The Year Was 1938 – June 1st

Cecil B DeMille in 1938

• Paramount can no longer brag about the four name combination of C B Demille, Ernst Lubitsch, Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper. Only DeMille is left, and he only does one picture a year. [His one for 1939 is ‘Union Pacific.].

• The picture biz is mulling a national exploitation campaign for September, to make the consumer more film minded. Emphasis – quality pictures, enlisting stars to ballyhoo – via their radio programs (so many have radio venues).
• Talks stall between actors and producers on proposed amendment to the basic minimum contract.
• In Germany, Nazis have an edict that all cash in Germany belonging to Jews of any nationality is to be confiscated. Several picture companies with leading execs that are Jewish were tipped that they are targeted. Warners took all of theirs out when Hitler came to power. But Metro, Paramount and 20^th Century Fox have considerable cash there. US State Dept protesting. Universal the only company producing in Germany, (nearly kicked out when Hitler came in). UA moved out before the Nazis came in. RKO and Columbia never had much there.
• ‘Letty Lynton’ victors (Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes) not happy with amount ($587,000) proposed by special master proposed settlement. (See May 11^th).
• At 20^th Century Fox – in cutting rooms – Little Miss Broadway (Shirley Temple) and the Mysterious Mr Moto, (directed by Norman Foster with Peter Lorre). And a 14 member crew left yesterday to Canada where they will join those already there for the Dionne quint picture ‘Five of a Kind.’
• W S van Dyke has returned from Idaho, and has selected locations for exteriors to be shot in Payette Lake and the upper reaches of the Payette River for the MGM produciton of ‘Northwest Passage.’ Col Tim McCoy is staying in Lewiston, ID for negotiations with the Nez Perce Indians for extras.
• Jeanette MacDonald taking technicolor tests. [Most likely in preparation for Victor Herbert’s ‘Sweethearts.’ MGM’s first film in the three-strip Technicolor process. She only had one film for 1939, ‘Broadway Serenade’]. 
• Wendy Barrie called back for retakes at Columbia. [For ‘I am the Law’ starring Edward G Robinson].

ON THE MOVE

• Alfred Hitchcock leaving London for NY on the Queen Mary. Plans to negotiate a deal with David O Selznick to make a film in Hollywood at year’s end. He had signed with Mayflower Pictures (Charles Laughton and Erich Pommer) for their next picture – ‘Jamaica Inn’ – starting in three weeks.
• Mr & Mrs Darryl F Zanuck leaving NY for London on the Normandie. Zanuck when in Paris, will be made a Commander of the Legion of Honor. 
• Hal B Wallis to Honolulu.

• LA to NY – Irving Berlin, Rudolph Mate.
• Aldous Huxley gandering studios.
• Ray Bolger is back in town, waiting for the call from MGM to play the part of the Tinman in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’
• A crew from 20^th Century Fox has been sent to the Ozark mountain district to scout locations for ‘Jesse James.’
• Soon as Claude Rains finishes ‘Sister Act,’ he is heading east to his farm in Pennsylvania.
• Julian Johnson, the 20^th Century Fox story editor, leaves tonight for New York. Half vacation – half business, for, while there he will look over the new plays, and scout other story material.

STARS IN OTHER NEWS

• Judy Garland suffered a wrenched shoulder in a motor crash in Hollywood.
• Bobby Breen’s parents set up a trust fund for his benefit – to date has earned $105,000. Parents to receive $200/month.
• Eddie Cantor’s daughter Edna will be married to Jimmy McHugh jr (son of song writer) on 9/18. Will live in Beverly Hills.
• Stan Laurel and thrice married wife Iliana have parted again. She is going to Vegas for a divorce.
• C B DeMille a grandfather.
• Merle Oberon is sued by her attorney Lyle W Rucker for a contract negotiated by him with Selznick Int’l. She was to have received $82,000 to star in an as yet untitled film by January 1937. Evidently the actress had litigation against Selznick regarding this. She never went through with the deal, but the lawyer wanted his percentage (14%).

