The Devil's Tickets

by Gary M. Pomerantz

  SLAM: The bidding and making of a contract of six-odd (12 tricks) constitutes a Small Slam, or seven-odd (all 13 tricks) a Grand Slam. However, if 12 or 13 tricks are taken, but have not been contracted for, there is no slam, the tricks above the contract being scored only as extra tricks.

  TRICK: A card led from one hand, and followed by one card played from the three remaining hands. In the struggle for suits in bridge, the trick is a symbolic gesture signifying the capture of an enemy.

  TRUMP SUIT: The suit, if any, to which a higher trick-taking power attaches during the play of the hand. Each of its cards ranks above any card of any other suit. The trump suit, if any, is named in the final contract.

  VULNERABLE: A scoring term applied to a side that has won a game in a rubber. A vulnerable side runs the risk of incurring greater penalties for defeated contracts, offset by the possibility of making greater premiums for making contracts and slams.

  NOTES

  “Don’t forget that man”: Jerome Beatty, “What Is Your Wife Worth to You?” American Magazine, October 1931, p. 137.

  “We played perfectly—except Jo”: John Clay, Culbertson: The Man Who Made Contract Bridge (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), p. 192.

  INTRODUCTION

  “Treat it like the measles”: Steven Watts, The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 339. Ford was quoted in the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine in September 1923, p. 8.

  Henry L. Mencken, so favored blondes: Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Good-By (New York: The Viking Press, 1974). See also Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. xxxvii-xxxviii.

  meets the famous Austrian psychiatrist “Dr. Froyd”: Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, pp. 88-90.

  one arrangement of the 635,013,559,600 possibilities: Edward McPherson, The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer’s Journey into the World of Bridge (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), p. 39; and Marvin Reznikoff and Tannah Hirsch, “Over Troubled Water,” Psychology Today, May 1970, pp. 36-39.

  cards dates to China in or before the thirteenth century: Catherine Perry Hargrave, A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966), p. 6.

  encountered such fearsome weather that they threw: Ibid., p. 279.

  They called them the devil’s tickets: Henry G. Francis, editor in chief, and Alan F. Truscott and Dorothy A. Francis, The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, 6th ed. (Memphis, Tenn.: American Contract Bridge League, 2001), p. 115.

  “When you write a love scene”: Loos, Kiss Hollywood Good-By, pp. 190-91.

  ONE: ELY AND JO

  “all the iridescence of the beginning”: Nathan Miller, New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003), p. 9; and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson, ed., The Crack-Up (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993), p. 25.

  pancake makeup and jangling jewelry: Stanley Walker, The Night Club Era (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 95-96, 240-43.

  roller-skated the Charleston: Ibid., pp. 95-96.

  “the pleasure of not giving a damn”: Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), pp. 357-58, 383.

  “90 percent entertainment, 10 percent”: Neal Gabler, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 73.

  ” ‘Are you Dorothy Parker?’”: Daily Mirror (New York), March 9, 1931.

  “seemed to purr with delight”: Gabler, Winchell, p. 80.

  Founded in 1891 by twenty enthusiasts of whist: August R. Ohman, Historical Sketch of the Knickerbocker Whist Club: Playing Cards, Whist, Bridge, Auction (New York: Knickerbocker Whist Club, 1926), p. 3.

  ladylike, her long, supple fingers dropping: Ely Culbertson, The Strange Lives of One Man (Chicago: The John C. Winston Company, 1940), pp. 424-26; and New York Sun, December 17, 1931.

  called her the Duchess for her regal: Daily News (New York), December 23, 1931.

  she played the adolescent game of basketball: Ibid.

  whispers that she had been his mistress: Clay, Culbertson: The Man Who Made Contract Bridge, p. 60.

  from Selma, Alabama, who once tried to irrigate the Congo: Dorothy Rice Sims, Curiouser and Curiouser: A Book in the Jugular Vein (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940), p. 123.

  “a brain of so perfect an organization”: George Walker, Chess and Chess Players: Consisting of Original Stories and Sketches (London: Charles J. Skeet, Publisher, 1850), p. 40.

  march with the spirited youth of Paris: Ibid.

  agreed to deposit a quarter million francs: Ibid., pp. 43-44.

  the quick trick table of card values: New York Times, June 28, 1931.

