4 Aces, located in Palmdale, California, is every Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford and B-Minus-film noir from 1949 to 1960 wrapped up into one, big, delightful fake.
The Diner
This is where you take the woman hitchhiking in heels with a suitcase and a shady story about her father, in Chicago, kicking her out of the house, when you know it’s really something about a boyfriend or husband. The boyfriend or husband robbed a bank in Indiana, and the woman has the dough in that Samsonite.
You listen to her story all evening—before you do what you’re about to do with her during the rest of the night. The next morning, she’s dead.
4 Aces Motel
Jan-Peter Flack created a movie ranch that specializes in just one look, one slice of Americana that still seems to be hanging on. It’s Atomic Age America but with the door open and the sand beginning to sift inside and the decay starting to happen.
Even though it looks like a refurbished motel and diner, 4 Aces was apparently built in 1997, from scratch, and was first used for the Lenny Kravitz video for “American Woman.”
An overactive imagination could come up with a scenario where Bette Davis kills her second husband, Arthur Farnsworth. After all, pick any Bette Davis movie at random, and she’s probably killing someone. Just the other night, I caught a very random Bette Davis movie: a weird 1964 late-late-film noir called Dead Ringer where Bette Davis kills Bette Davis (she plays two parts: twin sisters). Did she kill her husband, Arthur Farnsworth? That was a persistent urban legend, and here’s why.
Arthur Farnsworth
Today, you can walk past the Frolic Room on 6249 Hollywood Boulevard and admire its Art Deco facade, without knowing one item of trivia that happened below your feet. The Hollywood Walk of Fame star for Connie Stevens is there. Apparently, too, the L.A. Metro Rail, the subway, runs directly underneath that spot. Every piece of ground has its history.
Here, too, Bette Davis’ husband mysteriously dropped dead one day in 1943. Nothing obviously homicidal happened, no shooting, no stabbing, not even a heart attack. This reportedly otherwise healthy man in his 30s simply dropped dead on the sidewalk and no one ever could determine why.
Bette and Farny
By 1943, Bette Davis was already an established movie and stage actress, playing roles as varied as a “vixen and a tragedienne,” as described by the Los Angeles Times. Unlike so many other movie actors and actresses of the day, she married outside of the industry: Arthur Farnsworth.
Born on December 15, 1908, in Proctor, Vermont, Farnsworth was a high school friend of Davis and working as the assistant manager at a ski lodge Peckett’s On Sugar Hill in the White Mountains of New Hampshire when he met her.
On one of Davis’ vacations to her cottage, Butternut, in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, Davis and Farnsworth rekindled their friendship and turned it into a marriage in 1940. Farnsworth was often reported at that time as being a former commercial airlines pilot affiliated with the aeronautical branch of the Minneapolis-Honeywell Co.
Pantages Theater, 1943Pantages Theater, 2019
A Stop in Hollywood
At the time, Davis and Farnsworth were living at 1705 Rancho Avenue, Glendale, in a $50,000 house on the banks of the Los Angeles River that Davis called Riverbottom.
Some reports state that, on that day, Farnsworth first went to Burbank, then came back to Hollywood.
Why was Farnsworth here in the first place?
Farnsworth may have caught a show at the Pantages. On Monday, the Pantages was showing Mr. Lucky, with Cary Grant and Laraine Day. He might have caught a late matinee to see that picture.
Regent Liquors may have been his destination, but proprietor Dave Freedman did not mention Farnsworth visiting the store; only that as Farnsworth “passed his store” Farnsworth emitted a muffled scream.
Regent Liquor Store, Hollywood Blvd., 1949
The fall happened on the afternoon of August 23, 1943. After a muffled scream, Farny fell backward and struck his head on the pavement. He fell into a coma and was dead by 6:30 p.m. August 25.
He never regained consciousness. The base of his skull was fractured and he suffered several hemorrhages and a high fever as he lay in the hospital.
This English Tudor house, located at 201 Clent Road, Great Neck, New York, may not look like much of a love nest. But in 1948, its chief female resident, Mrs. Dorothea Matthews turned this house into something approaching the Playboy Mansion, East. It wasn’t until Mrs. Matthews’ divorce proceedings from her husband Mark Matthews in 1948 that we began to see that wanton sexual escapades did not begin in the groovy Sixties. According to court documents, Mrs. Matthews racked up a large number of sexual partners.
