Courthouse to Fall After 30 Colorful Years

The year was 1955. Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, Marilyn Monroe was starring in “The Seven-Year Itch,” the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series. And an Art Deco building became the first courthouse in Van Nuys.

Thirty years later the same municipal courthouse--now grimy, neglected and crowded--is to be torn down in early fall, to be replaced by a

high-tech, $43-million glass and granite high-rise. The courthouse is the processing center for people charged with crimes from the ordinary to the grisly, from traffic violations to murder.

“If you stand in front of a courthouse long enough, you’ll eventually see everyone,” said Glenn Spence, retired administrator of the courthouse on Delano Street. “Everyone passes through sooner or later.”

Famous Cases

Among the famous who have passed through the County Courthouse in Van Nuys are comedian Lenny Bruce, wrestler Gorgeous George, cowboy actor Gene Autry and killer Marvin Pancoast, all charged with assorted misdeeds.

At least a dozen escape attempts have taken place there, and three prisoners have been shot dead. One prisoner eluded police for hours by becoming a “human spider,” scaling the walls of the court’s holding cell, then somehow flattening himself against the acoustic-tile ceiling.

The once-ample courthouse is now so crowded that, especially on Monday mornings after a weekend of arrests, it can look like a scene in a Fellini movie.

As many as 100 prostitutes, pimps and addicts often are lined up against the walls, waiting for a weary judge to handle their cases.

By noon a typical court will have handled 75 cases.

By the end of the day it can go as high as 200.

Cadre of Regulars

“The place reminds me of the lobby in an emergency hospital,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald Goldsobel, who started working in the building in 1964. “No one really wants to be there. It’s life being played out daily.”

The courthouse has a cadre of regulars--people who have nothing to do with the criminal justice system yet nonetheless show up at the building daily.

One is a transvestite, usually dressed in Army fatigues and black high heels, who goes by the name St. Lawrence.

Another is a smiling man with mirrored sunglasses and a stooped-over walk who carries a Polaroid camera and offers photos at $1 to $4, depending on his mood.

The courthouse has always attracted its share of publicity and color. When Lenny Bruce was charged with possession of half a gram of heroin in October, 1962, he wore a black Nehru jacket. Spotted by news photographers, he slouched down in his seat, pulled the jacket high over his head and buttoned it. A newspaper reported that he looked like a headless horseman.

When photographers started aiming their cameras, Bruce, who was 37 at the time, ran to the front of the courtroom and wrapped himself in the state flag. A television cameraman persisted. Bruce knocked the man down. A platoon of bailiffs quelled the fracas.

‘A Lot of Commotion’

Today the municipal judge who presided over Bruce’s arraignment hardly remembers the incident.

“To be truthful, I can’t recall much about it, just that there was a lot of commotion,” said retired Judge Charles Hughes, who lives in North Hollywood.

Bruce was represented by flamboyant attorney Melvin Belli. When a young deputy district attorney by the name of Armand Arabian saw that Belli had been retained in the case, he blanched.

“I went back to the head D.A. and said I just couldn’t face Belli,” said Arabian, now a California Court of Appeal justice. Owen Boon, then in charge of the Van Nuys district attorney’s office, took the case and won a conviction.

Arabian also remembers wrestler Gorgeous George’s appearance in the courthouse, sometime in 1963, for a misdemeanor. It was several months before his death. The wrestler, known as the Human Orchid, looked old and haggard. His hair was completely white. But he still wore his trademark, a flowing purple robe.

The man who was born George Wagner and legally changed his name to Gorgeous George was preceded by his valet, who sprayed the court with an atomizer filled with perfume. An entourage of followers crowded the courthouse steps.

Other Notables

Another notable with business in the courthouse was Gene Autry, who was tried for drunken driving and acquitted, recalled former courthouse administrator Spence.

In June, 1984, Marvin Pancoast, charged with bludgeoning to death model Vicki Morgan, the mistress of former presidential confidant Alfred Bloomingdale, was arraigned in the courthouse amid a swarm of reporters.