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Talent schools at the studios, not effected by the studio economic reductions, in fact more talent is being using from these schools than ever. At Paramount – Oliver Hinsdell and Harold Helvinston are the heads – 20 young hopefuls in the stock company, training in dramatics, to be advised on dress and studio deportment. At WB, Frank Beckwith, head and Mavina Dunn (voice and diction teacher) – have a stage (to be ready within the week), where they can put on productions – they have a 13 point program, 6 in American technique, 6 in emotional acting from the Russian school, and one course to bridge the two. Also being taught – how to get along with people on the lot, when to give presents and what can and cannot be done. At 20^th Century Fox – the talent director is Florence Enright, according to her philosophy there is no difference between acting for stage or screen (prepare for one, good for other). Their key, ndividual attention. Has a camera crew on call for her use, schools her people for particular roles to test for. Has 60 current students (grads – Arlene Whelan, June Lang, Lynn Bari, Robert Allen). At Metro, they have no such school per the desire of the head of talent forces, Bill Grady. Instead they have talent scouts (3 on Coast, 7 in NY) to feed prospects to him and he assesses their possibilities. His asst Glesca Marshall preps them for a reading with Grady. He keeps ahead of producers with future needs and mentally places the young talent needed. He has a staff of specialists – Ruth Roberts – former prof of phonetics at U of MI; Meastro Romani, singing teacher; Lillian Burns – diction & posture; Sidney Guilaroff – hair stylist. He considers stage and film acting different, though legit training an aid. Grady instructs his students in the idiosyncrasies of each director. Recent grads – Dennis O’Keefe, Alan Curtis, Lynne Carver, Ruth Hussey, Anne Rutherford.
• Bill Robinson leaves next week for a personal appearance tour in the East. This evening he is throwing a benefit at the Lincoln Theater to help 1500 underprivileged kids to summer camp. He has enlisted the help of fellow Fox people – Tyrone Power and Don Ameche.

Advertisement

The Year Was 1938 – May 31st

Bette Davis in 1938

• Lots of news for Bette Davis. She is to begin work on ‘The Sisters’ this week. This is to be followed by ‘The Phantom Crown’ which will begin production as ‘Juarez.’ And another project calls her back to the old South – a post Civil War story called ‘Memphis Belle.’ [The Sisters which pairs her with Errol Flynn closes out 1938 for her. ‘Juarez’ did go ahead, but another project came on line before it – ‘Dark Victory’ (one of the biggies for 1939). The ‘Memphis Belle’ title remained on the shelf].
• Sidney Franklin (director) due in tomorrow at Metro to conference about his next film – ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’ – to be filmed in England with Robert Donat. 

• Laurel and Hardy start shooting today their final Roach production for Metro. [This is the ‘Meet the Missus’ project that was released as ‘Blockheads’]. (Mentioned in prior posts – see May 28^th)
• RKO is so happy with the dailies on ‘The Affairs of Annabel’ that they are considering adding more titles and making it into a series. [There was a quick turn around on this idea for ‘Annabel Takes a Tour’ came out in the same year. Jack Oakie went directly between the two; Lucille Ball squeezed in her part in ‘Room Service’ between them].
• Walt Disney is looking to expand to a bigger plant – his Hyperion Ave site – covering 70,000 sq ft and employing 735 workers has become too cramped, hence plans are going forward for a million dollar facility. As for this next projects, slated next is Pinocchio, then Bambi.
• 20^th Century Fox is prepping ‘The Little Princess,’ the beloved story by Frances Hodgson Burnett as a film for Shirley Temple. To start 9/1. [It would be released in 1939].

