South Bay History

Birthday parties were in full swing at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour on Hawthorne Blvd. in Torrance at 12:39 p.m. on Friday, April 9, 1982. At that moment, diners looked on in shock and disbelief as a small plane crashed and exploded into flames just in front of the popular restaurant.

Bob Farrell and Ken McCarthy had opened the first Farrell’s in Portland, Oregon, in 1963, and the chain grew quickly. The partners adopted an old-fashioned, good-timey theme both for the restaurants, which featured player pianos, and its servers, who wore early 1900s-style employee uniforms and straw hats.

The restaurants served regular meals, but specialized in ice cream. Lots of ice cream. They offered free sundaes to patrons on their birthdays, but became best known for seeming to promote the gluttonous consumption of ice cream. Employees would bring the largest dessert on the menu, the Zoo, to the table on a wooden stretcher-like carrier, accompanied by ambulance sirens and great fanfare.

The restaurant’s wholesome atmosphere and emphasis on large portions of food made it a big favorite among families, and the chain grew rapidly. The Marriott Corp. took notice, and acquired Farrell’s in 1972, when the chain had 58 total locations. By the mid-1970s, there were more than 130 Farrell’s restaurants nationwide.

Strangely, Farrell’s seemed to have more than its share of tragedies associated with it. The most devastating of these occurred in Sacramento on Sept. 24, 1972. On that Sunday afternoon, the pilot of a vintage F-86 Sabrejet fighter plane crashed into the Sacramento Farrell’s after an unsuccessful takeoff attempt.

There were more than 100 people inside the Farrell’s when the plane struck it. 22 people died, 12 of them children. The pilot survived.

Ten years later, Farrell’s patrons looked on in horror as a private plane carrying three passengers crashed right in front of the restaurant at 23705 Hawthorne Blvd.

The aircraft, a Cessna Cardinal 177, had just taken off after a brief refueling stop at Torrance Municipal Airport following a return trip from Catalina Island. Los Angeles Fire Dept. Capt. Donald Morgan, 44, was piloting the plane, which also carried his 17-year-old daughter, Michelle, and her 19-year-old fiance Joseph Bagley. All three perished in the crash.

Witnesses at the airport heard the airport’s engine sputtering on takeoff, and the control tower radioed the plane to check on it, but received no response. 

Farrell’s waitress Iris Sicuro also heard the plane sputtering shortly before it landed on Hawthorne Blvd., which luckily was devoid of cars at that moment.

“It exploded into a big ball of fire,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “The flames were shooting up past the (restaurant) windows. We opened the front door, but the heat was too intense to go out just then.”

Miraculously, no one on the ground was injured, including the 30-40 lunchtime customers and staff inside the restaurant at the time. Flames reportedly shot more than 100 feet in the air, and several nearby parked cars were destroyed.

About two hours after the crash, Michelle Morgan’s brother Jim arrived at the crash site after hearing about it on the radio. “Oh God, it’s them!” he cried out upon realizing who the victims were.

Michelle, a junior at Torrance High School, was memorialized when the school’s Student Memorial Fund sponsored a 5K race in her honor in 1983. The surviving family members, her mother and two brothers Jim and Bart, ran in the race.

During the early 1980s, Marriott sold off the chain to a group of private investors, who changed the restaurant’s concept to more of an everyday family restaurant without the nostalgic trappings and emphasis on ice cream. Many of the restaurants began to close.

By 1986, the Torrance Farrell’s had closed. That year, Ed Debevic’s, a 1950s-style burger joint, announced plans to operate at its 23705 Hawthorne Blvd. location. They served up burgers and updated nostalgia until 1991. The site’s current occupant, the El Pollo Inka Peruvian restaurant, opened there in 1995.

As for Farrell’s, by 1990, nearly all of its locations had closed. The moribund chain was revived in 2008, when Paul Kramer’s Parlour Enterprises acquired rights to the name.

His new company, headquartered in Lake Forest in Orange County, began opening locations in 2009 in California and Hawaii.

The new chain, though much smaller than the original, operated with some success for several years, with founder Bob Farrell on board in an advisory role.

In 2011, there were rumors that Kramer was considering opening a Farrell’s at the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, to be located at the former site of Jerry’s Deli. It never happened; the company ultimately decided against it.

Bob Farrell died in 2015 at 87. The new company’s fortunes began to ebb later in the 2010s, and the final Farrell’s location in Brea, Ca. closed in 2019.

Sources:

“The Age of Aries in Torrance, California, April 9, 1982,” Check-Six.com website.

Daily Breeze files.

Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour Facebook pages.

Los Angeles Times files.

“Two Plane Crashes, Tragedy, and Ice Cream Sundaes: Was Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour Cursed or Just Unlucky?”, by Erica Landis, Wide Open Eats blog, Aug. 30, 2021.

Wikipedia.

For a brief time in January 2021, Elon Musk inched ahead of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world, with a net worth of $185 billion. Bezos reclaimed the title a month later, but Musk’s flagship ventures — SpaceX and Tesla Motors — continue to prosper.

Musk’s pioneering rocket manufacturing company SpaceX has had a particularly strong impact on the South Bay. Its rise from a start-up firm scrambling to make the privatization of space a reality to the acknowledged leader in the field remains one of the great business success stories of the early 21st century.

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971. He spent his childhood there before moving to Canada to attend college at age 17. He ended up transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned degrees in economics and physics.

He was accepted to the Stanford doctoral program in 1995, but the promise of the Internet boom enticed him into the business world after he’d attended just two days of classes in Palo Alto.

His first business venture was the development of a video game, which he sold for $500.

Next, he, together with his brother Kimbal and another investor, started Zip2, which produced Internet-based city guides. Compaq bought the service in 1999, bringing Musk his first fortune of $22 million.

Musk didn’t start the PayPal online payment service, but he did end up as the company’s CEO for a time. More importantly, he received a $100 million payout when eBay acquired PayPal in 2002.

