DCS: amanda blake

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So, it may be too soon, I know/The feeling takes so long to grow/If I tell you today will you turn me away/And let me go?/I don't wanna lose you

Beverly Neill was working as a telephone operator when she began to take some small roles in a few MGM productions. Using the stage name “Amanda Blake” , she appeared with Judy Garland and James Mason in the first remake of A Star is Born  in 1954. The following year, she signed on for the role for which she would be most remembered. Amanda played barkeeper Miss Kitty Russell for nineteen years on Gunsmoke,  the longest running Western in television history. In 1968, Amanda was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. She was the third performer, after Tom Mix and Gary Cooper, to be given such an honor.

After 425 episodes of Gunsmoke,  Amanda called it quits, commenting “‘God, if I have to put on that damn bustle and those curls one more time, I’m gonna snap!” The series lasted one season without Amanda before it was canceled. Amanda guest-starred on several television shows including The Match Game and a Gunsmoke  cast reunion on The Love Boat.  But soon, the demand for roles dwindled and Amanda devoted her new-found free time to animal-welfare causes. She partially financed the start-up of the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and devoted a great deal of time and money in support of its efforts.

A life-long smoker of two to three packs a day, Amanda was diagnosed with mouth and throat cancer. She underwent oral cancer surgery and entered therapy to regain speech. She was moved to become an advocate for warning labels on cigarette packages and spoke before a United States House of Representatives subcommittee.

Amanda passed away in 1989 at the age of 60. Despite her cancer, the official cause of death was listed as cardiopulmonary arrest due to liver failure and CMV hepatitis, which is AIDS-related. It is believed that Amanda contracted the disease from her last husband who was openly bisexual and had passed away three years earlier.

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from my sketchbook: vicki morgan

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tell me what you want, what you really really want

Vicki Morgan wanted everything – money, sex, drugs, fame – and for the most part, she got it.

Born in Colorado, the sixteen-year old willowy beauty was sent to a Catholic maternity home for girls in Los Angeles to hide her family’s shame over her unwanted pregnancy. At seventeen, she married Earle Lamm, thirty years her senior. He was interested in Vicki only as a sex object, persuading her to join in lesbian threesomes and pedophilliac role-play fantasy in which he dressed her as a schoolgirl, in exchange for a lavish lifestyle.

She began working as an usher at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre. She hoped to rub elbows with “Hollywood types” and jump-start her dreams of modeling and acting. It was at Graumann’s that young Vicki met 54-year old multimillionaire Alfred Bloomingdale, of the famed New York department store. Bloomingdale mentioned that he had a daughter Vicki’s age and the two should get together for tennis. Tennis was the last thing on Bloomingdale’s mind.

Vicki became Bloomingdale’s mistress. For twelve years, Bloomingdale showered Vicki with jewelry, clothes, vacations — anything she wished for… and she wished for a lot! Bloomingdale paraded Vicki around in front of friends and colleagues like a trophy. And Vicki loved every minute of it. Betsy Bloomingdale, while fully aware of the relationship between Vicki and her husband, refused to acknowledge it. During her years with Bloomingdale, Vicki also had a whirlwind tryst with Princess al-Jauhara, daughter of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. They partied long and hard and their affair ended with — in Vicki’s words — “a sex and drugs bacchanal cruise to Hawaii.” Upon returning from the cruise, Vicki checked into rehab for treatment for addiction and depression.

In 1982, Alfred was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Betsy took control of the couple’s finances and immediately cut Vicki off. Vicki hired noted attorney Marvin Mitchelson and filed a palimony suit. The pre-trial coverage caused a huge scandal in Washington political and social circles because of Bloomingdale’s connections to President and Mrs. Reagan and his membership to the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Vicki learned of a dinner meeting Mitchelson took at the White House. She lost trust in Mitchelson and fired him. At the trial, Betsy testified that Vicki was a very well-compensated prostitute and was entitled to nothing more than she already received. The judge agreed and the the case was dismissed.

