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Education or Indoctrination?: Conservative Female Activism in the Los Angeles Public Schools

Michelle M. Nickerson

in Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right

This chapter focuses on a series of educational battles in the early 1950s that reveal the step-by-step process of how political ideas germinated in the fabric of women's everyday lives. Starting ... More

This chapter focuses on a series of educational battles in the early 1950s that reveal the step-by-step process of how political ideas germinated in the fabric of women's everyday lives. Starting with the “Pasadena affair” of 1950, it shows how new ideas about “mind control” and “brainwashing” inspired political epiphanies among women otherwise busy with their children's homework and PTA duties. Parents, especially mothers, started to think they saw communism in action. For a few years, conservative women asserted themselves in school politics as activists and school board members in Southern California, forcing teachers to resign and blocking policies they deemed subversive.Less

To Mount Wilson

in Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels

This chapter takes a tour to Mount Wilson which takes the following route: South Pasadena–Pasadena–Flintridge–La Canada–Mount Wilson 27.9 m; Fair Oaks Ave., Atlanta St., Arroyo Dr., La Canada–Verdugo ... More

This chapter takes a tour to Mount Wilson which takes the following route: South Pasadena–Pasadena–Flintridge–La Canada–Mount Wilson 27.9 m; Fair Oaks Ave., Atlanta St., Arroyo Dr., La Canada–Verdugo Rd., State 118, Foothill Blvd., Haskell St., Angeles Crest Highway, State 2, Mount Wilson Rd. Cutting through one of the most spectacular areas of the Angeles National Forest, this route winds to mile-high Mount Wilson, which, though chiefly known for its great 100-inch telescope and its many contributions to astronomical research, is also a year-round pleasure resort.Less

The Only Difference between Pasadena and Mississippi Is the Way They’re Spelled: Swimming in Southern California

Lynn M. Hudson

in West of Jim Crow: The Fight against California's Color Line

This chapter centers on the work of Ruby McKnight Williams, Edna Griffin, and other southern Californians who fought racial restrictions. Williams and her allies in the NAACP touched a nerve in the ... More

This chapter centers on the work of Ruby McKnight Williams, Edna Griffin, and other southern Californians who fought racial restrictions. Williams and her allies in the NAACP touched a nerve in the wealthy enclave of Pasadena when they joined forces to integrate the public swimming pool. The backlash against their efforts was swift and lengthy. While segregating bodies in water was not solely a western project, California had more pools than any other state by the 1920s and pioneered systems of restricting these spaces. Pools became a focal point for the battle over Jim Crow in the state, just as streetcars had in the previous century. The struggle over the Brookside pool lasted longer than any other case in the history of the Pasadena NAACP and shaped the memories of black Californians, including Jackie Robinson.Less

Epilogue: Remembering (and Forgetting) Jim Crow

Lynn M. Hudson

in West of Jim Crow: The Fight against California's Color Line

This last section considers Pasadena’s groundbreaking resistance to Brown v. Board of Education, circling back to the book’s overall argument that California was an innovator of methods to restrict ... More

This last section considers Pasadena’s groundbreaking resistance to Brown v. Board of Education, circling back to the book’s overall argument that California was an innovator of methods to restrict and contain black bodies. The history and memory of segregation in California has been submerged or forgotten and the epilogue considers the implications of such practices.Less

Pasadena

in Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels

Pasadena, a quiet and conservative residential city, lies 10 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains which stand like a great Spanish comb behind it. ... More

Pasadena, a quiet and conservative residential city, lies 10 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains which stand like a great Spanish comb behind it. Dignified, reserved Pasadena is a city of many churches. Its well-bred quiet is not broken by the whir of machinery. Indeed, many a retired industrialist with a princely estate here has joined the local Chamber of Commerce for the express purpose of preventing the development of factories in the city or immediate vicinity. This chapter describes points of interest in Pasadena, including the Civic Center, Pasadena Public Library, All Saints' Episcopal Church, and Grace Nicholson Art Gallery. It also provides visitor information such as bus service, streetcars, taxicabs, information bureaus, traffic regulation, accommodations, and parks and playgrounds.Less

