Before Their Time

John L. French: Nearly made St. Louis the U.S. auto capital

August 5, 1900

The noise was deafening. Much different than the sounds usually heard on racing day at the St. Louis Fair Grounds, where thousands of horse-racing fans would fill the grandstands surrounding the half-mile oval that was the site of many of the biggest races of the day, like the St. Louis Derby.

This time fans queued up for a peek at one of the latest curiosities of the modern era — a race between horseless carriages. The contraptions were indeed a novelty at the time, as there were only about 25 of them in the entire city. Five of them were lining up for the race, which Fair Grounds owners hoped would save the foundering operation.

The privately owned Fair Grounds had been around since 1856 and — following a pause during the Civil War that saw 23,000 Union troops take over the grounds and temporarily create “Camp Benton” — even thrived for a while in the 1870s.

The biggest attraction then was a zoo where for a mere two bits per adult or a dime for kids, visitors could gawk at llamas, tapirs. kangaroos and bears. If you were lucky, you might have been there the time a groundskeeper was gored by a buffalo or the time his clothes were ripped by a leopard.

But, attendance waned, the animals were auctioned off (some to the Ringling brothers circus) and buildings started to show the signs of age and neglect. As the new century rolled in, Fair Grounds owners reasoned that perhaps these newfangled horseless carriages could liven things up.

John L. French was hoping the same thing. As the founder and president of the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company, French had already established a reputation as a savvy promoter and skilled driver. Most of the noise at the starting line that day came from French’s car. The belching thunder from his internal combustion engine stood in stark contrast to the quiet whine of electric motors that powered his nearest rivals’ machines.

When the dust cleared one-and-one-half miles later, French had won and electric cars took the next two spots. For French, it was further confirmation that his chosen career path was the right one and his dream that his motor cars might one day be eagerly snatched up by adventurous people from coast to coast was possible.
But French’s ambitions would never be realized and, within three years of his Fair Grounds triumph, he would be dead.

*****

John French was destined for success. His father, Jesse, had emigrated to the U.S. from England as a young boy and quit school in Nashville, Tennessee, to work as a printer’s devil in a printing office. After working up to chief clerk, he took a job as a postal worker. When his parents returned to England to settle an inheritance, young Jesse was left to care for two sisters and a younger brother.

When his parents returned, Jesse headed to college to study business and the law. That led to a job as Assistant Secretary of State for the state of Tennessee. When he ran for the top job in the Tennessee State Department and lost, he tried his hand at private business.

He started by buying a Nashville sheet music company in 1873 and three years later moved into piano sales. By 1885, the Jesse French Piano and Organ Company was worth $500,000 and French operated as many as six branches from his Nashville headquarters, making his company the largest music retailer west of New York City.

French ultimately contracted to have his own line of pianos manufactured in Indiana. Among his roster of more than 100 salesmen was John Stillwell Stark of Sedalia, Mo. Stark, a veteran of the Union army in the Civil War, was eking out a living by farming and selling ice cream on the road from a Conestoga wagon when he joined the French team. Soon he was delivering pianos and organs to Missouri farmers, dropping them off for a trial period then closing the sale on his return.

Missouri was a fertile area for Jesse French. He entered business with a brother-in-law, Oscar Addison Field, in St. Louis in 1883 and later moved the corporate headquarters of the French operation from Nashville to St. Louis.

John French, Jesse’s oldest son, was born in 1872 and studied mechanical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis before returning to Nashville to work for his father. But his interests went well beyond pianos and organs.

He and good friend George Preston Dorris spent many hours of their childhoods cavorting in the Cumberland River before hatching a plan to cash in on their favorite haunt: Why not charge passengers for river cruises?

Soon they had bought a used steam launch and planned to go into business when steamboat inspectors shut them down. You’re too young to operate a steamboat, they were told. But Dorris, who had enrolled as a freshman in Vanderbilt Engineering School’s Manual Training Program, had an idea. I’ll bet I can come up with an alternative in the school’s well-equipped workshop, he reasoned.

The result was a gasoline engine that passed inspection and French and Dorris were back in business.

Their operation soon hit a snag, however. When delivering fuel to the engine while bobbing on water proved to be an issue, Dorris developed a free-float carburetor that solved the problem.

The pair operated their cruise business for three years, until French moved to St. Louis in 1895 to join his family. Dorris kept the boat running for a while, but had other ideas. Using the boat engine as a template, Dorris started working on building an automobile. By 1897, he had an eight-horsepower, two-cylinder automobile capable of making a 60-mile trip.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, French’s mother had bought a car of her own, a Winton. French thought it was a fine machine, but could be made better. He contacted Dorris in Nashville: Hey. How about coming up to St. Louis? I have an idea. Oh, and bring your car with you.

*****

John French was doing well in the family business, having risen to the position of secretary, but set his sights elsewhere.The horseless carriage was popping up everywhere. The first electric one hit the streets of St. Louis in 1893 and by 1895 Chicago was even holding races for them. Why not build them in St. Louis?

French approached his father about investing in the proposed company.

Jesse French was busy himself. Through salesman Stark, he’d been introduced to ragtime, an exciting new form of music that held great promise for his sheet music and piano businesses. Stark had helped fuel the ragtime rage by discovering a young ragtime phenom named Scott Joplin in Sedalia, Mo. But, yes, Jesse French told his son, I’ll invest in your venture if you can prove to me that your horseless carriage is reliable enough to safely haul a piano all the way across St. Louis.

When John French approached Dorris with his father’s conditions, Dorris had a quick response: No problem.

Dorris dismantled his hand-crafted automobile and transformed it into St. Louis’ first truck. The condition was met.

Dorris and French formed the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company in 1898 and set up shop at 1211 North Vandeventer Avenue, creating the first car manufacturing facility west of the Mississippi. John French installed himself as president in charge of marketing and Dorris as vice president in charge of engineering and production at a salary of $75 a month.

Thus, with two second-hand lathes and a drill press, French and Dorris got down to the business of making cars.

In 1899, they built their first two cars and placed their first advertisement, in the Aug. 30, 1899, edition of Horseless Age. Two months later, one of their cars was loaded onto a rail car, headed for Texas. Dorris went, too, first teaching new owner Edward H.R. Green how to drive the contraption, then taking him on the state’s first automobile road trip from Terrell, Texas, to Dallas.

Cars were such a novelty in those days, manufacturers were obliged to personally deliver the cars and give instruction to the new owners. They were also always looking for opportunities to prove their car’s reliability and abilities to make it through muddy roads and up steep hills.

As marketing director, that was largely French’s role. Following that August 1900 race in St. Louis, French took to the road, driving one of the company’s cars 450 miles from St. Louis to Chicago in 36 hours without incident to compete in the first Chicago Inter-Ocean Automobile Exhibition. French picked up three trophies in Chicago and sales improved to 30 cars in 1900.

The company quickly expanded into adjacent properties and sales continued to rise as the company incorporated new Dorris innovations into its machines. Besides the unique carburetor, St. Louis cars had a sliding gear transmission and three-point engine mounting that allowed the engine to flex slightly while the rest of the car remained stable. And, while most cars of the era had tiller steering — similar to holding the reins of a horse — the Dorris car had switched to a steering wheel. French also adopted a bold advertising slogan — “Rigs that run” — to tout their cars’ reliability.

In the fall of 1901, French took one the toughest challenges to date, a race from New York City to Buffalo as part of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Although President William McKinley was shot a few days before the start of the race, it went on with 80 vehicles — 54 powered by gasoline and 26 powered by steam. The race was halted in Rochester after McKinley died on Oct. 14, with French in the middle of the pack with an average cumulative speed of 10 miles per hour over the often rough and muddy roads.

Undeterred, French moved on to New England, spending some time in the Boston area where his efforts resulted in the sale of 65 cars.

In 1902, sales continued to rise and French kept busy building on his reputation as a skilled “chauffeur,” as drivers of that era were called. He found time to take a wife, Elizabeth Penny of St. Louis, before heading east again, this time to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

*****

The St. Louis Motor Carriage Company was expanding rapidly as John French checked into an apartment at the Dorset Hotel on Pittsburgh’s East End in August 1902. Parked outside was one of the most popular models of the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company, the aptly named St. Louis. It was the first car model made in the U.S. that had the engine, clutch and transmission built as a single unit and became the first police car in America when the St. Louis Police Department adopted the car for the “Scorching Squad,” its motorized traffic unit.

French hoped to sell a few of the cars during his Pittsburgh trip and took a prospective customer out for a spin in the afternoon of August 11.

Cyrus Dauler had recently returned from duty in the Phillipines with the U.S. Signal Corp when he clambered into the passenger seat of French’s car. Dauler, the 20-year-old brother-in-law of Common Pleas Court Judge Elliot Rodgers, was just starting a career with the Pennsylvania Tube Company.

As French was chatting up the benefits of his machine, a slow-moving wagon gave him the chance to show the vehicle’s passing ability. But French failed to notice an approaching trolley that was gathering speed on a downhill incline. Motorman H.H. Fay quickly applied the brakes on the trolley, but it was too late.

The collision sent French’s car hurtling through the air “and crushing it to splinters.”[1]

French and Dauler were tossed about 30 feet. French lay motionless after landing on his head and shoulders; Dauler was unconscious on the pavement, blood gushing from his nose and ears. Both men were carried to the nearby office of Dr. B.B. Wood, who stitched up a nasty cut on French’s scalp and revived both men. Dr. Wood assessed French’s shoulder and other body bruises and determined that he should be returned to his apartment at the Dorset to recover. Dauler had similar, but less serious injuries, and was sent to the home he shared with his mother.

After French sent a telegram to his family, his father and new wife headed to Pittsburgh. French spent several days recuperating in the hotel before Dr. Wood determined there were no internal injuries. French returned to St. Louis to continue his recovery.

The healing went slow. As winter approached, French thought the warmth of the Florida sun might do some good. He and his wife planned an ambitious drive to the Sunshine State. Outside of big cities, paved roads were scarce. Nor were there road signs or reliable maps to plan such a trip.

Nevertheless, French and his wife left St. Louis on Nov. 3, destined for Ocala, Fla., where they would meet up with old friends and spend a leisurely winter. They spent a few days visiting French’s uncle Henry French in Nashville before pressing on through Chattanooga, Atlanta and Macon, Ga., en route to his destination.

He made good time in his 8 horsepower machine, reaching speeds up to 30 miles per hour on the good roads, but just 8-10 mph on the sandy roads of Georgia and Florida.

French’s recovery did not go well. The Pittsburgh accident had lingering effects and his internal injuries caused serious hemorrhaging. He returned to St. Louis in early spring and died on May 23, 1903. He was 30 years old.

His brother, Jesse French Jr., took over as president of the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company, which moved to Peoria, Ill., in 1905 and, without its star promotion man, operated for just a few more years. George Dorris stayed behind in St. Louis and started his own Dorris Motor Car Company in the same building on North Vandeventer Street.. He stayed in business until 1926.

Jesse French continued in the piano and sheet music business, capitalizing big-time on the ragtime music that dominated the first two decades of the 20th century. One of his top piano tuners, Charles Hunter, was born blind and taught himself to play ragtime while doing duty for French in Nashville and St. Louis. Hunter was an influential ragtime composer before dying of tuberculosis before his 30th birthday in 1906.


[1] St. Louis Republic, Aug. 12, 1902

John S. French, automobile pioneer
Born: Nov. 10, 1872
Died: May 23, 1903 (age 30)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Christine Chubbuck: A shocking end to a troubled life

Valerie Rubin wasn’t believing what she was hearing.

Did the woman on her TV screen really say something about “blood and guts” and “suicide?”

Up to that point, it had been a typical Monday morning for Rubin, a reporter with the Herald-Tribune newspaper in Sarasota, Fla. She was sipping a cup of coffee with her husband when she tuned her television to channel 40 to catch a few minutes of Suncoast Digest, a breezy half hour interview show with local personalities.

Rubin, who had become a regular viewer of the show in recent weeks, was surprised to find the show’s host, Christine Chubbuck, reading a news script from the anchor’s chair instead of interviewing guests from the coziness of the show’s interview set. Assuming she was seeing the last few minutes of a newscast instead of the opening of Suncoast Digest, Rubin turned her attention to the morning newspaper.

Chubbuck ran through the news, including noting that the Sarasota area had been hit with several violent crimes the previous week. When film of a shootout at a local bar jammed, Chubbuck started ad-libbing:

“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color …”

As Rubin looked up from her paper, wondering “What’s she talking about?” Chubbuck continued.

“ … we bring you another first. Attempted suicide.”

Chubbuck then raised a pistol, pointed it behind her right ear and pulled the trigger. There was a crack and a puff of smoke, Chubbuck’s long dark hair billowed in front of her face as she crashed face-first into the desk before slowly sliding off her chair.

As Rubin tried to make sense of the surrealistic scene, the screen went black.

*****

By all accounts, Chris Chubbuck was an enigmatic soul.

“She was a wet suit and silly wet black flippers on the floor of the Gulf,” her brother, Greg, said at her memorial service. “She was clambakes and sea shells, sandy feet and sunburned skin.”