As a slim, shapely 28 year-old woman with plenty of time on her hands, Dorothea had many sexual options beyond her husband Mark, and she took advantage of so many of them. Mrs. Matthews was a very forthright individual; or, to put it in the words of the New York Daily News , she was “socially minded.” Mrs. Matthews managed to bed down a good number of men and women in Great Neck, Upstate New York, trains in transit to Florida, Manhattan, and probably lots of other places.
Yet her taste in sexual partners was not indiscriminate. A doctor, art historian, student, actor, secretary, and her husband, who was a Ping-Pong champion and owned a messenger service, filled her sexual roster, and those are only the ones we know about. And of course, a murderer would be one of her conquests. But let’s start with her husband.
The Ping-Pong Champion and Husband: Mark Matthews
Born Marcus Schussheim, Mark Matthews married Dorothea on September 16, 1936 in Yonkers. Mark Matthews owned a couple of Grand Central Station area messenger services and made quite a bit of money from them. Obviously, this would prove to be a turbulent marriage. Mark was apparently more tolerant of Dorothea’s sexual hungers than most husbands would be.
Mark Matthews was also a world-class ping pong champion. According to a press clipping about Mark and his ping pong prowess, he liked to sleep nude and tended to drink lemonade before going to sleep and after. At age two, according to Mark, he fell three stories out of a window and directly into a garbage can. A scar over his left eye remained with him.
Mark clearly viewed Dorothea through his penis; he did not make her his wife for practical purposes. According to a 1950 newspaper account, “Dorothea…couldn’t cook or keep house, and she wasn’t interested in learning.”
The Hatseller: Doris Lee
Doris Lee had a hat business in Great Neck. New York. Because Doris had a brick-and-mortar location, she received some of the love letters that men sent to Dorothea Matthews. At least on one occasion, Dorothea and Mark had a foursome with Doris Lee and actor John Meredith.
The Actor: John Meredith
Other than this photo from IMDB (John Meredith identified as the actor in the middle), I haven’t found out anything about him.
The Doctor: Fernand Vistreich
Dr. Fernand Vistreich, 1948
Dr. Vistreich was a Great Neck doctor who consulted with Mrs. Matthews in bed. According to Mrs. Matthews’ cook Claude Stewart, one morning he served coffee to Dr. Vistreich and Mrs. Matthews in bed. “That’s absurd!” retorted Dr. Vistreich in courter, “I’ll bring charges against anyone who says that! I have a family!” He pointed at Mrs. Matthews, called her a baboon, a reference which the judge ordered struck from court records.
Dr. Visteich’s wife of the time put up a good show, above, accompanying him to court. But the affair and perhaps other events incinerated the marriage. In 1964 Dr. Vistreich married schoolteacher Roslyn Vistreich (d. 1999).
The One-Night-Stand Physician: Doctor Spear
In 1941, while on a train to Florida, Mrs. Matthews met a stranger, Dr. Spear, for a one night stand. She insisted that they only got together to see Seminole Indians for a day tour.
The Art Historian: Winston Weisman
Then there was the free-spirited Winston Weisman (February 2, 1909 – October 9, 1997), who first hit the minor headlines in 1937 when the freighter he was travelling in, West Mahwah, hit a sandbar 35 miles south of San Francisco, near Pesadero. Weisman and his companion 23 year-old Karola Preer were the only two passengers on this freighter, along with 45 crewmen. When Weisman next hit the headlines, it was as Mrs. Matthews’ sexual partner.
The Murderer: Herbert Gehr
Gehr was an amiable enough guy, so it’s only for dramatic purposes that he’s called the killer. Yet the fact does remain: he did kill. Gehr killed his wife, Andrea Goldschmidt Gehr, point-blank. Gehr and his wife, after 8 years of marriage, had come to hate each other intensely. A friend of the couple relates that they become physically ill when they were in each other’s presence. Herbert Gehr would take care of that problem before long, though.
Herbert Gehr’s Brewster New York Cottage
It happened in Brewster, New York, a small village 30 miles north of White Plains. Herbert was shacked up with Dorothea Matthews in a cottage in or around Brewster, when Andrea showed up at 2:30 am, four detectives in tow. Herbert had apparently been expecting trouble, because he had booby-trapped the yard. The traps didn’t do their job, because the party was able to reach the house, Germanic bulldog Andrea leading the way. Gehr shot through the screen door with a .22, killing his wife.
