Alabama Book Spotlight: Starett by Arthur V. Deutcsh

I'd like to begin this intermittent blog series with a book barely connected to Alabama, a novel by Arthur V. Deutcsh. He came to Birmingham in 1981 and served 10 years as the city's Chief of Police. He may thus be the only published novelist among police chiefs in Alabama history.

This front and back cover is the Dell paperback edition published in January 1980. The third image is the front cover of the Arbor House hardback edition which had appeared in 1978.

The hardback dust jacket announces the book as simply "A novel by Arthur V. Deutcsh". By the time the paperback appeared, the cover declared that Starett was "A Scorching Novel by a Twenty-Year Veteran of the N.Y.P.D." 

Deutcsh apparently published only this one book. His dedication reads, "I have dedicated some off-duty hours to this book and the entertainment of fiction readers. In real life, I've dedicated twenty-two years to my city's finest profession, the police force. Neither of these dedications would have been possible without the help of my lovely wife and six children."

Deutsch was tried for tampering with governmental records while in Birmingham and received a 12-month jail sentence and a $2000 fine on the misdemeanor charge. He and three other officers were indicted for altering arrest records of Mayor Richard Arrington's daughter Erica in December 1990. Deutsch filed an appeal in July 1992. 

I have found curiously little about Deutsch online. I did not find the outcome of his appeal or an obituary. I did find a 1987 article about Deutsch's pursuit of a thief while he and his wife Elaine were out walking near their home. 

I have yet to read Starett but hope to get to it one day. Who could resist a novel with a cover tag like "His business was death. Both the cops and the Mafia called him one of their own."

Arthur Deutsch is not the only Alabama policeman to publish fiction. James Byron Huggins, who worked in the Huntsville Police Department among many other jobs, has published a series of popular novels. Sorcerer published in 2006 seems to be the most recent.

Lee Kohn worked for the Mobile Police Department from 1977 until 1993. He has published several novels such as Badge 13. 

[Added 8-23-14]

 I recently came across a copy of the "Just A Chat" feature the Birmingham News ran years ago dated June 12, 1991. The subject was David Harris, an Irondale police lieutenant at the time. He mentions having written one novel, "The Visitation," about a policeman who fights a demon in a small Southern town. He also notes he's far along on a second novel, "All Creatures Here Below," "a futuristic love story." I've been unable to find any further information about these novels. 

If you know of other Alabama law enforcement officials who have published fiction, please comment below. Join me again next time for another obscure book somehow related to Alabama!

[Added 8-29-14]

I found an old file I had on Chief Deutsch that contained some further articles. "Deutsch may have had a stroke, his doctor says" ran in the Birmingham Post-Herald on January 27, 1995. This article noted that "Since falling down a long flight of stairs at Birmingham City Hall three years ago, the specifics of Deutcsh's declining health were never publicly disclosed." The article notes his misdemeanor charge of record tampering as noted above had been overturned on appeal. His attorney Mark White said Deutcsh did not understand due to his mental status. 

Earlier articles in my file focus on Deutcsh's literary career. "New chief's book about cop-gone-bad gets attention now" the Birmingham News noted in a November 11, 1981, article. A brief note in the News on September 28, 1986, described his upcoming appearance at the Avondale Community School for a talk on mystery writing and his recent workshop at the Birmingham-Southern College Writers Conference. 

An April 20, 1984, article in the UAB Kaleidoscope declared, "Police chief finds second love as aspiring writer." This item notes an episode Deutcsh wrote for the television series McCloud that starred Dennis Weaver as a policeman from the west working in New York City. Deutcsh's script for "The 42nd St. Cavalry" featured McCloud riding a horse through the city.

[Added 3-2-23]

Richard Arrington's 2008 memoir, Richard Arrington: There's Hope for the World devotes a chapter to Deutsch: "The Controversial Reign of Chief Artie Deutsch" pp 91-114. 

Source for paperback edition: my collection

Source: Amazon

Source: Amazon

Source: Amazon

Mines, Mills & Moonshine: Silent Filmmaking in the Birmingham Area, Part 4

Part 1 of this series can be found here; part 2 here; and part 3 here. 