Growing up, she was a precocious child. At 15, she wrapped up an autobiography by writing: “I hope to be able to become a lady with little spice, a housewife, mother and good friend to all of my acquaintances.”[1]

By just about any metric, Chubbuck fell short of those goals in her brief tumultuous life.

She was a “sandwich” child, born between two brothers on August 24, 1944. Her father, George Chubbuck, did well enough as a salesperson to allow the family to live in an upscale neighborhood in Hudson, Ohio, a small town of 22,000 midway between Cleveland and Akron.

The Chubbuck kids went to private schools where Christine excelled. She was so smart says brother Greg that she “used to make up words for things that didn’t have a word.”[2]

Christine grew quickly and stood 5-11 by the time she was 13, around the time she was earning a national ranking as a kayaker and playing flute in her middle school band. But she was also depressed much of the time and rarely seemed happy. Her parents brought in mental health professionals to moderate her mood swings.

“She had no greys in her life,” Greg Chubbuck said. “Everything was black and white. Things were either wonderful, or terrible. Chrissie just didn’t have a compromise button.”[3] 

When Christine was still a very young girl, older brother Tim pulled his younger brother aside to tell him: “We have to hug Chrissie extra hard because we aren’t going to have her very long,” Greg Chubbuck recalls. “He was 12 and I was 8 and in the back of our minds we always knew that our time with her was not going to be infinite.”[4]

Photos of Chubbuck’s high school years at Laurel School for Girls show a typical teenager. There’s a smiling Christine banging on an xylophone. Another of her wearing a toga with a group of friends. There are several snapshots of her slow dancing (and not all with the same boy).

She was a skilled puppeteer and took an interest in acting so intense that she enrolled in a summer acting program at the University of North Carolina, where she landed the lead in a play. She apparently also found a boyfriend through her kayaking.

The family knew him as “Dave the Kayaker” and notes that he was quite a bit older, 23 to Chris’s 16. His death in an auto crash was devastating to young Christine, who dealt with her grief by spending many mornings at a rehab center, helping another young man who was a passenger in Kayaker Dave’s car and was paralyzed in the accident.

You never knew how Chris was going to react, but there was one familiar pattern: Once she mastered something, she would give it up and move on to something else.. Despite her national ranking as a kayaker, she quit the sport. After earning the lead in that play in North Carolina, she never acted again. After tragically losing her boyfriend, it looked like the pattern was repeating.

“She often referred to herself as someone who still believed in wine and roses, being sent flowers and called up for a date,” her mother told reporter Sally Quinn of the Washington Post. “But she would go through periods of two or three years where nobody would even ask her out for a hot dog.”[5]

Chubbuck acknowledged her lonely social status with self-deprecating humor, organizing a “Dateless Wonders Knitting Club” with her Laurel high school classmates.

After high school, Chubbuck briefly attended college at Miami of Ohio before moving to Massachusetts to attend Endicott Junior College and Boston University, where she took broadcasting and film courses. She began her broadcast career at Ohio public television stations in Cleveland and Canton. Somewhere along the line she became close to a man who also worked in television.

“She moved to Pittsburgh to be with him, but the relationship fell apart because my dad was vociferously opposed to him,” brother Greg said. “He was older and my dad did not want her to marry a Jewish man.”[6]

Her time in Pittsburgh was short. For three months she was an assistant producer for two local programs on WQED-TV — Women’s World and Key to the City — but when her relationship ended, she left town.

“Chrissie then literally quickly came to Florida and sort of restarted her life,” says Greg. “She never really had another boyfriend after that.”[7]

Chubbuck took refuge in her family’s summer home in Siesta Key, a barrier island known for its sandy beaches just southwest of Sarasota. The home eventually became something of a family commune, her mother joining her after a divorce and her brothers Greg and Tim following in short order. Tim, an interior decorator by trade, spruced up the place.

He helped Chris with her bedroom, a yellow and white checked room with a small single bed in a corner with ruffled curtains around the bed posts. It looked more like the room of a young girl than the one of a 30-year-old woman.[8]

It would be another six years before Chris Chubbuck resumed her broadcasting career. She spent four years working as a a computer operator at a Sarasota hospital before landing a position in the traffic department of the Sarasota cable satellite branch of St. Petersburg TV station WTOG.

She found her first opportunity to do on-camera TV work at WXLT-TV, Channel 40, a seat-of-the-pants ABC affiliate in Sarasota. WXLT was the third leg of Robert Nelson’s broadcast stool. The Philadelphia native and Army Air Corps veteran had arrived in nearby Bradenton in 1953 to launch his first radio station, WBRD (“The Bird”). After starting FM station WDUV 10 years later, Nelson turned his attention to TV.

When WXLT-TV debuted on Oct. 23, 1971, few people saw it as serious competition for the Tampa/St. Petersburg stations to the north. It had a small (13 people at its start) and inexperienced staff. The station’s first news anchor, Bob Keehn, did two newscasts each night, pocketing a mere $5 for each one. Staffers were given Polaroid cameras and told to look for news stories. The photos were then taped on a board, which a camera panned as stories were read. No wonder many in the community called the operation “The Funny Forty.”

Chubbuck, though, had high hopes when she joined the staff in the summer of 1973 as a reporter. Her skills were obvious and soon led to the host’s spot of Suncoast Digest, a  local Monday-through-Friday morning interview program. Chubbuck felt the show’s focus should go beyond the fluffy “human interest stories” dictated by its time slot. As she became more comfortable in her role, she emphasized more timely topics such as social and environmental issues, a stance that put her in frequent conflict with her bosses.

The best audience WXLT could hope for was around 10,000 viewers for any one show. For Suncoast Digest, the audience was estimated to be fewer than 500 on most mornings. After more than two years on the air, WXLT wasn’t pulling the viewers it needed to be viable in the growing media market. Station executives decided to follow the tried and true mantra of broadcast television: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Chubbuck hated the policy, even though she occasionally filled in as a news anchor on weekends. Despite her clashes with station management, she managed cordial, if distant, relations with most of her co-workers. Many of them shared her ambition of fleeing the small Sarasota market. From their perspective, Chubbuck was a hard-working, confident and talented broadcaster with an enigmatic personality and a macabre sense of humor. But, as her family was well aware, the insecurities of her childhood followed her into adulthood.

Her mother tried to boost Chubbuck’s confidence by buying her expensive designer dresses so she’d look good on the air.

“In 1974 there weren’t too many local TV personalities wearing $2,000 designer dresses, and she did,” her brother Greg told People magazine in 2016. Despite her classy attire, Chubbuck was earning just $100 a week at the peak of her career.

As professional as Chubbuck appeared on-air, her personal life was much different. Despite being a local celebrity, she had been unable to forge a lasting relationship with any of the men she met. Indeed, as her 30th birthday approached, Chubbuck was still a virgin, a personal detail she was quite open about.

“One afternoon we were doing a mock newscast and because she had no qualms about being virginal at 29 she named herself ‘Pristine Buttocks.’ ‘I am Pristine Buttocks and here is the news’,” news director Gordon Galbraith recalled.[9]

In the summer of 1973, around the time she started at WXLT, Chubbuck had her right ovary removed surgically. At that time, doctors told her that if she wanted children, she’d have to conceive in the next two to three years. Finding a suitable mate seemed to be an obsession with Chubbuck, according to friends.

Chubbuck found a confidante in camerawoman Jean Reed, who was her mother’s age. The pair frequently dined together and Chubbuck shared details of her personal struggles, like the time in 1970 when she tried to end her life by swallowing a bunch of pills. Or the fact that she was seeing a psychiatrist, unbeknownst to station brass.

Like many fellow staffers, Reed tried to bolster Chubbuck’s confidence, like steering her to Sarasota Memorial Hospital where she put on puppet shows for patients with intellectual disabilities.

Chubbuck's prospects for a romantic partner seemed slim as she rarely dated. Then came George.

George Peter Ryan was a business reporter at WXLT. His good looks led some staffers to refer to him as “Gorgeous George.” Ryan, a Sarasota native, was active in community theater and, more importantly, available following a recent divorce.

The two didn’t hit it off at first. Chubbuck was leery of Ryan’s reputation as a ladies man and he found her professional ambitions to be unladylike, even militant.

But Ryan started piecing his personal life back together after discovering transactional analysis and shared his newfound zest for life with Chubbuck. Chubbuck remained distant, but found Ryan’s change in attitude refreshing.

She confided to friends that the “new George” was someone she wanted to get close to. At a dinner with co-worker Andrea Kirby, she revealed a plan to bake a cake for Ryan on his 30th birthday on June 26, 1974. That plan went awry, though, as Ryan — who was discreetly dating Kirby at the time — snubbed her advances.

“When Chris found out that George and I were going out, that depressed her,” Kirby said.[10]

Chubbuck’s behavior became erratic. When someone tried to brighten her set with a spray of artificial flowers, she flung them across the room, screaming, “I won’t have these damned things in my studio.”[11]

She became furious when other staffers did interviews on her show and thought Miss Florida was after her job when someone suggested the pageant winner do a weather segment on the news. Often when young males appeared on the show, she used foul language in front of them and hinted they may want to date Shay Taylor, a 24-year-old camera person.

Just days before her suicide, Chubbuck seemed to warm up to Ryan again as a romantic prospect, As her friend Kirby was soon to leave for a new job in Baltimore, Chubbuck turned flirtatious toward Ryan, once perching herself on his lap while joking about how horny he must be. Ryan planned to ask her out at a party the next night, but Chubbuck brushed him off.

That party was hosted by Chubbuck at her family’s home. About 30 people attended, including many surprised WXLT staffers.

“She didn’t seem the type to hang out and then all of a sudden we get this invitation she is going to have a huge party at her place,” said Craig Sager, then a sports reporter at WXLT. “We thought this is fantastic. She is coming out of her shell. This will be a treat.”[12]

That weekend, Chubbuck baked a cake and worked on her tan. She put on a puppet show for her niece.

“In retrospect there was an uncomfortable calm about her,” recalls brother Greg. “She was more resolved than she usually was about everything. At the time, I didn’t see that.”[13]

*****

Monday, July 15, 1974

It was a beautiful start to a work week in Sarasota. Seventy degrees. Blue skies. Just a slight hint of mugginess.

Chris Chubbuck had breakfast with her mother, Peg, in their cottage overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. She reminded her mother to keep an eye on her poodle while she was gone to do her Suncoast Digest TV show, but said that she’d be back before 11 a.m. She put on a fashionable black and white print dress, got into her yellow Volkswagen Beetle convertible and drove the four miles from her home to the WXLT studio.

Her apparent good mood wasn’t the only thing different as she entered the WXLT building, She approached technical director Linford Rickard and asked for a rare favor: Could he tape today’s show? Then she told the show’s director, Gordon Galbraith, that she was going to open the show with a brief newscast, something she’d never done before.

While the crew was adjusting the set to include the news desk, Chubbuck’s interview guests — a local meteorologist and his wife — arrived. Chubbuck settled them into the interview area and went to work on her news script. A few minutes later she emerged and headed to the news set, carrying her tote bag of puppets, which she sometimes included on the show.

She stopped briefly to check with the two-person camera crew to make sure they understood that she’d be opening from the news desk before moving over to the interview area. Camera operator Shay Taylor locked her camera onto the guests in the interview area while Jean Reed set up for a head-and-shoulders close-up shot of Chubbuck at the news desk.

For eight minutes, Chubbuck read through national news stories before moving to a local story, a shooting the previous day at the Beef and Bottle Restaurant at the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport. When the film for the story wouldn’t come up, Chubbuck started her ad-lib.

“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color, we bring you another first, an attempted suicide.”

Before anyone on set realized what was happening, Chubbuck reached into her puppet bag, pulled out a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and completed her grisly task.

As Chubbuck slid to the floor, Rickard faded the screen to black, then rushed into the studio, furious that Chubbuck would pull such a prank. Jean Reed reacted much the same as she abandoned her camera to rush behind the news desk. They soon realized it was no prank.

Viewers were similarly confused. Was this some sort of stunt? Dozens of calls overwhelmed the station’s switchboard. Others called the police, as did station officials. Rickard filled the remaining minutes of Suncoast Digest with public service programming as sheriff’s deputies and Sarasota police raced to the scene and the South Trail Ambulance Unit rushed Chubbuck to Sarasota Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

Station employees moved studio furniture back into their regular positions after the ambulance left to assist authorities in their investigation. Employees were interviewed at length. Photos were taken. Evidence was gathered. Chubbuck’s car was searched. Tape of the incident was viewed.

Reporters filled their notebooks with whatever information they could dig up, filling local newspapers with vivid dispatches and feeding newspapers across the land through national press associations. TV networks, true to the “if it bleeds, it leads” mantra, wanted the tape. ABC and WXLT said no.

Peg Chubbuck and her sons, Tim and Greg, rushed to the hospital. They were at Chris’s side when she died at 11:15 p.m.

The next morning, instead of Suncoast Digest, WXLT viewers saw reruns of Gentle Ben, a show about a young boy and a bear living in Florida’s Everglades.

*****

Chris Chubbuck was the talk of the nation for a day or two. Sarasota officials, however, seemed determined to escape the glare of the national spotlight as soon as possible.

