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A giant tobacco company offers the small town of Eagle Rock, Iowa $25M if all 4,006 residents can give up smoking for 30 days.

With that kind of premise, you already know that Cold Turkey is going to be a super-broad satire movie, one that you really have to be in the mood to watch.

Directed by Norman Lear, all characters are one-dimensional and the themes are obvious, but that doesn’t matter. That the topic of the movie is smoking feels almost quaint and warm. Remember those days?

Of course, it’s not really about smoking; it’s really about avarice, smallmindedness, the voraciousness of Big Tobacco, the radical Right, and so on.

Watch it for standout performances from Graham Jarvis, as the power-hungry leader of the ultra-right Christopher Mott Society. He’s not interested in policing the event until he asks if he can wear a cap and an armband. Cold Turkey is worth watching just for Graham Jarvis:

Pippa Scott is the twitchy, put-upon wife of minister Dick Van Dyke:

Bob Newhart is the evil mastermind behind the whole scheme:

Barbara Cason:

It’s an uneven, imbalanced movie. At one point, Bob Newhart realizes that it’s time to subvert the whole operation because it’s going too well. You’re expecting many delicious scenes of subversion. But nothing happens.

Plus, the movie takes so long to get started. There is so much comedic potential in the movie that could be mined, yet the heavy front end sucks up precious minutes of the movie’s 100-minute run-time.

Cold Turkey is worth watching, if anything, for its fantastic character set-pieces.

One of the less savory aspects of the William Talman raid in 1960 was one of the members of the party: Lola DeWitt.

On March 12, 1960, TV show Perry Mason actor William Talman was arrested in West Hollywood, along with seven others, on narcotics charges after officers found marijuana.

Besides Talman, we have his friend James H. Baker, a producer, a married couple, Peter and Suzanne Helpelt, a married woman named Mrs. Peggy Louise Flannigan who later married Talman, and a woman named Mrs. Willie Donovan.

Another member, Richard Reibold, the host of the party, could barely be called respectable. Reibold held a high-paying ad executive job. But only a few years before, Reibold had been accused of attempting to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard, 24, from the Bloomingdale’s department store in Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY.

And then we have the seventh member of the Talman group, Lola DeWitt: a human catastrophe who destroyed everything she touched.

Lola’s “Beauty Turned Her Head”

Born April 11, 1928, in Wisconsin to Luella DeWitt (later, Gunther) and Paul Douglas DeWitt, Lola DeWitt was trouble from the start.

Lola always wanted to be theatrical, her mother later recounted. Even as a little girl, Lola craved the limelight.

Mrs. DeWitt said that her daughter was beautiful, perhaps even “too beautiful.” This may very well have been mother-daughter rivalry, because Lola DeWitt was attractive but not a stunner. Still, Lola may have gained some of the male attention her less-than-attractive mother Luella DeWitt never had.

According to her mother, Lola’s beauty as a young girl “turned her head” and it was enough to get her in with fast company.

Lola and Freddie Stewart

Then Lola DeWitt met, married, and became pregnant by Freddie Stewart.

Born Morris Joseph Lazar, Stewart shed his name for a more Anglo-Saxon one–a common practice in show business at the time. He combined the names of Freddie Bartholemew and James Stewart to produce Freddie Stewart.

Freddie Stewart was in show business but he wasn’t exactly fast company. In fact, he was an ambitious actor and big band singer of some renown at the time.

On January 13, 1952, Lola gave birth to a daughter, Fancy.

If Lola DeWitt knew what was best for her, she would have played it straight and stuck with Stewart. But thankfully for Stewart, they separated and they went their separate ways.

And Lola just kept getting in trouble. Next time, in New York.

Lola’s New York Arrest

Lola DeWitt was now living in New York, sharing an apartment at 333 West 56th Street. DeWitt had managed to secure a part as a maid in the comedy play Pajama Tops.

A French bedroom farce starring Diana Barrymore, Pajama Tops was a knock-off of the wildly popular and better known Pajama Game. The copycat show even prompted the producers of Pajama Game to sue the Pajama Tops producers–a suit they lost.

Pajama Tops could have been an avenue to the limelight that Lola so desired, except she managed to wreck her prospects once again.

On February 12, 1953, at 3:13 am at the Lyric Theater, 229 W. 42nd St. New York, Lola DeWitt was arrested for assaulting an officer.

Lola and companion TV actor James T. Robinson went to a late showing of the movie “Stop, You’re Killing Me.”

Lola lit a cigarette. The theater’s security guard asked her to put it out; she refused.

“Go away, you’re bothering me–drop dead,” she told the guard.

The guard called the New York City Police. Officer George Intermont showed up and asked her to put it out. She once again refused.

“I came here to be entertained,” she said to Intermont. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

As Intermont tried to haul DeWitt back to the station, DeWitt attacked Intermont.

The judge sentenced DeWitt to 30 days in women’s jail.

On December 29, 1954, she was fired from the play for “insolence and insubordination.”

Harry Clay Blaney, a producer of the play said that she showed a “complete disinterest” in the play and that she often failed to appear.

Lola Kills Fancy

As DeWitt pursued her acting career, she would bring her daughter to the theaters and even to clubs late at night.

Said one fellow actor:

[DeWitt] used to bring three-year-old Fancy, her adorable little daughter, to the Blackstone Theater in Chicago every night and keep her in the dressing room. Afterwards, she and the child would go night-clubbing until the wee hours. Several members of the company, including myself, thought more than once of reporting her to the Children’s Aid Society, but never did anything about it. I’ve a hunch the others are experiencing deep feelings of remorse today. I know I am.

On February 26, 1955, Lola DeWitt killed 3 year-old Fancy Stewart at the Hayes Hotel, 6345 University Ave., Chicago.

She was sentenced to Elgin State Hospital on October 19, 1956 and was freed on April 5, 1957. Before that, she spent 10 months in prison in Kankakee. So, DeWitt spent about 14 months in prison for killing her daughter.

Lola DeWitt made it out to Los Angeles to continue her acting, but nothing really came of that. She spent most of the time as a prostitute for parties like the one at Richard Reibold’s home that William Talman attended.

DeWitt died on February 19, 1967.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As someone who loves the English language but hates change, I arch an eyebrow when I hear a new fangled phrase.  Language is a continually shifting thing.  At no point in history has English been a fixed language.  At the very moment you might think it’s fixed, someone out there is creating a new phrase that will be recognized and spoken by millions a year from now.  Here are some that sounded stupid at first, but I gradually came to see their usefulness:

Conflicts vs. Wars

War photographers have existed ever since there has been war and photography.  But what is war?  Is the U.S. at war with terrorists?  What about North Korea?  Even though the U.S. spends more lives, money, and energy fighting terrorists, we are not officially at war with them.  Even though the U.S. is officially still at war with North Korea, relations between the two countries is quiet, more or less.  Conflict photographer makes sense, because it covers a huge spectrum of activities where people kill each other.

Where It Began

The earliest mention of conflict photographer that I found was in relation to Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva’s The Bang Bang Club.  A December 9, 2000 Indianapolis Star review of the book pulls a quote from their book:

I had become known as a conflict photographer.  I could ask for assignments to almost any place, as long as people were killing each other.

Note on Image:

This photograph was taken by Hilda Clayton, a U.S. Army photographer who was killed July 2, 2013 when a mortar exploded in Afghanistan.