           We don’t consider Birmingham a hotbed of silent filmmaking because it wasn’t. Yet three feature films were made in the area before the movies learned to talk. In recent posts on this blog I’ve discussed each of these films in some detail: The Moonshiner’s Daughter [1908?], Coming Through [1925] and Men of Steel [1926]. Since those pieces were written I’ve come across more information about the production of Men of Steel and would like to share it here.

            By way of introduction, let me quote myself on the South’s role in silent film production. “Silent filmmaking arrived in the South very early in the twentieth century. Beginning in 1908, the Kalem Company operated in Jacksonville, Florida, each winter. At least eight films were made between 1916 and 1926 at Norman Studios, also in Jacksonville; all featured totally black casts. For about a decade until 1919, when most filming had moved from the northeast to California, Florida was known as the “Winter Film Capitol of the World.” In addition, the very first Tarzan film, Tarzan of the Apes staring Elmo Lincoln, was shot in Louisiana in 1918.”

            Men of Steel was filmed in Ensley and released by the First National company in July 1926. The premier was held at the Mark Strand Theatre on Broadway in New York City. The studio’s advertising declared it “One of the Greatest Pictures ever produced.”  Directed by George Archainbaud, the film’s cast included three popular stars of the day: Milton Sills, Dorothy Kenyon and Victor McLaglen. Kenyon and Sills married just months after the film was released. According to the BhamWiki site, the local premier took place at the Franklin Theatre in Ensley.

A copy has not survived, but the film seems to have been just over 90 minutes long. Men of Steel was based on a short story, “United States Flavor” written by Ralph G. Kirk and published in a Saturday Evening Post issue in 1924. I have yet to determine whether the story is set in Birmingham or why the city was chosen for filming.

            As I noted in the earlier piece, “A synopsis of the film’s story by Hal Erickson can be found online at the allmovie.com site. ‘Sills plays Jan Bokak, a self-educated steelworker who finds himself in the middle of a romantic triangle. Two different girls -- wealthy socialite Claire Pitt (May Allison) and blue-collar worker Mary Berwick (Doris Kenyon) -- simultaneously fall for Bokak. It later develops that Claire and Mary are actually sisters, the first of a series of surprising plot twists leading to Bokak being accused of a murder he didn't commit. In the gutsy climax, the actual villain attempts to kill Bokak by pouring a vat of molten steel upon him!’”  That summary probably came from advertising material.

            Shortly after I completed the original Men of Steel piece, a new digital resource became available—Lantern, the Media History Digital Library. Included here are numerous issues of 20^th century magazines related to film, television and radio.  I hope to use this resource to investigate the other two films, but for now I’ve included some of the photographs and advertisements related to Men of Steel I found in Lantern. Of special interest is the photo taken on the set at the Ensley Mills with what must be director Archainbaud, some of his crew and a camera high above one of the vats. Note the man in the vat and the clothing worn by the men. I wonder what the city’s temperature was that day? Maybe they were filming in winter.

            Finally, I’ve included something else on the subject of Birmingham’s silent film history. This clipping from the Birmingham News published on April 28, 1925 is online at the Birmingham Public Library’s DigitalCollections. The article describes the release of a silent film made by the Imperial Film Company, Things You Ought to Know about Birmingham. Being shown at the Trianon Theater, it “shows more than one thousand Birmingham citizens” and “many local scenes and places.” Yet another fascinating topic for research! 

This piece originally appeared on the DiscoverBirmingham.org site in November 2013.

Mines, Mills & Moonshine: Silent Filmmaking in the Birmingham Area, Part 3

Part 1 of this series can be found here and part 2 here.

               A third silent film shot in the Birmingham area was Men of Steel, filmed in Ensley and released on Sunday, July 11, 1926. An advertising tag line used for the film was a modest one: “One of the Greatest Pictures ever produced.” All the details of international distribution are unknown, but the film did appear in Portugal in December 1927 and Finland in February 1928. Running time for the film is given by various sources as 96 or 100 minutes.