An autopsy was performed within hours of Chubbuck’s death. To no one’s surprise, the cause of death was a bullet to the head. Authorities reported that no suicide note was found and Sarasota County Detective Capt. Ellis Denham said “deep depression and loneliness” were the only reasons for the suicide that investigators had been able to discover. Case closed.

But the sad story of Christine Chubbuck was far from over. Advocates for better mental health treatment latched onto her story, noting, among other things, that earlier intervention and taking the cries for help from a mentally anguished person more seriously may have avoided the tragedy.

But, as Greg Chubbuck pointed out in numerous interviews, the family spent a small fortune trying to help Chris, but it wasn’t enough.

Editors at the Washington Post saw a story beyond the obvious drama of the country’s first televised suicide. As Post editor Ben Bradlee pondered his options, he found the solution under his own roof.

Bradlee and Post reporter Sally Quinn had recently moved in together in D.C.’s fabled Watergate apartments following Quinn’s ill-fated six-month attempt at television journalism on CBS News’ morning program. Quinn, a skilled interviewer and talented writer, was dispatched to Sarasota where she spent two days interviewing Chubbuck’s family, friends and co-workers for an in-depth article that ran in the Post on August 4.

As reporters found, people were very open to talking about Chubbuck after her death. Everyone, it seemed, had a sad story to tell.

After Chubbuck was whisked from the set by paramedics the day of the shooting, news director Mike Simmons found a blood-splattered script on the news desk, two pages hand-written from a stenographer’s notebook.

One page contained the fateful words she uttered before the shooting. The other, apparently intended to be read by someone else, said: “Today Chris Chubbuck shot herself during a live broadcast. She was rushed to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where she remains in critical condition.”

That she wrote of her action as an “attempted suicide” reflects on her journalistic skills, recognizing that she may not succeed in her morbid quest. That she so accurately described her condition also left open the possibility that the shot may not be immediately fatal.

Chubbuck did her homework before putting her suicide plan in action. Despite her aversion to hard news, she lobbied Simmons a few weeks earlier to let her do a story on suicide. He said yes.

She contacted Sarasota police who told her the most efficient suicide method was to use a .38 caliber pistol with “wadcutter” bullets that disintegrate on contact. Despite popular belief that a shot to the temple is best, police told her it’s better to aim at the lower back of the head, where vital bodily functions are controlled.

A week before killing herself, Chubbuck bought a .38 caliber snub-nosed silver Smith & Wesson revolver and some wadcutter bullets.

One of her closest friends at WXLT, Rob Smith, a 22-year-old former film student at New York University who had transferred to New College in Sarasota, was working as night news editor when Chubbuck casually mentioned that she had bought a gun.

“What for?” Smith asked.

“Well, I thought it would be a nifty idea if I went on the air live and just blew myself away,” she answered.

“I just changed the subject,” said Rob.[14]

Chubbuck’s threats of suicide were not unusual within her family. Just two days before her suicide, she had mentioned the possibility to her brother, Greg. When he offered to talk to her about it, she said, “Nah. We can talk tomorrow.” They never did.

There were other signs that something was amiss in Chubbuck’s final hours. On Sunday she unexpectedly gave a piece of heirloom jewelry to her brother’s fiancee. In the studio on Monday there was the unusual request to tape the show and her insistence that she lead with a newscast for the first time. She also picked a day when two of her most loyal viewers, her grandparents, wouldn’t be able to watch Suncoast Digest because of a doctor’s appointment.

If Chris Chubbuck was chasing the “15 minutes of fame” that Andy Warhol claimed every human was allotted, she succeeded. But, if she thought that having her demise recorded on videotape would extend her time in the spotlight, she was only partially correct.

*****

It is absolutely certain that WXLT recorded Chubbuck’s on-air suicide on videotape. But where that tape is today (or if it still exists) is one of the lingering mysteries surrounding the entire incident.

And people are still looking.

On the day of the shooting, Rob Smith said the WXLT program director was dubbing copy after copy, claiming that every national network was going to want a copy. No copies ever surfaced and even as Chubbuck was clinging to life at Sarasota Memorial, her brother Greg was working with lawyers to get an injunction to ensure the tape was never broadcast.

At that point, the tape was in the hands of Sarasota authorities who had seized it as evidence. Within two days the tape was returned, but to whom?

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that the tape was returned to WXLT, but People magazine reported that it was returned to Peg Chubbuck. In interviews, Greg Chubbuck has stated that he doesn’t know where the tape is. Molly Nelson, the widow of WXLT owner Robert Nelson, claims that her husband kept the tape for years, despite her pleas that he toss it in Tampa Bay.

When Robert Nelson died, Molly Nelson says she turned it over to a “very large law firm” for safekeeping, which, presumably, is where it is today.

Interest in the Chubbuck tape increased in the late 1990s when the darker side of human nature found a home on the internet where a subculture of gruesome death enthusiasts took root. It’s not unusual to find lengthy threads devoted to Chris Chubbuck’s death on these sites, mostly lamenting the absence of actual footage of the fatal moment. The words “Holy Grail” are often used to describe the missing Chubbuck tape.

A few years back a purported grainy taped version of the incident popped up on a few sites, but was quickly taken down after being generally determined to be a fake. Its authenticity is still debated today, but most knowledgeable Chubbuck enthusiasts have debunked it, largely on technical grounds.

The original tape was in the 2-inch quadruplex format, the television industry standard for a quarter-century after its introduction in 1956. The shooting occurred before there were VHS or Beta home recorders so it is extremely unlikely that any of the limited viewing audience that day recorded the show from their home.

There is a question about whether videotape from the 1970s would still be playable after all these years. Some tapes from that era can only be played back on the machine that made the recording. The oxide coating on cheaper tapes sometimes flakes off, affecting playback. Plus, tape was expensive. Many stations re-used videotape over and over. It’s doubtful anyone would knowingly tape over the Chubbuck suicide, but how many times had the tape been used up to that time? WXLT was a bare-bones operation and it’s pretty safe to say their tapes were used more than once.

And what would happen if the Chubbuck tape were to magically appear?

“It’d get a million hits on YouTube, but ultimately, there are no mysteries to it,” said Scott Michaels, founder of FindADeath and of a death-site tourism company called Dearly Departed. “You’d be like, There’s a woman, she blows her brains out. There it is.”[15]

*****

Many people think Chris Cubbuck’s on-air suicide inspired Paddy Chayefsky to write his Oscar-winning Network screenplay. The movie, which also depicts a violent on-air death, premiered two years after the Chubbuck incident, but Chayefsky claimed he was actually working on the screenplay before July 1974.

However, two other movies were clearly inspired by Chubbuck and premiered at the same film festival in 2016, when Kate Plays Christine and Christine both debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Christine was a conventional biopic, purporting to tell Chubbuck’s story while taking a few creative liberties. It starred Michael C. Hall (Dexter) as George Ryan and Rebecca Hall as Christine. It premiered nationally on Oct. 14 and eventually grossed $313,465 in its international run.

In a curious twist of fate, when producer Craig Shilowich went in search of a company to put together a preview trailer for Christine, he ran across Chubbuck’s former co-worker Rob Smith, the 65-year-old owner of InSync Plus, a California company that produces trailers. Smith gave Shilowich a discount for his services.

Kate Plays Christine was an ambitious docudrama, mixing real-life interviews while following actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she portrays Chubbuck in a retelling of her story. Director Robert Greene’s creative screenplay won Sundance’s U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Writing. Greene’s film premiered the same day as Christine, but only managed to pull in $27,364 from the seven screens it appeared on worldwide.

Even less successful was the 2010 attempt to create a musical about Chubbuck. Playwright Michael Finke created the musical called Reporting Live, but quickly abandoned the project when he feared that viewers may erroneously think he was condoning Chubbuck’s action.

*****

It was an unusual request.

Lew Funeral Home asked the Sarasota County Commission for permission to hold a memorial service for Chris Chubbuck on the Siesta Key public beach. Commissioners wrestled with their decision. They had approved weddings on the beach before, but no one had asked to hold a memorial service there. Ultimately, they took no action on the request, fearing it may create a precedent they might later regret. The funeral home went ahead with the service.

It was another cloudless Chamber of Commerce morning on July 18, 1974, when Rev. R. Tom Beason of the Presbyterian Youth Culture Ministry strode to the lectern to eulogize Chris Chubbuck. Vacationers were frolicking in the Gulf of Mexico, just a few feet from Benson’s post. A few people in swimsuits and bikinis strolled closer to check out the hubbub. Peg Chubbuck was there, in a white dress with green polka dots. So were about 120 other people, including Florida State Representative Bob Johnson.

Chris Chubbuck loved the beach, where she swam, scuba dived, sailed and fished. She also loved singer Roberta Flack. Three of Flack’s songs were played during the 30-minute service that morning.

“We are shocked by the suddenness … confused by her message,” the Rev. Mr. Beason said in his eulogy.

Beason wasn’t alone in his confusion. Outwardly, Chris Chubbuck appeared to have it made.

She was young, attractive, well-educated, had a decent job and supportive family and was living in what some people might call paradise.

Her family home was perched on limestone cliffs with a spectacular view of the Gulf of Mexico. Stairs led down to the sandy white beaches that drew thousands of tourists to the area each year where they could enjoy some of the best snorkeling on the planet, slip into the turquoise waters and swim among snappers, groupers and amberjacks.

The small home, which was built in 1918, is actually a cottage, but its location is special. So special, in fact, that it sold for $1.8 million in 2014 and was named a historic site by the Sarasota County Commission in 2015.

This was where Chubbuck, her mother and brothers called home, where Chubbuck had a room decorated like a child’s and a closet stocked with designer dresses so she’d look nice on the air.

Her job at WXLT, while not paying well, offered opportunity. Her good friend Andrea Kirby went on to be a successful sports broadcaster for ABC, including duties on the network’s popular Wide World of Sports. Another sports reporter, Craig Sager, lad a lengthy career at ESPN. Known for his colorful suits, Sager was a revered NBA announcer before his death in 2016.

It’s hard to know what pushed Chubbuck over the edge. There were plenty of stressors in her life. There was the disappointment of her failed relationship with George Ryan and the fact that her window of opportunity to be a mother was slipping away. Her parents had divorced and her father remarried less than a month before she killed herself.

In the end, Chris Chubbuck’s cremated ashes were scattered over the Gulf of Mexico and her friends and family were left wondering why she killed herself. Sager, for one, wished he had known what was going through Chubbuck’s mind while everyone was yukking it up at her party the Friday night before she took her life.

“That was her going away party and it was her chance to say goodbye to everyone, but of course we didn’t realize it at the time,” said Sager. “It was just so shocking.”[16]


[1] Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1974, “Christine Chubbuck: 29, Good-Looking, Educated, A Television Personality. Dead. Line and in Color.”
[2] People magazine, Feb. 11, 2016, “Brother of TV Journalist Christine Chubbuck Who Shot Herself on Air: ‘She Never Felt Like She Was Good Enough’”
[3] The Telegraph, January 24, 2017, “The Newsreader who shot herself live on air: the tragic true story of Christine Chubbuck.”
[4] People magazine, Feb. 11, 2016, “Brother of Christine Chubbuck, the 70s Journalist Who Committed Suicide on Live TV, Says No One Will Ever Find the Tape of that Horrific Day.”
[5] Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1974.
[6] The Sun, News Group Newspapers Limited, London, Oct. 8, 2016, “I THINK ABOUT IT EVERY DAY”
[7] People magazine, Feb. 11, 2016.
[8] Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1974.
[9] People magazine, Feb. 11, 2016.
[10] Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1974.
[11] Ibid
[12] People magazine, Feb. 11, 2016.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1974.
[15] Vulture, Jan. 29, 1916
[16] People magazine, Feb. 11, 2016

Christine Chubbuck, TV news reporter
Born: August 24, 1944
Died: July 15, 1974 (age 29)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Judy Tyler: From Howdy Doody to Elvis, a star in the making

“Where are you going now?” Elvis asked.

Judy Tyler, his co-star in Jailhouse Rock until just a few days earlier before filming was wrapped up, had an easy answer. After a whirlwind three months in Hollywood where she filmed two movies and one television show, Tyler was eager to return to New York City where she and her husband of less than four months had rented an apartment.

Elvis understood. He had a new place, too, a mansion on 14 acres south of Memphis that his parents had found and plunked down a $1,000 down payment to seal the $102,000 purchase from a professor of urology at the University of Tennessee. As Elvis boarded a train for his new digs, Tyler and husband Greg LaFayette loaded their suitcases in the trunk of their new 1957 Chevy, put the poodle and cat they had bought as gifts for Tyler’s agent in the back seat and headed east on a leisurely course along the Lincoln Highway.

In the early evening hours of July 3, 1957, they drove through Medicine Bow, Wyoming, and past the world’s oldest building, a cabin built of 5,800 dinosaur bones resurrected from the fossil-rich dinosaur trove of nearby Como Bluff. They were also within view of Medicine Bow Peak, where 66 souls perished less than two years earlier in the country’s worst civilian aviation disaster to that time.

As they approached Rock River, Wyoming, a car leaving a curio store pulled in front of Tyler’s car prompting LaFayette to swerve into the oncoming traffic lane where their car was struck broadside. Tyler was killed immediately; LaFayette died the next morning. She was 24 years old.

