Two very different front pages on January 16th 1947.

Welcome to the Black Dahlia and Blue Dahlia podcast. This is your host, Scott Tracy.

Jan 16th 1947 The Los Angeles Examiner has written the headline to remember. The Los Angeles Times has written a headline to forget. It’s difficult to conceive in today’s world how essential daily newspapers were to our culture in the 1940s. The second world war had turned Americans into news junkies. Every day there were stories on three fronts. From Pearl Harbor to the Atomic bomb, from Adolph Hitler to Alger Hiss; the future of civilization had been at stake and the excitement of war news created a public that became addicted to reading the paper like never before. The American public is still thirsty for news after VJDay. The impact of news you can hold in your hands has the greater reach in media. Although It is peacetime, American newspapers are still at war with their rivals. In 1947, Newspapers are either a morning or evening publication. The Los Angeles Times was the more successful morning newspaper. The Los Angeles Herald Express was the primary evening paper. The Hearst morning paper was the Examiner. Morning papers were delivered to the homes and offices. Housewives and businessmen could read the paper at their leisure. The Los Angeles Times was a white collar publication, very much a cheerleader of business interests. The Los Angeles Times is a historically anti-union publication. In contrast, the evening papers are sold to the worker class readers by sound and sight. At the newsstand, a paper needs big headlines to jump out so it can be read from a distance. The afternoon papers gives the public the news the morning papers doesn’t have; up-to-date stock market news, horse racing results and night baseball scores. Citizens read the paper at home at dinnertime commonly just as we might watch the TV news. Bold dramatic headlines were key to evening newspaper sales. A headline needs to grab the attention of the public. Newsies, 10, 11 year-old boys screamed out lurid headlines to sell papers at trolly stops and train stations. HEAD IN TORSO MURDER STILL MISSING was shouted out-loud by young boys on street corners on Jan 28th 1946. That’s a headline that grabs. Jane Doe number one would become the number one story of 1947. The Hearst newspaper offered one of the most successful headlines in history and the paper sold the most copies of any issue in the post war period. It is an expressive, shocking and descriptive headline. GIRL TORTURED AND SLAIN; Hacked Nude Body Found in L A Lot. The Herald gets everything right on that front page; Note the sequence is correct. Beth Short is tortured then killed then cut in half and displayed in the vacant lot. Remarkable in contrast, the headline in the Times is less successful; beginning with the fact that it’s on page 2. GIRL VICTIM OF SEX FIEND FOUND SLAIN it is a two column headline. When I was a journalism student I was given an example on how not to write a headline. The story as an example, discussed was about the undeveloped areas of Siberia. The headline was “Russian Virgin Lands” semicolon, “Short of Goal Again”. The problem was with the way the headline translates is when its shrunk into a one column story. So the first line is racy, Russian Virgin, the second line Lands Short, the third line— of Goal Again. Russian Virgin Lands; Short of Goal Again Put together, it seems to be a call for help. The Los Angeles Times Black Dahlia headline fails when the words are crammed in to two columns. First line reads Girl Victim of Sex. Second line reads Fiend Found Slain. As if the Fiend is murdered and the crime committed against the woman was sex. The sub-headline is troublesome as well. Nude mutilated body indicates; first line. Orgy of torture before murder; second line. The first word in the sub-headline is “nude” and the first word in the second line is “orgy”; those words jump out at the reader. The way the sub-headline bonds with the use of sex in the primary headline that strikes me as distasteful and heavy handed. Another copy editor might have chosen to say. Frenzy of torture, for example. I recognize that the killer pleasure from the controlled torture, but for the rest of us, orgy doesn’t fit. The headline draws the reader, but it creates an uncomfortable connection as if we, the readers, are meant to feel what the killer feels. The language has a pulp quality to it. An orgy of torture sounds like an illustrated cover article in a post-war men’s racy pulp magazine, like “Hostages in Hitler’s Passion Cave; Orgy of Torture Before Murder.” The two main papers use very different pictures as well. The Herald airbrushes a blanket over the hacked and nude body without explanation. The Times shows that location from safe distance and a very low height, the photo taken level with car’s lug-nuts, so that the grass on Norton Ave lot is tall enough to obscure the dead body. The reporters and police are taller than the telephone poles on the next block and stand with backs to the camera and eyes down on the unseen body as if the are praying. The significance of the success of the Herald headline was not lost on the Hearst newspaper syndicate. Detective Finis Brown spoke about the placement of the victim on the grass and the press coverage during the Grand Jury inquest in 1949. “the two halves were about a foot apart, but the legs were spread and the type of mutilation that was done would indicate a person – to my estimation who had a mania for publicity. The newspapers up until the 23rd when things began to slack off and we only had one page in the newspaper – one column, the 23rd and the 24th – that night we received the belongings of the Short girl. The next day it was full. The papers was full of it then. It continued that way until altogether about 33 days. To my estimation, the person sent that in because they wanted publicity to gloat over the fact that they had been successful in their crime and got a kick out of it.” The reason to quote Detective Brown is to point out how important the press is to the killer and how important an ongoing crime story is to the afternoon papers in particular. The Killer sought anonymous notoriety, the papers needed everybody’s nickel; the relationship of the killer and the press is a courtship made in hell. One subscripted to the morning papers, they came automatically. The afternoon papers were bought on a whim. So competition is fierce. The Herald wrote better headlines or they went broke. This press coverage Detective Brown speaks of when he says 33 days, is referring to the Hearst newspapers. Not the Los Angeles Times. I mentioned that the murder story is on page two on January 16th 1947, the front page of the Los Angeles Times is concerned with the request of the Mayor for issuing 40 million dollars in bonds. London Strikers are creating the worst labor crisis in 40 years. Ford Motor Co is cutting the prices of new cars by $15 to $50. Quadruplets were born in France and Elenor Roosevelt driver’s license is being revoked. During this post war decade, the Black Dahlia story was NEVER front page news in the Los Angeles Times. Once again, A strike in London, Ford drops prices and Eleanor can’t drive. Front page news in the Times. For the Herald; Girl Tortured and Slain; Hacked Nude Body Found in L A Lot. The police canvas the Norton ...