CONTRACT TIME

• Metro signed Gabriel Dell and Huntz Hall to term pacts. [Two of the Dead End kids gang. Dell has one short and four features for 1939].
• 20^th Century Fox lifted the option on Pauline Moore. [Charlie Chan, Abe Lincoln and the Musketeers keep her busy for 1939].
• Republic renewed director James Cruze’s contract for one year. [Former silent actor and director Cruze had one film on the screen at this moment – ‘Gangs of New York.’ He has only one more credit for the year, none in 1939. Alcoholism over-shadowed his career and life until his death in 1942].
• Fay Bainter had her contract at WB extended for two more pictures.
• Frank Wead inks writer contract at 20^th Century Fox. [The former navy pilot had written the story upon which MGM’s ‘Test Pilot’ was based. After the freak accident in which he broke his neck in 1926, he turned his skills to a writing career. He would work on two projects for Fox in 1939, one of wich was ‘Tail Spin’].
• John Huston signed for a writer’s contract at WB. [Huston’s contribution to the screenplay for ‘Jezebel’ no doubt raised him in the eyes of WB. His involvement with ‘Jaurez’ for 1939; and an uncredited contribution to ‘Wuthering Heights’ put him on course to reach his goal – to direct the films based on his own scripts].
• Florence Rice’s new contract with MGM, guarantees her time off to go East to catch the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling fight.
• WB lifts the ban in director Lloyd Bacon’s contract on flying, so he can fly to Florida to do his research in Pensacola before he shoots ‘Wings of the Navy.’

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Eight casting directors rate the top supporting actors. The top 8 were Mischa Auer, Beulah Bondi, Walter Connelly, Edward Everett Horton, Jean Hersholt, Donald Meek, Alan Mowbray, Frank Morgan. (With 7 of the 8 votes, none unanimous). Next group (with 6 votes each) – Billie Burke, Leo Carrillo, Andy Devine, Hugh Herbert, Lewis Stone, Charles Winninger. Next (with 5 votes) – Una Merkle, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Henry Stephenson, Fay Bainter, Alice Brady, Spring Byington, Walter Brennan. Next (with 4 votes) – Edward Arnold, Ralph Bellamy, Humphrey Bogart, Herman Bing, Donald Crisp, Fritz Feld, Glenda Farrell, Bonita Granville, Edna May Oliver, May Robson, C Aubrey Smith, Ned Sparks, Slim Summerville, George Sanders, Akim Tamiroff.

• Regarding premiers in Hollywood – for “A pictures” six to eight arc lights were the norm. The prize houses were Grauman’s Chinese, the Village in Westwood, and the Paramount in downtown LA, and sometimes the Carthay Circle (seating 1600) on the edge of the Beverly Hills District. Disney’s ‘Snow White,’ garnered historic grosses there on a two-a-day run.  [Now you know why a replica of the Carthay Circle graces the main street in Disney’s California Adventure park].
• Inside the sound stage of ‘Four Daughters’ at WB, the Lane sisters under the direction of Michael Curtiz arrive via a Pullman car at the station of a small town. The snow – cornflakes; the slush on the ground – cornflakes, gypsum, salt and water. The Pullman car was real, but there was no motive power. It was pulled into the station by a winch, which could only move the rail car 20 feet, but that was all they needed.

The Year Was 1938 – May 15th

Publicity shot from Room Service – The Marx Brothers

• ‘Room Service’ with the Marx Brothers to begin shooting today at RKO under director William A Seiter. [The boys would return to MGM for ‘At the Circus’ released in 1939].
• Director Herbert Leeds leaves for Callander, Ontario, Canada where he will direct a fictional story using the talents of the Dionne quintuplets for 20^th Century Fox. Jean Hersholt went with him to play the doctor; also along was Lou Breslow, the writer; and Daniel B Clark, cameraman. Film — is entitled ‘Five of a Kind,’ and would be released in Oct 1938. [A documentary short from RKO in 1939 would cover the fifth birthday for the quints].
• Frank Capra is elected president of the Screen Director’s Guild, replacing another director at the top, King Vidor who was then in London on assignment for Metro. Capra’s ‘You Can’t Take It with You’ was then in production at Columbia.

