Invisible Themepark

Author: Lee Wallender

Max Tannenbaum: New York Hoodlum Brought to L.A. By Mickey Cohen

Los Angeles.

It’s the 1950s. You’re on the front lines as a low-level gang associate of famed mobster Mickey Cohen.

Associate, enforcer, pal, friend, whatever. You’re called many things.

It’s not like a gangster movie.

It’s a mundane life. Some people call you a functionary like it’s an insult. But why? A functionary functions. A functionary gets things done.

Your name is Max Tannenbaum

You do things like accompany your boss to Los Angeles International Airport in 1958 when he’s flying off to Mexico with Barbara Darnell.

You’re the one always off to the side.

You’re not there to help with the plane tickets, You’ve got to keep your hands free. One never knows what will happen.

You don’t look like much, right off. You’re in your forties, heading fast into your fifties. Your hair is receding and your face isn’t exactly carved from granite, with its tucked-in chin, patrician nose, and expectant eyes.

You could pass for a maitre d’ at a place with red velvet ropes. Type of place Mickey is always being photographed at his higher-level associates or with Miss Darnell.

Overall, you look nice. You look like a nice man. You could be an accountant or a VP in a small airplane parts company in El Segundo.

Max Tannenbaum, 1958, Johnny Stompanato Murder

Max Tannenbaum, 1958, Johnny Stompanato Murder

When another of Mickey Cohen’s enforcers, Johnny Stompanato, gets killed, you show up at the funeral and you do the right things–mainly stand off to the side–say the right things, which isn’t much.

You’re never one to hog the limelight. You’re always on the edges. Mostly you watch.

You live at 1267 N. Laurel

It’s in West Hollywood, just off of Fountain.

Laurel is a new apartment building, constructed in 1958. One-bedroom, woolen rugs, built-in amenities, heated pool go for $150, starting price. It’s a good size for a bachelor with a world of prospects.

Sure isn’t New York.

You like the pool. The pool to you is exotic. That pool is your bit of the tropics.

You have no idea that decades in the future 1267 N. Laurel will restyle itself as The Laurel and that West Hollywood will become WeHo–at least to a couple of people. What you paid $150 a month for will eventually cost $3,450 a month, studio only. $4,600 if you want one bed, one bath.

You mostly stay out of the way

Even though your job is to stay out of the way, you break the fourth wall once. It’s in 1958 when Stompanato is murdered.

Stompanato’s brother, Carmine, rushes out to L.A.

Mickey trusts you enough that he wants you there. It’s extremely high-profile, and the press is waiting for the plane in huge numbers.

You catch a picture of yourself next day in the papers. That’s Carmine and Mickey, arm in arm, and you’re frozen and staring at the paparazzi flashes.

Carmine Stompanato, Mickey Cohen, Max Tannenbaum, April 4, 1958, Los Angeles Airport

Ultimately you’re just a petty criminal

Sharp suit and snappy apartment aside, you’re a thug. You do bad things to people.

Mickey wouldn’t have brought you out here if you couldn’t do things.

Max Tannenbaum, 1961

First arrest, 1929.

Sentenced in New York to 15 years for second-degree burglary charges, served four, then paroled.

You’re a cheap, petty burglar. You can’t get out of your own way. You got this opportunity with Mickey Cohen but you can’t stop from burglarizing apartments for costume jewelry.

You’re already on the rack for two burglaries at 345 S. Doheny Dr. when it happens. You get shot and it’s the beginning of the end.

“He won’t even admit he was shot,” said a frustrated detective

You go to a bar at 9114 W. Pico Blvd, West Hollywood. You step into your car in the alley in back and–

BOOM! Then another. BOOM!

Two shotgun blasts, one that catches you in the eye. Ambulance takes you to UCLA Medical Center.

At first, you admit nothing, you agree to nothing.

Police want to know who hit you. You’re such a stand-up guy, you won’t even admit that you’d been hit.

“Who shot you, Max?”

“Who’s shot?”

Police theorize that the assailant didn’t want you dead because why would he have used a shotgun?

Doctors plead with you to operate. Your eye is pulverized. You’ve got a pellet in your brain. You say no.

Finally, you agree. They remove your eye.

You’re on your own from here, scrouging a living by doing more burglaries. You’re a pro with the passkeys. And you’re an ace at past-post betting at Santa Anita.

But it’s not in you anymore, especially being exiled by Mickey.

In 1965, you’re picked up again for two burglaries in West Hollywood

A 53 year-old one-eyed burglar.

Eight years later, 1973, you die.

August 1, 2021
Richard Reibold: Shady Ad Exec and Talman Raid Party Host

Call it a sign of changing times, plain luck, or powerful lawyers, but being arrested in Hollywood on morals and drug charges in 1960 wasn’t what it used to be.

