“way out there in the blue”: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem (New York: The Viking Press, 1949), p. 138.
developed the concept of compounding toilet preparations: New York Times, March 18, 1930.
57 “Many a woman has looked at the long array”: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 4, 1931.
“an almost fairy-like loveliness”: New York Times, November 20, 1927.
“The moment you take the cover off the box”: New York Times, September 22, 1929.
“gay little compactes, topped with genuine”: New York Times, December 9, 1928.
“The initials of a friend”: Richard M. Fried, The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), p. 61.
“Any woman who does anything”: Ibid.
“We build of imperishable materials”: Ibid., pp. 66-67.
Sears and Montgomery Ward sold by mail order: Timothy B. Spears, 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 1.
“As influential factors in the creation”: Ibid.
“victims and martyrs, creatures touchingly”: Ibid., p. xv.
“curb our tendency to flirt”: Ibid., p. 4.
two million rubber condoms were used daily: Gerald Leinwand, 1927: High Tide of the 1920s (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001), p. 8.
flappers shaved their pubic hair: Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Good-by (New York: The Viking Press, 1974), p. 194.
“of kissing every Tom, Dick and Harry”: Stephanie Coontz, Marriage: A History (New York: Viking, 2005), p. 200.
“Psychologists assert that sex”: Silas Bent, Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927), p. 21.
FIVE: MYRTLE’S BLUR
“You will leave me, will you?”: Kansas City Times, October 16, 1929.
“Won’t you give me your revolver?”: Kansas City Journal-Post, September 30, 1929.
“I shot him. I went into mother’s”: Kansas City Times, February 28, 1931.
Hofman brought J. Francis O’Sullivan: Kansas City Journal-Post, September 30, 1929.
“He and mother were all I had”: Kansas City Times, October 2, 1929.
“Perhaps from the tragedy”: Bridge World, November 1929, p. 8.
68 “We shudder at the thought”: Ibid., p. 64.
“Tragedies, comedies, and the broadest farce”: Bridge World, December 1929, p. 52.
“This innocuous-looking deal”: Ibid., p. 53.
Her nerves shot, Mayme required rest: Kansas City Journal-Post, October 2, 1929.
SIX: SENATOR REED COMES HOME
he preferred a hearty game of Red Dog: Kansas City Star, July 21, 1929.
JIM’S HOME, HURRAH: This scene of Senator Jim Reed’s return at Union Station is drawn from coverage in the Kansas City Star, Kansas City Journal-Post, and Kansas City Times on March 9-10, 1929.
Reed’s verbal assaults as “chemical”: George Wharton Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer: An Autobiography (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1944), p. 149.
“We will vote on the resolution”: New York Times, August 8, 1926.
“nature’s law of love and life”: “The Suffragrette Crusader,” 1918 speech by Senator James A. Reed of Missouri, James A. Reed Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Kansas City, KC443: Box 41.
“Now we find a petticoat brigade”: Speech by Senator James A. Reed of Missouri in the Senate of the United States, Sixty-fifth Congress, Second Session, September 27, 1918, Congressional Record, James A. Reed Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Kansas City, KC443: Box 41.
“Rid Us of Reed” clubs: Dixon Merritt, “James A. Reed—Fighter,” Outlook, vol. CXLVIII (March 21, 1928), p. 468.
“some of the leading ‘political prohibitionists’”: Washington Star, February 17, 1929.
“magnificent bellicosity”: Paul V. Anderson, “Jim Reed: Himself,” North American Review CCXXV (April 1928).
“Like [Daniel] Webster it is impossible”: Oswald Garrison Villard, “James A. Reed,” Nation CXXVI (March 28, 1928), p. 343.
requested his office to mail out 750,000 copies: Kansas City Star, February 27, 1929.
“the most monstrous doctrine ever”: Jack M. Bain, “A Rhetorical Criticism of the Speeches of James A. Reed,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Missouri, 1953, p. 98.
“He may talk of retiring”: Kansas City Journal-Post, March 3, 1929.
Southern breakfast of hot corn bread, fried chicken: New York Telegram, May 25, 1928.