ITEM THAT PIQUED MY INTEREST

• BIll Robinson to be the guest of honor of the Hollywood Vaudeville Frolics at the new Las Palmas Theater. [‘Bojangles’ the tap dancing wizard of vaudeville, Broadway, and film (Shirley Temple films, of course) had four films in 1938, but none in 1939. Instead he was on Broadway in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullvan operetta].

Ann Miller in 1938 – seen in both ‘You Can’t Take It WIth You’ and ‘Room Service’

The Year Was 1938 – May 12th

• Exhibitors who recently complained about producers paying huge salaries to stars who are Box Office poison, are now complaining about double bills as the root of all evil in the film industry.
• Strained relations between the producers and directors continues. Frank Capra accuses Zanuck of trying to split the Directors’ Guild and that Zanuck and the pesident of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Joseph Schenck, have acted for the producers without authority. [I’m not sure how Capra could make that last statement, given that Schenck was the president of the producer organization. Unless perhaps by inference he was trying to divide the two from the other producers, by making it known what they were doing or not doing in the negotiations]. (See May 9^th).
• Stan Laurel as producer releases his western feature ‘Songs and Bullets,’ – director Sam Newfield with Fred Scott, Al St John, and Alice Ardell. Variety pans it. [Laurel has another film (Swiss Miss) with his partner Oliver Hardy coming out this month from Hal Roach. Laurel’s foray into production petered out after his 1939 offering ‘Two Gun Troubador,’ another western with Fred Scott. For the most part here on out, he stays in front of the camera].
• Shirley Temple is appointed sponsor of National Airmail Week. She is visited on the set of ‘Little Miss Broadway’ for the presentation by acting Postmistress of Los Angeles, Mary D Briggs.
• Nancy Kelly, a 17 year old actress, is just in from New York and her role in the play ‘Susan and God.’ Feeling very much the new face and lonely her first day on the 20^th Century Fox lot, she spotted two actors that she had worked with as a child in films made in New York – Warner Baxter and Jean Hersholt – and felt more at home. [Fox had three films for her in 1939 – Jesse James, Tail Spin, and Stanley and Livingstone].
• In an article about Clark Gable, it is noted that his girl friend Carole Lombard has a nickname for him – “Moose.” [Once married they began calling each other ‘Pa’ or ‘Ma’].

The Year Was 1938 – May 5th

A few items of interest, datelined on May 3rd:

• The Jackie Coogan case is in the news. At question was how did the fortune he earned as a child actor (e.g. Chaplin’s The Kid) pegged at 4 million, dwindle down to $535,932. The judge has granted him permission to examine the books, kept by his mother and stepfather. [Rough times ahead for the actor now 24, and for his marriage to Betty Grable. And on another aside, I may be related to him].
• Betty Grable’s contract taken up by 20^th Century Fox.
• Paramount has plans for the 1938-39 production schedule. To pay for improvements to the studio laboratory, $20,000 was appropriated. Fifty-eight features are planned and 102 shorts. Zukor and DeMille from earlier in the year were getting themselves into hot water with the exhibitors, claiming that the theater owners were responsible for the poor product, because they were not paying enough in film rental. [Film rental always the bone of contention between the two, I should know].
• Bette Davis is returning to work at WB. She had been under suspension since April 1^st for refusing to take a part in ‘Comet over Broadway.’ [Kay Francis starred in it instead – a story in which a girl has a struggle making it in the legit theater].
• The National Confectioners Association files suit against 20^th Century Fox for dialogue that desparaged candy in their film ‘Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.’ When her aunt asks Shirley Temple’s character if she had had anything to eat, Shirley replied, “Oh, yes. A candy bar.” To which the aunt handed her over to her servant with the command – “Take the child to the kitchen and get her something decent to eat.” Besides damages they were requesting that the offensive part be removed from the film. [And after all the good she did for them with her song ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’ from the 1934 film ‘Bright Eyes’].
• Carole Lombard has been tapped to play her first role in two years for Selznick-International – ‘Made for Each Other.’ She has a deal with Selznick for one film yearly. [This film opened in Feb 1939, the month before her marriage to Clark Gable].
• Merchants in Lone Pine CA looking to stimulate for film business coming to their area plan on spending $20,000 for a western street set. They had recently lost a Hopalong Cassidy film, when its Paramount producer took them to Kernville instead. [Lone Pine was very busy, especially for the 1939 film ‘Gunga Din’].
• Jack Carson’s player contract renewed by RKO. [He arrived in Hollywood just the year before; for 1939 he made one film for RKO (Fifth Avenue Girl with Ginger Rogers), and was loaned out to four other studios including to Universal for ‘Destry Rides Again’].
• Robert Montgomery announced he was not running for re-election of SAG president (Screen Actor’s Guild). Edward Arnold may run. Vote postponed til September.

