The Public "I": CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter Two

Friday, August 02, 2024

CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter Two

Theatrical lawyer William Klein reached the fulcrum of his life at 1:38 in the morning of Thursday, 11 May, 1905, while he was sleeping in a lower berth on a Pullman car of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Cincinnati Overnight Express - 25 years and one month before his cold dinner with Judge John Force Crater. The train had departed Manhattan's Penn Station about 10:00 pm on Wednesday, and had reached Harrisburg, Pennsylvania well after midnight.

"Willie" was traveling to Pittsburgh with his client, Samuel Shubert (above), youngest and most ambitious of the very ambitious Shubert brothers. Messrs. Shubert had already bought or built 13 theaters,. And Bill Klein was the feisty, pushy, legal hammer which pounded the Shubert's opposition into dust. Said one Broadway historian, "...to most people a litigation was a breakdown in human relations, to the Shuberts...it was an arm of diplomacy."

Leaving Harrisburg's red brick station (above) at 1:30am, the Express was just picking up speed when it hit that fulcrum. A railroad work crew had hooked their train onto a 100 car westbound freight. Then, the freight was shunted onto a siding above the Susquehanna River, in the Lochiel neighborhood just south of Harrisburg, to clear the track for the Cincinnati Express. But the unexpected work train extended at least one car onto a curve beyond the "safe zone" of the siding, And when the Express came barreling out of Harrisburg, picking up speed, its cars swaying as it rounded the curve, it slammed into that single car left hanging out. It was the work train's dynamite car.

In the resulting explosion, the Pullman cars disintegrated, their elaborate wooden interiors wrenching apart, the berths collapsing, trapping the sleeping passengers. Kerosene lamps were smashed, and fires were sparked, and almost immediately there was a second tremendous explosion, then another as the dynamite began to cook off. Quickly the entire freight began to burn, as did the Pullman cars. The 29 year old Sam Shubert was trapped in his burning bunk, By the time another passenger freed him, his legs were almost charred.

Wrote a local newspaper, "Horrific explosions shattered the darkness, lighting up the sky like daylight. Passengers were tossed from their berths. Some were flung from the cars. Others died horribly in the burning wreckage. " Willie Klein was dragged semiconscious from his berth, badly burned on his face, hands and legs.

The resulting devastation reduced the wooden passenger cars to splinters and kindling, more easily consumed by the flames. More than a dozen passengers were burned to death. Almost another dozen would die within a few days. Most of the rest would be scarred for life.

There was little left of either train (above). And little left of many of the victims. Sam Shubert survived in agony, with burns over 100% of his body, until he mercifully passed into a coma and died at 9:30 the next morning.

Their lawyer, William Klein would survive, but with scars. Because of that terrible wreck, there are few pictures of Bill Klein, giving a hint at the internal scars. For the rest of his life, Bill, a "Tall, craggy faced, rather homely man, would occasionally look at himself in a mirror and announce, “What an ugly bastard I am."

Over the next quarter of a century, William Klein laid the bricks of surviving Shubert brothers Lee and Jacob's theatrical empire. As Jerry Stagg noted in his detailed 1968 "The Brothers Shubert, “Not only did he fight their legal battles but he managed their contracts, negotiated them in and out of theater leases, helped smother their scandals, used every device of a devious man to further Shubert interests, and, as a by product, created a large part of today's theatrical law." But the center of that empire would forever be, Times Square.

In April, the year before Sam's death, the New York City Council renamed Longacre Square as Time's Square, in honor of the new 25 story New York Times building, which had just opened at the head of the space where Broadway formed a pair of X's across 8th and 7th Avenues. But by the summer of 1930, three of tallest buildings in the world, and all more than double the height of the Times building, were under construction in New York City.

Begun first, in May of 1928, was the 71 story tall Bank of Manhattan Building (above, center) at 40 Wall Street. It towered 135 feet above the previous tallest building in the world, the Woolworth Building, completed in 1913. The Bank of Manhattan had been created by Aaron Burr, authorized in 1799 to bring clean water to thirsty New York City. But Burr never invested in pipes. Instead, by the May of 1930 completion of the bank's new tower, the corporation had become one of the biggest financial firms in the world. The Chairman of the Board who had overseen the previous 8 years of the corporation's growth, "Sunshine" Charlie Mitchell, was later deemed largely responsible for the Stock Market crash. But the bank survived the Great Depression and thirty years later, would rename itself "CitiBank".

