- Messages
- 17,219
- Location
- New York City
...A $40,000 shortage in funds to be applied to the accounts of incompetent persons under his supervision has cost a prominent Brooklyn attorney his membership in the Bar. Louis Voso, who formerly kept offices on Montague Street, today resigned from the Bar in the face of an investigation. Voso stated that he resigned because he couldn't afford an attorney to represent him in the probe.
A Wall Street banker plunged to his death this morning from the 25th floor of the Hotel New Yorker. 48-year-old Otto Alden, assistant secretary of the Bank of New York, leaped from a window about an hour after checking into the hotel without baggage just before 5 am. Bank officials say there has been no reason to investigate Alden's affairs, but there will be an investigation now. Alden's suicide comes almost exactly 24 hours after a Detroit couple jumped from a 27th floor window at the same hotel. Like them, Alden's body landed on the fifth floor roof of an extension of the hotel....
...A rabbit whose father was a test tube was born in Manhattan this week. The New York Academy of Medicine reports that the rabbit was born as a result of a scientific procedure in which an ovum of one rabbit was fertilized with a "simple salt solution" and then implanted in the womb of another rabbit. The procedure is expected to provide knowledge which could lead to the birth of healthier human beings....
...Dress-Detailed Zipper Princess Coats -- just $1.19 at Loeser's!...
...Helen Worth hears from a mother shocked to discover that her son is sexually involved with a young woman. She advises her to read some of the recent books on the subject and understand that sex is one of the most dominant factors in life., and that she should not be judgemental. If it's possible for the couple to marry, they should, but either way if she values her happiness she must not question the young woman. Doing so may cause her to suffer for the rest of her life....
...Lovable bushy-browed character of stage and screen Claude Gillingwater has taken his own life in Hollywood. He was 69 and in poor health....
I once broke my toe at the Hotel New Yorker. The place is cursed.
Only A Few Days More And You Can Get 1940's Finest Refrigeration -- the 1940 Servel Electrolux GAS Refrigerator. No moving parts! $9.50 allowance on your old ice-box!
...The wife of gangland figure Louis "Lepke" Buchalter has switched her story, claiming now she had nothing to do with aiding her husband in any way in his flight from the law, and had nothing to do with the various individuals and corporations accused of shielding him during his time as a fugitive. Mrs. Beatrice Buchalter had previously testified for the prosecution before switching to the defense in the trial, which is expected to end today in Manhattan Federal Court....
...Helen Worth says no one should feel obligated to drink liquor at a party, but one should be tactful in refusing alcohol. But that doesn't mean the hostess was justified in slipping some gin in your ginger ale after you told her you didn't want any liquor because you think of it as something that causes a lot of harm to others, and then she said, well, liquor killed my brother but that doesn't mean I don't like a drink now and then myself, and you didn't have anything to say after that......
...MacPhail also reports there's nothing to report on the matter of Joe Medwick -- and dismisses all talk that the Dodgers will pry Al Lopez and Max West away from the Boston Bees....
...Max Schmeling wants another shot at Joe Louis. So spoke the German heavyweight during a visit to Spain, where he is said to be scouting locations for a film to star his wife, actress Anny Ondra.....
Schmeling probably figured if he could beat Louis in a re-rematch, he wouldn't have to go to The Front.
"Bees" never really caught on, in part because they really didn't do anything to promote it -- there was no aggressive sneering-bee logo or any other kind of bee motif on field, other than the highly-resistable renaming of Braves Field to "The Beehive." They wore a bright-yellow capital letter "B" on the home uniforms, which was a change, I suppose -- bright yellow wasn't a common color on baseball uniforms at the time -- but they could have gone a step further and had black-and-yellow bee-striped socks and didn't. Something tells me their heart really wasn't in it, and they were just marking time till they could go back to being the Braves again.
Somebody pulled that business with a drink on me once, sort of. I was in a stage show, and a scene called for me to pick up a glass and slam down a shot -- the glass of course was full of water, until some backstage joker filled it with gin. I had it in my mouth before I knew what it was, and immediately sprayed it out onto the stage floor. The varnish immediately began to dissolve. Fortunately, this wasn't during a performance, just a rehearsal, but it was enough for me to reconsider a stage career.
The City Of Flint has been released to its American crew after the Norwegian government seized the ship from the German prize crew sailing it to a German port as a contraband vessel. The German Charge d'Affairs at Oslo filed an immediate protest over the Norwegian intervention in the matter, which the Norwegians are expected to reject on the grounds that the German seizure of the ship was not conducted according to international law. The Norwegians cite the 31st article of the 21st chapter of the Hague Convention, which states that a prize ship may be taken to a neutral port only if it is unseaworthy. The Soviets cited the same clause in forcing the ship to leave Murmansk.
The future destination of the City Of Flint may be Glasgow, under escort from a British convoy, with the American crew reported to be worried that ship may now be a "marked vessel," targeted for German attack. Meanwhile, the German prize crew has been interned in Norway pending further action in the case.....
...Borough President Raymond Ingersoll denounced the proposed legalization of parimutual wagering in New York City by calling it a "partnership with gambling." In a statement to be read to a mass meeting of Brooklyn churches, Ingersoll called the measure both economically and morally unsound, and urged that it be rejected at the polls....
...Only one felony was committed at the World's Fair this year, a fraud case involving $50 -- and that case was dismissed yesterday in Queens County Court. In dismissing the matter, Judge Charles S. Colden noted that it was a remarkable feat for an event attracting 30,000,000 people to produce not one case for the grand jury...
...If you're setting the table for Thanksgiving dinner, remember that the dinner fork is on the outside, the salad fork is on the inside, and the oyster fork goes on the right, next to the spoons. (Joe Punchclock down in Bensonhurst yells out to Sally in the kitchen "HEY KID, WE HAVIN' ERSTERS THIS YEAR?")....