*****

Judy Tyler was genetically obliged to pursue a career in show business. Her father, Julian Hess, played the trumpet in the bands of Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman before embarking on a career as a building contractor. Her mother, Lorelei Kendler, had been a Ziegfeld Follies dancer before marrying.

Tyler, who was born Judith Mae Hess on Oct. 9, 1932, studied ballet, music and acting as a youngster before attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City where Anne Bancroft, John Cassavettes, Vince Edwards and Grace Kelly were classmates.

As a teenager she modeled for the Harry Conover Agency, where she was named “Miss Stardust.” Conover also suggested the surname change from Hess to Tyler and provided training in working on radio and television as one of the Conover “Cover Girls.”

Before her 18th birthday, Tyler had landed a spot as a dancer in the Copacabana chorus line and was given an occasional opportunity to sing. Copa pianist Colin Romoff recognized her vocal talent and became her vocal coach. On Dec. 29, 1950 — two months after meeting — the 26-year-old Romoff and Tyler were married.

Tyler kept busy in the New York area — singing at night clubs like the Mocambo, the Riviera and Le Ruban Bleu and making TV appearances with Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar — before getting her big break with NBC.

Despite her diverse experience, Tyler was ill-prepared for her first steady network gig. She entered Doodyland — the province ruled by kiddie TV’s first superstar, Howdy Doody (and inhabited by the oddest set of characters yet assembled by the young medium) — in 1952.

Howdy was the center of the show, but it was the rest of the cast that made it memorable. Howdy, a freckle-faced marionette of dubious intelligence, proved a likable straight man to the likes of Phineas T. Bluster, Inspector John J. Fadoozel, Cornelius Cobb and Howdy’s sister, Heidi Doody. There were Goofy-like regulars like Dilly Dally and Flub-a-Dub as well as human characters like Chief Thunderthud and Clarabell (a mute clown portrayed by future Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan).

The show was clearly geared towards youngsters in the lower elementary grades. Those who were lucky enough to score tickets to the actual show (there was a two-year waiting list), found themselves sentenced to 30 minutes of uncomfortable seating in Doodyville’s Peanut Gallery.

But there also were adult shenanigans going on behind the scenes. Much of the NBC complex shut down so employees could catch the often X-rated rehearsals for the show. Puppeteers found that those kid-friendly marionettes could also be maneuvered into hysterically funny compromising positions. Writer Dayton Allen, who was well-known for groping women on the set, extended that courtesy to Howdy, who was once retrofitted with a puppet-sized package of wooden genitalia. Peanut Gallery mothers were often propositioned, sometimes successfully.

When Tyler was added to the cast as an Indian princess, it satisfied more than the tykes who tuned in on Saturday morning.

“We got her to appeal to the little girls,” said producer Roger Muir. “Well, she appealed to the little girls and the big daddies, too.”[1]

Prior to Tyler’s arrival, Princess SummerFallWinterSpring was just one of the many marionettes used on the program. But, beginning in 1952 and for the next three years, a puff of smoke heralded the character’s transformation into a flesh and blood version of a true Tinka Tonka tribal maiden, complete with braided hair and headband.

Tyler’s following extended well beyond the TV audience. Her appearances at supermarket openings around the country guaranteed large crowds.

“There were lots of stories about the road trips and Judy and lots and lots of guys,” said Bob Rippen, a director for the show. “Once in a nightclub in Kansas City she ended up drunk and standing on a table and said something that would have been very, very bad for a kids’ show. We pulled strings to keep it out of the paper.”[2]

Howard Davis, a scriptwriter and occasional director for the show, conceded that Tyler had “round heels” but added: “Had she lived, she would have been a major star.”[3]

Others agreed with Davis’ assessment. Garry Moore ranked Tyler among “Television’s Own Promising Starlets” for TV Guide in 1955. Reginald Hammerstein, brother of composer Oscar, spotted her on TV and recommended her for a new musical in the works by Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Although Tyler did, indeed, land a major part in the musical, Pipe Dream, the production appeared to be jinxed from its inception.

Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin, fresh off their success with Guys and Dolls, had persuaded John Steinbeck to write a follow-up novel to Cannery Row with the intent of turning it into a Broadway musical. Thus, Steinbeck produced the novel Sweet Thursday, which received lukewarm reviews. When songwriter Frank Loesser was unavailable to compose the score for a musical, Feuer & Martin turned the project over to Rodgers & Hammerstein, who were hoping to rebound from 1953’s Me & Juliet, a relative failure for the duo.

Rodgers & Hammerstein were a bit squeamish about taking over a project mostly set in a whorehouse, but hoped to offset the storyline with a powerhouse cast. For the lead character, the house’s madame, they picked Helen Traubel, an operatic diva with little acting experience. They wanted Henry Fonda for the male lead but, after six months of vocal training, they couldn’t get Henry to carry a tune so settled on veteran stage actor William Johnson. For the key character of prostitute Suzy, they first sought out Julie Andrews (recently contracted to My Fair Lady) then Janet Leigh, who also was unavailable, before settling on Tyler.

In preparation for her Broadway debut, Tyler spent part of the summer of 1955 co-starring in Annie Get Your Gun at the Warwick, R.I., Musical Theater.

During rehearsals for the Nov. 30, 1955, opening at the Schubert Theater in New York City, Rodgers & Hammerstein tinkered with the screenplay, writing new songs as they went. By the time they finished, the whorehouse had been reduced to a boarding house, prostitute Suzy was merely a boarder and Steinbeck was pissed, complaining to Hammerstein: "You've turned my prostitute into a visiting nurse!"[4]

Although the musical set a Broadway record with $1.2 million in advance sales, it received mixed reviews and closed after 245 performances. It did receive nine Tony nominations, including one for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a musical for Tyler. The exposure also netted Tyler a cover story in Life magazine where she was featured with other up-and-coming actresses (like Jayne Mansfield and Susan Strasberg).

However well her professional life was going, Tyler’s personal life was crumbling. Not long after divorcing Romoff in 1956, she wed again — this time to 19-year-old aspiring actor Gregory LaFayette on St. Patrick’s Day 1957— at the Balmoral Hotel in Miami with singer Patti Page as her matron of honor. After a brief stop to set up their Manhattan apartment, the newlyweds headed to Hollywood to pursue movie careers.

It didn’t take long for the pair to find work. Tyler was cast as a singer in Bop Girl Goes Calypso, one of those exploitive quickie films cranked out in the early rock & roll era. LaFayette landed a decent part in a war picture, Under Fire. Tyler also found time to play the part of a stripper in an early episode of the Perry Mason TV series entitled “The Case of the Fan Dancer’s Horse.”

But Tyler’s biggest break came when she was cast as Elvis Presley’s love interest in his third film, Jailhouse Rock. Despite her second billing, Tyler didn’t play a major part in the filming, but Elvis, who was developing a reputation for being romantically involved with his co-stars, took a liking to her.

Whether the two actually had a romantic liaison is in doubt, but LaFayette may have suspected something was afoot. His behavior on set was apparently so disruptive, that he was banned by the film’s producers.

Although Tyler drew good reviews for her work with Elvis and on the Perry Mason project, she never read them since all her Hollywood work was released after her death. It was reported that Elvis was so shaken up by her death that he initially refused to watch Jailhouse Rock.

Although LaFayette was buried in his hometown of Hopewell Junction, N.Y., Tyler was cremated and her ashes were interred in the tony Ferncliff Mauseleum in Hartsdale, N.Y., where she counts among her neighbors Basil Rathbone, Ed Sullivan, Paul Robeson and Toots Shor.

In 1959, a Washington rockabilly singer named Kenny Baker recorded a tribute to Tyler, Goodbye Little Star:


[1] The Box, Penguin: 1995, Jeff Kisseloff, p. 450.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Rodgers & Hammerstein, Harry N. Abrams: 1992, Ethan Mordden, p. 174.

Judith Mae Hess (Tyler), actress
Born: October 9, 1932
Died: July 3, 1957 (age 24)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

John C. Holmes: An actor known for more than a big heart

In his heyday, John C. Holmes was compared to Elvis Presley and Errol Flynn. But Holmes didn’t sing and, although his greatest exploits were on film, he wasn’t much of an actor, either. Holmes owed whatever success he achieved in the entertainment industry to something else: He had a big dick.

If it weren’t for his “discovery” in a California men’s room, Holmes’ greatest physical attribute would have likely remained a secret, known only to his wife and closest confidantes. But once his super-sized manhood hit the screen, a legend was born. And Holmes, who just a few months earlier was content with his job as an ambulance driver, happily embellished the emerging storyline.

Holmes spoke of how, when he was born, his mother was told that her son had “three legs, but only two feet,” a not-so-subtle reference to his prodigious tallywacker. He told of how he was raised by an aunt who split her time between London, Paris and Florida where he lost his virginity at age six to a Swiss nursemaid. He claimed to have had sex with all but three girls in his high school class, earned the nickname “Horse Dick” and was regularly recruited by mothers to deflower their daughters.

As a porn star, he bragged that he’d slept with 14,000 women, including three state governors and a U.S. Senator. He’d written nearly 30 books, had an equal number of fan clubs and had sex in airplanes, elevators and 50 feet underwater while wearing scuba gear.

While Holmes’ claims were hyperbole at best and mostly outright lies, the verifiable facts of his life are amazing enough. It’s estimated that the number of his sex partners is closer to 3,000, still well above the American norm. He appeared in about 2,300 porn films (including a large number of short “loops”) in his 17-year porn career, with most of those produced between 1967 and 1980. He earned as much as $3,000 a day for his work, but in the twilight of his career he was crippled by a $1,000-a-day cocaine habit.

Holmes liked to brag that his penis was “bigger than a pay phone, smaller than a Cadillac.” It was sometimes compared in length to a normal man’s forearm, with a circumference equal to a man’s wrist. One critic doubted that Holmes ever had a full erection because the blood flow required would certainly render him unconscious. Holmes, on the other hand, boasted that his career was so successful because he could maintain an erection for five hours despite the stress of filming.

Truth is, there is no truly accurate measurement of Holmes’ fully inflated schlong. Guesstimates range from 10 to 15 inches. Early in his career, he preferred short, slender partners which further emphasized his length and contributed to the legend.

There was nothing in Holmes’ childhood in Ohio that gave even a hint of celluloid stardom. A gangly, shy youth, Holmes spent much of his time hunting and fishing, anything to escape a house where drunkenness and physical and mental abuse by first his father and later by his stepfather was rampant. When he was 16, his mother allowed him to join the U.S. Army. After his discharge at 19, he relocated to southern California where he found work as an ambulance driver.

There he met a graduate nurse, Sharon Gebenini. He stole flowers from a neighbor’s garden for their first date, but within a year they married and Holmes took a job as a forklift driver at a meatpacking pack. The cold work environment proved harmful to Holmes, who suffered a collapsed lung on three occasions. The young couple was also thwarted in their plans to start a family, with Sharon suffering three miscarriages in 17 months.

Holmes drifted through a variety of sales jobs and was a chocolate stirrer at a Candy Nips factory when his big break came at a urinal in a men’s card-playing club. A photographer noticed Holmes’ huge penis and suggested he might have a career in the thriving Southern California pornography industry. Soon Holmes was moonlighting, sharing his unique talent in magazine pictorials, unbeknownst to his wife.

Until a summer day in 1968, that is, when Sharon came across her husband in the bathroom, a tape measure in his hand.

“It’s incredible,” he said. “It goes from five inches all the way to ten. Ten inches long! Four inches around! … I’ve got to tell you I’ve been doing something else, and I think I want to make it my life’s work. … It’s like being a carpenter. These are my tools.”[1]

Soon Holmes diversified, adding short 8mm porn features known as loops to his resume. He met Bob Chinn, a producer of raunchy magazine pictorials and grainy stag films, who had lofty ambitions. The evening he met Holmes, Chinn dashed off a three-page screenplay featuring a seedy detective, a cross of a film noir private dick and a smarmy lounge singer. Holmes, of course, would play the detective who would be known forevermore in porn lore as Johnny Wadd.

Chinn and Holmes would parlay the polyester-clad gigolo to riches in the mid-1970s golden era of porn that had been sparked by art house classics Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and The Devil and Miss Jones. Though the Johnny Wadd films lacked the polish of those movies, some did feature the same female leads, all eagerly yielding their bodies to the mustachioed lothario. Holmes was getting plenty of sex in front of the camera, but he wasn’t getting any at home where Sharon had drawn the line.

Nevertheless, they continued to live together as man and wife and worked together as managers of a Glendale apartment court, a complex of 10 aqua stucco cottages. In addition to his film duties, Holmes was the complex’s handyman and gardener. A collector of everything from copper wires to animal skulls, Holmes also trolled the area in his El Camino, sifting through dumpsters and grabbing up furniture from yard sales.

It was at the apartments where he became acquainted with 15-year-old Dawn Schiller, a recent transplant from Florida with her dad and younger sister. Schiller was immediately intrigued by the 32-year-old Holmes, known to her family as a soft-spoken, polite Save the Whales activist who occasionally brought her gifts when returning after a film shoot. Holmes hired the Schiller sisters to do odd gardening jobs around the complex.