With no income, Vicki began to sell jewelry and other possessions. She also prepared to write a “tell-all” book, detailing the sexual escapades she shared with famous businessmen and politicians. She was forced out of her plush Bloomingdale-supported LA apartment and into a small condo in the San Fernando Valley. She shared the condo with Marvin Pancoast, a man with a history of mental illness including schizophrenia, whom she met during her brief stay at a drug rehab clinic. Their time together was short, as the condo’s management threatened eviction for non-payment of rent. Vicki demanded that Marvin find alternative living quarters for the two of them, but none of his suggestions met with her satisfaction.

At 3:20 a.m. on July 7, 1983, Marvin Pancoast wandered into a North Hollywood police station and informed the desk officer on duty, “I just killed someone.” He willingly gave details to the police. He told how he was tired of hearing her complaints and being treated as “her little slave boy”. He explained that he searched the garage, found a baseball bat, returned to her bedroom and beat her to death. Vicki was a month shy of her 31st birthday. Investigators found the scene at the condo just as Marvin had described. Marvin was sentenced to twenty-six years. He died of AIDS in prison after serving eight.

A subsequent appeal to the palimony suit resulted in a settlement of $200,000. The money was awarded to Vicki’s grown son.

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IF: mesmerizing

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This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “mesmerizing”.
It's the same kind of story/That seems to come down from long ago/Two friends having coffee together/When something flies by their window
In his doctoral dissertation of 1766, De influxu planetarum in corpus humanum  [“The Influence of the Planets upon the Human Body”], physician Franz Mesmer theorized that a natural energy force exists and flows continuously over the body. He publicized his belief that this energy was influenced by the positions of the stars, planets and other natural occurrences. He conducted numerous tests on this “animal magnetism” (as he called it) using techniques of touching, intense staring, waving magnetic wands and even the high-pitched tones of the glass armonica.

Mesmer left Vienna in 1777 after his claim to bring a cure for blindness failed on an 18-year old patient. He moved to Paris where he continued to proliferate his theories. In 1784, King Louis XVI organized a committee to investigate Mesmer’s practices and claims. The group of four prominent and honorable commissioners from the Royal Academy of Sciences included:

  • Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, who assembled the first list of elements and was also instrumental in the development of the metric system
  • Jean Sylvain Bailly, a noted astronomer and scientific historian
  • Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a respected physician and supporter of the smallpox vaccine pioneered by colleague Edward Jenner
  • Benjamin Franklin, inventor and American ambassador to France

After careful consideration and investigation, the committee ultimately determined Mesmer to be full of shit. He was driven into exile and died in shame in obscurity in 1815.

And he outlived every member of the committee*.

* It is interesting to note that two of the four commissioners of the investigating committee, Antoine Lavoisier and Jean Sylvain Bailly, died on the guillotine during the Reign of Terror after the onset of the French Revolution. Although Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin advocated the use of the mechanized decapitation device, he did not die on it. Another physician with a similar name, Dr. J.M.V. Guillotin from Lyon, France, was executed on the guillotine. Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who despised and shunned his association with the execution apparatus, died of natural causes in 1814.

Based on stories about the many, many illegitimate children he fathered, Benjamin Franklin obviously died from exhaustion in 1790.

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from my sketchbook: fanny adams

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You're just my size/But if you're so wise/See the chick in black/Maybe she'll come back
On a bright August afternoon in 1867, eight-year old Fanny Adams, along with her little sister Lizzie and her friend Minnie Warner, went to play near Flood Meadow, just up Tan House Lane from her home in southeast England.

While the girls played, they were approached by Frederick Baker, a 29-year old, well-dressed solicitor’s clerk. Baker offered Minnie and Lizzie three halfpence to run off and buy candy. He offered Fanny one halfpence to accompany him up the road to the village of Shalden. Fanny took the coin, but refused to leave. Baker picked Fanny up and carried her into a nearby field and out of the sight of her playmates. Unfazed, Lizzie and Minnie played for several more hours until they decided to head home.