The 1977 California Trip: Hello Anxiety, the Fox Tour

The day after our exciting day on the Paramount lot, we were looking forward to our next studio – 20th Century Fox.

We went through Westwood on the way to Century City and saw the Avco Center Cinemas owned by my first employer, GCC. They were playing Star Wars to blockbuster business. (The film was then in its third or fourth week, piling up record grosses all across the country). We were tempted to brave the crowds later, but held off. (We had seen it already).

The entrance to the studio back then was off Pico Blvd on a long side street that lead to the visitors’ parking area.  Lining that street was a three story standing exterior set that was immediately recognizable. We could not help but rubberneck to take in the location where a song and dance number was performed and shot for Hello Dolly.  [The facade must be gone now, as it is not visible on any of the satellite map sites I checked].

I do not recall where it was exactly that we reported to begin our tour, nor do I remember who it was that took us around. I have the distinct impression that we were on our own exploring the lot. But then again some one had to have been with us to tell us what we were looking at.

We made our way through the rest of the New York set that branched off of the street we came in on. Past that we came out on one of the studio streets that ran by a series of four stages on our left, and a rather odd looking building on our right. Some big rig trucks were parked parallel to it, sitting idle. The building looked like an exterior mock up of a train station, including a raised platform in front of it. (In fact it had been used as such, see the following article). It is probably the oldest building on the lot (and may have been moved from its original position). Tom Mix, the cowboy star who appeared in Fox westerns, kept his horses in this “barn.” He was the original owner of the ranch it sat upon. Fox purchased this property when their older studio lots in Hollywood proved too small. (You can find a series of pictures of the site over time in this article).

With the exception of one film, not much was going on in the studio that day. We took a right and walked by some more stages, up to the area of the Tennessee Avenue gate. The bungalows kept for stars working on the lot were situated there. It looked for all the world like a neighborhood street from the thirties. That’s probably because they date from that period. A larger one on the corner was then the medical clinic for the studio, but had been the bungalow for the pint-sized savior of Fox during the Depression – the singing and dancing, cute as a button dynamo, Shirley Temple. (Another article)

At this point of the tour, the lunch hour had crept up on us, for the next stop was the commissary (aka Cafe de Paris). I ran across a picture recently that was taken after a remodel in 1976, the year before our visit. It’s exactly as I remember it right down to those two big planters.  The studio heads Dennis Stanfill and Alan Ladd Jr. were nowhere in sight, so they must have been in the executive dining room.

As I mentioned above there was one film in production – Mel Books’ High Anxiety.  It just so happened that at the end of April they had been doing exterior work up in San Francisco and in the Hyatt Regency in particular, the very place we had visited just a few days prior. Now Brooks was set up in Stage 14 for interior work, which was on the other side of those NY standing sets.

I had located a history that put the lounge song number from the film on that stage (the scene in which Brooks sings the title tune to Madeline Kahn). That was not the setup we saw that day. It was very quiet as we walked down the alley to the open studio door. A quietness that whispered everyone was taking a siesta. As we looked through the door a simple setting of furniture was arranged against white walls – a glass topped coffee table in front of a sofa. Though there was probably no one within, I could not shake off the feeling that people were there in the shadows holding their collective breaths waiting for us to go away.