It was probably inevitable that Holmes and Dawn Schiller would progress from sharing cheeseburgers and fries dunked in blue cheese dressing at Bob’s Big Boy to a tryst in the back of a van. But Schiller had no idea of Holmes’ cinematic achievements until the night he drove her and her sister to the Pussycat Theater where they saw his name on the marquee. He took them into the theater.

 “We’re slumped down in our seats, and I’m covering my face, and my sister’s covering her face,” Dawn Schiller recalled. “People are walking by, trying to get John’s autograph, whispering, ‘Oh, my God. He’s here!’ My sister and I are hugely embarrassed.”[2]

When Schiller’s father returned to Florida with her sister, Dawn moved into a cabana with Holmes’ half-brother for a short time before moving in with Holmes and Sharon.

Holmes’ career was starting to slide as his involvement with Schiller grew. In the early years of his porn life, Holmes had resisted many of the temptations of the business. He didn’t smoke, drink or do drugs. But, by the time Schiller came along, he was drinking. His drink of choice was scotch, and he rarely was seen on set without a brown Samsonite briefcase that contained a quart of J&B.

Although he had resisted the steady offers of cocaine that were so common in the business in the early years, by the late 1970s he was hooked on the stuff. The scotch was supplanted in the briefcase by drugs and the equipment necessary to transform cocaine powder into crack. His free-basing habit threatened to derail his career. His erratic behavior included difficulties with the hydraulic functions of his most obvious asset.

With his porn career deteriorating, Holmes turned to petty crime to support his drug habit. He ransacked the rental homes where he was filming. He broke into cars and stole luggage from airport baggage claim carousels. He hit rock bottom when he and Schiller were living out of his wife’s Chevy Malibu, subsisting on occasional fast food tacos while Holmes pimped out Schiller’s sexual services. He also turned into a cocaine delivery boy, including rock stars, lawyers and dentists among his customers.

He became intimately involved with two of his drug suppliers — nightclub owner Eddie Nash and a group of heroin addicts who operated out of a rented house on Wonderland Avenue in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles.

Nash was the Americanized name of Adel Gharib Nasrallah, an immigrant from the Middle East who launched a successful business career in 1960 with a hot dog stand on Hollywood Boulevard. By the time he crossed paths with Holmes, he held 36 liquor licenses for the string of eclectic nightclubs he owned, as well as some prime real estate, pushing his net worth north of $30 million.

He was also a heavy user of drugs, especially free-base cocaine. In support of his habit, Nash also dealt drugs, which were always in ample supply at his luxurious ranch home in the hills above Studio City.

Holmes bartered a pair of antique guns owned by the Wonderland camp for $1,000 worth of heroin from Nash. The Wonderland gang wanted the guns back and thought the best way to get them was to steal them. Working in concert with Holmes, the Wonderland gang, impersonating cops, broke into Nash’s home and robbed him of drugs, cash, jewelry and the antique guns.

Two days later, Holmes was spotted by Nash’s bodyguard wearing a ring stolen from Nash. Holmes was snatched up and brought before Nash. His hands were bound by electrical tape and he was tortured for 14 hours to wring from him information about the Nash robbers. An irate Nash then dispatched a team of his associates to the Wonderland house, led by Holmes.

There, in the early morning hours of July 1, 1981, four of the five occupants were brutally beaten to death. (The fifth, also brutally beaten, survived). Some veteran L.A. detectives called it the most gruesome scene they’d ever seen. It became known as the “Four on the Floor” murders.

Holmes’ role in the murders is unclear. He claimed to have been forced to watch, but police believed he participated in the lead-pipe bludgeoning of at least one victim. Holmes’ bloody palm print was discovered above one of the beds at the crime scene.

Although Holmes and Schiller went into hiding, Los Angeles detectives tracked them down in a local motel. Police interrogated Holmes extensively but got nowhere. Following his release from police custody, Holmes and Schiller took off for Florida.

They settled into a seedy hotel in North Miami Beach where Holmes dyed his hair black and worked in construction  by day while forcing Schiller to turn tricks at night. Schiller eventually was rescued by several of the hotel’s residents. After telling her family where she was, her brother tipped off police. Detectives found Holmes watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island, slapped on handcuffs and whisked him back to Los Angeles.

There he was reunited with an old friend, Detective Tom Lange. Ironically, real detective Lange first met bogus detective Johnny Wadd on a porn set, where Holmes was arrested on a morals charge. For the next several years, Holmes was an informant to Blake on matters related to the porn industry. Lange, who would go on to greater fame in the 1990s while investigating the murder of O.J. Simpson’s wife, was the lead investigator on the “Four on the Floor” case.

Blake pressured Holmes with offers of immunity and protection in exchange for his testimony, but he refused, claiming his family feared for their lives. With only Holmes’ palm print and a couple of fingerprints from a table at the crime scene as evidence, he was charged with the murders. On June 16, 1982, jurors acquitted Holmes but he was found in contempt of court for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

Holmes spent 110 days in Los Angeles County Jail on the contempt charge. During that time he staged a 32-day hunger strike, losing 16 pounds, before jailers started force feeding him. Holmes also spent many evenings working on an autobiography with writer Barbara Wilkins, who shared many of the details in a Hustler magazine article in June 1983. Some of Holmes’ claims:
     — He was held in the “High Power” section of the jail, where high profile prisoners such as the Skid Row Slasher, the Hillside Strangler and the head of the Black Mafia were also incarcerated.
     —He took up yoga and transcendental meditation to escape the boredom of his solitary confinement.
     —While other prisoners hung pages from Penthouse and Playboy in their cells, he hung pictures of casseroles from food magazines.
     —He claimed to have given out thousands of autographs while in jail, to deputies, judges, district attorneys and secretaries.

Holmes was finally released when he was given the green light to testify from those who had previously threatened him. He immediately returned to his old lifestyle.

Porn was experiencing a renaissance in the early 1980s thanks to videotape. Bill Amerson, a former Holmes business partner and longtime friend, had snatched up the rights to many of Holmes’ old films and was re-packaging them in the new medium. With Holmes he created John Holmes Productions and began producing new product with his old friend, whose popularity was again on the rise thanks to the murder case.

It was on a movie shoot that Holmes met another porn star known as Misty Dawn, who bore a strong physical resemblance to Dawn Schiller. He was immediately smitten with the 19-year-old (real name: Laurie Rose) and within a short time, they were a couple. Rose had a steadying influence on Holmes. He quit drugs and persuaded Rose to leave the porn business. With AIDS on the rise, Holmes figured it was best to have just one porn star in the family.

Although Holmes cut back on his porn work, he was still seen as a superstar in the medium. At the premiere of his film, Girls On Fire, on Feb. 7, 1985, his handprints were immortalized in concrete in the sidewalk in front of the Pussycat Theater.

Holmes, who was an early advocate of AIDS testing for porn stars, ironically was one of the first to test positive for the disease. But months after being diagnosed, Holmes took off for Italy where he made the last of his XXX movies, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress, with eventual Italian Parliament member Ilona “Cicciolina” Staller as his co-star.

Holmes resumed his drug and alcohol use following the diagnosis, telling friends that he was dying of colon cancer rather than sharing the true reason for his ill health. He finally shared his diagnosis with Rose around the time of their marriage on Jan. 23, 1987. He continued to make public appearances through the end of 1987, when he began a series of hospitalizations. In February 1988 he was admitted to the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, Calif., where he died on March 13, 1988. He was 43 years old.

His death was attributed to encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, a consequence of AIDS. The source of his disease could have been his pornographic occupation or his excessive drug use, though close family members claimed that he was deathly afraid of needles and never took drugs intravenously.

Another thing Holmes feared was that his famous penis would someday be preserved in a jar or become a subject of scientific study. To that end he insisted his body be cremated intact, a task his widow apparently dutifully respected before his ashes were spread in the San Francisco area.

The Holmes legend gave rise to several books and documentaries but was most prominent in a pair of Hollywood movies. Boogie Nights was a 1997 success that featured Mark Wahlberg in the Holmes-inspired role of Dirk Diggler. Co-star Burt Reynolds claimed a Golden Globe for best supporting actor. Wonderland, a less-successful 2003 production, starred Val Kilmer as Holmes and focused on the Wonderland murders.

While Holmes’ legendary penis is no more, foot-long replica dildos carry the legend forward in sex shops and on the Internet, for as low as $45. According to the Associated Press, his memoirs were worth just $35 at the time of his death.


[1] “The Devil and John Holmes,” Mike Sager, Rolling Stone, May 1989.
[2] “In Too Deep,” Allan MacDonell, L.A. Weekly, Oct. 3, 2003.

John Curtis Holmes, porn star
Born: August 8, 1944
Died: March 13, 1988 (age 43)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Janet Parker: Photographer in wrong place at the wrong time

Janet Parker had a splitting headache. A migraine, she thought, as she knocked off work early on Friday afternoon, August 11, 1978, and headed home to the duplex she shared with her husband on Burford Park Road in the Kings Norton section of Birmingham, England.

Fortunately, she had a weekend to recover. Feeling better on Saturday, she went for a brief walk. But after visiting a neighbor on Sunday, the headache returned. By midweek, she developed a rash, prompting a doctor’s visit. He prescribed an antibiotic, but the rash persisted.

Parker mostly ignored her aches and muscle pains  as she and her husband, Joseph, tried to maintain their day-to-day activities: Robert in his duties as a Post Office engineer; Janet as a photographer in the anatomy department of Birmingham University’s medical school.

But when she developed spots over much of her body, she was sent to East Birmingham Hospital, where she was admitted at 3 p.m. on Aug. 24. Doctors suspected Variola major, a serious form of smallpox, which was thought to have been eradicated globally. Electron microscopy of vesicle fluid confirmed the diagnosis and Parker was immediately transferred to Catherine-de-Barnes Isolation Hospital in Birmingham.

The hospital was one of a handful of isolation facilities remaining in the United Kingdom. Built in 1907, the Catherine-de-Barnes campus once housed as many as 16 victims of diphtheria, typhoid fever and smallpox but, as risks from these diseases diminished, the need for “fever hospitals” also declined. Indeed, Catherine-de-Barnes had been mothballed, though caretakers Leslie and Dorothy Harris had spent the previous 11 years cleaning and preparing the hospital so it could be readied for patients on an hour notice.

That hour occurred at 10 p.m. on Aug. 24, as the ambulance carrying Janet Parker arrived on the 20-acre grounds. Anyone coming in contact with her had to wear protective clothing and had to be inoculated against small pox. That included her husband and parents, Frederick and Hilda, who were among 500 contacts who would eventually be placed under quarantine.

Within an hour, the British press were tipped off. By morning, a full-fledged panic ensued.

It wasn’t the first outbreak of the disease to strike Birmingham. In 1966, Tony McLennan was diagnosed with a milder form of the disease, leading to at least 12 cases in the area. All survived and many Birmingham residents were vaccinated against the disease at that time, including Janet Parker.

Investigators determined that Parker’s immunity had worn off over time. They also discovered a connection between McLennan and Parker: both had worked as medical photographers out of the same office at the University of Birmingham Medical School. Furthermore, their offices were located one floor above a smallpox research laboratory, one of just three in the UK at the time.

Lab director Henry Bedson was continuing his research on the form of smallpox known as whitepox as the World Health Organization pressed for global eradication of the disease. But Bedson’s lab, which was constructed in 1930, was scheduled for closure and his budget had been cut, forcing him to work without benefit of protective clothing, airlocks and special showers.

In addition, several of Bedson’s staff had received no special training and WHO inspectors labeled the lab as substandard. An inquiry later found that Bedson had misled inspectors about the volume of work at the lab. He told inspectors that the work had steadily declined since 1973 when, in fact, he picked up the pace in order to accomplish as much as possible before the lab’s closing.

Although the inquiry found no certain cause for Parker’s contraction of the disease, the most likely culprit was the ductwork that ran from the lab to a small room in Parker’s office where she spent the greater part of one late July day on the phone, ordering photographic supplies.

As Parker lay in isolation, panicky residents demanded inoculations against the disease. Health officials, decked from head to toe in other-worldly protective gear, fumigated her car and home. Amazingly, no one else who worked in Bedson’s lab (or the entire four-story building) came down with the disease. Parker’s mother was diagnosed with smallpox, but was treated and recovered. Overall, though, the incident claimed three lives.

Parker’s father, Frederick. escaped smallpox but died of a heart attack while visiting his daughter. He was 71.

Bedson and his family were quarantined, but were hardly alone. For days after Parker’s hospitalization, he was besieged by camera crews and reporters. Though he felt he had done nothing wrong, friends say Bedson was riddled by guilt. On Sept. 1, as his wife was on the phone, he walked to the family garden shed and slit his throat. Five days later, he died at age 48.

Parker was the final victim of the epidemic, dying on Sept. 11, 1978. Her body was cremated to prevent spread of the disease and the crematorium was closed and thoroughly cleaned after the procedure. The funeral home handling her body canceled all other funerals and the hearse carrying her remains was escorted by unmarked police cars to minimize the possibility of an accident. The hospital ward where Parker spent her final days was sealed for five years. In October 1979. authorities fumigated the East Wing of the Birmingham Medical School.

