1933 (1932) (1934) (1920-1930) (1930-1940) Table of Contents
Fred E. Basten Main St. to Malibu, Yesterday & Today, Graphics Press, Santa Monica, CA, 1980, 123pp., 1933 See Text
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp. See Text
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1933, 1930s See Text
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1966, 1949, 1943, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1933, 1922, 1921, 1917, 1913, 1912 See Text
Morow Mayo, Los Angeles, Knopf: NY, 1933, 1888 See Text
Esther McCoy Irving Gill 1870-1936 Five California Architects, 1960, Reprinted in Marvin Rand Irving J. Gill: Architect 1870-1936, Gibbs Smith, Publisher: Salt Lake City, UT, Design, Ahde Lahti; Photographs, Marvin Rand, 2006, 238 pp. pp. 219-227, 2006a, 1960, 1933 See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987. 176 pp., 1938, 1934, 1933 See Text
Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1933 See Text
Willard Huntington Wright (S. S. van Dine) Authors Today and Yesterday, A Companion Volume to Living Author, 1933 See Text
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1933 See Text
General Information
The year of the Long Beach Earthquake. Repeal of Prohibition, sort of. March 10, 1933.
Documents
Fred E. Basten Main St. to Malibu, Yesterday & Today, Graphics Press, Santa Monica, CA, 1980, 123pp., 1933
"Proposed Santa Monica breakwater, 1926 . . . despite the Great Depression a bond issue was passed to build a breakwater opposite the end of the Municipal Pier. The first attempt was a disaster and the tied concrete caisons, set into sandbars, broke away with the heavy currents. In 1933, construction on a 2,000-foot rock breakwater was begun. Again, heavy seas won out, ripping away the upper portion so that today only a portion is visible at high tide. The remaining breakwater's only benefit, over the years, has been to change the natural sand-carrying currents in the area, thus greatly widening the beach."
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp.
Chapter XXVII The Athens of America
" . . .
"One of the centers of seismological investigation is now at Cal Tech. Beno Gutenberg, one of Europe's foremost savants, is now with the institute. He was the man who travelled all the way from Germany to experience a California earthquake and-engaged in conversation with Dr. Einstein on the Cal Tech campus-failed to feel the Long Beach quake.
" . . . [p. 368]
Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1933, 1930s
The Earthquake of 1933
On March 10, 1933, at 5:55 p.m., an earthquake jarred southern Californians into forgetfulness of their evening meal. Close to a major disaster as it proved to be in some sections, Santa Monica learned to accept it as a blessing in disguise; first, because it acquainted her citizens with the physical conditions of the schools as nothing else could have; and second, because it enabled the Board of Education to rebuild the oldest structures and make the rest quake-resistant, with the Federal government paying variously from 20 to 80 per cent of the cost. [1. Santa Monica Evening Outlook, Oct. 10, 1933, p. 18.]
In those southern California communities where the trembler reached its greatest intensity, damage to school buildings was extreme. Auditoriums collapsed, walls were thrown out, and the very exits to safety were piled high with debris which, a few minutes before, had been parts of towers and ornamental entrances. Had the quake occurred while the schools were in session, an appalling number of children undoubtedly would have lost their lives.
In Santa Monica, however, removed as it was from the center of the quake's intensity, the damage was considerably less, although great enough to warrant the closing of the schools so that an inspection of them could be made. Four days later, while the ground still shook with tremors of diminishing intensity, a committee composed of architect D.D. Smith, engineer Phillip Rowell, and builder Robert Peterson, accompanied by the president and the secretary of the Board of Education, examined every room in each of the twelve plants in the school system. [2. Board Minutes, Mar. 13, 1933.] The inspection disclosed no structural faults and a relatively few minor damages, with the exception of the high school where fire walls had been loosened at the top of the wall. [3. Ibid., April 3, 1933.] These damages were rapidly repaired. At the same time, brick chimneys were removed and replaced with iron stacks; cast stone entrances gave way to monolithic concrete; gable ends were anchored, roof trusses braced, and many other measures taken to eliminate hazards.
Later in the same month, the firm of Marsh, Smith, and Powell, architects, were employed by the Board of Education to carry out the recommendations of the inspection committee. In their voluminous report, Peterson and Rowell suggested, among other things, that the Board inform itself as to the proximity of school buildings to definitely known earth faults, in order to determine whether to prepare for major or minor earth shocks, and recommended that all new buildings be of class A construction, properly designed. This last advice was based on the failure of brick and hollow tile to withstand the March tremblor in the cities most heavily stricken. [4. Robert A. Millikan, president of the California Institute of Technology, was chairman of the State Commission for School Inspections and coordinated the work of the local inspection committees.]
