Grover Jones and the Birth of Hollywood, Part Two

Motion pictures had been made sporadically in Hollywood since 1908.  Its good weather helped spark a movement west by filmmakers and the area would soon transplant New York as the movie industry capitol.  One person drawn to Hollywood area was Carl Laemmle, a Jewish immigrant from Germany who gave up the clothing business and became a theater owner after seeing the profit potential of nickelodeons.  Disgusted, like many theater owners, at having to pay fees to the near-monopoly operated by the Motion Picture Trust (their control was based on being backed by Edison who owned patents on various equipment), Laemmle decided to make his own films.

He formed a motion picture company with partners in 1911.  Initially based in New York, Laemmle had made the move to California by 1913, bought out his partners, and firmly planted the Universal Film Company out west.  He purchased over 200 acres near Hollywood and set up his “film factory.” Universal was to become the first (and oldest continuing) major film company.  And Laemmle was to become the first Hollywood mogul. 

Into this new world came Grover Jones.

As he stepped from the train in LA the 20 year-old (he claimed he was down to .50 in his pocket), the film-loving Hoosier must have felt drawn to Universal as if by a magnet. 

His first few months in Hollywood were rocky ones.  If indeed Laemmle had invited Grover out (something the mogul would have immediately forgotten, as was his habit with such spur of the moment invitations), and if Grover thought it was to be a writer, he was disappointed.  His early days were a struggle (inceville).  His first job at Universal appears to have been living on the lot and tending the studio’s chickens. Probably not the glamorous life that he had envisioned.  After all, he could have stayed in West Terre Haute and done that.

To insinuate himself into the Hollywood scene Grover also took extra or day player jobs.  He was most often cast as an Indian in the westerns that were being churned out daily.  With the aid of a makeup called bolemania he would darken his skin in order to receive the free lunch and $1.00 a day given to extras.  But he soon decided acting was not his calling and took a job as a painter on the Universal lot for $15.00 a week.

Initially he was a “paint-pumper” whose job was to pump paint into a sprayer.  The paint shop adjoined a barn that housed Charlie the elephant and beyond was a veritable menagerie of camels, lions, bears, and other animals used in the movies.  Grover could always tell when it was nearing 4:00 when various roars went up from the “zoo” in anticipation of feeding time.  Charlie the elephant could be especially vexatious as he had a tendency to go berserk when penned in his barn (rumor had it that he had already killed two men).  He could only be calmed down by his trainer, a man named Dynamite.  Grover observed that Dynamite could actually make Charlie cry, merely by talking to him as a parent would a miscreant child.

He painted whatever was assigned to him: sets, dressing room, offices. In the fall of 1914 he was absentmindedly painting a number on a dressing room when the door was pulled open.  There appeared a grotesque face that scared the bejeezus out of Grover, causing him to fall back.  Trying to recover his dignity he realized it was only Lon Chaney (Sr.) in another of his fantastic makeup transformations that made him famous on his way to the set.  Jones rightly believed that Chaney was one of the real geniuses in Hollywood and the incident began a lifelong friendship between the two.  Painting seemed to allow Grover’s mind to wander and another time while trimmimg a window he unthinkingly opened it to have a look inside.  In doing so he became an unwitting—and unwanted– part of a pie-throwing scene being shot.  Not only did he ruin the scene, but the canvas set had to be repainted and the scene re-shot. Of course he caught hell and had to slink away.

Grover celebrated his 21^st birthday by looking back at his year in Hollywood and sending money home to his folks.  He missed them and wanted desperately to get his dad out of the mines.  The money, he hoped, would enable them to follow him to California.

At first he missed being around the “stars.” But as he took on more responsibility as a painter, the job allowed him to roam the studio and observe all aspects of the business, getting a feel for motion picture making, the work of the stars and directors.  It allowed the boy from West Terre Haute to closely observe the birth and evolution of Hollywood and the studio system.

Ever curious, he was always observing, always asking questions about the studio and how it worked, although he felt few people took him seriously because he was “just a painter.”  But some did recognize that the “hick kid” had promise.  Actors Max Asher and Fritzi Brunette (both stars of their days) took him seriously.  Another was an assistant to director Allen Curtis (he directed nearly 300 silents) who, when he learned of Grover’s interest in writing gave him a copy of a script to study (even though he thought writers were “clucks”).  Grover studied the screenplay and borrowed a typewriter.  At first he merely copied the script to get the feel of how screenplays were organized, etc.

No matter what his position, Grover was always thinking ahead.  One senses that he had an enormous inner drive to succeed, to elevate himself above his meager origins and the claustrophobia of the dark mines.  While riding the interurban to work one day he was seized by an idea.  Films of the day contained many technical or continuity mistakes, some of which were caught by sharp-eyed moviegoers.  His idea was to play off this by purposely making films with mistakes imbedded within them.  Then theaters could hold contests with the audience member who caught the most errors winning a prize.  When he mentioned his idea to several colleagues they scoffed at the idea.  But he sent his scheme to Laemmle anyway.  The kid was a striver.

But even strivers have roadblocks put in their way.  The studio, like other “factories,” sometimes laid off staff when cost cutting was necessary.  Grover was among those furloughed.  Had he had baseball talent this might not have happened.  The studios baseball team was very important to many.  So much so, that Grover and others noticed that those who played on the team were never laid off.

