While rigging in the roof of the Orpheum Theatre on Broadway in downtown LA I noticed paper poking out of the poured concrete of the building. It looked like newspaper. So I pulled on the paper and tore some bits of it out of the building. The chunks were not huge, some 8" long, brittle, tattered, yellow. I was looking for a date on the paper to tell me when it was from and maybe what paper.
The pieces were several layers thick and I tried to figure out the mystery there in the ceiling but they were ripping so I stopped and put them in my pocket for later, when I had my glasses and could carefully look.
There was no date on the paper but there was an article that said the word "Flapper" which was the 1920s, and I knew the Orpheum was built sometime in the 1920s. It opened in February of 1926. Also the writing was interesting. It seemed a lot more personal than you would see in the papers of today. There was personality to it. I did find the name of one reporter. Ira C. Tichenor. I looked him up on Google. I didn't find much about him. He was married in 1882 and had a daughter in 1901 who became an actress in the silent movies.
Thomas Meighan was an actor on stage and silent movies. The film mentioned in the bit of paper above is The Man Who Found Himself. A 1925 movie. So this narrows down when the paper was put into the cement. The movie came out August 25, 1925. So the paper would be maybe a September edition of either the LA Times or the LA Examiner.
The ad in the top bit of paper was pretty funny to me. They were worried about being too thin. TANLAC made them more robust. Tanlac was a medicinal "with alcohol, gentian, buckthorn, rhubarb, licorice, glycerin, wild cherry." But since it was the 1920s and Prohibition was in effect, the 15% alcohol content made Tanlac a popular "medicine." So you might have "puny children" but give them Tanlac and they will grow strong. Or they will just be drunk and not give a shit.
There was also a reference to Sid Grauman of the famous Chinese Theatre in one of the bits of paper. His Chinese Theatre opened in 1926. It was not mentioned in the scrap I had, but said something about a party he was at.
It would have been cool to see more of the paper that was buried in the wall, but it was trapped in poured concrete. I wondered how it got there. Was a worker on the grid, 70 feet in the air, reading the paper at lunch and when he was done instead of taking the paper back down or throwing it 70 feet to the ground, he put it inside the form where the concrete was going to be poured. The building is old and parts have crumbled away to reveal this time capsule to me. The worker was discarding a paper. I found part of it 86 years later and searched the internet for answers to my questions.
Here's the Flapper story from the top scrap:
THE ESCAPES
(Confession Story)
Nifty flapper, lugging satchel, gets off car late at night. So did we. Couldn't help it. It was our stop. Flapper gave us one furtive glance, and began ankling away from there like a frightened doe. We tried to be as non-burglarious as possible, business of carrying newspapers in hand, etc. Whistled to appear innocent. Found we were doing "Hotsy Totsy." Hardly fitting. Made quick switch to "Nearer My God To Thee." Stumped at the end of two bars. Flapper in fright, had made a feint to go in a direction in that to which we were proceeding...
Thanks to that long lost construction worker for unknowingly leaving me an intellectual mystery to solve.
1 comment:
THIS IS SOOO COOL!!!!!!!!!
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