Cruising for Community: Youth Culture and Politics in Los Angeles, 1910-1970

Cruising For Community: Youth Culture and Politics in Los Angeles, 1910-1970 By Matthew Allan Ides A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan 2009 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Matthew D. Lassiter, Co-chair Professor Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Co-chair Associate Professor James W. Cook Jr. Associate Professor Paul A. Anderson Acknowledgements A list of everyone who has supported me through my years of graduate work is frankly untenable. So instead, I will identify advisors, colleagues, friends, and family who in the last couple of years helped me through the final stage of my graduate career. First and foremost, I would like to thank my family. Joel in his Venice pad was always there for a place to crash or a shared meal on research trips. Kate, and her husband Brun, served as a new source of friendship in Ann Arbor at the end stages of the dissertation. My parents, Allan and Cindi, have been a constant source of emotional and financial support—and in many ways, as young Angelinos in the mid-20th century, my dissertation is a tribute to them. My father, Allan, also provided me with excellent feedback on many chapter drafts, thereby providing a role model as teacher/scholar. In Ann Arbor, I have had the privilege of meeting and working with many creative and intelligent people. Pete Soppelsa, Dan Rose, Megan Biddinger, Urmila Venkatesh, Afia Ofori-Mensa, Tyler Cornelius, Matthew Wittmann, Elizabeth Ben-Ishai, Dros Adamson, Bob Rich, Charles Gentry, and Mark Dilley have all at times provided me with sources of both intellectual stimulation and down righ good fun. In the last year or so, Lauren Squires stands out as someone who has been a constant companion and a source of inspiration. I look forward to future collaborations and fun with Lauren. In the program at the University of Michigan, I have had the pleasure of working with an energetic set of young American historians, including Andrew Highsmith, Brendan Goff, Millington Lockwood, Clay Howard, Drew Meyers, Nathan Connolly, ii Aaron Cavin, and Lily Geismer. The American History Workshop at the University of Michigan was a critical means for me to get feedback from these scholars and thereby advance my work. Thanks also to the History department staff, especially Lorna Altstetter, Sheila Coley, and Kathleen King. I wish to heartily thank my dissertation committee members Matthew Lassiter, Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Jay Cook, and Paul Anderson. Jay and Paul provided critical feedback helping me to strengthen the theoretical organization of my dissertation. Without either of my co-advisors, Gina and Matt, this work would not have been possible. Gina’s critiques cut to the core of my dissertation’s weakness, and to her, I promise not to turn my dissertation into another “boy book.” Finally, Matt has provided me with consistent and insightful feedback on my dissertation and his invisible hand can be felt in many of its pages. I thank Matt for all his labor, support and friendship throughout my graduate career. Lastly, I would like to thank the many people I met during my dissertation research. These would include the archivists at the many libraries I visited and the people I interviewed. Jerome Handler, Lenny Potash, Hector Gonzalez, Steven Chavez, Fernando Ruelas, Ed Pearl, Harvey Ovshinsky, Borden Olive, John Meigs, Augustus Maimodes, Sac Mesa, Mike Roman, Juan Jimenez, Ron Jorgenson, Martin Hodell, Richard Delvy, Robert Eng, and John Blair—this is your story. And Thelonious—I thank you for what you do best. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements.………………………………………………………………………ii Chapter One……...………………………………………………………………………..1 Introduction: The Fifth Estate Chapter Two…...…………………………………………………………………………38 The ‘Boy Problem’: The Commercial City and the Governmental Roots of Youth Culture Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………………….99 From Hot Rods to Lowriders: The Vehicles of an Emerging Youth Culture Chapter Four…….………………………………………………………………….…..170 From the Trenches to the Schools: How the Communist Party and the Labor Movement Forged a Youth Subculture Chapter Five…...………………………………………………………………………..233 Rocking the Beach and the Barrio: The Youth Music Culture of Mid-20th Century Los Angeles Chapter Six……….