But his year ended on an up note.  On December 30, 1914 his parents, brother Bill and a family friend named Jersey Irwin arrived in California.  They settled into a home Grover had rented on Sunset Boulevard.  At last they were together again, though Grover dared not tell them it was costing him $30.00 a week to rent.  They could have built the grandest house in West Terre Haute for that.

More good news with the new year.  It was a letter from Carl Laemmle saying that the studio liked his idea about mistakes movies and enclosed a $25.00 check with the encouraging word that “In all probability we will be able to work out this idea.”  Soon Grover was back at work on the Universal lot in his old role as a painter.  The lot was so large that Laemmle shrewdly petitioned to have it declared a city in its own right.  Laemmle, who was affectionately known as “Uncle Carl,” was described by Grover as “about the size of a tree squirrel, but he’s all four fingers and a thumb.”

Grover and old friend Earl Sibley were among the hundreds of staff preparing the lot for the big weekend when it was made a city.  Laemmle combined the new status with a charity event for the Hollywood Children’s Hospital.  It was to be a spectacular event with animal acts, shows, and an exhibition of stunt flying.  Pilot Frank Stites was a friend of Grover’s.  Needing a cap, he borrowed Grover’s. He told Stites that if he got grease on it there would be hell to pay.

The opening day on March 15, 1915 was a success.  Large crowds mobbed the lot (presaging Universal becoming the first studio to fully embrace studio tours for the curious public.  Day two, however, brought tragedy.  Stites was do do a stunt with a fake plane attached to his plane.  Stite’s real plan was a “rattle-trap” and he was always visity the paint shop to get glue to patch it up.  Just before he took off, Grover leaned out to shout “Don’t forget where you got that cap, you louse.”  Stites replied, “What goes up must come down.”  Within a few minutes the fake plane exploded beneath Stites.  Grover described him coolly loosening the straps that held him in the plane.  He jumped.  He landed in front of Grover and a friend.  His broken body was rushed to the hospital but he did not survive.  A shaken Grover noted in his diary, “My cap was ruined alright, but it was blood and not grease.”

Putting the tragedy behind him, Grover was still determined to move forward.  Once again he focused on his future, anxious to become a screenwriter.  He told a co-worker he was getting nowhere as painter and wanted to get into the “writing racket” even if he had to lay someone.  He was told he could make it as many on the lot thought him a clever lad, but Grover felt most viewed him as a smart mouthed kid who popped off too much.

Anxious to write something, he decided to start a newspaper about goings on at the studio called the Photmaniac.  By now, his father was also working at the studio (he would go on to be an electrician at several studios), as was family friend Jersey Irwin.  Both were menaced one day when a lion escaped, but Grover’s father, Bill, took it all in stride.  In April posted the first issue of the Photomaniac.  He hoped that some producers would read it and give him a writing job.

In his wanderings around the lot, Grover encountered many people.  One of those he admired was director Francis Ford, whom he thought was smart and creative.  Not so Ford’s younger brother Jack, whom he described as “not know[ing] what its all about,” although he thought him a nice kid.  Jack was working as a prop man for his brother.  He was a cocky kid also.  When Grover asked him what he wanted out of the business, Jack answered, “If I get the breaks I’ll own the studio, and if I do you’re fired.”  He indeed did get his breaks in the business, becoming legendary director John Ford.

Grover, too, got a break.  In May he was named as assistant to the head craft services.  Now wearing a suit and tie, Grover was in charge of the painters, grips, carpenters and stage hands.  It was a job right up his alley as he noted.  His years of roaming the studio had made it all familiar ground to him.  Although his boss was not happy that Grover was not a baseball player, as the team had lost it star second baseman to the minor leagues.

Unfortunately Grover’s diary ends there. He continued to work at Universal.  As his photo album shows he also had time for fun.  It is filled with photos of family outings around California.  He was also a part of the Terre Haute expatriate community in Los Angeles.  The group hosted annual picnics and he sent photos back to the Terre Haute papers. He kept in contact with the Terre Haute papers, writing witty accounts of his adventures.  On at least one occasion he indulged his finely tuned sense of leg-pulling by sending them a photo of the West Terre Haute soccer football team, with the caption, “Sure! They are all ugly but they all know how to play football.”  Only later did the paper learn he had sent them a photo of a California team.

Over the next few years he left Universal and worked for several other studios.  He later jokingly said he had been fired from every studio in Hollywood, even those that were not painted.  He once was interviewed by C.B. deMille, who was looking for a secretary.  DeMille described him as “a former sign painter, then employed then at the studio as a kind of assistant to all the assistants.”  Ho noted that Grover did not know shorthand so was not hired.

But Grover’s ambition and striving eventually paid off.  By 1920 he had received his first writing and director credit for a short he wrote called “The Snip.”  Over the next twenty years he would write over 100 screenplays and direct 31 films.  Present at the birth of Hollywood and the studio system he would grow with it, and relish its heyday.

There is an interesting postscript to Grover’s story that shows that his iconoclastic character was passed down to his family.  His daughter Sally Sue was only three when her father died.  Her most frequent playmate was a young Jane Fonda.  Sue was introduced to horses and polo by her parents.  For twenty years she disguised herself as a man (initially using mascara to draw a moustache on her face) so she could invade the exclusive male enclave that was big time polo.  Her secret became an open one eventually and in 1972 she became the first woman admitted to the United States Polo association.

