1925 Los Angeles Library “Character Analysis In Photography” One-Man-Art Exhibit by then Eighteen-Year-Old Poet/Photographer George Hill Hodel
February 24, 2024
Birch Bay, Washington
Self Portrait Artist/Poet George Hodel circa 1924
In December 1925 young George Hodel having just turned eighteen (18), had a one-man art exhibit which he termed “Character Analysis in Photography” which displayed his photographs in the DTLA Public Library in the Metropolitan Building, located at 5th and Broadway.
GHH photo exhibition L.A. Public Library Metropolitan Bldg 1925
Excerpted pages from The Early Years Part I (1920s)
*TEY Part I contains all 22 photographs by George Hodel from 1925
GHH friend/accomplice Fred Sexton-age 18 GHH photo suspect to be L.A. political crime boss Kent Kane Parrot Known photo KKP
No old mirror tale connected to Merlin seems to exist. But in the Harry Potter universe a mirror of desire shows magic stuff.
Steve:
Can you say how you were able to identify GHH’s portrait of Tom Evans, Tony Cornero’s sometime pal? Reading up on Cornero, his early rum-running operations involved landing Canadian whisky on California beaches using speedboats. He started doing this in LA in ’23, but it sounds like he might have been doing something similar in San Francisco before that. I think there is a strong possibility the Father Heslin kidnapping grew out of such an operation, so I find that interesting.
Cornero Article: https://jhgraham.com/2016/10/14/tony-cornero-the-bootleg-years/
Best regards,
LW
LW:
Also, I should correct myself in that the photo by GHH I represented to be Kent Kane Parrot is only suspected based on a later photo that closely matches KKP. I think it is the same man, but naysayers, of course, will argue “no way.”
Tom Evans was connected with the Mimi Boomhower investigation. See excerpted text from BDA I as follows:
…
“An article in the Mirror revealed,
“The police were discounting rumors that a scar-faced gambler was angry at
Mrs. Boomhower for not selling him the place for a gambling palace.”
A possible suspect, identified by the newspaper as “Tom E. Evans, exhost
on Tony Cornero’s gambling ship and former dope peddler, is to be
questioned in West Los Angeles today.” An ex-LAPD officer phoned in a
tip that several days before her disappearance he saw Evans with the victim
having drinks at the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.
Tom Evans was a gambler, with a criminal record in Los Angeles dating
back to the early 1920s. He had prior local arrests for bootlegging and
robbery and had convictions for “opium running.” As the former associate
and employee of Los Angeles vice czar and gambling ship owner Tony
Cornero, Evans was well-known to LAPD, who ran him out of town after
the shooting and wounding of Cornero in Hollywood in 1948. Cornero’s
assailant was never identified or arrested.
Evans told reporters who questioned him after he was identified in the
paper, “Sure I was in the bar at the hotel last week—I’m there every day.”
He was taken to West Los Angeles Division police station and questioned
by detectives but denied knowing the victim. Detectives told the press
they believed that Evans was “in the clear and that someone probably just
had a grudge against him,” adding that they had been receiving numerous
phone calls and tips and had eighty names of possible suspects. In the
course of my investigation, I learned that Tom Evans was not only Tony
Cornero’s bodyguard, but also an acquaintance and associate of my father,
dating back to 1925.
After interviewing Mrs. Boomhower’s friends and business associates,
police learned that only days before her disappearance she had inadvertently
acknowledged to her furrier William Marco that she “had been
secretly married.” She said she couldn’t give Marco an order for a fur she
was contemplating buying, because “I’ll have to talk it over with my present
husband.” Then Marco said that the victim “checked herself ” and said,
“I’ll talk it over with my family and come back.”
Yes,, I think GHH and Fred Sexton could well be tied to other early 20s crimes with these gangsters.
(I mentioned asking Dad why my middle name was “Kent” some years before he died. He hemmed and hawed and stammered a bit and said, “Well, no reason. Just a nice name.” (No way is that George Hodel. When it came to name he always had a REASON.)
The photo of Evans certainly looks like the real deal. I have tried to find details on him on ancestry.com but it’s a pretty common name so no luck so far. He was about the same age as Cornero and it would be interesting if he came down from San Francisco with him ca. ’23, as did some of Cornero’s other rum-running associates (per the J H Graham blog.) It’s also possible that Evans didn’t connect with Cornero until much later, during the gambling ship era — I don’t see the names linked in the press until the 40s.
