Genealogy DNA Roots Family History Hand-painted Lithographs and Buffalo Bill

I am not into genealogy, though the doctor did take a DNA test today...scientists are learning how genetics influences disease. I have always been more interested in moving ahead than looking back, but those who do the family history are to be much admired, and if it weren't for my uncle I would not know I was related to Buffalo Bill. (True) When I was young, that was really cool, but now that I know he was a "showman" and big-time hunter, I have had second thoughts.

The document here lasted one hundred years. Not a long time when tracing your roots or relatives. And yet to me it seems ancient. The entries begin in 1826, and the last entry is dated 1927. One hundred years before the family lost interest and stopped keeping track. The latest death recorded was 1880 and it is still sad. The country was young when this record was started, but in the span of life on earth, this entire familial package doesn't even qualify as a freakin' blip.

I am sorry the entire document doesn't fit on the scanner, but we should be glad it remains at all. It has been in a flood or two and has been repaired, but at some point it was passed over or weeded out, and I found it abandoned in an antique mall.

The document itself was printed by Kellogg and Comstock, lithographers who churned them out and underpaid women to add the color by hand. They were second only to Currier and Ives in sales.

As the world shrinks, we will actually have to rely on science even more for our records. Travel and the growing population have put one tribe in touch with another to the extent that culture, language and heritage are even harder to trace and record. When one married the "girl next door" it was easy to know where she came from (of "good stock" probably) but now who knows?

I have been doing this blog a few years. It is surprising how many relatives of those I have mentioned or profiled have gotten in touch. I'm not too polite or delicate, but in all that time not one family member has written to criticize. Every single mail I have received from a surviving member, be their ancestors scoundrel or saint, has been to thank me. I am including the folks I put on old time religion and vintage sleaze as well...not one critical letter from a family member. I think we have lost so much of our roots, we are grateful for whatever we find. I have had former strippers, children of musicians, great grandchildren of artists, family members of postcard makers and more write to say "Thanks..."I didn't know that!"

(I try to generate heat, but the only complaints I have received came from a post where I made fun of Glenn Beck (which I ignored) and from a post where I roasted the "science" of chiropractic. I ignored them as well for the most part, but did refer a few to the Wiki article. I also got one or two angry notes from folks who didn't like my profile of scam artist Charles Jessup...so let's bring it up again HERE. Facts is facts.)

The important categories are Family, Born, Married and Died. Not died HOW, but died when and where. Although the family here came all the way from England, it looks like most of them never got out of Michigan after that. Having gotten out and returned, I know one could do both better and worse.

I won't be making any deathbed confessions (or having a deathbed conversion.) I am an open book for the most part, and now even my Deoxyribonucleic acid will be in digital form I guess. Medical confidentiality is sacred, but how many of you read the forms you sign? Eh...if whoever replaced J. Edgar wants my DNA, let him have it. At least I don't have to worry about some crime from decades ago coming up when they sort through my strands of genetic material. When I was ten, I was fingerprinted during a boy scout tour through a police station. That has never haunted me either!

Kellogg and Comstock Lithograph, embellished by hand circa 1825. Collection Jim Linderman

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"Clear Out, Art Boy...We're puttin' in a Darkroom"

Everyone loves the covers to original true crime magazines. I even love the insides. This little photo essay on the good life in small town America comes on the cusp...the precise moment when the painted covers by all manner of pulp artists skilled with oils and a brush changed to the camera artist. 1953.

Let's put it in the right lingo.

Rudy had been workin' the night shift turning out paintings for the murder rags...suddenly, a pounding on the door made his brush wiggle like the little finger on a ten cent hooker. The Camera guys were at the door, and they weren't going away. Rudy put down the brush and picked up his blaster. "Go away, shutterbugs" he cried..."No one is taking my work away!" Big Frank and his ugly brother Rocco entered the joint, slapped Rudy's gun from his hand and tore the paint-splattered rug right from under his feet. His days sniffing turpentine thinner were over. "Clear out, art boy" groused Frank "We're puttin' in a darkroom."