The report condemned the use of brick veneer as practiced in the past, and the joining together of materials having different degrees of flexibility; e.g. wood frame joined to a masonry wall, or a brick wall against a concrete wall. If anchor ties were used in masonry to wood, it was recommended that the ties go completely through the wall. Any ornamentation not monolithic was also condemned as was that which could not be made absolutely secure through proper anchorage. [5. Board Minutes, April 3, 1933.]
Subsequent reports from various groups who inspected the schools revealed that none of the buildings was better than class C construction, and that some of them belonged to Class D. In the event of an earthquake equal in intensity to that of the Long Beach-Compton area, they stated, Santa Monica's schools would meet the same fate that befell schools of class C and D construction there. Some of the features of the school buildings listed as hazards were: side walls too high, unsupported large window openings, large rooms with insufficient supports for the room above, workmanship in the masonry graded from poor to excellent, joist anchorage inadequate, bond beams over second story windows in some cases were two feet below roof joists, and the roof construction resting on brick walls carried above the bond beam. [6. Board Minutes, April 17, 1933.]
Peterson and Rowell, considering the problem of what to do with the present structures, stated that it would be impossible to prepare them against a major shock with entirely new construction. Confirming reports from other inspection groups, they emphasized that in a semi-major quake Santa Monica would sustain approximately the same loss as had the Compton and Long Beach schools in the March disaster. To prepare against a shock of this intensity would entail a complicated and costly program, they pointed out. A great deal could be done, however, to minimize the loss of both property and life by eliminating the hazards in Santa Monica schools known to be the same as those from which the Long Beach-Compton areas suffered. [7. Loc. cit.]
Marsh, Smith and Powell submitted their report on May 9, 1933, and the Board of Education employed Paul Jeffers and Murray Erick, consultant engineers, to review the findings and recommendations submitted up to that time. [8. Board Minutes, May 9, 1933.] While the engineers were completing their examination of these data, some fifty or more citizens made a tour of inspection of the damaged schools in the Compton and Long Beach areas with representatives of the architectural firm of Marsh, Smith and Powell pointing out the faulty construction. The group, deeply impressed by what they had seen, immediately elected a committee to make further investigations. Moe M. Fogel, chairman of the committee, appealed to various civic organizations to appoint their own representatives to serve as an advisory committee. [9. Pearl, op. cit., p. 60.]
Jeffers and Erick returned their report on May 29, 1933, describing the weaknesses of the Santa Monica school buildings in detail. The following items were included in their report:
"Many of these details of faulty construction could be corrected and the buildings thereby made safe for occupancy in case of mild quake. Such reconstruction would not, however, be sufficient to make the buildings safe for occupancy, in case of another earthquake of the degree of intensity of the Long Beach and Santa Barbara quakes. Such construction would make your buildings somewhat better than the average school building."We therefore recommend that, with the exception of the oldest buildings which do not warrant the costs of reinforcing, all buildings be properly reinforced to withstand some definite horizontal force, thereby minimizing the damage by earthquake, of which this type of building has proven susceptible.
"This reinforcing is not difficult of achievement nor is it particularly expensive for the average school building. Only by such reinforcing of the building can assurance be had that every reasonable precaution has been taken to safeguard the lives of the children who are compelled to occupy the buildings." [10. Board Minutes, May 29, 1933.]
Early in October of 1933, while the citizen's committee was still studying plans with the engineers, another earthquake but of relatively minor intensity, disturbed the public mind. The committee, perhaps somewhat influenced by the latest tremblor as well as what they had witnessed and the reports they had perused, advised the Board of Education to call a bond election for the purpose of providing funds for strengthening and reconstruction of school buildings, to the amount of $200,000. The bond election, held October 24, 1933, failed to receive the necessary two-thirds vote, thus leaving the Board without funds to carry out the recommendations made. [11. Santa Monica Evening Outlook, Oct. 25, 1933, p. 1.]
