THE COLUMBO COLLECTION

Today is COLUMBO co-creator Richard Levinson's Deathday (1987). (See prior blog post.) In 2010, his partner WILLIAM LINK published a collection of stories about my favorite TV detective, COLUMBO, titled "THE COLUMBO COLLECTION."

Sometime in the 1980s, "THE COLUMBO PHILE" was published and I bought a copy immediately. It's on my bookshelf behind me right now....watching me.....

"Columbo" Writer & Producer Richard Levinson 1987 Westwood Village Cemetery

Richard Levinson (August 7, 1934 - March 12, 1987) was an American writer and producer who often worked in collaboration with William Link. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Economics in 1956. He served in the United States Army from 1957-1958. He married actress Rosanna Huffman in 1969.

William Link and Richard Levinson co-created and produced the detective television series Columbo, Mannix, Ellery Queen, Murder, She Wrote and Scene of the Crime. They also collaborated on several made-for-TV movies including My Sweet Charlie, That Certain Summer, The Judge and Jake Wyler, The Execution of Private Slovik, Charlie Cobb: A Nice Night for a Hanging, and Blacke's Magic, which was also developed into a short-lived TV series. The partners also collaborated on two feature films: The Hindenburg (1975) and Rollercoaster (1977). Levinson and Link occasionally used the pseudonym 'Ted Leighton,' most notably on the telefilm Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You, where their work was substantially re-written by other hands, and Columbo when they came up with stories to be scripted by their collaborators.

In 1979, Levinson and Link received a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for their work on Ellery Queen and Columbo. During the 1980s, they were three-time winners of the Edgar for Best TV Feature or MiniSeries Teleplay, and in 1989 they were given the MWA's Ellery Queen Award, which honors outstanding mystery-writing teams. In November 1995, they were jointly elected to the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

Levinson died of a heart attack at the age of 52. His ashes are located at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.

Mulholland's St. Francis Dam Disaster in Santa Clarita 1928

 

The St. Francis Dam was a concrete gravity-arch dam, designed to create a reservoir as a storage point of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The dam was located 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Los Angeles, California, near the present city of Santa Clarita. The dam was built between 1924 and 1926 under the supervision of William Mulholland, chief engineer and general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (then called the Bureau of Water Works and Supply). Three minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting flood killed more than 600 people. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is one of the worst American civil engineering failures of the 20th century and remains the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and fire, and it marked the end of Mulholland's career.

Planning and design

Mulholland, a self-taught civil engineer and native of Ireland, had risen through the ranks of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (then called the Bureau of Water Works and Supply), and had quickly established himself as having a penchant for thriftiness, an enormous capacity for innovation, and the ability to complete difficult projects on-time and on-budget. These traits undoubtedly aided him in designing and building the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, which at the time was the longest aqueduct in the world, bringing water 233 miles (380 km) from the Owens Valley to the city of Los Angeles.

The rapid growth of Los Angeles demanded a larger water supply, so a series of small reservoirs were built in the 1920s to provide the rapidly-expanding city with a water supply in the event of a drought or damage to the aqueduct, but the need for larger reservoirs was obvious.

In the process of designing and building the Los Angeles Aqueduct, Mulholland had considered sections of San Francisquito Canyon—beginning about 30 miles (50 km) north of Los Angeles—as a potential dam site in 1911. Conveniently, the Los Angeles Aqueduct ran along the canyon, and two generating stations in the same canyon used aqueduct water to provide power for Los Angeles. To Mulholland, the location appeared ideal—the reservoir would provide ample water for Los Angeles in the event of a drought or if the aqueduct was damaged by an earthquake or sabotage.

Construction and modification

In 1924, construction was quietly begun on the dam so as not to attract the attention of the farmers dependent on the water of San Francisquito Creek. Additionally, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was the target of frequent sabotage by angry farmers and landowners in the Owens Valley, and Mulholland was eager to avoid the kind of expensive and time-consuming repairs which plagued the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The dam was named the "St. Francis", an anglicized version of the name of the canyon in which it was built.

Immediately after construction had begun in 1924, Mulholland decided to raise the height of the dam 10 feet (3 m), increasing the capacity of the reservoir from 30,000 to 32,000 acre-feet (39 million cubic meters) of water, and Mulholland made minor changes in the dam's design to accommodate the additional height.

In July 1925, when the dam was roughly half-completed, Mulholland added an additional 10 feet (3 m), bringing the dam's new height to 195 feet (59 m) and increasing the reservoir's capacity to more than 38,000 acre-feet (47 million cubic meters) The dam's new height necessitated the construction of a "wing dike" along the top of the ridge of the western abutment to prevent water from spilling over the ridge.

