IBID (13 page)
Authors: Mark Dunn
15.
Leopold and Loeb liked the scent.
Nathan Leopold to Jonathan Blashette, 4 October1924. Attempting to expand the market for his men’s deodorant line, Jonathan and Davison sent free samples to as many celebrated Americans as he could think of—and a few whose celebrity was colored with all the dark hues of notoriety.
16.
Calvin Coolidge wasn’t available that day.
The reason that President Coolidge wasn’t able to see Davison, or anyone else on that day was because he had cleared his calendar to meet with “Ol’ Rip,” a horned toad that emerged alive during the razing of the old courthouse in Eastland, Texas, after thirty-one years of incarceration in the building’s cornerstone. Few details of the visit have survived with the exception of one transcribed account from
The Amphibian Lovers’ Oral History Project: 100 Years of Frogs & their Friends
(Chicago: S. Elliot and Company, 1982).
Coolidge allegedly invited the toad and its human entourage to stay for lunch, during which he hand-fed the toad flies skewered on toothpicks. The legendarily laconic president is said to have remarked, “My, my. Hmm. Yum, huh?”
It was foolish of Davison to think that he could have gotten a product endorsement from the president in the first place.
17. “
Didn’t James Joyce’s eye patch used to be over the other eye?”
Jonathan Blashette to Harlan Davison, 1 November, 1924HD. Jonathan’s pub encounter with author James Joyce was the second in a long series of late-night celebrity convives. Many of the individuals whom Jonathan met during his many years of urban night-owling were, like Joyce, well established in their high-profile professions; others, such as Rodolfo Valentina d’Antonguolla, were soon to
be
famous. Most of the encounters, though friendly and even affectionate, never rose to anything sustaining, and generally didn’t extend beyond a single, isolated evening of convivial fraternity, soul-baring confession, and/or bathetic beer-basted blubbering.
Still, Jonathan’s pantheon of pub pals is impressive. Among those with whom he bonded over brews and spirits, both legal and il, were popular radio announcer Graham McNamee; at least one of the Dionne quintuplets (Jonathan was too drunk at the time to recall which, but did remember that the young woman imbibed only Shirley Temples, and so was the exception to the elevated blood-alcohol rule.); fashion designer Christian Dior (to whom, it is rumored, Jonathan suggested the sack dress); Betty Ford (during her tenure with the Martha Graham Concert Group); contract bridge expert Charles Henry Goren; murderess Winne Ruth Judd (during her years on the lam—“What saw? Oh,
this
saw. Why, Mr. Blashette, I carry this ol’ thing everywhere I go. It’s my
lucky
saw. Now—enough about the saw
if you know what’s good for you.
”); mobster Lucky Luciano; record-setting
thoroughbred Man O’War (“Who the hell let that horse in here?”); government agent Eliot Ness; saxophonist Lester Young; German film director Leni Riefenstahl (“I’m going to live to be 101; just watch me, liebchen.”); entrepreneur Billy Rose (“Is Fanny Brice in here? She left something on the stove.”); crooner Rudy Vallee (“Where’s my megaphone? Did somebody pinch my megaphone?”); folksinger and composer Woody Guthrie (“So long. It’s been good to know you.”); jigsaw puzzle designer Jo LeGood; actor J. Carroll Naish; baseball player “Gorgeous George” Sisler; manufacturer William C. Procter (“I’m looking for a business associate of mine—Jimmy Gamble.”); and manufacturer Arde Bulova (“Do I have the time? Sure as tootin’ I’ve got the time.”). Incidentally, it was Bulova who originated spot advertising on the radio and convinced Jonathan to give the new medium a shot.
18.
“Things are going well.”
The full text of Jonathan’s letter to Bloor (10 November1924 AnB) follows:
Dear Dr. Bloor,
I thank you for your letter. I am happy to report that things are going well. Things, in fact, are going exceedingly well. Dandy-de-odor-o, Inc. has become more successful than I ever imagined. We cannot keep up with the orders that are flooding in; we are already making plans for expanding our plant and are taking on new employees on almost a weekly basis.
