Coffeetable Books
Remembrance of Things Past
By Clay Smith, Fri., Dec. 17, 1999
Local News: Tabloid Pictures From the Los Angeles Herald Express, 1936-1961
edited by Diane KeatonDistributed Art Publishers, 144 pp., $35
On December 23, 1947, a Tuesday, Mrs. Helen Miller, proud as a peacock, raised up her skirt and revealed for the eager readers of the Los Angeles Herald Express that she had been held captive for eight days and was the victim of "thigh branding." Why was she captive? What do the symbols on her thigh mean? How did she escape? Local News is cruel that way; slim, enticing phrases here and there explain these lurid, macabre images. But soon enough even the need for explanatory text vanishes as these lost souls and suspects speak for themselves and become complicit as we read heavily into their circumstances. "DEATH ALONG THE RAILROAD TRACKS," ""NEW MAN' STEPS ON "OLD SELF,'" "DEJECTED PUPPY AWAITS OWNER" -- there's nothing in the world quite like the misfortune of others. "These details are the remnants of the dreams people came to town with," Diane Keaton writes in her introduction. "That's what their faces say to me. They say, we're holding on, and yes, it may be a small-minded, idiot's folly that could only come out of L.A. with its lame-o promise of eternal youth, but it's ours."
