The Pokemon Go craze might get people to see more public art ... would you live in a murder house? Surf Punks!
Surf and turf wars: Co-founder of Surf Punks remembers localism battles of the 60s and 70s
Maybe you've been following the saga of the gang that controls surfing on Lunada Bay on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. After years of inaction, it looks like the gang will finally have its illegal beach fort demolished.
In 1976, a group called The Surf Punks captured the essence of surf localism with their songs "My Beach," "My Wave," and "Punchout at Malibu:"
Now that surfing's caught on
There's less waves to go around
I'm a fool to stay in town
A fool to stay in town
Now it's the goons in the water
That are bringing on a slaughter
Gonna be a punch out at Malibu
A punch out at Malibu
The co-founder of The Surf Punks is now in his 60s and lives in Oregon, in part because surfing here is "done."
He's Dennis Dragon, and he grew up immersed in the ocean off Malibu, and immersed in music: his dad was Hollywood Bowl Orchestra maestro Carmen Dragon, his mom was an opera singer, his brother and sister-in-law were The Captain and Tennille, and Dragon produced "Love Will Keep Us Together" and many more hits.
In fact, the hit records gave him the dough to set up the recording studio where he and Drew Steele made music.
I talked with Dragon about the scene in 1976; about Valleys, dummies, and shoulder hoppers; bird poop in your eye; and whether they made a difference. Listen to the audio for our in-depth conversation and lots of music.
Hidden History of LA: The murderous lover who lived in a Silver Lake attic
Robert Petersen produces the podcast The Hidden History of Los Angeles and shares it with KPCC's Off-Ramp. This time: the weirdest love story you've ever heard. Make sure to listen to the audio — we knock on the door of the murder house!
“If there is any sympathy to be felt in this case, do not waste it on this woman. All your sympathy should be with the dead man who wanted a home and a loving wife and who was shot down in his own home when he discovered the lover of his unfaithful wife in his own living room.”
In 1922, police were called to a home in Silver Lake after there were reports of gunshots. When the police arrived, they found a man lying dead in the living room with multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the back of the head. The dead man’s wife, Dolly Oesterreich, was found alive, locked in the closet. Dolly told the police that there was a robbery, and that the robber locked her in closet. But the police were suspicious of Dolly, and her story.
Dolly told the detective that she and her husband never fought. Not even once. The intensity of her denial made the detective skeptical. What married couple doesn’t fight? Plus, her husband was killed with a .25 caliber pistol, a very small caliber, generally considered a woman’s gun. What kind of robber carries a woman’s gun? But the police could not figure out how Dolly could have killed her husband when she was locked in the closet. They would later learn that there was much more to this L.A. housewife than anyone could have expected.
The story behind the murder actually started in Milwaukee a decade earlier, when, in 1913, Dolly met a 17-year-old boy named Otto Sanhuber.
At the time Dolly was in her thirties and young Otto worked as a sewing machine repairman. One day Dolly called her husband at work and told him that her sewing machine was broken. When Otto arrived to fix the machine, Dolly answered the door wearing nothing but stockings and a silk robe. The two became lovers and soon Otto, who had become fixated with Dolly, moved into her attic so he could be close to her.
Dolly’s husband had no idea what was going on inside his own home. Dolly would let Otto out of the attic during the day while her husband was at work so he could do household chores and perform his duties as a lover, before being stowed away back in the attic at night when Dolly’s husband returned home. Otto would later describe himself as Dolly’s sex slave.
This routine continued year after year, after year.
In 1918, Dolly and her husband decided to leave Milwaukee and move to Los Angeles. Dolly had only one condition for the move — the new house had to have an attic. A suitable house with an attic was located in Silver Lake, and Otto also made the trip to LA.
The routine continued in Los Angeles for several more years, and Otto stayed in the attic until one night in 1922. That night, Dolly and her husband got into a loud argument. Otto listened as the argument became more heated. Fearing Dolly was in danger of physical harm, Otto rushed out of the attic with a .25 caliber pistol.