He then used those funds to make another career U-turn, leaving the software industry for a different kind of venture: forming a private firm to manufacture rockets for space travel.

“I thought there was a significant opportunity to set a new benchmark for low-cost, reliable access to space,” Musk told Daily Breeze business reporter Muhammad el-Hasan in 2003. “The market is looking for an option that’s much better than what’s out there today.”

Musk had started Space Exploration Technologies Corp., later shortened to SpaceX, in El Segundo in June 2002 at 1310 East Grand Ave. The nondescript industrial building currently houses Lee Fish USA, which imports fish from New Zealand.

Musk originally had attempted to build his operation through recycling discarded Russian ICBMs, but when that failed to work out, he decided that manufacturing his own rockets, while challenging, would make more sense in the long run.

The privatization of space following years of government funded and controlled efforts through NASA still seemed like a novel idea at the time, but Musk committed to it fully. 

In February 2007, Musk announced plans to consolidate SpaceX’s operations in El Segundo and East Los Angeles into a former Northrup Corp. manufacturing site built in 1966 and located off Crenshaw Blvd.  just south of the Hawthorne Airport. Its new address? 1 Rocket Road.

 “You guys don’t realize how big this is for Hawthorne,” Hawthorne Mayor Larry Guidi told an audience of 600 businessmen and community leaders, and Daily Breeze reporter Doug Irving,  at the time of the announcement. In hindsight, Guidi’s enthusiasm was not misplaced.

Unfortunately, it took the company several years to successfully launch one of its rockets into orbit. But Musk was persistent, and the company’s breakthrough successes began to come in 2008. After three previous attempts failed, the fourth one succeeded on Sept. 8, 2008.

In addition to the launch success, the company also won a large contract from NASA to develop a program for supply flights from Earth to the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the first private space firm to take control of a NASA program.

After that, the company steadily began to assume its role as the primary provider for space travel in the U.S., recording a series of firsts for a private space firm throughout the 2010s.

It also has pioneered the recycling of used rockets, crafting a system that returns them undamaged to earth, often onto a company barge landing platform in San Pedro. (The rocket recycling operation moved to the Port of Long Beach in 2021.)

By the end of 2008, the first Tesla automobiles had begun to be produced. The all-electric cars were considered an expensive novelty also at first, but, as prices fell and performance proved true to Musk’s promises, the cars have become increasingly common. (Musk didn’t found Tesla, but he bought into control of the company in 2004 and has been its CEO since 2008.)

Musk also has explored several other ventures, including tests of the Hyperloop mass transit system, tunneling operations using his Boring Co. firm,  and work with the artificial intelligence company Neuralink and the solar energy firm SolarCity, among others. Tests and demonstrations of both Boring Co. and Hyperloop operations often take place at the Hawthorne facility.

As for SpaceX, the company has gone from 20 employees in 2003 to more than 9,500 by early 2021. Musk has moved some of his operations to Austin, Texas, and is building a large rocket factory near South Padre Island at the southern tip of the state. Rumors persist that he will move SpaceX to Texas in the future; Musk himself now lives in Austin.

So far, the company’s headquarters remains in Hawthorne, where it contributes significantly to the city’s tax base — it paid more than $700,000 in property taxes for 2021-22 — but also receives many tax breaks. The company’s current 10-year agreement with Hawthorne expires in 2022.

The company’s latest success occurred on Sept. 18, 2021, when its Dragon spacecraft  successfully completed Inspiration 4, the first-ever flight carrying only civilian passengers, returning the quartet safely to earth after three days in space.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

El Segundo Herald archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

“SpaceX closes in on West Coast Starlink launches with lease for drone ship dock space,” by Eric Ralph, Teslarati website, April 27, 2021.

SpaceX  website.

Wikipedia.

Even after nearly a century of residential development encroaching upon it, the view from the Lunada Bay cliffs in Palos Verdes Estates remains breathtaking. 

The cliff edges are unsullied by any manmade structures, leaving nothing to impede the sight of the gently curving arc of shoreline and the crescent-moon shaped bay which inspired the area’s name, Spanish for “half moon.”

When Frank Vanderlip took over the management of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1923, he did so with a goal in mind. He created the Palos Verdes Project, a carefully thought out plan for its development.

In order to assure the longevity of the plan, a deal was struck for the Bank of America to transfer ownership of four and a half miles of shoreline extending from Malaga Cove south to just past Lunada Bay for $10. The symbolic sale, which became final in July 1925, was predicated on the agreement that no development would ever take place on the beachfront land stretching from Bluff Cove south to Lunada Bay.

Under the terms of the deal, the Palos Verdes Home Owners’ Association, whose members were the property owners in Palos Verdes Estates, gained stewardship of the shoreline and how it would be used. Developers, who were eager to subdivide and sell lots in the area, were prevented from building on the coastline itself, as were commercial entities.

A Palos Verdes Project promotional brochure from 1926 titled “Palos Verdes Estates: Prominent among the world’s famous residential communities” shows ambitious plans for Lunada Bay. It was to house one of five central business plazas planned for Peninsula neighborhoods, but, of these, only Malaga Cove Plaza was completed. Too bad, as the Lunada Bay Plaza design featured elaborate Spanish colonial architectural elements.

The brochure also mentions another plan that never became reality, and we quote: “Lunada Bay will be improved and converted into a swimming cove. A breakwater will be thrown out and a kiosk erected to accommodate bathing and beach parties.”

Both of these projects fell victim to the arrival of the Depression a couple of years later, with neither of them coming to fruition. 

Another idea floated in 1936 called for gifting former King Edward VIII of England, who had recently abdicated the throne over his scandalous affair with Wallis Simpson, with a prime $150,000 homesite overlooking Lunada Bay. He never took them up on the sweet deal.