“I’m sure you are mistaken”: Kansas City Star, September 29, 1929.
“We thought of a tiny bit of a mouse”: Kansas City Star, February 25, 1931.
pronounced it, Eye-oh-way: James A. Reed speech on election night, November 1, 1940, United Broadcasting Company, James A Reed Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 771 KC, Phonograph Recordings Accession 1236kc, Box 1, Folder 2A.
Nancy cold, “vinegary”: Bain, “A Rhetorical Criticism of the Speeches of James A. Reed,” p. 10.
townspeople came to hear the boy orator: Ibid., p. 13.
he ran for alderman (and lost): Ibid., p. 18.
Reed would win all but two of his 287 cases: Anderson, “Jim Reed: Himself.”
“It would hardly be possible for Mr. Reed”: Kansas City Star, March 12, 1900.
“There is no more compromise in Jim Reed”: Kansas City Star, April 21, 1902.
“We find him nearly always occupying”: Anderson, “Jim Reed: Himself.”
“Dare we reject it”: Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919 (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 489.
“So spoke the creator of this republic”: Bain, “A Rhetorical Criticism of the Speeches of James A. Reed,” p. 98.
“The trouble with you gentlemen”: Speech by Senator James A. Reed of Missouri about the League of Nations in the Senate of the United States, September 22, 1919, James A Reed Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Kansas City, KC443. Box 41 (Speeches), Transcript, p. 40.
“Not at all, sir. Let me puncture”: Ibid., p. 43.
with such force that the crutch broke in half: Lee Meriwether, Jim Reed, Senatorial Immortal: A Biography, (Webster Groves, Mo.: International Mark Twain Society, 1948), p. 89.
78 the audience hissed in disapproval: Kansas City Journal, September 23, 1919; and Kansas City Star, September 22, 1919.
delivered forty speeches in three weeks: MacMillan, Paris, 1919, p. 491.
“I just feel as if I am going to pieces”: Ibid.
“Doctor, the devil is a busy man”: MacMillan, Paris, 1919, p. 492.
“It means this is the greatest day in American history”: New York Evening World, March 21, 1928.
“marplot”: New York Times, August 8, 1926.
crossover Republicans in St. Louis: Kansas City Star, November 8, 1922.
“Gentlemen, I appreciate the compliment”: Undated newspaper review of the 1948 book Jim Reed: Senatorial Immortal: A Biography, by Lee Meriwether. James A. Reed Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Kansas City, KC443, “Meriwether, Lee, 1920-1944,” Box 13.
“[Reed] would laugh himself to death”: American Mercury XVI (April 12, 1929).
an anachronistic and disquieting reminder: Ibid.
to collect the three remaining $10,000 policies: Kansas City Star, March 9, 1931.
SEVEN: ELY AND JO: STARS ON THE RISE
Adaptability is a basic law: Culbertson, Contract Bridge Blue Book, p. 241.
“Instead of carrying the person away”: New York Times, November 24, 1935.
“Social talking presen
ts far more risks”: Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown in Transition (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1937), pp. 269-71.
“fraction infinitestimal”: Lt. Col. Walter Buller, Reflections of a Bridge Player (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1929), pp. 7-8.
a wife threw an alarm clock: Bridge World, June 1930, p. 26.
“Personally, I have always deplored”: Bridge World, August 1930, p. 28.
“is a game in which superiority in play”: Ibid., p. 4.
“Now and then a wife does throw”: Maude Weatherly Beamish, “Clubs and Daggers,” Saturday Evening Post, March 29, 1930, pp. 12, 83.
“If Germany and England and America”: Ibid.
“Bridge players are usually suffering”: Bridge World, April 1930, p. 3.
85 “like his books, but half truth”: Ibid.
“Mr. Wilbur C. Whitehead describes himself”: Buller, Reflections of a Bridge Player, p. 88.
Each hand dealt in the first room would be reproduced: Manchester Guardian (U.K.), September 13, 1930.
“the first purely intellectual”: Bridge World, June 1930, p. 42.
“The overwhelming majority of America’s”: Ibid.
