This is a particularly interesting shot. It looks like there’s a mystery keyboardist with a tiny piano or some sort of keyboard instrument. Mood music?   

[Update: This is Hugh Herbert, but the rest of the people in the photo are unidentified. Please congratulate Dewey Webb, Mary Mallory, Carmen, Rotter, Mark Heimback-Nielsen, Eve, Cold in Phoenix, Roget-L.A., Herb Nichols, Sarah, Julie Merholz, Randy Skretvedt, Mike Hawks, Benito, Norma Desmond and Stacia for identifying him!]

Our mystery folks are making a mystery cocktail! Notice the little risers being used to lift the table!

Jan. 28, 1981: Lee Manual Gooch, 15, is missing four days after the discovery of the strangled body of Terry Lorenzo Pue, the 14th black child to be killed  in Atlanta in 1 1/2 years, The Times says. Freelance photographer Wayne B. Williams will be arrested in June on suspicion of killing as many as 28 victims between 1979 and 1981. Williams was convicted on two counts of murder in February 1982.

Jan. 27, 1961: Matt Weinstock has an item about folk music featuring singer Joyce James and guitarist Bill Fernandez. One of their songs is David Arkin’s “The Klan,” about a cross burning in East L.A.

Jan. 27, 1961: Carroll Van Court asks Mirror readers to pray for Mel Blanc, who was badly injured in a car crash.

Paul Coates dips into the mailbag and endures a reader’s taunts that he is getting old.

Jan. 27, 1941: Tom Treanor writes about the popularity of the Lockheed Hudson among British fliers. “The Hudson's such a sweetheart to the British airmen that it has been made the heroine of their next-to-the-dirtiest war flying song,” Treanor says.  

Jimmie Fidler says: Here's the kind of determination that's needed to be a successful "movie mamma." The other day, stopping at Columbia, I found the anteroom crowded with moppet applicants for a minor kid role, each one shepherded, of course, by a militant mother.

As I watched, a pretty 6-year-old was dismissed from the producer's sanctum with a few words of consolation.

Craftily, her mamma took her aside, produced a comb and brush, and with a few deft strokes, completely changed the tot's appearance. Minutes later, the same child re-entered the big shot's office for another try and -- you've guessed it -- came out with the job!

[Update: This is a production shot from “Tennessee Johnson,” published Jan. 2, 1943. The fellow  on the ladder with the gloves is director William Dieterle.]

In this mystery scene, we have a large room, a big cast, and lots of lights!

Here’s another historic location in the 1975 film “Farewell, My Lovely,” a scene with Robert Mitchum and Jack O’Halloran at the Far East Cafe on 1st St. in Little Tokyo.
 
[These images are a little funky. They’re frame grabs from a copy of the film I taped off the air many years ago and recently transferred to DVD.]

Jan. 26, 1961: The sound of an auto collision at Sunset Boulevard and Roxbury Drive attracted the usual crowd of onlookers and as Eugene Rodney, producer of the Robert Young TV show, dejectedly appraised the damage to his white Thunderbird, one of them, a man in sports shirt and slacks, asked, "Is there anything I can do?"

Rodney recognized him as pianist Jose Iturbi and after a moment's contemplation said, "Yes, there is! Would you play 'The Ritual Fire Dance' from 'El Amor Brujo' by De Falla--Softly!"

DEAR ABBY: Yesterday I saw two people together who had absolutely no business being together. The man is the husband of a very good friend of mine. The women is the wife of a respected professional man. He was helping her into his car and they were laughing and so wrapped up in each other's company they didn't know anyone else was on the street. This was about noontime.

It worked on my mind so much I decided to call up my friend and tell her about her husband....

Jan. 26, 1961: Paul Coates has the latest example of the recurring stories the Mirror published about petty intimidation by LAPD officers, under Chief William H. Parker, particularly traffic officers. 

Jan. 26, 1941: Times reporter Tom Treanor, having returned from Europe, writes about the black market money exchange in Romania.

Jimmie Fidler has the day off. Philip K. Scheuer writes about the filming of two Norman Krasna pictures, "The Devil and Miss Jones" and "The Flame of New Orleans."

[Update: This is Joan Crawford in “The Ice Follies of 1939.” ]
Hm. What’s going on here?