Once, it meant the end of your career and public humiliation. But for Perry Mason actor William Talman and the rest of the group, including host Richard Reibold, it was only a bump in the road.

When TV D.A. William Talman Got Busted For Narcotics and Lewd Vagrancy

On March 12, 1960, Talman and seven others were arrested at an apartment on 1156 N. Curson Ave., West Hollywood. Officers reportedly found everyone nude in a bedroom, plus they discovered marijuana and pornographic literature.

Ad Exec Richard Reibold

The party host and person renting the N. Curson apartment was Richard Reibold. For years, Richard Reibold operated on the edges of legality and respectability: a man who got into big-time trouble a couple of times, but always managed to claw his way back.

Richard Reibold, 1963

At the time he was arrested, Richard Reibold, 31, was Director of Radio and Television for a high-end Beverly Hills advertising agency, Lennen & Newell. Lennen & Newell had accounts in the TV and film industry.

Reibold started in New York and had only recently come to Los Angeles.

In New York, Reibold was an executive at the BBD&O advertising agency, now called BBDO–at least, until he was accused of rape and kidnapping.

Reibold’s New York Kidnap and Rape Attempt Charges

In 1956, while living in New York, Richard Reibold was accused of attempting to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard, 24, invariably identified by papers as an “attractive honey-blonde housewife.”

Allison Apartments, 81-10 135th St., Kew Gardens, NY

Reibold was married but separated from his wife for the last year and a half. He now lived with his aunt, Eleanor Simpson, at 81-10 135th St., Kew Gardens, New York.

On November 8, 1956, Richard Reibold allegedly attempted to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard.

Reibold had forced his way into Mrs. Burkhard’s car in the parking lot of the Bloomingdale’s department store in Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY, and threatened her with a blackjack. He then ordered her to drive to an isolated area of Cunningham Park, where he tried to rape her.

Bloomingdale’s, Fresh Meadows, New York

Mrs. Ann Burkhard, 1956

Mrs. Burkhard fought him off. He ordered her to drive him back to the scene of the alleged kidnapping, where he got out of the car.

Reibold later claimed he had been walking around Cunningham Park for two and a half hours, “meditating about a big job he was readying for an account.”

Detectives, though, noted that Reibold’s auto hood was warm and they discovered a blackjack in his car.

Richard Reibold, 1956

During the trial, Reibold had many prominent and well-connected character witnesses, including fellow BBD&O ad agency executives and friend Carol Reed, a weather broadcaster for WCBS-TV.

Carol Reed, The Weather Girl

A Queens jury, after deliberating for nearly two hours, acquitted Richard Reibold of attempted rape and kidnapping charges.

“I bear no animosity toward that woman,” Reibold said after acquittal. “I just didn’t do it.”

Reibold After Talman Scandal

While this is conjecture, it appears that Reibold was fired from Lennen & Newell due to the scandal.

Reibold landed not-so-feet-first at Nutri-Bio of California, Inc.

Nutri-Bio: Forgotten MLM Supplements Scheme

Nutri-Bio was a sleazy Amway-like multi-level marketing supplements company based in Vancouver, Canada. Reibold worked at Nutri-Bio’s Beverly Hills office.

For a period, Nutri-Bio did big business, reportedly pulling in over $30 million per year, gross.

Nutri-Bio also wasn’t well-loved by the FDA, charging Nutri-Bio with “falsely promoted as cures for ailments ranging from heart trouble to impotency.”

In other words, Mr. Reibold was directly involved with these suspect promotions.

Reibold bounced back, out of Nutri-Bio hell. Only a few years later, in 1963, Reibold was named radio-television director at far more respectable Los Angeles ad firm, Beckman, Koblitz, Inc.

Richard Reibold married Margaret “Peggy” Reibold, who is still alive as of 2023 and still living in the Los Angeles area.

Coda: Reibold’s “Unusual Spanish” in the Hollywood Hills

Richard Reibold finally lived at 3410 N Knoll Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90068, a house that the real estate ads in the 1960s called “an unusual Spanish.”

3410 N Knoll Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90068

For a period, the house seems to have been unsellable, starting at $52,500 in 1966, down to $45,000 in 1967, then $36,950 in 1968.

Reibold ran his own company from there, The Reibold Company, Inc. He appears to have done well. As of 2022, he and his wife Margaret were listed by Pepperdine University as having given at least $1,000,000 to the university over the course of their lives.

Richard Reibold died in 2000.

July 14, 2021
Nutri-Bio: Forgotten MLM Supplements Scheme

With food supplement peddling, what comes around goes around. Apparently, this has been going on for ages.