Andrea Goldschmidt Gehr
Cast of Characters
Dorothea Matthews: Great Neck, NY housewife and mother
Mark Matthews (Marcus Schussheim): First husband of Dorothea Matthews and Ping Pong champion
Joseph Matthews: Brother of Mark
Winston Weisman: Art historian and one of Dorothea’s affairs
Herbert Gehr: One of Dorothea’s affairs
Andrea Goldschmidt Gehr: Herbert Gehr’s first wife, killed by Herbert
Kiki Richter: Herbert Gehr’s second wife
Dr. Fernand Vistreich: Great Neck, NY doctor and one of Dorothea’s affairs
James Lonergan: Student and one of Dorothea’s affairs in 1941
John Meredith: Described as an MGM actor, still photographer, and one of Dorothea’s affairs
Doris Lee: Milliner in Great Neck, friend of Dorothea
Timeline
1920: Dorothea Matthews born (possibly November 4?)
September 16, 1936: Mark Matthews and Dorothea Matthews wed in Yonkers
July 10, 1950: Herbert Gehr shooting
November 13, 1950: Dorothea Matthews obtains divorce in Huntsville, Alabama
January 16, 1951: Putnam County (NY) jury finds Herbert Gehr not guilty of shooting wife.
December 28, 1952: Herbert Gehr and Kiki Richter marry
He was old, his wife sick, he had lost his job, and he was drinking too much. It didn’t help that the country had hit rock-bottom in the worst financial depression of its history.
Still, the human spirit persists. In 1932, jobless and dejected Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) persisted in a very small way by signing up for a University of California Extension course called Short Story Writing 52AB.
True to the period and following all conventions, Chandler turned out a pulp story about pirates. The main character, One-eyed Mellow
glanced at the braid, once no doubt gold, that adorned the outer edges of his sleeves. He smiled insidiously, and his hand, with a movement very familiar to his men, began to wander towards the pistol stuck in his sash. As he freed it, coolly and without haste, from the broad band of dirty silk, the little dark sailor made an abrupt but very graceful movement One-eyed Mellow’s glance turned rapidly to the wall at his elbow, and he perceived his pistol hanging by the trigger-guard on the blade of a slim dagger.
“Very pretty,” he drawled at length, when the silence threatened to become unbearable.
Chandler received an “A” for his pirate short story. The only problem was that he was not meant to tell this story.
Fired and Frustrated
There is a good chance that this legendary writer of detective fiction who also helped spawn iconic noir films may have gone on, like the rest of us, to finish off his days in quiet desperation.
Tom Hiney, in Raymond Chandler: A Biography reports that 1932 was an absolute bottom year for Chandler. For one thing, Chandler was old. At 42 years old at that time, Chandler could expect to die within the next couple of decades. According to Social Security statistics, he had roughly a 50/50 chance of living to be 65 years old. If Chandler did reach 65 years old, on average he could expect to live another 13 years.
In short, 42 years old at that time was old.
On top of it, Chandler had worked as an oil company executive for the Dabney Syndicate for 13 years and had just lost his job. Drinking too much and with a sick wife, he went up to Seattle to live with some friends and dry out. Driving along the Pacific Coast, he began to pick up cheap detective pulp magazines because they were expendable: read ’em, throw ’em away. Back in Los Angeles, with nothing to back this assertion, he asserted that he was now a writer by listing himself as such in the Santa Monica telephone book. That is the time that he took the short story writing course.
Chandler’s life events came together painfully to force him toward fiction writing. Today as well as back then, we all know that type of story: unceremoniously booted from your job, you take stock of your life and start that brew pub you’ve always dreamed of. But that’s only half of it. Life events can come together to force you toward the dream, and you still end up nowhere. This isn’t about harnessing life events; it’s about telling the tale that you are uniquely positioned to tell.
Chandler’s Unique Tale
Everyone has a certain story that they are uniquely positioned to tell. The story you need to tell–zeitgeist, sweet spot, groove, perfect storm, whatever you call it–is composed of several elements that must come together.
In the 1920s, the period preceding Chandler’s first story, Los Angeles was still a sultry backwater. Yet in the 1920s and 1930s, it was growing and re-shaping seemingly by the minute. From 1920 to 1930, the population of Los Angeles more than doubled from 577,000 to 1,238,000. That was the last ten-year period when the population boomed as much.
Having spent 13 years in the oil racket, Chandler was in a unique position to tell a certain kind of story. Not a story of 17th century pirates and brigands but of the people he encountered, the low-lifes and dregs of society, as well as the idle wealthy and businessmen who formed the underpinnings of Los Angeles society.
