Depression-era Southern California: Amongst the burgeoning urban sprawl built atop bulldozed orange groves and the bitter realization that you can’t eat the sunshine, Maryland-born James M. Cain found his writer's voice. The unforgettable regional stories he spun between 1934-44, in novels ”The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Mildred Pierce” and “Double Indemnity” and their subsequent film adaptations, would help launch a unique American genre: Film Noir. How did this East Coast sophisticate go from managing editor of “The New Yorker” to…
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Los Angeles County is vast, with 88 cities contained within its nearly 5000' square mile sprawl. Too often, historic preservation efforts are focused on famous landmarks in dense neighborhoods popular with tourists: Hollywood, Downtown, Pasadena, Silver Lake. But there is architectural beauty and rich history to be found in every corner of Los Angeles, and it's in the less traveled sections between the freeways where preservationists can both do the most good and be happily surprised by new discoveries. This…
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