Grover Jones and the Birth of Hollywood, Part One

Grover Jones, 1913

I earlier wrote about the “established” Grover Jones, who by the mid-thirties was recognized as one of the premiere screenwriters and prominent figures in Hollywood.  He was a well-regarded wit, writer and raconteur with many friends among the stars and Hollywood literati. But how did the callow lad with coal dust on his shoes from West Terre Haute get there?

Thanks to some further research, neck wearying hours at the microfilm reader,  and the discovery that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar organization) held some of Jones’s papers in it archives (particular a diary he kept for 1914-1915), I can now tell you more of the early story.

Grover was born in Rosedale, Indiana in 1893 to immigrant parents.  His father William was born in Wales, while mother Elizabeth had migrated from Germany.  According to census records, both were literate and spoke English.  Like most immigrants who came to America without advantages they took jobs similar to those they had in their homelands, or whatever they could find. Grover later related that the German side of his family worked on the railroads and the Welsh side (quite naturally) were miners,

After some moving around, (the family lived in Ohio briefly where William worked as a miner) the Jones returned to West Terre Haute sometime before 1910, moving into a house on McIlroy and West Johnson Avenues.

Grover was certainly a precocious child with a gift for storytelling.  As a very young man he started writing poetry and songs (he was an accomplished piano player).  Later, he turned to writing one-act plays and stories as a teenager.  Beany, as he was called, certainly was different from most of the kids he played with in West Terre Haute.

 As work was hard to find, Mrs. Jones supported the family by turning their home into a boarding house that usually had three or four boarders, most of them miners.  But, as Grover, in a later tongue-in-cheek testimony to a Congressional committee investigating labor problems in Hollywood told them, his father “double-crossed me and went to work, which made it embarrassing for me.”

So Grover, too, joined his father in the mines around West Terre Haute.  While waiting for the wagons to be loaded with coal he wrote poetry (one guesses it would have been best described as doggerel) in the dust on the coal cars.  Though he had only a common school education (roughly an 8^th grade education), Grover was thought of as “clever.  He was well read, drew cartoons, and thought of a world beyond Indiana.  He even published a “private newspaper” in West Terre Haute called the Public Blaetter.

His short periods in the mines quickly showed him that he did not want the arduous life of a miner.  While working in the mines he also sought to learn sign painting, seeing that as not only a way out of the backbreaking drudgery of the shaft, but also a way to use his creative side.  The dusty streets of West Terre Haute would not hold him.  Hopping on his motorcycle, Grover spent many days and nights in the big city east of the river.

He apprenticed as a sign painter with a Col. Oebel in Terre Haute.  Sign painters of the time not only painted signs for businesses, but did other advertising work, and specialties like doing “show cards.”  These were the placards held up to introduce acts in theaters, vaudeville, and movies.  Through this he became great friends with another sign painter named Jimmy Trimble.  Trimble was also a magician and became a local legend in Vigo County for his magic act and being the go-to emcee for many local events.

Grover developed an intense interest in “moving pictures.”  He had plenty of opportunity to spend what little he earned at local theaters.  West Terre Haute had two movie theaters and across the bridge Terre Haute offered many more.  He became something of a “Stage Door Johnny” hanging around the vaudeville houses, theaters and movie palaces of Terre Haute. The clever young man soaked up the atmosphere of the entertainment world and it only made him more determined to make show business his life.

Through his sign painting or being a theater habitué  he met a man who was to help change his life.

Richard Earl Sibley was a sign painter who branched out into scenic design for theaters and movie houses.  Thirteen years older than Grover, Earl was also a man looking for something better.  He became well known for his design and painting of stage backdrops.  He served as Terre Haute’s representative of the International Theatrical Mechanics Association.  Sibley was likely Grover’s connection to the infant Terre Haute film “industry.”

In February, 1913 the Terre Haute Tribune announced that “the first moving picture ever written, constructed and posed for in Terre Haute” would soon hit local theaters.  It was the brainchild of Robert W. Nicholson a local film operator (read projectionist).  Using his own self-constructed camera (the only movie camera in the city), Nicholson directed his own screenplay of “The Girl in the Tower.”  Echoing (or presaging) the Pearl White “Perils of Pauline,” it was a movie about villains who tie the heroine to a railroad track in anticipation of watching the train roll over her.  He shot the film at various railroad yards and interiors at a local artists studio.

Grover would have been excited about the news (and there is a slight chance he was involved in some way).  At any rate he soon joined forces with Nicholson on a project to be bankrolled by local saloon keeper and theater owner Roy Dycus and his grandly named Dycus Film Company.  Dycus put up $600.00 for a film to be called “The Boy and the Bandit” written by 19 year-old Grover Jones.  The thin plot involved a bandit and a greedy landlord seeking to take the “boy’s” family home.  Eventually, the boy captures the bandit and uses $500.00 reward to save the family homestead.  It was filmed in a studio (Earl Sibley was scenic designer) at Third and Ohio and on location at the county fairgrounds (present site of Memorial Stadium) in May 1913.  Like many moviemakers, they ran out of money before it was finished.  That did not stop them from exhibiting it though.  Grover later said the unfinished film was shown at several theaters in town. 

