Lefty, page 28
Most of the 1938 holdouts ended quickly. Lefty, who likely very much wanted to get baseball under way to take his mind off lawyers and angry wives, signed his contract in early March for the same $20,000 salary he had received in 1935 and 1936. Red Ruffing, who was often the last to agree, signed on the same day.
As March progressed, only two players were unsigned, Gehrig and DiMaggio. Lou, refusing to play for less than $40,000, had driven to Florida from Hollywood, where he had finally made that motion picture he’d contracted for during his previous holdout. Since the producers couldn’t get Lou to swing from a vine, they settled for putting him on a horse. The film was called Rawhide, and the plot—what there was of one—involved Lou playing Lou and quitting baseball to buy a ranch with his sister, only to run afoul of a crooked cattlemen’s association. His costar was a singing cowboy named Smith Ballew who played an honest lawyer. Together, they brawled and braved their way through danger and bad guys to return peace and law to the valley. Lou wore a big hat, threw a rope, and perused his herd. During filming, when Lou showed up on the set, real cowboys had put a saddle with handlebars on his horse.
In mid-March, Lou finally signed for $39,000, just in time for Rawhide to open in St. Pete. “The world premiere took place at the Century Theatre,” Lefty reported. “The day before, the press came out to take publicity shots of Gehrig as he moseyed around in his chaps and cowboy hat, throwing his lasso and roping Bill Dickey, Frank Crosetti, and me. Ruppert and McCarthy got into the act, pleading for mercy when Lou held them up at pistol point. We all laughed because Lou had held Ruppert hostage for more dough and Ruppert had called it ‘robbery.’
“The night of the premiere, the Yankees marched in a parade down the streets of St. Petersburg, wearing our pinstripes and carrying torchlights. Lou led the way, high in the saddle on a snowy white Cayuse. Fans crowded the sidewalks, screaming and throwing streamers and confetti. There were giant posters of ‘Two Gun Lou Rides Again’ and the theater was bathed in the glaring white of the klieg lights. We were mobbed at the entrance and were lucky that we still had our uniforms when we settled into our seats with our boxes of popcorn. Of course, I like westerns, but Lou’s debut as an actor was laudable and he could brawl with the best of the cowpokes in the barroom scenes. The Yankees had such a good time with Lou that night.”1
DiMaggio, however, was not at the premiere. Ruppert and Barrow had offered him $25,000, but Joe thought that was peanuts for a player of his abilities. He wanted $40,000 or he would just stay in San Francisco. But Joe, who had been cheered for prying money out of management the previous year, had grossly misread the mood of the fan base. The recession had deepened and a twenty-three-year-old kid who wanted to be paid $1,000 more than Lou Gehrig all of a sudden looked simply like a greedy brat.
By this time, Lefty was doing all he could to demonstrate that the divorce proceedings weren’t a concern. For one thing, he was sneaking off to the airfield every chance he got. “The Yankees had a clause in Lefty’s contract that he couldn’t fly,” Bing Russell said. “But whenever Buddy was in St. Pete, Gomez was in the skies. At the end of spring training, Gehrig buttonholed Lefty as they boarded the train to go north. ‘You should have been here earlier.’ Lefty asks why, and Gehrig says, ‘Because there was a pilot over at Million Dollar Pier in an airplane just wringing it out. My God, what stunts. You’d have loved it!’ Lefty asked if it was a little red plane, and Lou said, ‘Yeah. You saw it?’ ‘No, Lou,’ Lefty says. ‘I was in it.’ ”
He also pulled the strings on any number of pranks with Joe Gordon, who had taken over not only Tony Lazzeri’s position but his role as team cutup. Bing Russell, now eleven, was often the stooge.
“Gordon was always in the thick of things. I think Lefty picked him out because he was just off center enough to do what Gomez wanted. Joe tells me that in the game that day, Gehrig is playing outfield and he, Gordon, is on first. I said, ‘No way. That’s ridiculous.’ So Flash bet me five bucks, which was a helluva lot of money in the Depression. Son of a bitch, if they don’t open the game that way. I don’t know how they pulled it off without McCarthy getting wind of it. All I know is, I’m in the dugout at the start of the game and Gehrig is playing outfield and Gordon is on first and I lost the five dollars. And if you hit me for a hundred thousand now it wouldn’t hurt as much as those five bucks hurt. And you know the whole Yankee ball club was in on it.”