 

Prelude to disaster

Throughout 1926 and 1927, several temperature and contraction cracks appeared in the dam and its abutments, as the reservoir filled. The cracks and leaks were inspected by Mulholland and his assistant Harvey van Norman and adjudged to be within expectation for a concrete dam the size of the St. Francis.

Through the closing months of 1927 to March 1928 the reservoir rose steadily, and uneventfully. On March 7, 1928 the reservoir had reached full capacity; Mulholland ordered that no more water be turned into the St. Francis. In the same week, motorists traveling on the road along the east shore of the reservoir reported cracks and a sagging in the roadbed near the dam's east abutment. By the morning of March 12th, the roadbed had sagged almost 1 foot (0.30 m).

On the morning of March 12, the dam keeper, Tony Harnischfeger, discovered a new leak and immediately alerted Mulholland. Mulholland and Van Norman inspected the new leak. Convinced the leak was relatively minor and normal for a concrete dam, Mulholland pronounced the dam safe.

Collapse and floodwave

Three minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam catastrophically failed. There were no eyewitnesses to the dam's collapse, but a motorcyclist named Ace Hopewell rode past the dam and reported feeling a rumbling and the sound of "crashing, falling blocks," after riding about a half-mile (800 m) upstream. He assumed this was either an earthquake or another one of the landslides common to the area, not realizing he was the last person to have seen the St. Francis Dam intact, and survive.

Dam keeper Harnischfeger and his family were, most likely, the first casualties caught in the floodwave, also called dam break wave, which was at least 125 ft (38 m) high when it hit their cottage in San Francisquito Canyon, approximately 1/4 mile (400 m) downstream from the dam. Forty-five minutes before the collapse, Hopewell, the motorcyclist, also reported seeing a light in the canyon below the dam—the dam itself did not have lights—suggesting Harnischfeger may have been inspecting the dam immediately prior to its failure. The body of Harnischfeger's wife was found fully clothed and wedged between two blocks of concrete near the broken base of the dam; their six-year-old son's body was found farther downstream, but Tony Harnischfeger's body was never found.

As the dam collapsed, twelve billion U.S. gallons (45 billion liters) of water surged down San Francisquito Canyon in a dam break wave, demolishing the heavy concrete walls of Power Station Number Two (a hydroelectric power plant), and destroying everything else in its path. The flood traveled south down San Francisquito Canyon, flooding parts of present-day Valencia and Newhall. The deluge then turned west into the Santa Clara River bed, flooding the towns of Castaic Junction, Fillmore, and Bardsdale. The flood continued west through Santa Paula in Ventura County, emptying its victims and debris into the Pacific Ocean at Montalvo, 54 miles (87 km) from the reservoir and dam site. When it reached the ocean at 5:30 a.m., the flood was almost two miles (3 km) wide, traveling at a speed of 5 miles (8 km) per hour. Bodies of victims were recovered from the Pacific Ocean, some as far south as the Mexican border.

Telephone operators in Fillmore (notably Louise Gipe) and two motorcycle policemen in Santa Paula notified people in their homes of the danger, until the rising floodwaters forced their retreat.

Aftermath

The block is approximately 63 feet long, 30 feet high, and 54 feet wide. Note the dam wing wall in the distance. March 17, 1928.The dam broke into several large pieces, some of which were carried almost 1/2 mile (800 m) downstream, while the center section of the dam—nicknamed "The Tombstone"—remained standing (see photo in [2]). Two months after the collapse, 18-year-old Lercy Parker fell to his death while climbing the ruins, and in the following months, the upright section was toppled with dynamite and the remaining blocks demolished with bulldozers and jackhammers to discourage sightseers and souvenir hunters from exploring the ruins. Although the west wing dike remained intact, it was used by Los Angeles firemen to gain experience of using explosives on building structures. The St. Francis Dam was not rebuilt, although Bouquet Reservoir in nearby Bouquet Canyon and Castaic Dam in the town of Castaic were subsequently built as replacements for the St. Francis Dam (in 1934 and 1973, respectively).

To this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown. The official death toll in August 1928 was 385, but the bodies of victims continued to be discovered every few years until the mid-1950s. Many victims were swept out to sea when the flood reached the Pacific Ocean and were not discovered until they washed ashore, some as far south as the Mexican border. The remains of another victim were found deep underground near Newhall in 1992, and the current death toll is estimated to be more than 600 victims (excluding the itinerant farm workers camped in San Francisquito Canyon, the exact number of which will never be known.)

Immediately following the disaster, Mulholland said he “envied those who were killed” and went on to say, “Don’t blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human, and I won't try to fasten it on anyone else.” At the Coroner's Inquest, the leaks Tony Harnischfeger had spotted and reported to Mulholland were cited as evidence of the dam leaking the day before the break, and that both the LADWP and Mulholland were aware of them. Mulholland admitted being at the dam the day before the break, but had noticed nothing out of the ordinary, testifying that leaks in dams—especially in dams the size of the St. Francis—were not unusual.

