Harry Carr
Encyclopedia
Harry C. Carr whose byline for most of his career was Harry Carr, was a reporter, editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Times
. In 1934 he was given an honorable mention by a Pulitzer Prize committee on awards. When a heart attack claimed his life at the age of fifty-eight, his funeral was attended by more than a thousand people.
to do "unusual little stories, funny or with heart interest.".
As a young reporter on the hunt for a story, Carr was ejected from a Los Angeles theater when, uninvited, he tried to watch the rehearsal of a play. The resourceful Carr, however, spied on the troupe through an alley window, wrote a story about it and it was printed. Subsequent stories brought Carr's talent to the attention of Harry Andrews, then managing editor of the Times, so he sent for Carr and gave him a job.
Carr's reputation soared with his eyewitness coverage of the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. He was the first outside reporter to make his way to the shattered city and his efforts resulted in "four or five full newspaper pages of print, the longest story I ever saw in a paper," said John Von Blon, an assistant city editor at the time. "I locked Harry in a room in the morning, brought him his luncheon and dinner and kept him right at it." His coverage, reporting and writing was "one of the greatest stories of modern times, one that is still regarded by newspapermen all over the world as a model for the chronicling of some tremendous and awful event," a colleague, Julian Johnson, recalled thirty years later.
Carr was later assigned to the sports department, where he became editor around 1912 and wrote a column, "Through the Carr Window." "He was particularly interested in boxing and covered many championship fights . . . . He was one of the first writers to hail Jack Dempsey
as a coming champion."
Shortly after, Carr was assigned as Times correspondent in Washington, D.C., and in 1915 he was in Europe, covering World War I from Berlin and elsewhere. In 1916 he returned briefly to Los Angeles, then headed back to Washington. Columns he filed from there were often headed "Checkerboard" or "Grouchy Remarks." He also covered the Mexican revolution
(1910–1920).
In 1920, he turned to criticism of the stage and screen. Directors like D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille
, Mack Sennett
, Jesse Lasky and Erich von Stroheim
called on him to help humanize their films; he became a "story editor-at-large." He went to New York for a time, but "hastened back to his beloved California."
Carr was editorial page editor in 1922. His column, "The Lancer," began on November 18, 1924, and appeared almost daily thereafter.
In 1932 he was called back to the sports department to edit the special sections covering the 1932 Olympic Games
in Los Angeles, and
Between March 1933 and January 1934, Carr made an around-the-world trip and reported on "the bloody retreat of the Chinese before the Japanese invaders" and likened Japanese-occupied Korea "to a perpetual comic opera on a blood-stained stage, with lovely little girls — and lepers — making up the cast." He told of "Hitler's psychology and dreams of conquest, . . . of the possibility of another European conflagration breaking out in Czecho-Slovakia's capital, of the gaudy but not too impressive show being presented in Italy, and of a precarious ring of steel which France maintains about Germany. . . . Carr saw ghost ships in the harbor of Manila, and wrote of them; found the women of Bali going about without shirts and had a beetle fight staged for him."
For these stories and others written on his trip, Carr was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by James M. Cain
, novelist and Burbank, California
, screenwriter. Carr was given an honorable mention in 1934 by the Pulitzer committee on awards for distinguished service as a foreign or Washington correspondent.
Of the profession of journalism, Carr wrote in 1931:
He wrote his last column in his Tujunga home before he left for the hospital on the day he died, and it was published the next day. In it, he referred to the recent deaths of Thelma Todd
, John Gilbert
and "Quien Sabe?" (who knows?). "Death cuts down the famous by threes in Hollywood," he wrote.
, on March 27, 1877, to Henry Clay Carr and Louise Low Carr. He was brought to Los Angeles
as a boy and graduated from Los Angeles High School
. During summer vacations he went back to Rhode Island "and learned all about ships."
He had two sisters, Katharine Carr and Mrs. Edmund D. Locke. He was married to Alice Eaton of Detroit, Michigan
, in 1902, and they had two children, Donald Eaton Carr and Patricia Josephine (Mrs. Walter Everett Morris).
