1950-1960 Starr 2002

Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams California in War and Peace 1940-1950, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2002, 386 pp., 2002, 1950s, 1950

     [p.265] "By 1950 Warren had completely undermined Howser, who failed to win the Republican nomination for reelection. In the general election of 1950, Republican candidate Edward Shattuck was defeated by Pat Brown . . . with the tacit approval of Warren . . . The bond between the two men . . . constitutes the central political continuity in California between 1950 and 1966 when Pat Brown was defeated for governor by Ronald Reagan. Earl Warren, Republican, recruited Pat Brown, Democrat, into the Party of California, committed to an essentially bipartisan, growth-oriented, neo-Progressive program based in public works . . ."

     [p. 274] 1950s: Actress Helen Gahagan Douglas, wife of Melvyn Douglas, was already representing Westside Los Angeles in the House of Representatives.

     " . . .

     [p. 274] Earl Warren kept very few papers, wrote even fewer letters. If not for his posthumously published Memoirs (1977), written between 1970 and 1974, Earl Warren died 9 July 1974, there would be little evidence for any conjectures . . .

    [p. 275] . . .

     "Earl Warren pushed toward the 1952 Republican convention in Chicago with a mixed reputation . . .

     "He was sixty-two . . . his last shot at a national career . . .

     [p. 276] "Warren's Republican opponents were Robert Alonzo Taft of Ohio, co-author of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The junior senator from California, Richard M. Nixon, began to play a part in the election . . .

     [p. 277] "In June 1945, Nixon was a Navy lieutenant attached to a legal unit of the Navy; Eisenhower, a triumphant five-star general. "In 1949 Congressman Nixon first met Eisenhower, then president of Columbia University, when Eisenhower had requested a briefing on the internal security threat posed by Communists in the United States. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Nixon provided Eisenhower with the briefing. The young congressman was pleased . . . At the Bohemian Grove encampment of July 1950, Nixon, now running for the United States Senate, once again met Eisenhower . . . listened as Eisenhower spoke, and who was only applauded when he endorsed the loyalty oaths at Berkeley. From the perspective of the Southern California-dominated Hoover wing of the Republican Party in California-with Hoover himself presiding in rustic splendor at his camp-the barely articulate Eisenhower stood in no danger of replacing the charismatic and articulate Taft.

     "A year later at the Bohemian Grove . . . liquor industry executive Ellis Slater, a close personal friend of Eisenhower's argued that Taft had no Democratic supporters and could not win the election. U.S. Senator Nixon was mentioned as a possible vice-president with strong support from the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

     [p. 277] "The rise of Richard Nixon in five years from naval reserve lieutenant to senator and a leading vice presidential possibility, working energetically, if discreetly, on Eisenhower's behalf, must have nettled Earl Warren, although he never said so, at least in public. Posed alongside each other in the presidential campaign of 1952, the sixty-one-year-old governor and the thirty-eight-year-old senator, as men, as types, embodied to perfection a contrast of generations, regions, values, and styles that juxtaposed one California against another. Genial and open in demeanor; calm, self-assured; fair, blond, bland, Warren stood in dramatic contrast to the neurotic and insecure Nixon, self-conscious, unfavored in features, plagued by an [p. 278] ominous five-o'clock shadow and a tendency to break out in nervous sweats. Warren stood calmly and smiled to the crowd. Nixon had a tendency to hunch, clasp his hands, and shift his eyes nervously above a feral smile. . . .

     [p. 278] "In geographical terms, Nixon represented Southern California, with its deep connections to the rising plutocratic conservatism of the prosperous Sun Belt. Warren, by contrast, was a Northern Californian by choice and a Progressive by temperament . . . Nixon cut his political teeth on the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers case as a junior member of the House Un-American Activities Committee. In his race for the Senate in 1950, he savaged his opponent, Congresswoman Helen Gahagen Douglas, for allegedly voting the Communist Party line. Warren shared Nixon's anti-Communist fervor, but after the Point Lobos case and the scuttling of Max Radin for the state supreme court, he tended to float above discussions of the Communist conspiracy. Warren also kept his distance from the corporate, legal and financial bigwigs who dominated Republican Party fundraising. Nixon welcomed their help. Nixon developed a first-rate knowledge of foreign affairs. Warren remained focussed on California . . .

     [p. 280] Eisenhower won the Republican nomination, due to Nixon's conniving and dirty tricks-California delegates muttered that Nixon was the kept man of conservative Southern California interests . . .that Nixon was benefitting from a secret slush fund set up by Southern California Republicans to supplement the senator's income. The disclosure nearly cost Nixon his place on the ticket, until he recovered himself in late September by means of his nationally televised Checkers speech.