Popular Cinema and Conceptualizing Class and Social Change

Malek Khouri

in The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema

Chahine made twelve films in the 1950s. Chahine's cinema never adopted a dogmatic stand on the issues of class and class divisions; rather, it acknowledged the common areas of interest among people ... More

Chahine made twelve films in the 1950s. Chahine's cinema never adopted a dogmatic stand on the issues of class and class divisions; rather, it acknowledged the common areas of interest among people from different classes. His film career immediately followed his return from the United States with an acting diploma from the Pasadena Playhouse in 1948. Some of Chahine's early popular melodramas and musicals of the 1950s certainly alluded to and occasionally criticized the gap between social strata in Egyptian pre-revolution society, or mocked the bourgeois lifestyle, or described the workers' environment in a more or less “realistic” fashion. Chahine explores the working conditions on the docks of the port of Alexandria through a story about a clash between a young worker and his boss in Sira'fi-l-mina.Less

From the Lexington Stage to a New York Park Bench

Joseph B. Atkins

in Harry Dean Stanton: Hollywood's Zen Rebel

This wide-ranging chapter follows Harry Dean Stanton in his first years after military service. He returned to Lexington, Kentucky, and enrolled at the University of Kentucky, eventually making his ... More

This wide-ranging chapter follows Harry Dean Stanton in his first years after military service. He returned to Lexington, Kentucky, and enrolled at the University of Kentucky, eventually making his way to the university's Guignol Theatre where a performance as Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion convinced him to pursue a career in acting. He continued his studies at the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse in California, spending several years there before signing up with a traveling, all-male chorus group that took him across the country. Like many actors, including his fellow Kentuckian and future friend Warren Oates, Harry Dean tried to put his training to work in New York City, but after spending more time on park benches than the stage he joined with the Strawbridge Children's Theater and was back traveling cross-country. He tired of this before long, and it was back to California, this time for good.Less

The Anaheim Hoofer

Brent Phillips

in Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance

This chapter traces the early life of Charles Walters from his childhood in Anaheim, California, to his early professional endeavours as a young adult. It discusses his introduction to dance, the ... More

This chapter traces the early life of Charles Walters from his childhood in Anaheim, California, to his early professional endeavours as a young adult. It discusses his introduction to dance, the influence of vaudeville, and his early theatrical aspirations. The chapter discusses his initial dance tour with a Fanchon and Marco troupe, his one year studying law at University of Southern California, and the mounting of the Pasadena Playhouse production Low and Behold. This chapter also focuses on Walters’ friendships with Leonard Sillman and Tyrone Power.Less

“This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?”

Thomas Söderqvist

in Science as Autobiography: The Troubled Life of Niels Jern

This chapter focuses on Niels Jerne's departure from Pasadena. Students, visiting researchers, and staff wrote their goodbyes. “Have a miserable trip; I hate you (but love Adda),” wrote George ... More

This chapter focuses on Niels Jerne's departure from Pasadena. Students, visiting researchers, and staff wrote their goodbyes. “Have a miserable trip; I hate you (but love Adda),” wrote George Streisinger. The next day, the Jernes flew to New York to sail back to Europe. In the week it took to cross the Atlantic, Jerne buried himself in Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, a tract on inwardness that mentally prepared him for his return to Denmark. A week with the “subjective problem” was also, he thought, “a valuable antidote” to the endless suburban streets of Pasadena, to Delbruck and his desert excursions, and, not least, to “the objectivism which is spreading so deplorably among the educated [classes],”as he expressed it in a letter to Stent.Less

Advise and Consent

in Nixon at the Movies: A Book about Belief

Pasadena, with its Tournament of Roses and Greene & Greene houses became a cynosure for gracious living in the basin. In San Gabriel, George Smith Patton, the scion of a prominent Virginia military ... More