  José Capablanca, and spent a year in India studying magic: Bridge Magazine, March 1932, p. 8; also New York Times, July 18, 1948, April 17, 1960; also John A. Garraty, ed., Dictionary of American Biography, suppl. 6, 1956- 1960 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980), pp. 379-80; also Bridge World, March 1932, p. 27.

  blue bathrobe while settling into a wide armchair: Sims, Curiouser and Curiouser, p. 128.

  officer on the USS Montana during the war, convoying American soldiers: New York World-Telegram, February 17, 1932.

  had died in a yachting accident: New York Times, October 8, 1964.

  guardianship of an uncle in Berlin, who later enlisted him: Ripley v. Von Zedtwitz, 201 Ky. 513 (Ky. App. 1923); Von Zedtwitz v. Sutherland, 40 F.2nd 785 (D.C. Cir. 1930); Commonwealth v. Von Zedwitz, 215 Ky. 413 (Ky 1926).

  He had pulled on his earlobes: New York Times, October 21, 1984.

  “Intellectually, and almost emotionally”: New York World-Telegram, February 23, 1932.

  intending to catch a train Saturday morning: Commander Winfield Liggett, Jr., “Memories of Fortieth Street,” Contract Bridge, October 1931, p. 3.

  playing bridge, dining out, and attending dance parties: Madeleine Kerwin, “Jo Culbertson, My Friend,” Bridge World, April 1956, p. 6. 12 her husband was a Princeton boy: Clay, Culbertson, p. 60.

  former husband was dead, perhaps by suicide: Ibid.

  Ely and Mrs. Shelton won top score: Culbertson, The Strange Lives, pp. 418-19.

  the famed 1732 Guarnari del Gesù violin: New York Times, December 30, 1924, and April 2, 1929. NY Herald-Tribune, April 2, 1929; also Culbertson, The Strange Lives, pp. 424-25.

  “Well, then, let’s drink a toast”: Culbertson, The Strange Lives, p. 416.

  Pygmalion’s love, and Aphrodite’s spark, Galatea springs: Louis Herbert Gray, ed., and George Foot Moore, William Sherwood Fox, The Mythology of All Races: Greek and Roman, Vol. 1 (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 1964), p. 200; and Richard P. Martin, Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), pp. 56-57.

  Must be between 18 and 21 years old: Culbertson, The Strange Lives, pp. 319-20. The ad was published in Italian; the translation to English is Culbertson’s.

  “No, signorina”: Ibid., p. 321.

  “It isn’t your ideas”: Ibid., p. 431.

  17 ambition was to create the Modern Theory: Ely Culbertson, Contract Bridge Blue Book (New York: The Bridge World, Inc., 1930), p. xvii.

  “You could be a revolutionist, a monk”: Culbertson, The Strange Lives, p. 436.

  “You’re a bridge monster/”: Ibid., p. 444.

  those who quarreled everywhere, including: Bridge World, July 1930, pp. 44-45.

  “oil business”: Ely Culbertson-Josephine Dillon Affadavit for License to Marry, June 9, 1923, New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives, New York.

  Father Duffy presiding: Marriage Certificate for Ely Culbe
rtson and Josephine M. Dillon, married on June 11, 1923, signed on August 30, 1930, New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives, New York.

  the isle of Capri, a lovely country home: Culbertson. The Strange Lives, pp. 453.

  young Yale man playing a casual game: Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed., The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Scribner, 1989), p. 326. Originally published as a short story, “The Rich Boy,” in a two-part series in Red Book, January and February 1926.

  plays three-handed bridge with friends: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Scribner Trade Paperback Edition, 2006), p. 130.

  On a cruise ship voyage through the Panama Canal: Alan Truscott and Dorothy Truscott, The New York Times Bridge Book: An Anecdotal History of the Development, Personalities and Strategies of the World’s Most Popular Card Game (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), pp. 22-24; also Rex Mackey, The Walk of the Oysters (London: W. H. Allen, 1964), pp. 12-14.

  “Contract will sweep the country”: Culbertson, The Strange Lives, p. 497.

  von Zedtwitz came, and so did Ted Lightner: Ibid., p. 501.