Within weeks the Tribune’s entertainment columnist Mique O’Brien featured a photo and story about Grover.  “Over in West Terre Haute there lives a young man who simply insists on furnishing material for the theater” was the lead.  The article described a man not yet young enough to vote, but full of creativity who “has turned out a volume of cartoons and has written scores of playlets on every conceivable subject.”  Perhaps more than slightly gilding his particular lily Grover told the critic he had received payments from famous movie companies as Vitagraph and the Lublin Company for some of his ideas.

Though the Dycus Company announced that further films were forthcoming, there was no further mention of them in the local papers.  Though Grover’s first effort in the film industry was a bit of a failure, it spurred him on.  He was not a fellow to give up.

Through Earl Sibley who had already migrated to California and was working as a painter at a studio, Grover learned opportunity awaited him out west.  Sibley wrote that he was making $20.00 a week (a good salary then) and work was available.  Though he does not mention it in his diary, a book on Hollywood studio moguls says that Grover had pitched some movie ideas via mail to Carl Laemmle and soon-to-be mogul of Universal Studios who had sent Grover a check and told him if he ever came to Hollywood to look him up.  If Grover had indeed been paid by the Hollywood film companies, he still had to borrow $50.00 from a Terre Haute banker named Weills to finance his trip.

Whatever the impetus and wherever the funds came from, Grover left West Terre Haute in late 1913 and headed to California.  As his train chugged out of West Terre Haute young Grover must have been enticed by his dreams and uncertain of his future.  Whatever his future, it would not take place in West Terre Haute. There he became witness to the birth of Hollywood, soon to become the world’s fantasy engine…

In Part Two I will follow Grover to Hollywood as he became an eyewitness and participant (though a minor one) in the birth of Hollywood.

The Handsome Killer Escapes: Preacher’s Kid, Part Two

Perhaps none of my blog entries so far has elicited as much comment as Preacher’s Kid, Part One, the post about West Terre Hautean Cozzie Merrill Jones who killed 12 year-old Edith Barton.  Since that post I have been contacted by readers who knew Cozzie (both described him as a “creepy man who made them uneasy.  They have given me some interesting leads (and I have requested his Indiana prison records) that may lead to me being able to learn more about the psyche of the young preacher’s kid who turned out so badly, who was described as totally insane and a con man par excellence.

In the meantime I thought I should continue with at least the bare bones of the Cozzie story.

When we left Cozzie he had been convicted of the murder of young Edith and sentenced to life.  He entered the Indiana State Prison North at Michigan City on November 20. 1942.  For the next 19 years he was 22194.  He escaped in September, 1960.  One Hoosier newspaper reported that he simply “walked away” from the prison’s Summit Farm.  But did he?

Is it that easy to just “walk away.”  Does a prisoner who escapes and evades recapture have to have help?  Where did he get clothes (outside of the clichéd stealing them from an unattended clothesline)?  Who gave him money.  How did he obtain a car (which he was later reported to have repainted by hand to escape capture?

It has been long rumored in Indiana corrections circle that he had inside help.  Some believe that as the consummate con man Cozzie was able to convince some prison officials of his innocence.  It was they, it is said, who aided and abetted his escape.  And escape he did.

Little is known of the immediate aftermath.  Did he immediately leave the state?  Where did he “hole up.”  At this point I can only concretely place his whereabouts at any given time by the crimes he committed.  By 1961 he was living in Arizona, where he had adopted the name “Steve Palmer.”  Cozzie was a very talented piano player and supported himself by play in bars and bands.  As Steve Palmer he was hired out of a local musicians union hall to play in a big band.  The daughter of the bandleader reported he was an excellent player but the family came to fear him.

In March, 1961 a pretty young eight year-old named Marguerita Bajarano went missing while on her way to school in Tucson.  He body was found four days later.  Cozzie eventually confessed, recanted and then re-confessed to her murder.

Cozzie continued to roam, whether it was due to his life as an itinerant musician or the need to keep moving.  Did he perhaps return to Indian for a visit?  He was driving along a highway near Joplin, Mo when he picked up a young Canadian hitchhiker named Robert Fillmore in October, 1962.  Fillmore was headed to California.  He never made it.  Cozzie murdered him and left his body alongside the road.

The Steve Palmer identity was stripped away in Arizona in December, 1962, when two men saw a man trying to abduct a young girl.  They chased the perpetrator who abandoned his car and ran.  Eventually he forced his way into the home of a retired rancher and forced him to drive him away.  Later Cozzie killed him, leaving his body in the desert near Casa Grande, Arizona.  It was for this crime that Cozzie was initially arrested and his identity revealed.

The story of Cozzie Merrill Jone’s conviction, sentence to be executed and long legal battle is for a further chapter. In the meantime, as I find out more about I will post updates.

When Elvis Lived In West T.

When I was six, Elvis lived in West Terre Haute.  In a whitewashed house with blue trim and a cinder block garage.  On an alley on Fifth Street between National and Riggy, just behind a gas station.   I know this because I saw him.  Sideburns perfect, wearing khaki, pegged chinos and an unusual colored shirt.  I never actually heard him singing, but once when he came out of the house and got into his convertible I heard him, hum,ming to an Everly Brothers’ tune on his car radio.  Even as a six year-old with a very limited understanding of the expanse of the world I thought it odd he should be living in my home town.  Wasn’t he supposed to be in the Army or something?

