Thanks
1612havenhurstdrive for the link to the tribulations of the Pandora and its neighbors and welcome to the thread. Quite fascinating, and Larry Harnisch deserves credit for posting it back in 2009.
For those of you unwilling to slog through it all, here follows a summary of the material Harnisch found with some additional information I found.
Pandora’s was a nightclub located on the island in the middle of the intersection of Sunset and Crescent Heights. In 1958, it changed ownership. The new owner, Tom Elwell, tried and failed to get an entertainment license. The licensing process generated public hearings which provide a granular description of the collision of Sunset Strip nightlife, police, contemporary morals and, of course, the neighbors.
Thompson Ellsworth Elwell was born on October 19, 1933 in Los Angeles to William H. and Grace Secrest Elwell. Tom had an older brother, William Jr. In the 1940 census, the family lived in a comfortably middle class neighborhood at 916 Hauser Boulevard. William Sr. was a salesman for an oil refinery. Tom went to USC and graduated in 1957:
ancestrylibrary.com
While there, Tom was a member of the Young Republicans, and even found time to work at real estate agency with his brother, and sell used cars* while still an undergrad. He and his brother lived at 4309 Santa Rosalia, a mere 3 minute drive from the car dealership, and not much further from USC. As can be seen, both were (of course) registered Republicans:
ancestrylibrary.com
After leaving USC, he decided he’d like to run a nightclub. He set his eyes on Pandora’s on the Sunset Strip. He bought it from a Michael Schachel** and Al Adrian in early 1958. There was litigation over ownership but Elwell won. He started operating Pandora's on May 1, 1958.
In July 1958 Elwell applied for a "Cafe Entertainment” license. In September and October he had hearings before a Hearing Examiner. This worthy, after receiving testimony from vice-squad members, and neighbors, denied the application. Elwell then appealed to the Police Commission in January 1959, but the Commission agreed with the hearing officer.
The Hearing Examiner had determined Pandora's was no more or less noisy than other nearby clubs. But he decided Mr. Elwell was "unfit" for his license due his associations with three criminals: prostitute Shirley Paulos, narcotic suspect McKinley Sims, and “Homo” [sic] Don Arden***.
Paulos (aka Shirley Richards) had a brief career as a prostitute. Shortly after she met Elwell in 1958, she was arrested for offering at her house at 8039 Hemet Place, a ten-minute walk from Pandora’s. The police described her as a petite redhead, age 23 or 24, divorced mother of a 5 year-old boy. Police testified that Elwell's belongings were found in her house, and that subsequent to the arrest, she worked as a cashier at Pandora’s. Elwell didn’t consider her a “bad person” because she had turned a few tricks to pay her rent.
But Vice Squad officers testified that Ms. Paulos was an associate of one McKinley Sims, "colored gambler." Mr. Sims was a "good customer" of Pandora's, and knew Elwell. He had been arrested for narcotics possession (i.e. marijuana) at 2125 Sunset Plaza Drive in March, 1958. Sims was a "singer and comedian" at the Garden of Allah across the street from Pandora's, according to Elwell.
A final damning piece of evidence against Elwell was that “another patron of Pandora's, one Don Arden*** was arrested there as a 'Homo'."
Perhaps in a final but futile attempt to sway the Commission just before his appearance there, Elwell and Shirley got married in Las Vegas on January 4, 1959. The ploy didn’t work, the application was denied.
I looked for further information about Elwell and found the following article from the August 2, 1963 LA Times, five years after the Pandora’s problems:
LA Times through ProQuest
This article is worth reading, it's an interesting racket they were running. Evidently Elwell had kept in touch with his old pal Evans since the United Motors days of 1955. On February 1, 1964, the Times reported Elwell was sentenced to nine months in jail and was already in prison on another grand theft case.
Tom later ditched Pauline somewhere along the line, and married Petronella Vanommering [!] in Miami in 1982.
I could not think of a more Noir conclusion to this story than finding this:
HTML Code:
http://coroner.lacounty.gov/htm/ucpdetail.cfm?offset=2535&dec_id=3690
The Coroner got the birthdate garbled, but it is clear it’s the same man. You can see he had blue eyes in his college yearbook photo. He was a big guy, 6’5” and 240 lbs, even at age 63. Probably not the kind of guy you’d want to meet in a dark alley…
Footnotes:
*In his statement to the hearing officer, Elwell said that he worked at United Motors, 3838 Crenshaw Blvd as a partner of Murray Thomas Evans in 1955 while an undergraduate at USC. He told the officer that he understood Evans had legal problems after he, Elwood, had left the concern. He did indeed.
**In 1949, 16 year-old Schachel was picked up hitchhiking by "Big Bill" Tilden, the tennis star. This resulted in a year in jail for Tilden, who was already on probation for a similar offense. Newspapers said that Schachel, an unemployed grocery clerk, claimed to have been molested weeks earlier by someone else. Later, he sued Tilden for severe mental anguish caused by his brief fling with Tilden. Perhaps Schachel did have relationship issues: when Schachel was in his 50s, he was married briefly to a woman 22 years his junior. He died in Florida in 1982.
***This was Donn Arden, the "Busby Berkeley of Las Vegas,” creator of "Jubilee!" and not Don Arden, the English mobster/band manager of Black Sabbath.
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