Whitley Heights 101

2167 Fairfield Avenue

2167 Fairfield Avenue was built in 1922, a two-story, six room home, constructed by contractor James Turney of Turney Building Company. The home was originally built for a widow, Amanda Moore, who put the property up for sale the following year.

The house was located on lot 39 of tract 3737 on Fairfield Avenue near the intersection of Fairfield Avenue and Odin Street just off of Highland Avenue, across the street from the Hollywood Bowl. This entire area of Whitley Heights is no longer and now a parking lot across the street from the Bowl.

Below, 1952, where parts of Whitley Heights are being demolished to pave way for the Hollywood Freeway. 2167 Fairfield is still standing, but was most likely demolished.

In 1938, journalist Harold J. Salemson purchased the home and moved in with his wife, his mother, Mary Salemson, and sister, Paula Walling until 1950. Salemson was born in Chicago in 1910 where his Russian father worked as a doctor. When his father died, the family moved to France and Harold attended the University of Montpellier and at the Sorbonne where he studied history and literature. Using his money his mother saved for tuition, Salemson decided to publish an ambitious, bilingual modernist journal, Tambour. He edited and published eight issues (1929-1930) designed to appeal to a diverse readership and featured unknown, emerging American writers, such as Paul Bowles and James T. Farrell. Tambour had an impressive circulation of about 1,500 copies and a solid base of 800 subscribers, including James Joyce, Stuart Gilbert, Henri Barbusse, Henri Bergson, Jean Cocteau, major American film studios and established literary magazines.

When he moved to Hollywood, correspondent for newspapers, a film and book critic, as well as a publisher, editor, and translator. From 1932 until the U.S. entered World War II, he worked as the Hollywood correspondent for several French publications. He enlisted in the U.S. Army immediately following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and served in the Army’s Psychological Warfare Branch in North Africa and Italy, producing propaganda leaflets and radio broadcasts delivered to occupied Europe. There has been some indication that Salemson had been mentored by Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, who wrote Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four and was concerned with government control and totalitarian political systems. In 1947 he edited the book Thought Control, which was published by Progressive Citizens of America.

The “Hollywood Ten,” which were eventually about 200 people, were blacklisted in Hollywood for decades. Some of the most talented people in Hollywood could not work in films for years. The initial list included Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Lester Cole, Maurice Rapf, Howard Koch, John Wexley, Harold Buckman, Henry Meyers, Ring Lardner Jr., Harold Salemson, and Theodore Strauss. He appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in August 1955, accompanied by his lawyer Victor Rabinowitz, but refused to denounce anyone and was fired from his job with Italian Film Export the following day. As a result, he became a self-employed translator of books from French to English. Among his 24 book translations were biographies of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Georges Simenon. His sister, Paula, worked as a French tutor for Shirley Temple, and at the time when Americans were worried that Communist ideas were being infiltrated into the US, even Shirley Temple and his sister were being investigated for having communist ties. Temple was only 10 years old!

In 1966, Salemson became a book reviewer for Newsday and later taught film history courses at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus. He died of a heart attack at Community Hospital in Glen Cove, New York, on August 25, 1988.