District Attorney Burton Fitts of Los Angeles County held that the negative result of the election absolved the School Board, individually and collectively, from legal responsibility in case of damage or injury resulting from future earthquakes. Thus, on Fitts' further advice, Superintendent Davis filed with the grand jury a complete report of the steps taken to provide earthquake-proof school buildings for the children of Santa Monica. [12. Pearl, op. cit., p. 61.] But such self-protective measures could do nothing to accomplish the end results desired. And so, in November of 1933, three members of the citizens' committee-C.H. Cromer, structural engineer, Fitts, and Dr. Ellet Harding, the President of the Board of Education-met with the grand jury for further discussion of the problem at hand. This meeting precipitated an inspection of the Santa Monica schools by the State Department of Architecture, the first such inspection to be made by this department; and the information gleaned during this investigation guided the State in formulating its "earthquake code' for public schools. [13. Personal interview with Percy R. Davis, Feb. 16, 1951; Los Angeles, California.]
" . . .
The earthquake of 1933 caused considerable damage to the Washington School and compelled it to be closed. When a rigid inspection of the building was made, the school came under the ban of official condemnation and was demolished in 1934. Class work continued in tents that had been erected on the John Adams Junior High School campus nearby. [50. Pearl, op. cit., p. 28.]
" . . .
". . . and in 1933 her (Miss Rice, the Principal of Garfield Elementary) efforts were rewarded. A new Garfield School containing eight classrooms, a kindergarten, and an auditorium-cafeteria room, was constructed at 1811 Sixteenth Street. True, Miss O'Leary had been aided and abetted by an "act of God," for the earthquake of 1933 had rendered the old building [at Michigan and Seventh] unsafe for occupancy, and thus it had been razed. But from the record there can be little doubt that much credit is due the principal who, for eleven years, never missed an opportunity to call needed improvements to the attention of those who had the power to make such improvements materialize.
"Americanization classes were started in the new school for entering pupils who spoke little or no English. In these special classes as much academic work was given as seemed profitable to the children; but emphasis was placed upon handwork and physical activity, and careful attention was given to the formation of desirable habits and attitudes. The general instructional program was expanded to include worthwhile activities in the practical arts. The boys worked in the woodshop on simple construction projects and did considerable furniture repair, while the girls were taught cooking and sewing in their domestic science classes. Both boys and girls participated in activities involving weaving, basketry, and gardening."
" . . .
After the 1933 earthquake, the brick building [at the old Garfield site] had to be abandoned [by the Junior College] and tent-frame bungalows were built on its foundation and around the edges. Although the temporary quarters of the junior college were somewhat inadequate for the best program, "There existed a close association between the students and the faculty that might otherwise have been lost in a larger, finer building." [70. Personal interview with President Elmer C. Sandmeyer, Santa Monica City College, May 22, 1951; Santa Monica, California.]
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1966, 1949, 1943, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1933, 1921, 1917, 1913, 1912
"15. Santa Monica High School, 601 Pico Boulevard. The cornerstone for the high school was laid on April 11, 1912, on what was once known as Prospect Hill; the campus has expanded over the years to its present size by incorporating the former Santa Monica College site.
"The high school contains a great many points of interest, especially the Memorial Open-Air Theater dedicated in 1921; Barnum Hall, dedicated to William F. Barnum*, who served as principal from 1913 to 1943; a senior bench donated by the Classes of 1940 to 1943; an imposing Athletic Hall of Fame in the Men's Gymnasium; a trophy collection; the Freedom Shrine in the Administration Building; and the Hall of Fame in the History Building. Two special items of interest in Barnum Hall's lobby are a mosaic-tile mural depicting the landing of the vikings and a four-foot-tall concrete owl that stood atop the original high school from 1913 until 1933, when an earthquake caused its removal."
Ocean Park
"46. Santa Monica Alternative School House, 2802 Fourth Street. The former Washington School, at the northwest corner of Fourth and Ashland. The oldest existing school site in Santa Monica was established as Washington School in 1890 and has been in continuous school use since. The present building was constructed in 1934 after the 1933 earthquake and is patterned after the "Santa Monica Plan" developed by the architectural firm of Marsh, Smith and Powell, who also designed the Roosevelt School at Lincoln and Montana. The "Santa Monica Plan," incorporating outdoor activity areas immediately acccessible to classrooms, was a result of experiences incurred by having to hold classes in tents for a year after the earthquake."
"58. Los Amigos Park, Fifth and Ocean Park. This three-acre city recreation park is the former site of John Adams Junior High School, which was built in 1913 and abandoned after the 1933 earthquake when the new junior high school was built at 16th and Pearl. The land was leased to the city for park purposes in 1949 after having been used by the Army as a recreation center and by the Navy as a training site. It was for many years the location of the Morgan Theatre, which occupied the former Army recreation hall as a community theater until it was destroyed by fire in 1966."