The Los Angeles Coroner's Inquest concluded the disaster was primarily caused by the paleomegalandslide on which the eastern abutment of the dam was built, but would have been impossible for the geologists of the 1920s to detect. Indeed, two of the world's leading geologists at the time, John C. Branner of Stanford University and Carl E. Grunsky, had found no fault with the San Francisquito rock. Therefore, the jury determined responsibility for the disaster lay with the governmental organizations which oversaw the dam's construction and the dam's designer and engineer, William Mulholland, but cleared Mulholland of any charges, since neither he nor anyone at the time could have known of the instability of the rock formations on which the dam was built. The hearings also recommended, "the construction and operation of a great dam should never be left to the sole judgment of one man, no matter how eminent."

Soon after the inquest, Mulholland retired from the LADWP and retreated into a life of self-imposed isolation. He died in 1935, at the age of 79.

Analysis

Looking across the canyon at the damsite today; the wing dike necessitated by the increased height of the dam is visible on the left, and the area of paleolandslide is visible on the far side of the canyon.Modern geologists know the type of rock found in the San Francisquito Canyon is unsuitable for supporting a dam and a reservoir, but in the 1920s, two of the world's leading geologists at the time, John C. Branner of Stanford University and Carl E. Grunsky, found no fault with the San Francisquito rock. The dam was built squarely over the San Francisquito earthquake fault, although this fault has since been inactive.

J. David Rogers, a professor of geological engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, has published a comprehensive account of the dam's failure. The dam's failure can be attributed to three major factors: the instability of the paleomegalandslide on which the dam was built, the failure to compensate for the additional height added to the dam's design, and the design and construction being overseen by only one person.

Recently, a critique of Rogers' historical analysis of the dam's collapse was published in the journal California History (Fall 2004) by historians Norris Hundley Jr. (Professor Emeritus, UCLA) and Donald C. Jackson (Professor, Lafayette College). While accepting the validity of Rogers' geological analysis of the failure, this article makes clear how the structure built under Mulholland's direction in San Francisquito Canyon fell well short of standards for large-scale concrete gravity dams as practiced by other prominent dam engineers in the 1920s.

 

Mulholland Dam reinforced

After the disaster, the City of Los Angeles immediately reinforced another dam almost identical in shape and design—Mulholland Dam (which creates Hollywood Reservoir), also designed and built by Mulholland—by piling tons of earth and rock on the face of the dam.

Present-day remains

The only visible remains of the St. Francis Dam are weathered, broken chunks of gray concrete and the rusted remnants of the handrails that lined the top of the dam and the wing dike. The ruins and the scar from the paleomegalandslide can be seen from San Francisquito Canyon Road, about five miles (8 km) north of the city of Newhall.

The road sustained heavy storm damage in 2005 and when rebuilt, it was routed away from both the remains of the dam and the damaged portion of the roadway.

 

Cultural references

Robert Towne made numerous references to Mulholland, the California Water Wars, the aqueduct, and the St. Francis Dam disaster in his screenplay for the 1974 Neo-noir movie Chinatown. Mulholland is split between the characters of Noah Cross (John Huston) and the city's chief engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling)—the name Noah alluding to a flood, and Hollis Mulwray to "Mulholland"—possibly to suggest the conflict between good and evil in one man. In one scene, Hollis Mulwray makes a specific reference to the St. Francis Dam disaster (albeit using the ficticious name of "Van der Lip Dam"):

“In case you've forgotten, gentlemen, over five hundred lives were lost when the Van der Lip Dam gave way. Core samples have shown that beneath this bedrock is shale similar to the permeable shale in the Van der Lip disaster. It couldn't withstand that kind of pressure there. And now you propose yet another dirt-banked terminus dam with slopes of two and one half to one, one hundred twelve feet high and a twelve thousand acre water surface. Well, it won't hold. I won't build it. It's that simple. I am not making that kind of mistake twice. Thank you, gentlemen.”

Also in 1974, the movie Earthquake showed the Mulholland Dam meeting a nearly identical demise to that of the St. Francis.

Rock musician Frank Black has made several references to the St. Francis Dam disaster in his songs, including the tracks "St. Francis Dam Disaster" and "Ole Mulholland."

"Ben Casey" Actor Vince Edwards 1996 Holy Cross Cemetery

Vince Edwards (July 9, 1928 - March 11, 1996) was an American actor, director, and singer, best known for the role of TV doctor "Ben Casey."

Biography

Early life

Edwards was born Vincent Edward Zoino III in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Julia and Vincento Zoino, a bricklayer, immigrants from Italy. He had a twin brother and was the youngest of seven children.[1] He was a standout on his high school swim team and went on to study at Ohio State University on an athletic scholarship. There, he was part of the university's swim team that won the United States National Championships.

