Raymond Chandler and the case of the purloined cover art
Gentle reader,
A decade ago, we published The Kept Girl, Kim’s mystery novel about the real-life cult of angel worshippers who relieved Raymond Chandler’s oil company co-worker Clifford Dabney of a small fortune and put it to creative use.
Though based mostly on fact, the book presents an imagined alternate history in which Chandler, his devoted secretary and the idealistic L.A. cop who is a real-life model for Philip Marlowe come together to try to uncover the cult’s secrets and avoid a scandal for the Dabney family.
If Los Angeles had a stronger media landscape, and if the universe didn’t have such a wicked sense of humor, that book might have had a sequel or two by now.
But while doing research for a second novel, Kim first stumbled onto an unknown comic operetta that the young Chandler wrote with Julian Pascal, husband of Cissy—the woman Chandler would later woo, wed and build his increasingly narrow life around—and then Los Angeles exploded with a wave of public corruption unseen since Chandler’s day. We were right in the middle of it, because Downtown L.A.’s historic district was ground zero for the schemes. And since almost nobody else was reporting on it, we’ve had to.
As excuses for not finishing books go, at least Kim’s are unique!
But unexpectedly, there’s some mysterious, larcenous and interesting Kept Girl book news to share.
It started with a tweet from @jmshghtwr: "Love this coffe shop from the Chinese drama "Never too late" that plays on iQIYI. Wonder where I could get that nifty poster on the wall..." WHAT?!
Sure enough, the set decorator for an online Chinese drama had sourced Paul Rogers' cover art for our independently published mystery novel, printed and framed it, and hung it in a prominent spot in the show's coffee shop set!
This is bootlegging, pure and simple. Posters of The Kept Girl cover art don't exist—though had the production asked, we would have happily put them in touch with Paul to license the image.
It's wrong to steal from artists.
Still, it's sort of funny to see the imagery Paul dreamed up to accompany this twisted tale of angel worshippers and idealists facing off against the backdrop of Jazz Age Los Angeles repurposed as set decoration in a 21st century digital soap opera about romance, interior decoration and the generation gap filmed half a world away.
You can check it out for yourself here and here. Turn on the captions (CC) for an English translation.
This Saturday’s walking tour takes us into the real life noir of Raymond Chandler’s world as a 1920s oil company executive and frustrated writer, with visits to time capsule locations that feature in the detective fiction that made him famous, decades after he first set his pen to the page beneath the bright and sordid Los Angeles sun. It’s going to be drizzly, but not horrible, and we’re bringing hot tea in honor of Chandler’s English education. Join us, do!
And the Franklin Village Old Hollywood tour that was postponed due to the storm late last month has been rescheduled as a rare Sunday afternoon outing on April 28, with the option to attend a spiritual class in the historic Vedanta Temple before the walk. If our regular Saturday tours don’t work with your schedule, we hope this special date will be the chance you’ve waited for to discover some secrets of Los Angeles in good company.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Psst… If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. You can share this post to win subscriber perks. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown (Sat. 4/13) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (Sat. 4/20) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/27) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (Sun. 4/28) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (Sat. 5/4) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (Sat. 5/11) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (Sat. 5/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sat. 5/25) • POP – Preserving Our Past (Sat. 6/1) • Westlake Park (Sat. 6/8) • Highland Park Arroyo (Sat. 6/15) • Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 6/29) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 7/13) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (7/27)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
We had a great turnout for the annual John Fante tour of the writer's haunts, ending at 3rd & Broadway where the marquee of the Million Dollar Theater celebrates his beautiful book Ask The Dust: "Los Angeles give me some of you... you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town!"