Consciously or not, Chandler pieced together several strands, place, time, and former experience, to form the unique tale. Chandler’s sweet spot was to tell the tale of this city struggling to rise from its dusty origins of orange groves and Spanish land grants.
It was a plane crash that killed 32 people, mainly illegal immigrants, and spawned Woody Guthrie’s song “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” For over 70 years, “Deportee” has come to signify the heartlessness of the American public, media, and law enforcement system towards illegal immigrants.
Recorded by Joan Baez, Kingston Trio, Hoyt Axton, Nanci Griffith, Concrete Blonde, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, and countless others, “Deportee” is a tight little package that protests what Guthrie considered to be racist mistreatment of the passengers before and after the accident. One typical contemporary mainstream media approach to the song comes from NPR, seeking to connect the 1948 deportation of 32 Mexican nationals with Trump administration immigration policies, saying that the immigrants’ “death [was] marked by anonymity when their names were lost in the accident.”
Except it wasn’t quite that way. The truth is a little more nuanced and less cruel than Guthrie made it out to be.
The Crash in Los Gatos
On January 28, 1948, a DC-3 plane carrying 32 people went down in rugged Los Gatos Canyon, near Coalinga, California, about 200 miles south of the San Francisco Bay Area. The crash killed the 32 people on board: 28 Mexican nationals, all men except for one woman, and four Americans. The Americans were a husband-and-wife pilot/stewardess team, Frank and Billie Atkinson; co-pilot Marion Ewing; and Immigration Inspector Frank Chaffin.
A road crew working in the area saw the plane go down and they were the first responders. Some bodies were strewn so far away from the plane that newspaper accounts at the time speculated that some of the men had tried to jump before the plane crashed. No solid explanation for the crash was ever produced.
Living in New York at the time, Woody Guthrie likely picked up the New York Times on January 29 and, seeing only the names of the four Americans listed and none of the Mexican nationals’ names, wrote about how the unnamed Mexicans were left “To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil / And be called by no name except deportees.”
Since no names are supplied in the newspaper account, Guthrie makes up a few names:
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria; You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane, All they will call you will be “deportees”
Attempts Made to Identify Bodies
Some have speculated that Guthrie’s song was only uninformed and well-meaning. Since Guthrie did not read past that first initial account, he did not know that officials “eagerly sought” the names of the Mexican nationals on the second day. Yet because the crash was not a local story, the New York papers did not extend their coverage beyond that first day.
On the day of the crash, even the local Fresno and Bakersfield, California newspapers did report just the names of the four Americans and none of the Mexican nationals. But already by the second day, as reported by the Bakersfield Californian, both American and Mexican officials were working to identify the names of the Mexicans. Another local newspaper, the Fresno Bee, listed every Mexican national confirmed or believed to be on that doomed flight.
By sifting through the burning debris and mangled bodies, officials were able to positively identify 11 of the Mexicans; that is, they matched a body to an identity. Another 16 names that were listed as being on the transport list but not matching bodies were still publicly listed by immigration officials and published in the newspapers.
One aspect that complicated matters, according to I.F. Nixon, regional immigration director in San Francisco, was the fact that all were “agricultural workers who had slipped across the border without a passport or had overstayed their work permits.” So, in any kind of fiery plane crash, identification is difficult. Identifying the Mexicans in the Los Gatos crash was made even more difficult due to the pervasive lack of identification. Some were workers overstaying their work permits as part of the Bracero Program of the 1940s that standardized living conditions and a living wage for migratory workers. Thus, some of the workers were braceros who had timed out their permit and were now forced to leave.
In the end, positive identification of the remaining bodies was simply not possible due to the incredible impact of the plane crash and subsequent fire. Fresno County Deputy Coroner L.R. Webb said, “The rest may never be identified, so badly were the bodies broken and burned.”
Facts
Though Guthrie’s version of the story is overwrought and incomplete, some facts do remain:
All 28 Mexicans were buried unidentified in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery, Fresno, California.
After that first identification, no attempts were made by officials to contact families of the Mexicans.
The location of immigration guard Frank Chaffin’s remains are unknown, but he is marked on the mass grave memorial with the Mexican nationals.
Marion Harlow Ewing (b. 1915) the co-pilot, was buried at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park, Ventura, California.
Subsequent writers such as Tim Z. Hernandez in his book All They Will Call You give a more complete version of the story. Hernandez spent six years searching for families of the dead and he was instrumental in obtaining funding for a new memorial that lists the names of all of the dead.
By the third day, media reports of the Los Gatos crash and practically all other new items were buried by an event of international importance: Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.