But another crisis would threaten the pristine coastline in 1938. The Palos Verdes Estates community was situated on unincorporated Los Angeles County land, and it was revealed that the Palos Verdes Home Owners Association had been unable to pay county property taxes since 1931, amassing $62,000 in debt in the process.

The fear was that the county would take control of lands along the shoreline and then develop them into public beaches and parklands in return for retiring the debt, which the Association otherwise was unable to pay.

A possible solution came in the form of a movement for PVE to incorporate as a city of the sixth class. If that happened, the county would have no further influence on the future of the coastline. The new city would have complete control in perpetuity.

Debate raged over the pros and cons of incorporation, and the final vote was close. On Dec. 4, 1939, residents voted to incorporate by a margin of nine votes, 213-204. The shoreline was safe.

During World War II, the U.S. Army maintained a small station there, and housing for defnese workers was provided in the area.

Following the war, housing development in Lunada Bay ramped up significantly, with most lots snapped up for development. The city also succeeded in building new schools in the area, with Lunada Bay Elementary School opening in November 1956, and nearby Palos Verdes High School in September 1961.

Through it all, the beachfront remained in its original undeveloped state. In 2016, the California Coastal Commission even put pressure on the city of PVE to add “amenities” to make the shoreline more accommodating to outside visitors. The city flatly refused.

The Commission’s recommendation came about as a result of the “locals only” activities of the Lunada Bay Boys, a band of surfers who have been accused of using harassment, vandalism and threats to discourage outside visitors from enjoying Lunada Bay’s excellent surfing conditions.

In fact, the Lunada Bay Boys built the only structure on the Lunada Bay beach, a rock patio  that stood for years at the base of the rocky cliffs. Under pressure from the Coastal Commission, the PVE City Council voted to remove the structure. Crews finished demolishing it in December 2016.

The Coastal Commision felt that the addition of benches, new signs and a parklike atmosphere would discourage localism and allow everyone to use the area for recreation without fear of retribution.

PVE officials disagreed, and Lunada Bay’s shoreline remains undeveloped for now.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

“Palos Verdes Estates: Prominent among the world’s famous residential communities,” Palos Verdes Project promotional brochure, 1926.

Palos  Verdes Peninsula News archives.

The Palos Verdes Story, by Delane Morgan, The Palos Verdes Review, 1982.

San Pedro News Pilot archives.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 decisive presidential election victory over Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater always comes up when the subject of landslide elections arises.

Johnson had been vice president under President John F. Kennedy, and became president after the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination of Kennedy. LBJ had only been in office a couple of months when the 1964 presidential campaign began in earnest in January 1964. It had been postponed in the wake of the assassination.

The Johnson-Goldwater tussle offered a clear choice between the incumbent president, a centrist Democrat, and Goldwater, a staunchly conservative Republican. Johnson’s campaign tried to paint Goldwater as a dangerous war-monger, while Goldwater’s campaign attacked Johnson as being too liberal.

Goldwater had a couple of ties to the South Bay that brought him to the area in 1963, after he’d already made it clear that he was running for president. Members of the Peninsula Republican Men’s Club presented him with an award in April 1963 in Torrance, where he was helping his daughter with a project at her home. Social/political events also were held for another daughter, Mrs. Thomas H. Ross, who lived in Redondo Beach where her husband practiced medicine.

Once the campaign began in 1964, Goldwater established a strong South Bay presence.

The first Goldwater for President office in Torrance opened on Jan. 11, 1964, at 4729 Torrance Blvd., near where Scardino’s Italian restaurant currently stands.

His campaign later moved their headquarters to 1323 El Prado in Torrance, across the street from McCown’s Rexall drug store. The small storefront building still stands, just north of the Clutch and Coffee restaurant in downtown Torrance.

Goldwater had to cancel his first major South Bay campaign appearance scheduled for  April 6, 1964, at Ascot Park near Gardena because he had to stay in Washington for the congressional debate on civil rights legislation.

On May 16, the Palos Verdes Young Republicans sponsored a one-day to cruise to Catalina Island, where those who paid $10 for a ticket got a chance to meet Goldwater in person.

Goldwater appeared at a major campaign rally at El Camino Stadium (later renamed Murdock Stadium) on the El Camino College campus on Aug. 22, 1964. The 7,000-seat venue was filled for the event, with tickets costing $1.50. Area Congressman Alphonso Bell introduced Goldwater.

Teenagers also got in on the local campaign. The group Torrance Teenagers for Goldwater held a bake sale fundraiser at 228th and Sepulveda in Torrance on Oct. 4.

At Torrance High School, history teacher James Armstrong engaged three of his classes in projects involving the presidential election. (Armstrong later would become one of Torrance’s most celebrated mayors, serving from 1978-1986. )

They spent a total of 18 hours participating in activities outside of the classroom related to the campaign, choosing the side with which they wanted to be involved.

Groups of South Bay and Harbor Area Goldwater supporters also made the pilgrimage to rallies at the Los Angeles Sports Arena on March 19, Dodger Stadium for another major rally on Sept. 16, and then, close to the Nov. 3 election, back to the Sports Arena.

As for Johnson, he had no such local ties. His local Democratic Headquarters office in Torrance didn’t open until October 11, 1964, less than a month before the election. It was located at 1876 Torrance Blvd., currently the site of a residential housing development.

South Bay Johnson supporters did greet Johnson when Air Force One arrived at Long Beach Airport on Oct. 11, the same day as the opening of his Torrance headquarters. From there, they accompanied Johnson to his public speech in South Gate, bypassing the South Bay.

Area newspapers offer no evidence that Johnson made any personal appearances in the South Bay during the campaign.

So how did it all turn out locally? Goldwater may have lost the national race by a large margin, but he won several cities in the South Bay. 

According to near-complete results from selected cities reported in the Torrance Press-Herald, Goldwater won the city of Torrance by more than 1,000 votes, 24,293 to 23,241. Thanks to strong Republican support on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Goldwater won in Rolling Hills Estates, 2,351 to 868 votes. It was the largest margin for him in the area.

