Wonkette
- DEPRESSION DESERT: “Alexander Pantages, the Greek tycoon, moved from Seattle to Los Angeles and gave Walt Disney a start in the animated-film business. But Pantages had other interests, and as Wall Street collapsed in 1929, he was tried and convicted for the rape of a 17-year-old dancer.” [LA CityBeat]
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Alexander Pantages, Phil Gramm.
Slow news day?
Ken Layne’s Google Alerts Keywords Notification for: “rape +”17-year-old” +Disney”
You are the last remaining print journalist in California.
That is all.
mattbolt: I’ll defend Ken on that one. There are no 17 year’olds in the stupid Mojave desert. BUT the mohave allows for trips up to Bishop, which is this beautiful gateway to an entire change of opinion. ANYHOOS. Still tired, so ya know, assfucking and some such.
shortsshortsshorts: South by North East California near the Nevada border. Se habla Hunter Thompson.
Ken, you could easily have added a couple of those Mojave tortoises into that story.
Easily.
It’s as if you’re not really trying.
Did your son get to see some owls?
That was great, Ken. Have you read The Secret Knowledge of Water? It’s a beautiful book I think you’d like.
I simply cannot believe that before that Socialist Roosevelt was elected that a rich person could not rape whoever they want. That is like believing that Obama won’t take all our guns.
Layne is really hitting the depression sauce hard.
yeah, am i missing the point of this post or do i just not know who pantages is?
finkystinger: Pantages has a theater named after him on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s called the Pantages Theater.
If you lived in Los Angeles before 1950, and you had a lot of money and/or you raped a 17-year old, you got a landmark named after you. We had a serious shortage of notable politicians, war heroes, and famous literary personages, so we had to make do with wealthy child-rapists. Sometimes that’s what it takes to build a major metropolis, so bite me.
btw the alleged rape victim was named, I shit you not, Eunice Pringle.
More to this, apparently, than meets the eye. Pre-Marilyn Kennedy clan involvement. Assassination rumors. Possible set-up. Conviction overturned on appeal, etc. Probably could make for an even better story than “Chinatown”. Depressing maybe, but every grain of sand…
Whenever I drive by Hesperia I think of how much the name sounds like a disease. Good for you ken, gettin out and about with your kid. Watch out for the shotguns and the meth-heads.
From my inbox today:
“Speaking of Walnuts, one of the newest products offered by LivingNutz is their mouth-watering Tahitian Vanilla Bean Coconut Creme.”
http://www.naturalnews.com/024858.html
I think owls are a waste of time. But that was actually a beautifully written article ken.
As ususal, lovely piece..tho’ I like the ones that stir up the wackjobs and get the comments a’ flowin’..
you know Ken, that encounter could’ve turned out very different. You carry a gun right?
How sen-ti-mental. Just goes to show, crack the shell of any hard-bitten “journalist” and there’s a little kid clapping for Tinkerbell to wake up (to paraphrase Calvin Trillen). Good thing, too.
I detect a lack of respect for our troops in that article; SUPPORT OUR MUD-BAKED TROOPS!!
Also, owls.
charlesdegoal: I’m with you– take the source for whatever it’s worth, but Ken Anger basically lays out the case for Pantages’ innocence in ‘Hollywood Babylon’. It was a bad time to be wealthy, swarthy, foreign-named guy in Depression-era El-Lay.
don’t tell Dave about the menu at the G20 summit!
This is a really wonderful essay–best yet, I think. And QI is a good group, Ken, but you do need to like to hunt quail…..
zetetic: And it really is a beautiful theater.
my four year old is also owl obsessed. we have great horned owls hanging around the house, though - scared all the barn owls off. and the screech owls scare the shit out of me. parenting tip: get a copy of Jane Nolan’s Owl Moon and read it to the kid on a regular basis.
I was under the impression all this stuff burned up last week.
zetetic: According to this, http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ytedk.com/pringle.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ytedk.com/framed.htm&usg=__eCirwGrrB66g_mp-ddNlTasAiic=&h=285&w=200&sz=7&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=tEBC1gpuKrHXSM:&tbnh=115&tbnw=81&prev=/images%3Fq%3DEunice%2BPringle%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN the (otherwise innocent) Mr. Pantages was set up by none other than Joe Kennedy with the wannabe actress Pringle in her only starring role.
Yes, that Joe Kennedy.
Also, the Pantages Theatre in Tacoma is pretty sweet. I went there once to see a Barbershop Quartet program. (My dad was really into that stuff; yes, Republican; no, not closeted)
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.pstos.org/instruments/wa/tacoma/pantages_exterior-1921-l.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pstos.org/instruments/wa/tacoma/pantages.htm&usg=__J7NltJ1RFW67weejX1g4XGiXndg=&h=310&w=442&sz=42&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=f2eBds4NPSQMOM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3DPantages%2Btacoma%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN