This Fascination For Chronicling Hollywood......

.....started even before I was born!

I have written before about my parents, Phil and Dee.  Well that story took us up to their marriage in 1956. So let's pick things up from there, shall we?

Shortly after their wedding in Columbus OH, the decision was made that my Dad would re-enlist in the Army.  When he received his orders for his first relocation, surprise, surprise, it was Fairbanks Alaska! Now, Alaska wasn't even a state yet but, those crazy pioneering kids traveled north with glee to inhabit the Last Frontier and, once there, settled into base housing.

He was working full time, she was working full time, they had a two year old and if all that wasn't enough, they also formed "The Michael Company" (named after my half brother) which supplied and engraved trophies to the greater Fairbanks area.  A smart move considering there wasn't much to do in Fairbanks in '56 outside of bowling and other sporting contests.  Needless to say, business was brisk.

After about a year, all of this activity just didn't seem like enough so, they got a plot of land and some materials

and with the help of some trusty friends

they built themselves a log cabin!

You'd think that this would be enough to satisfy these busy Alaskan beavers but you'd be wrong.

Scoping the local scene looking for another business opportunity, they saw a need in the market, partnered up with their friend Dalton and started "The Fairbanks TV Guide" and Hollywood came to Fairbanks.

Dalton was the Editor and Publisher, Dee was the Advertising Director, Secretary, Marketing Rep, and all around gofer, and Phil was, well, he was really proud.

In addition to being chocked full of pictures and blurbs teasing the week of programming adhead, it had loads of local advertising.  Fairbanks was a pretty rough and ready town at the time and one of the ads was for the "Top Hat Club, featuring exotic dancing sensation, Renee Starr.  Come as you are - no formality necessary.  Couples are always welcome.  Lovely Hostesses available for you single gentlemen."

But most important of all, it gave complete listings of the two television stations that made up the Fairbanks television market.  Channel 2 carried split ABC/NBC shows and Channel 11 handled CBS.  What's more, they each broadcast for about six hours Every. Single. Evening.

No fools Dalton and Dee, they gave away the first three weeks of copies to get everyone dependent on it and then began charging the princely sum of 15¢ per week, or $3.75 for 6 months, $6.50 for 1 year.

Dee even appeared (doing her best Carol Merrill, before Carol!) in one issue for a television give away:

By far the most popular of all the covers didn't show a Hollywood starlet though:

It celebrated the announcement of statehood for Alaska (though the actual admission didn't occur till Jan 3, 1959).

Later that month another contest was held to rename the Fairbanks TV Guide.  The winning name:

Why change a perfectly good name you ask?  It seems that Dalton and Dee got the sweetest registered letter from "TV Guide Magazine" down in the lower 48.  I believe they call it a 'cease and desist' letter.

By the end of '58 Phil and Dee cashed in their chips on the glamorous world of Television listings.  It seems there was a new star that was going to debut in the Mershon household in about 6 months.....but that's a whole other story........

Great Loves in History

The year was 1954, THE GIRL was only 21 but already her marriage was in shambles.  How had it all happened so fast?  Was it really only two years ago that she had left home in Ashland, Ky and moved to Chicago.  She felt hopeless and definitely outnumbered.  She, her husband and their new baby lived in rooms at a swanky highrise hotel, but the hotel was managed by his parents who lived two flights up.  It was at least 3 against 1; her infant hadn't chosen sides yet.  Her husband was a traveling marketing rep whose territory was the Eastern US and Puerto Rico.  So no suspicions were raised when he offered to put the baby in his parents care and take her on a 'second honeymoon' trip to San Juan to 'patch things up'. 


Barely off the plane, he told her the truth and the truth was this:  She could stay in Puerto Rico, go back to Chicago or go home to Ashland for all he cared, the marriage was over.  He didn't love her, had never stopped sleeping with other girls,  and had she not gotten pregnant, would have never married her in the first place.  What's more, his parents felt that she was too young to raise a child on her own, so they would be keeping the baby!  The panic that shot through her had flipped some kind of a switch.  She appeared so calm on the outside and she couldn't believe the things that came into her head and tumbled out of her mouth.  Things like not needing to be rash, he could have as many girls as he wanted, she might have a few men too, this could all be worked out and the baby could still have a mother and a father.  "Now let's take the restrictions off, partner up and have some fun with these two weeks down here."


It was as if some older, wiser version of herself, who knew exactly how to play this, had taken over.  This 'other self'' would do and say anything to get her baby back no matter how long it took. (and it took months)  He bit the hook just like she knew he would and suggested that they go to this great nightclub run by a guy he new that night.