The insides had already changed...black and white photograph reproduction in the guts was easier, and although they were stilted and staged shots for the most part, they were actual photos from the 40s on. But the cover had to be in lurid living (or lurid dead) color, and so were painted. Advances in printing techniques made actual photos for the cover possible. New clarity and fresh layouts were developed using pictures of models being strangled with heaving actual cleavage, not heaving painted cleavage. The bright colors once used on canvas were replaced with bright color backgrounds. Art became artless. The crimes remained the same. 

BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR ARE HERE AND HERE

Crime Scene Drop Zone Tossed in Haste and a True Crime Pulp Staple

Hard-boiled visual aids here, a collaboration between photographer, graphic artist and perp. Give me twelve straights, an easel, and we've got this one sewed up.

True Crime! William Edward Hickman "The Most Horrible Crime of the 1920's" and a Lurid Literary Genre

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I read true crime books to relax. Somehow being reassured there are people in the world a million times more horrible than I is comforting. Despite lurid come-ons bellowing from every back cover, they don't "grip me with fear" they just put me to sleep at night, and that is goal enough. If I told you the number of times I've stuffed a book with the phrase "INCLUDES 16 PAGES OF SHOCKING PHOTOS" or "UPDATED WITH PRISON INTERVIEW WITH THE KILLER" into the trash after reading it, you wouldn't believe me.


The worst part of reading true crime is the raised eyebrows of the checkout clerk...but I'm not alone. The recent Casey Anderson fiasco proves public interest in the genre persists, despite appropriate criticism that only Caucasian blonds and pretty women receive public scrutiny. Even my little sister reads them, and she's normal as can be. In fact, most readers are women...a fact which I don't understand.

My favorite serious true crime book of the last few years is When Evil Came to Good Hart by Michigan writer Mardi Link. HUGE steps above the crappy instant books cluttering the checkout lane, it is a direct, straight, beautifully written and edited work of art which should earn an honored place in the Dewey decimal classification "364" in every library and on every bookshelf. A University of Michigan Press book from 2008, I've linked to it and you will thank me for the tip.


But back to those "16 pages of lurid photos."


Long ago, I posted a highly embellished press photograph of accused murderer William Edward Hickman to illustrate both the editing of newspaper photos and an early example of the "perp walk" phenom. (Now more common than the "Cake Walk" from the same era...cue the Ragtime music) I took my information from the reverse of the photo...no big deal, just another warped creep with confused and deadly hormones. But when an anonymous writer asked if I had any more photos, which I do, I took the time to look the loser up.


Hickman's crime has been called "the most horrible crime of the 1920's" and I need not describe it here. Shocking and disgusting it was, but when your sleeping pill is a book about a mob hit-man who killed over 100, including some left near the beautiful Delaware Gap as rat food, it hardly stands out. The Wiki article, which is extensive, goes on to tell the story of another major creep, Ayn Rand, who planned a book on this little weasel to be titled "The Little Street" the notes for which were later published in her journals. She isn't the only major writer to find inspiration in pathetic murderers. (Truman? Norman?)


This could be a longer essay than it is, but I am all about photos and art, not crime and punishment. To the anonymous writer who asked "if I had any more..." here ya go!


Group of Original Press Photographs of William Edward Hickman, all dated 1928 Collection Jim Linderman

Cleveland Torso Murder True Crime Ed's Head on a Plate

Cleveland Dick Dave Cowles shows the reconstruction mask bas relief of Mr. Edward Andrassy, a murder victim to be sure, but one of the lucky ones as he has his name. Most of the other victims are left only with names such as "Lady of the Lake", "Tattooed Man" and a handful of regular old "John Doe" followed with a number. It is a trade off though--as Edward DOES have a name, when the killer was finished he did not have a penis...win some lose one Ed. The Cleveland Torso Murderer is credited with 12 hits. There MAY be as many as 40. Most of the victims lived in the shanty towns which turned up in Cleveland during the depression. Big Daddy Elliot Ness got involved in the case and couldn't solve the crime...but it did insure books, films and such would be produced. Some book titles? The Maniac in the Bushes, In the Wake of the Butcher, Butcher's Dozen, Torso (a recent graphic novel) and many more. Unusual to see Paper-Mache as grisly.