Nutri-Bio was a multi-level marketing scheme in the 1960s and 1970s started by Chuck Young, a Californian who moved to Vancouver, BC.

Talented but troubled actor, health food advocate, and occasional methamphetamine user Bob Cummings was the star attraction. A photo of his beaming face was even displayed in the Vancouver headquarters.

Said Cummings to a group of Nutri-Bio distributors, “NutriBio is not a business. It’s a way of life.”

The U.S. branch of Nutri-Bio supposedly grossed $30 million per year in 1962.

One Nutri-Bio executive even hazarded the idea that food supplements might curb violent behavior, saying that

If you deprive a bunch of laboratory rats of calcium they become vicious and attack each other. Restore calcium to their diet and they calm down. There was the story in the newspapers a few years ago about the young lad who killed eleven people for no apparent reason. That report included a powerful message. The boy hadn’t had a home-cooked meal for two years; he had lived on hot dogs and cokes.
MacLean’s, The Rosy World of Nutri-Bio

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration didn’t look too kindly on Nutri-Bio, often seizing shipments of the tablets and powders, as they were “falsely promoted as cures for ailments ranging from heart trouble to impotency,” according to The Greenville News, November 30, 1961.

Richard Reibold: Shady Ad Exec and Talman Raid Party Host

Nobody really knew what was in Nutri-Bio products, but that was never the point.

The point, as in all MLM schemes, was in selling the concept to the next person and working your way up the pyramid.

July 13, 2021
When TV D.A. William Talman Got Busted For Narcotics and Lewd Vagrancy

Actor William Talman (1915-1968) is probably most familiar as Los Angeles District Attorney Hamilton Burger, from the long-running TV series Perry Mason.

Talman is less-known as a truly effective noir actor, especially in the title role in The Hitch-Hiker.

There, Talman–and his reptile eyes that don’t fully close at night–menace a driver and his passenger who simply were out for a fishing trip and made the mistake of helping a hitchhiker.

William Talman, The Hitch-Hiker

At only 71 minutes and with no substories, The Hitch-Hiker truly qualifies for that overused word applied to so many thrillers: taut.

Affable and well-liked, Talman also heroically put his name and face on an anti-smoking commercial filmed before his death–due to smoking. The effort was heroic because he was in the last few weeks of his life and doing poorly. The morning of the shoot, he’d been at the hospital for cobalt treatments.

In 1960, Talman engaged in a scandalous act that got him temporarily fired from his sweet TV D.A. job.

Raid on 1156 N. Curson Ave.

1156 N. Curson Ave., West Hollywood, CA

On March 12, 1960, Talman and seven others were arrested at 1156 N. Curson Ave., West Hollywood on narcotics charges after officers found marijuana.

It was a Saturday, so unlikely that Talman would be filming any of the Perry Mason shows that day. Talman lived over the hill in Sherman Oaks. at 15426 Valley Vista Blvd, a convenient place to hop onto the San Diego Freeway to the studios.

William Talman House, 15426 Valley Vista Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA

It wasn’t just any marijuana party but a “nude marijuana party,” according to the Los Angeles Mirror-News, March 14, 1960. Plus, officers found “dirty movies, spicy books, and lewd photos.”

The N. Curson apartment, part of a building supposedly built by Charlie Chaplin, was rented by ad exec Richard Reibold.

Richard Reibold: Shady Ad Exec and Talman Raid Party Host

Besides Talman, the group consisted of Reibold, Talman’s friend, James H. (Jimmie) Baker, Peter and Suzanne Hespelt, and three women, in their twenties or thirties: a Mrs. Peggy Louise Flannigan, a Mrs. Willie Donovan, and all-around bad girl, Miss Lola DeWitt.

What Happened That Night

A sheriff’s deputy, Harry Stameisen, gained entry to the Reibold residence by making a phone call and pretending to be a prospective guest. Stameisen was also the arresting officer. Talman’s attorney would later claim that the deputy had made illegal entry.

One news account was very tabloid-ready, with Sheriff’s Capt. Richard B. Brooks stating:

We found seven people, all nude, in one bedroom. Some were on the floor and some were on the twin beds. When we saw the nudes we summoned the vice squad and officers from there helped us.
Knoxville News-Sentinel, March 14, 1960

According to the Mirror-News account, Mr. and Mrs. Hespelt were “fraternizing” with Miss DeWitt.

James H. Baker was “paired” with Mrs. Donovan. Talman was with Mrs. Flannigan.

Talman was fired from the Perry Mason show. But after lobbying from Mason producer Gail Patrick, he was eventually hired back.

Charges were dropped against the entire group.

