Indeed, of all the Marilyn Monroe items stolen from the Strasberg bin, the most famous was the dress Monroe wore in The Seven Year Itch. Monroe made this Billy Wilder-directed comedy (released in 1955) after she was divorced from baseball great Joe DiMaggio. It was a difficult time for her personally, but she enjoyed great success in this movie, playing a dumb-blonde role with such panache, charm, and sexiness that she became one of the most popular movie actresses of the day. In one scene, she stood over a New York City subway grating, and a rush of air swirled the pleated skirt of her white dress around her waist. This would be her signature film scene, one that would be forever imitated.
The boxes were opened, but alas, the Seven Year Itch dress was not among the recovered contents. There was still a perp to be arrested, however.
At 1:30 P.M. the next day, March 29, O’Malley and O’Brien left the Tenth Precinct and headed uptown to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital on Ninth Avenue. Two hospital security officers escorted the detectives to Jesus Davila, who worked at the hospital. Confronted with the fact of the detectives’ discovery, the thirty-five-year-old man quickly confessed his crime; he was placed under arrest and advised of his Miranda rights. Davila also admitted that he had given some of the Marilyn Monroe pieces to his co-workers and a neighbor who lived upstairs in his apartment building. The detectives found the co-workers and told them they had until eight o’clock that night to return the stolen goods, otherwise they would be arrested. Three Marilyn Monroe commemorative dishes were promptly returned.
Back in the squad room O’Malley interviewed Davila, who gave further details. He said that in August 1993 he had clipped the lock on the Chelsea storage bin that contained the Marilyn Monroe objects and removed the boxes within, but he was unaware their contents had belonged to Marilyn Monroe until he saw the media reports.
Davila had placed the stolen boxes in his bin, intending to recover them at a later date, but had removed some of the items and taken them home. O’Malley asked Davila to sign a letter granting permission to search his home, and Davila consented. Davila and O’Malley initialed the note, which was witnessed by O’Brien, who initialed it also. Davila said the neighbor to whom he had given some of the stolen goods lived in the apartment above his.
Shortly before 4:30 P.M. on March 29, O’Malley and three other detectives took Jesus Davila to his home on East 106th Street. They went to a sixth-floor apartment, where Davila requested his friend to bring him the black plastic bag he had given him to hold. The resident retrieved the bag and turned it over to Davila, who in turn gave it to the detectives. The bag contained only a few hats, a fur piece, and some plates. The detectives then went to Davila’s apartment one floor below, which he shared with his sister and brother, and searched it, but they found no items stolen from Anna Strasberg’s bin. Davila was brought back to the Tenth Precinct for the arrest process to be completed.
The arrest caught the attention of the media. The New York Post reported that Davila had “reportedly emptied a storage bin at a West Side storehouse of $10 million in movie star memorabilia,” including property that had not only belonged to Marilyn Monroe, but other stars and former Lee Strasberg students as well, including Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Al Pacino. The Post noted that while most of the stolen items had been recovered, Marilyn Monroe’s dress from The Seven Year Itch was still missing.
But it wasn’t long before O’Malley was told by his superiors to stop looking for the Seven Year Itch dress. It seems it hadn’t been stolen after all. The perp had been arrested, but the official word now was that during the course of the investigation, the dress had been found in the Strasberg bin.
The dress hadn’t been stolen after all? O’Malley registered a sudden jolt on his shock meter, but the arrow quickly returned to zero. After all his years of experience working with the legal system, he understood how these things worked.
If a stamp collection with one world-famous stamp were stolen and most of it recovered except for the premier stamp, the owner would of course do anything to get it back; and if the perp had a half-decent lawyer, he would know that that stamp was his bargaining chip. The lawyer could offer to return the stamp provided his client didn’t get any jail time. Probation, maybe, but no jail time.
O’Malley pictured the Seven Year Itch dress in his mind. “Here’s a guy who got himself a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he mused.
O’Malley had seen this sort of thing over and over again in his career, although he wasn’t always privy to the fine details. Lawyers make deals with the district attorney’s office, they don’t make deals with the police department. The DA has the last lick. So if the cop is looking for a world-famous stamp and the DA tells him to stop poking around, what’s he to do but stop looking?
But how do you explain the stamp all of a sudden showing up? Of course, the media would ask the police if they had recovered the stamp. The detective would respond, “I never recovered that stamp.” So the media would say, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here? If the police didn’t recover it, how was it found?” To save face, the DA might say, “The stamp was reported stolen in error. It was in the back of the safe, and we didn’t see it. But it was always there.”
O’Malley knew that that sort of response eliminates the whole issue of impropriety. Nobody is going to question anybody, and the deal is done. The owner’s got his stamp back. The perp does soft time, the district attorney is happy because the case is closed with probation, and the police department is happy because before the case was taken out of their hands an arrest was made, and it was a good arrest.
Using the NYPD nomenclature, O’Malley closed out the case on paper with an A, which is a good clearance, as opposed to any of the C designations, which are negative clearances.
