added: "savagery is no substitute for beauty." Other Mayor. He was appointed to a committee of five council members in May 1940 to call on Mayor Fletcher Bowron to complain about "persistent and erroneous" remarks the mayor made about the council in his radio addresses. FDR painting. In October 1945, Harby and Rollin McNitt, chairman of the Democratic County Central Committee, physically interfered with the removal of a portrait of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt from the space behind the City Council president's rostrum, as previously ordered by the council. It was later removed and drapes hung in the empty space to provide better acoustics. Tokyo Rose. In December 1947, Harby authored a successful resolution in the Council asking Congress to "keep the female World War II Jap propagandist Tokyo Rose out of America." The resolution noted she was a one-time resident of Los Angeles. Feud. He and Councilman Kenneth Hahn engaged in what was called a "feud" over various subjects, including their differences concerning the subject of continuing wartime rent control in Los Angeles, with Hahn favoring and Harby opposing. Harby also called a suggestion by Hahn for a pay raise for city employees "political prostitution in its lowest form." Harby used the same term, calling Hahn a "political prostitute" in a raucous debate over the fate of a $110-million-dollar public housing proposal for the city (Hahn in favor and Harby opposed; see above). At one point, Harby "reached over" and shoved Hahn back into his seat. Bomb shelters. In January 1951 he broached the idea of converting the city's major storm drains into atomic air-raid shelters. The City Council asked the city's Board of Public Works to study the matter. Anti-Communism. In October 1952, Harby joined a group of people supporting a House Committee on Un-American Activities probe into Communist sympathies among Los Angeles attorneys. Harby repeatedly took photographs of one of the anti-committee picketers who were also on the scene, "then made shaming signs with his finger and chided, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself.' " References Access to the Los Angeles Times links requires the use of a library card. 1894 births 1978 deaths Los Angeles City Council members Businesspeople from California Politicians from Gjøvik Norwegian emigrants to the United States 20th-century American politicians 20th-century American businesspeople