James H. Baker, William Talman, and attorney C. Richard Maddox

James H. Baker

James (Jimmie) Hollan Baker, 1970s

James Hollan Baker, 39, was Talman’s friend and companion. Known as Jimmie Baker, he was an Oklahoma-born producer of music-related documentaries.

Baker was big in the music scene and helped out with many charitable organizations, including the Hollywood Motion Picture and Television Museum, which was intended to be located on a 4-acre site behind the Hollywood Bowl but never got past the planning stage.

Baker died in 2003.

Richard Reibold

Host of the party and apartment renter, Richard Reibold, 31, was identified by papers as Director of Radio and Television for high-end Beverly Hills advertising agency, Lennen & Newell, which had accounts in the TV and film industry.

Mrs. Peggy Louise Flannigan, Mrs. Willie Donovan, Lola DeWitt,

Mrs. Peggy Louise Flannigan

At the time of the arrest, William Talman was in the process of separating from Barbara Read. The divorce was granted on September 13, 1961.

Mrs. Peggy Louise Flannigan became William Talman’s next wife: Margaret Louise Larkin Flannigan Talman. Her divorce from her previous husband was granted on October 30, 1961.

William and Peggy Talman

On November 4, 1961, Talman and Flannigan married at the Flamingo Hotel, in Las Vegas.

Lola DeWitt Stewart

Lola DeWitt, 1953

A colorful character with a shady past, Lola DeWitt was typically identified in the news as an actress. Lola DeWitt was a notorious stripper, model, prostitute, child murderer, and yes, also an actress and singer.

Peter Neil Hespelt and Suzanne Elizabeth Hespelt

A married couple was also arrested: Peter Neil Hespelt, 29, and Suzanne Elizabeth Hespelt, 24. Papers stated the name as “Hestelt” but it appears to actually be “Hespelt.”

Peter Neil Hespelt, 29, was identified as a finance company manager. At one point, Hespelt ran or was employed by Budget Finance Plan, in the L.A. area.

Peter and Suzanne Hespelt appear to have divorced. The Santa Cruz Sentinel on January 15, 1971, reported that Peter Neil Hespelt married Lisa Ann Saenz. The paper states that both are residents of “Toponga,” but likely this is a typo for Topanga, an area around Los Angeles.

Peter Neil Hespelt died in Mammoth Lakes, California, in 2011.

Suzanne Hespelt is still alive.

Mrs. Willie Donovan

All we know of Mrs. Willie Donovan is that her husband stuck by her, at least until the trial, because we have a news account that says that Mr. Donovan “shoved photographers” as he was “just trying to protect [his] wife.”

Harry L. Stameisen

The arresting deputy, Harry Stameisen, is still alive and is in his 90s.

July 4, 2021
Go for Broke! (1951): a Film Out of Its Time

Judging by Go for Broke‘s posters and related promotional material, you’d think that this Robert Pirosh picture is yet another post-WWII jingoistic war film. We see strapping blonde Van Johnson hoisting a rifle and chasing the Italian ladies.

The title, too, evokes visions of Battleground (1949)–also starring Van Johnson and directed by Robert Pirosh–and the wartime Gung Ho (1943).

No doubt the style of promotion was intended to make the film palatable to the general public in 1951-1952.

Those were sly disguises for this sharp film.

Instead, Van Johnson takes a distant back seat to the real stars: the 442nd, composed of second-generation Americans born of Japanese parents–Nisei.

Johnson seethes with a quiet sourness when he realizes that he’s in charge of all of these so-called Buta-head (or Buddhahead) Nisei from Hawaii and Kotonks from the mainland U.S.

In fact, one layer of the movie is the internal tension between the Buta-heads and the Kotonks.

Warner Anderson’s Col. Pence issues a corrective toward the beginning of the film when Van Johnson’s character requests a transfer to another unit.

First, he says, they’re not “Japs” but “Japanese-Americans” or Nisei. Second, they’re all volunteers. And third, the White officers are actually referred to as haoles, a Hawaiian term for non-Hawaiians.

The story is told with finesse and restraint. Johnson’s character is no pig-headed bigot; he’s just quietly aggrieved and confused.

By the end of the movie, Van Johnson’s view of the men of the 442nd changes, but it’s a very slow realization.

There are no long Capra-esque monologues about the indignities faced by the 442nd. Nor is this the shove-it-down-your-throat social commentary that modern viewers are so accustomed to.

Characters say how they feel, but it’s within the dialogue and it feels natural. In fact, most of the soldiers–with the exception of Don Haggerty as Sgt. Culley–aren’t really put out by the 442nd soldiers at all.

Go for Broke is now in the public domain, so it’s available on YouTube and on Amazon Prime for free.

July 2, 2021