As I said this revelation came about because that was about the age when I was allowed to leave the yard on my own (as long as I let Grandma know).  What was there to fear?  West Terre Haute in 1959 or 1960 was not home to sexual predators, drive-by shootings, or cocaine dealers hissing seductively from the bushes.  And besides, most people knew me and would take me home to McIlroy Street should I become lost.

I took full advantage of my new “grown up” freedom.  I loved walking and exploring.  In the ensuing years my long legs helped me cover literally every street in town.  My routes depended on whether there was a purpose to my journey, or merely whimsy.

Purposeful trips most often involved obtaining comic books (Superman, but especially WWII comics.  Sgt. Rock was acceptable, but by far the most sought after was Sgt. Nick Fury and His Howlin’ Commandos) and MAD Magazine.  I bought my comics at two drug stores, Berry’s on Paris Avenue and Dodge Drugs on National Avenue.

Dodge Drugs was the more upscale of the two.  Brighter, bigger, with a long soda fountain bar.  If I went there I crossed McIlroy into the alley that ran between Riggy and National .  I would take that to Fifth Street (where Elvis lived), then slide through the gas station up to National.  I would vary the routine on the return trip.  Clutching my brown bag of comics I would walk along National Avenue, past the drive-in with car hops, the liquor store and the little house that always seemed to have strange cooking odors reaching out to you as you walked past.  When I got to 3rd Street (also known as Market St.) I would once again head to the alley to home.

Berry’s Drugs was on the north side of town, on Paris Avenue.  In addition to comic-buying forays, I sometimes was entrusted with $3.06 to get Grandma’s vitamin prescription (Bectin with C).  The Berry store was a much darker venue.  The Berrys (perhaps because they had dealt with generations of squirmy, indecisive kids hoisting up 12 cents for a comic) were never quite as welcoming.  I remember Mrs. Berry, a dark, fatigued looking woman) emerging reluctantly from behind a curtain (they lived in the back of the store) when an old bell announced my arrival.  The route to and from Berrys was unchanging.  Up the alley to Church street, then past some nice homes and the high school to Paris Avenue, then reversing the journey.

Probably because of the book and my growing older, my youth and the streets of West Terre Haute increasingly invade my dreams.  Nearly every night I walk different streets in various guises, Tim at 6, at 13, at 58.  Sometimes Mom is there.  Sometimes Grandma.  Often it is me and Gramps, walking up McIlroy to Snacks Tavern to pick up a couple of pints of Falstaff or to ray’s to get our hair cuts.

Return to Sundown Town

In a previous blog entry I conjectured that the 1920s was the last time an African American dared live in West Terre Haute.  Since then, due to some newly available records and one I overlooked, I can extend their tenure until at least 1939.  I also discovered that West T. is officially listed as a Sundown town by James Loewen in his book Sundown Towns.

Through the now available digital archive of Black newspaper The Indianapolis Recorder (it is online at the IUPUI Library website thanks partly to the library’s Associate Dean named Robin Crumrin), I learned that several families still called West Terre Haute home during the Great Depression. 

One of the early families were the Colemans (or Coalman).  Wesley, wife Alice and daughter Mattie lived on N. 4^th Street and he listed his occupation as farmer.  Wesley was likely born into slavery in Kentucky in 1859.  Wesley and Alice were a devoted couple.  She gave him a surprise birthday party in 1912.  Sadly, Wesley died in March, 1914.  Alice soon followed, dying within ten days of her husband.  The Recorder noted that “Grief for her loving companion and la grippe” were the causes.

Next door to the Colemans were the Kanabbs.   Henry, a teamster, and Elizabeth had 6 children, five of them daughters. It is possible that one of the Kanabb girls is the lone Black student at West Terre Haute High  School in 1916.  The picture below is of the Sophomore class, which may have included my grandmother.

But no African American family lived in West Terre Haute longer than the Browns, although the Manuel family was a close second.  Spencer Brown was born in Kentucky in 1860 but by 1908 he was a driving a wagon for a wholesale grocer and living in West Terre Haute.  He did a little farming on the side.  In that year he married Delilah Davis, also of West Terre Haute, and a divorced housekeeper more than twenty years his junior.  Three years later Raymond Brown was born.  It is possible that Raymond was the first African American born in West Terre Haute.  The Browns were the constant in African American life in WTH.  They saw the flow and ebb of the town’s Black population from their house at 522 S. Seventh Street.

Delilah died in 1923, Spencer five years later.  Ray and his sister Katherine were the only African Americans listed on the 1930 census.  They still lived in the family home, but no occupation was listed for either.  Though the census shows them to be the lone “survivors,” various members of the Manuel family seemed to move in and out of the town in the thirties. Their family had lived in West Terre Haute since at least 1910.  In 1939 the two families joined, in a way, when Ray Brown married Vernon Wood Manuel, widow of Leonard Manuel.  Ray, now working as a porter, still lived in the family home, but the couple soon moved to Terre Haute, where Ray worked as a porter and custodian until his death in 1954.  Vernon lived to be 95 years old.

