From USC Archives is this sad photograph, dated October 30, 1951, showing Van Nuys firemen over the dead body of T.E. Commings, who had earlier hung himself from garage rafters.

American newspapers back then showed flash lit photographs of crime and tragedy, usually with names and addresses of victims. “Mrs. Robert Crane, 34, of 114 Maple Street, was arrested by Officer Casey at the corner of Main and Toro where she had just run a red light. She was later tested and found intoxicated and booked at the Witsend Police Station.”

Though we erroneously imagine that we live in an unparalleled time of explicit violence, coarse language and animalistic barbarism, available to see in the palm of our hands, the 1950s had explicit examples of the worst of the humanity.

The difference is that Americans 73 years ago thought that there were normal, law abiding people who lived to pay taxes, marry, attend church, vote in elections, buy homes, cheer for ball players, and who knew right from wrong.

Popular morality was codified and distributed in films, written in stone on the bases of statues, and inscribed in history books that taught our history as a glorious march of freedom envied by the world.

The obscure ones who failed, who died by their own hands, or screwed up their lives in crime, they had one brief moment of infamy in the news and were quickly forgotten except by those who still loved them. To dwell on them would have been an indictment of the American experiment.