COMICFIDENTIAL

I was watching Wonder Boys on Hulu the other day and came to the part where the talented but troubled character James Leer reels off in alphabetical order the names, dates and methods employed by 15 Hollywood stars that took their own lives.  In with Pier Angeli, Charles Boyer, George Reeves (Superman), George Sanders, Jean Seberg and Gig Young was Dorothy Dandridge which for some unknown reason sparked my curiosity.  Googling revealed that she had starred in Carmen a 1954 film that I saw at the Eagle Theater when I was 9 years old.  I suppose it's possible that some part of my brain had stored away Dorothy's name for 70 years and was the reason it piqued my interest. How else could one explain my chasing her down instead of Albert Dekker who hung himself with his suicide note written in lipstick on his stomach?

Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte

Dorothy's single mom was an entertainer and started Dorothy and her sister in the business performing a song and dance act as pre-teens interestingly called The Wonder Children on the chitlin' circuit during the great depression.  Carmen was the first taste of real success for Dorothy bringing her a Life Magazine cover and a best actress academy award nomination - both firsts for a black woman.  The  downside for her was the beginning of a 4-year affair with the film's director, Otto Preminger, that resulted in a pregnancy that 20th Century Fox insisted she terminate - a common requirement imposed by most studios according to a 2017 article in Vanity Fair.

My memory of Carmen is quite vivid and it may be because it was in color.  The television in our home was black and white as were the westerns and the Abbott and Costello movies that were run every Saturday for kids at the Sierra Theater.  The Sierra was 5 blocks from the Eagle and was known locally as the "dirty dime".  It was a pink no-frills shell of a building put up in 1922, 7 years before the eagle and in the early 1950's charged only a dime for admission and 9 cents for kids on Saturday mornings.  The Saturday morning card included 10 cartoons that were in color but the film of the day with Francis the Talking Mule or what have you, was always black and white.  In addition, I more than likely saw Carmen in the evening with my mom which would have added to the uniqueness of the experience and help plant Dorothy's name in my subconscious.

As I continued to read up on Dorothy I discovered some unexpected details.  The first of which was her only child, a daughter named Harolyn.  Named after Dorothy's first husband Harold Nicholas, Harolyn survived a difficult birth which resulted in her being mentally impaired and eventually institutionalized at Camarillo State Hospital.  The cause of the problems with her birth was due to Dorothy's late arrival at the hospital.  When Dorothy went into labor at her sister's house, Harold had gone off to play golf taking their only car.  

Once I got past thinking about what a prince of a fellow Harold was, I realized Dorothy's daughter was at Camarillo when Heger and I used to help out there in 1965.  Heger had a class at USC that required him to put in a full day, once a week, as a volunteer at Camarillo and I used to go with him.  We spent the mornings with children and the afternoons with adults.  Harolyn would have been in her early 20s and may have been in with the adults that we attended to. 

A random dive into the internet can be fascinating.  It is definitely entertaining to hopscotch across seemingly unrelated events and people, similar to playing the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.  The aspect of this particular string of fragments that intrigued me was the connection between myself and the various pieces. 

My next observation had to do with Confidential, a Hollywood gossip rag that was launched in 1952.  Dorothy Dandridge and Maureen O'Hara teamed up in 1957 to sue the magazine for libel.  The magazine had featured one article claiming O'Hara had a sexual encounter in the balcony of the Grauman's Chinese Theater and a second story entitled Only the Birds and the Bees Saw What Dorothy Dandridge Did in the Woods.  The highlight of the trial had the jury visiting the Grauman's balcony to witness a demonstration put on by the prosecution that established the balcony seats made the purported sexual activity physically impossible.  Dandridge and O'Hara won and were awarded $10,000.

This tidbit of Dorothy's biography was yet another event that coincided with my own experience.  The same year as the trial, my parents loaded me and the dog (named Boy) into our 1950 Ford sedan and began exploring sites throughout the Mojave Desert.  After visiting Burro Schmidt's tunnel, we drove to Randsburg, a former mining town in the early 1900s.  What remained was a quasi-ghost town with a couple of hundred residents that enjoyed a limited amount of tourism during months where the temperatute fell below 110.

We exited our non-air conditioned car, gave Boy some water and went into the General Store in search of something cold to drink.  The general store was among only a handful buildings that were still functioning and by the looks of the interior served as the supplier of everything to everyone.  This was definitely the spot for rockhounds, picnic planners, spelunkers, carpenters, hikers, campers, fishermen, hunters, bird watchers, geologists, ham radio operators, building contractors, prospectors, handymen, cooks, students, photographers, gardeners, diviners, pet owners, painters, auto mechanics, alcoholics, plumbers, interior decorators, masons, custodians, composters, handcrafters and collectors of  antiques and mysterious gadgets. 

 

It was visually mind boggling to walk down the narrow aisles hemmed in by total chaos.  It was like an Amazon warehouse put through a blender - there was no order or system to the location of anything.  You were completely engulfed in a random mass of 20th century artifacts.  It was there in the middle of that insane gathering of unrelated material goods, smack dab in the middle of the Mojave desert, that I came upon a copy of the one and only published issue of Comicfidential.  

In the early years of Mad Magazine when it was still a comic book, it only came out an average of 6 times a year.  This left time for its contributing editor and illustrators to devote time to other comics published by EC Comics that specialized in horror, crime, satire, dark fantasy, as well as science fiction.  The only issue of Comicfidential was produced in 1955 as a parody of a tabloid expose of comic book characters.  Stories targeted RX Morgan MD and Marlin Perkins among others.  I remember asking my dad to buy it so I had something to occupy myself on what seemed like an endless drive.  I had no idea what it was but it looked like a comic book and that made me curious.  After we drove away from Randsburg, I tried to decipher the content most of which was over my head but I eventually discovered jokes (all one liners) printed in miniscule type fitted into the narrow borders between the illustrated cells of the comic.  I had no idea that this kind of humor existed but instantly was captivated by it.  From the back seat I began reading the one liners aloud to my parents as we rode down the bleak and barren 395.  The one I can still recall was:  "A man took Carter's Little Liver Pills all of his life and when he passed away they had to beat his liver to death."  

The combination of the heat, the long uneventfull drive and the oneliners contrasted against the stupefying blandness of the 1950s sent my parents into hysterics, with my dad eventually pulling off to the side of the road to gather himself.