Pancoast’s defense was that someone else had killed Morgan to prevent the showing of purported videotapes that depicted the 30-year-old North Hollywood woman engaging in sexual activities with Bloomingdale and high-ranking government officials. The jury was not convinced, and Pancoast was convicted and sentenced to 26 years to life.

Most of the hundreds of thousands of defendants who have passed through the squat, two-story building, of course, have not been celebrities.

Municipal Judge James M. Coleman, current “dean” of the building with 14 years’ seniority, said the most memorable defendant he recalls was Dr. Jimmy Jackson, a psychiatrist who had been in charge of evaluating mentally unstable inmates.

Jackson’s own stability was called into question when he was charged with criminal libel. In 1974, the 54-year-old man was sentenced to 180 days in County Jail for writing letters and making phone calls claiming, among other things, that U.S. astronauts were Communists and that he intended to bomb public areas as part of a Nazi-sponsored protest.

‘Something Happened to Him’

“He wore a Spanish-American hat into the courtroom with a swastika and started ranting and raving about judges, politicians, postal inspectors all being Communists,” Coleman said. “I guess something happened to him examining all the criminal insane for so many years.”

Escapes stand out in the minds of many judges.

Municipal Judge Robert L. Swasey, who presided over the hectic arraignment court for five years, recalls an attorney pleading to allow his client to be released without bail.

“The lawyer went on and on, singing the praises of his client as being a pillar of society, explaining why the man should be allowed to be released, when all of a sudden the guy jumps over the court railing and runs out the front door.” He was arrested a block away, Swasey said.

Arabian recalled a defendant who managed to sneak out the back door. Officers discovered him in the parking lot adjacent to the building where, after resisting arrest, he was shot to death, Arabian said.

‘Like a Zoo’

Coleman described the building, which has 13 courtrooms for preliminary hearings, arraignments and misdemeanor trials, as being “like a zoo.”

“It’s always been congested, but now it is getting impossible,” he said. “Too many people, too little space.”

Municipal Judge Edward Davenport, who worked in the building from 1969 to 1976 and is now in downtown Los Angeles, agrees.

“It’s a terrible building,” he said. “When the air conditioning went out in the middle of the summer, which was frequent, you had to pry open the windows just to breathe. It doesn’t have adequate soundproofing or the proper security. The place is a mess. It should have been torn down a long time ago.”

Bothersome Smell

Something else in the building is bothersome to many: its smell.

“I can’t really describe it,” Municipal Judge Kenneth Chotiner said. “It’s a combination of sweat, stale cigarette smoke, decaying food and human elimination. But they haven’t been able to do anything to help.”

“People are nervous, and they give off a certain odor,” said Goldsobel, who now heads the district attorney’s preliminary hearing office there. “It’s spilled coffee, along with all the tension they have waiting to appear before a judge.”

Chotiner recalls that once he was leaving the building late at night and heard an explosion. A water pipe had burst and the judge found himself ankle-deep in water.

After the air conditioning broke down three times in a week, Chotiner crawled into the attic with a repairman to see what was wrong.

The building was dedicated Nov. 22, 1955, and was designed to serve a San Fernando Valley population of 520,000. Now the area has grown to nearly 1.1 million.

23 Courtrooms Planned

The new 10-story courthouse will have 23 courtrooms. It is to be completed by the fall of 1988. Once the existing building is demolished in early fall, Municipal Court business will be carried on in temporary trailers that have been installed at Delano Street and Sylmar Avenue. The Superior Court will not be affected by the demolition and replacement.

The new structure will include a courtroom specifically designed for television coverage of high-publicity trials, with portals for cameras. Another courtroom will have a floor-to-ceiling, bulletproof glass wall separating the trial areas from viewing gallery. A heliport and a microwave dish for transferring electronic data will be atop the structure.

Not everyone likes the new building. The designs for the structure have come under fire by the city Planning Department, which in a report called it “odd and unappealing.”

“I think it’s horrible,” staff planner Marcus Woersching said. But the Planning Commission approved the design unanimously on June 6.

Despite the old building’s drawbacks, for Chotiner at least, the courthouse has an accumulation of charm and history. “I know the place like a glove,” he said. “There’s nostalgia here. I’ll miss it when it goes.”