Pasadena, with its Tournament of Roses and Greene & Greene houses became a cynosure for gracious living in the basin. In San Gabriel, George Smith Patton, the scion of a prominent Virginia military family, chose to make his home there after marrying the daughter of Benjamin D. Wilson, the first elected mayor of Los Angeles and owner of some twenty thousand acres of prime Southland property. There is one fact people know about Richard Nixon and Hollywood, it's that he loved Patton. The film's protagonist figured in Nixon's career long before 1970, before Nixon even had a career, really for he and Patton once might have become political rivals. Nixon, as a sort of existential Clausewitzian, considered life to be war by other means and expected the wartime allowances to be made for him.Less

The final years: Travel and tributes

A. J. Kox and H. F. Schatz

in A Living Work of Art: The Life and Science of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz

Chapter 12 deals with Lorentz’s final years as a renowned physicist who traveled extensively. It describes the festivities around the golden anniversary of his doctorate and his seventieth birthday ... More

Chapter 12 deals with Lorentz’s final years as a renowned physicist who traveled extensively. It describes the festivities around the golden anniversary of his doctorate and his seventieth birthday and how he received a multitude of national and international honors and tributes and was a sought-after speaker and respected participant in international scientific cooperation. It highlights how Lorentz, already in his seventies, undertook two lengthy and strenuous speaking tours across the United States, twice spending time to teach at Caltech in Pasadena, and how he continued to actively participate in physics to the very end of his life, when he died at the age of seventy-five after a short illness caused by an Erysipelas infection. It ends with a description of Lorentz’s funeral, attended by international luminaries as well as the general population.Less

“Calitopia”: New Models for Cities

Peter J. Holliday

in American Arcadia: California and the Classical Tradition

This chapter examines how the classicizing Beaux-Arts architecture at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago inspired Southland communities to fashion civic identities. California civic ... More

This chapter examines how the classicizing Beaux-Arts architecture at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago inspired Southland communities to fashion civic identities. California civic leaders embraced its model in the design of their public buildings and administrative or civic centers (e.g., Pasadena, Long Beach); in some developments, planners adapted its principles in an idealistic attempt to harmonize public and private, urban and rural by embracing the principles of the City Beautiful Movement (Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes), and on a smaller scale but no less significantly, the region’s colleges and universities incorporated the Movement’s principles into their campus plans (UCLA, USC).Less

The Gateway to the Planets

Fred Taylor

in Exploring the Planets: A Memoir

After graduating from Oxford University with a doctorate, the author had job offers from British Aerospace, the European Space Agency, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. ... More

After graduating from Oxford University with a doctorate, the author had job offers from British Aerospace, the European Space Agency, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Upon arrival at JPL, then as now the lead centre for NASA’s planetary exploration programme, he joined a group that was planning missions to the outer planets of the Solar System. This involved working on techniques using infrared spectroscopy to investigate the weather and climate in the deep atmospheres and colourful cloud systems on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. His hobby at the time was cars; no longer on a student budget, he was able to buy an Aston Martin DB5.Less

The Hi-De-Ho Man 1971–1994

Alyn Shipton

in Hi-de-ho: The Life of Cab Calloway

This chapter describes Cab Calloway's solo career from 1974 until 1978. In the 1970s, he joined forces with Anita O'Day, Ray Eberle's orchestra, and a jazz group led by Ray McKinley at Pasadena Civic ... More

This chapter describes Cab Calloway's solo career from 1974 until 1978. In the 1970s, he joined forces with Anita O'Day, Ray Eberle's orchestra, and a jazz group led by Ray McKinley at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, to “recreate the sounds of the 40s.” During his run in Hello, Dolly! he took time out to visit the studios and record an album covering not only the best known songs from that show but those from Cabaret and Mame as well. His album The Hi-De-Ho Man spanned his work for that label from the mid-1930s to 1947.Less