Johnson had victorious margins in Carson, Lomita and the Los Angeles city and county areas in the South Bay. He also won by more than 400,000 votes in Los Angeles County, and by more than 1 million in the state of California (59.11% to 40.79%).

Nationally, Johnson defeated Goldwater by almost 16 million votes, garnering 61.1% to Goldwater’s 38.5%. Johnson’s final margin in the electoral college was 486-52. He carried 44 states to Goldwater’s six.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

“The Most Lopsided Presidential Elections in US History,” by Tom Murse, ThoughtCo. website, Jan. 15, 2020.

Palos Verdes Peninsula News archives.

Redondo Reflex archives.

Torrance Press-Herald archives.

Wikipedia.

1964 presidential campaign ads:

Lyndon Johnson (Credit: Library of Congress):

Barry Goldwater (Credit: JFK Library):

Deane Dana Friendship Park’s hilltop location offers some of the most spectacular views of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in the entire Harbor Area.

The park also offers sports facilities, hiking trails and a nature center, all of which have been added in recent years.

In 1960, Los Angeles County purchased the 123-acre parcel of land which stretches from San Pedro across into neighboring Rancho Palos Verdes. The Friendship Park land remained completely undeveloped for decades, and area residents prized it for its wilderness feel. 

Perhaps that’s why an early plan to rename it Cabrillo Historical Park and conduct a local “world’s fair” event displaying histories of local cultures never became a reality.

The park’s future as an undeveloped wilderness began to change in the mid-1960s, when ideas to develop the land in one way or another started to proliferate. 

The first idea? Make the open land part of the new California State University campus approved for the South Bay/Harbor Area in 1960. Classes began at temporary locations in 1965 while CSU leaders tried to decide between three permanent sites.

The three sites: Friendship Park and some additional parcels in the South Shores area of San Pedro, land on the border between Torrance and Rolling Hills Estates, and the Carson site where the campus eventually was built.

In 1966, the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce proposed building an 18-hole golf course on the hilltop site. The County Board of Supervisors nixed the idea, saying the site was too small. 

But the idea didn’t die. In 1972, supervisors okayed the construction of a smaller nine-hole course on the site. County parks department head Norman Johnson told the Los Angeles Times that he expected the course would open in Summer 1973.

After that proposal fizzled, the supervisors started on a novel track: developing the barren acreage into an actual park. $2 million was appropriated, and planning began in May 1974. 

By 1980, the project was still in the planning phase. That October, it was announced that the construction of trails, picnic sites, a playground and restrooms would begin. Much of the land would remain undeveloped under the plan.

In 1987, the supervisors voted to rename the recreation area of the park from the San Pedro Recreation Center to the Martin Bogdanovich Recreation Center, after the founder of Star-Kist Tuna.

The park, still in somewhat of a spartan state despite the addition of soccer fields that same year, faced its biggest crisis in 1993. Los Angeles County faced a $1.6 billion budget deficit that year, the largest in its history. As a result, closures of county facilities had to be made.

The supervisors included Friendship Park on its list of 23 parks to be shuttered, along with Bodger Park in Hawthorne and Del Aire Park east of El Segundo. Fortunately, that worst-case scenario of abandoning the park was averted.

In February 1995, the supervisors voted to rename the park after one of their own, retiring Supervisor Deane Dana. Dana lived in Palos Verdes Estates, and enjoyed hiking in Friendship Park.

The park’s biggest controversy erupted a month later with the unveiling of plans to build a $4 million, 6,426-square-foot nature center at a highly visible location in the park to be named after Dana. Public reaction came swiftly, and harshly.

Residents and environmental activists mobilized quickly to express vigorous opposition to the plan at a series of often fiery meetings during the rest of 1995. Opponents filed a lawsuit opposing the center in early 1996. The project was put on hold.

Dana retired from the board later that year. His successor, Don Knabe, adopted a more conciliatory role toward the community, pledging to scale back the size of the nature center.

In September 1997, he announced a plan calling for a center with just under 4,000 square feet of floor space, to be built at a less conspicuous location in the park.

The supervisors signed on to the new plan in 1998, and opponents dropped their lawsuit. In February 2001, both groups gathered, peacefully this time, at the groundbreaking for the new center. The Deane Dana Friendship Park Nature Center officially opened on March 14, 2002. The dedication ceremony took place seven years after the center first was proposed.

The Bogadanovich Recreation Center portion of the park now includes a large playground, the soccer fields, a baseball field and an indoor gymnasium. And the park still has some of  the best scenic vistas around.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

San Pedro News Pilot archives.

Torrance Press-Herald archives.

The 100-foot high electric towers dominate the skyline along the Redondo-Hermosa Beach border. They stretch east from the AES power plant near the shoreline, down Herondo and Anita streets, which become 190th St. in west Torrance. From there, their path follows the 190th St. corridor, eventually veering north to terminate at the Southern California Edison (SCE) La Fresa substation in north Torrance.

The high-tension wires carry a powerful 220 kilovolt current, which gets distributed along smaller lines from substations such as La Fresa to South Bay business and residential users.

SCE built the line of huge steel towers beginning in the late 1940s. In 1917, it had purchased the old Redondo Beach steam plant property, which was built in 1907 by Henry Huntington, in large part to provide power to his popular Pacific Electric Red Car trolley lines.

As new sources of electric power came online, the plant’s role lessened, and it began to be used mostly as a backup. It closed in 1933. In 1946, SCE announced plans to build a modern power plant to replace it on the N. Harbor Dr. site near the city’s border with Hermosa Beach. It came online in 1948.

The purpose of the giant towers? To connect the new power plant with the main electrical substation for the Torrance-Redondo area, La Fresa. The substation’s name came from the Spanish word for strawberry, as the plant was constructed in 1930 in an area of mostly strawberry fields.

