Another January 15 approaches – and if Elizabeth Short doesn’t define
noirish – I’d be remiss if it passed unnoticed.
I crawled through my Hollywood cards until I found — The Brevoort...
...AKA first Hollywood address of Elizabeth Short. She and Gordon Fickling shacked here Aug 20-26, 1946.
She thereafter bounced around, the Hawthorn, Mark Hansen’s, the Figueroa, the Guardian Arms, etc.
Up to the last Hollywood address of Elizabeth Short. The Chancellor.
Room 501, top floor (left of the fire escape). Flopped here Nov 13-Dec 6 ’46, went to San Diego, some other stuff, the missing week, and
bam, top totem on LA’s collective obsession with crime and itself, and the world’s obsession with crime and LA. (Lest we mention 1947 and its weight as a touchstone.)
"(Suspect) Glenn Wolf is the owner of the Chancellor Apartments, 1842 Cherokee Hollywood. It was the last place where victim resided in Los Angeles before she met Carl Balsiger and then left for San Diego. He [Wolf] was residing at 1617 North Las Palmas in an apartment house owned by Kate Harris at the time of the murder. He admitted knowing victim. She lived in a six bed apartment at the Chancellor Hotel and left there December 6, 1946 as she did not like the place. Wolf is known as a sexual maniac by other young women. Ray Pinker, LAPD Crime Laboratory chemist, checked the rooms in which he resided for blood and got no positive reaction. This was done upon request of undersigned. Marvin Hart, now living at Lido Apartments, Hollywood, lived at Chancellor Apartments at the time of the murder. He has not been questioned. Alice Lebedeff, private investigator, 1967 Carmen Street, Hillside 6279 states that a Miss Schell, who runs a hot dog stand on Santa Monica boardwalk, slept in the upper bunk of the bed occupied by victim on December 1, 1946 at the Chancellor apartments. Further that Polly Blits, Hollywood real estate broker is a known queen queer and knows plenty. There is reliable information that some of the five girls in the room at the Chancellor living with victim were queers. Victim stated on several occasions, however, that she had no use whatsoever for queers."
District Attorney Investigation Report
“She came here for a room last November 13. That’s a bad day, isn’t it? She wasn’t sociable like the other girls who lived in apartment 501 with her — more the sophisticated type.”
Juanita Ringo, manager, Chancellor Apts
Both buildings still look relatively the same. Perforce a bit less charming.
Everyone has an opinion on the Dahlia, and here's mine, that is, where I "choose up sides" when it comes to aligning with the experts. (This Dahlia business gets awful persnickety among differing folds of the faithful.) After all my study (there's only so much a man can learn about Caspar Bartholin the Younger and his relation to Liz Short), and doggy-paddling through oceans of so much crazy, seems I've found there's only one researcher whose methods are spotless:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thed...-story-ruined/ (not to say Halleluyah, I'm led to the Promised Land, because of course Short's mystery will remain Kennedy-esque in its riddles and conjecture until both are displaced by fresh enigmas; I will say that Harnisch's sagacious scholarship is replete with accuracy and insight).