It has not been a difficult task. There, apparently, has always been a need for deodorizers for the male underarm. I suppose it was simply a matter of time before someone like me came along to find a way to fill that need. But is it, simultaneously, filling the need within me to make something of my life—something lasting? Something with which I can make a difference
in this world? Perhaps not. Yet, I know that the money I make from this business can be put to good use in myriad ways. I would like to found an organization with some humanitarian aspect. I haven’t yet decided what that will be. I am still trying to figure out why I am here. You have told me that I have a life mission. I know that selling deodorants is not it. Dandy-de-odor-o, Inc. constitutes merely a rest stop along the highway of my life. To freshen up. To help others freshen up. I will be back on that highway soon—speeding toward my destiny, to be sure.
I have rented a very comfortable little apartment for my father on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. When I first moved him here he had a terrible aversion to the city. Almost daily he would remind me how much he wanted to get back to Arkansas. But now he seems to have settled in nicely. He has made several friends—older men like himself, living alone—with whom he sits in Riverside Park and discusses current events. They debate the merits of various local delicatessens. Last night he told me that he is considering becoming a Jew. He doesn’t wear his overalls any more. He is evolving into a true New Yorker.
Doctor Bloor, I am in love. I will speak frankly. Her name is Winny Wieseler and she is smart and funny and beautiful. I cannot wait to see her each day. And when I am not with her, I am thinking about her—constantly. I do not think I dishonor the memory of Lucile by having such strong feelings for Winny. I have simply been blessed by God with the chance to meet and cultivate affection for two most extraordinary women. I cannot wait for you to meet my Winny. Will you be in New York some time soon?
Sincerely,
Jonathan Blashette
19.
She was dedicated to public service.
Among the other causes to which Winny devoted herself was working to replace the name of the Dakota School for Crippled and Stumbling Children. Leggio,
Winsome Winny
, 123.
20.
It was no Algonquin.
Of decidedly less collective magnitude than the luminaries who congregated uptown at the Algonquin Hotel, was the literary demimonde that gathered twice each week at the Bowery Hotel “Round Table.” (Robert Benchley did wander in on one occasion to use the telephone and was corralled into sharing a drink with the group for a quarter of an hour. The experience included little conversation and much gawking.) And yet the conclave’s existence through the twenties and into the early thirties made enough of a ripple in the New York literary and theatrical pond to merit a book by Justin Dunigan, grandson of charter member
New York Clarion
columnist A. Deveer Dunigan. In his book, Justin assembles a number of the quasi-witticisms delivered by participants of the Bowery klatch, among them the effervescent and slightly cheeky Winny Wieseler. A sampling follows. Justin Dunigan,
Wednesdays at Noon, Fridays at One: An Anecdotal History of the “Other” Round Table
(New York: Tabitha Press, 1983).
A. Deveer Dunigan
: My paper reports that Nellie Bly has just died
.
I am more inclined to believe that the woman is feigning death as a means to investigating the undertaking profession.
Thomas Marchese
(columnist for the
New York Shoppers Weekly
) She certainly has the coloration down.
Cordelia Klempt
(columnist for the
Ladies’ Reader
): Nellie Bly—Nellie Blech! Gentlemen, may we please suspend such morbid talk until after the à la mode?
Arden Philpot
(drama critic with the
Yonkers Crier,
regarding an actress whose name is now lost to us): Watching her perform is like observing the purchase of stamps.
Winny Wieseler
(on the former President): You can lead a horse to Warren Harding, but you can’t castrate the two of them simultaneously.
Enos D. Ryerbach
(bon vivant): The biggest difference between men and women lies in the tits, unless, of course, you’re speaking of Mr. Philpot here, when one is advised to travel farther south to draw a conclusion!
Arden Philpot
(his retort): Enos, you are bile in human form!
Cordelia Klempt
: Shut up, the both of you! You’re wilting my surprise salad.
Victor Sonderskov
(freelance poet, on the recently opened tomb of King Tutankhamen): Tut, tut, tut. I am not moved.
Winny Wieseler
(on the launch of Chanel Number Five): I haven’t tried the new fragrance. I have, however, worn Chanel Number One and Chanel Number Four simultaneously and would imagine the end result to be the same.
Enos D. Ryerbach
(On Coco Chanel): I do not generally endorse women whose names are eponymous with beverages.
Arden Philpot
(reviewing Pirandello’s
Six Characters in Search of an Author
): I would have preferred to see perhaps two more characters.
