'A Bright and Guilty Place'

By Richard Rayner, 281 pages, $25

There must have been at least some virtuous citizens among the half million who doubled the population of Los Angeles between 1920 and 1930.

Nearly two centuries before, the founding Spanish missionaries had given the city a name that evoked innocence: "The Town of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels." Americans shortened it to "Los Angeles" — Spanish for "The Angels."

A shortage of angels appeared well before the riverside village of Spanish colonial times morphed into what Orson Welles called a "bright and guilty place." British author Richard Rayner, an 18-year Los Angeles resident, aims bright light on the guilty characters — not the more angelic.

He abounds in the doings of crooked politicians, conniving business people, brothel keepers, casino operators, blackmailers, embezzlers, unscrupulous lawyers, corruptible journalists, thugs who took care of their dirtier jobs. And, of course, the Hollywood stars. He does for Los Angeles what Lincoln Steffens and fellow muckrakers did for American cities in the decades just before.

Rayner tells much of his story through one steadfastly virtuous character, Leslie White — a bespectacled young news photographer. White became a forensic expert in the Los Angeles Police Department and a writer of pulp fiction. He and Steffens were good friends in later life.

White brought to court in 1930 the pictures he had made of jewels apparently stolen from red headed, gum chewing Clara Bow — the reigning "It" girl of Hollywood. The alleged thief was her hairdresser and best friend, Daisy De Voe. Bow burst into tears when she told the judge that De Voe tried to blackmail her for $125,000 as the price for hiding some love letters.

One newspaper listed among Bow's lovers Gary Cooper, John Gilbert, Fredric March, Howard Hughes "and others." De Voe testified that part of her job was to tell them when their companionship was no longer required.

Other Los Angeles stories of the period were almost as sensational and of equal or greater significance.

There was the unsolved murder of Ned Doheny who, on behalf of his father, the book says, handed Interior Secretary Albert Fall $100,000 in a Washington hotel room. Oil developer Edward L. Doheny Sr. was one of the country's wealthiest men.

"Fall arranged for (the elder) Doheny to meet President Harding and soon handed his old friend (Doheny) the Elk Hills lease (of federally owned oil lands) which Doheny reckoned would be worth more than $100 million," the story goes on. That would be the equivalent of well over $1 billion today's dollars.

Rayner summarizes the eventual result: "Fall resigned and Warren Harding died in disgrace, but not before memorably remarking, 'I can take care of my enemies, it's my friends who are causing me troubles."'

There was less ominous meaning in the story of the odd friendship struck up between Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. Chaplin invited Einstein to the Los Angeles premiere of "City Lights." A crowd of 50,000 rioted outside the theater.

"They cheer me because they all understand me and they cheer you because nobody understands you," Chaplin told his friend in the lobby.

— Associated Press