Invisible Themepark

Category: Where Did This Person Go?

  • Richard Reibold: Shady Ad Exec and Talman Raid Party Host

    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.

  • Nancy Kovack, Forgotten Siren of the Sixties, the One That Got Away

    Nancy Kovack is long retired, no need to act anymore, and firmly married to conductor Zubin Mehta. But in her day, she graced both the big screen and the cathode ray screen with her elegantly sleek looks reminiscent of Honor Blackman.

    Nancy Kovack is also the one who got away. With big-star quality looks and acting chops, she was destined for greatness. Instead, she chose a different path.

    The first the world saw of Nancy Kovack was in 1955, as the 19-year-old Queen of the Romeo Peach Pie Festival, in Michigan. She was tasked with distributing 50 peach pies around the U.S. to various luminaries. One pie that she delivered went to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

    After that, Kovack made the usual round of Sixties-era TV shows: Love, American Style, Bewitched, Mannix, I Spy. If a casting director ever needed a beautiful face and a refined look, Kovack led the way in their Rolodex.

    To compound matters–and it’s here where the faint-of-heart should clutch their pearls and avert their gaze–Miss Kovack owned a fantastically voluptuous body.

    Nancy Kovack

    Nancy Kovack is the one that got away. Directly or indirectly, it’s Mehta we have to blame for taking Nancy off the screen and out of circulation. After her marriage to him in 1969, her filmography drops off to only five or six more credits before disappearing altogether in 1976.

    While it seems crazy, in 1991, when Mehta was 55 years old (and Kovack about the same age), Mehta fathered a child in Israel. An article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency relates the rumor of “a smattering of illegitimate children from various affairs.” Mehta admits to just that one boy.

    There’s no need to Google-Image-search Nancy Kovack at age 55: we already know that she aged like fine wine.

    Still a lovely 88, Nancy Kovack-Mehta and her husband Zubin Mehta live in Los Angeles, where he is Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

  • Zona Sage and Paul Camera: Progression, But Not Fast Enough

    Sharpen your knife, go back in the past, and slice off any section. It all says something. Everything is significant, every mote of dust on the microfiche slide.

    We flip to San Francisco. We look at a woman named Zona Sage. In 1970, Zona Sage is a 25 year-old law student at Hastings College of Law. She is newly divorced. She has red hair. She wears women’s liberation buttons, one of which is described at that time as “a circle with a staff and two cross-bars.”

    But we must stop there. More than that would be going too far–for now.

    Now, Paul Camera. Paul Camera is 34 years old and a professor at Hastings College of Law. Since Mr. Camera’s parents, Dino Camera and Teresa Daveggio, come from Italy, let’s assume that Mr. Camera name is pronounced not like the picture-taking device but with an emphasis on the second syllable.

    What brings these two people into conflict are Professor Camera’s comments in Ms. Sage’s criminal law class about women. He says that women lawyers can get too emotional and vindictive when dealing with divorce cases.

    Camera kicked Sage out of the class. Sage brought up a complaint before a faculty panel. Eventually, though Sage was not allowed back into the class–the panel stated that this would only lead to more conflict–she was given a 70-percent passing grade.

    What’s interesting is that the writer in the San Francisco Examiner article cannot resist a few digs at Sage, referring to her as “plump,” a characterization that has no bearing on story. She’s also described as “militant,” though at the time, “militant” may not have had the ring of insult that it does today. The other irony is that the faculty panel was composed of five men. Another article in the same paper (San Francisco Examiner, April 29, 1970) refers to a networking group of women lawyers as “lady lawyers.”

    Camera died in 2010. Sage today is an Oakland-based artist.

  • Man-Eating Sex Queen of Great Neck, New York, Dorothea Matthews

    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
    • May 2, 2012 (possible?): Dorothea Matthews dies

  • Christopher Morley in the Age of Evil Cross-Dressing Men in Film

     

    It was the period when you could shoot, stab, punch, and humiliate cross-dressing men with complete abandon and glee. It was the 1970s. If the 1960s were all about peace, love, and understanding, many identity groups were still excluded going into the Seventies. A man who dressed like a woman in Seventies film and TV was little more than a convenient plot point signalling evil. Audiences automatically understood that this was an evil that had to be eradicated. Movies don’t allow for a lot of complexity. You have two hours or less, so you need to use shorthand. And this was one of the easiest, laziest ways to do it.

    Freebie and the Bean: Christopher Morley

    In 1974’s Freebie and the Bean, Christopher Morley and other actors, notably Paul Koslo at his twitchy best (and that character actor, the City of San Francisco Circa 1974) are the true stars. Headliners James Caan and Alan Arkin, by contrast, couldn’t have been more one-dimensional or annoying, their entire interaction running along the lines of:

    FREEBIE: Whad’ ya!

    BEAN: Hey, whad’ ya back!

    Constantly, back and forth, this bickering “married male cop couple” dialogue being a familiar feature of Seventies shows and movies.

    Paul Koslo, James Caan, and Alan Arkin in Freebie and the Bean (1974)

    Like other cross-dressing characters of the Seventies, Christopher Morley’s characters have suffered many a fate. In Freebie, he was shot, kicked in the groin, and had half of his clothing torn off. In the TV show Switch, he was hit on the face by Robert Wagner and half-Nelsoned into a shower, water turned on, and wig ripped off.

    Not Just Kill But Humiliate

    As significant as the physical violence against Morley’s and other cross-dressing characters of that period is a certain indignity that is visited upon them. It’s not enough to riddle them with bullets; they also need to be humiliated. They need to be told that they will not find love. They need to be reminded that they are vain, and that their vanity is a cheap and tawdry one.

    In Switch, watch carefully. When speaking to Wagner, Morley reaches for the small handgun secured to his leg by a holster. Then, so entranced by Wagner’s alleged debonair flair and manliness, Morley forgets his killer mission and begins to holster the handgun. He makes himself ready for the kiss, but no kiss is to be had. Wagner smacks him.

    In Freebie, in the Candlestick Park scene where he fights James Caan, his character is so vain that he takes occasional breaks from delivering kicks and blows to Caan in order to primp himself. Vanity rules all, especially a cross-dresser’s vanity, right?

    In T.J. Hooker, after William Shatner rips off Morley’s wig, the female co-star sputters the inevitable “She’s a…” Morley’s character responds, “If you’re confused, you should be in my heels.” The implication is that no cross-dresser can be secure in his convictions: he is eternally confused.

    Even on the somewhat nicer end of the spectrum, while acting with Ted Knight in Too Close for Comfort, Morley experiences that classic Wig Reveal Moment.

    Grace Under Pressure

    Morley brings a unique calm and grace to his roles of that period. He is reserved, self-composed, sure of himself–anything but confused. Call it poise. In the Switch scene, contrast Morley’s low-key self-composure with Wagner’s oily fake swankiness.

    Because the Freebie script was so convoluted, I was never clear on why I was supposed to hate Morley. And in that bizarre death scene, I found myself wanting the trim, doe-like Morley to prevail over big, lumbering James Caan.

    In a YouTube comment about his characters of that time, Morley says, “That’s the best critique of my scripts so far….brutal and transphobic.” In his 60s now and living in West Hollywood, Morley is still around and continues to perform as a female impersonator.

    YouTube Channel: Christopher Morley

     

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