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Tag: 1949

October 19th in Seal Beach History

On this date in 1949, Seal Beach residents woke to discover that during the night frigid fifty miles per hour winds and rough waves had torn the Super Express fishing boat from its moorings at Seal Beach pier and smashed the boat upon the Seal Beach Naval Ammunition Depot breakwater, leaving a gaping hole in the hull.

As dramatic as this event was to the normally sedate Seal Beach, it was just one of many similar incidents spread across Southern California. Flights at LAX airport had been grounded. Boats had been beached at Santa Monica and Redondo Beach. The Monstad Pier in Redondo Beach had a section torn apart by waves. Several inches of sand had blown on to Pacific Coast Highway, stranding automobiles and buses. Trees were toppled, and some communities went without electricity for a few hours. Daylight brought calmer weather, and repairs and clean-up efforts began.

In Seal Beach, the Super Express was beached, and the hole was repaired with a temporary canvas patch to make the vessel seaworthy enough to be towed to the San Pedro Boat Works. The canvas patch prove too temporary for the entire trip and peeled, and the boat sank in what must have been shallow water. It was re-floated, re-patched, and towed to safely to San Pedro for more substantial repairs.

– Michael Dobkins

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October 19, 2019
August 15th in Seal Beach History

On this date in 1949, the Seal Beach City Council passed what was described by the Los Angeles Times as “an ironclad anti-gambling ordinance.”

There was already a city ordinance against gambling on the books, but the new ordinance was designed to close loopholes in the previous ordinance. This followed a failed city initiative to allow poker rooms in Seal Beach that was voted down by Seal Beach voters in July 1949.

The city council meeting was packed with a charged crowd as Mayor Frank Shufelt, councilmen F. O. Brostrom, Albert R. Leonard, Emil F. Jacobsen, and Oliver L. Bowers voted unanimously to adopt the new ordinance. Richard Steyling, chairman of the Seal Beach Civic Improvement Association, the organization sponsoring the ordinance, told the Long Beach Independent that the new ordinance would ban virtually every type of game of chance from Seal Beach.

Well, that settles that.

Of course, nothing was settled. The battle between gambling interests and anti-gambling forces would continue in Seal Beach well into the next decade.

– Michael Dobkins

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August 15, 2019
July 30th in Seal Beach History

On this date in 1916, Aileen Allen and Her Company of California Mermaids gave a diving and swimming exhibition from the Seal Beach pier, both during the afternoon and during the night. These night-time splish splash-capades were probably scheduled to highlight (Ha! A pun!) the “surf bathing at night” recreational activity made possible by the powerful lighting from the scintillators at the end of the pier. In 1916, Seal Beach’s publicity mill did its best to grind out as many attractions for the new city as possible. Sunset dinners! Carnival and prize dancing! Scintillator surf bathing Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday nights! Weekend fireworks! All this to convince the public that there were “Just Two Places To Go — Seal Beach and Home.”

Aileen Allen with or without her mermaids was an impressive woman. A member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club and one of the first female athletes registered with the Amateur Athletic Union, she placed fourth in the women’s 3 meter springboard diving competition for the 1920s Olympics and once held the world record for women’s high-diving.

Born in 1888, Allen discovered swimming and diving after she married and remained devoted to water sports for the rest of her life. She coached at the Los Angeles Athletic Club after her personal competition days were over and guided many world class athletes to success. She even had a brief movie career as a double for Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties when they did water stunts.

But Aileen Allen’s connection to Seal Beach doesn’t end with the one-day only diving and swimming exhibition on July 30, 1916. She was back in town twice more for more water sport athletics in September 1918 and July 1919, but perhaps her most notable connection to Seal Beach came in 1947 when she saw a young diver, Pat Keller, at a Long Beach dive meet and invited her to join the Los Angeles Athletic Club’s team.

Keller honed her diving skills at the club and won her first national meet in 1949 (and she also got married.) In 1952 and 1956, she won the Olympic gold medals for springboard and platform diving under her married name and the name she still uses today.

She is, of course, Seal Beach’s own Pat McCormick, local businesswoman and Swimming Hall of Famer.

So let’s all raise a special splashy toast to Aileen Allen in honor of her contributions to Seal Beach’s divey history!

–

– -Michael Dobkins

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July 30, 2019
March 24th in Seal Beach History

On this date in 1949, the solution to a small week-old Long Beach mystery was revealed residing in Seal Beach.

Worthmore Millinery in Long Beach once ran a regular weekly promotional ad campaign in the Long Beach Independent. The hat shop would snap a photograph with a hidden camera of an unsuspecting window shopper outside the store, and then the photo would be featured in a Thursday newspaper advertisement like this one from March 17th, 1949.

On March 24th, the identity of the mystery photo woman from March 17th was revealed to be Mrs. G. A. Wise of 117 8th Street, Seal Beach!

Today the Long Beach Transit Mall stands in the center of the street behind Mrs. Wise, and thousands of passengers used it daily to board the Long Beach Blue Line train. The building behind her, the building with the Worthmore Millinery storefront and the hidden camera, the Seal Beach house where she lived, and presumably Mrs. Wise herself are all gone. The whereabouts of the free ten-dollar hat she won remains unknown.

– Michael Dobkins

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This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

March 24, 2019
Cocktails, Shuffleboard, and Cheesecake

Matchbook Cover for Mamie’s – 1948-1951

Today’s post answers the musical question, “what do The Beatles, the Memphis Belle B-17 Flying Fortress, and Clancy’s Saloon have in common?”

Since last Friday, we’ve posted two images of the Seal Beach Pharmacy that once occupied the current storefront of Clancy’s Saloon at 111 Main Street. While preparing a future post, I stumbled across a matchbook cover for another business that once ran at the same location. If you were in the mood for better bar-b-q, cocktails, and shuffleboard, Mamie’s was the place to go in the late forties and early fifties.

What is interesting about this matchbook cover is the illustration of the buxom babe preparing to go fishing by charmingly asking us if we’ll bait her hook. The signature reads “PETTY,” who was George Petty, a well-known cheesecake artist working in the Albert Vargas style. He did a series of pin-ups called “The Petty Girls” for Esquire magazine from 1933-1956. His glamorous gals were reproduced extensively as nose art on American World War II airplanes, including the famous “Memphis Belle” that was featured in a wartime documentary and feature film. You can find an image of a Petty Girl in the crowd on the album cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And between 1948 and 1951, George Petty drew five sets of girlie matchbook covers for the Monarch Match Company in San Jose to be used on business matchbooks across the country, including Seal Beach’s very own Mamie’s.

One of the fascinating things about local history is how even minor ephemera like a matchbook cover can lead you far away from your original subject.

To learn more about George Petty, visit The Pin-Up Files or view more samples of his artwork at the American Art Archives.

Be sure to check back each week for more historical photos and stories of Seal Beach.

– Michael Dobkins

Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?

If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.

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September 9, 2010