Located at 17860 Yukon Ave. in north Torrance, the substation underwent a $2.8 million  upgrade completed in 1948 in order to be able to receive and distribute the high-voltage power coming from the Redondo station and other sources. It was part of SCE’s overall plan to conform to what was then becoming the modern de facto national standard of power transmission: 220 volts at 60 hertz. (La Fresa had been operating at 66 volts and 50 hertz.)

Many of the giant towers used probably were made of steel from Torrance’s Columbia Steel plant, then a major provider of steel used in electric utility structures.

When they first were erected, the swath of electric towers marched across mostly farmland and vacant rolling hills. But the area quickly filled with housing developments during the post-WWII residential housing boom, and the unsightly nature of the towers became more noticeable, with houses built near the steel behemoths routinely selling for less than others in the area. 

It wasn’t until many decades later that SCE allowed the land directly underneath the towers to be used for civic purposes. The Redondo Beach Dog Park, located directly beneath the row of towers at 190 Flagler Lane, didn’t open until 1992. Nurseries and community gardens also were allowed to operate under the towers.

The Redondo Beach King Harbor welcome sign also lies beneath the towers, and is dwarfed by them. Its water fountain had to be shut down in 2009 due to safety concerns over its spray potentially coming into contact with the tower’s electric current.

But the potential effects from electromagnetic fields in the area around the towers caused the most public outrage and debate. The furore began with a study conducted by the University of Colorado in Denver in the 1970s that linked some types of cancer in children to proximity to electromagnetic (EMF) fields created by electricity.

The 1992 publication of a major study conducted by Robert P. Liburdy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at UC Berkeley describing a possible physiological link between EMF and cancer in children ramped up the intensity of concern around the topic.

Lawsuits began to pop in courts, including one in San Diego, with litigants claiming that high-tension wires had caused cancer in their children.

The hysteria began to die down in 1995, when an unknown whistleblower’s claims that Liburdy had fudged the data to make his EMF case in the 1992 study were verified to be true by an independent panel of scientists. Liburdy had to forego the $3.3 million in federal funds he’d received as a result of his study, and he left his job at the UC Berkeley lab.

The jury remains out on exactly what effects EMF areas near high-tension power lines have on humans, with the Environmental Protection Agency currently stating that the evidence of such links remains inconclusive.

The negative aesthetic effects of the towers remain real, however. Now that their once lightly populated path has become a dense urban landscape, calls for them to be removed, especially in the Redondo Beach portion of the pathway, have become louder.

Energy company AES purchased the Redondo power plant from SCE in 1997. It scaled back operations at the plant over the years, but continued to operate it despite opposition from the city, which wants to convert the property into parkland and possibly a mixed-use development, and to have the towers removed to improve the area’s scenic qualities.

AES agreed to sell the site to a private developer in 2020, but only after the plant has closed down. In April 2021, the company received permission from state power regulators to operate the plant until 2023.

In 2019, SCE offered to pay for the towers in the Redondo Beach section to be dismantled and the lines moved underground once the AES plant does close. The high-tension lines can’t be completely removed even with the closure of the plant, as they still serve as a crucial component of the South Bay’s power grid.

SCE’s cost for the proposed removal of the Redondo towers is prohibitive, with the project of moving them underground estimated to run as much as $7.9 million. At those prices, removal of the much longer Torrance segment of giant towers seems unlikely in the near future.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

“Do High Voltage Power Lines Cause Cancer?”, by Steven Salzberg, Forbes magazine, Sept. 1, 2014.

Easy Reader archives.

“Electric and Magnetic Fields from Power Lines,” Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website, updated June 2, 2021.

“EMF Researcher Faked Data,” by Dan Vergano,” Science magazine website, June 30, 1999.

Los Angeles Times files.

“Southern California Edison Company Substations, Monumental Type,” Historic American Engineering Record #CA-2318, National Park Service, Jan. 2, 2014.

Torrance Press-Herald archives.

Stephen M. White excelled at everything he did. His stints as a successful lawyer and supremely effective politician brought him wide recognition in the late 1800s.

He was so highly regarded by colleagues, the public and the press that, within five days of his death in 1901, a fund to erect a statue of him in Los Angeles already had $3,700 in its coffers, the equivalent of $120,000 in 2021 dollars.

White was born on Jan. 19, 1853, in San Francisco to Francis and William F. White. White was a prosperous merchant who later became active in California state government. His son attended Bay Area private schools, then graduated from Santa Clara College in 1874. Studying with lawyers in the Santa Cruz area, he passed the state bar later that year.

He immediately moved to Los Angeles to set up his law practice. Working mostly as a defense attorney, he earned a strong legal reputation. He became a charter member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association in 1882.

He also began dabbling in politics during those years, losing races for Los Angeles County District Attorney in 1875 and 1879 before being elected to the post in 1882. 

It was his campaign for D.A.  in 1879 that would tarnish his reputation some 140 years later.

White associated himself with the Workingman’s Party of California, running on their ticket for the office.

San Franciscan Denis Kearney had founded the party a year earlier as a vehicle to promote his anti-Chinese views. The Chinese who had come to California to help build the railroads had begun settling in its cities, much to the consternation of Kearney and others of his ilk.

The Workingman’s Party and its backers worked tirelessly to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first U.S. law to bar a specific ethnic group from coming to its shores. They succeeded in pushing the bill through in 1882, and the racist law stood until 1943.

The association didn’t hurt White’s career. After his stint as D.A., he won election to the California State Senate in 1887. For most of his four-year term, he served as the state’s lieutenant governor.

But his greatest triumph, the one that forever endeared him to the city of Los Angeles, came after he was elected to the United States Senate in 1893. White’s tenure in the Senate came at the time of the political battle to determine whether Santa Monica or San Pedro would become the official Port of Los Angeles.