Career

Zoino studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and in 1950, he was signed to a contract by Paramount Pictures, making his film debut as "Vince Edwards" in 1951's Mr. Universe then played the lead next year in Hiawatha. Although he had major or lead roles in several films, including the film noirs Murder by Contract (1958) and The Scavengers (1959), it was not until he was featured in the title character on the highly successful Ben Casey television series that he achieved a level of stardom. The medical drama show, which he occasionally directed, ran from 1961 to 1966 and, as a result of the show's and his own popularity, Edwards also released several music albums. Vince was represented by one of Hollywood's first "Super Agents," Abbey Greshler of Diamond Artists in Hollywood.

When the television series ended, Edwards returned to acting in motion pictures with a major role in the 1968 war drama, The Devil's Brigade. He continued to act in film as well as in guest spots on television plus. He directed a number of episodes in a variety of television series including the original Battlestar Galactica. some twnety-two years after the series ended, Edwards returned to television as Dr. Ben Casey in 1988. Edwards made his last film in 1995, The Fear, after the filming of which he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

He died in Los Angeles, California the following year and was buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Novelist Heinrich Mann 1950 Woodlawn Cemetery

Luiz (Ludwig) Heinrich Mann (27 March 1871 – 11 March 1950) was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.

Life and work

Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and Júlia da Silva Bruhns, he was the elder brother of Thomas Mann. His father came from a patrician grain merchant family and was a Senator of the Hanseatic city. After the death of his father, his mother moved the family to Munich, where Heinrich began his career as a freier Schriftsteller or free novelist.

His essay on Zola and the novel Der Untertan earned him much respect during the Weimar Republic, since it satirized German society and explained how its political system had led to the First World War. Eventually, his book Professor Unrat was liberally adapted into the successful movie Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). Carl Zuckmayer wrote the script, and Josef von Sternberg was the director. The book's author wanted his girlfriend, the actress Trude Hesterberg, to play the lead, but Marlene Dietrich was given her first major role instead as Lola Lola the "actress" (named Rosa Fröhlich in the novel).

Together with Albert Einstein and other celebrities, Mann was a signatory to a letter to the Urgent Call for Unity condemning the murder of Croatian scholar Dr Milan Šufflay on 18 February 1931.

Mann became persona non grata in Nazi Germany and left even before the Reichstag fire in 1933. He went to France where he lived in Paris and Nice. During the German occupation he made his way to Marseille in Vichy France and there was aided by Varian Fry in 1940 to escape to Spain. He then went to Portugal and sailed to America.

The Nazis burnt Heinrich Mann's books as "contrary to the German spirit" during the infamous book burnings of May 10th 1933, which was instigated by the then Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

During the 1930s and later in American exile, his literary career went downhill, and eventually he died in Santa Monica, California, lonely and without much money, just months before he was to move to Soviet-occupied Germany to become president of the Prussian Academy of Arts. While initially buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, his ashes were later taken to East Germany.

His second wife Nelly Mann (1898-1944) committed suicide in Los Angeles.

Singer Andy Gibb 1988 Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery

Andy Gibb (5 March 1958 – 10 March 1988) was a British singer and teen idol, and the youngest brother of the family whose other members formed the Bee Gees: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb.

Death

In March 1988, Andy Gibb celebrated his 30th birthday in London while working on a new album. Soon after, he entered John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, complaining of chest pains. He died on 10 March 1988 just five days after his 30th birthday as a result of myocarditis, (an inflammation of the heart muscle) due to a recent viral infection. The Bee Gees' following album, One (1989), featured a song dedicated to Andy, "Wish You Were Here." Andy Gibb is entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. His father, Hugh, died four years later on 5 March, Andy's birthday, and is buried close to Andy.

"Imitation of Life" Producer Ross Hunter 1996 Westwood Village Cemetery

 

Ross Hunter (born Martin Fuss 6 May 1920 – 10 March 1996) was a Hollywood film producer.

"The way life looks in my pictures is how I want life to be.
I don't want to hold a mirror up to life as it is."

After serving in Army intelligence during World War II, Hunter signed a movie contract with Columbia Pictures and acted in a number of B-movie musicals. Success followed when he became a film producer attaining a staff producer post at Universal-International in 1953 on the strength of his previous credits as a theatrical producer and director. A gay man, Hunter was known for producing what were considered 'light' films starring actresses including Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds (the Tammy films) and (later) Julie Andrews. He was also known for producing Douglas Sirk melodramas such as Imitation of Life with Lana Turner and several with Rock Hudson.

 

In 1970 he had a major box office hit with Airport. After the 1973 version of Lost Horizon flopped, he worked for Paramount Pictures on a string of television movies.

 

Ross Hunter is entombed at Westwood Cemetery near Marilyn Monroe.