            The film premiered in New York City at the Mark Strand Theatre on Broadway. Opened in 1914 with a capacity of 2,989 people, the Strand managed to survive as a cinema in one form or another until it was demolished in early 1987.  In its review the next day, the New York Times noted about the film that “all the stupendous paraphernalia of a steel plant has been used, with the happy result of making that fascinating industry vivid without sacrificing narrative in the picture.”

This picture was a First National production. The company had been founded in 1917 when 26 of the largest cinema chains in the United States merged and created one chain of more than 600 theaters. Thomas L. Tally was the guiding force behind this effort, which was intended to compete with dominate Paramount Pictures. First National would produce, distribute and exhibit its own films.

 Quickly the firm signed Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to the first million-dollar contracts in film history. In 1928 Warner Brothers bought a controlling interest in First National and continued production under its banner until 1936. Among the almost 400 productions the company released were such classics as So Big (1924, based on Edna Ferber’s bestselling novel), The Lost World (1925, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle novel), and Little Caesar (1931, from W.R. Burnett’s novel), one of the early gangster classics with Edward G. Robinson.

           Movie herald for Men of Steel. These two-sided pieces were included in film press kits and copies were provided to individual theaters to hand them out on the street, etc.

Source: eBay Item #370760843105 accessed 3-12-13

            Men of Steel was based on a short story, “United States Flavor” written by Ralph G. Kirk and published in the Saturday Evening Post issue of June 14, 1924. Kirk was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1881 and died in 1960 in San Diego, California. Between 1921 and 1953, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, he published numerous short stories, most of them in the Post. In 1923 he published a book, Six Breeds, a collection of five dog stories, including two that had been published in separate editions in 1917 and 1918. A 1922 film, The Scrapper, was based on his story “Malloy Campeador.” Little else is known at the moment about Kirk, and I haven’t seen the story yet and don’t know if it is set in Birmingham. Since Kirk was from another steel producing state, the story may be set there. Why Birmingham was chosen for a filming location is currently unknown.

Cover of a book by R.G. Kirk

Source: Amazon

            The Film Daily, a trade newspaper that covered the film and later television industries from 1915 until 1970, ran a front page column-long review of Men of Steel in its issue for Tuesday, July 13, 1926. “The picture has a punch that reaches wallop proportions at several climaxes,” reviewer Kann gushed. “’Men of Steel’ impresses,” he concludes. Unfortunately, the review makes no mention of filming in Birmingham. The same issue of the paper also contains a two-page advertisement for the film, crowing that “N.Y. Strand Busts Town Wide Open with ‘Men of Steel.’” The ad also reproduces a telegram from the Strand’s Joseph Plunkett who wrote breathlessly to executive Richard A. Rowland that “WE HAD TO STOP SELLING TICKETS FOUR TIMES STOP AUDIENCE VERY ENTHUSIASTIC.”

I have not been able to locate an image of the movie’s poster for use at theaters, but an article by Mark Caro published in the Chicago Tribune on March 13, 2012, gives us a few hints about its quality. Caro profiles Dwight Cleveland, who has amassed a collection of more than 35,000 such posters. Cleveland mentions “a brilliantly colored poster touting Milton Sills in "Men of Steel" (1926) and depicting one guy punching another in the face.  To Cleveland, ‘Men of Steel’ illustrates a key problem with his hobby. Although Sills and that silent film are long forgotten, the poster is a beautiful stone lithograph that the collector argues should be judged on its artistic merits. ‘That's a poster that should sell for 10,000 bucks at some point, when people really understand how important the artwork is,’ Cleveland said. ‘Then they'll realize this is a great example of early lithography, and it will rise. Now if it's just going to be valued by movie people, they're not going to think it's so important.’"

          Men of Steel was directed by George Archainbaud, an actor and manager who came to the U.S. from France in 1915. Before his death in 1959, he had worked primarily as a director in silent and sound films and television. He is perhaps best remembered today for several westerns, including some featuring Hopalong Cassidy. In 1932 he directed The Lost Squadron, in which three World War I aviators find jobs as stunt flyers in Hollywood after the war.