Otis Chandler and the Los Angeles Times favored San Pedro, while Southern Pacific railroad  magnate Collis P. Huntington wanted Santa Monica.

White took the side of San Pedro, advocating for it during a three-day debate with Sen. William Frye of Maine, who supported Santa Monica. He won the day, managing to wrangle the passage of an  appropriations bill for the new port. That cleared the way for San Pedro’s final approval as official port, which came in 1897.

Two years later, San Pedro celebrated, holding the Free Harbor Jubilee, which attracted thousands on April 26, 1899. They saw the first load of rock for the port’s new breakwater get dumped into the harbor.

White’s Senate term ended in 1899, and he didn’t run for re-election. Two years later, on Feb. 21, 1901, he died following a severe stomach hemorrhage related to his gastric ulcers.

The outpouring of public affection and high regard for White filled the pages of the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald and San Pedro News Pilot for days following his death.

The money was raised for the statue honoring him, and it was installed prominently in front of the old red sandstone county courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. It was moved several times after that, first to the Hall of Records, then back to the new courthouse when it opened in 1958.

San Pedro began lobbying to have the statue moved to the Harbor Area at least as early as 1924. Community leaders renewed the proposal to move the statue upon the dedication of Stephen M. White Drive in San Pedro in 1932. The new road connected Pacific Ave. to Cabrillo Beach.

In addition to the roadway, the U.S. Maritime Commission named one of its Liberty ships the  Stephen M. White in 1942. Fifteen years later, Stephen M. White Middle School opened to students on Figueroa Ave. in what would become the city of Carson.

In 1989, the city of Los Angeles relented, and agreed to move the statue of White to its present location on Stephen M. White Drive at the entrance to Cabrillo Beach. In 1995, the Port of Los Angeles christened one of its new pilot boats the Stephen M. White.

Now, some activists and historians are calling for the removal of the statue from Cabrillo Beach and the renaming of the Carson middle school, citing White’s involvement with promoting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that has sullied his once impeccable reputation. In June 2020, protestors doused his statue with red paint.

So far, no plans to remove the statute or rename the school have been announced.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

“Looking at Statues: Public Protest or Vandalizing?”, by Brad Nixon, Under Western Skies blog, June 25, 2020.

Los Angeles Herald archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

“Reckoning with the racist legacy of our Founding Fathers,” by Terelle Jerricks, Random Lengths, June 10, 2021.

San Pedro: A Pictorial History, by Henry P. Silka, San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1993.

San Pedro News Pilot archives.

“The Two Sides of Los Angeles lawyer Stephen M. White,” by Michael L. Stern, Los Angeles Daily Journal, April 24, 2019.

Wikipedia.

Threats to the American way of life seemed to lurk around every corner in the 1950s. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about the war on pinball machines being used for illicit gambling during the era.

Today’s topic posed a deeper, more pernicious danger: the corruption of America’s youth via  crime and horror-based comic books, which mushroomed in popularity in the early part of that decade.

Make no mistake, the comic books in question did portray scenes of crime, violence, gore and ghoulishness with unbridled enthusiasm, and should not have been allowed to be sold to young children. But their proliferation did spark what in retrospect seems like a classic overreaction among the arbiters of morals, common decency and good taste.

Comics historians date the origin of comic books to the early 1930s, with the 1938 publication of Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman, marking their rise to mass popularity.

Comic books always have relied heavily on fantasy and the supernatural, so the rise of horror-based comics isn’t all that surprising. Early illustrated adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were comic book naturals. 

Comics expert Adrian Wymann cites the 1943 publication of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1943 by the Gilberton Company in its Classic Comics series as the first comic wholly dedicated to the horror genre.

The publication of Eerie #1 by Avon Comics (a division of Avon Books) in 1947 marks the first comic comprised fully of original horror stories. But it was the arrival of EC Comics that really kick-started the horror comics trend.

Max Gaines had started Educational Comics as a traditional comics outfit, but his son William changed the company’s direction after Max died in 1947. He began publishing crime, horror, science fiction and, later, satirical comic books, starting MAD magazine in 1952. Oh, and he also changed the name of the company to Entertaining Comics.

With the arrival of EC titles such as The Crypt of Terror, The Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear in 1950, the small company’s new direction became clear. And its comics grew in popularity among teens, who often passed the comics on to their younger siblings.

By April 1954, EC’s output had a high-enough visibility on the cultural landscape to attract the attention of Congress, specifically the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, headed by Sen. Estes Kefauver. Time magazine estimated the horror comics comprised 25 percent of all comic book sales.

Looking for quick answers to a complicated social ill, the committee attempted to tie the postwar rise in delinquency to the influence of the lurid comics. 

Kefauver relied heavily on testimony from Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who theorized that comics were responsible for juvenile delinquency, something he personally believed but did not back up with facts or relevant studies. 

His sensationalist November 1953 article in Ladies Home Journal, “What Parents Don’t Know About Comic Books,” fueled outrage, and the publication of his full-length book condemnation, Seduction of the Innocent (Farrar & Rinehart), in early 1954 further stoked the flames.

The Senate hearings generated enormous publicity, enough to alarm parents nationwide. The scare was on, and local governments throughout the land took their cue from Kefauver.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors banned the violent comics on Nov. 15, 1954. The South Bay beach cities of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo Beach all had their own bans on horror comics in place by then.

Outrage grew in Torrance as well. The Torrance Herald joined in the fray in early November 1954, sending a reporter to discuss the comics with a sixth-grade class at Riviera School, many of whom felt the books should be kept from kids their age.

After increasing pressure from local PTAs and parent groups, Torrance councilman Albert Isen, who would become mayor a year later, proposed an emergency ordinance banning the sale of such comics. The council passed unanimously on Dec. 7, 1954. (Isen would go on to tout his role in local comics enforcement in his mayoral campaign ads well into the 1960s.)

