A big fan, I have now contributed to the Hollywood & Crime podcast. I’m interviewed in Episode 20: “Noir L.A.: Hollywood & Vice.”
One can tune in to the complete series, the groundbreaking Black Dahlia Murders, from this link. I suggest listening from the beginning, The Bathtub Murder.
Elizabeth Short was a star-struck young beauty whose body was found severed at the waist in January 1947 in Los Angeles. She will be forever remembered as The Black Dahlia! Her sadist murder remains perhaps THE most infamous unsolved case in the world to this day. But few people know that several other women died in similar circumstances in Los Angeles around the same time. HOLLYWOOD & CRIME, the audio series that debuts today, examines the cold cases of not only The Black Dahlia, but the other 7 women that were brutally murdered in Noir-era Los Angeles.
This new true crime audio series, HOLLYWOOD & CRIME, investigates notorious crimes and scandals from mid 20th-century Los Angeles. Season 1, THE BLACK DAHLIA SERIAL KILLERS, available now on Wondery, reopens the unsolved cases of 8 women, including the notorious murder of Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia. Their stories are told based on rigorous research and groundbreaking new and untold information.
TERE TEREBA talks about her close friendships with guitar icon MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD and ANDY WARHOL. She tells the story of how Michael Bloomfield came to do the soundtrack music for the film, ANDY WARHOLS’S BAD, aka BAD (1977). BLOOMFIELD also did a single (unreleased) in conjunction with the movie called ANDY’S BAD. The interview was shot in Los Angeles, March 19, 2016, exclusively for MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD LEGACY Facebook page.
The recent shooting of Suge Knight at a Sunset Strip nightclub has remarkable parallels to an assassination attempt on the life of LA mob boss Mickey Cohen in a nightclub at the same location, 9039 Sunset Blvd., 65 years ago. This incident of history repeating itself is covered at Playground to the Stars.
I detail the 1949 ambush of the Cohen party outside of Sherry’s nightclub (which became Gazzarri’s, then, in a new building, the Key Club, now 1 Oak), in my book, Mickey Cohen: Life and Crimes of LA’s Notorious Mobster. In the biggest outbreak of violence in LA history, up to that time, among several injured were two women: Hollywood beauty Dee David, and Mickey’s on-payroll newswoman, Florabel Muir. The newest and most controversial of Mickey’s bodyguards, Special Agent Harry Cooper, a highly ranked state officer — appointed by California’s attorney general to protect the mobster — was critically injured. The Mick was just winged, but his lieutenant, Neddie Herbert, died of his wounds. I reveal Shirley Temple left the club just before the fireworks began. In another parallel, Justin Bieber (like Temple, a youthful superstar) had left the party shortly before Suge Knight was shot. A romantic postscript to the Cohen story: Dee David married (and later divorced) state officer Cooper, when they recovered from their injuries; Mickey had introduced the pair that evening. I wonder if there will be any marriages born of the recent shooting on the Sunset Strip?
And more: In 1955, Dee David shot top Cohen mobster, Joe Sica, in a business dispute. Allegedly, Joe and his brother, Fred, had threatened and beat David (over her bad faith business dealings with Fred), and she then shot Sica. He survived the shooting, and the conflict was settled in court. Mickey Cohen appeared on the stand and disparaged Miss David’s character. The Sicas won the case.