            The male lead in Men of Steel was Milton Sills, a popular star of the time; the movie was one of four he made in 1926 alone. Sills also wrote the script for the film based on Kirk’s short story. Born in Chicago in 1882, he attended the University of Chicago and worked there after graduation. In 1905 he joined a stock theater company and toured the country before settling in New York and making his Broadway debut in 1908. By 1914 Sills had moved to Hollywood for his film debut in The Pit. By the time he arrived in Birmingham his success put him in films of the largest studios and opposite such stars as Gloria Swanson and in such box-office hits as The Sea Hawk (1924). In 1927 Sills was among the 36 people who founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  

 Milton Sills [1882-1930]

Source: Wikipedia

            Staring opposite Sills was Dorothy Kenyon, a native of New York who was fifteen years younger. She made her first film in 1915 and by 1924 appeared in Monsieur Beaucaire with Rudolph Valentino. She continued to act in films well into the sound period and had a few television appearances in the late 1950s. She died in 1979.  Sills and Kenyon carried their relationship beyond the set in Birmingham; they were married in October 1926 and had a son before Sills' death from a heart attack in 1930.

Doris Kenyon [1897-1979]

Source: Wikipedia

            Other individuals acting in the production included Victor McLaglen, May Allison and Frank Currier. Born in England in 1886, McLaglen served in World War I after several years on the boxing circuit. He even fought heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in an exhibition match. McLaglen acted in several silent films in Britain before moving to Hollywood where he quickly became a popular character actor, often playing intoxicated Irishmen. He was still acting in films and television until his death in 1959. His son Andrew McLaglen became a director in both film and television.

Victor McLaglen [1886-1959]

Source: Wikipedia

            Georgia native May Allison appeared on Broadway in 1914 but quickly moved to Hollywood. She became very popular in a series of some 25 films with leading man Harold Lockwood. However, his death in 1918 during the influenza pandemic resulted in a decline in the public’s interest in her. Allison made her final film, The Telephone Girl, the year after Men of Steel and then retired. She died in 1989.

May Allison [1890-1989]
Source: Wikipedia

            Born in Connecticut in 1857, Frank Currier acted in more than 130 films between 1912 and 1928. He also directed a number of films during that period.  He appeared in such silent classics as Ben-Hur and died in 1928.

            A synopsis of the film’s story by Hal Erickson can be found online at the allmovie.com site. “Sills plays Jan Bokak, a self-educated steelworker who finds himself in the middle of a romantic triangle. Two different girls -- wealthy socialite Claire Pitt (May Allison) and blue-collar worker Mary Berwick (Doris Kenyon) -- simultaneously fall for Bokak. It later develops that Claire and Mary are actually sisters, the first of a series of surprising plot twists leading to Bokak being accused of a murder he didn't commit. In the gutsy climax, the actual villain attempts to kill Bokak by pouring a vat of molten steel upon him!” 

            According to BhamWiki.com, Men of Steel premiered at the Franklin Theatre in Ensley, although no date is given. Located at 1819 Avenue E, the theatre was built in the early 1900s and closed in the early 1930s. The building remains vacant today.

            All three of these silent films made in the Birmingham area—Moonshiner’s Daughter, Coming Through, and Men of Steel—are among the many “lost” films of the silent era. Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation has estimated that 90 percent of films made before 1929 are lost. These movies were made on nitrate film, which is highly flammable and chemically unstable. Improperly stored, these films can turn to toxic mush or powder in the canister. Sometimes "lost" silent films will surface in various unexpected places. In 2010, the Russian state film archive gave the Library of Congress copies of ten U.S. silent films believed lost but discovered in storage.

            Little is known about the local details of making these three silent movies. Hopefully some research in Birmingham area newspapers will uncover further information.

            If you would like to learn more about silent filmmaking, the print literature and web resources are vast. My own interest was sparked years ago by Kevin Brownlow’s book, The Parade’s Gone By [1976], an excellent place to start.

This piece first appeared on the Birmingham History Center's blog in May 2013.