Original Press Photograph November 1939 Collection Jim Linderman

Frozen Stiffs! True Crime True North: The Golden Age of Canadian Pulp Magazines

I haven't done a book review in a while, since like all the rest of us, I only look at pictures. It will be a few weeks before Kindle figures out how to incorporate graphics like these into their digital downloads, so I'll use the time to suggest a hardcopy purchase.

Canadian true crime pulp magazines! Written by Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, I presume their real names...a fabulous collection of covers and entertaining text providing the history of detective rags from above. I suspect these magazines are FAR more scarce than those churned out in America during the 1940s and 1950s and as such seldom seen, so the writers have done us a service. As you can see, the covers are just striking. More primitive than ours, the Canadian illustrators opted for a sparse, open, esthetic as forlorn as their landscape during December. With their muted colors, these pulps seem as lonely as the folks who read them. Even the man on fire seems cold! I see a few soggy and nearly frozen pages of these in a pile on a cabin floor in my mind's eye as I type. The book, 100 pages of true north crime bliss was published 6 years ago, so my review is a bit late...but it doesn't diminish the appeal. Using images from the National Library of Canada and a wonderful layout and design, this is an inexpensive book as cool as a Canadian on a cooling bed...and even though it was published in 2004, It's still good...after all, it's a BOOK. Put on your cyber mukluks and go buy one.

(Book Linked at Amazon on the right here under "GOOD THINGS)

Jack Webb Stiff Dick with Deadpan Delivery The FIRST annual Dull Tool Dim Bulb Lifetime Achievement Award™

It was fashionable among my peers growing up to lambaste Jack Webb. At the time, he was busting happy hippy hedonists on TV but they looked like the GOOD guys to me. Of course, this was the second incarnantion of Dragnet, the one with the future Sherman Potter of M.A.S.H, one Harry Morgan, who was raised in Muskegon Michigan just 12 miles north of here. ( By coincidence, so was young James Osterberg, nee Iggy Pop, who just might be the winner of the second Dull Tool Dim Bulb Lifetime Achievement Award™ but that is another story or two) In retrospect, it turns out Jack Webb was not only a cool dude, the fellow you saw walking around on TV stiffer than a cast-iron Viagra pole was exactly the same fellow in real life, and how many actors can you say that about?

Big Jack was born in 1920 and suffered from asthma his whole life. A trait I identify with, but you never saw jack turn from the camera and take a puff of albuterol. He was born in a slum in L.A, so he comes to his toughness through authenticity. He was a crew member of a B-26 bomber during the big one, and that assignment had just about the highest mortality rate in the war. So Jack was tough as nails as well as stiff as one. After the war he commenced his lifetime advocacy for the rule of law and hatred of the nefarious. He first played hard-boiled detective Pat Novak on the radio, where he delivered with sound waves as flat as his crewcut. Later, he played a character in "One out of Seven" who stood up against racial discrimination long before it was fashionable.

Of course, Dragnet is the stiff stuff of legend. There were two, the first black and white from 1951 to 1959. From this came "The story you are about to see is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent." The second, the one I grew up laughing at, started in 1967, in glorious anti-psychedelic color, and ran 3 more years. How many actors can you think of who starred in two TV series, both with the same name...with virtually no acting talent?

Jack spread his dragnet over some serious tail as well! He loved Jazz and played the cornet, so he romanced and married the most luscious MOR jazz dame of all time, Julie London. It was the first of FOUR marriages (including another hot score not of a musical scale, Miss USA Jackie Loughery)

At the time of his passing, Jack was working on another revival of Dragnet. Remaining true to his tight moral standards, he turned down the role of Dean Wormer in Animal House. When he hung up Badge number 714 for good, the flags of Los Angeles were ordered flown at half-mast.

So how can you get close to the now dead legend? First, read his book The Badge, fabulous true crime stories he wrote in 1958. Tough as shoe leather but easy to find on Amazon. Second, see if your hands measure up to his on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Third, listen to Jack's silver chords on the Rhino records compilation of singing actors. Fourth, watch his 1962 short subject The Commies are Coming, The Commies are Coming. (which features hot little minx Billie Jo from Petticoat Junction) also available on Rhino. 30 minutes of red-baiting bliss. Finally? The stunning minute long tirade below. Take THAT Hippie!