Nationally, the comic book industry already had gotten the message, and began scrambling to clean up its image. Mainstream publishers hastily formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and its Comics Code Authority subsidiary in September 1954. The latter group quickly issued its self-policing Comic Book Code a month later.

Its provisions explicitly prohibited just the kind of subject matter and graphic depictions that EC Comics and its imitators had become so successful in selling. The Code, which put a postage stamp-like seal of approval on every non-violating comic book issued, essentially put EC out of business.

William Gaines went on to devote his energies to MAD magazine. The popular satiric monthly had started out as a comic book, but became a magazine in 1955, enabling it to avoid the strictures of the Comic Book Code.

Horror comics would return in the 1960s with the advent of Creepy (1964) and Eerie (1966). Like MAD, they were comic books in magazine form, allowing them to avoid Code regulation. Essentially niche publications, they trafficked in just the kinds of stories and illustrations that had brought about the 1950s frenzy, but, by then, the crusade against horror comics had become a distant memory.

Sources:

“Haunts Of Horror Or Tombs Of Torture? American Comic Books And The Horror Genre 1939 – 1955,” By Adrian Wymann, The Thought Balloon blog, April 10, 2014.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Redondo Reflex archives.

“Horror Comics,” Time magazine, May 3, 1954, Page 78.

Torrance Press-Herald archives.

Wikipedia.

So how did one go about starting up a major Pacific Coast passenger steamship line from scratch in 1920 offering passenger service from Los Angeles to Hawaii? It looked like no easy task, with a crowded field of competitors seemingly having the business sewed up.

Three companies already in operation — Matson Navigation, Oceanic Steamship and Pacific Mail Steamship — offered cruises to Hawaii from San Francisco. The Bay area also served as the hub for passenger transport between the major West Coast port cities.

That is, until Los Angeles began to assert itself, thanks to the selection of San Pedro harbor as the Port of Los Angeles, the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, and the Southern California oil boom of the late teens and early 1920s.

With Chevron’s El Segundo plant the only local refinery in operation, the crude had to be shipped to East Coast plants for processing. The Port of Los Angeles became the logical hub of that operation, especially after a major dredging operation made it suitable to accommodate larger ships of all types.

Business was booming. With the infrastructure already in place, entrepreneurs began looking to make the Port a hub for passenger transportation as well. Hearing about the availability of two troop ships recently decommissioned after the end of World War I, a group of wealthy investors formed the Yale-Harvard Syndicate, with an eye toward transforming the wartime ships into cruise vessels.

On June 2, 1920, the Syndicate was reorganized into the Los Angeles Steamship Company, known informally as LASSCO, headquartered at 517 S. Spring St. in downtown L.A. A month later, the SS Harvard and SS Yale arrived at the Port for refitting as passenger liners. The opening of the massive Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in 1917 proved timely, allowing the ships to be refurbished locally.

The plan was to begin offering cruises to San Francisco, and then expand to San Diego, Portland and Seattle. LASSCO’s first trip, the maiden voyage of the Yale to San Francisco, began on May 2, 1921. The ship departed from LASSCO’s dock at Berth 155 at 3 p.m. with much hoopla. The coastal routes quickly became a very successful part of LASSCO’s business.

Even though the Yale had the speed to reach Hawaii in under five days, LASSCO ultimately decided not to use the Yale and the Harvard for its Hawaii runs. (At the time, the average transatlantic voyage, a longer trip by about 750 miles, took about four days.) Two German-built ships seized by the U.S. Navy during the war were deemed more suitable. After retrofitting, the Aeolus was rechristened the City of Los Angeles, and the Huron became the City of Honolulu.

On Sept. 11, 1922, the City of Los Angeles left Berth 155 in Wilmington for its maiden voyage to Hawaii, with 264 passengers aboard. The guest list included company executives, Chamber of Commerce dignitaries and L.A. Mayor George Cryer and his family. The first trip went off without a hitch.

The City of Honolulu’s maiden voyage had a different outcome. On its return trip from Hawaii, the ship caught fire on Oct. 12, 1922. All 262 passengers were rescued, but the ship was swamped and unable to make the voyage back to port. Declared a  total loss, it was sunk by a Coast Guard cutter five days later.

The incident could’ve been a public relations nightmare for the young company, but instead, the safe rescue of all its passengers and the bravery of its crew gave a positive spin to the disaster. The company acquired another ship, the President Harrison, to take over the route temporarily until a new City of Honolulu could be put into service in 1926.

The 1920s were boom times for LASSCO. It added several ships to its fleet, establishing a brisk commercial shipping business to go along with its increasingly popular ocean cruises. At one point, it had seven passenger ships in operation.

Hollywood came calling several times, with more than a dozen films availing themselves of LASSCO. Stars such as Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Wallace Beery appeared in features shot aboard the company’s ships during the 1920s.

Of course, the 1920s were a boom time for all kinds of businesses, not just cruise lines. And the arrival of the Depression put all kinds of companies in financial jeopardy.

LASSCO’s cause was not helped by another fire aboard the second City of Honolulu. This time it occurred while the ship was berthed in Honolulu on May 25, 1930. Again, there were no casualties. The ship was able to make it back to Los Angeles, but plans to rebuild it were scrapped, as was the ship itself in 1933.

LASSCO couldn’t survive such calamities for long, especially as the full weight of economic  gloom began settling in nationwide. In 1930, the debt-ridden firm began looking for a buyer, and on Oct. 31, its merger with rival Matson Navigation Co. was announced

On May 30, 1931, little more than a year later almost to the day, the venerable Harvard ran aground on the rocks near Point Arguello on one of its coastal runs. This time, 497 passengers were rescued successfully. The Harvard could not be saved, however, and was left to sink.

LASSCO continued on as a division of Matson for the next few years, but finally ceased operations in 1937. That same year, the City of Los Angeles was sold to a Japanese metal company for scrap.