Ely told Jo they would need $5,000: Culbertson, The Strange Lives of One Man, p. 539.
“Suppose you don’t write it?”: Ibid.
in advance of regular trade channels: Bridge World, May 1930, p. 3.
“… And now to England!”: Bridge World, August 1930, p. 9.
“the absence of errors in their defensive play”: New York Times, September 2, 1930.
“When a team-of-four is defeated”: Bridge World, September 1930, p. 14.
“To my wife and favorite”: Culbertson, The Strange Lives of One Man, p. 547.
four Americans weighed a combined 520 pounds: London Evening Star, September 12, 1930.
“She is a very beautiful woman”: London Evening Star, September 13, 1930.
quiet voice and miraculously delicate hands: Bridge World, November 1930, p. 9; reprinted from London Evening Standard.
The Brits assumed a lead of 960 points: Manchester Guardian, September 16, 1930.
England leading by 595 points: This number might look strange to the modern bridge player since nowadays all point totals are divisible by ten. In the time of the Culbertson-Buller match, though, a no trump trick contract was worth thirty-five points.
the hand cost his team 1,400 points: London Star, September 16, 1930; also London Daily Telegraph, September 27, 1930.
” machine-guns were working with deadly”: Manchester Guardian, September 18, 1930.
“In the middle of this match”: London Evening Star, September 22, 1930.
would win “hands down”: London Evening Star, September 29, 1930.
“more informative, more certain and more exact”: Bridge World, October 1930, pp. 9-10.
92 “The matches at Almack’s and Crockfords”: Bridge Magazine (U.K.), V, no. 55 (November 1930), p. 259.
“The New Best Seller of All Bridge Books”: Bridge World, November 1930, p. 3.
“Nowhere else in the modern”: New York World-Telegram, January 8, 1932.
EIGHT: THE SENATOR AND MRS. DONNELLY
he’d climb the back stairs to the master bedroom: Peter Reed interview, Reed is a grandson of Jim Reed and Nell Donnelly.
protect patent rights on the Handy-Dandy Apron: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 15, 1933.
Peck’s Dry Goods Store in Kansas City sold: Terence Michael O’Malley, Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time (Companion to the film Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time) (Kansas City, Mo.: The Covington Group, Inc., 2006), p. 2.
a thousand workers, nearly all women, and producing five thousand: Ibid., p. 30.
“Honestly, I would be happier here”: Kansas City Post, November 10, 1910.
“The game is not worth the candle”: Ibid.
“People often express surprise”: Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time, documentary film of ninety-four minutes, by Terence Michael O’Malley. (Kansas City, Mo.: O’Malley Preferred Media Production, 2006). The “national magazine” quoting Nell Donnelly is not named in the documentary.
Paul Donnelly once threw an ashtray: O’Malley, Nelly Don, p. 50.
he tried to sweat out his late-night carousing: Peter Reed interview.
she dropped thirty of Paul’s guns: Terence Michael O’Malley interview.
the twelfth child in the family: Kansas City Star Magazine, May 24, 1987.
domestic science at Lindenwood: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 15, 1933.
to find Paul sharing intimacies: Peter Reed interview.
wrong for this woman to be wearing her pajamas: Ibid.
“The dresses are a little shorter”: James A Reed, “The Pestilence of Fanaticism,” American Mercury V, no. 17 (May 1925), p 5.
“That was before I met you, Nell”: Terence Michael O’Malley and Peter Reed interviews.
she no longer was interested in having sex: Peter Reed interview
97 senator told all of this to Roberts: Ibid.
“if Nelson ever supported James A. Reed”: Bain, “A Rhetorical Criticism of the Speeches of James A. Reed,” p. 156.
“Down at Eleventh and Grand”: Ibid., p. 134.
he gave speeches in thirteen states: Ibid., p. 193.
“Throw the rascals out!”: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 29, 1928.
making a $1,000 contribution: O’Malley, Nelly Don, p. 39.
senator’s standing order to his secretary: Peter Reed interview.