So, Raymond Brown, among the first African Americans to be born in West Terre Haute was quite possibly the last to live there in the Twentieth Century.   WTH was likely never a town that embraced citizens of color, but why did attitudes become so hardened after 1940?  Was it the depression and the scramble for work that saw Whites highly resent competition from Blacks?  It is interesting to note that 1910 was apogee of the town’s Black population (tho even then it was only about 20).  Once Blacks were gone and few in town came into social contact with them was it easier for the racism to harden?  At any rate, West Terre Haute soon came to be known, as it is today, as a racist Sundown Town. 

Boom[let] Town

West Terre Haute’s “heyday” was short-lived.  The peak of its prosperity was between the years 1915 and 1925.  It went from a small agrarian crossroads village of about 250 in 1900 to a relatively thriving community of 4500 in the mid 1920s.  The engines of its growth were the railroads and two natural resources: coal and clay.  Coal was the lynchpin.  Besides the small independent mines there were 9 large mining operations in the area.  Clay is often found in coal areas and that resource would lead to four clay plants being established.

This boom which so increased the population also changed the face of the town.  Previously it had been a striking homogeneous population.  For most of its history, West Terre Haute was “home grown” with over 70% Hoosier-born or from the upland south.  In 1850 there were only 47 foreign-born people in the township, and over half of them were the nuns at St. Marys.  But with the “boom” came a different population.  Immigrants often followed patterns where they migrated to places with climatic conditions similar to their homeland (the reason so many Scandinavians settled in northern states like Minnesota) or to where they could find similar work.  Thus the coal mines of West Terre Haute drew those who had been miners in Great Britain, Belgium, France and Germany.  They fueled the growth that is reflected below.

West Terre Haute, Ca. 1917, Population 4,100

• 6 doctors
• 2 dentists
• 15 grocery stores
• 12 Saloons
• 7 churches
• 3 Restaurants
• Blacksmith
• 4 Clay Pants

• Soft Drink Bottler
• 1 Bank
• Bakery
• 9 Coal Mines
• 3 Baseball Teams
• 2 clothing Stores
• 2 Hotels
• Canning Factory
• Miner’s Company Store

But the mines began to play out in the late 1920s.  With each closure went livelihoods.  So even before the Great Depression West Terre Haute was well on its way to decline.

The Bell Tolls at Jarama

Walter Fairbanks Grant was an idealistic young man.   Born in Michigan to the family of Congregational minister Martin Grant, he grew up in Marion, Indiana. He was an exceedingly bright young man, concerned about others and musical.  All in all, the epitome of what parents wanted in a son.  Marion, one of the gas boom towns, was a quiet Hoosier town in Grant County  of no great notoriety until August 1930.  But on August 7^th, Walter was among those who saw 3 young Black men dragged from the jail by a mob.  Two of them were lynched.  Two more strange fruit dangling from a Hoosier tree.  The Dantean scene may have thrilled some as photos show, but to young Walter, who pleaded with the mob and prayed to god, it was a dark epiphany.

His sister later recalled to a friend that Walter “did not talk for two days.”   It shook his faith.  Walter carried his doubts and questions to Indiana University.  Meanwhile his father took up the post as minister at the Congregational church in West Terre Haute.  Walter visited his family in West Terre Haute on weekends and vacations.  He prospered at IU, becoming an editor of various student publications and seems to have been honored and respected.  Still he brooded on what he had witnessed and pondered thoughts of injustice and violence.

After attaining his masters in English, he taught at IU until budget cuts ended his job.  He worked briefly for Anaconda, but that did not last long as he appears to have been fired due to union organizing.  Walter then left for New York where he stayed in cheap hotels.  Eventually, he got a job with the WPA Writers Project.  There again he saw what he was beginning to view as fascist violence, as when he witnessed mounted police mercilessly dispersing the jobless demonstrating in a park.

The son of a minister became a secular activist, joining the Communist party.  As author Peter Carroll noted, for Walter it was “a short step from evangelical Christianity to the Communist party.

Walter, stirred by what he had seen, and like many other like-minded Americans, saw the Spanish Civil War as the first major battleground to confront Fascism.  There, forces eventually led By Franco (and supported by Hitler’s Germany) fought a civil war with loyalist republican government forces (supported by Stalinist USSR).  Around the world (but especially in the US and Britain), the Left looked for some way to aid the republican army.  For some it meant taking up arms

Walter Fairbanks Grant, late of West Terre Haute and New York, was one of those.  He joined what became known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and sailed for Spain via France.  In Spain they offered there services to the republican cause.  The volunteers were under-trained and oftten ill-equipped.  Few had military training.  Sources disagree whether Walter had ROTC training at IU or not.  In any case, in February, 1937 Walter Fairfield Grant was one of those huddled in the lead truck of a convoy to reinforce republican lines along the Jarama River.

It was just a wrong turn.  The lead driver of the convoy turned left along a road instead of right.  Another truck followed.  A third driver, realizing the mistake turned right.  Walter and his colleagues were lost, unknowingly stumbling their way into an enemy stronghold.

Little was known of their fate until later.  Were they captured or killed?  In the months afterward there was hope that Walter and his group were taken prisoner.  The US State Department thought they might be alive.  Indiana Congresswoman Virginia Jencks called on Spain to release Walter.  The Grant family anxiously awaited word.