Pondering an Alabama Map (1): Pelham in 1917

        A great resource for anyone interested in Alabama maps is the online Historical Map Archive at the University of Alabama, which draws on map collections from various libraries and archives around the state. I've recently been exploring many of the maps there and would like to highlight some on a regular basis on this blog. 

The two images below are taken from a 1917 soil survey map of Shelby County from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The National Cooperative Soil Survey began in 1899 and continues today; maps have been issued for counties in every state. The surveys are a cooperative effort of governmental and private agencies to study and publish information about soils in the U.S.

On this map we can see near Pelham familiar features such as Little Oak Ridge and the Cahaba River, the railroad to Birmingham and Helena to the west. If you really zoom in around the word “Pelham”, you can see a few structures of the town, three of which have crosses to indicate churches.

Still to come are Pelham’s appearances on a 1926 road map of Shelby County and a 1928 state highway map. After those maps I'll move on to some of the other riches in this collection.

Unless otherwise noted, maps discussed in this series are available via the online Historical Maps Archive based at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Mines, Mills & Moonshine: Silent Filmmaking in the Birmingham Area, Part 2

Part 1 of this series can be found here.

           

      Apparently the second of the Birmingham silent films was Coming Through, released in mid-February 1925 and premiered at New York City’s Rialto Theatre on the 17^th. The 70-minute drama was produced by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which had been formed in 1916 by the merger of the Famous Players Film Company of Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky’s Feature Play Company. Lasky would oversee production of Coming Through. Two years after the picture’s release Lasky was one of the three dozen individuals who established the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The company that he and Zukor founded evolved into one of the largest silent filmmakers in Hollywood with stars that included Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow and eventually became the Paramount Pictures Corporation.

Jesse L. Lasky [1880-1958]

Source: Wikipedia

            Coming Through had been shot in the second half of 1924, primarily in Brookside, the mining town in Jefferson County incorporated in 1896 and the mining camps of New Castle and along Oxmoor Road. A few actual mining scenes were completed in a New York studio, probably for safety reasons. The film was based on the 1924 novel Bed Rock by Jack Bethea.

Jack Bethea [1892-1928]

Source: Bham Wiki

Born in Birmingham in 1892, Bethea started work as a reporter for the Birmingham Age-Herald while still in high school. By 1916 he had moved to the Birmingham Ledger as city editor.  After another paper, the Birmingham Post began publication in 1921, he became news and then managing editor there. He was named editor in 1928.

Bed Rock was actually his second novel; the first, Half-Gods, had been serialized in the popular Collier’s magazine the year before. The second novel, as “Coming Through”, was also serialized in that magazine before book publication. Bethea also published short stories during this period and joined a local writers’ group the Loafer’s Club that also included Octavus Roy Cohen, a very popular author in his day. Two more novels set in the Birmingham District coal mines quickly followed, The Deep Seam [1925] and Honor Bound [1927]. Alabama agriculture was the subject of his final novel, Cotton [1928].

        Suffering from health problems and depression, Bethea hanged himself in his room at the Tutwiler Hotel on July 2, 1928. In late April of that year a film version of Honor Bound had appeared, advertised as “A Daring Drama of Life in the Convict Labor Camps.” The movie featured an uncredited extra earning $7 a day named Jean Harlow; it was her first appearance on film.  Although perhaps melodramatic by current standards, his mining novels depicted the wrenching changes industrialization was bringing to his native state.

The Tutwiler in the 1920s

Source: Bham Wiki

            Although the novel is set in the Cahaba coal fields south of Birmingham, Jesse Lasky moved the setting to Brookside and other nearby mines and camps. The Brookside mine had opened in 1886 and by 1900 the mine’s modern equipment made it the most advanced in the area and the headquarters of the four Sloss mines there. Yet by the time Hollywood came to town, the mine had been closed after a 1920 general strike.