Then, at the end of March, just before the team was to break camp and begin its journey north, Melvin Kleeblatt unleashed his barrage.
Vernon Louis Gomez was a drunk. He had hit his wife and blackened her eye. He had locked her in her stateroom on the 1934 trip around the world. And, for the coup de grâce, Vernon Gomez had been overheard a full two years earlier outlining “the perfect crime.” He was, Kleeblatt made clear, planning to murder her.
Lefty related the details of his murderous plot a half century later. “A socialite was strangled in 1935, and the killing was played up in the newspapers. Tony La Faso, a seaman on a luxury liner and a pal, had just arrived from Australia and stopped by our apartment. He and I sat up late playing bridge and drinking beer. June went to bed around nine because she had an early morning opera class. So Tony and I are dealing cards in the dining room and, after an hour or two, our beery conversation turned into how to commit the perfect crime. La Faso asked me, ‘How would you kill June and get away with it,’ and, after some thought, I outlined in minute detail how I would strangle June, leave no clues, have an ironclad alibi, and walk away from her murder a free man.
“Tony and I didn’t notice that in the middle of this murder conversation, June had woken up and walked past the dining room on her way to the bathroom. More to the point, we didn’t realize that she had overheard me talking about my ‘perfect crime.’ There had been rifts in our marriage that year over our conflicting careers and my frustration with my lousy win-loss record. June put two and two together and came up with five, that I was going to strangle her to death.
“The next morning, she left for her opera class without mentioning what she had heard the night before. I went on a road trip. After I left town, she returned to the apartment and packed her suitcases and went into hiding at a friend’s house in Boston. For two weeks I couldn’t reach her. No one knew where she was. I didn’t know why I couldn’t get in touch with her because I didn’t know June overheard Tony and me talking about the perfect murder.
“When June finally returned to New York and told me why she went into hiding and I explained what really happened, she didn’t believe me. From then on, she was on high alert for any suspicious behavior. I bet to this day, after fifty-five years of marriage, June still thinks she was going to be the victim of my perfect crime. I was having a bad year in ’35 but I hadn’t thought of rubbing her out … yet.”
“Kleeblatt’s accusations against Lefty were so outrageous that even I was in shock,” Sunny said, “but June was going for a knockout and she didn’t care if she hit below the belt. If she had to lose, she was going down swinging.”
For the first time in his life, Lefty was fully in the glare of adverse publicity. That the charges weren’t true, and that June knew they weren’t true, made the sting all the more painful. But Lefty was too proud to back down. He returned to New York in April, the center of a media frenzy, moved into the Mayflower Hotel with Pitzy Katz, and tried to bluff his way through the storm, remaining outwardly the same old Lefty. When opposing players took to coming to the on-deck circle with a ring of black around their eyes, or pretended to strangle each other in the opposing dugout, Lefty laughed it off. “I’ll wait for them at the plate,” he said. But Babe Dahlgren, whose locker was next to Lefty’s for three years, said the only time Lefty didn’t talk in the clubhouse was during the separation suit.
Meanwhile, although spring training had ended and opening day had come and gone, DiMaggio was still in California. The moribund St. Louis Browns offered $150,000 for Joe, a lovely publicity stunt since they probably couldn’t have afforded half that figure. Finally, on April 20, Joe hoisted the white flag. Not only did he agree to $25,000, but he was forced to swallow a $1,850 fine for the time he missed. Joe swore he would never indulge in such behavior again and, just to make sure he remembered, when he made his first appearance in Washington on April 30, he was roundly booed. To make matters worse, in the sixth inning he ran into Joe Gordon while chasing a pop fly. Both players were knocked unconscious and taken to a local hospital. DiMaggio was out of the hospital the next day and began playing with his usual excellence. Gordon, however, was out for six weeks.
With the court hearing coming due, Lefty began the season with a win over the Red Sox, a loss to Washington, then lost to Boston and Lefty Grove. In his fourth start, the same game in which DiMaggio collided with Joe Gordon, he again lost to the Senators, 4–3. The Yankees returned to New York just in time for Lefty to appear before Judge Levy.
“The first witness called, Miss O’Dea testified in a sheer wool black dress, picture hat and silver fox furs,” a newspaper reported. “Her sister, Sunny Dale, also an actress, and her mother, Nellie Schwarz, and her grandmother, Bridget Grady, accompanied her to court.”
