by Jim Lehrer
“What are you doing up and about at this time of night?” she asked.
That voice. It was definitely a lady of the movies—maybe a star of the movies. At least, she had a voice Rinehart had heard before.
“I always come in here about now,” said Rinehart.
“‘Always come in here’? What does that mean?” she said. A few more sentences, thought Rinehart, and I’ll know who she is.
“I’m a regular on the Super Chief, that’s all,” he said. “I like to come in here in the late dark and sip a scotch.”
“For a while, I was a regular, not for long and no more,” she said. “This is my first time in a long time.”
Rinehart now knew exactly who this woman was. She was indeed a star—or had once been a star.
She said, “Do you want your drink refreshed? I’ve got more where this came from back in my compartment.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’ Well, that’s easy for you to say. I’m not fine at all. I haven’t had a role worth anything in five years. I’m quitting. I have quit. Everything I own is in the trunks I have with me on this train. I’m on my way to Europe. Sailing on the Queen Mary next week from New York. I’m going to live in Switzerland or someplace and I’m not going to even go to the movies, much less act in them. Do you blame me?”
“No, I do not. I know exactly how you feel and, as a matter of fact—”
“I could have gone away on an airplane. But I decided my last trip out ought to be on the train—the Super Chief. Old times’ sake. Go slowly. Other reasons for the Super Chief, too. Personal reasons. I’m never coming back. The pictures got everything I had and they hate me. Everybody hates everybody else in Hollywood. Did you know that? Remember Harry Truman when he was president? He used to say that if you wanted a friend in Washington, get a dog. Well, let me tell you in Hollywood even the dogs will bite you in the back.”
Rinehart smiled and then he laughed out loud, particularly at the idea that he hadn’t known until they got to LA that Harry S Truman himself had been on the westbound Super Chief.
She laughed, too, for her own reasons—probably at her telling of the Truman line. Then she made a move to stand.
“You’re Grace Dodsworth,” said Rinehart. “I’m Darwin Rinehart.”
She sat back down. “Did we work on a picture together?”
“Yes. The Tie That Binds in 1941.”
“Right, right. Set on Park Avenue. I was the killer—and I got away with it. I strangled Barton Greene with his own necktie.”
“That’s right. A red, white and blue one.”
“But it was in black and white so nobody could see the colors. I was Rose. His character’s name was Richard. The sonovabitch had stolen my daddy’s inheritance, thrown it all away on the horses and the whores. I hated him for that. I hated him more than anybody I had ever hated before in my life …”
Her speech was not quite slurred but the words were becoming increasingly rounded—and loud. Rinehart couldn’t tell if it was the gin or the anger that was the primary cause. Her ferocity recalled the conversation he’d had with Gene about actors playing out their make-believe roles. She sounds as if she really does hate the Barton Greene character. Wasn’t she also married to the real Greene, the British actor? There was a time in Hollywood when it seemed everybody had been married to everybody for a while.
Rinehart said, “He came in falling down drunk, taking off his suit coat and tie, you confronted him, he socked you in the jaw, you shoved him backward—”
“He fell back, but onto a couch—”
“A chair, actually.”
“All right, a chair. He passed out. I grabbed the tie he had just taken off. I went around behind him, wrapped it around his neck and pulled it until he was dead. I strangled him and it was good riddance.”
There was an element of stridency in her voice—as if she had just killed the guy a few minutes ago and was damned proud of it.
“I really did get away with it, too.”
“You did indeed. You merely put the tie back around your dead husband’s neck, tied it in a regular four-in-hand knot and the police never thought of it as the murder weapon. They suspected you might have killed him but nothing could ever be proved and it worked as a movie because it was a satire and he was such—”
“An awful bastard who deserved to die!”
“Exactly. You were terrific.”
“My god … it’s getting me all worked up. See, I can still do it. I can act. What’s your name again?”