Thomas Marchese
: What an age in which to live—Fascists to the right, Communists to the left! And Mr. Kahlil Gibran telling us to love them all! Give me Texas Guinan and a night of liquor-facilitated self-absorption. Give me a plush seat in the Epicurean, hedonistic middle! Give me the bottle of ketchup, Arden, before the grease on my meatloaf sandwich congeals!
21.
“Tomorrow I will ask Winny if she will consent to be my wife.”
Jonathan’s Diary.
22.
Then, suddenly, Winny was gone.
Lana Leggio,
Winsome Winny
.
23.
Jonathan received the tragic news late that night.
Patrick Oldeman,
Tears for the Shawmut
, 256-66. Fate had indeed played another cruel trick on Jonathan. Once again the setting for tragedy was (amazingly) Boston. Whereas six years earlier Lucile Moritz’s young life had been snuffed out by a tsunami of molasses, Winny was now meeting her end in a different, yet equally freakish Beantown accident. Like Lucile, Winny was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jonathan knew that she liked to dance, but was unaware that the Charleston had become such an obsession with her that her frequent travels would inevitably draw her inexorably and often foolhardily to the hottest night spots in town. 1925 was the peak year for the popular dance, and Winny (as Leggio notes in her biography) made a special effort to get to the Pickwick Dance Club—
the
hot spot in Boston for “doin’ it, doin’ it.”
The official post mortem was unequivocal: the roof collapse was attributed to “unnatural stresses” placed upon the building’s structural members by the feverish, swiveling, swaying, flailing and knee-knocking of hundreds of monkey-limbed dancers, among them one Winny Wieseler
from New York City by way of Heppleville, Illinois. Poor Winny—artist, writer, progressive activist, lover and friend to Jonathan Blashette—had literally danced herself into an early grave.
A postscript: Jonathan vowed never to return to the city that had claimed his two fiancées. He refused even to sell his deodorants there, in retribution. “I hate this town more than any man on this planet, save probably Babe Ruth,” he told a reporter 1927. “It killed two women who meant the world to me, and murdered my hope for any future happiness. The men of Boston can stink with b.o. till the cows come home!”
LIFE AFTER WINNY
1.
The grief slowly receded.
The loss of Winny clearly haunted Jonathan for the rest of his life. His near-obsession with her death resulted in a number of strange attempts to either perpetuate her memory or, conversely, to force closure through some radical acknowledgment of her passing. According to Harvey Freeman in his article, “Jonathan Blashette; Inside the Man,” for
Body Fresh
Magazine, a trade publication put out by the Deodorant Council of America (July/August issue, 1972), Jonathan commissioned well-known portraitist Ely Wochna to do a painting of Winny, which Jonathan then hung in the study of his Greenwich Village brownstone and which remained there for the rest of his life. What made this commission odd is the fact that Jonathan requested that its artist return to his home every year upon the anniversary of Winny’s death to retouch the painting, subtly aging the face, neck and hands of its deceased subject, so that with the passage of years, the late Winny would, in effect, age along with her extant paramour Jonathan.
Freeman elaborates:
“Comparisons to Wilde’s Mr. Dorian Gray are without merit. Unlike the portrait of Mr. Gray, which was transmogrified by the unseemly acts of its owner, here was a painting physically modified by the painter himself, under specific instructions from its owner. Deprived of the permanence of youth—that blessed state customarily granted by the artist’s brush—denied the reward of immortality by a man who did not wish to age alone, Winny was required to grow old, to wrinkle, to sag,
perhaps even to bruise and scar, should one presume that the head in its dotage might encounter sharp airborne objects, or perhaps duck too slowly beneath a drooping oak branch or spinning windmill sail, or swing carelessly toward an unacknowledged lamp post, thereby incurring cutaneous abrasion, although one suspects that it was never Jonathan’s intention to see the face of his beloved Winny vandalized by the years, but merely to have her grow old with grace and dignity, in quiet company with the man who loved her
.
The painting disappeared from Jonathan’s home shortly after his death. One imagines that the family felt it simply too macabre to include in the public estate sale. Those who saw it last will attest to the artistry of its painter; its subject looking appropriate for the age she would have been, had she lived. Curiously, in her last “years” her head had acquired a simple red babushka. One wonders as to the reason for the suspected hair loss, but an explanation has never been given.”