Halloween, Houdini, and Holyoke

Halloween and Houdini seem to go together, and add to that, Holyoke.


An intriguing collection of Houdini memorabilia has been on display at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, Massachusetts for the last six weeks. The last day to see it is tomorrow, October 31st.

The items are from the famed Sidney Radner collection. Mr. Radner, a Holyoke native, was a magician himself who acquired the items from “Hardeen”, a fellow magician who was also Houdini’s younger brother.

In his vaudeville touring days, a 21-year-old Harry Houdini played Holyoke when he was first performing his escape from handcuffs in 1895. As he did in many communities for a publicity stunt, Houdini once escaped from the Holyoke jail under a challenge that he couldn’t.

Upon Houdini’s sudden death in Detroit on Halloween 1926, annual séances were conducted first by his widow, and then by magician societies around the country; Mr. Radner, before his death in 2011, presided over the Holyoke Houdini Séance.

Try to catch the marvelous exhibit at Wistariahurst before it disappears.

NOTE: Photo is from the Library of Congress collection, now in public domain.

Mount Sugarloaf - Deerfield, Massachusetts

You are standing on the back of a dead giant man-eating beaver.  According to Native American legend.  Maybe so.  This is the view from Mount Sugarloaf in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.  It's only just over 650 feet high, but it's placement on a wide valley floor lends the view a strangely spectacular sense of drama.  Especially at peak foliage season.

We're looking south in the above photo; that's Mt. Tom in Holyoke on the horizon.  Here below is looking eastward.

Across the Connecticut River you can see Mt. Toby in Sunderland.  No dead giant man-eating beaver over there.  And the volanic energy that created it is long since dormant.  So, it's safe to bring a lunch and go for a hike.  Our only sense of urgency comes from missing what's left of the fleeting peak season.

Makris Diner - Wethersfield, Connecticut

The Makris Diner has spent over 60 years watching the traffic speed by on the Berlin Turnpike in Wethersfield, Connecticut. It’s a good enough reason to stop.


It was built by the Jerry O’Mahoney Diner Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, one of the largest manufacturers of metal pre-fabricated diners from 1917 (or 1913?) to 1941.

According to an article in the Hartford Courant by Donna Larcen, September 22, 2011, the Makris Diner has been standing in its present location since 1951. I don’t know if the building was in use in a different location for at least the previous 10 years -- these metal diners can be moved, after all -- but this undated postcard (1940s, early 1950s?) would seem to indicate that the place was always busy even then.

But there’s still plenty of booths and counter seating, so don’t pass it by. Eat slowly.  Enjoy that comfort food.

West Cornwall Covered Bridge - Connecticut

The iconic red bridge has known its lonely moments, but this is not one of them. On a spanking fresh fall day, the West Cornwall Covered Bridge in West Cornwall, Connecticut is likely to be the scene of converging leaf-peepers with cameras.

Open to vehicular traffic, a minor traffic jam might occur when someone takes a little extra time to get that perfect shot.

Bridges were placed on this spot over the Housatonic River as early as the 1760s, but floods and ice swept them away. This present bridge was reckoned to have been built about 1864. It had been gray colored until 1957, when it was first painted red and took on the image of typical New England tourist brochure. According to the ConnecticutHistory.org site mentioned below, the producers of the 1967 film, “Valley of the Dolls” used a shot of the bridge at the opening of the movie to represent an idyllic New England town.

Fame didn’t go to the bridge’s head. It’s still willing to mingle among the little people, it’s adoring fans, who cluster under its roof timbers and line up along the banks of the Housatonic as they set up for that perfect photo.

A covered bridge is a precarious structure. This one has been threatened (what hasn’t?) by the Hurricane of 1938, the 1955 flood, and a 1961 ice jam. An effort by the community in 1968 to save and preserve the bridge received the help of the Connecticut Department of Transportation to raise the bridge and insert a steel support under the roadway. Today it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

If you happen to be meandering through western Connecticut, have a look at West Cornwall’s lovely bridge. If it’s a sunny, leaf-peeping weekend and others have gotten there first, don’t mind. Get out your camera. You’ll get your turn. In the meantime, listen to the splash of the Housatonic on the stones below, and breathe the fresh air. It’s a good spot for a rest.

For more on the West Cornwall Covered Bridge, have a look at this West Cornwall Historical Society site, and this site for ConnecticutHistory.org.

USS Constitution - Old Ironsides

You can see Boston through the masts, which are truncated in this shot. The USS Constitution was undergoing a little refurbishment when these photos were taken two years ago. She’s presentable again, now on the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, when Constitution came to fame.