Microbiologist R.A. Shooter led the investigation into Parker’s death, but his report was delayed until the Health and Safety Executive completed its prosecution of the university for breach of Health and Safety legislation. The university was found not guilty and the 236-page Shooter report was debated in the House of Commons in 1980. The report concluded that the lab was the source of Parker’s illness, but the mode of transmission was unclear.

The WHO declared smallpox eradicated on Dec. 9, 1979, and started to make plans to destroy all remaining stocks of the virus. But much of the scientific community objected and two sites were ultimately designated for the last 571 samples of the disease - one in Russia and one at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga. In 2014, vials from the 1950s containing the virus were found at a National Institutes of Health lab in Bethesda, Md., and were shipped to Atlanta.

The Parker case played prominently in the plot of Patricia Cornwell’s best-selling 1997 novel, Unnatural Exposure and was briefly mentioned in an episode of the House TV series, A Pox On Our House.

As it turned out, the 1978 smallpox incident could have been far worse. Parker was scheduled to attend a week-long course at Nottingham University around the time of her exposure, but canceled when her rash appeared. Had she gone, she would have come in contact with as many as 3,000 other attendees.

In 1981 Joseph Parker was awarded 26,500 pounds as a settlement of a death claim. In the mid-1980s, owners considered burning down the hospital where Parker received her smallpox treatment, but the building was instead sold to developers who by 1987 had converted it into luxury apartments known as Catherines Close.

Janet Parker, photographer
Born: March 1938
Died: Sept. 11, 1978

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Ernie Davis: Best of the best, more humble than the rest

It was supposed to be something of a celebration.

Helen Gott was just a month from graduation. Across the candlelit table from her at the Tippin’ Inn in Syracuse, N.Y., was her steady boyfriend, Ernie Davis, a recent college graduate himself. It was a familiar scene for the couple, who had first met at the restaurant two years earlier.

Promise you’ll come to my graduation, Gott teased. I promise, replied Davis, who was more subdued than usual because of the treatments he was receiving for a recurrence of leukemia.

Curiously, Davis ordered chicken livers for dinner. My doctor said they’re good for my blood, he sheepishly explained to Gott.

“He’d never ordered chicken livers before,” Gott recalled. “I knew the chicken livers were not going to help. … I knew how sick he was.”[1]

The two struggled awkwardly through what would be their last dinner together. Two weeks later, Davis - the first black player to win college football’s Heisman Trophy - was dead. He was 23 years old.

                   ****

Life was never easy for Ernie Davis. His parents split up shortly after he was born in New Salem, Pa., and his father died in an accident before his first birthday. Davis was raised under austere conditions by his maternal grandparents in Uniontown, Pa., a coal-mining town 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.

Sports were a big part of Davis’ early life and helped him cope with a severe stuttering problem. St. Louis Cardinals star Stan Musial was from nearby Donora, Pa., and NFL quarterback Johnny Lujack was from Connellsville. Two childhood friends from Uniontown — Sandy Stephens and Bill Munsey — went on to football stardom at the University of Minnesota.

Baseball was Davis’ best sport as a youngster. As an 8-year-old he earned a spot on a midget baseball team, competing with boys three and four years older.

At age 11 he was reunited with his mother, who had remarried and was living in Elmira, N.Y. Young Davis excelled in baseball, basketball and football in elementary school. As a high schooler at Elmira Free Academy, he was a prep All-American in basketball and football.

In basketball, Davis was a starter as a high school freshman, when he stood six foot tall and weighed 175 pounds. He led the Academy to 52 straight wins in his final two years, averaging 18 points a game. His basketball skills led to many college scholarship offers but his true love was football, where he started at end before moving to halfback. After averaging 7.4 yards a carry throughout his varsity career, more than 30 colleges offered Davis football scholarships, including many predominately white schools, a rarity for a black athlete in the 1950s.

While Davis was flattered to be recruited by national powerhouses like UCLA and Notre Dame, they didn’t have a chance. His idol, Jim Brown, had played just 90 miles down the road, at Syracuse University, which led to a professional career with the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League. Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder was a regular visitor to Elmira in his efforts to entice Davis to join the Orangemen, but it was the addition of Brown to the recruiting process that sealed the deal.

Brown’s path to football stardom was eerily similar to Davis'.

He spent the first eight years of his life with his grandmother in Georgia before rejoining his mother in Long Island, N.Y. In high school, he averaged 38 points a game one basketball season (setting a Long Island season scoring record later broken by Carl Yastrzemski before his Hall of Fame baseball career with the Boston Red Sox).

When Brown first arrived at Syracuse, the school was in the early years of racially integrating its athletic programs and Schwartzwalder had just gone through his first racial scandal. “Don’t be another Avatus Stone,” Brown was warned, referring to a black Syracuse football recruit whose apparent “crime” was dating a blonde majorette.

Things had improved some by the time Davis was being recruited, but Brown still had words of caution for him.

"I told him it wouldn't be a cakewalk, because we're still breaking down barriers,” Brown said. “I don't think he was getting that message from too many schools (that were recruiting him), because there wasn't a whole bunch of us at any one place to tell him the truth.”[2]

When Davis arrived on campus, he was given the same No. 44 that Brown had wore. (Davis carried the legacy forward, helping recruit the next No. 44, Floyd Little, near the end of his career). NCAA rules kept freshmen from playing varsity sports in 1958, but Davis stood out in practices and led the freshman team to an unbeaten season.

It was in his sophomore season that Davis earned the nickname “the Elmira Express” at halfback and defensive back in those single platoon days. Davis averaged seven yards a carry and scored 10 touchdowns while earning All-America honors that season, forcing his roommate to make a tough decision.

As a freshman, Davis had helped recruit John Mackey, a tough running back from New York City, promising to be his roommate if he came to Syracuse. Coach Schwartzwalder also promised that Mackey could take over Davis’s No. 44 once Davis graduated.

"I don't want to be number 44," Mackey told him. "I don't want to play behind anyone."[3]

Mackey instead switched to tight end where he went on to an All-Pro and NFL Hall of Fame career.

That 1959 Syracuse team went unbeaten and claimed a national championship in the 1960 Cotton Bowl where Davis scored two touchdowns - including an 87-yard pass reception - in a 23-14 win over Texas to cap an 11-0 season.

Life magazine reported that Syracuse players accused the Longhorns of dirty play, especially against their three black players:

“Once when he was plowing through the line, said Negro fullback Art Baker, ‘one of them spit right in my face.’

“John Brown, a Negro lineman, played nose to nose against 235-pound Texas tackle Larry Stephens. To goad him off balance, Brown claimed, Stephens kept calling him ‘a big black dirty nigger.’ Finally, Brown warned him not to call him that again. When Stephens did, Brown swung.

“Afterward Stephens apologized to Brown. But Brown had already forgiven him. ‘That Texas boy was just excited,’ he said. ‘Let's forget it’.”[4]

Davis, who was voted most valuable player for the game, found that decades of racial discrimination in the American south carried well beyond the playing field.

Davis and his two black teammates were required to leave the segregated post-game banquet after Davis received his MVP award. When Davis’ white teammates learned of the arrangement, they vowed to leave the banquet, too, in a sign of team solidarity, but Syracuse officials nixed that plan.

Before his junior season Davis was named a preseason All-American by Playboy magazine, whose sports editor Anson Mount called Davis the greatest college running back in history. On the Orangemen’s first play from scrimmage that fall, Davis ran 80 yards for a score against Boston University. He finished the season as the nation’s third leading rusher with 877 yards and 7.8 yards a carry, repeating as an All-American. Davis also found time in his junior year to play basketball in nine games for the Orangemen, averaging 10.2 points and 9.6 rebounds a game.

Davis ran for 823 years in his final football season, scoring 94 points and breaking 10 of Brown’s school records while leading Syracuse to its second bowl win in three years.
Davis’s impact on the game he loved was cemented in history in a three-day span in early December.

On Dec. 4, 1961, he became the first black player to be selected first in the National Football League draft at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. Ironically, Davis was selected by the Washington Redskins, which was still an all-white team, the last in the NFL.

Redskins owner George Marshall had been under pressure for years to integrate the team but, as the southernmost team in the NFL, enjoyed a strong southern base. But Interior Secretary Stewart Udall issued an ultimatum: Either sign a black player by the start of the 1962 season, or the Interior Department would revoke the Redskins’ 30-year lease on the then-new D.C. Stadium.

Although many football watchers expected Marshall to use the No. 1 pick to take one of the top white prospects, like Roman Gabriel, Lance Alworth or Merlin Olson, he opted for Davis.

here was a complication, though: the last two Heisman winners - Billy Cannon (1959) and Joe Bellino (1960) - had signed with the rival American Football League. Furthermore, Davis had vowed he would never play for Marshall and was giving the Buffalo Bills of the AFL, who had also drafted him, a serious look. Within a week, Davis was traded to the Cleveland Browns where he would join his football mentor Jim Brown in the backfield.

On Dec. 6, 1961, Davis was formally recognized as the country’s top college football player, accepting the Heisman Trophy at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City. Davis became the first black player to claim a Heisman in the 27-year history of the award. Davis edged out Ohio State’s Bob Ferguson by just 53 points in what is still the third-closest vote in Heisman history. His old elementary school pal, Minnesota quarterback Sandy Stephens, finished fourth in the voting.

After the trophy presentation, Davis had a brief meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel with President John F. Kennedy, an ardent follower of Davis’ career. Later that day, Davis weaved his way through a celebratory crowd and extended a hand to Coach Schwartzwalder.

"Put 'er there, Coach," Davis said. "Shake the hand that shook hands with President Kennedy!"[5]

On Dec. 29, while in San Francisco preparing for the East-West Shrine game, David appeared at a press conference with his lawyer Anthony DeFilipo and Browns owner Art Modell to sign what was then the largest NFL contract for a rookie - $65,000 for three years plus a $15,000 signing bonus.

His final semester of college was a whirlwind of activity. He had returned to school, but his daily routine was constantly interrupted by phone calls - invitations to speak at banquets or receive awards. He was gone nearly every weekend, making appearances in high school gyms, auditoriums and corporate boardrooms. By April, he’d had enough. He got off the public merry-go-round and focused on his studies. In June, he led the Syracuse graduation march before turning his attention back to football.

He was still feeling worn down when he traveled to Buffalo in late June to prepare for the Coaches All-America Game. On July 8, he reported to the Browns’ training camp in Hiram, Ohio, and from there it was on to Evanston, Ill., to work with the College All-Stars for their game against the NFL’s Green Bay Packers on Aug. 3.

While in Buffalo, Davis started having trouble with nose bleeds, bleeding gums and infected wisdom teeth. By the time he got to Chicago, the problem was severe enough to send him to the hospital where the wisdom teeth were removed. He rejoined the team, but his dental issues kept him from eating well. There were no signs of trouble on the field, though, and he was the team’s leading rusher in a scrimmage against the Chicago Bears.

But, on the Saturday before the game, Davis woke to find that one side of his face was badly swollen. A trainer sent him to the hospital. The initial diagnosis was mumps or mononucleosis, but they soon learned it was more serious. The diagnosis was acute monocytic leukemia and treatment was begun immediately,

Browns owner Art Modell was given the grim diagnosis over the phone immediately, but Davis wasn’t told he had leukemia until October. Modell flew to Chicago, pulled Davis from the All-Star roster and flew him back to Cleveland, where he was checked into Marymount Hosital. Team physician Dr. Vic Ippolito ordered a new series of tests, hoping the Chicago doctors were wrong. But the leukemia diagnosis was confirmed and pathologists estimated Davis had six months to a year left to live.

Modell called for a private meeting with local reporters where he shared the dire news and asked that they not write about it, a request that was apparently honored.

Davis, meanwhile, knew he had some sort of blood illness, but said he never was in pain, nor did he feel sick. Chemotherapy put the disease in remission and Davis was feeling well when he was summoned to a meeting with hematologist Dr. Austin Weisberger, Ippolito and Modell on Oct. 4, where he was told he had leukemia.

Can it be cured? he asked. No, he was told, but with the disease in remission, you can play football if you want.

Modell shared the news with his coach, Paul Brown. Brown, who had looked forward to the day when Jim Brown and Ernie Davis could appear in the Browns’ backfield together, was skeptical. He found another hematologist who recommended that Brown not play Davis. The rift between Modell and Brown over whether to play Davis or not would fracture their relationship and lead to Brown’s dismissal after the 1962 season.

Modell, however, did not give up on Davis. He sought specialist from around the globe, including a few whose alternative treatments were compared to something out of a Boris Karloff movie. Davis, too, carried on - working out in a gym and playing basketball to keep in shape. Jim Brown helped him land a job with Pepsi Cola, but he never gave up hope of playing in the NFL.

His only public appearance with the Browns came on Aug. 18, 1962, when he was introduced to Cleveland fans before a preseason game.

"The PA announcer said, 'Here is another member of the Browns’ offensive team, No. 45, Ernie Davis,' " Modell recalled. "The place was bedlam.”