Illustrations hand-embellished additions to Jack Webb's Safety Squad Coloring Book, 1956. Collection Jim Linderman

The Rise of True Crime: 20th Century Murder and American Popular Culture (and the delivery system missed)

An interesting read and a few tiny, hand-held examples the author missed. Jean Murley discusses the rise of "true crime" as a form of entertainment in a scholarly but readable manner. At least I read it all, and my attention span lasts as long as a grape fizzie in warm water. From pulp magazines in the 30's to websites trading rumors circling around the latest "missing white woman of the week" a very nice survey of media channels through history clamoring for the lurid market. You HAVE to love a book with the phrase "incendiary ambulance-chasing pseudojournalist Nancy Grace..." The trading cards date to the 1930's, a fabulous set of 240 true crime cards, each with the thrilling exploits of a lawman fighting a gunsel...and like it should be, the good guys always win. Book is linked at right.

Set of G-Men and Heroes of the Law Trading Cards, c. 1936. Collection Jim Linderman

True Crud from Newsweek and True Crime from David Jacobs

The Newsweek double issue last week was devoted to true crime, supposedly. Whadda ripoff...is anyone doing any research anymore? I paid $6.95 at the airport and received a mere ONE PAGE from the genius James Ellroy...but several more from Vincent Bugliosi...a yawn every paragraph from this whitewash writer of decades ago who couldn't even take a literary punch from tough-guy Truman Capote. Then a few vintage mug shots, the likes of which photo collectors on Ebay found so long ago they carry about as much shock as a hearing aid battery. I'd rather look at the new ones they post on the Smoking Gun showing pimps smiling through police brutality wounds and gold grills. Please...the reason magazines are going under is because they now "write" them with press-releases from publishers and wire stories linked on Drudge the week before. Don't they even have any INTERNS who know what is cool over there? The real true crime is the price I paid for this snore which crept over me faster than my sonata.

Here, however, is the real deal. David Jacobs, shown as "the man I would most like to have dinner with" compiles tales of true crime when it meant hoodlums, hopheads, hepcats, convicts, jailbirds, reform school girls, hellcats, vixens and vice dolls. All are true stories swiped from the SOURCE...pulp magazines from the 1950's Detective Rags. Each morbid tale written with few words over 7 letters and a punk gets what was coming to him at the end of every damn one. Each story a GEM edited tighter than the lyrics to a Hank Williams weeper. From back when hacks pounded typewriters..that's right....typewriters... on speed and had to backspace to cross out the mistakes in between gulps of vodka and smoke. Back when the spouse was the spell-checker. I link to the fattest one here..355 pages of greasy gals with gats in their garters. Now that's summer reading!


Lurid heaven from David Jacobs.

George Jerome Rozen and his brother Jerome George Rozen Artist Illustrator Twins Pulp Painting Geniuses

A double dose of drawing dynamite! George Jerome Rozen had a twin brother named Jerome George Rozen. No kidding! The twins were born in 1875, one lived ten years longer than the other. Jerome was the first to enroll in the Art Institute of Chicago, Jerome followed a year later and had George as an instructor! Jerome was the first to paint covers for The Shadow, but George did them later. Both were in GREAT demand for their pulp magazine illustrations (as these six examples from my collection should serve to illustrate) These were done by George, who is shown in the dreary black and white photo here, which should also illustrate just why artists were favored over photographs for magazines during the 1930's. However, even though the pair of brothers painted their way through the depression, they could not paint their way through the technological progress of the camera, and not long after WW2 the glory days of pulps were over. Between the two, hundreds of pulp covers, from True Crime to Fictional Science were produced. These are six simply incredible examples of George #1's talent. Never mind they didn't quite come true.

Six Modern Mechanix and Inventions Magazines 1934, 1935, 1936 cover illustrations George Jerome Rozen. Collection Jim Linderman