“Darwin Rinehart. I was the producer of that picture.” He chose not to add the fact that her name was engraved on his silver The Tie That Binds flask with the rest of the cast. That flask was back in his compartment. Maybe he should get it and show it to her?
“Sure, right,” said Grace Dodsworth. “Sorry. Yes, certainly you were. I remember you now.”
“Nobody ever remembers producers.” He laughed. It was not a friendly laugh.
“What happened to you since that picture?” she asked, but it was not a serious question. She didn’t give a damn about him. She was just making noise. For him, the noise resonated deeply into his own thoughts about who he was and where he was right now.
He said, “I made seventeen pictures. We did have that one Oscar nomination for The Tie That Binds …”
“What time is it?” said Grace Dodsworth.
Rinehart said he couldn’t see his watch in this darkness but it was probably well after one o’clock.
“Why don’t you take off that scarf and those glasses?” he said. “I know who you are.”
“Knowing is not seeing,” she said. “If anybody sees me tonight on this train … well, it won’t be you—or anyone from the movie business. It’ll be somebody else.”
Under normal circumstances, that would have sounded weird. But nothing was sounding that way to Rinehart right now.
Grace Dodsworth’s was a well-known Hollywood story. She had been picked out of a nightclub chorus line when she was eighteen, given a screen test by MGM and established herself quickly as a sexy siren. She initially played mostly light roles with comedians such as Bob Hope and Jack Benny but then was given a chance to do some satirical stuff along the lines of The Tie That Binds and eventually a few serious parts. She was riding along on a star high when her personal life erupted into a series of storms. Her many affairs—some rumored with women as well as men—quick-short marriages, drinking and drug episodes took a toll.
The Super came to a gradual, gentle stop. Rinehart looked out the window. It was Bethel, Kansas, as he knew without even reading the sign in front of the station. Now he could see his wristwatch. It was just after one thirty.
Grace Dodsworth suddenly yanked off her scarf and sunglasses. She looked at her reflection in the window glass.
“How do I look?” she asked Rinehart—the world.
“Great,” Rinehart replied. “Expecting someone?”
She didn’t answer.
They remained seated, silent, staring out the window. The lights from the station and the platform at least had made the famous face of Grace Dodsworth fully visible to Rinehart. Her aging and drinking had left marks but her baby blue eyes and shiny porcelain complexion were as striking as ever. So was her hair, which was, with the help obviously of a coloring expert, still its famous reddish brown.
Finally, after five or so minutes, the Super eased away from Bethel, Kansas.
“I knew it was a long shot that he might be here tonight,” she said as the Super picked up speed. “Life goes on.”
Rinehart had no idea what she was talking about. He? Who? Rinehart decided not to ask. He saw what appeared to be tears in her eyes. Whatever she meant, it seemed way too personal for him to ask about.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Dodsworth?” he asked.
She shook her head. Then after a few seconds, she said, “‘Miss Scarlett.’ Being a Hollywood man, you figured why I chose that
name for this trip, am I right?”
She was indeed correct. He had definitely figured it out. But Rinehart decided to say nothing. This was her story.
“I’m the one Selznick really wanted for Scarlett O’Hara. But he couldn’t cast me because I couldn’t prove to the bluenoses I was really married to … oh never mind. You know all that.”
Yes, Rinehart knew all that. Everyone knew all that.
He said, “As coincidence would have it, Clark Gable just came in on the westbound Super Chief from Chicago yesterday morning.”
She shook her head again. “Couldn’t be. I was with Clark—in the flesh, so to speak—in a suite at the Beverly Wilshire in L-A Land the night before, saying our farewells. Bad Breath and I used to be quite an item, and we were—one last time. He’s still not much more of a lay than he ever was. Carole Lombard was right about his not being any kind of king in the sack. But who cares. It’s Clark Gable. For me, like leaving town on the Super Chief, it was all for old times’ sake.”
Rinehart assumed that Grace Dodsworth was either so drunk the other night in Los Angeles or right now on this train that she was dreaming about having been with Clark Gable at the Beverly Wilshire.