When Dolly’s husband saw Otto, he became enraged and rushed toward him. During the struggle, Dolly’s husband was shot three times, and he died. In a panic, Dolly and Otto staged the scene to look like a robbery. Otto took the husband’s watch and Dolly hid herself in the closet. Otto locked the closet door from the outside and returned to the attic. The police never found Otto and therefore could not explain how Dolly could have killed her husband and then lock herself in the closet.
After her husband’s death, Dolly moved into a different house, which also had an attic. Otto moved in as well. But Otto was not enough for Dolly, and she started having affairs with multiple other men.
The murder of her husband finally caught up to Dolly after she gave her dead husband’s watch to a lover, the same watch that was allegedly stolen during the robbery. Then she asked a different lover to dispose of the .25 caliber gun. He threw it into the La Brea Tar Pits. She even asked one of her lovers, who was also her attorney, to bring groceries to Otto in the attic. When these men started telling the police what Dolly had asked from them, the police finally started to piece together what really happened the night of the murder.
Eight years after the death of her husband, Dolly was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Otto was charged with murder.
Otto initially confessed and told the police the whole story. He told investigators that he had an overpowering love for Dolly. On that fateful night, he explained, he believed Dolly was going to be killed, and he shot the husband to protect her. He even took officers to the house and showed them where he hid in the attic.
Later, when the case progressed to trial, Otto recanted. But law enforcement had already put the pieces of the puzzle together. The case became a media sensation and was referred to as the love slave murder, or the "bat man" case.
During trial, Dolly admitted that Otto shot her husband and covered it up to look like a robbery, but contended that she took no part in either, and only lied to the police to protect Otto.
“I didn’t believe he meant to do it, and I didn’t want to expose my life to the world — having him in the house," she said.
Dolly testified that she loved her husband, despite the fact that she hid Otto in the attic for ten years.
However, the prosecutor painted her as a cold-blooded murderer who aided and abetted the “garret ghost” lover in perpetrating the murder.
“If there is any sympathy to be felt in this case, do not waste it on this woman," the prosecutor said. "All your sympathy should be with the dead man who wanted a home and a loving wife and who was shot down in his own home when he discovered the lover of his unfaithful wife in his own living room.”
The prosecutor's final words to the jury were simple: “Hang this woman.”
Otto was found guilty of manslaughter but was released because the statute of limitations for manslaughter had expired. The case against Dolly ended with a hung jury, and she was also released.
After the trial, Dolly found a new lover with whom she actually ended up staying with for 30 years. Dolly died in 1961 at the age of 75. We don’t know what happened to Otto.
The street name is changed, but the house where Dolly’s husband was killed and Otto lived in the attic still stands.
Listen to the audio as we talk with two of the current tenants, and check in with a Realtor to find out whether new owners would have to be told about this episode in the Hidden History of Los Angeles.
Can 'Pokémon Go' teach us about public art in Los Angeles?
After less than a week, "Pokémon Go" has gone from a brand new app to a nationwide phenomenon. Here in Los Angeles, sights of thousands of people walking aimlessly, smartphone in hand, on the hunt for rare Pokémon. Yelp now lets you filter businesses based on PokéStop distance.
The app has got people walking out into the world and exploring it in a totally unique way, drawing players to murals, sculptures and public art that likely would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
"I think that's one of the reasons why we have public art," said Danielle Brazell, general manager of Los Angeles' Department of Cultural Affairs. "To help break up the mundane, to help create some joy and some wonder for the people who occupy Los Angeles."
Near Downtown Los Angeles you'll find PokéStops for dozens of public art works — Lloyd Hamrol's "Uptown Rocker," for example. But other stops contain titles that merely describe the artwork — probably because the works themselves aren't described or explained on panels nearby.
Click the play button above to listen to an audio tour of Downtown LA's public art via "Pokémon Go." Spoiler alert: We found a couple of rare Pokémon — and a lot of beautiful, context-free public art.
Song of the Week: Nite Funk - "Love x2"
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week is “Love Times Two” by Nite Funk — it's a collaboration between Pasadena native and music producer Dam Funk and LA singer songwriter Ramona Gonzalez of Nite Jewel.