Brookside coal mine entrance on a 1908 postcard

Source: Bham Wiki

        The cast and crew arrived in Brookside in the fall of 1924 and were met at the train depot by a welcoming crowd of locals. Pam Jones’ article “Brookside” (Alabama Heritage #85, summer 2007, pp 26-37) profiles the one-time “wild west town” that was reaching for middle-class respectability at this time. The film group stayed in local private homes during filming, since travel from Birmingham would require too much time. Jones’ article has a photograph of Lasky and actors Thomas Meighan and Wallace Beery on the set of the film, but does not specify whether the scene is Brookside or the New York set.

Director A. Edward Sutherland was probably a little nervous as filming began. Coming Through was his first film behind the camera, after an acting career spanning almost 40 films including one directed by Charlie Chaplin. Sutherland directed over 50 movies during three decades and worked in television into the mid-1960s. He had married five times before his death in 1973.  

A. Edward Sutherland [1895-1973]

Source: Wikipedia

            In its entry on the film, BhamWiki summarizes the story. “Meighan played the typical ‘quiet and strong, kindly and brave’ hero, Tom Blackford, who marries a reluctant mine owner's daughter, Alice (Lee). The owner (played by John Miltem) makes Blackford a mine superintendent, hoping to see him fail. To hasten his downfall, he hires Joe Lawler (Beery) to make life miserable for Blackford. Lawler conspires with a saloon keeper (Laurence Wheat) to provoke a strike. Blackford manages to foil the scheme, however. In the culminating fight sequence, Lawler gets thrown off a mine tipple when his crowbar gets caught in the conveyor. In the end, Alice confesses her love for him [Blackford].”

            Three of the actors cited were well known at the time. A Pennsylvania native, Thomas Meighan began acting on Broadway by 1900 when he was only 21. In 1914 he appeared in his first film and acted steadily until his death from cancer in 1936. At the height of his career Meighan made $5,000  or more a week and acted opposite such female stars as Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. Meighan was Sutherland’s uncle by marriage.

Thomas Meighan [1879-1936]

Source: Wikipedia

            The female lead in Coming Through was New Jersey native Lila Lee. At seventeen she signed with Famous Players-Lasky and within a few years acted with Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino (in the very popular Blood and Sand in 1922) and other stars of the day. She remained popular into the late 1930s and also died in 1973 just weeks before Sutherland.

Lila Lee [1901-1973]

Source: Wikipedia

1923 portrait of Coming Through star Lila Lee

Source: Bham Wiki

            Born in Kansas City in 1885, Wallace Beery made about 250 films in a career lasting over three decades until his death in 1949. He was the younger brother of two actors, William Beery and Noah Beery; and uncle of another, Noah Berry, Jr. Among his roles were King Richard the Lionheart in Robin Hood (1922) with Douglas Fairbanks, and Professor Challenger in The Lost World based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel. He won a Best Actor Oscar for The Champ (1931) and played Long John Silver in a classic version of Treasure Island (1934). A heavy drinker who often played villains, Beery had a reputation for abuse of both colleagues and others including first wife Gloria Swanson. A young couple named Ida and Evan Lollar welcomed Beery into their home during filming. The actor apparently spent time exploring the saloons along the town’s Main Street.

Wallace Beery [1885-1949]

Source: Wikipedia

            Beery had a close call on the set after a night of such carousing. He and Meighan were acting that scene atop the coal tipple, a structure for loading the ore into railroad cars. Beery slipped and nearly fell to what would have been serious injury or death. For the rest of the shoot Beery had to be watched carefully after hours by the crew.

An abandoned coal tipple in West Virginia

Source: Library of Congress

Tipple Foundation, Exterior Southeast. Brookside Coal Mine, Tipple (Foundation), Mount Olive Road, North of Five Mile Creek Bridge, Brookside, Jefferson County, AL, ca. 1968

Source: Library of Congress

            Coming Through premiered in New York City on February 17 and the New York Times’ critic Mordaunt Hall was not kind in the next day’s paper. “The narrative of this effort might make an excellent bedtime story for an old ladies’ home, as all its dramatic teeth have been pulled and the hero, Tom Blackford (Thomas Meighan) seems to deserve a pair of wings,” he wrote in the first paragraph. After describing scenes from “a picture so utterly lacking in drama”, Hall closes with a restatement of his opening. “The narrative is as flat as the proverbial pancake, with only a few scenes of a coal mine to relieve its monotonous trend.”

