A TIME LINE
1895: John Edgar Hoover is born on Jan. 1 in Washington.
1906: On Christmas Eve, Howard Robard Hughes is born in Houston, Texas.
1910: Donnel Clyde "Spade" Cooley is born in Grande, Oklahoma.
1913: Future Bugsy Siegel bookkeeper and L.A. mob kingpin Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen is born.
1915: Geneva Odelia Hilliker is born in Tunnel City, Wisconsin to Gibb Hilliker and Ida (Linscott) Hilliker.
1921: The Pacific Dining Car opens.
1924: J. Edgar Hoover is named director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1930: On Jan. 17, Richard Joseph Contino is born in Fresno, California.
1934: Geneva Hilliker graduates high school and moves to Oak Park, Illinois.
1937: Roy Rogers discovers Spade Cooley at the gates of Republic Pictures' studio. Cooley, now an accomplished fiddler, becomes a member of Roger's Band and a film stand-in for the singing cowboy.
1937: Geneva "Jean" Hilliker graduates nursing school in May.
1938: "Jean" Hilliker wins a national beauty contest and is dubbed America's "most-charming redhead."
1941: Jean Hilliker and Armand Ellroy meet in L.A.
1942: Jose Diaz is found murdered in the "Sleepy Lagoon" swimming hole.
1945: Armand Ellroy divorces his first wife, Mildred Jean Feese.
1946: Dick Contino makes his first appearance on the Horace Heidt-Phillip Morris radio talent show on Dec. 7. His star ascends.
1947: On January 15, the hideously mutilated, bi-sected body of Elizabeth Short, the "Black Dahlia," is found in a vacant lot at 39th and Norton in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, California. The body is found some four blocks from James Ellroy's future dwelling.
1947: Jean Hilliker and Armand Ellroy marry in Ventura County on Aug. 29, 1947. Jean is two months pregnant with James.
1948: Lee Earle (James) Ellroy is born in Beverly Hills, California on March 4.
1948: Actor Robert Mitchum is arrested for smoking marijuana in a starlet's L.A. apartment. Mitchum: "Jail is like Palm Springs without the riffraff."
1950: A bombing attempt fails to kill mobster Mickey Cohen on Feb. 6.
1950: In June, three former F.B.I. agents produce a pamphlet entitled Red Channels listing names of Hollywood personalities suspected of having Communist ties.
1951: Mickey Cohen is jailed for tax evasion. He is sentenced to five years and serves four.
1951: On April 13, Dick Contino's career-threatening, self-described, "Army beef" commences.
1951: The "Bloody Christmas" scandal rocks the L.A.P.D. when seven Mexican-American youths are arrested and beaten by L.A.P.D. officers. Eight officers are indicted; 36 others are disciplined.
1952: Television's "The Spade Cooley Show" wins an Emmy. Cooley's show wins another in 1953, but his health, and ratings, are slipping.
1954: James Ellroy is told his parents are divorcing. Geneva kicks Armand Ellroy out of the family's apartment. James spends weekends with his father, eating junk food, watching fights on T.V. and reading books.
1955: Disneyland opens. The Ellroy divorce papers are filed on Jan. 3, 1955.
1956: Dick Contino marries actress Leigh Snowden.
1957: On April 4, The Club Mecca is firebombed.
1957: L.A. mobster Jack Dragna dies.
1958: Armand Ellroy takes James to the Pacific Dining Car to celebrate James' tenth birthday.
1958: On April 4, ex-Mickey Cohen bodyguard Johnny Stompanato threatens girlfriend Lana Turner. Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, age 14, overhears and grabs a kitchen knife. She fatally stabs Stompanato.
1958: Geneva and James Ellroy move to El Monte, California. New address: 756 Maple Street. On Saturday, June 21, Geneva Ellroy is strangled and her body dumped at Kings Road and Tyler Avenue, near Arroyo High School in El Monte. Ellroy, age 10, moves in with his father and begins engaging in petty thefts. He also becomes a peeping tom.
1959: Dick Contino stars in the B-movie, "Daddy-O," as drag racer, singer Phil Sandifer.
1959: Armand Ellroy gives his son a crucial birthday present: a copy of Jack Webb's "The Badge," a highly-sensationalized tribute to the L.A. police department. One chapter focuses on the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short. Ellroy's Black Dahlia obsession is born.
1960: John F. Kennedy is chosen as its presidential nominee by the Democratic National Committee. The DNC holds its 1960 convention in Los Angeles.
1960: Spade Cooley suspects his wife, Ella Mae, of having an affair with Roy Rogers. Spade files for divorce in March of the following year.
1961: Spade Cooley strangles and stomps wife Ella Mae to death as their teenage daughter, Melody, looks on. Cooley survives a heart attack and ducks the gas chamber. He forms a prison band.
1962: Dodger Stadium opens in Chavez Ravine.
1962: Ellroy graduates junior high school in June. He moves up to Fairfax High School.
1963: J.F.K. is assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22.
1965: The Watts Riots rage for six days. In the end, 34 are killed and nearly 4,000 arrested. Six hundred buildings are damaged/destroyed. Price tag: $40 million.