NINE: MYRTLE’S MURDER TRIAL, PART 1
The trial coverage in the three Kansas City dailies was voluminous with extensive excerpts drawn from transcripts of testimony. In Notes for this chapter and chapters 11 and 13, I cite only sources other than direct trial coverage of the Kansas City newspapers.
“Comrades, don’t starve—FIGHT!”: Kansas City Star, February 10, 1931.
“He defied the criminal code”: Kansas City Star, February 22, 1931.
Kansas City as the center of far-reaching: Kansas City Star, February 21, 1931.
“You’re a’gin everything—the Bible”: Kansas City Star, March 1, 1931.
“The situation is so terrible”: Gabler, Winchell, p. 108.
to make order out of chaos in that person’s life: Peter Reed interview.
had poured $750,000 into Reed’s pockets: New York Times, January 8, 1931.
borrowed heavily and lost nearly everything: Peter Reed interview
Reed was contesting his fee from the Universal: Kansas City Star, March 26, 1931.
“Mrs. Waterstradt just insisted”: Kansas City Star, February 22, 1931.
Ely Culbertson, now world champion”: Kansas City Star, February 21, 1931.
“a man who loves fairness as the sun”: A. E. Montgomery, ed., Great Speeches by Famous Lawyers of Southwest U.S.A. (Tulsa, Okla.: Southwest Publishing Company, Inc., 1961), p. 49.
“I am asking, gentlemen”: Ibid., p. 71.
including Missouri, still categorically excluded women: Joanna L. Grossman, “Women’s Jury Service: Right of Citizenship or Privilege of Difference?” Stanford Law Review 46, no. 5 (May 1994): 1136-37.
murder a libertine who had had sex with his wife: Jeffrey S. Adler, “‘I Loved Joe, But I Had to Shoot Him’: Homicide by Women in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern University School of Law) 92, nos. 3-4(2003): 882.
“I look upon my act as a morally”: Ibid., p. 881.
“to join the great army of boob”: Ibid., p. 883.
“I suppose if I had been young”: Ibid., p. 885.
would never marry an Irishwoman: Peter Reed interview. Nell Donnelly told this story to her grandson during a conversation in the 1970s.
emigrated from Coun
ty Cork, Ireland: O’Malley, Nelly Don, p. 26.
would have to wait for Lura to die: Peter Reed interview
“I have never tried to appeal”: Montgomery, Great Speeches by Famous Lawyers of Southwest U.S.A., p. 70.
TEN: ELY IN THE CRUCIBLE
Hard Times and Bridge: Bridge World, January 1931, p. 28.
write weekly letters to their parents: New York Times, February 13, 1933.
He decided his son would become a scientist: Culbertson, The Strange Lives of One Man, pp. 515-16.
He preferred frozen meats, four: New York Daily News, November 17, 1931.
On radio, the United States Playing: Bridge World, October 1929, p. 34.
Goldwyn, Irving Thalberg, and Louis B. Mayer: McPherson, The Back wash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats, p. 102.
“That’s the only time this afternoon”: Clay, Culbertson, p. 140.
Lou Gehrig regularly partnered with sports columnist Rice: Charles Fountain, Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 238, 258.
“kneaded, rough thumbed”: Paul Gallico, Farewell to Sport (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), p. 32.
“So long, kid”: Jerome Holtzman, No Cheering in the Press Box (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), p. 105.
“than on any other activity except”: Shepard Barclay, “Contract Bridge,” Saturday Evening Post, April 26, 1930, p. 60.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry”: Bridge World, April 1931, p. 21.
“I’m half Russian and entirely American”: Bridge World, June 1931, p. 15.
748 were women: Boston Evening Transcript, April 1, 1931.
Nearly 3,000 showed up for Ely’s lecture in Oakland: Clay, Culbertson, p. 142.
124 “His bid was one spade”: Bridge World, June 1931, pp. 14-15.
“We have heard of lives depending on the play”: Bridge World, April 1931, p. 7.
refused to be photographed with a pretty woman: San Francisco Call-Bulletin, April 24, 1931.
“I’d be president by an electoral grand slam”: San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 1931.
“women trust less to intuition”: Ibid.
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