GHH might well have become acquainted with Evans first during his 1924 Record gig, e.g., through crime reporter Johnny Arrington. Still, the business about Cornero’s smuggling in liquor by landing small boats on the beach caught my eye. There are a number of indications that William Hightower had become involved with something like that at Salada Beach and somehow this led to the Heslin kidnapping — conceivably as a result of Hightower’s “Man Friday” going rogue and freelancing his own crime.
Steve and LW: Busy 🌵 weekend so will comment more on your reference to the Father Heslin kidnap/murder when I have time to review again in TEY👍. But must comment right now……..is it not evident…..son Matt Hodel (GHH’s grandson) inherited GHH’s photographic talents!! So evident in both photographers’ skills with the lighting of their subjects AND catching their personalities/moods👌!
😎🌵
Patricia O:
Yes, I have to agree. Both definitely had “the artist’s eye” along with the high intelligence. The best I can tell, the serial killer genes were not passed on to Mattie, and that’s A GOOD THING.
Steve, GHH’s serial killer affliction not in his genes/DNA. No……, (IMO) strictly a result of “nurture” not “nature”! Rereading parts of the Fr. Heslin murder in Colma, CA, I remember my initial feeling that the young teen, George Hodel, was on a powerful quest for revenge and yes, Hightower & gf Dolly were probably a part of that murder. I do believe GHH “instigated” the course of events leading to Fr. Heslin’s murder & sloppy sandy beach burial. As a mother & grandmother to 5 grandsons and 1 son, the trip to SF from L.A. (abt 400 miles) on a fake license was quite an undertaking for one so young! GHH’s tragic life, despite his brilliance, was due to sexual abuse, emotional indifference/distance by those he truly loved & needed! And I have seen in my own family as I grew up, the results of these abuses in close family members, ……….especially when dealt out to young males by religious clergy! As I was told by a clinical psychologist dealing w/pre-teen & teenage males in my teaching career: “You’ve heard of ‘a woman ‘scorned’? ……well……. you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet”😔!! You, Steve, Tamar, your brothers and your & their progeny will set the Hodels once again on a path of achievement and success👌! As the clinical psychologist also told me years ago in my teaching career, this recouping of severe “mistakes” made by a previous generation can take several future generations to correct😔. Take pride, Steve, in the fact that your investigations, books have definitely hastened that down to one generation…………yours!!👍👌
😎🌵
Steve!
Steve!
Steve!
Rap’cha and I unite in the Sisterhood of the Sacred WombSpace to send you a cleansing, centering breath and powerful VIBRATIONS for ancestral healing! Ancestral healing is the ancient practice that connects us to our forefathers and foreMOTHERS to dispel the negative energy of the past and replace it with purest LOVE 💖 💖💖 Now more than ever the world needs ancestral healing. The message of ancestral healing never grows old. Never.
Will you come to Whittier this year?
Peace to you!
Peace to Brother Kel!
Peace to FaunaElizabeth!
Peace to powerful Dorero of the Sacred WombSpace!
Peace to noble Rima, earthly Guardian of Steve!
Peace always!
Yolie💎
Rap’cha💎
Kristel is absent to care for her rescue cat Boogers.💎
Patricia O:
Thanks as always for your input and insights. Much appreciated.
The “nurture vs. nature” is always questionable. I see the nature contribution coming from his extremely high intelligence. He visualized and conceptualized differently from us mere mortals. . Add to that all that he suffered as a youth from his mother and his “peers” I can see how he moved into a “Most Evil” hatred of all peoples and became a Sadist and Misanthrope. We can only guess what kinds of suffering in his youth along with the rejections led him to become Pure Evil.
Regarding the photo of GHH at UCSF, I literally lived just a couple of blocks away from Cole Hall Auditorium on Shrader St. in the 1990’s. I’m also very familiar with the cusp Daly City/Colma area where Father Heslin was based. I’m even familiar with the dunes along the coast, just south of S.F. and stretching to Pacifica (one of my favorite places, in spite of the heavy fog). I’ve mentioned before that I always felt very uncomfortable in the vicinity of the Mtn. View Cemetery in Oakland, long before I ever knew about the cemetery, and the fact that Beth ‘Black Dahlia’ Short is buried there. It was always one of those areas where I sensed something was wrong, and that I didn’t belong there. Strange.