, fired at once. Astonishingly not a single round hit its mark. Officer Trainor leveled his gun at the crazed woman and pulled the trigger. Ella finally went down. Clad in pink pajamas, one slipper on and one off, she fell backwards from the porch steps, shot through the eye.
Detectives questioned Miss Norton. She said that as far as she knew Ella was the former secretary of J.V. Baldwin, a local car dealer. She believed Baldwin provided financial aid to the dead woman.
Investigators found Baldwin at his dealership and quizzed him about Thompson. He said that she’d been in his employ five years earlier and that when she married a former hospital employee, Roy Alger, Baldwin offered the couple money for a honeymoon trip.
He continued.
“Since then I have been made the target of an attempt to ‘shake me down’ for money.”
Baldwin sued Alger for $125,000 in an alienation of affection suit which involved Ella. According to some of her acquaintances, Ella and Alger’s marriage was short-lived and ended with an annulment.
Ella, who took Veronal (a barbiturate used to induce sleep) for her nerves, was a ticking time bomb. Police arrested her on October 2, 1931 for carrying a concealed weapon.
Her trouble with her neighbor, Pauline Pohl, started just days after ice pick and billy club incident when she was arrested for attacking her in a backyard fight. Ella was accused of beating Pauline and fined $25 for battery.
According to Pauline, she built her house next to Ella’s a little over a year before the shooting and there was no trouble between them until, “Miss Thompson . . . accused me of throwing papers in her yard. She became hysterical and beat me and pulled my hair.”
Dr. Glen Bradford, Ella’s physician, told police he had treated Thompson for a nervous breakdown for quite some time.
“I visited her Wednesday, however, and she seemed to be getting along nicely.”
Paul Donath
The deceased officer, 34-year-old Paul Donath, was on the job for ten years when he was gunned down. Paul’s heartbroken wife, Virginia, fainted at the news of his death.
The gun which Ella used in the shootout was the property of another LAPD officer, Palmer A. Pilcher. Pilcher was recently suspended from duty for being intoxicated. Apparently, the inebriated officer attempted to park his car on the sidewalk in front of the Rosslyn Hotel, and to make matters worse his gun was missing. There’s nothing that will get an officer in hot water faster than losing his weapon.
View looking north on Main Street near 6th Street. The Rosslyn Hotel with the large sign on roof is on the northwest corner of Fifth and Main Streets.
On the day of his suspension he called on Ella, whom he had been dating, and tried to get his gun back, but she refused to let him into the house. Nurse Norton said.
“I tried to find the gun, but she must have hidden it. She had been hard to handle for some time and my efforts to quiet her after she shot as Mrs. Pohl were useless.”
Lady trims lawn in or around Washington, D.C., with Ajax Ball Bearing reel mower.” c. 1930
If Ella was driven to a homicidal rage by the gentle whirring of the blades of Pauline’s hand mower, can you imagine how she’d have coped with the constant din of modern leaf blowers and power mowers?
NOTE: This is a revised reprint of a post from 2014. The story is so outlandish, that I had to share it again.
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.
Tonight’s feature is SHAKEDOWN (aka THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL) starring, Howard Duff, Brian Donlevy, Peggy Dow, Lawrence Tierney, and Bruce Bennett.
Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
In a San Francisco train yard, photographer Jack Early hides a camera just before he is beaten by some men who are chasing him. Later, he retrieves the camera and takes the pictures to newspaper photo editor Ellen Bennett. She agrees to buy one, but Jack refuses to sell it unless they hire him for a week, at the end of which he vows to prove his worth.