“He had on his skinny tie, tweed jacket, nice shirt,” recalled John Brown, a Syracuse teammate who was also a Cleveland player. “It was like there was a hush as he walked out to the middle of the field. You had something like 85,000 people go crazy when the spotlight hit him. I'm sure there were a lot of people that were around that told their kids."[6]

During the 1962 season, Davis ran non-contact drills with the team, helped develop game plans and spent most games on the Cleveland bench.

In mid-December, he accompanied his old college coach, Ben Schwartzwalder, on a recruiting trip to New Haven, Conn. The target was Floyd Little, a record-breaking high school running back. Davis told him of the great opportunities at Syracuse, home of the great Jim Brown. You might even get to wear No. 44, he hinted. In January, Davis made a follow-up call to Little. Have you decided where you’re going, Davis asked?

"You know I'm going to Syracuse," Little said. "My mom wants me to grow up just like you."[7]

                    ****

Helen Gott wasn’t particularly fond of athletes. She was quiet and reserved, deeply religious and didn’t drink. Her dad was an Army colonel. Athletes, on the other hand, were loud and profane. That’s what she thought. Until she met Ernie Davis.

It was the spring of 1960. Davis was an All-American football player; Gott was a shy freshman at Syracuse. Their paths crossed at the Tippin’ Inn, a hangout near the Syracuse campus where black students congregated. Gott was there with a few fellow freshmen; Davis was among a gaggle of track and football players. They started talking.

"I didn't know that much about football, and I do remember telling him I didn't know he was a big star, and him laughing,” Gott later recalled.[8]

It was a casual meeting. Things picked up in the fall, after Helen was named “weekend queen,” an honor marked by an appearance at a Syracuse U. football game. Ernie noticed her and soon they were dating.

They went for rides in his Edsel, walks in Thornden Park, dinners at the Tippin’ Inn or dances where up to 80 black students would toss in $5 apiece to rent a room at a restaurant and hire a band so they could dance to their heart’s content. Felix Cavaliere, a Syracuse student who would later form the rock group, the Young Rascals, was an early attraction.

Helen had met his parents in Elmira; he had met her parents in East Orange, N.J. They were a serious couple and, though not formally engaged, were discussing marriage as Ernie battled his illness.

At the time of his chicken livers dinner, the leukemia was back.

Davis tried to be discreet in his battle, but friends noticed when he stuffed cotton up his nose to curtail the nosebleeds. They noticed as his trips to the hospital for treatment were more frequent. On May 16, he told Art Modell he was entering the hospital. Davis routinely kept Modell updated on his medical care since the Browns were footing the bill. But he usually gave Modell a telephone call; this time he arrived at Modell’s office in person.

"You don't have to come down to tell me that," said Modell. "Call me when you get out. I want you to get busy and start lifting weights." The two men chatted briefly, shook hands, and Davis left.[9]

Davis checked into Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland. On the evening of May 17, he lapsed into a coma. At 2 a.m. he coughed once and died.

That morning, Gott was in her Sigma Delta Tau sorority house when the university chaplain approached her with the news. Suddenly, she wanted to be alone.

"I went outside and sat under a tree. At that time, even with the faith that I had in God, it seemed unfair. It seemed like he had done all the right things. He had led a good life. He had overcome obstacles. He had excelled. He would be just a great role model. Not only for black youths, but for everybody. This was a truly good person. If he didn't ask the question—'Why me?'—I think I did. You know, "Why him? Why Ernie?”[10]

                    ****

Although Davis was just 23 when he died, his legacy runs deep. At the time of his death he was eulogized in both houses of the U.S. Congress. His wake in Elmira drew lasted more than 12 hours and drew more than 10,000 mourners who waited in lines two blocks long at the Neighborhood House, a recreation center Davis had spent many hours in as a kid. A message from President Kennedy was read at his funeral, which was attended by nearly every member of the Cleveland Browns.  Davis was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira on May 22.

He was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979. His college coach, Ben Schwartzwalder, said, “I never met another human being as good as Ernie.”

His old high school, Elmira Free Academy, was reborn as Ernie Davis Middle School. A city park across the street was named for him and in 1988 a life-sized bronze statue of Davis was dedicated in front of the school. For years after, Davis’ old high school football coach, Marty Harrigan, placed a bouquet of flowers at the foot of the statue on the anniversary of Davis’s death.

Another statue of Davis stands on the campus of Syracuse University, near the spot where pre-game football rallies are held. A dormitory for the school also bears his name. In 2008, a fictionalized version of his life was presented in a film, The Express. The movie, which fared poorly with critics and at the box office, was based on a book, Ernie Davis: The Elmira Express by Robert C. Gallagher.

Davis was one of 19 players to wear No. 44 at Syracuse. Three of those players were All-Americans: Jim Brown (who recruited Ernie Davis), Ernie Davis (who recruited Floyd Little) and Little. In 2005, Syracuse officially retired the number. So iconic was the number in Syracuse U. lore that the United States Postal Service granted the school permission to use the number in its own zip code, 13244.

Shortly after Davis’s death, the Browns retired Davis’s No. 45 despite the fact that had never played a down in the NFL.

It took Helen Gott a while to get over the loss of Davis. On one of their trips to her parents’ home, Davis brought a gift, a 45rpm record of Our Day Will Come by Ruby & the Romantics. The couple would go down to the basement and dance while they played the record over and over. For years after his death, she could not bear to hear the song. But she finished her studies at Syracuse and Columbia, moved to Kansas City, married a minister and had a nearly half-century career as Helen Gray, a religion writer and editor at Kansas City newspapers.

Davis’s football teammates continued to sing his praises, some more than 50 years after his death. John Mackey credited Davis for encouraging him to woo the woman he would eventually marry, even giving him the keys to his beloved Edsel on occasion.

John Brown, his teammate at Syracuse went on to have a successful career with the Browns and, later, in banking. Brown, who shared an apartment with Davis in Cleveland, named a son after his Heisman-winning teammate. Brown acknowledged that Art Modell and the Browns were gracious in their treatment of Davis but wishes they would have done one more thing:

"I wanted him, hoped for him, to be able to run one doggone kickoff back. I think that would have satisfied him."[11]


[1] “A Life Cut Short,” William Nack, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 4, 1989.
[2] “Ernie Davis’ legacy lives on long after his death,” Steve Wyche, NFL.com, Oct. 8, 2008.
[3] “A Life Cut Short,” William Nack, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 4, 1989.
[4] Life, Jan. 11, 1960
[5] “A Life Cut Short,” William Nack, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 4, 1989.
[6] “Ernie Davis’ legacy lives on long after his death,” Steve Wyche, NFL.com, Oct. 8, 2008.
[7] “A Life Cut Short,” William Nack, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 4, 1989.
[8] “From the woman who loved him: The real greatness of Ernie Davis transcended football,” Sean Kirst, Syracuse Post Standard, Sept. 12, 2008.
[9] “A Life Cut Short,” William Nack, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 4, 1989.
[10] Ibid.
[11] “Ernie Davis’ legacy lives on long after his death,” Steve Wyche, NFL.com, Oct. 8, 2008.

Ernie Davis, football
Born: December 14, 1939
Died: May 18, 1963 (age 23)

Here's a video tribute to Davis produced by Syracuse University:

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Ulrike Maier: 'Skiing mom' was something special, indeed

Ulrike Maier was a special skier. As a member of the powerful Austrian ski team, that's no small feat.

For starters, she was the only mother to compete on the World Cup downhill circuit in the early 1990s. Indeed, she was three months pregnant when she won the first of her two world titles in 1989. Maier - whose nickname was Ulli - came back two years later to claim her second world title in super-G.

Maier, who was denied an Olympic medal in the 1992 Games at Albertville, France, was aiming for redemption in the 1994 Games at Lillehammer, Norway. But Maier and the rest of the World Cup women competitors were so upset with the easy course planned for the 1994 Games that they went on strike before the 1993 Norwegian Games. The tactic worked as Olympic officials changed their plans and switched to a shorter version of the more-difficult men's course for the women's competition.

The trend of women racing on men's courses created alarm among some downhill officials. Improvements in equipment and techniques had caused speeds to soar to what many saw as dangerous ranges. For example, when famed French skier Jean-Claude Killy sped to victory in the first World Cup season in 1967, his average speed over a 1.86-mile course was just over 54 miles per hour. The average top speed for world class women competitors in 1994 was closer to 68 miles per hour.

Maier was coming off her fifth World Cup win on January 21, 1994, in Maribor, Slovenia, when she headed to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, for a final tuneup before the Lillehammer Games. Although the 26-year-old Maier had announced that she would retire after the 1993-94 season and marry the father of her daughter, she reportedly was reconsidering as she was enjoying great success.

As she hurtled down the course at speeds topping 65 miles per hour, Maier's right ski appeared to catch a patch of soft snow two-thirds of the way down, causing her to lose balance and go off course. Her head hit a pile of snow (initial reports erroneously said she struck a timing tower), lost her helmet and tumbled several times down the course.

Although emergency workers quickly reached her and she was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital within minutes, she was declared dead. The cause was a broken neck.

In Austria, where downhill skiing is as popular as professional football is the the U.S., the event was witnessed live on television. Maier was the fifth Austrian ski team member to die in three years. The others were Gernot Reinstadler (ski accident, 1991), Rudolf Nierlich (car crash, 1991), Peter Wirnsberger (ski accident, 1992) and coach Alois Kahr (car crash, 1991).

Here's a video of the accident. Caution: it's quite graphic.

Ulrike Maier, skier
Born: October 22, 1967
Died: January 30, 1994 (age 26)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

Daredevil Harry Rich tempted fate once too often with his "Slide for Life"

Few people have heard of Harry Rich today, but for a brief stretch of the early part of the 20th century he was a major attraction in the upper midwest, even claiming the title of "Demon of the Air."

According to some sources, Rich was a magician, but his enduring claim to fame came as one of those young barnstorming daredevils of his era. The Davenport (Iowa) Democrat and Leader newspaper described Rich's stunt of performing dangerous trapeze tricks from the top of a high bank at a homecoming performance as "foolish ... because anything of that kind, which is done merely to make folks shudder, we deem foolish."

Born in Imperial, Nebraska, on January 24, 1888, Rich likely fell into the orbit of a pair of legendary Nebraska entertainment moguls, brothers Walter and Arthur Savidge. In 1906, the Savidges started what would become the Walter Savidge Amusement Company, a traveling sideshow that had as many as 125 employees and traveled in its own train, mostly between New York and Nebraska, setting up shop with its tents, freak shows, dramatic productions and daredevils wherever there was a chance to make a buck.

The brothers had a falling out just before World War I and Arthur created his own troupe under the pseudonym of Elwin Strong. When Rich registered for the World War I draft, he listed his occupation as an aerial performer for the Elwin Strong Company. By that time, Rich had been married - to another performer, Lillian Hawkins - and had fathered a child. The marriage reportedly took place on stage between performances at one of the troupe's stops.

Rich apparently built his career around balloonist skills, trapeze prowess, raw nerve and extraordinarily strong teeth.

As a balloonist, Rich would soar to heights unimaginable in those days before giving the nervous crowd a brief scare by tumbling from the gondola, only to arrive safely back on earth via parachute. On one such occasion, however, a gust of wind caught Rich shortly before touch down and dragged him through the trees of an apple orchard, where the trees' branches shredded most of his clothing, inflicted numerous lacerations from head to toe and fractured both of his ankles.

As a trapeze artist, Rich rigged his equipment high above the ground, usually atop a building. When no building was available, he erected a tower that stood nearly 100 feet tall. From his lofty perch, Rich would swing out over the huge crowd that inevitably gathered on the street below, performing various feats, all without benefit of nets or any safety devices of any kind. The climax came when Rich pretended to lose his grip, catching the bar with his feet while his head dangled toward the alarmed crowd.

Not satisfied with the trapeze act alone, Rich brought his teeth to center stage, firing a 200-pound cannon while it was suspended from his mouth or pulling as many as three automobiles by his teeth alone.

But none of that compared to his signature act, his "Slide for Life." While it is hard to know when Rich perfected "the slide," it was the dramatic finale to his appearances after 1919.

In the "Slide for Life," a tightwire was strung from the top of a building to the ground. Early accounts had Rich riding the wire to the ground while resting on the small of his back, but later reports described a trick far more dangerous. One description claims that Rich fastened a special contraption to his head, went into a headstand on the tightwire atop the building and slid the length of the wire to the ground while inverted. Another (and probably more likely) description has Rich making the descent while dangling from the wire while attached through a specially designed mouthpiece.

On July 1, 1925, Rich prepared for an appearance at State Fair Park near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Rich, who had recently arrived from an appearance in Houston, Texas, spent part of the day doing a splice repair on his tightwire. That evening, he began his "Slide for Life" from the top of the fairgrounds' horse pavilion.

As he neared the end of the descent, the wire snapped and Rich tumbled some 30 feet to the ground, landing on his left side. He broke his left arm and left leg and suffered a fractured skull. He died in a Milwaukee hospital four hours later. He was 36 years old.

A ring once owned and worn by Rich showed up on the PBS program, Antiques Roadshow, 85 years after his death. Here's a video of that segment:

Harry Rich, magician/aerial performer
Born: January 24, 1888
Died: July 1, 1925 (age 36)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Dinah Washington, 'Queen of the Blues,' dead at age 39

Dinah Washington was looking forward to Christmas.