“I would have been a great Scarlett with Clark,” she continued. “A great Scarlett. I’d have won that Oscar instead of that Brit twit Vivien Leigh. All she was before was to be Larry Olivier’s lay. She didn’t deserve that part. I did. They’d still be talking about me if I’d gotten it. I’d have been great. It’s still in me. Acting is still in me. It’ll always be in me. But I’m not doing it anymore. Do you hear me?”
At that moment, Darwin Rinehart made a decision to do something about what was in him.
“I do hear you, I do believe you,” he said. “You are one of the greats of the business and you will always be known and revered as such.”
Rinehart stood up. “I remember that scene from The Tie That Binds. To me, that was one of the great movie scenes of all time—of my all time, at least. Do you remember the lines?”
Grace Dodsworth stood. “I remember every line I have ever had.”
She glided into the aisle of the lounge car. Rinehart pushed his chair out, too, and placed her scarf around his neck as if it were his tie.
They faced each other.
“‘You still up?’” he asked, in his best impression of a 1930s drunk hustler named Richard.
“‘I know about the money—the women, the gambling,’” Grace Dodsworth said as Rose of Park Avenue.
“‘Shut up about it and everything else,’” Rinehart said, grabbing the scarf from around his neck and placing it on the table to the side, as if he were removing his tie.
“‘Don’t tell me to shut up!’”
“‘You do what I say!’”
“‘Never again!’”
Rinehart threw his right fist toward Grace Dodsworth’s chin, stopping in time to avoid any contact—just like in the movie.
But she reached forward with both hands and shoved him with great force. There was hate in her eyes.
He fell carefully back in the chair, closed his eyes and slumped his head down onto his chest. He had, in accordance with the script, passed out.
Grace Dodsworth snatched the scarf off the table, went back behind Rinehart and wrapped it tightly around his neck, leaving the two ends free.
Rinehart felt tension in the scarf.
She had grabbed the two ends and was pulling on them.
The pressure mounted.
He coughed.
He had trouble breathing.
His head filled with haze.
His last thought before losing consciousness was that maybe the Santa Fe kid was onto something with his idea about a movie that happens on the Super Chief. A remake combination of Silver Streak and Grand Hotel? Maybe there was a TV series here if nothing else. You could stretch one forty-hour Chicago-to-LA trip into eighty half-hours. But not with Claudette Colbert …
When the scene was over, Grace Dodsworth mouthed the word CUT!
Then she unwrapped the scarf, pulled it from around Rinehart’s neck and tied it back over her head. She replaced her sunglasses, picked up her gin and walked back to her compartment.
She remained there for the rest of the night until, from the passageway outside, she heard shouts of alarm, calls for Detective Pryor to come immediately as the Super Chief completed its silvery streak to Chicago.
Jack Pryor immediately closed off the observation car, securing, as is, the body of Darwin Rinehart and any accompanying evidence there might be.
Then, through conductors and attendants, he ordered that everyone remain on the train upon arrival at Dearborn Station.
That happened ninety nonstop minutes later.
Pryor, after talking briefly to several crew members, had concluded that Rinehart’s death must have occurred after the Super crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois—probably somewhere between Streator and Joliet. That meant the Rinehart death was the official business of the State of Illinois, a declaration Pryor made official with phone calls to local, state and railroad authorities once at the station.
Three hours later the coroner, forensic and other investigative personnel released Rinehart’s body and an hour after that the passengers began to be told they were free to go.
The first allowed to leave were Claudette Colbert and Grace Dodsworth.
Epilogue
The Rinehart case remains officially open after more than fifty years.
There have been no developments since July 1956, when a Chicago coroner concluded after a three-month investigation that Darwin Rinehart was the victim of strangulation by “a means and person unknown.”