  “Here’s to the most wonderful wife”: Ibid., p. 503.

  “Whose bid is it?”: Sims, Curiouser and Curiouser, pp. 153-54. 23 GUESTS AND FISH STINK: Ibid., p. 152.

  “Bridge sharks multiply like rabbits”: Ibid., p. 149.

  TWO: MYRTLE AND JACK

  Her young cousins would wait on the front porch: Carolyn Scruggs interview.

  25 “i was glad to hear that you enjoyed”: Letter from H. F. Adkins to his wife, Alice B. Adkins, June 27, 1889, personal files of Myrtle Bennett at the time of her 1992 death, courtesy of a lawyer for the Bennett estate, who asked not to be identified.

  The lawyer Abner McGehee, Jr., whose father founded: Arkansas Gazette, June 13, 1938; also Kansas City Times, March 3, 1931, and Kansas City Journal-Post, February 28, 1931.

  In a club car on the Illinois Central: Kansas City Star, October 1, 1929.

  completed his infantry work: Certificate of Graduation, Fourth Officers Training School, Camp Grant, Illinois, August 26, 1918, Myrtle Bennett personal files, courtesy of LeRoy Simpson.

  A pharmacist attached to a medical division: Favorable Discharge from Army of the United States for John G. Bennett, 2061946, Sgt. Medical Division, 161st Depot Brigade upon acceptance of commission as Second Lieutenant at Camp Grant, Illinois, August 26, 1918, Myrtle Bennett personal files, courtesy of LeRoy Simpson.

  worked as a clerk at the W. A. Ball drugstore: White County (Illinois) Democrat, October 3, 1929.

  “a tall bold slugger set vivid”: Carl Sandburg, The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, revised and expanded ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), p. 3.

  [A woman] searches out his weaknesses: H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (Garden City, N.J.: Garden City Publishing Company, 1922), pp. 29-30.

  “FLASH: The Armistice Has Been Signed”: Memphis News-Scimitar, November 11, 1918.

  HUNS MADE POWERLESS : Ibid.

  the Shrine band, the Boy Scout Drum Corps: Ibid.

  in the business term of the day, “a producer”: Kansas City Star, October 1, 1929.

  a stenographer for a tire company, a doctor: Kansas City Star, March 1, 1931.

  Jack was earning $6,000 a year: Kansas City Journal-Post, February 28, 1931.

  stitching his trousers: Kansas City Journal-Post, March 3, 1931.

  Myrtle had twice lost babies: Kansas City Journal-Post, October 1, 1931.

  ” broad-verandahed country places”: Auction Bridge Magazine, July 1929, p. 23.

  31 Jack hoping to be perceived as a lavish host: Kansas City Journal-Post, October 1, 1931.

  KMBC, broadcasting live from the El Torreon: Chuck Haddix interview.

  “Men have more psychology”: Bridge World, October 1929, pp. 18-19.

  “Ships made Carthage”: William Reddig, Tom’s Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), p. 23.

  Its downtown skyline took impressive shape: Rick Montgomery and Shirl Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story (Kansas City, Mo.: Kansas City Star Books, 1999), p. 200.

  forged iron, milled flour, turned corn into sugar: Kansas City Star, February 12, 1931.

  North of the city nearly seven hundred acres: “At the Municipal Airport,” Kansas Citian, July 23, 1929.

  “In a waiting room a block long”: Kansas City Star, February 12, 1931.

  “I have seen the streets of Paris”: St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press, September 19, 1934; and Time, October 1, 1934.

  challenged God to strike him dead: Kansas City Times, April 19, 1926; also Richard Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 277; also Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 447.

  Lewis held “Sunday school classes”: Kansas City Star, May 17, 1926.

  “What the hell right has the church”: Kansas City Times, March 16, 1927.

  “Sit down, my son”: Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street, p. 276; also Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, p. 450.

  “I’ve had huge and delightful reglimpses”: Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street, p. 270.

  “It is a good booster town”: Kansas City Times, April 1, 1926.

  sat on an inverted motorcar brake drum: Kansas City Journal-Post, February 21, 1927.

  He placed his thumbs inside holes in the flagpole’s shaft: New York Times, October 12, 1952.

  he saw a bootlegger deliver four bottles to a man: Kansas City Journal-Post, February 21, 1927.