The second tower, begun in September of 1928, at Lexington Avenue and East 42nd Street, was the

1,000 foot, 77 story Chrysler Building. It was built by Walter P. Chrysler, intended to secure the future wealth of his children. To show them how wealth was secured, after the building was completed at the end of May 1930, Chrysler refused to pay his architect. This Art Deco monument to harsh business practices became the tallest building in the world until the completion of the third sky scrapper.

In January of 1930 construction began for the Empire State Building, on Fifth Avenue, between 33rd and 34th streets. (Above, left. Chrysler building BG center. 40 wall Street, spiral top middle BG. Woolworth, far BG, behind Chrysler) Rising 1,404 feet in just 410 days, the Empire States's 102 stories would be completed on 1 May, 1931, as a funeral monument to the excesses of the Roaring Twenties.

There were lots of nails in the coffin of the Jazz Age, of which the disappearance of Judge Crater was one. But bigger by far was the November 1930 collapse of the Nashville financial firm of Caldwell and Company. Because of an intricate tower of debts and loans, the Caldwell banks dragged down dozens of banks all across the south. And that set off a series of financial failures in St. Louis and then Chicago, and the closing of 1,300 banks nationwide, which turned the panic of 1929 into the Great Depression which would last for a decade.

Because of that deepening depression, and because of no nearby subway access, the Empire State building struggled to find tenants. The first full year of operation, the unrestricted view from the 86th story observation deck (above) took in as much money as the rent paid for the office space below it - $2 million. The tower became known as the "Empty State Building', just another tombstone to the excess of the Mad Decade.

The dominant Broadway producers who had controlled American theater since 1910, A,L. Erlanger and E. F. Albee, both died in March of 1930. Rising to take their place now were the Shubert brothers, J.J.(above left) and Lee (above, right), They owned half the theatres on Broadway and a hundred others from London to Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles In the words of Howard Tubman, for the New York Times in 1964, "...they were merchants in show business...They drove hard bargains...They made money—lots of it." Even during the Great Depression.

During the 1930 season - beginning in August - there were 31 theaters with 500 or more seats, in the Broadway Theatre district - not counting vaudeville houses - all built since 1910 In 1930 they presented 230 shows, limiting the average run of a play to just 7 weeks. Besides indicating the time it took for a show to "break even", this turnover required a constant stream of investors, always with new money they were willing to risk a loss in the hopes of the occasional big hit.

While the stock market was booming, Broadway investors were easy to find. Come November of 1929, that source of cash suddenly evaporated. But there were still three groups of professionals eager to invest in short run cash business ventures, to whom "finishing in the red" was not only profitable, but preferable - the bootlegger, the pimp and the gangster.

Broadway was not their business. But money made dirty because it came from an illegal "Speakeasy" or a brothel could be used to rent stage lightning for "The Ballyhoo of 1930" or costumes for "The Dancing Partner". Passing through these mundane exchanges, at a profit or a loss, it was now laundered. Clean and legal, it could return as kickbacks to the investor, who also owned "a piece" of the lighting or costume rental company. This was where the world of lawyers like Willie Klein and "Good Time" Joe Crater met the world of gangsters like Jack "Legs" Diamond and Charles "Lucky" Luciano - backstage in the Broadway theatres, chasing showgirls.

The women who survived in this crossover world for any length of time, like upscale prostitute girlfriend of "Legs" Diamond, Vivian Gordon, and showgirl Sally Lou Ritz, who dined with Judge Crater the night he disappeared, and the legions of other women who sacrificed themselves for the opportunity to dance or sing, could do so only as long as they were of interest to the men. It was not about intimacy, you could even say it was rarely about sex. It was always about power.

Jerry Stagg provides a description - albeit solely male - of this junction of worlds from the Shubert Brother's perspective. In Chapter Six of "The Brothers Shubert" he writes, "Jake (above, left) was the "cruder" of the two, and legion are the tales of his assignations - in dressing rooms, in telephone booths, in corridors, behind scenery flats, and, of course, in hotel rooms and apartments. Lee (above right)...calculated that time was money, made his office a convenient place. To one side of it...he had an apartment complete with bedroom. To the other side of his office was a small meagerly furnished room...which also contained a bed. A former secretary... remarked, "It was a traffic problem. You see the bedroom was for stars and important people. The room - well that just for girls. The room got most of the action."