"62. John Muir Elementary School, 721 Ocean Park Boulevard. Established in 1922 and rebuilt in 1934 following the 1933 earthquake, the school was originally a two-story building."
Morow Mayo, Los Angeles, Knopf: NY, 1933, 1888
"Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be advertised and sold to the people of the United States like automobiles, cigarettes, and mouth washes."
Esther McCoy Irving Gill 1870-1936 Five California Architects, 1960, Reprinted in Marvin Rand Irving J. Gill: Architect 1870-1936, Gibbs Smith, Publisher: Salt Lake City, UT, Design, Ahde Lahti; Photographs, Marvin Rand, 2006, 238 pp. pp. 219-227, 2006a, 1960, 1933
"There was one last time when Gill's talents in social architecture found an outlet. In 1933 Gutheim was instrumental in arranging to have Gill design a number of cottages for the Office of Indian Affairs as well as a chapel for the Rancho Barona Indian resettlement in Lakeside. He readily accepted the post even though he had to live on the site, design a project to be built by the relatively untrained Indians, and stay on and supervise construction.
"In the small cottages for the Indian resettlement, among his last work, he came full circle returning to the freshness with which he saw his first adobes in California. The little Rancho Barona houses were curiously touching in their simplicity, but the simplicity was of a kind that came from a lifetime of architectural concern.
By 1933, Gill had suffered a second heart attack, but he eagerly accepted the Indian resettlement project for Lakeside. According to a letter in his files from the Department of the Interior, his fee was $540.
Jack Smith The Big Orange Ward Ritchie Press: Pasadena, CA, 1976. 1933, 1928, 1900, 1875, 1869, 1769, 1542
Santa Monica
"'Title to the ocean, the sunset, and the air is guaranteed by God.'
"The Santa Monica pier is antique. Naturally many people want to tear it down. Naturally, many people want to leave it up. At best, it is on reprieve. It has an embattled look, somewhat misshapen and askew. It creaks and groans on its weathered pilings, and supports a ramshackle row of shops, fish markets, galleries and cafes. At its shore end it is ornamented by an enchanting old merry-go-round." pp. 248 and 249
"It has stood there throughout the century, this Victorian playhouse, while generations of concrete buildings have come and gone. the little horses of the carousel are exuberantly sculptured, obviously of Arab blood, with wild eyes and flaring nostrils. The old organ pounds and clangs and wheezes as if trying gallantly to finish this one last song before expiring. A sign tells its story:
"'Welcome friend. The music you are listening to is coming from one of the oldest organs in the country, built in 1900 . . . Constantly playing for seventy years. The merry-go-round has the happiest record in the U.S. The horses were imported from Germany and are all hand-carved. There are no two horses alike. Your grandparents and mom and dad probably rode this ride when they were children. All the great actresses, and their children, too. Come aboard, close your eyes and listen to the music . . . '
"This was the first merry-go-round my own sons had ridden. We had lived in Venice then; the older boy was three . . .
""Fishing is free from the end of the pier, and there is always a hardy group of fishermen out there, whatever the hour and the weather. . . .
"He looked out at the breakwater, a ragged dark line, like the back of some enormous sea monster. It had been made of great blocks of granite, many of which had tumbled into the sea.
"'Fishing hasn't been so good here, though,' he said, 'since they built that new breakwater.'
"'New?' I said.
"'Well, new in Thirty-three, it was. I been fishing here since Twenty-eight.'" p. 250
"It seemed incredible that only a hundred years ago there was nothing here but land, sea and sky. An Easterner, writing years later of a visit he made to this shore in 1869, recalled that it was 'an unpeopled waste - no light (dressed) brigade of sportive bathers charged the angry surf; neither keel nor oar vexed the breakers that broke on the desolate shore.'
"Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his crew were the first white men to see Santa Monica Bay, on their voyage of 1542. Then two hundred and twenty-seven years passed before Gaspar de Portolá and his soldiers camped at a spring above the bay. It is said that one of Portolá's men named the place Santa Monica, likening the spring water to the saint's tears for her wayward son, Augustine.
"It was another century before John P. Jones, a Nevada senator, and Colonel R.S. Baker, a cattleman, who had bought the old Mexican land grants, formed a township, filed maps and started selling lots. The sale was held on a hot day in 1875. They hired Tom Fitch, an orator and auctioneer of note. Hundreds of people buggied down from Los Angeles to hear Fitch and to see the ocean. Both were magnificent.