Come December when High Anxiety was released I finally understood what we had seen on Stage 14. It was the comic scene played out between Cloris Leachman (Nurse Diesel) and Harvey Korman (Dr. Charles Montague), in which the camera shooting up from under the coffee table attempts to follow the two as they converse, only to have its view blocked by their movement of the cups, saucers and plates across its glass top.

A little bit of film history. Alright, minuscule. But we didn’t need to see “stars.” Just being there was a thrill. (We did have a brief encounter when we returned to the lot in 1985, but that’s a blog post for another day).

So stay tuned and Watch This Space.

Working the Fifth Avenue

Collage made from photos on the Fifth Avenue website.

As I mentioned in my last Memories post, I left the UA Cinemas and began a job as assistant manager for Mann’s Fifth Avenue in Seattle. It wasn’t an exercise of my own will that I left the UA. I was dismissed. The Manager Bill Shonk was being promoted, so the company brought over the manager from their theater in Spokane as his replacement. Russ (a Danny DeVito look- and sound-alike) didn’t take a shine to me, so he fired me to bring on his assistant from Spokane. Actually as it turned out, he had other plans, he needed a confederate to facilitate his thievery. It is heartening to know that what is hidden does not stay that way, but in the fullness of time will be revealed.

Anyway, I was on to other pastures, and the Fifth Avenue theater was a fantastic “pasture,” or perhaps a better analogy would be “rice paddy.” The Fifth Avenue, as most of the “Pleasure Palaces” built in the 20s and 30s, was designed with a exotic theme. In this instance, Imperial China. Like Grauman’s Chinese theater in Hollywood, the movie goer was treated to sumptuous surroundings – from the entrance to the lobby to the auditorium. And many critics consider the Fifth Avenue theater in Seattle to have “out Chinesed” Grauman’s. A story circulated that the Chinese dignitaries at the opening in 1926 marveled at the authenticity of the decor.

(Aside – I have seen depictions of the court at the Forbidden Palace in some films, and I had “deja vu” for the lobby at the Fifth).

My new boss was Johnny Bretz, a movie theater veteran, who began his career back in the thirties. He had started out at the Egyptian theater as a doorman and moved over to the Neptune as assistant manager. Both theaters were in the University District (near the UW), and at that time (1974) were art houses. In the 1960s he was a purchasing agent and auditor for the Evergreen State Amusement Corporation (a subsidiary of 20^th Century Fox) with 18 theaters in Oregon and Washington. He moved onto the Fifth Avenue after Mann Theaters of LA acquired the assets of National Theaters Corp (Fox West Coast).

My first day, Mr Bretz took me on a tour of the theater, showing me the lay out, where the doors were to check and lock at closing, and where the lights were to turn on and off, etc. He briefed me on details regarding the concession stand, which sat between the two main aisles into the theater from the lobby. Then into the theater proper, the decor inside was splashed in red and gold and green and blue. Coming out from underneath the cover of the mezzanine and upper balconies I saw the main lighting fixture, a golden dragon with an ornate lantern suspended from its teeth. A white globe was anchored beneath the lantern. Quite impressive. He explained that the globe, according to the Chinese motif (and legend) was a “pearl.” We went right down to the front of the auditorium and over to the left side, and climbed a short stair up to the stage. He brushed aside the curtain and led me back stage. As we went along that stage wing with all the paraphernalia of a theater stage – switches for stagelights, ropes and counterbalances, it reminded me of those old movies like “42^nd Street” and “The Zeigfield Follies.” That notion was reinforced when he led me downstairs and through the dressing rooms and a chorus room. The picture would have been complete if a crusty old stage hand stood nearby puffing on a stogie. (Well, actually, I met that character later, only minus the stogie).