If you’re a listener of a certain age, this song might take you back to your slow dance on prom night, but “Love Times Two” was released this month. Both members are devout lovers of classic boogie funk and R&B. It comes off Nite-Funk's self titled debut EP, available to stream here:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4T0FyjXseq9XASjEbxMTVW
DIY film fest: Why film noir is a style, not a genre
Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC's Filmweek and Alt Film Guide, has joined Off-Ramp's team of commentators. Cogshell blogs at CinemaInMind and is producing a series of DIY Film Festivals for Off-Ramp listeners to throw in the comfort of their homes.
Here’s the thing about the genre known as film noir: it’s not a genre.
Noir is a style. It’s a set of aesthetic and narrative devices, themselves cobbled together from other cinematic languages and infused with uniquely American post-war sensibilities. This style can be applied to any genre — there are Western noir like "The Furies" and horror noir like "Cat People." At its core, "Citizen Kane" is a nascent noir.
There is also a distinction between the crime films of the '30s and film noir. Jimmy Cagney never made a film noir. Despite many visual and thematic similarities, for instance, "White Heat" is not noir.
Mr. Cagney’s characters aren’t chumps in-too-deep in a game they don’t understand. They’re gangsters and sociopaths.
If it’s in color, it’s neo-noir. "Chinatown" is retro-neo-noir. "Body Heat," from 1981, is a contemporary neo-noir, despite its constant references to "Double Indemnity."
If you’re a fan of the style, you already know the best examples of film noir: "The Maltese Falcon," "DOA," "Out of the Past," "Detour," "The Setup" and "The Red House." So I won’t mention them ... except that I just did, so consider them on the list, especially 1947's "The Red House," starring Edward G. Robinson and directed by Delmer Daves, who also wrote "Destination Tokyo," "An Affair to Remember" and the classic Bogie noir "Dark Passage."
But for this DIY Film Noir Film Festival, I’ve picked a few films that are unique for their cinematic accomplishments as well as their interesting perspective on the world — sometimes literally.
1. "The Lady in the Lake" (1947)
This groundbreaking noir is both directed by and stars Robert Montgomery. Adapted from Raymond Chandler’s novel, the film is shot entirely from the subjective POV, with all the other actors playing directly into the camera. We only see Montgomery's Phillip Marlowe in mirrors. This is unnerving. Just think about it for a second: everyone in the movie is looking right at you. Unnerving.
2. "They Live By Night" (1948)
This is director Nicholas Ray's debut film. In the opening scene, he uses the first helicopter shot in a feature film. "They Live By Night" stars Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, who are plainly prototypes for the James Dean and Natalie Wood characters refined later in Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause."
3. "Odds Against Tomorrow" (1959)
Directed by Robert Wise, the film stars a young Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, and Ed Begley, Sr., and was written by Abe Polonsky, blacklisted and writing under a pseudonym. This late noir is couched as a caper film with a heavy social context. All of the noir tropes are here. Gloria Grahame is the femme fatale, but race is a central theme. Robert Ryan plays a hardboiled, bigoted vet with a grudge against the world. Watch Ryan (a real boxer) sock Wayne Rogers (the serviceman) in the solar plexus early in the film. It was Rogers' first film.
Belafonte is a young black man resentful of a world that tries to tame him because he’s black. He plays the role as defiantly as Sidney Poitier ever played any, even when he slapped that judge in "In the Heat of the Night." At 29, Belafonte was also a producer of the film. Ryan was a staunch supporter of civil rights his entire life, though he did testify before HUAC — nobody is perfect. Which is the point of noir.
4. "Touch of Evil" (1959)
Last in our film festival is what some believe to be the last true film noir: Orson Welles’ "Touch of Evil." I know, Charleston Heston playing a Mexican cop. It was an ordinary affectation of the day, and I can live with it. I do know this: Welles was a great supporter of civil rights, and all peoples everywhere.
That’s it for this DIY Film Festival. You can put together any of the classics mentioned here to have a noir film festival of your own, but remember: noir is a style, not a genre.