Fanny’s mother questioned the girls as to Fanny’s whereabouts. The girls told her of the man and the monetary offerings. A panicked Mrs. Adams and a neighbor ran up Tan House Lane and were met by Frederick Baker, calmly strolling towards them. They asked him about Fanny. He told them he had given the girls money for sweets, as he often does, but that was all. He said the three girls left together. Impressed by his calm demeanor, his fine clothes and his air of respectability, the women let him go.

As evening fell and Fanny had still not returned home, more of the Adams’ neighbors formed a search party and scoured a wider area. Around 7 PM, they discovered Fanny’s horribly butchered remains strewn across the field at the end of Tan House Lane. Her severed head, eyes removed, was perched atop a pole. Her torso had been cut open and her internal organs were tossed in all directions. Her arms and legs had also been dismembered and lay in several locations throughout the field. Mrs. Adams ran to where her husband and some colleagues were playing cricket. Upon hearing the full report from his wife, Mr. Adams went home to get a shotgun and hunt for Frederick Baker, but neighbors talked him out of it.

Later in the evening, police arrested Frederick Baker at the office of his employer, respected solicitor William Clement. Baker’s clothes had several unexplained blood stains on them. A search of his desk yielded two blood-stained knives as well as a personal journal with the August 24 entry: “Killed a young girl. It was fine and hot”. When police questioned him as to why his pants and shoes were wet. He said he liked to walk through water and followed that with a sarcastic “I won’t hang for that,  will I?”

At an inquest (sort of a grand jury), Baker maintained his innocence, despite the testimony of several witnesses and a coroner’s report identifying a rock from the field as the murder weapon and the two knives as the instruments of dismemberment. At the close of the trial, the jury took fifteen minutes to return with a guilty verdict. Frederick Baker was hanged on Christmas Eve 1867,  before a crowd of 5,000.

An elaborate headstone for Fanny Adams’ grave was purchased from public donations.

(In 1869, the Royal Navy began issuing tins of mutton stew as meal rations to sailors. The tasteless meals were likened to the remains of Fanny Adams. “Sweet Fanny Adams” became slang for anything worthless and was eventually shortened to “Sweet F. A.”)

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IF: mysterious

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This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “mysterious”.
Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour.
On Saturday, I went to meet my son at a free concert at the Great Plaza on the Delaware River’s waterfront. Instead of driving and fighting for a parking space on a busy holiday weekend, I took the train into downtown Philadelphia. I disembarked at the Market East station and headed toward to 11th Street stop of the Market-Frankford subway. I passed through the turnstiles and waited on the platform for the next subway train to arrive. The station slowly welcomed more passengers — an interesting array of humanity, the majority of which I would, most likely, never ever see again for as long as I live. One man paced the tile floor — the full length of the station — several times with his head down and a determined gait. He muttered unintelligibly under his breath — the only word I could understand was “fuck” and each utterance rang out clear as a bell. He also looked straight at me on several passes of his confined journey. Two women in their twenties argued loudly and bitterly about “taking my fucking money, you bitch”,  but I didn’t hear the outcome, as they moved to the very end of the platform and their disagreement became muffled echoes. Finally, the train clattered along the tracks and hissed to a halt in the station. The doors whooshed open and, after a number of riders exited, I boarded with the other commuters.

The train rattled and shook until it rested briefly at 8th Street, its next scheduled stop. The doors opened and two men entered and sat down in a nearby double seat. One man was obviously older, and by the looks of his leathery, wind-burned skin, I’d say by about two hundred years. He was a husk of a human and it was as though his entire, intact skeleton had been extracted. He was bent over like a palm tree in a hurricane and a dirty T-shirt hung loosely from his withered upper torso. His pants were just as ill-fitting and rivaled his shirt in the cleanliest department. He did not wear a green and mesh Notre Dame baseball cap, so much as it was perched on the dome of his cranium. He sat and stared at a spot several inches in front of his crooked nose and his toothless mouth drooped agape at the base of his head.