While downstairs, Mr. Bretz instructed me in the mechanics of the theater’s air conditioning system. It was a water cooled affair. By my spatial sense, I judged it to be under the center of the stage and running perpendicular to its longitudinal axis. A huge lever switch was thrown and a enormous drum at the back whirred and hummed to life. The movement of the air thus created was forced over and around some radiator like structures with cold water coursing through them. And the resultant cool air was propelled onward and upward in the ducts to their apertures in the auditorium.

On another occasion I visited another area of the structure. The theater itself is located inside the Skinner Building, an eight story office building. It comprises the first five floors. Office space fills up two of the floors above that, and another was given over to a ball room. It wasn’t Mr Bretz who took me up to the fifth floor, I believe that it was the afore-mentioned stage hand (more about him in future posts). He unlocked this most ordinary of doors and ushered me into a remarkable space. The fifth floor housed the magnificent terra cotta ceiling of the theater. It was not as beautiful as what could be seen from below. Lots of steel bars – horizontal and vertical – ran this way and that, around which and to which the terra cotta had been formed and fixed. You could make out the shapes of things, but they were in reverse. The biggest part of the structure was the dome section under which you knew the dragon lurked and from which the lantern hung. To see all this you tread a very narrow catwalk. Surprisingly there were holes in the terra cotta through which you could see the auditorium four stories below. It was a little unnerving, for that material seemed oh so fragile. Come time to retrace my steps, I remember with pleasure discovering an old poster resting on the terra cotta – too far out for me to reach, but close enough to admire – the image of a curly-topped Shirley Temple in “The Little Colonel” looked back at me. (I checked, the film did indeed play at the Fifth, opening on March 12, 1935).

The Fifth Avenue was a little farther away from our apartment than the UA, but at only six blocks there was still no need to fire up the Roadrunner.

Louie Louie, the Kraut and the Strangler

or Murder on Lafayette Street

It was the dawn of rock’n’roll into my consciousness. The West Coast had Wolfman Jack, but here in the East it was Juicy Brucie blasting out “Louie Louie” on the airwaves of WBZ Boston. The whispers of its rumored nastiness swirled around me. But the terms bandied about by my classmates had no reference in my understanding, and though mildly curious, it’s taboo nature held me back from further inquiry.

 

It was also the time of my new German nemesis (see my 6/6/13 post for the first).

 

Klaus is a bit of a mystery in my memory. I don’t remember him being in any of my classes at Saltonstall.  Perhaps he was older.  The other kids, unkindly, called him the kraut, or rather cruelly, the Nazi.  His father had served in the German army during WW2.

 

What I knew for sure was, he had it in for me. It wasn’t apparent at first. Somehow he knew of my propensity for “adventure.” He told me once he would show me a short cut. Before I knew it I found myself in someone’s private backyard and being confronted by its angry owner. The irate proprietor was at a distance from us on his back porch. Klaus ran to one of the corners and pulled down a trellis, despite the yelling man and together we ducked out.

 

I was slow on the uptake but finally figured out that he was trying to get me into trouble. And I didn’t know why. Until…

 

Some time later, Klaus cornered me between our apartment building and the next in a narrow gap that let out onto Lafayette Street. He neither punched nor hit me, he just exuded belligerence. He placed a hand on each of my shoulders, and if I made a move of any kind, he counter moved to pin me. Then he told me I was not to have anything to do with a certain girl. I knew the name. She was in my class and quite possibly the cutest. But I don’t think I’d even said two words to her. I was scared of girls and painfully shy.  I’ll admit to a little boy crush for Shirley Temple that was followed by the then current one for Hayley Mills (and soon to be superseded by one for Julie Andrews). I thought myself too young for any such involvement. This I told Klaus. I didn’t see him around after that. I guess whatever fear he was dealing with was assuaged.

 

Across Lafayette and down the block, another scene of violence unfolded, severer by far than my little drama. I had seen an ambulance double parked out front, and learned with the rest of the neighborhood that an older woman had been found strangled in her apartment.  Her name was Evelyn Corbin and because of the circumstances of her murder, she was added to the list of victims of the Boston Strangler – number 11.

 

My mother and grandmother were understandably upset.