L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

Then there was the: Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis, 127. See also Tygiel, “Metropolis in the Making,” 1-9.

The Parkers settled first: “Champion ‘Ag-inner’ of Universe Is Shuler, Belligerent Local Pastor Holds All Records for Attacks Upon Everybody, Everything,” Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1930, A2; Starr, Material Dreams, 136-39.

By 1910, the year: http://www.life.com/Life/lifebooks/hollywood/intro.html; Starr, Material Dreams, 98; Ross, “How Hollywood Became Hollywood,” in Sitton and Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making, 262.

Parker was plankton in: “Plans Submitted for Fine Theater: Picture Palace to Follow Elaborate Spanish Architecture,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1920, V1.

The first was Theodosia: “Milestones,” Time magazine, April 18, 1955.

As the movies heated: Dixon, “Problems of a Working Girl: Queer Aspects of Human Nature Exhibited to Quiet and Watchful Theater Workers, Says Love is Catching ’Like the Measles,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1919, 112.

As chief of police: Parker’s claim to have been born in 1902 rather than 1905 dates to this era, raising the possibility that he lied about his age so that he could claim to be slightly older than Francis. Divorce petition, Francette Pomeroy, Oregon City, OR.

Despite (or perhaps because of): Author interview with Joseph Parker, Houston, Texas, December 12-13, 2004. It should be noted that my account of Bill’s first marriage comes almost entirely from his wife’s divorce petition. Such accounts are invariably one-sided; exaggerating spousal cruelty was a common tactic for achieving a speedy divorce. It should also be remembered that Bill’s response to his wife’s behavior would have struck many men as wholly justified at the time.

Any attempt to heist: Reid, Mickey Cohen: Mobster, 39. See also unpublished notes for Mickey Cohen biography dated February 6, 1959, Ben Hecht Papers, Newberry Library, Box 7.

Chapter Three: The Combination

“The purpose of any political”: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 315, 341.

He was born Meyer: There is some confusion about Mickey’s birth date. Cohen himself generally claimed that he was born in 1913; however, his funeral marker says he was born in 1914. Still other evidence points to a 1911 birth date. See Lewis, Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster, 1; Cohen, In My Own Words, 3. Other accounts of Mickey’s life say that his father was a grocer.

Fanny, Mickey, and sister: Boyle Heights’s Jewish population jumped from 10,000 in 1917 to 43,000 in 1923, making it home to about a third of Los Angeles’s Jewish population. Romo, History of a Barrio, 65. The current brick Breed Street Shul was finished several years later, in 1923.

Mickey soon became a: Clarke and Saldana, “True Life Story of Mickey Cohen,” Los Angeles Daily News, July 1949. This is the beginning of a nine-part series on Mickey that is a valuable, though not always reliable, guide to his life. See also “Cohen Began as a Spoiled Brat,” the second installment in the series.

Mickey’s entree came from: Mickey’s exact age at the time of this incident is somewhat unclear. In Mickey Cohen: Mobster, Ed Reid says that this occurred when he was seven (37-39). In his autobiography, In My Own Words, Cohen says that this incident occurred when he was nine (5).

What followed was a: Cohen, In My Own Words, Chapter One.

Clearly, Mickey had a: The FBI would later estimate his IQ to be 98. Cohen FBI files.

While Mickey started his: The following year Los Angeles would surpass it—a lead L.A. would maintain until the 1990s. Klein, The History of Forgetting, 75. However, Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 73, disputes the belief, widespread at the time, that Los Angeles was suffering a crime wave.

“The white spot of …”: “The Soul of the City,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1923, 114.

By 1922, Harry Chandler: In 1909, progressive reformers had dismantled the old ward system that had allowed Democrats, Catholics, and Jews to be elected to political office in favor of a system that provided for only citywide at-large elections. The result was a city government dominated by Times readers—white, middle-class Protestant Republicans. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 9.

The Times newsroom claimed that Chandler was the eleventh wealthiest man in the world. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 125; “The White Spot Glistens Brightly,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1921, II; Taylor, “It Costs $1000 to Have Lunch with Harry Chandler,” Saturday Evening Post, December 16, 1939.