The Gradys had closed ranks for the court case. It probably pained Lefty as much as anything to see Nellie and Grandma Grady lined up against him. If he won in court, he’d lose not only June but house privileges in Lexington and his surrogate family.
“I came off the circuit from Houston, where Conville and I were doing the comedy act for the Texas Bicentennial Celebration,” Sunny recalled. “Bridget, seventy-four years old, came by train down from Boston to testify that her granddaughter June was a decent person. She went into Filene’s in Boston and bought a new gray skirt suit and matching hat. Grandma was scared out of her wits to go to court, but she boarded a train in Boston with gumption and came. She wasn’t used to living in a skyscraper. We had to make sure we kept all the windows closed at the Ansonia, even though it was May, because one day, standing next to an open window, Bridget got so dizzy looking out at the street, we almost lost Granny to the sidewalk.”
The opening of the case did not look promising. Judge Levy’s sister taught at a Harlem elementary school and brought her students to watch her brother preside at a real live court case. When the children saw who one of the parties was, they lined up in front of the table for Lefty’s autograph. Sunny leaned over the railing and whispered to June, “I don’t think we’re going to win this one.”
June came out fighting anyway. Her testimony was, if anything, even more lurid than Kleeblatt’s filing. In 1933, June insisted, she had awakened one night to find Lefty prepared to jump out the window of their hotel room. Once, driving home from a game, he had threatened to wreck his car and kill them both. And, according to June, she hadn’t overheard the perfect crime story but had been directly threatened with it. “He said he would wear gloves and choke me to death and leave,” she testified. “He would come back later, discover me, and tell everyone his wife had been killed.” About the black eye, she said, “After all, he’s a very big boy.”
Testimony in the trial was accompanied by a bevy of gleeful headlines. On the front page of the Daily News of May 6, for example, were pictures of a leggy Edna and an equally luscious June, with a small inset of Lefty in the middle looking like Rodin’s Thinker. The caption read, “Will It Be Edna … Or June?”
Lefty pitched against Detroit on May 7, a Saturday, and got pasted, giving up seven runs, five earned, almost blowing a nine-run lead. The Yankees drew 41,000 fans, their largest crowd of the season, many undoubtedly to see how the man in the hot divorce case would fare on the mound.
On Monday, Judge Levy called both parties into his chambers. “June had written out what she wanted,” Sunny said, “but Lefty wouldn’t accept her terms because he didn’t want a legal separation. He wanted a divorce. He’d come this far and even if he had misgivings, he was still going through with it. When it comes to June and Lefty, you’re dealing with two strong-willed, stubborn personalities.
“June came out from the meeting in the judge’s chambers and walked over to where I was sitting. She whispered to me, ‘I don’t know what to do. Lefty wants a divorce.’ ‘Tell him he’ll get his divorce,’ I said. So she went back into the chambers and said, ‘I’m not being cast off as a wife with a flawed character. But, in a duly respectable length of time, you will get your divorce. You can count on it, Lefty. I will divorce you.’ Lefty went along, because it was now a win-win situation.”
So June withdrew her separation suit and Lefty withdrew his counterclaim for a divorce. Judge Levy stipulated that terms were not to be disclosed to the press. Lefty was now free to take up again with Edna. There was only one problem.
He didn’t love Edna. He loved June.
“My sister picked up her life. Once again, she appeared at the Hotel Elysée on East 54th Street in her nightclub act. She added an engagement at a Philadelphia hotel. Her pursuit of a career in opera was serious and meant almost daily coaching lessons and building a repertoire of arias. Sandwiched in between were ongoing lessons in piano, French, and Italian, and the joy of her life, horseback riding on the bridle paths of Central Park.”
Within weeks, however, a distraction emerged. “More often than not there were phone calls from Lefty at the Ansonia, asking Nellie if he could speak with June. It seemed that the bloom was off his romance with Edna Torrence. He wanted to start up again, but June’s pride got in the way. She loved Lefty. Who didn’t? But she never wanted to see him again. So, after exchanging pleasantries, Nellie would say, ‘June’s out,’ whether June was in the apartment or not, and hang up the phone.