LASSCO’s name has lost its familiarity over the years, with people in Los Angeles more likely to wax nostalgic over the Great White Steamship to Catalina. That operation began in 1924, two years after the larger LASSCO steampships began their more wide-ranging passenger service.

Note: Gordon Ghareeb and Martin Cox, authors of Hollywood to Honolulu: The Story of the Los Angeles Steamship Company (2008), tell the definitive story of LASSCO in their fascinating book, a must-read for anyone interested in this topic.

Sources:

Hollywood to Honolulu: The Story of the Los Angeles Steamship Company, by Gordon Ghareeb and Martin Cox, published for The Steamship Historical Society of America by Glencannon Press/Maritime Books, 2008.

Los Angeles Times archives.

San Pedro News Pilot archives.

Wikipedia.

It sounds like a cliche to say that the quintessential glamorous movie star came from the humblest of beginnings, but, in Marilyn Monroe’s case, it’s true.

She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at Los Angeles County General Hospital (now known as County/USC Medical Center) on June 1, 1926, in the charity ward. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, worked as a film cutter in Hollywood.

Gladys was married to Martin Mortenson at the time, though it’s not at all clear that he was Marilyn’s father. The pair separated months after their 1924 marriage, but didn’t get divorced until 1928. 

Though her last name is Mortenson on her birth certificate, both Marilyn and her mother preferred to use the Baker surname. Due to a later clerical error, the “e” on Jean was dropped mistakenly, and Marilyn often is referred to as Norma Jean Baker.

Unable to afford child care and struggling to make ends meet, Gladys turned to the Bolenders, who lived across the street from her mother, Della, in Hawthorne.

Albert Wayne Bolender and his wife, Ida, ran a foster care home in their three-bedroom house at 459 Rhode Island St. The house, which originally included an additional four acres of land, still stands pretty much as it was at 4201 W. 134th St., though on a much smaller lot. (Numerical street names carried down from Los Angeles replaced the original street names in Hawthorne beginning in the 1930s.)

The Bolenders were devout evangelical Christians who raised their foster children in a strict but  nurturing environment. Biographer Donald Spoto, author of Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, describes Marilyn’s first seven years as among the most stable in her troubled life.

Her mother didn’t abandon her, and in fact lived with the Bolenders for Marilyn’s first six months until she was forced to return to work. She visited Marilyn at the house on weekends, staying at her mother’s home across the street.

Unfortunately, Marilyn’s grandmother Della suffered from a weakened heart, which caused other ailments. Her condition worsened in 1927, and she began suffering from delusions. She broke a door window attempting to break into the Bolender’s house to see her grandaughter. Albert and Ida called the police, which resulted in Della being evaluated and sent to the state mental hospital in Norwalk, where she died at 51 a couple weeks later.

Gladys stayed at her mother’s house for a few months, but eventually sold it and moved back to Hollywood. She had great difficulty coping with her role as a mother while working full time and being enticed by the Hollywood lifestyle.

As for her daughter Norma, she began attending Washington Street School in Hawthorne as a first grader in 1932. She also formed a friendship with Lester Flugel, another child at the Bolender household who had been born in 1926. They were known in the household as “the twins.” The Bolenders later adopted him, and he became Lester Bolender. They tried to adopt Marilyn as well, but Gladys refused to allow it.

Author Spoto describes Marilyn’s early childhood as on the austere side, but happy. She took weekend trips with her mother to the South Bay beach cities, and they even toured a glass factory in Torrance. Marilyn adopted a dog, Tippy, who became her constant companion.

When a Hawthorne neighbor shot Tippy due to the dog’s incessant barking, Marilyn was inconsolable. Whatever her failings as a mother, Gladys wanted the best for her daughter, and was determined to reclaim her. In June 1933, shortly after Marilyn’s seventh birthday, she paid the Bolenders what they were owed and took Marilyn with her back to Hollywood, ending her days in Hawthorne.

Gladys had been able to afford to buy a house in Hollywood under a Depression-era federal program. Life there for her daughter turned out to be diametrically opposed to life with the Bolenders. 

Working as film cutters, Gladys and her friend and co-worker Grace McKee were immersed in the world of Hollywood and would on occasion send Marilyn off to a movie theater all day while they worked. The Bolenders had viewed the film industry as  “sinful,” and had refused to allow their charges to go to the movies.

Unfortunately, Gladys’ mental state was deteriorating in late 1933, especially after hearing of her grandfather’s death in Missouri. She fell into a deep depression, convinced that she and her family were cursed with mental illness. She was taken to a Santa Monica rest home in 1934, and would end up in and out of mental hospitals for the rest of her life.

Grace McKee became Grace Goddard when she remarried in 1935, and she also became  Marilyn’s legal guardian. She’d always told young Marilyn that she could be a movie star, but Marilyn’s stay with her and her new husband only lasted for a few months. 

The young girl ended ended up in and out of foster homes, orphanages and various homes of Goddard relatives for the next few years. When the Goddards moved to West Virginia, Marilyn had to stay behind. To avoid another orphanage stint, she quickly married factory worker James Dougherty in 1942 when she was 16.

She got a job working at the Radioplane Co. defense plant in Van Nuys. There, she met photographer David Conover, who began using her for glamor photo shoots. After doing some pin-up modeling and appearing on several magazine covers, she came to the attention of Hollywood agents and film studios.

Daugherty opposed her new career choice, so in 1946, she divorced him and began working her way up through the movie star ranks on her way to becoming one of Hollywood’s greatest film icons. Her death by drug overdose in 1962 at age 36 remains grist for gossips and conspiracy theorists to this day. 

And it all started in Hawthorne.

Sources:

Findagrave.com.

Hawthorne and Centinela Valley: A Portrait of a Memory, by Douglas T. Robertson, self-published, January 1993 edition.

“Marilyn Monroe’s Childhood Home,” Iamnotastalker blog, Dec. 6, 2013.

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, By Donald Spoto, HarperCollins, 1993.

Wikipedia.