She was launched long before, however, in October 1797, in Boston, not far from where Constitution remains berthed, still a commissioned ship in the US Navy, still the oldest commissioned warship afloat. She last sailed, briefly, under her own power in 1997 as part of her 200th anniversary. That had been for the first time since 1881.

The War of 1812 was such a convoluted episode in our history. President James Madison declared war on Great Britain over “Free Trade and Sailors Rights”, the latter a complaint over the nasty habit of British warships to increase the size of their navy by kidnapping US sailors.

New England nearly seceded over the war at the Hartford Convention, not wanting an interruption of trade with Great Britain.

We invaded Canada a few times, and were repelled each occasion. The final hopes of an autonomous state of Indian tribal control in the Midwest (or Northwest Territory as it was called then) -- supported by Great Britain, were dashed.

The peace treaty was finally signed in Belgium in 1815, but the Battle of New Orleans happened after that. Britain juggled the Napoleonic War at the same time, but when they finally dispatched Napoleon in 1814, they found time to burn Washington, D.C. And Francis Scott Key observed from the deck of a ship wondering in poetic form if the flag, or “Star Spangled Banner” was still there.


That’s a lot of unrelated, overlapping stuff to happen in war not often remembered today.

Though she did defeat four British warships in battle, the USS Constitution’s contributions did not affect the outcome of the War of 1812, but it provided enormous symbolism of a strong new nation. If the Revolutionary War gave us our independence from Great Britain, the War of 1812 solidified it politically, militarily, and especially psychologically. It was really our first taste of nationalism. A few decades after that Era of Good Feeling, national unity dissipated, bitter regionalism came back and led to the American Civil War.

The USS Constitution continues to remain an important symbol. “Old Ironsides”, a nickname earned in the War of 1812 after defeating the HMS Guerriere because the enemy’s cannonballs seemed to bounce off her, was also immortalized, of course, in poetry. This famous work of 1830 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was used to promote the ship’s value for American prestige and to stir public support for it not to be decommissioned. The public responded, as it always does, to this sleek frigate with the patriotic legend attached.

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

She is not plucked apart, or when she is, she’s always put back together again. For more on the USS Constitution, have at look at the official Navy website, and here for the museum at the Charlestown Navy Yard where you can visit the ship.

Some Hollywood Stars in New England Summer Theatre

In the summer of 1952 Victor Jory departed Hollywood for one of his habitual stage runs and toured the summer theatre circuit, with Alexis Smith in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives”. The sophisticate role was a natural for Miss Smith, who was typecast as such by Hollywood since her film career began some 12 years previously. But unknown to many moviegoers, it was an even more natural fit for Victor Jory, who had a much longer film career, and a much, much longer stage career. Hollywood had already typecast Jory as a scruffy villain. On stage, he was urbane, witty, and devilishly charming.

From the Boston Daily Globe August 12, 1952:

“The Boston Summer Theatre may be air-cooled but it sizzled last night with the heat engendered by Victor Jory kissing decorative Alexis Smith in that famous second act of “Private Lives”…I never saw…quite as much vigor and passion as Miss Smith and Mr. Jory, who seemed to enjoy every second of the sophisticated romp…The dialogue is light, witty and thoroughly naughty; the acting should be on the same order. And Miss Smith and Mr. Jory live up to audience expectations. It was a wonderful evening and the audience was capacity.”

Alexis Smith had minimal stage experience when she was in college, but Victor Jory had played stock theatre everywhere from his early apprenticeship at the Pasadena Playhouse to stages across the continent and as far as Australia. He played Shakespeare, Ibsen, Moliere, and Shaw. He wrote plays, and directed them.

A year later, Miss Smith and Mr. Jory took another summer tour, this time with “Bell, Book and Candle.” From the Boston Daily Globe, June 28, 1953, Alexis credits Victor Jory for teaching her stagecraft:

“I can’t believe that anyone in the whole world could have taught me as much as Victor has about my job. Working with him is better than any training school of the theatre you ever heard of. Mr. Jory has a vast amount of experience and he is willing to share it. Some actors are reticent when it comes to giving newcomers tricks of the trade. Victor is generous and kind. He has taught me all I know about legitimate theatre.”

When she first met Jory, she had a different impression. This was on the set of her film “South of St. Louis” (1949), which we discussed here. Jory played a nasty villain. She thought him a “rather horrible person” who was, “dirty, bewhiskered and wearing baggy pants.”