"Fitch promised that anyone who bought a lot in Santa Monica would have the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop, with a daily sunset of 'scarlet and gold' and 'a bay filled with white-winged ships.'
"He went on to say that the title to the land was guaranteed by his employers, but the title to 'the ocean, the sunset and the air is guaranteed by God.'" p. 251
Jeffrey Stanton Venice of America: 'Coney Island of the Pacific,' Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1987. 176 pp., 1938, 1934, 1933,
"Natural disasters in 1933 and 1934 did almost as much to damage Venice as the Depression did. The Long Beach earthquake on March 10, 1933 wrecked the high school auditorium and damaged a number of buildings. . . ." p.130
"Then in January 1934 heavy rains caused Ballona Creek and the Grand Canal to overflow and flood Venice. . . . The Works Progress Administration did, however, begin work on building a flood control levee on Ballona Creek the following year. It helped but failed to curtail the brunt of the 1938 flood.
"Congress pass the Little Volsted Act on April 7, 1933 as a prelude to ending Prohibition. It authorized the consumption 3.2% beer in any municipality that would allow it. Los Angeles put the issue on the May ballot and it passed. . . . By the end of the year the states ratified the repeal of the 21st Amendment, and it became legal once again to drink liquor on December 5, 1933." p. 132
Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1933
"One of Santa Monica's major fiascos occurred during the years of the Great Depression.
"Despite the condition of the economy, interest in yachting and boating was increasing rapidly in Southern California, and a bond issue was submitted to the electorate for the construction of a breakwater. Taggart Aston, an engineer of considerable repute, was commissioned to design a breakwater, and he produced plans and specifications for one which wa to have been made by casting a row of reinforced concrete caissons, each cylindrical and formed in groups of three, these to be tied together after being located in the bay.
"The contract was let, and after many delays the first of the units was towed from San Pedro, where it had been caast, and was duly filled with sand and placed on the floor of the bay at a point roughly opposite the end of the municipal pier.
"No rock or other foundation was placed under the structure . . .
"Currents washed the sand away from either end of the unit, leaving it standing on a narrow bar of sand at the middle. It cracked apart in the center, and the contractor pleaded that the design was unworkable.
"A change order was negotiated, by which the 2,000 foot breakwater was made of rock, although the new design show a grossly inadequate cross section.[ . . .] the entire wall was [to be] made of relatively light stone from Santa Catalina Island [which] would have been acceptable for the lower parts of the breakwater, but the cap rock should have been heavy granite or similar stone . . . quarried from inland mountains . . .
" . . . the breakwater [was] built in 1933, and almost as soon as it was completed heavy seas began rolling the cap rock off the top, so that as this is written [c. 1974], little of the wall is visible at high tide.
"Even so, Santa Monica enjoyed a brief period of yachting activity befoe the harbor became a thing of the past.
Pp. 36, 37[Photo captions; "During the brief period in which the Santa Monica breakwater was more or less intact, steamers plied between the municipal pier and Catalina Island. The trip enjoyed great popularity, but not for long."; "This was the city hall of Santa Monica until the present building was erected in 1938, but the photo shown was made much earlier by H.F. Rile*, who recorded innumerable scenes of old Santa Monica."]
"Boating activity virtually ended with World War II, and about the best that could be said of the breakwater was the fact that by interupting the natural currents which carry sand from northwest to southeast, it vastly increased the area of public beach in Santa Monica.
"For some time, dredging occurred at irregular intervals, but the sand has widened steadily over the years, and, by 1974, there had been no dredging in many years."
This short biography of Willard Huntington Wright (S. S. van Dine) appeared in the 1933 edition of Authors Today and Yesterday, A Companion Volume to Living Authors .
"The mysterious Willard Huntington Wright was born in 1888 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was educated at St. Vincent College, California, 1903; Pomona College, California, 1904; and Harvard University, 1906. At Harvard he was a prize student in anthropology and ethnology. In 1907 he married Katharine Belle Boynton of Seattle, Washington, and in the same year became literary editor of the Los Angeles Times.
"During his six years with the Times , Wright also served as literary critic for Town Topics, 1910-14; dramatic critic for the same, 1912-14; and editor of Smart Set Magazine, 1912-14. In 1915 he became art critic for The Forum, the following year he was literary critic for International Studio, and in 1917 he served as literary editor of the New York Evening Mail. In 1918-19 he was music critic and art editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, and in 1922-23 he was art critic for Hearst's International Magazine.