Meanwhile, on the other side of San Juan....


THE GUY, 38, was in the death throes of his second bad marriage.  The wife was sleeping with everything on the island but him.  But to the outside world, he was a charming guy who had the incredibly sexy job of running the hottest nightclub in town.


So that night in the club, moments before excusing himself to the table of a bleached blond Puerto Rican girl, the husband introduced THE GIRL to THE GUY.  Their chemistry was combustible and they began an affair that night!  The next couple of weeks was a whirlwind.  The husband was making his way through the island, one broad at a time.  THE GIRL and THE GUY were doing the Adam and Eve bit, with abandon.  Somewhere in there THE GUY took her to a lawyer friend to discuss the issue of Chicago.  The news was not good.  The lawyer said that if the husband and his parents were in cahoots, they could make up whatever stories they wanted about her and it would be the word of 3 against 1.  Her best bet, he said, was to go back, somehow get in the good graces of the mother-in-law, take the baby out for a walk one day, and keep walking.


When the 'San Juan Affair' concluded, the husband went back to Chicago and THE GIRL flew to Columbus, OH and moved in to a bedroom in the home of a brother and sister-in-law to mobilize the next step.  A couple of months later, in an operation that was part CIA covert operation and part Keystone Cops, THE GIRL accompanied by three of her brothers hopped in the car at four in the morning and drove to Chicago.  With one brother in the getaway car (engine running)  another posted at the elevator as a lookout (having tipped the elevator boy to hold it) THE GIRL and her third brother burst into the in-laws apartment, took the baby and made a run for it!  In a move that, to this day remains a mystery, neither the husband or his parents ever lifted a finger to try and get the baby back.


Back in Columbus, THE GIRL surrendered to the inevitable, got a job as a waitress behind the lunch counter at a five and dime, and readied herself for a life as a single mother, dependent on the kindness of her brother and sister-in-law for shelter and help raising the baby.  The affair with THE GUY was madcap and wonderful, but she knew she'd never see him again.  Until....


Three months later he called her, he was in New York, he had left his wife and he wanted to come to her!  He went to Columbus where they moved, the three of them, into a little apartment of their own.  Because it took time for their respective divorces to be finalized, they lived in sin for their first two years together.  


In addition to everything else they had in common, they discovered that, although there was a 17 year age difference between them, they had both been born on April 18th.  When they were finally legally free, they chose to be married on her 23rd and his 40th birthdays;  April 18, 1956.

THE GIRL was Dee:

THE GUY was Phil:

and they are my parents.  I came along 3 years later.
They remained married for the rest of their lives.

Living and loving in sin, Columbus Ohio.  1955

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM.

AND HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO YOU BOTH.

Car Wars

I just read a great post by Ask The Cool Cookie on Doing Hard Time In Shaker Heights on a Plymouth Volare he once owned.  It called to mind the following:

The fall after high school, my parents offered to buy me a new car.  So off to a dealership in Waldorf, Md. we went.  They sold Dodge, Jeep and Triumph.

I, needless to say, was desperate for a Triumph Spitfire.  The folks thought the Dodge Aspen the more appropriate way to go.  Their compromise however was the 'sporty' Aspen RT.

I was predictably pouty and sullen.  (of course I'd kill to have that car now)  The car was bigger and therefore safer, my father reasoned.  Actually, I countered, a smaller car would make me a more cautious driver.
The Aspen had automatic and power steering dad said.  They don't make Triumphs with anything but standard transmissions and power steering would be silly on a little sports car, I retorted.  The Dodge is air conditioned, he boasted.  Who needs AC with a convertible top, I whined.  Well, the Dodge is an American car and it's better built.  Shit.  The Triumph, by British Leland, was notoriously temperamental.  He had me there.  That is until I was having a stroll around the RT trying to get used to my fate. (my fate, their money.  what a brat.)  On the drivers side front quarter panel, just behind the wheel well, was the 'Aspen' name badge in a jaunty chromed script.  In the same spot on the passenger side (as could only happen in the fantasy that was quality control in the late 70s) it said 'Volare'!  (the look-a-like model by Plymouth)

I grabbed my dad.  "American great building, huh?" I sneered as I marched him around the car.  When he saw the fuck-up all the color drained from his face and he looked as though everything he ever believed in was slipping away.  (Christ, first Nixon and now this).

And I got the Triumph.