He sighed with satisfaction. Thanks to good old-fashioned detective work, Marilyn Monroe’s billowing white dress from the immortal Seven Year Itch subway scene was back where it belonged and would endure as a memento of one of the most famous scenes in movie history and popular culture.
LOCATIONS: New York City (for the Strasberg dress); another dress is in the collection of actress Debbie Reynolds. (As mentioned, stars in major motion pictures often have multiple identical costumes for particular scenes. Hence the reason for at least two dresses identified as having been worn by Marilyn Monroe in the subway-grating scene from The Seven Year Itch.)
ELVIS PRESLEY’S PURPLE
CADILLAC
DATE: 1956.
WHAT IT IS: An automobile purchased by Elvis Presley that, according to legend, was repainted purple after he had made his color preference known in a manner that was quintessentially Elvis.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The car is purple and has white upholstery, whitewall tires, tail fins, and massive chrome detail.
The car languished in a backyard shed for many years, then was left out in an open field, where, exposed to the elements, it began to crumble away. The 1956 convertible Cadillac Eldorado Baritz had been a precious possession of Elvis Presley’s when he was a hot young rock ‘n’ roll star, but just as he faded from public view for a time in his later years only to reemerge in a new blaze of glory, so his car was forgotten until it was rescued at an auction and restored by a used car dealer and his wife, both Elvis fans.
Elvis Presley had a passion for cars. Once his new fame had accorded him sufficient income, he purchased a pink Cadillac in December 1954. Some months later this car caught on fire and was destroyed, and in the summer of 1955 Elvis acquired another Cadillac, a pink Fleetwood. The next year he bought a pink Cadillac limousine. When it became widely known that Elvis was driving pink Cadillacs, he was forced to give them up, as his car would be mobbed. He gave his 1955 Fleetwood to his parents, but it wasn’t long before Vernon and Gladys couldn’t drive it either. Thinking Elvis must be driving the car, fans besieged his mother and father.
The Presleys had been relatively poor, and with Elvis’s escalation to stardom, Cadillacs were seen as a suitable reflection
of the family’s newfound wealth and rise in social status. Whatever the psychological reasons that drew Elvis to Cadillacs, 1956, the year he bought his Eldorado Baritz, was a watershed year for him; the cost of the sumptuous vehicle was not an issue. (Elvis’s taste in cars eventually broadened, and his later purchases included a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, an MG, and a Stutz Blackhawk.)
The well-known story of Elvis’s transformation from impoverished country boy to the “king of rock ‘n’ roll” is classically American. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935, with a stillborn twin brother, Elvis was his parents’ only child. The family had little money but found inspiration at church, where Elvis was exposed to gospel music. Recognition of his musical talent came early, as he won fourth place in the Tupelo State Fair talent contest in which he was entered by his fifth-grade teacher at East Tupelo Consolidated School (later renamed Lawhon Elementary School). Elvis attended Humes High School in Memphis, where his family moved in 1948, and after graduating he worked for a tool company, then drove a truck.
One summer day in 1953, shortly after he graduated, during a lunch break from his job Elvis went into a recording studio and paid four dollars to record a couple of songs so he could present the acetate demo to his mother as a gift. The following January he returned to the studio, owned by Sun Records’ head Sam Phillips, to record some more songs, and met Philips there for the first time. Phillips was looking for a white male who could sing soulfully and invited Elvis to record some songs with top-notch musicians he hired for the occasion. One of the songs in this session in early July 1954, “That’s All Right,” became a regional smash, and Presley began appearing on local television shows and having additional local hits. He had two different managers before Colonel Tom Parker took over the reins of the young singer’s career. In late 1955, RCA bought out Presley’s Sun Records contract for a then-exorbitant sum, and with the proceeds, Elvis purchased the Cadillac that he later gave to his parents. RCA and Elvis wasted no time in readying the new product for the market, and the following January Elvis went into a Nashville recording studio and recorded a package of new songs that would make him a star.
Indeed, 1956 was a banner year for the young singer. Elvis topped the national pop charts with “Heartbreak Hotel,” “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me Tender,” and he appeared on the national television shows of Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Milton Berle, and Steve Allen, in addition to making two of his three famous appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show (his third Ed Sullivan appearance was in January 1957). Sullivan had initially refused to book Presley, but changed his mind after the singer had performed on the other shows, paying $50,000 for Presley’s three appearances. In March 1957, the now-celebrated twenty-two-year-old icon of the young generation purchased an estate in Memphis called Graceland for $102,500.
With his suave looks, shiny black pompadour, and unique singing style, not to mention a selection of up-tempo songs that showcased his electric rhythm—his nickname “Elvis the Pelvis” referred to his whirling gyrations—the southerner had by now captured the public’s imagination and was in the process of transforming the relatively new genre of rock ‘n’ roll into the cultural idiom of the younger generation. Indeed, Elvis Presley was on his way to becoming not only rock’s most famous and enduring individual star, but the most imitated, recognizable, and celebrated singer of the twentieth century. In 1956 he even commenced what became a flourishing movie career, debuting in the Civil War drama Love Me Tender, the first of thirty-three feature films he would star in.