After Carr became a successful newspaperman, he and his wife maintained two homes — one at 3202 Lowry Road in Los Angeles (between Griffith Park Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue) and an "oak-shaded picturesque ten-acre retreat" called Las Manzanitas Ranch on McGroarty Street in sububan Tujunga
. It was there that Carr wrote his will "in his sharp, crisp penmanship, almost like printing," nine days before he was stricken by a heart attack and died on January 10, 1936. He left most of his estate to his wife but bequeathed Las Manzanitas to his children.
Lee Shippey
, another Los Angeles Times columnist, described the 53-year-old Carr in 1930 as
Carr was considered a friend of Mexico and of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles. Upon his death from a heart attack on January 10, 1936, memorial services were held in the Mexican-themed Olvera Street
, with candles lit in his memory.
Carr's funeral at Pierce Brothers Mortuary was attended by more than a thousand people who overflowed three chapels. Audio of the service was carried from the main chapel into two adjoining rooms. Father Francis J. Caffrey of Mission San Juan Bautista
delivered the eulogy at the request of the family although Carr was not Catholic.
Among the notables were Admiral Joseph M. Reeves
, commander-in-chief of the United States Naval Fleet, Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz, actor Harold Lloyd
and director Cecil B. DeMille
, but the throng also included "Main-street habitues, hard-bitten fellows from the flop-house district." Honorary pallbearers included producers Sid Grauman
, Sol Lesser, Joseph Schenck
, D.W. Griffith, Irvin Cobb and Mack Sennett
, boxing champion Jack Dempsey
, Judge Isidore B. Dockweiler
, actors Ernst Lubitsch
, Eric von Stroheim and Leo Carrillo
, car dealer and radio station owner Earle C. Anthony
and poet and writer John Steven McGroarty.
Carr was buried at Rosedale Cemetery.
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. In 1934 he was given an honorable mention by a Pulitzer Prize committee on awards. When a heart attack claimed his life at the age of fifty-eight, his funeral was attended by more than a thousand people.
Professional life
Carr's first newspaper job was in 1897 when he was hired by the Los Angeles Herald on the recommendation of business manager Fred AllesFred Lind Alles
Fred Lind Alles was a businessman and civic leader in Los Angeles, California, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, serving as secretary or other officer for various committees and for the National Irrigation Congress.-Professional life:...
to do "unusual little stories, funny or with heart interest.".
As a young reporter on the hunt for a story, Carr was ejected from a Los Angeles theater when, uninvited, he tried to watch the rehearsal of a play. The resourceful Carr, however, spied on the troupe through an alley window, wrote a story about it and it was printed. Subsequent stories brought Carr's talent to the attention of Harry Andrews, then managing editor of the Times, so he sent for Carr and gave him a job.
Carr's reputation soared with his eyewitness coverage of the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. He was the first outside reporter to make his way to the shattered city and his efforts resulted in "four or five full newspaper pages of print, the longest story I ever saw in a paper," said John Von Blon, an assistant city editor at the time. "I locked Harry in a room in the morning, brought him his luncheon and dinner and kept him right at it." His coverage, reporting and writing was "one of the greatest stories of modern times, one that is still regarded by newspapermen all over the world as a model for the chronicling of some tremendous and awful event," a colleague, Julian Johnson, recalled thirty years later.
Carr was later assigned to the sports department, where he became editor around 1912 and wrote a column, "Through the Carr Window." "He was particularly interested in boxing and covered many championship fights . . . . He was one of the first writers to hail Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey was an American boxer who held the world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926. Dempsey's aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first...
as a coming champion."
Shortly after, Carr was assigned as Times correspondent in Washington, D.C., and in 1915 he was in Europe, covering World War I from Berlin and elsewhere. In 1916 he returned briefly to Los Angeles, then headed back to Washington. Columns he filed from there were often headed "Checkerboard" or "Grouchy Remarks." He also covered the Mexican revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
(1910–1920).
In 1920, he turned to criticism of the stage and screen. Directors like D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
, Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...
, Jesse Lasky and Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...
called on him to help humanize their films; he became a "story editor-at-large." He went to New York for a time, but "hastened back to his beloved California."
Carr was editorial page editor in 1922. His column, "The Lancer," began on November 18, 1924, and appeared almost daily thereafter.