The old-timer’s traveling companion was destined to evolve into a similar state as the old man in a few years time. His skin — or more precisely, his hide — had the appearance of scabby beef jerky. It was deeply wrinkled and looked like it belonged on a man twice his age. His hair, although close-cropped, was matted and unkempt and undoubtedly filthy. Upon first glance, his shirt displayed a pattern, but closer inspection merely revealed it to be an accumulation of stains. His shorts were threadbare and equally as grubby. His sinewy legs ended at a pair of lace-less sneakers. He fumbled with a bag from FYE (a nationwide chain of entertainment media stores, specializing in CDs and DVDs) and withdrew the last possible thing anyone would ever have imagined.

A DVD box set of a complete season of Little House on the Prairie.

The old man continued his blank stare into space, as the younger man methodically unwrapped the DVD. He removed the outer cardboard slipcase and carefully placed it in the bag. He opened the plastic box that housed and protected the DVDs. He examined the top disk, admiring the likeness of Michael Landon emblazoned on its surface and lifted the small descriptive booklet that accompanied the set from beneath the two clips that held it in place. He snapped the box shut and, as if he was about to study some fantastic literary tome, began to read the booklet from page one.

As I stared incredulously at this mysterious pair, a stream of questions poured into my head, including, but not limited to: “Where do these guys live?”, “Where do these guys work?”, “What did they wear on their job interview and how did they pass the interview process?”, “Which season of Little House on the Prairie  did he buy? The one where Mary went blind? The one where Almanzo has a stroke?”, “Which season did he love so much that he must own?… or perhaps he just heard about the show and this is his introduction.”, “Where will he watch the DVDs? At home? Does he have  a home? Does this guy, who can’t even keep his clothes clean, even own  a DVD player? … and, if so, what the hell kind of priorities does he have?”

The subway stopped at my destination. My questions remained unanswered. The mystery remained a mystery.

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from my sketchbook: an exercise in selfishness

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Oh, what miracle has made you the way you are?
My wife’’s grandmother turned 101 this past July. When I met her nearly thirty years ago, she was a feisty, strong-willed woman who called things as she saw them and took no shit from anyone. She came from humble beginnings in Russia and lived an even more humble existence upon her arrival in the United States. She single-handedly raised two children – and by “single-handedly”, I mean that she got absolutely no help from her perpetually out-of-work husband. Eventually, her husband, through some shrewd maneuvering, became prosperous and his latent financial success allowed her to enjoy the life she always longed for and certainly deserved. She doted on and cared deeply for her children, their ensuing spouses and subsequent children. She hosted elaborate Sunday dinners and made sure everyone was abundantly satisfied. She was generous to a fault, but she also enjoyed frequent gambling excursions to “the casinas” — as she called them — to win more money with which to be charitable.

My wife’s grandmother always held a special place in her heart for her grandchildren and that place grew larger as offspring multiplied with progeny of their own. With the birth of my son twenty-four years ago, the family welcomed the first great-grandchild of the generation. I began referring to my wife’s grandmother as “GG”, short for “great grandmother”. She approvingly responded to the nickname.

GG lived on her own until well into her 90s. She currently resides in a gracious assisted-living facility. Although her memory is failing with each passing day, her spunky spirit still regularly surfaces. She was lively and animated at her 100th birthday celebration last year, cracking wise in front of an audience of extended family and friends. More recently, she wandered into another resident’s room late one night and demanded that she ““get the hell of my bed!”” Lately, though, her pace has slowed, her recognition skills have diminished and her demeanor wavers between happy and terribly sad. After all, she is 101.