This had become Jory’s fate by the 1940s. Syndicated Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas visited the set of “South of St. Louis”, as picked up by the St. Petersburg, Florida Evening Independent June 14, 1948:

“Victor Jory, the mug they love to slug, was being pummeled by Joel McCrea when I visited the “South of St. Louis” set. The poor guy was being bounced all over the barroom…”

After “South of St. Louis”, Alexis and Victor Jory worked on one more film together, “Cave of Outlaws” (1951). He’s still a villain here, but considerably cleaned up. He vies with Macdonald Carey for the love of the typically cool and aloof Alexis, and gets beaten up again. It was on the set of “Cave of Outlaws” where she and Victor got to know each other better. They talked of theatre, of his experience in it, and her desire to pursue it. They formed the plan of working together. In the following year, they found themselves in an unexpected hit in “Private Lives”.

The next year, they met with further success in “Bell, Book and Candle”. Their performances were sold out, largely on the strength of their previous hit. From the Lewiston (Maine) Evening Journal, July 3, 1953. Smith and Jory “broke all attendance records at the same theater last year with their presentation of ‘Private Lives’.” (At Lakewood.) They had opened their tour of “Bell, Book and Candle” in Ogunquit, Maine at the famed Ogunquit Playhouse “to the pleasure of all that saw them there.”

“Bell, Book and Candle” opened the Framingham, Massachusetts season that June 1953. James Lee, author of the “Backstage” column for the Worcester Evening Gazette, June 11, 1953, met Alexis Smith and Victor Jory at a party in Boston the week before.

“They were supposed to leave at 7:30 for another rehearsal of “Bell, Book and Candle”…Victor decided they had been rehearsing so arduously for a week they could skip that night’s practice, and prolong the party instead.

“But not Miss Smith. She liked the party, but she liked the rehearsal idea better. So they left and rehearsed.

“‘Never saw anybody so anxious for perfection,’ he whispered to me.”

In the above-referenced Boston Daily Globe article of June 28, 1953, the article by Marjory Adams, Jory further commented on his co-star:

“Alexis is one of the hardest workers in the theatre I have ever met…She has intelligence and imagination. She is able to concentrate. And it has been a hell of a lot of fun to work with her in both ‘Private Lives’ and ‘Bell, Book and Candle.’”

Jory was pronounced “superb” by the New London Day when they brought “Bell, Book and Candle” to the Norwich (Connecticut) Summer Theatre.

From Skowhegan to Schenectady, they covered New England and the northeast with both plays. Hollywood was entering an interesting period in the early 1950s. Between the studios cutting back on productions, the court-mandated breaking up of movie theater properties, the competition from television, and the Communist witch hunts going on in the industry, actors were being booted out from the system or else voluntarily fleeing for work on the stage or television. It was, not so coincidentally, one of the most celebrated periods of summer theatre.

The same year Smith and Jory brought “Bell, Book and Candle” to Ogunquit, Zachary Scott appeared there in “The Moon is Blue”, Richard Arlen brought “Mister Roberts”, and Cedric Hardwicke appeared in “Island Visit”. The latter two stars brought those plays that same summer to the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts. Macdonald Carey was at the Westport (Connecticut) Country Playhouse in “Day of Grace.”

In future seasons, Alexis Smith returned to New England summer theatre with a different partner, her husband Craig Stevens, who made fame as TV’s Peter Gunn, in the comedy “Critic’s Choice”, which played, among other stops, the Ivoryton (Connecticut) Playhouse in August 1961, and closed the season that year at Oguquit. They also appeared together in the comedy “Mary, Mary” which made a stop at the old Mt. Tom Playhouse (see this previous post on the Casino at Mt. Tom) in August 1965; and at the Westport Country Playhouse, and Ogunquit, in 1968 with the comedy “Cactus Flower”.  She returned to the Country Playhouse, and Ogunquit, in 1968 without Victor or Craig to appear in "The Coffee Lover."  Gabriel Dell was her lead.

Victor Jory's many other appearances included "The Happiest Millionaire" in 1958 at Ogunquit, and with Don Porter in "The Best Man" at the Cape Playhouse in 1976.  Mr. Jory was in his 70s at the time, and looking well and fit.

The 2012 season of summer theatre is ending hereabouts, and joins the memories of seasons past.

For more on Victor Jory - On Stage and Screen, have a look at yesterday’s post on my Another Old Movie Blog.

Hurricane of 1938 Marker - Wickford, Rhode Island

This Friday, September 21st marks another anniversary of the Hurricane of 1938, which we covered here in this three-part post. We don't hear too much about that monster storm anymore as the generation that experienced it firsthand is diminishing among our ranks.  But here and there the great storm left calling cards that remain.  The generation that experienced it wanted it remembered, too.

Here on the brick facade of a charming bookstore on the corner of Main and Brown streets in Wickford, Rhode Island is a plaque.

To measure by, lest we forget.