With his outstanding success, Elvis had the financial freedom to indulge himself. And so after having picked out and paid for a brand-new white 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Baritz while in Houston on one of his concert tours—Elvis frequently performed in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana—on June 12 Elvis flew with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend June Juanico (who purchased her airline ticket under the name June Pritchard) to Houston to pick up his new Eldorado. Elvis wasted no time trying out his new set of wheels, and the next day drove it back to Memphis with June.
Elvis adored the car, but after only about a year and a half he decided he needed a new one. In December 1957 he traded in his Eldorado Baritz. Having “inside” information on the crooner’s swap, Lena Moskovitz, an acquaintance of Elvis’s mother and fan of the singer, rushed to the dealer and purchased it for $4,000 in cash and a trade-in on her 1954 Cadillac. Moskovitz drove the car until around 1964, then parked it in a shed at her Phoenix City, Alabama, home. Here the car remained hidden away. When Lena Moskovitz Smith died in 1974, her husband, Herbert O’Dell Smith, a stuntman whose specialty was being buried alive, moved to College Park, Georgia, leaving the Eldorado in an open field, probably in Phoenix City, Alabama. Here the car was exposed to the elements and to vandals who scribbled graffiti on it.
Although Elvis never regained his ’50s stature, he wasn’t long out of the public mind in later years. His biggest career slump occurred from 1966 through early 1968. His so-called comeback concert in 1968 at a Hollywood studio (his first concert since 1961) was number one in the ratings, and this reception showed that the indifferent box-office success of his movies had not been his fault. Elvis, who had 105 charted hits, was the number two artist of the ’60s, number eleven in the ’70s, and the number one concert box-office draw in both 1973 and 1977—the year he died, in August. During his last few years, Elvis, who was damaging his health by abusing prescribed drugs, was no longer so drawn to the limelight, but he wasn’t a recluse. He undertook concert tours, as well as regularly attending movies in Memphis, driving around town, and signing autographs for eager fans at the gate of Graceland.
After rotting for years in an open field, Elvis Presley's 1956 purple Cadillac was recovered and restored to its original splendor.
In 1976, the car was purchased for $975 at an auction by James Cantrell, a used car dealer, and his wife, Jean, from Columbus, Georgia. The Cantrells spent $30,000 of their own money to restore the car and repaint it purple. The couple intended to show the restored car to Elvis as a surprise. Unfortunately, just before the restoration of his 1956 purple Cadillac was completed, Elvis Presley died at the age of forty-two.
Elvis is dead (sightings notwithstanding), but his Eldorado is a reminder not only of the star’s lavish tastes as a young man, but of his flamboyant nature.
On July 27, 1957, just over a year after he bought it, Elvis drove his Cadillac Eldorado Baritz into the Jimmy Saunders Custom Auto Shop in Memphis to have it painted. He also had mechanics add taillight bullets, convert the interior to purple and white, and inscribe the floor mats with his EP monogram, but painting the exterior of the car weighed heavily on his mind. In fact, shortly before he took the car over to Jimmy Saunders’s, Elvis demonstrated to his maternal aunt, Lorraine Smith, exactly what shade of purple he had in mind.
Young Elvis, conversing with his Aunt Lorraine at Graceland, mentioned his intention to have the car painted. A simple announcement of a common task to be sure, but there was to be no mistake about the color. Picking up a bunch of purple grapes, he asked his aunt to follow him outside. In the driveway, Elvis lifted his arm and smashed the grapes down heavily on the car’s gleaming white surface. Then he turned to her and declared, “That’s the color I want it to be!”
LOCATION: Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee.
ABLE THE SPACE MONKEY
DATE: 1959.
WHAT IT IS: The stuffed remains of a rhesus monkey that was one of the first two primates to be launched into space and return alive.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The monkey is preserved in an upright position and is held in a harness.
The goal: To determine if human beings could travel safely aboard rockets into space.
The experiment: To send living animals into space and bring them back without any adverse effects.
Experiment coordinator: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Jupiter C missile supplier: U.S. Army
Ballistic Missile Agency.
The date: May 28, 1959.
The political situation: The Soviet Union and the United States are at the height of the Cold War, and the Russians are leading the space race. …
The cosmos, with its array of twinkling lights, diverse celestial bodies, and vast expanse apparent as one looks up into the black night, no doubt intrigued the earliest human beings. Over time, humans charted the heavens, first with the naked eye and later with the telescope, but actually traveling into those infinite reaches of space seemed a wildly fantastic dream. By the mid-twentieth century, however, technology and science had progressed to the point where humans were on the verge of soaring into space for firsthand exploration. The crusade to the stars was the result of brilliant scientific achievements—hastened, in part, by the political struggle between two superpowers.
As the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was smoldering in the 1950s, technology had made it possible to send rockets outside the earth’s atmosphere, and a space race between the nations was heating up. On October 4, 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik I, which became the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth and collect and transmit data on space conditions. With this celebrated leap and their subsequent highly publicized achievements in space, the Russians appeared to have taken a threatening lead in the space race. The ultimate goal, of course, was to put a human being in space, and both sides labored assiduously toward this goal.
Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha Page 37