Later it was learned that Walter’s truck was driven off the road by gunfire.  The other truck rammed it.  The troops scurried into a gully.  Soon they were overwhelmed by nationalist forces.  Twenty of them were killed.  Walter Fairbanks Grant was among them, becoming one of the first Americans klilled in the Spanish Civil War.

Death Cry of the Gypsy

Death Cry of the Gypsy

When I was growing up the Gypsy (more properly Rom) was a potent figure.  They were a much despised group associated in the American mind with fortunetelling, curses, kidnapping, thievery and general chicanery.  When I was about seven there was a carnival on the west edge of town along the National Road.  Gypsies were taking part.  At school we gathered in the playground as our elders (sixth graders) told stories of how the filthy gypsies would steal children.  Do not let them come to your house we were warned, they will steal everything in sight.  Needless to say I shuddered a bit as we drove by the carnival or thought of them invading our house on Larimer Hill.

West Terre Haute was long a stopping point for Gypsy caravans, as it was for hoboes (one self-described King of the Hoboes lauded West Terre Haute in his memoirs as a place with two great “hobo jungles” and accepting citizens.

On May 1^st, 1914 about thirty Gypsies moving north from their winter quarters in Kentucky set up camp in West. T.  They pulled over their wagons and pitched their tents along Paris Avenue just west of the town limits.  They set about fortune telling, horse-trading, and trying to sell handmade goods to the locals.  The intrepid visited the camp   and the gawkers walked or drove by to catch a glimpse.  Shopkeepers maintained a balance between hoping for sales or keeping eagle-eyed surveillance for shoplifting as the Gypsies who entered their stores.

All in all it seemed like any other visit by the Gypsies.  West Terre Haute warily accepted their presence.  But Sunday evidently became a bacchanal day in the camp.  Over the course of the day and night 8 kegs of beer and other drink were consumed among the 30.  Neighbors reported the “camp was a scene of brawling and hilarity.”  Eventually, most, sated with drink, took to their beds.  But in the early hours of Monday, one imposing figure still stalked about the camp.

John Demetro (later research noted his name was more properly Tsina) was a large man with a commanding presence.  Born in Brazil, (South America not Indiana) he was a 55 year-old who listed his profession as coppersmith, and  was considered a leader of the band.  Whether John stayed awake drinking while others slept, or awoke at some point to return to the bottle is unknown.  But by 5:30 AM, he was likely dwelling on a history of family troubles (he believed Socca had been unfaithful) and feeling resentment toward his “in-laws.”  Around 6:00 an old Gypsy named  Katarina, one of the first up that morning, heard gunshots.  Panic spread through the camp as it was learned that Demetro had first bludgeoned then shot his wife Socca.  He then shot her father Bob Riska and son-in-law Joe Riska. 

Terrified members ran to a nearby saloon or perhaps a farmhouse (or both) to report the crime.  Police from West Terre Haute and Terre Haute responded.  Terrified Gypsies told them to be careful as Demetro was still stalking around the camp, still had his gun (a 16-shot Remington rifle) and promised death to anyone who came near.  Cautiously they maneuvered around.  They saw him sitting in front of his tent, gun in hand, thinking of what he had done.  Instead of resisting Old John calmly handed his gun over and meekly surrendered.  Police found Socca and Bob already dead and Joe Riska, wearing only half his face, clinging to life by a wisp.  They took John to jail in Terre Haute.  The next day Joe died.

The “Death Cry of the Gypsy” echoed across Paris Avenue that day, and the next in Terre Haute.

Two years later after various delays John Demetro was pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was taken to the state prison.  Prison is hard for anyone, but to a gypsy used to wandering ways it must have been a brutal life.  Fortunately for John Demetro, it was not to last forever.  Within 18 months, and against the wishes of his own Board of Pardons, Governor Goodrich pardoned him, which has caused many to suspect bribery may have been involved.

Demetro was sent abroad “to the thema—unspecified foreign land” and there in some unknown place he died.

West T. to Hollywood Redux

One of the more interesting characters I have come across during my research is Grover Jones.  The son of a miner, Grover was born in Rosedale but proudly grew up in West Terre Haute (while substituting for a Hollywood columnist he once billed himself as GROVER JONES, formerly of W. Terre Haute, IND).  Like my grandfather, he began work at a young age in the mines as a breaker boy, young men who broke up too large chunks of coal into more manageable pieces.  The family lived on W. Johnson Street.  In addition to being a miner, young Grover showed his artistic side by painting advertising signs on the side.  According to Mike McCormick’s excellent piece in a Terre Haute newspaper, Jones was entranced by the silent movies he saw in West Terre Haute movie houses and even did a short film of his own on Terre Haute.  With the money he earned he took his talents and WTH upbringing to the very young Hollywood.

The family moved to Hollywood (Grover may have preceded them in 1913) , where by 1920  Grover and his father were both to find work in the nascent movie industry.  Grover began as a painter and set decorator (his father also found work as a studio electrician) but his irrepressible personality, persistence and wit led him to a career during which he was to direct over 120 short films and write or collaborate on over 400 scripts, winning an Oscar in 1932 for his original story Lady and a Gent.  His work included famous films like Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Lives of the Bengal Lancers, and Dark Command.  He worked (and fought with) such stars as Mae West, W.C. Fields, and Buster Keaton.