"Beginning in 1913, Wright published various books on art, literature, and music, which were regarded as scholarly works, but gave him little fame. In 1916 he published a novel, The Man of Promise, dealing with the failure of a man of high talent, which received little attention.
"About 1925 Wright underwent a long illness. During his convalescence, by way of occupational therapy, he wrote The Benson Murder Case, in which he created the character of Philo Vance, a master sleuth. In order that his mystery novels should not be judged in comparison with his previous scholarly works, he adopted the pseudonym of S. S. Van Dine, taking an old family name from his maternal grandmother who was a Van Dyne.
"The Benson Murder Case was published in Scribner's Magazine and then in book form in 1926. By the time the second of the series, The Canary Murder Case, appeared a year later, Van Dine had become a best-seller, Vance was a household word, and guessing the author's identity was a favorite pastime. When Van Dine wrote an article for a Chicago paper, he responded to the editor's malicious request for a photo with a caricature of himself (having been a painter) which was faithful in every detail, yet unfaithful in general impression. It had the prehensile ears, hair parted to the right, beard, mustache, and monocle. This drawing led to a comparison of the works of S. S. Van Dine with those of Willard Huntington Wright, and thus to a discovery of the author's closely-guarded identity thru certain similarities in those works.
"In 1927 Wright published, under his own name, an anthology called The Great Detective Stories, which he prefaced with a thirty-five page essay on the types of detective fiction produced in America, England, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia since Poe and Gaboriau. Under his own name he also wrote an introduction to Some Famous Medical Trials. At the same time he wrote articles on detective fiction under his pen-name. Under both names he expressed some of the same ideas, in some of the same language. When this evidence was presented, together with other clues, he finally admitted his identity. When Wright's neglected novel, The Man of Promise, was reissued in 1929 after he became known as S. S. Van Dine, it received high praise.
"Meanwhile, at the rate of one a year, Wright continued to produce Philo Vance's ingenious solutions of baffling murders. After the Canary Murder Case came: The Greene Murder Case (1928), The Bishop Murder Case (1929), The Scarab Murder Case (1930). The author allotted himself six years to produce the complete works of S. S. Van Dine. After the publication in 1931 of the sixth of the series, The Autumn Murder Case , he planned to bid farewell to his successful pseudonymous self and return to his old identity. He planned then to complete the writing of Philology and the Writer and Modern Music. The latter is to supplement Modern Painting (1915) and Modern Literature (1926) and, like them, will be applications of the critical theory enunciated in The Creative Will (1916).
"Wright is the very model for Philo Vance himself. A versatile scholar, he is acquainted with languages, literatures, sciences, art, criminology, medicine. He has studied abroad. An interviewer who visited Wright in his study in the West Seventies of New York City writes: "The gentleman seated opposite us was meticulously, groomed and completely at ease in his soft flannel robe. His grey Van Dyke befits his character perfectly. The expression of his eyes changes with his conversation from quiet amusement to intense interest and back to amusement in the course of a sentence. A straight nose and high forehead complete the impression of dignity and extraordinary alertness . . . As we talked he lighted a fresh cigarette at regular ten minute intervals, each time selecting a new holder from a right-hand drawer of the desk." The visitor found the room perfectly conceived for the study of a master sleuth: "It is a large room, rather high, with solid book-shelves against the walls to a convenient reaching height. Above the shelves are hung modern paintings, the predominant note of which is brilliant coloring. These paintings stand out remarkably in the rather dim light of the study. On the north wall is probably the most complete library of detective fiction ever assembled; against the west wall is, perhaps, the most complete private library of Egyptology, including many papyri, in the United States; and the remaining space is given to subjects interesting to a gentleman who delves into arts and sciences."
"Wright married for the second time in October 1930. His wife is Eleanor Rulapaugh, known professionally as Claire De Lisle, a portrait painter. They are living in Los Angeles.
"Other books by Willard Huntington Wright include: Songs of Youth (1913); Europe After 8:15 , with H. L. Mencken and G. J. Nathan ( 1913); What Nietzsche Thought ( 1914); Richard Hovey and His Friends ( 1914); The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters ( 1916); Misinforming a Nation ( 1917); Informing a Nation ( 1917); The Great Modern French Stories ( 1918); The Future of Painting ( 1923). "
Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1933
"The Pacific Electric Railroad continued to provide trolley service as far as Santa Monica Canyon until August 22, 1933. . . ."