In 1932 he was called back to the sports department to edit the special sections covering the 1932 Olympic Games
1932 Summer Olympics
The 1932 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the X Olympiad, was a major world wide multi-athletic event which was celebrated in 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. No other cities made a bid to host these Olympics. Held during the worldwide Great Depression, many nations...
in Los Angeles, and
Harry Carr was back in the sports saddle for sixteen glorious, hectic, fantastic days and nights. He was . . . an impresario sitting in the old office of The Times, amid mounds of waste paper and mountains of pictures, making drama out of barelegged boys and girls from all over the world leaping and running in the Coliseum. . . . His staff was not big enough to keep up with him. . . . He loved sports more than anything else.
Between March 1933 and January 1934, Carr made an around-the-world trip and reported on "the bloody retreat of the Chinese before the Japanese invaders" and likened Japanese-occupied Korea "to a perpetual comic opera on a blood-stained stage, with lovely little girls — and lepers — making up the cast." He told of "Hitler's psychology and dreams of conquest, . . . of the possibility of another European conflagration breaking out in Czecho-Slovakia's capital, of the gaudy but not too impressive show being presented in Italy, and of a precarious ring of steel which France maintains about Germany. . . . Carr saw ghost ships in the harbor of Manila, and wrote of them; found the women of Bali going about without shirts and had a beetle fight staged for him."
For these stories and others written on his trip, Carr was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by James M. Cain
James M. Cain
James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
, novelist and Burbank, California
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
, screenwriter. Carr was given an honorable mention in 1934 by the Pulitzer committee on awards for distinguished service as a foreign or Washington correspondent.
Of the profession of journalism, Carr wrote in 1931:
Journalism isn't a business. It is a consecration. There is no money in the job but there is everything else. Of all careers I think it is the most soul-satisfying. When I come around this way in my next incarnation a thousand years from now I am not going to lose as much time as in this whirl of life. I waited until I was 19 in this life; in the next I am going to crawl out of the cradle and demand that the nurse take me to the nearest city editorCity editorA city editor is a title used by a particular section editor of a newspaper. They are responsible for the daily changes of a particular issue of a newspaper that will be released in the coming day...
.
He wrote his last column in his Tujunga home before he left for the hospital on the day he died, and it was published the next day. In it, he referred to the recent deaths of Thelma Todd
Thelma Todd
Thelma Alice Todd was an American actress. Appearing in about 120 pictures between 1926 and 1935, she is best remembered for her comedic roles in films like Marx Brothers' Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, a number of Charley Chase's short comedies, and co-starring with Buster Keaton and Jimmy...
, John Gilbert
John Gilbert (actor)
John Gilbert was an American actor and a major star of the silent film era.Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw...
and "Quien Sabe?" (who knows?). "Death cuts down the famous by threes in Hollywood," he wrote.
Personal life
Carr was born in Tipton, IowaTipton, Iowa
Tipton is a city in Cedar County, Iowa, United States. The population was 3,155 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Cedar County.-Geography:Tipton is located at ....
, on March 27, 1877, to Henry Clay Carr and Louise Low Carr. He was brought to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
as a boy and graduated from Los Angeles High School
Los Angeles High School
Los Angeles High School is the oldest public high school in the Southern California Region and in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its colors are blue and white and the teams are called the Romans....
. During summer vacations he went back to Rhode Island "and learned all about ships."
He had two sisters, Katharine Carr and Mrs. Edmund D. Locke. He was married to Alice Eaton of Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, in 1902, and they had two children, Donald Eaton Carr and Patricia Josephine (Mrs. Walter Everett Morris).
After Carr became a successful newspaperman, he and his wife maintained two homes — one at 3202 Lowry Road in Los Angeles (between Griffith Park Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue) and an "oak-shaded picturesque ten-acre retreat" called Las Manzanitas Ranch on McGroarty Street in sububan Tujunga
Sunland-Tujunga, Los Angeles
Sunland-Tujunga is a community served by two post offices in the northeasternmost corner of Los Angeles, California. Though Sunland and Tujunga began as separate settlements, they are today linked through a single police station, branch library, neighborhood council. chamber of commerce, City...