My wife’s cousin Cuz went to visit GG this past week, as she is his grandmother, too. He hadn’t seen her in a long while and arrived to find her in bed, quiet and melancholy. He brought her some ice cream — an all-time favorite — and it seemed to perk her up a bit, but GG was still despondent and detached. Cuz concluded his visit, kissed GG goodbye and went out to his car. On his way home to see his own family, he called his sister. Sis answered the phone in a harried manner, obviously preoccupied with plans and activities concerning her own two children. Cuz reported on GG’s status and suggested that Sis pay her a visit of her own. Sis hesitated, then said, “You mean now?  Can’t it wait until Friday?”

Cuz was silent for a moment, and then answered, “I don’’t know, Sis. I’m not a doctor.”

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from my sketchbook: corinne calvet

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That's the way the croissant crumbles
While studying criminal law at the Sorbonne in her native Paris, Corinne Calvet dabbled in acting on French radio dramas and on the stage. She appeared in a few French-produced films until noted producer Hal Wallis brought her to Hollywood and cast her in Rope of Sand  opposite Burt Lancaster in 1949. She went on to appear in a string of films during the 1950s, playing French characters in both dramas and comedies, including the James Cagney war picture What Price Glory,  for which she also performed songs for the soundtrack. Corinne continued to act in French films while playing roles in American television series and films. Her last role was in 1982’s cult fantasy The Sword and The Sorcerer.

In 1952, Corinne sued Zsa Zsa Gabor for slander after she spread rumors that Corinne was not actually French.

The three-times married and three-times divorced, Corinne lamented, in her autobiography, that Hollywood never offered her roles that fully showcased her acting ability. Corinne passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage in 2001 at the age of 76.

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from my sketchbook: bud jamison and vernon dent

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spread out!
Bud Jamison has the dubious distinction of delivering the first “eye poke” in a Three Stooges short. It was in 1934’s Woman Haters  and he applied the move to Moe, Larry and Curly in succession. Bud also recited his lines in that short in verse. He went on to be a staple supporting player in hundreds of Stooges shorts playing policemen, judges, servants, crooks – whatever was required. He liked to entertain the crew with his beautiful tenor singing voice, which was featured in only a handful of the comedy two-reelers. In addition to The Three Stooges, Bud appeared alongside Charlie Chaplin, Abbott and Costello, Buster Keaton and Zasu Pitts. He was also a reliable stock player for producers Mack “Keystone Kops” Sennett and Hal “Our Gang” Roach.

Bud was a diabetic and a devout Christian Scientist. It is believed that, because of his religious beliefs, he refused medication for an infection that had become gangrenous. Shortly after wrapping on the musical comedy Nob Hill  in 1944, Bud succumbed to a heart attack brought on by the infection. He was 50 years old.

— —

After great success with Mack Sennett in the 1920s, Vernon Dent joined Columbia Pictures in their short subject department in 1935. He appeared in more Three Stooges shorts than any other supporting actor. Vernon, playing any number of exasperated authority figures, worked as the perfect foil for the Stooges outlandish antics. During his years at Columbia, Vernon became very close friends with Shemp Howard, as well as his brothers Moe and Jerry (Curly) and Larry Fine. Moe often spoke glowingly about the barbershop singing he’d perform with Vernon and Bud Jamison on movie sets.

Vernon was also a diabetic and as the years went on, the disease took its toll. Vernon has become completely blind by the 1950s. His condition, however, did not interrupt his acting career. He would often deliver his lines seated at a table or standing in a stationary position. In 1955, Vernon attended the funeral of his friend and co-star Shemp Howard. Fellow character actor Emil Sitka, a veteran of countless Stooges shorts himself, recalled Vernon being led into the ceremony. “He was staring straight ahead,” related Sitka, “and was told ‘This is Shemp.’ by his guide, who then placed Vernon’s hand on Shemp’s. It was then I realized that Vernon was blind. I had worked with him and never knew it.”

After over 400 film appearances, Vernon finally retired from show business due to declining health. He died of a heart attack in 1963 at the age of 68.

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