Jones was invariably called a “wag” and “cigar chomping” funny man and seems to have been beloved for his cantankerous wit (why do I feel a kindred spirit at work here?) by fellow writers.  His home seems to have been host to “salons” (one was called the West Side Asthma and Riding Club) attended by the Hollywood set that did not buy into the Hollywood mystique (and what right-thinking West T. lad would fall for that?).  Most of all he was highly regarded by his peers as a consummate storyteller.  Her was also not one to give a damn about convention and was once sued by neighbors who did not like the fact that he and his beloved wife Susan kept a “menagerie” in their swanky Riviera neighborhood in LA that included a monkey, goat, two deer and 14 dogs.  Yep, you can take the boy out of West T., but….

Grover also did verbal battle with George Bernard Shaw.  When Samuel Goldwyn was trying to option the rights to some of the Irish bard’s plays he famously said that when he signed over his plays the produces would turn them over to “the bellboys for adaption”  and the screenwriters could no more “tell a story than a blind puppy could write a symphony.”  Whether dog-loving Grover was more upset about the aspersions cast on the talents of puppies or his own particular writer breed is uncertain, but he replied that “The senile sage of the ages is at it again.  Once we had warts, pug dogs and Shaw.  Now we only have Shaw, so why not make the best of it.”

This from the man who called himself “Just another Jones.”  Jones died in 1940.

This is someone I want to know more about.  Jones’s papers are at the AMPAS (the Oscar organization) archives.  I have written to it requesting a collections guide in hope that some of his letters or memoirs mention growing up in West Terre Haute.  I sense a nice article may be written on Jones.  As I learn more I will pass it on.

From West T. To Hollywood

A columnist in The Van Nuys Reporter of December 20, 1934 breathlessly announced that the Van Nuys city hall had received a visit from a young Paramount movie star named Billy Lee.  Four year-old Billy, described as “a handsome little chap…. with an irresistible smile” and an amazing conversationalist, was there with his family to visit an old friend from his home town, West Terre Haute, Indiana.

In 1930 the Schlensker family lived just off National Avenue in West Terre Haute.  The father, Pete, was a sometime farmer and miner (and ten year minor league baseball player) while mom Stella looked after the children, 3 sons and a daughter.  By 1934 the family (at least mom, dad and the two youngest boys) was living on Klump Avenue in Nan Nuys.  All in all, it was a world away from West T..  Why they left is uncertain, but one can surmise that they were part of that stream who thought the answer to surviving the Depression was out west. As the mines played out and West Terre Haute’s decline was hastened by the Depression many of its citizens (WTH lost approximately one-fourth of its population between 1928 and 1940) left the area.  The Shlenskers joined the exodus (oldest children Charles and Lucille remained behind) in 1933.

Why Hollywood (aside from the obvious) is also uncertain.

So far I have not turned up any evidence that the family was ever previously involved in the entertainment business  (Though in his obituary it was said that Pete claimed to have taught Billy to dance).  They were a simple farm family from Indiana.  But, Pete and Stella enrolled young Billy in a private school in Los Angeles.  There teacher Ethel Meglin quickly recognized Billy’s talents and enthusiasm and trained him in singing and dancing.  With her help and with his father acting as his agent, Billy, now known professionally as Billy Lee, was signed to a contract by Paramount Studios.  Over the next decade he was to appear in over 40 movies, ranging from westerns with Randolph Scott, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, to musicals (Billy was an accomplished drummer).  In one musical, Reg’lar Fellers, Billy appeared with Carl Switzer, who had played Alfalfa in the Our Gang comedies and, coincidently, had been born just across the state line from West Terre Haute in the West Union/Marshall area.  Billy was recognized as a genuinely talented performer.

Did Hollywood play a role in splitting up the family?  While Billy continued to make movies, his father-agent Peter returned to West Terre Haute to farm.  His 1942 WWII draft registration card listed son Charles as next of kin.  Daughter Lucille had also stayed in the area and married into the Rippy family.  As I have found no records for Stella after 1930, one wonders at her fate.  Did she and Pete break up?  Did  she remarry?  Pete’s 1950 obituary does not list a wife as surviving him, although items in the “West Terre Haute News” in the paper in 1949 talked of Peter and wife.  Although it could have been Peter, Jr.  But Pete, Jr, was to die in California like his famous younger brother.

And adorable Billy Lee?  He made his last movie in 1943.  Like many child stars, the waning of his youth also saw the waning of his career.  By age 14, his movie career was over.  He was listed as living in Terre Haute in 1950.  He served in the Korean War.  After the war Billy married and had three children. What did he do until his death in California in 1989?  His obituary in the LA Times does not say.  Did he continue to use his musical talent?  Did part of his take life advantage of his movie career? 

No matter his end, Billy left behind his movie appearances as a legacy.  Several, like “Wagons West” and “Biscuit Eater” are available on DVD.  Young, charming, 4 year-old Billy Lee from West Terre Haute still lives on celluloid digitized for the ages.

 Billy’s brother Charles’s 1992 obituary indicates that there were still family members living in the WTH area.  Are you one of them?  Do you know them?  I would certainly like to know more of the family’s story.