. It was there that Carr wrote his will "in his sharp, crisp penmanship, almost like printing," nine days before he was stricken by a heart attack and died on January 10, 1936. He left most of his estate to his wife but bequeathed Las Manzanitas to his children.
Lee Shippey
Lee Shippey
Henry Lee Shippey , who wrote under the name Lee Shippey, was an author and journalist whose romance with a French woman during World War I caused a sensation in the United States as a "famous war triangle." Shippey later wrote a popular column in the Los Angeles Times for 22 years.-Early...
, another Los Angeles Times columnist, described the 53-year-old Carr in 1930 as
a short, roundish man with short, graying hair, a round face which continually flashes smiles, but never grins, and a heart which is an everlasting spring of sentiment. He wears his sympathies on his sleeve. In all people who are simple, natural and frank he sees the good with a magnifying glass, but he is continually laughing up his sleeve at shams. . . . He is as nervous as quicksilver and as full of surprises as a jack-in-the-box. He brashes right through doors marked "Private" and somehow the "privateers" like it. . . . He is very gentle with all who are humble or modest, but scornful of both fawning and pretentiousness. It would pain [him] to crush a fly."
Carr was considered a friend of Mexico and of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles. Upon his death from a heart attack on January 10, 1936, memorial services were held in the Mexican-themed Olvera Street
Olvera Street
Olvera Street is in the oldest part of Downtown Los Angeles, California, and is part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. Many Latinos refer to it as "La Placita Olvera." Circa 1911 it was described as Sonora Town....
, with candles lit in his memory.
Carr's funeral at Pierce Brothers Mortuary was attended by more than a thousand people who overflowed three chapels. Audio of the service was carried from the main chapel into two adjoining rooms. Father Francis J. Caffrey of Mission San Juan Bautista
Mission San Juan Bautista
Mission San Juan Bautista was founded on June 24, 1797 in what is now the San Juan Bautista Historic District of San Juan Bautista, California. Barracks for the soldiers, a nunnery, the Jose Castro House, and other buildings were constructed around a large grassy plaza in front of the church and...
delivered the eulogy at the request of the family although Carr was not Catholic.
Among the notables were Admiral Joseph M. Reeves
Joseph M. Reeves
Joseph Mason "Bull" Reeves was an admiral in the United States Navy, who was an early and important supporter of U.S. Naval Aviation...
, commander-in-chief of the United States Naval Fleet, Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz, actor Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....
and director Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
, but the throng also included "Main-street habitues, hard-bitten fellows from the flop-house district." Honorary pallbearers included producers Sid Grauman
Sid Grauman
Sidney Patrick Grauman was an American showman who created one of Southern California's most recognizable and visited landmarks, Grauman's Chinese Theater. He was the son of David Grauman who died in 1921 in Los Angeles, California and Rosa Goldsmith...
, Sol Lesser, Joseph Schenck
Joseph Schenck
Joseph Michael Schenck was a pioneer executive who played a key role in the development of the United States film industry.Born in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia to a Jewish household, he and his family-including younger brother Nicholas- emigrated to New York City in 1893, he and Nicholas...
, D.W. Griffith, Irvin Cobb and Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...
, boxing champion Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey was an American boxer who held the world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926. Dempsey's aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first...
, Judge Isidore B. Dockweiler
Isidore B. Dockweiler
Isidore Bernard Dockweiler . Prominent California lawyer and politician from a pioneering Los Angeles family.-Biography:...
, actors Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
, Eric von Stroheim and Leo Carrillo
Leo Carrillo
Leopoldo Antonio Carrillo , was an American actor, vaudevillian, political cartoonist, and conservationist.-Family roots:...
, car dealer and radio station owner Earle C. Anthony
Earle C. Anthony
Earle C. Anthony was a pioneer businessman based in Los Angeles, California. He is primarily known for his achievements in two fields: Broadcasting and automobiles...
and poet and writer John Steven McGroarty.
Carr was buried at Rosedale Cemetery.
His books
- Old Mother Mexico (1931)
- The West Is Still Wild (1932)
- Riding the Tiger (1934?)
- Los Angeles: City of Dreams (1935?)