1965: Ellroy, 17, is expelled from Fairfax High School. He enlists in the army. Ellroy hates the army. His expressed fear for his father's failing health, coupled with a feigned stutter, earn James a discharge. On June 4, Armand Ellroy dies. According to James, his father's last words were, "Try to pick up every waitress who serves you." Ellroy descends into drug abuse, alcoholism, breaking and entries and vagrancy.
1966: The now reclusive Howard Hughes moves into the Desert Inn and begins buying up Las Vegas property.
1968: Democrat presidential hopeful Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy is assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
1969: Charles Manson masterminds the Tate-LaBianca murders.
1969: Spade Cooley is granted parole in August. On Nov. 23, three months before he is to be released, Cooley performs a benefit concert for the Alameda Sheriff's Association. Spade finishes the show, walks backstage, and drops dead. A halcyon decade draws to a close.
1972: On May 2, America's number one voyeur finally perishes. J. Edgar Hoover was 77.
1973: Ellroy's petty crimes, vagrancy and substance abuse overtake him. In June, James nearly dies of a lung abscess and "post-alcohol brain syndrome." He spends a month in the hospital, fed antibiotics intravenously. Ellroy swears off alcohol and inhalers, and takes a job as a caddy at Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles. After punching a member's son, Ellroy is fired from Hillcrest.
1976: Howard Hughes hops the Night Train to the Big Nowhere.
1976: Mickey Cohen hops the Night Train to the Big Nowhere.
1978: Ellroy begins outlining the novel that will become "Brown's Requiem" but stops, afraid that he might "fail."
1979: In January, Ellroy begins writing his first novel, "Brown's Requiem," shortly before his 31st birthday.
1980: James Ellroy composes his second novel, "Clandestine," which is centered around his mother's thinly-disguised murder.
1981: In October, James Ellroy's first novel, "Brown's Requiem," is published in the U.S. in paperback by Avon Books.
1981: Ellroy, now 33, leaves L.A. for Eastchester, New York. He takes another caddying job at Wykagyl Country Club to support his writing.
1982: Leigh Snowden Contino dies of cancer.
1982: "Clandestine" is published by Avon Books as a paperback original. The novel introduces seminal Ellroy character Dudley Liam Smith.
1984: Mysterious Press publishes the first of three Lloyd Hopkins novels, "Blood On the Moon." It is Ellroy's first book to be published in hardcover in the U.S.
1984: Mysterious Press publishes "Because the Night."
1986: In April, the last of the Lloyd Hopkins' novels, "Suicide Hill," is published in hardback by The Mysterious Press.
1986: In October, Avon publishes Ellroy's "Silent Terror" as a paperback original. The novel is unique for its first-person narration by a serial killer. Ellroy's own title for the book is "Killer On the Road," after the Jim Morrison lyric. Eventually, the book is retitled in the U.S.
1987: "The Black Dahlia" is published by Mysterious Press in September. Ellroy finances his own book tour and the novel becomes a best-seller, establishing Ellroy as a major writer in the genre of crime fiction.
1988: On Sept. 12, "The Big Nowhere" appears.
1990: On June 4, "L.A. Confidential," the third volume in Ellroy's "L.A. Quartet," is published by Mysterious Press. It is his last book for the publisher.
1992: Ellroy supplies the introduction for a quickie paperback A-to-Z digest of serial killers entitled "Murder and Mayhem."
1992: "White Jazz" is published in hardback by Century in the United Kingdom. The final volume of the L.A. Quartet debuts later in the U.S. from Knopf.
1994: Ellroy's short stories are gathered in hardcover along with a new novella centered around real-life accordion player Dick Contino under the title, "Hollywood Nocturnes."
1994: In April James Ellroy travels to L.A. and looks at his mother's homicide file for the first time with Det. Bill Stoner.
1994: The August issue of G.Q. Magazine features Ellroy's article "My Mother's Killer," about viewing his mother's homicide file. The article is the spark for Ellroy's ensuing memoir, "My Dark Places."
1994: "Dick Contino's Blues," the centerpiece of "Hollywood Nocturnes," is reprinted in paperback as part of a special Granta "Crime" anthology.
1995: "American Tabloid" is published on Feb.27, 1995. Ellroy deftly moves from L.A.-centered criminal intrigue to poltitical skullduggery and the Kennedy assassination in a novel that structurally recalls "L.A. Confidential.” Ellroy announces the novel is the first in a new series that he has dubbed, "The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy."
1996: James Ellroy publishes his memoir, "My Dark Places," centered around his 1990's invesigation of his mother's 1950s-era murder.
1998: Mysterious Press releases a hardback omnibus dubbed, "L.A. Noir," gathering the three Lloyd Hopkins novels.
1999: Ellroy gathers his G.Q. Magazine fiction and non-fiction in a single volume under the title, "Crime Wave." The book appears in paperback in the U.S. Ellroy's British publisher, Century, packages the book in a rare hardcover edition.
2000: Ellroy's agent holds a literary auction for the rights to James Ellroy's first e-book. Dubbed "Widespread Panic," the book collects Ellroy's G.Q. articles published subsequent to those printed in "Crime Wave." Upon release, the e-book is retitled "Breakneck Pace."
2001: The "The Cold Six Thousand," the sequel to "American Tabloid," is published.