……………………………………………………………………..286 Burn Baby Burn: Youth Spaces, Civil Rights and the Counterculture in Los Angeles, 1959-1967 Chapter Seven…………………………………………………………………………..344 The East Los Angeles Blowouts: From Youth Culture to Identity Politics Chapter Eight…………………………………………………………………………...397 Conclusion The Politics of Youth Culture Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………403 iv Chapter One Introduction: The Fifth Estate Throughout the 20th century, Los Angeles was a crucible of American youth culture. The city’s social organization, commercial orientation, and spatial development consolidated policing authority and centralized youth consumer sites; adult youth experts lobbied for the management of youth culture as a way to ensure social stability and common civic identity. Alongside these modes of consolidation and centralization, local youth subcultures developed that organized the activities of thousands of young people. These subcultures were both culturally and politically potent; subcultures gave young people language to articulate challenges to adult authority and collective agency to shape the evolution of youth culture. “Cruising for Community” explores the dynamic negotiations between adults and youth that drove the growth of youth culture in metropolitan Los Angeles from the First World War and Progressive era to the Vietnam War and civil rights era. The development of youth culture is a critical means for historians to explore the formation of youth politics, that is, the ways that young people see their lives, desires and futures as forming a distinct age identity. In youth politics, youth identity is mobilized to make claims on resources and power. Within Los Angeles and American culture, youth politics functioned as a catalyst to progressive activism, and in three distinct periods young people’s collective practices restructured the city’s social order. In roughly three 1 periods beginning around the turn of the century, youth activism and claims of autonomy crested; at these peaks, young people en masse made demands for greater resources, political representation and cultural recognition. In the early part of the century, young Angelinos restructured youth culture in high schools in a climate of Progressivism. During the Great Depression, youth activists petitioned government to secure greater vocational training and employment opportunities. And in the 1960s, a number of coinciding factors—including the entry of the baby boom into adolescence, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War—made generational identity and youth culture an extremely powerful social force and the basis for transformative politics and culture. "Cruising for Community" examines the development of youth culture in the first half of the 20th century to closely interrogate the social and cultural relationships that produced the convergence of youth culture and activism during the 1960s. Detroiter Harvey Ovshinsky’s experiences in L.A. offer a window into the crest of youth culture and politics in the 1960s. In 1965, Ovshinsky, against his wishes, moved with his mother from Detroit to Los Angeles. Separated from his friends, high school peer networks, and city of birth, Ovshinsky spent lonely nights watching late-night television programs. One evening, Ovshinsky tuned in to the “Joe Pine Show” and watched an interview with Art Kunkin, the publisher of a local underground newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press (LAFP). Subsequently, Ovshinsky sought Kunkin out and became an intern at the paper during the spring and summer of 1965.1 The staff of the LAFP provided a new and welcoming community for Ovshinsky. Moreover, the basement of The Fifth Estate Coffee House, located on the Sunset Strip in 1 Harvey Ovshinsky interview by author, July 16, 2008. The information in the next three paragraphs comes from the same interview. 2 Hollywood, served as the newspaper’s home and gave Ovshinksy access to the area’s vibrant youth and celebrity culture. In comparison to many of the other youth-oriented establishments on the Strip, The Fifth Estate stood out. Its proprietor Al Mitchell envisioned the coffee house as an alternative to university learning, a place where young people had the freedom and leisure to develop self-expression and community outside of narrowly defined commercial endeavors. At The Fifth Estate, customers broke out in spontaneous poetry and folk music sessions, watched avant-garde films of Luis Buñuel and Kenneth Anger upstairs, and contributed to the art collection featured on the walls. In addition, the Strip and the coffeehouse provided places that Ovshinsky could meet young women for a teenager dislocated from his peer networks. In Hollywood, Ovshinsky also witnessed the weekend horde of youth that flocked to teen dance clubs, the cruising scene on the boulevard, and the police’s heavy-handed traffic control techniques. The coffee house scene encouraged participation and unregulated relationships, and the energy and giddiness of the crowds of young people on the Sunset Strip washed through the front door. Within this environment, generational identity was not a theory; it was a lived experience. Ovshinsky’s exposure to the youth scene on The Sunset Strip was not only a matter

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