Another L.A. innovation?We don’t know when restaurants,...
Another L.A. innovation?
We don’t know when restaurants, furniture stores and other establishments first began displaying shelves of books with colorful covers purely for ornamental purposes.
But we do know that the practice dates back at least to 1931--at L.A.’s City Hall. We discovered this when we opened “A Mirror for Californians,” by Oliver Carlson, a 1946 history that had been decorating our own shelves for years (its cover is red).
Carlson relates an interview that the old Los Angeles Herald conducted with L.A. Mayor John Porter about the latter’s office library.
“I haven’t time to read,” Porter explained. “I’m kept too busy with city business. When I first came to the office, I found those bookshelves bare. They occupied quite a space in the wall. At first I thought I would have the space walled up but found it would cost too much. So I called the city librarian and decided to put books on the shelves. I told him to get me some books for which there weren’t much demand--something good-looking with colorful bindings.”
And that’s how Porter’s library came to contain such tomes as “The History of Methodism in Nebraska,” “Face to Face With Kaiserism,” “Epworth League Methods,” “God Is Writing a Book,” and “Elementary Accounting.”
BETWEEN THE COVERS: Porter, the only used car dealer ever elected mayor of L.A., and his book collection were mentioned in a chapter that author Carlson sarcastically titled, “Speaking of Culture.”
In contrast to Porter, Mayor Richard Riordan likes to read and has a two-story library at home that contains 40,000 volumes.
Of course, we bet Riordan doesn’t have a copy of “The History of Methodism in Nebraska.”
BY THE NUMBERS: We demand a recount, as Bob Dornan would say. Caltrans signs at L.A.’s borders variously give the city’s population as 3,607,092 (Glendale Freeway), 3,144,800 (Pacific Coast Highway near Long Beach) and 2,896,100 (Santa Ana Freeway near City of Commerce).
The Census Bureau’s latest report gives the population as 3,448,613.
OFFBEAT HOLLYWOOD MILESTONES: Among the accomplishments cited by Working Woman magazine in its 20th anniversary issue were:
* “First Female Screenwriter to Earn Half of What the Highest-Paid Hollywood Male Screenwriter Makes”: Nora Ephron, who reportedly earned $1.5 million for writing “Sleepless in Seattle,” about half what Joe Eszterhas received for the critically unacclaimed “Showgirls” (1993).
* “First Lesbian Kiss on TV”: Amanda Donohoe, portraying C.J. Lamb, bussed Michele Greene’s Abby Perkins on “L.A. Law” (1991).
* “First Actor to Win an Academy Award for Playing Someone of the Opposite Sex”: Linda Hunt, best supporting actress, for her role as Billy Kwan in “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1983).
NO, NO, YOU MUST RELEASE THE BRAKE! Ads dealing with impotence must be sensitively written. Robin White of South Pasadena noticed that a regional newspaper’s blurb about a drug that allegedly cures the problem contained an unfortunate typo about a medical brakethrough.
miscelLAny
Writer Roy Harris, who recently moved from West L.A. to Boston, notes that his son R.J. has been affected by “all the colonial history they heap on fourth-graders. He was learning about that first American flag, the one with the rattlesnake divided into 13 sections. And his Grampa asked if R.J. knew what words were written on the flag. Without missing a beat, R.J. told him: ‘The United Snakes of America.’ ”