After six weeks out west, singing for adoring audiences in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, she was finally settled in her Detroit home where she would spend her first Christmas with her husband of five months, Dick "Night Train" Lane.

She and her husband had just returned from Detroit Metropolitan Airport with her two sons from previous marriages, who had flown home from their preparatory school in Boston. Lane turned in early to rest for what promised to be a busy weekend.

Lane was a standout cornerback for the Detroit Lions professional football team, which was scheduled to play its season finale at Chicago in two days and the team would be leaving for Chicago the next day.

Washington joined her husband in the bedroom and they watched television together before he drifted off to sleep.

Around 3:45 a.m., Lane was awakened by the buzzing of the television set, which remained on long after the station they were watching had signed off. After seeing Washington lying on the floor, unconscious and unresponsive, he called for help.

Dr. B.C. Ross responded as soon as he could, but at 4:50 a.m. he pronounced Washington dead. She was 39 years old.

Those closest to Washington were not surprised by the cause of death: an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. For several years, Washington had struggled with her weight and had turned to pharmaceutical solutions, including controversial mercury injections and prescription diet pills, to which she may have become addicted.

Washington also struggled to find the right man in her life. As she sang in her first hit, Evil Gal Blues:

I've got men to the left, men to the right,
Men every day and men every night!
I've got so many men, I don't know what to do.

In her short life, Washington was married seven times. In addition to these legal nuptials, she had several more "rent-a-husbands." Most of these relationships were with men who were merely opportunistic, looking for an easy meal ticket who was also easy on the eyes.

But, in Dick "Night Train" Lane, her friends say, she finally found the kind of supportive - and self-supportive - man she'd been looking for.

"She was very, very happy," said her personal secretary, Shirley Couch, right after Washington's death on December 15, 1963.

Born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on August 29, 1924, she moved to Chicago with her family in 1928 and began singing in her church choir with her mother as a young girl. By the time she was 15, young Ruth Jones had won a talent contest at Chicago's Regal Theater and began performing with the Sallie Martin Gospel Singers.

Jones idolized Billie Holiday, though, and began sneaking off to sing at night clubs though just 17 years old. Her mother disapproved and Jones dropped out of school and married John Young two months before her 18th birthday. The marriage lasted just three months. Besides singing at Chicago nightclubs like Joe Louis' Rhumboogie Cafe, Jones worked as a washroom attendant at the Garrick Lounge, where she also sang in the Downbeat Room.

Music manager Joe Glaser caught her singing at the Garrick and tipped off bandleader Lionel Hampton, who hired her and gave her the stage name of Dinah Washington. Her first recordings were made under the direction of songwriter and jazz critic Leonard Feather in 1943.

Washington met husband No. 2, Hampton drummer George Jenkins, in 1944. The couple had a son born in June 1946, a few months before they divorced and about the same time she left the Hampton band to pursue a solo career with the new label, Mercury Records, which promoted her as "Queen of the Blues."

Between 1946 and 1961, Washington would record more than 400 songs for Mercury. She also married - and divorced - four more husbands in that same time span while adding a second son.

Washington broke out as a crossover star in 1959 when her recording of "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" broke into the Top Ten popular charts and won a Grammy as top rhythm and Blues record. The next year she scored two more pop hits, teaming up with Brook Benton for "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" and "A Rockin' Good Day."

But Washington's pop sales slipped in the early 1960s and she jumped to Morris Levy's Roulette label, which was totally immersed into the twist craze after establishing itself with such diversely popular artists as rockers Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, folk singer Jimmie Rodgers and the novelty act, the Playmates.

Washington recorded nearly 100 sides in her three years with Roulette and kept busy with night club performances, even taking a stab at running her own club. In February 1961 she took over the Roberts Show Club on Chicago's South Side and renamed it Dinahland. She underwrote the club's operations for months before abandoning the project.

Washington enjoyed the trappings of her success. Some associates even called her a spendthrift.

She once bought an eight-passenger airplane but sold it at a loss after just three flights because it was too slow. On an extended tour of Europe she spent $100 a day on phone calls back home just to chat. She owned at least six mink coats and bought several more for her background singers.

On the day before her death, Washington reportedly bought some $2,400 worth of Christmas presents and wrapped them while waiting for a mink-trimmed sofa to be delivered. Washington was happy with her relatively new husband.

"He's one of the few very real men I've met in my life," she said of Lane. "I kind of think he'll be the one to grow old with."

Lane, whose star power was equal to Washington's at the time of their marriage, had risen to football fame from a hard-scrabble Texas background. Born to a prostitute and pimp in Austin, Texas, on April 16, 1928, Lane was abandoned in a dumpster when 3 months old and was rescued by Ella Lane, a widow with two children.

Lane played football in high school and junior college and served in the U.S. Army before taking a laborer's job in Los Angeles. Frustrated by the work, he persuaded the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League to give him a tryout.

The Rams gave him a chance, trying him first in the offensive line. By the time he moved to the defensive backfield, he had picked up his nickname of Night Train from a song of the same name. As a rookie cornerback in 1952, Lane set a league record for interceptions in a season with 14 in 12 games. He also gained a reputation as a fierce hitter and his "Night Train Necktie" eventually led to the NFL's ban of the clothesline tackle.

Lane first met Washington during his rookie NFL season. After he was traded to the Chicago Cardinals in 1954, he would occasionally run into her on the streets of her adopted home town. Even after he moved to the Detroit Lions, Lane would catch Washington's nightclub act whenever possible.

After Lane was divorced from his first wife in January 1963, he began dating Washington. By June they had decided to wed, which they did on July 2 in Las Vegas.

Both Lane and Washington were inducted into their respective career halls of fame - Washington into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and Lane into the National Football League Hall of Fame  in 1974. Lane died on Jan. 29, 2002, of a heart attack at age 73.

Dinah Washington, blues singer
Born: August 29, 1924
Died: December 14, 1963 (age 39)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon. 

 

 

For bullfighting legend, fan pressure led him to an early death

Manuel Rodriguez Sanchez - better known as Manolete - stepped wearily to the microphone in an anteroom of the San Sebastian, Spain, bullring, looking far older than a man who had recently marked his 30th birthday.

Manolete, the most celebrated bullfighter of his day, had just killed his 1,000th bull and the radio announcer asked him to comment on his achievement.

Speaking in a soft voice, barely audible over the roar from his fans in the stadium just beyond the room, Manolete delivered a somber response. "They are asking for more than I can give," he said. "Always more and more. All I can say is I wish the bullfighting season was over."

Manolete had actually considered retirement a year earlier but was persuaded to return for one last go-round in the 1947 season. Antonia Lupe Sino, a Spanish actress and Manolete's long-time girlfriend, did not think the decision would satisfy the matador's rabid fans.

"They'll never let him go until they see him dead," she said.

Less than a month after his depressing radio interview, Manolete, the most famous bullfighter of the 20th century lay dead, killed by a bull of the same Miura breed that killed his great uncle and many other famed Spanish matadors.

Matadors ran in Manolete's family, which came from Cordoba, Spain - the heart of bullfighting country. His mother was the widow of a matador before she married the man who would be his father, also a matador. His father went blind and died when Manolete was 5 years old.

After serving one month as a novice, Manolete was promoted to full-fledged bullfighter around his 13th birthday. The slim, clumsy teenager was spotted by Jose Camara, a retired bullfighter and agent who saw great potential. Thus began a life-long association that saw Manolete improve his footwork to the point of a classic gracefulness, refine his bold style and perfect a stoic technique that would vault him to the top of the bullfighting world. He was widely praised as the successor to Juan Belmonte, the Spanish bullfighting legend who finally retired in 1935.

By the time he reached his 20s, Manolete was considered a Spanish cultural treasure. He commanded huge fees and filled arenas with fans who applauded his skills and lined up days before his appearances to guarantee a seat.

During the World War II years, Manolete did most of his fighting in Latin America, where his reputation continued to grow. Fans fought over tickets to his events and his cult-like following resulted in Manolete dolls for little girls and Anis Manolete liquor for adults. He made an estimated $4 million in the 1940s and even drove a Buick imported from the U.S., even though fuel for it was not readily available in Spain.

Manolete's rock star image also played a role in his eventual downfall.

Promoters recognized his box-office potential and, rather than risking getting him hurt, started supplying "arranged bulls" for his appearances. These bulls had shaved horns, an illegal but common practice, that made injury by goring less likely.

Manolete also became a target for young matadors intent on replacing him as Numero Uno. The wear and tear of so many fights became obvious as Manolete approached his 30th birthday on July 4, 1947.

His killing of bulls, which he had elevated to an art form with his bold, stylish technique, was becoming a bit more sloppy. The gorings - he sustained somewhere between 11 and 33, according to various sources - were becoming more common. He was reportedly drinking more and the erosion of his skills was becoming more apparent with each fight.

In the summer of 1947, Manolete was challenged by a 21-year-old up-and-comer, Luis Miguel Dominguin. A joint appearance was set for August 28, 1947, in the small bullring at Linares, Spain.

Over 10,000 people squeezed into the Linares ring to watch Manolete, Gitanillo de Triana and Dominguin do battle with a string of Miura bulls, considered the fiercest and most unpredictable fighting bulls on the planet.

Manolete delivered a lackluster performance in his first kill, which was followed by a brilliant display by Dominguin in a fight that had the crowd roaring with approval. As Manolete entered the ring for his second fight of the day, he was greeted by a smattering of boos.

The bull he drew was named Islero. Islero was known as a fierce fighter, but had poor eyesight and a tendency to chop with his right horn.

Manolete appeared to be on top of his game. Fifteen times he stood his ground, using only his cape as Islero passed, his sharp horns just inches from the gold embroidery on Manolete's fabled "suit of lights." Emboldened, Manolete turned his back on Islero, his scarlet cape behind him, as he prepared for El Momento Supremo, the kill.

Instead of delivering the fatal blow from the side - the more prudent approach - Manolete favored a more straightforward attack. Clamboring over Islero's horns, Manolete drove his sword between Islero's shoulders to the hilt.

Islero paused briefly then hooked his horn into Manolete's thigh, severing his femoral artery, and tossed him aside. As blood gushed from the wound, a hobbling Manolete tried to stop the flow with his hands. Dominguin was among those who rushed to Manolete's aid and carried him from the arena. Islero staggered to the fence, stumbled to his knees and died.

As he lay in the infirmary, Manolete lit a cigarette and asked in a weak voice, "Is the bull dead?" After being informed that the bull was, indeed, dead, Manolete said that he could not feel his legs.

Doctors began what would be a series of transfusions of dry plasma. At 11 p.m. they transfered him to the hospital in Linares and summoned Dr. Luis Gimenez Guinea from Madrid, who arrived around 4 a.m. the next morning. At 5:07 a.m., Manolete uttered his final words, "My mother will not be happy about this. Don Luis, I can't see. I can't see anything!"

Tributes poured in from across Spain and the bullfighting world. Manolete was recognized as one of the most importanrt matadors in bullfighting history who "died fighting and killed before dying."

He was buried in his hometown of Cordoba, home of the Cordoba Museum of Bullfighting, which is dedicated to him. His bloody "suit of lights" was put on exhibition at the Museum of Bullfighting in Madrid and the head of Islero, the bull that killed him, is displayed in the Museum of Bullfighting in Seville.

Islero was also honored by Italian automaker Ferruccio Lamborghini, who was born just a year before Manolete. Lamborghini so admired Spanish bulls for their fierce fighting skills that he launched a line of Miura sports cars in the mid-1960s. In 1968, he introduced the Islero as his newest sports car.

Manolete's life has been the subject of many books and in 2007 it became the subject of a movie. The film, Manolete, starred Adrian Brody as Manolete and Penelope Cruz as his girlfriend, Antonia Lupe Sino. Sino starred in several films after Manolete's death before dying of a stroke at age 42 on Sept. 13, 1959.

The young matador who challenged Manolete to the fatal encounter in Linares, Luis Miguel Dominguin, pronounced himself "Numero Uno" after Manolete's death and went on to have a distinguished and colorful career. Some bullfighter watchers even say he was the best of the 20th Century.

Wearing flashy uniforms designed by his friend Pablo Picasso, Dominguin was a multimillionaire with 2,300 kills to his credit before his 30th birthday. He dated some of the world's most glamorous women, including Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth and Brigitte Bardot. He counted Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway among his closest friends.

Dominguin retired three times but couldn't stay away from the sport he loved until his final fight in Barcelona at age 47 in 1973. Late in his career, he explained the lure of the sport:

"It is like being with the woman who pleases you most in the world when her husband comes in with a pistol. The bull is the woman, the husband and the pistol, all in one. No other life I know can give you all that."

Manuel Rodriguez Sanchez (Manolete), bullfighter
Born: July 4, 1917
Died: August 29, 1947 (age 30)

Photo caption: The death of Manolete. Guillermo, his sword-handler (left), with his hand against the wound trying to stop the blood. Luis Miguel Dominguin (right), with cape. Photo by Paco Caño.

Here is a brief documentary on Manolete's life:

 

Here is film of Manolete's last fight:

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.