...No major league pitcher has ever been retired because of a knee injury. So reports Tommy Holmes in his review of Whit Wyatt's status. The Dodger right-hander is recovering from knee surgery performed yesterday in Baltimore. Wyatt is expected to remain in a cast for at least three weeks, and it'll be a month more before he can put his knee to a real test. Holmes notes that knee injuries have been career-enders for many infielders over the years, but pitchers have been lucky....
...Tomorrow's television schedule features another Dodger football game, as Brooklyn faces the Pirates at Ebbets Field. There will also be a variety hour headlined by Irene Bordoni, with Paul Wing's Spelling Bee, the harmonica team of Jim and Mildred Mulcahy, and the skating team The Four Comets.....
Apparently he hadn't heard about the lack of competition at the fair. A stay at Sing Sing is a tough knock for 65 cents and a pack of smokes.A 22 year old man is being held without bail after he beat and robbed a 90 year old man. Michael Gennone of 130 N. 3rd Street was arraigned in Felony Court on a robbery charge stemming from an attack on Morris Weinberg of 149 S. 9th Street.
...Mayor LaGuardia is pushing plans for a Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel as an alternative to the stalled bridge project. The Mayor outlined his proposal in a speech in Manhattan yesterday, stressing that the outlook for such a tunnel is better than it has been in quite some time. The Mayor expects a series of conference in the week ahead to firm up the plans.....
...A 32 year old woman has been exonerated of charges that she stabbed a man with a pair of scissors. Charges were dismissed against Miss Josephine G. Mellon of 19 Marine Avenue in Felony Court. The complaint had alleged that Miss Mellon had stabbed 38-year-old Frank McKee of the same address, inflicting injuries that required 15 stitches. (Didn't we actually see this happen a couple weeks back in "The Bungle Family?")....
...Deluxe Barbara Lee stockings -- 84 cents, 92 cents, and $1.04 a pair in the big Semi-Annual Sale at Abraham & Straus. In these days of short skirts -- shortest in ten years -- it is terribly important that stockings be fine, flattering, in the right colors!....
...Cookies Selling Like Hot Cakes in Queens Girl Scout Campaign. (I wonder if they ever considered just selling hot cakes?)....
...Brooklyn is allocated $34,445,607 in the $117,240,763.02 city budget for 1940. (I wonder what the two cents is for? Somebody wants to buy a copy of the Daily News? Don't you know you can always find a copy for free under a seat on the subway?)....
The repeal of the Arms Embargo has brought a sharp riposte from the Soviet Union, with Foreign Commissar Molotov issuing a harsh criticism of American profiteering from the war. In a four column manifesto published on the front page of the official Communist Party newspaper Pravda, Molotov accused "the bourgeois of the neutral countries" of "warming their hands over the fires of war. The commissar also insisted that the Soviet Union will maintain its own neutrality, and will not allow itself to be drawn into the European conflict -- but at the same time he called on the workers of the world to defend the embattled Chinese people. Molotov also had sharp words for Britain and France, whom he charged with keeping half the world under the chains of colonial slavery, and charged that Italy is only waiting for its chance to "throw itself on the oppressed and have its share of the spoils."....
...Economic sanctions against Japan in 1940 are likely according to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chairman Pittman (D-Nevada) predicts that unless conditions between the US and Tokio improve drastically between now and the expiration of current trade agreements on January 26th, Congress will "undoubtedly" enact his resolution empowering the President to embargo "any and all" exports to Japan. Pittman advises Japan to "be warned of the ides of January," stating that "Japan's entire attitude in China has been total disregard of the rights of the United States and other countries."....
...Four persons were injured today when a bridge under construction at the foot of Emmons Avenue in the Sheepshead Bay section collapsed. An ambulance and a police emergency squad are at the scene....
...Mayor LaGuardia has issued a strong condemnation of the proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize parimutual betting in the State of New York, insisting that bookmakers will be taken care of even if the amendment passes. "The same gambling touts and tinhorns who now infest the tracks will continue to be there doing business," argued the Mayor. "I suppose," he continued, "instead of calling them punks, if the constitutional amdendment should be approved I will have to call them 'Mister.'"....
I'm intrigued by the story of poor Bert Morton, Brooklyn College Class of 1942. He appears to have gone on to become "Bert Morton, a goateed poet of quiet manners," living in the 1950s as an expatriate on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. But before this, he did a stretch in the Army, and one of his buddies, a fellow by the name of Leo Bogart, had this to say about Bert, in his book "How I Earned The Ruptured Duck From Brooklyn to Berchtesgaden:"
"Bert Morton...looks exactly like a German Stalingrad prisoner, and his psychic state is also similar. His nose is red and swollen, and is perpetually draining snot. His lower lip is always jutting forward, revealing his front teeth. He seems to be developing a hunchback. When one of the fellows asked him what he did in civilian life, he lowered his eyelashes shyly and said 'I'm a poet!' He doesn't talk or laugh or sing or do anything but blow his nose. He is unfortunately posessed of a very sensitive soul."
Sheesh. With friends like that, who could blame poor Bert for skipping the country?
Bert wrote an essay for the Brooklyn College magazine in 1940 on the topic "Conscription and Defense," but an online link to it is frustratingly broken. I can't find any examples of his postwar poetry anywhere, but there is an Albert Morton who wrote a lugubrious poem in a 1937 issue of "New Masses" entitled "A Sonnet for Dave on His 23rd Birthday," which laments Dave's desperate unemployment while his kid brother -- presumably Albert -- lingers in high school and their grandmother is slowly going blind. I'm willing to bet this is our Bert.