     [p. 280] " . . .

     [p. 326] "On 24 February 1950 the regents voted twelve to six that those faculty not signing the loyalty oath by 30 April would automatically be severed from the university as of 30 June. Regents voting against the majority: Governor Warren, President Sproul; Sidney Ehrman, Edward Heller (Ehrman was the son-in-law of I.W.Hellman, a regent from 1881 to 1918, and Heller was Hellman's grandson), Jesse Steinhardt; and Admiral of the Fleet Chester Nimitz . . .

     " . . .

     [p. 328] "On 2 October 1950, Life magazine profiled the last days of dismissed [Berkeley] professor of psychology Edward Tolman as he cleaned out his desk and enjoyed a final lunch with colleagues in the Faculty Club . . .

     " . . .

     [p. 329] "Richard Nixon, by contrast, a non-UC man , found the entire affair beneficial to his campaign for the United States Senate. Four years after his victory over Jerry Voorhis, Nixon was back on the campaign trail with the same technique-a charge of fellow-traveling, hammered home repeatedly-in a race against Helen Gahagan Douglas. If Jerry Voorhis represented the Left as Pasadena socialist, Helen Gahagan Douglas embodied the Left as Seven Sisters in league with Beverly Hills . . .

     [p. 330] " . . . Murray Chotiner . . . printed on pink paper Douglas' voting record in the House of Representatives (to which she had been elected in 1945).

     "The Pink Sheet unnerved Douglas, as did the disruption of one of her rallies on the University of Southern California campus in front of the Doheny Library. Undergraduate men, members of the secret society the Skull and Dagger, disrupted the crowd. USC President Rufus B. von KleinSmid sent a letter of apology. A number of USC undergraduates involved in this incident went on to specialize in Dirty Tricks in subsequent Nixon campaigns.

     " . . . The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles died there in 1969.

     "George Gordon and his brother Eugene began doing business on the Santa Monica Pier in 1954. They leased the vacant arcade building where the Eel Aquarium had been the previous summer and installed a new penny arcade with extensive skee ball equipment. It was called Playland Arcade. They also began managing the carousel for Mrs. Newcomb.

     "The Gordon brothers had grown up in Atlantic City, New Jersey where their father, until George was thirteen, operated a carousel at Rendezvous Amusement Park. They came to California in 1944 and after the war operated several game concessions on the Ocean Park Pier. The relatively undeveloped state of the Newcomb Pier after Walter Newcomb's death gave them the opportunity to escape from the intense competition at the Ocean Park Pier and thrive.

     "Others took advantage of the business opportunities on the pier. Mrs. Newcomb's daughter Elizabeth and her husband Richard Westbrook opened Sinbad's Cafe in the old banquet hall next to the La Monica Ballroom. Al Bond and his partner Jeane Crowne began operating Al's Kitchen where Dusty's Chowder House had been, and F.J. Favares opened the Surf's View Cafe next to Mrs. Newcomb's gift shop. Edmond Friege took over Lewis Rea's boat and rental business at the end of the pier and Pete Peterson, a former lifeguard, began an aquatic supply business on the pier.

     "Versal Schuler and his partner Jack Rea began operating their charter boat fishing business from the end of the Municipal Pier after Bob Lamia left. They previously operated out of the Ocean Park Pier's landing, so most of their customers were already familiar with their boats. Their company, Santa Monica Sports fishing, . . . barracuda, halibut, bass and rock cod within three miles of the pier . . .

     " . . ." p. 118

     "Lamia's old charter boat office next to the Playland arcade . . . was leased to Gordon and Beryle Brunkow by Mrs. Newcomb. They operated a wholesale and retail gift shop that specialized in plaster of paris statues." p. 120

     ". . .

     "The City Council in the spring of 1956 [studied] a report by city engineer Maurice King . . . In July the Council by a vote of 5-2 (with Wellman, Mills and Rex Minter opposed) authorized the repair work [on the Municipal Pier]. Mills [questioned] "throwing good money after bad, in light of the deteriorating breakwater"; the advisability of having commercial fishing on the pier; advocated removal of the lower deck."

     " . . .

     "Santa Monica began fighting the state's plan to take over its beach operations in August 1956. The city had been negotiating for more than a year for a long term lease but the state had its own comprehensive plan on the drawing board. Finally, the State Parks Commission agreed in the fall to grant Santa Monica local control with a twenty-five year lease. The city on November 14, 1956 approved the lease and instructed City Manager Dorton to retain the architectural firm of Welton Becket and Associates to prepare beach parking plans between the Ocean Park Pier and Santa Monica Piers.