Yesterday saw aprogressive media implosion, and an update to our October scoop, when we exposed Knock LA's failure to support freelancer Lisa Kwon when a landlord operating illegal Airbnbs sued her personally. Journalist Cerise Castle took to her personal twitter account to raise the alarm about what she alleges are serious improprieties with political organizing operation Ground Game LA and its control of media outlet Knock LA’s fiscal accounts, digital channels and property, culminating in her and other editors being locked out. Lisa Kwon’s legal situation is mentioned in the newsroom’s lengthy open letter. We think this is especially troubling as it is happening just as reporter Ben Camacho is being personally sued by the Los Angeles City Attorney for passing along legally obtained public records—this is chilling for all of us who submit CPRA requests to watchdog the civic purse. Camacho is personally fundraising for his legal defense. Unlike Lisa Kwon’s case, Knock LA has reported on what’s happening to Camacho. The leadership of Ground Game LA is somewhat opaque, but co-founder Meghan Choi was hired by incoming councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, and is alleged by some online to have returned to Ground Game. Confidential to L.A. journalists and citizens trying to understand what’s happening here: you can’t do independent journalism while in bed with the City Family.
New on Empty Los Angeles: The Sachs Situation Sucks, Parts 1 and 2. R.M. Schindler's modernist masterpiece hillside compound suffers amateur remodels, scam evictions for illegal Airbnb use, and a very weird filming policy. It's L.A.'s housing use crisis in stark relief, and this is the city’s fault for not cracking down on illicit home shares as well as not monitoring Mills Act compliance.
This is our last photo of the newsboy at the Harrison Gray Otis memorial, snapped on the February 10 Westlake Park tour. We were inspired to take the photo because someone had scrawled a curse upon God on the back of the one-time publisher. According to the Los Angeles Times, the cops retroactively found the kid’s thieves on surveillance video—and they sound very similar to the organized gang that was snatching Glendale-Hyperion bridge lamps, until the Times reported on our efforts to protect them and the city took the survivors away for safekeeping. Why won't the police track license plates to the criminal metal dealers?! This spree could end.
As we reported from the courtroom, Jose Huizar co-conspirator Ray Chan seeks mistrial, or evidentiary hearing, on the grounds of jury misconduct for premature deliberation. Says the court should have investigated and removed three chatty jurors before the vote.
Coagula Magazine's Mat Gleason memorializes Brady Westwater, and admits that when the ex-Malibu real estate agent pitched an epic takedown of Mike Davis' City of Quartz, he ran it, then became convinced BW could not possibly be its author. So who was?
New from Rev. Dylan Littlefield, chaplain at the Hotel Cecil: we get terrorized in the Stay on Main lobby on Palm Sunday, but the experience is a wakeup call about safety fixes that will hopefully be made soon. SROs need good, local management.
Remember when the Waring Ave bungalow court by Paramount Studios with its four rent controlled units was illegally demolished? We do, and were inspired to start mapping these endangered 100 year old multi-family compounds. The developer who also tore down the Craftsman next door is engaged in illegal piecemealing and now seeks permits to span both lots—see page 6 here for proof. We’re asking councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez not to reward this crime against tenants and our cultural history and to require the proper CEQA project review the developer seeks to avoid. Action item for our preservation pals: Please send an email to Planning Deputy Ted Walker (ted.walker@lacity.org) if you agree.
This week’s most active preservation crisis concerns the lovely circa 1900 cottage at 109-111 South Union Avenue, just south of Beverly, which has been derelict for years and had a demo permit on it in 2022, which has since lapsed. These videos tell the tale of a few days in the life of a home that deserves so much better than rotting away in plain sight, with no tenants to care for it.
above: we made this video to amplify the public safety and preservation concerns of community member Jamal Toppi, and shared it on the morning of April 9.
above: inspired by our advocacy video, Steve Lucero of The Artery LA shot this drone footage later on April 9.
above: we checked in and found signs of improvement on April 11.
Action item for our preservation pals: Ask councilmember Eunisses Hernandez to have the city’s Office of Historic Resources investigate if the cottage merits landmark protection. Contact CD1 Field Deputy Ben Cassorla (email bencassorla@gmail.com or by phone 213-473-7001). Thank him for working to get the house boarded up and the tapped electrical wires removed, and ask that he ask his boss to initiate the landmark consideration.
If you would like more stories from that era, Look up ones by my dad, Paul Weeks. He was with the LA Daily News ( old one), the Mirror and the Times and you can find the blog he kept at the end called Typos Galore ( may be one word and there are two of them)
That cake though! ah!!!!