Jack Pryor was not faulted by the Santa Fe for his handling of either the Rinehart or Wheeler deaths. He was also cleared of any wrongdoing in putting Dale L. Lawrence off the Super. Pryor went on to be deputy chief of the Santa Fe police, retired in 1972 and died ten years later of congestive heart failure.
Grace Dodsworth’s last public appearance in the United States was in 1996 at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC. The strangling scene from The Tie That Binds was among the movie excerpts in her tribute film narrated by Elizabeth Taylor. Grace Dodsworth died of pneumonia two years later at age eighty-four in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Former Valerie County sheriff Hubert Ratzlaff resides in Otto Wheeler Village, a Randallite assisted-living facility in Bethel. In 1967 he judged the Wheeler killing as closed after a Chicago hit man named Ronald Allen (“Doak”) Faulkner confirmed in open court that Wheeler was one of his fourteen for-hire victims. Faulkner was not forced to identify who hired him to kill Wheeler.
Faulkner’s confessions were an add-on part of a deal to avoid the death penalty. He is serving life without parole at Stateville State Prison, next to the abandoned Joliet prison building now used as a rent-a-prison movie and TV set. “Doak” came from Faulkner’s admiration for the famous football player Doak Walker.
Charlie Sanders never finished his “confession” to Jack Pryor or said a word about it to anyone else. He also did not pursue a job in Hollywood. After rising to be vice president of the railroad, he is retired and lives in Naples, Florida. There is no sign of any connection between his Super idea and the movie North by Northwest. Whatever happened, he felt—feels, still—he would have been owed no credit or anything else because he did what he did as an employee of the Santa Fe.
Claudette Colbert, a 1989 Kennedy Center Honors recipient, appeared in her last movie in 1961 but continued to act onstage and on television. She was ninety-two when she died in 1996 at her Barbardos home after a series of strokes.
Gene Mathews had no involvement in North by Northwest or Elmer Gantry. He left the movie business shortly after Darwin Rinehart’s death. Mathews staged a memorial service at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for his friend, providing a small ballroom with one hundred and fifty chairs, an elaborate buffet and a lot of red and white flowers. Only twenty-two people showed up.
M
athews died of leukemia in 1968, one of fifteen leukemia or cancer victims among the Dark Days Utah crew. Another was Tracy Thurber, the girl Rinehart discovered on a trolley. Ninety-one of the 220 who worked in Utah on The Conqueror also became cancer or leukemia victims. The forty-six who died included John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, the Mexican actor Pedro Armendáriz and the director, Dick Powell. Moorehead, just before her death, said, “Everybody in that picture has gotten cancer and died.” Her remark was ignored because most of the famous victims—Wayne and Hayward in particular—had been heavy smokers.
A. C. Browne did not publish anything about Harry Truman or the Super Chief trip, but he did write a brief personal memo on what Dale Lawrence had told him in Dodge City. In 1972 he scribbled on that paper, “S. Hayward dead! Must get on this. A.C.B.” Albert Carlton Browne died from kidney disease a year later before acting on that instruction to himself. A bronze bust of Browne stands in a small park in downtown Strong, next to the Pantagraph newspaper office.
Nothing in the Truman presidential library mentions Browne, Dale Lawrence or the 1956 Super ride. But there is a note in Truman’s own handwriting from a conversation he had with an Atomic Energy Commission official in 1971 about the Nevada tests. “Somebody’s got to start thinking of compensation for these people!” he wrote. The former president died in December the following year. Compensation legislation was passed by Congress in 1990.
Truman and Browne had it right: Clark Gable was a phony. He was really Will Masters, founder and still the owner of The King’s Motors, a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealership in Janesville, Wisconsin. Masters was born with a striking resemblance to Gable, and he perfected the actor’s speech and mannerisms as he grew older for social and, later, business reasons. Masters was egged on by a friend to put on a mustache, among other false things, and test his Gable role on the Super. Masters selected that specific 1956 Super westbound trip because he knew from the newspapers Gable was in California preparing to shoot another picture. Something about the Civil War with Yvonne De Carlo.