“When June wouldn’t respond to his phone calls, Lefty sent her telegrams every day. Would she like to eat in Chinatown … at the 21 Club … Tavern on the Green? Golf … dancing at the Park Central roof? June ignored them all. Undaunted, if the Yankees were home Lefty began driving his roadster around and around the block of the Ansonia, hoping to catch sight of her coming out the front door. Lefty was out there every morning, but not having any luck. That is, until he spoke with the doorman, who said June usually came downstairs around eight-thirty.
“So Lefty was at the hotel entrance at eight-thirty. When he caught sight of her coming out the door, he drove up the block, pulling his car up alongside the curb, blowing the horn to get her attention as she made her way to the subway entrance at 72nd Street. June just looked straight ahead. Soon, to avoid meeting Lefty and his roadster, June walked out of the hotel earlier, eight-fifteen, eight, seven forty-five, but Lefty had anticipated that and he was out there as early as she was, ready to spring into action. What a scene. Of course, the press got wind of it and their pictures of the sidewalk rendezvous were splashed across the sports pages and the tabloids.”
But June’s strategy of avoidance was not simply upsetting Lefty. “Their friends missed Lefty and June being together. To everyone’s credit, no one took sides. They thought of them as two sides of a valuable coin. They wanted the tap dancer and her witty left-hander running in their circle once again. And not just close friends, but also the fans and the guys and gals on the street, like newsboys and waitresses and cops on the beat, who knew these two who so readily struck up conversation with anyone they chanced to meet. Everyone was in agreement that June and Lefty were made for each other. But how to get them together again?”
Help was to come from an unexpected source. “Jack Dempsey was a mutual friend. He called June at the Ansonia and said he’d heard that Frank Conville and I were sailing from New York for Sydney, where we’d been booked on an eight-month tour of Australia. Before they sailed, Jack said, he wanted to give them a surprise bon voyage party at his Broadway chophouse. ‘It’s a swell idea, Jack,’ June said. ‘Sunny and Frank will love a big send-off.’
“So far, so good, Jack thought, and told June he needed her help with the invitations, which of course would include all of June and Lefty’s friends … the Fungs, the Russells, the Ruths, the men of the newspaper game, theater folk, the Yankees. ‘But, Jack,’ June said, ‘I don’t want to see Lefty and the Yankees.’
“ ‘Of course, June,’ Dempsey said. ‘I understand. But Sunny is a close friend of Crosetti and some other guys. They’re Yankees.’
“ ‘Jack, I’m leaving if Lefty talks to me.’
“ ‘June, trust me. With two hundred people at the party you won’t bump into Gomez, even if he comes. He’ll be talking baseball with the crowd.’
“ ‘Okay, Jack, if you promise.’ So Jack promised he would make sure the two did not run into each other.
“Of course, Lefty showed and June did bump into him, but when she tried to leave the restaurant, she found that the door had been locked ‘to prevent strangers from crashing the party.’ Dempsey said he was sorry but he didn’t know where the key was.”
And that was that. A few weeks later, June was back at Yankee Stadium.
Lefty could laugh about the problems later in life. When asked what he thought a couple should do if they’re having marital problems, he replied, “One or the other should leave home and have amnesia.”
By mid-May, with DiMaggio back in the lineup and batting almost .500, and the Gomez divorce off the front page, the Yankees’ season took off. Lefty once again became the team’s free spirit and both McCarthy’s nemesis and foil. Bing Russell observed, “McCarthy would be stewed up about the team, the pennant, whatever, and say something caustic to Lefty about it, making out that it was Lefty’s fault, and Lefty would laugh and the tension on the team would be eased. McCarthy knew Lefty could hold what he said in perspective, that McCarthy was letting off steam and needed someone to torch.”
Lefty also picked up where he had left off with DiMaggio. “The year before, DiMag did a picture called Manhattan Merry-Go-Round,” Bing Russell said. “It opened around Thanksgiving. In it, Joe sang a song, ‘Have You Ever Been to Heaven.’ He didn’t sing it too badly, but he didn’t sing it too well either. Joe was a little off-key, as I recall. When Lefty wanted to needle DiMag, he’d start crooning that goddamn song. You’d see the steam coming out of DiMaggio’s collar. Nobody but Lefty would dare to do such a thing to DiMaggio because of the way Joe was, taking offense, but Lefty didn’t care. He’d be driving along humming ‘Haaaavvve youuu everrr beeeen to heavennnnn,’ and Joe would fume.”