            The film ran for 70 minutes, or 7 reels in the days of 10 minutes per reel. As with The Moonshiner’s Daughter discussed in part 1 and so many silent movies, Coming Through is currently a “lost film.” Perhaps a copy will turn up somewhere someday.

This piece first appeared on the Birmingham History Center blog in February 2013.

Birmingham Photo of the Day (17): 19th Street in 1908

The 1908 coffee table book Views of Birmingham Alabama (title page below) has a number of fascinating photographs of the area from that time. The photo below shows 19th Street looking north from 1st Avenue. 

The street is busy. Pedestrians are on the sidewalks and crossing the street. Two streetcars can be seen in the distance. A horse-drawn carriage is coming toward us. We can see a prominent "Saloon" sign on the lower left and what looks like another one on the lower right.

Across the street is a large "Gayety" sign, and we can see "New Gayety" down the building on the left. These signs advertise the Gayety Theatre which opened in the building in 1905. Theatricals performed there were of the burlesque variety.

The building, seen completely in the photograph below, opened in 1882 as the O'Brien Opera House. Follow the Bham Wiki link for a fascinating history of the structure, which was torn down in 1915. The site is a parking lot today.

An undated photograph of the Gayety Theatre in its first incarnation as O'Brien's Opera House which opened in November 1882. Source: Bham Wiki

Weeding My Alabama Book Collection

 

Recently we had one of those Basement Events That Shall Remain Nameless, and as a result I am now going through my collection of several thousand books and weeding many out. "Weeding" is a term we librarians liked to use back in the day when print collections were actually a major aspect of libraries and not something that gets in the way of public computers, social media space and backroom server farms. 

Weeding was done regularly, and books were removed as a result. Many public libraries weeded out damaged copies, multiple copies of past bestsellers no longer circulating as much and books not checked out in years. Larger public and academic libraries might actually keep titles even if showing no use just in case some strange future readers might want to check them out. But they too had to weed damaged books not worth repair, excess multiple copies, etc.

I'm now doing something similar with my books. Not all are related to Alabama; I have many medical history books, novels galore by non-state authors and many other miscellaneous titles. Some of that stuff is going too. The books on Marilyn Monroe are safe, however.




Any books with this woman on the cover will not be purged. 
This particular photo graces the one by Norman Mailer. 

Over the years I have collected many books with some kind of connection to the state and even some of those are headed out the door. I had picked up inexpensive copies of several novels by Gadsden's popular author Linda Howard, for instance, but never read one. Bye bye Linda, sorry, but I'll probably never read them.

One thing should be noted. Many people who have seen my collection over the years will ask, "Have you read all these books?" How silly. I have read many, of course and will read many more, but that's not the point of collecting books. I'm surrounded by books I want to read if I live long enough, or if I go to prison, and someone can smuggle them in to me.  

But now, downsizing will be done. Just boxing them all up and moving them a few dozen feet to the PODS on the driveway was enough to convince me to lighten the load. That, and loving suggestions by wife Dianne as to what I could do with all these books. I tell her that I've read about collectors who have bought the house next door to contain their growing collections, but she seemed unimpressed. Besides, the houses on either side of us are not for sale.

So now we come to other titles related to Alabama that may be harder to weed. Here are some samples of what I'm considering.

This paperback is signed by the Alabama senator, Rear Admiral and Vietnam POW Jeremiah Denton who died earlier this year. 

This books collects quotes from the many-time Alabama governor and was published in 1968 ahead of one of his presidential runs. 

This 1967 memoir no doubt covers the 1965 Alabama national championship team on which he and Kenny Stabler shared quarterbacking duties. Since I'm an Auburn fan, this one can be weeded with no guilt.

This 1962 book profiles the colorful Alabama governor who served two non-consecutive terms beginnning in 1947 and 1955.

So these are a few of the items I've selected for possible weeding from my collection. Many others will be considered. Feel free to offer your take on any of these titles in the comment section.

I must state again, for the record, that books with this woman on the cover will NOT be purged.