As an undergraduate student studying health and science and as an internet-dependent millenial, I had always been intrigued, but, honestly, somewhat intimidated, by the library. The words “special collections” and “archives” were reserved in my mind for history majors or those immersed in the upper echelons of academia. This perception, fortunately, was shattered this summer, as I was granted the opportunity to work hands-on with a collection that opened my eyes to the allure of archival curation.

I was drawn to this summer project, though so out of my comfort-zone, by the prospect of exploring its subject matter: the daily experiences of a young, female sex-worker in downtown Los Angeles in the 1950s. Sex, sex-work, gender relations, and female-agency through history are all themes that interest me, so I was compelled to involve myself. I applied and was chosen to receive a grant from the Summer Humanities Undergraduate Research Fund of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences under the guidance of Professor of History and American historian, William Deverell. Through this program, I was given the freedom and instruction to process the collection with the Special Collections department at the Doheny Memorial Library and conduct independent research on the subject matter.

View of 7th and Broadway, ca. 1952. Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection. 

The collection was riveting. It was comprised of diaries, photographs, and personal items belonging to Gladys A., a young woman in her early twenties that moved to Los Angeles from Saginaw, Michigan in 1949 and immediately began engaging in sex-work in order to support herself. The diaries begin the day that she arrived in downtown in January of 1949 and continue through the end of 1953, detailing the daily experiences, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of Gladys as she navigates through the physical and cultural landscape of Los Angeles nearly seventy years ago. The language, syntax, and honesty of these diaries was striking and captivating; so distinctively “old-fashioned” while simultaneously so relatable in many ways. In casual and colloquial language of her time, Gladys describes the fascinating monotony of a bygone era and the inner turmoil of a “twenty-something” girl that sounds all too familiar to the plot lines of an average edition of “Cosmo” today: how to lose weight, how to know if he’s actually interested in you romantically, how to deal with an annoying boss, etcetera. The photographs feature both formal portraits and casual photographs of Gladys at many ages, with friends, presumed family, lovers, and others in her personal life. The personal items include memorabilia from Gladys’s high school graduation from her Catholic high school in Michigan, receipts, identification cards, and a small collection of correspondence between Gladys and family members back home. These items, together, paint a broad narrative picture of Gladys’s life I was able to explore and analyze.

It struck me how, despite her economic instability, she was able to frequently participate in entertainment culture -- the emerging dominant industry of Los Angeles at the time -- be it going out to eat, out to the theater to see a movie, or out to a nightclub or dance hall. Occasionally, she funded these amusements herself, as she made money primarily from sex-work but also by working occasional and short-lived waitressing and domestic service stints. However, the many men in her life, whether they were friends, “clients”, or prospective love interests, were really what allowed her to take part in the many forms of entertainment and leisure 1950s Los Angeles offered, providing her with meals, money, gifts, and outings in exchange for her company. While Gladys was a young, white woman from the midwest, the men in her life were very notably ethnically diverse: primarily Mexican and Indian, but occasionally African American, Jewish, or from a multitude of racial backgrounds. As such, the places that Gladys and her men were able to frequent had a certain degree of accessibility, open to people of lower socioeconomic status. This is noteworthy, considering the social and political conditions of L.A. in the 1950s, where the real estate and housing sectors were overtly marked by racist policies and racial tensions. A handful of the locations Gladys went regularly, like Clifton’s Cafeteria and Jack’s Basket Room, were even featured in the famous Negro Motorist Green Book, a guidebook of notably non-discriminatory establishments that welcomed African Americans, in the early 1950s editions. Very few places, especially those of leisure, were featured in L.A.’s section of these guidebooks, emphasizing the significance of the inclusivity of the spaces Gladys enjoyed as a white woman. Gladys was very exact in explaining the details of her days, often citing exact names of locations she frequented, cross-streets, and even addresses. So, I made digital map of these “accessible amusements” frequented by Gladys, inspired by Kathy Peiss’s Cheap Amusements, but reimagined in a more contemporary context specific to Los Angeles rather than New York. 

"Clifton's Cafeteria in Downtown Los Angeles," ca. 1935, "Dick" Whittington Photography Collection, 1924-1987, USC Libraries Special Collections.

Sculpture, Biltmore Theatre, 1963. William Reagh Collection, Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

This map took the form of a ArcGIS Story Map divided into four categories of “amusement”: (1) restaurants, (2) bars, clubs, and dance halls, (3) theaters, and (4) parks, public spaces, and other. This map puts Gladys’s personal experiences into a broader context; showing the accessibility of Los Angeles establishments in that era and their physical locations in the city in addition to their longevity (or lack thereof) in the city’s cultural experience, as many of the spaces are still present today.

This mapping project further stimulated my interest in unique mobility and flexibility of Gladys as white, working class, female sex-worker. She seemed to be able to seamlessly navigate through and comfortably exist within multiple disparate spheres of an economically and racially divided Los Angeles. While she spent her free time enjoying Mexican, Chinese, and Italian restaurants, Latino dance clubs, and African American jazz clubs, because she was white and a woman, she could find employment in places that would have likely discriminated against minorities, such as in diners as a waitress or in private homes doing personal domestic service. She could walk down any street, shop at any store, and speak freely with whomever she desired, free of the stresses of racial discrimination or agressions. Though, she could just as easily enjoy the spaces designated for the minorities of Los Angeles that were, arguably, forcibly “removed” from Angeleno white society. Racial tension seemed absent from Glady’s personal experience of the city. This social flexibility also seemed to benefit her significantly in her sex work. Gladys’ clientele was extremely diverse, representing many races from all across the socioeconomic spectrum. So, interestingly, Gladys herself seemed to act as an unusual and unexpected tie between the men of 1950s Los Angeles that would otherwise never have crossed paths or found any explicit commonality. While these men were experiencing 1950s Los Angeles in extremely different ways, Gladys experienced all of them and some form of a glimpse into their lifestyles regularly, benefitting, at least monetarily, from them all. Sex and sexual desire are common threads that connect all people regardless of culture, status, and race. Sex-work exists in almost all global cultures and throughout nearly all of “civilized” history, and Gladys acts as a proxy and physical representation of this unifying phenomenon on the scale of 1950s Los Angeles.

Ultimately the Gladys A. Papers archival collection exposed me to a moment in history of the city that I live in, to the rich and accessible archives of my university library, to a field of work and study that I find compelling, to the complex nature of illegal sex-work, to the means of agency for a white woman of the 1950s, and to the inner-thoughts and personal narrative of a woman I may never meet but feel that I now know.

Emma Arroyo is a senior undergraduate student majoring in Health and Human Science and minoring in Organizational Leadership and Management at the University of Southern California. She is pursuing a career in health law and is working to attend law school after she graduates in 2019.