  French gilt and glitter of the Louis XV period:Lawrence H. Larsen and Nancy J. Hulston, Pendergast! (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), p. 79.

  ambience of a fraternal lodge: spare: William Reddig, Tom’s Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), pp. 131-32.

  36 old steamboat pilot named Captain Elijah Matheus: Ibid.

  “They was” or “I seen”: Larsen and Hulston, Pendergast!, p. 5.

  “When we had the controversy with Longwell”: Letter from James A. Reed to Honorable T. J. Pendergast, October 29, 1927, James A. Reed Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, Kansas City, KC443: Box 13.

  “What’s government for if it isn’t”: Larsen and Hulston, Pendergast!, p. 72.

  called it an “incomparable development”: Kansas City Times, January 25, 1926.

  “It gives you the comfort”: “Ward and Roanoake Parkway Building Corporation: 100% Cooperative Plan,” sales brochure of Park Manor Development, Kansas City: C. O. Jones Bldg. Co., 1929.

  Jack Bennett put down $4,890: Ibid.

  Jack joined the downtown Kansas City Athletic Club: Blue Diamond, newsletter of the Kansas City Athletic Club, Kansas City, Missouri, February 1927, p. 32.

  swimming pool, a cigar stand, card rooms: “Let’s Take a Trip Through the Club,” Blue Diamond, newsletter of the Kansas City Athletic Club, Kansas City, Missouri, December 1930, pp. 12-15.

  “They simply let themselves be clouded”: Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1931.

  “We have the vote, we have all the liberty”: Kansas City Star, September 23, 1929.

  THREE: ELY’S GRAND SCHEME

  Every human being floats: Ely Culbertson, Contract Bridge Blue Book (New York: The Bridge World, Inc., 1930), p. 261.

  “Whenever a hand contains a biddable”: Ibid., p.75.

  puffs on a cigarette demanded a lead in spades: Ibid., p. 482.

  they offered Ely only a few hundred dollars: Culbertson, The Strange Lives of One Man, p. 519.

  big houses that rent for $12,000: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Cambr
idge University Press, 1991), p. 8.

  overgrown garden with stucco monsters: Culbertson, The Strange Lives of One Man, p. 519.

  51 percent for him and Jo, and 49 percent divided: Ibid., p. 520.

  to the ego, to fear, and to sex: Ibid., p. 689. In an eleven-page appendix entitled “The Mass Mind,” Culbertson presents his views on marketing in America, and describes how he sculpted his advertising pitch to sell contract bridge.

  “vigorous thinking of a high intellectual order”: Bridge World, October 1929, p. 9.

  “From the heights of his masculine egotism”: Ibid., p. 18.

  Ely and P. Hal Sims won: Time, December 2, 1929.

  THE BRIDGE WORLD will fill, we confidently: Bridge World, October 1929, p. 5.

  Culbertson had his name appear 164 times: Andrew A. Freeman, “Culbertson: Soldier of Fortune,” Outlook, December 9, 1931, p. 461.

  “More married couples should hear”: New York Times, December 12, 1928; and Time, December 24, 1928.

  FOUR: FOUR SPADES SHE BID

  In this chapter, the intimate details of the fatal bridge game are drawn largely from Kansas City’s newspapers: the Star, the Times, and the Journal-Post. There were few discrepancies in the reports, although, true to form, the Journal-Post (desperate for circulation gains) was racier, more sensational. I also have used testimony from Myrtle’s 1931 murder trial to enrich the depiction of the bridge game and the wee hours of the following morning. In notes for Chapter 4, I cite only sources other than Kansas City’s newspapers on the Bennett killing and immediate aftermath.

  living room that measured eleven by eighteen feet: Architectural blueprint: First-floor Plan, Ward Parkway Apartment Building. CO. Jones Building Company. Personal files of current resident of Ward Parkway, who asked not to be identified.

  “The club is proud of the way its members”: Blue Diamond, newsletter of the Kansas City Athletic Club, Kansas City, Missouri, November 1928, p. 10.

  feminine moods—Romance, Gaiety, Sophistication: New York Times, November 20, 1927.

  “Here’s the new generation of Americans”: Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1922), p. 149.