     "Santa Monica's beach front, like many beach fronts elsewhere, attracted numerous drifters, hustlers and petty criminals. But it was the runaways and perverts that were attracted to its famed Muscle Beach that worried city officials and the police department the most. Their worst nightmare occurred on November 21, 1956 when ten year old Larry George Rice's body was found lying in a pool of blood beneath the Santa Monica Pier. He died three hours later from thirty stab wounds." p. 121

 Cardinal James Francis McIntyre actively endorsed Nixon . . .

     [p. 331] "Douglas made the mistake of endorsing Roosevelt, Warren's opponent for governor, forcing Warren to endorse Nixon . . .

     [p. 336] " . . . Mann's repudiation of the United States in the summer of 1952, "drove him into exile in Zurich . . . "the United States would not, as Mann feared, degenerate into roundups and concentration camps. The nation would correct and destabilize itself. Earl Warren had been offered no seat in President Dwight Eisenhower's cabinet. . . .

     [p. 337] " . . .

     "After Chief Justice of the United States Frederick Vinson had died in his sleep on 8 September 1953, Eisenhower did not turn immediately to Earl Warren . . . first John Foster Dulles, followed by Thomas Dewey . . . On 25 September Attorney General Brownell offered Warren the position of Associate Justice. [p. 338 ] Warren demanded Chief Justice. 4 October 1953, Earl Warren , sixty-two, left for Washington and was sworn in on 5 October.

     [p. 338] "The ensuing decade would witness Earl Warren emerge as one of the most influential-and liberal-Chief Justices in American history . . . the liberal side of the California duality-was free to emerge. Historians who would later describe Warren as reversing his philosophies and values after being appointed to the Court and turning liberal, even going soft, did not know the full complexity of Warren's California Progressive sensibility with its admixture of conservative and liberal values. The attorney general of California who had played as important a role as anyone in incarcerating Japanese-Anericans in 1942 strictly on the basis of their race would very soon be presiding over the unanimous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision that would end the legality of public schools segregated by race. The crusading prosecutor would in 1966 preside over the Miranda v. Arizona decision ruling that a criminal suspect must be apprised of his or her legal rights, including the right to remain silent, before being interrogated. The outspoken anti-Communist while district attorney, attorney general, and governor would soon find himself labeled on the floor of the Senate by Senator Joseph McCarthy as the best friend of Communism in the United States. Carey McWilliams had once denounced Warren as a reactionary. Now the John Birch Society would soon be mounting an Impeach Earl Warren campaign. The President who had appointed Warren would later describe the appointment as "the biggest damn fool thing I ever did." . . .

     [p. 339] ". . . the Cold War and the anti-Communist crusade that was taking hold of American life in the late 1940s represented an equally harsh confrontation and would remain so for more than forty years. As of 1950, however, this confrontation, while important, was not the entire American story and certainly not the entire story of California. Even as hostilities dragged on in Korea, California was entering the era, 1950 to 1964, that would witness the fulfillment of so much of what would become the most populous state in the nation. More, it would become in significant measure the fulfillment of its best wartime and post-war hopes for itself. Already, by the late 1940s, despite the dissensions and neuroses of the Cold War, that fulfillment was more than manifest in a gratifying pageant of moving vans pulling up to newly built houses in cities, towns, and suburbs and newly educated and employed veterans and their families entering upon their futures.

     "Tensions and ambiguities would remain, of course. Just as the tensions and ambiguities of the late 1930s were suppressed on behalf of the war effort, only to reemerge in the late 1940s, so too would the 1950s witness the gradual gathering of future storms of social and political protest, only temporarily suppressed. In this regard, the 1940s-with its chiaroscuro of life and death, foreign wars and homecomings, noir and suburbia-was perhaps the most ambiguous yet transformative decades in the history of the state. Pervading the lifestyle and imagery of the late 1940s and the ensuing decade-the swimming pools and backyard barbecues, the school yard teeming with healthy children, the suburban tracts and freeways, the whole Ozzie and Harriet splendor of it all-was an awareness continuing from the first half of the 1940s that it was all so precious because it could be lost. No matter whatever the dangers, the dream was there, energizing California with the convictions that a just war had been fought and won and that life, love, family, home, work, beauty, sunshine, even happiness, remained galvanizing.

[p. 307] In 1949 Tenney place a poor fifth in the race for mayor of Los Angeles. He subsequently failed in two attempts to reach the House of Representatives. In 1952 he ran for Vice President of the United States on the Christian National Party ticket alongside General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. By 1959 Jack Tenney was back where he began, in the desert, practicing law in Banning, a Mexicali Rose sort of town.

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017