CALLING JUDGE CRATER Chapter One

 

It was just after eight on a hot, humid Wednesday evening,  6 August 1930.  A few hundred feet off of Eighth Avenue, two men and a woman walked out of Billy Haas's Chophouse, at 332 West 47th street. The trio paused for a few moments to chat on the narrow sidewalk.  Then one of them, a dapper, six foot tall middle aged man with a perpetual smirk (above) stepped into a waiting cab, and vanished.

He weighed a fit 185 pounds, and was wearing a dark brown double-breasted coat and matching trousers, a bow tie, a Masonic ring and a gold wristwatch, a pair of pearl-gray pinstriped spats and all set off by a straw panama hat tipped at a jaunty angle, After the taxi headed into the night toward Ninth Avenue, Judge Joseph Force Crater dropped off the face of the earth, never to be seen again. The shockwaves would reverberate for decades.

Just a year earlier, on 3 September, 1929 the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a measure of the $109 billion American economy,  hit an all time high of 381.17 points.  Unemployment was at 3%. Then came Black Thursday - 24 October - when "The Dow" dropped 38 points, followed by Black Tuesday -  29 October - when it lost another 30 points. Over those 5 days $11 billion, 25% of the nation's wealth, simply evaporated.  Unemployment jumped overnight to 8.5%.  Thanks to a slight rebound, on 6 August, 1930, with the Dow closing was at  234.38, no one was panicking yet. The Wall Street experts expected a full recovery by the middle of 1931. Then, in February of 1930, came a string of bank failures, followed by the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed on June 17, 1930. U.S. exports dropped from $5.4 billion in 1929 to $2.1 billion in 1933. It was called the Great Depression and the U.S. had dragged the world down with us.

Judge Joseph Force Crater was, until Jimmy Hoffa, “the missing-est man in America”, AKA, "The Most Missingest Man in New York".  One biographer has described him as a man with multiple personalities:  He was a respected and successful lawyer - earning $75,000 a year, the modern equivalent of a million dollars. He was also a talented pianists, a Tammany Hall politician, and a devoted husband.  But he was also “Good Time Joe”, who under the sad pseudonym of "Joe Crane" and displayed a penchant for liquor and an endless hunger for showgirls. After he disappeared, rumors said he had committed suicide or (more likely) run off with a show girl, or that he had died in bed with a prostitute or was killed for reneging on a debt.

After he was reported missing an old prospector and a country store owner (above, left) reported seeing him digging for gold east of San Diego, California.  He was also reported shooting craps in Atlanta, on a steamer in the Adriatic and running a bingo game in North Africa.  Elevator operators, responding to call lights on vacant floors, would amuse their riders by sticking their head out and asking, " Judge Crater?" Theatrical producers would spice up a dull hotel lobby scene by adding a bell boy wandering about, calling, "Phone call for Judge Crater. Judge Crater call your office."  Groucho Marx's best exit line for a burlesque routine was to announce, "I'm going out to look for Judge Crater".  But for all the hoopla over his disappearance, nobody even reported him missing for three weeks.

Joseph Force Crater and Stella, his wife of 14 years, spent the July of 1930 at their cabin ten miles north of Augusta, Maine, in the pretty little village of Belgrade Lakes (above).  The Supreme Courts - or trial courts -  of New York were out of session at the time,  and the newly appointed Judge only had to make 2 trips back to the city that summer. Once in the third week of July, and again in the first week of August, both times after a phone call.

The judge (above, left) last left on Sunday, 3 August, telling Stella he had to go back this time just for a day or two to “straighten those fellows out”.  But he promised to be back in Maine by her birthday, Saturday, 9 August.  In fact he had already ordered her present, a new red canoe.

Joe took the overnight train to New York City, arriving on the afternoon of Monday, 4 August, 1930 at Grand Central Station (above), just in time for the start of a humid heat wave of ninety degrees plus temperatures.

Joe went immediately to their two bedroom co-op at 40 Fifth Avenue where he cleaned up and told the maid she could take a few days off.  But he asked her to return on Thursday, 7 August to clean up after he had left again for Maine.

That night, 4 August, 1930,  Judge Crater took in a Broadway show and then had a late dinner at the Abbey Club.  It was a new speakeasy in the basement of the Hotel Harding at 205 West 46th Street near 8th Avenue, The popular emcee was an openly gay drag queen, Gene Malin (above), and The Abbey was a notorious gangster and "pansy" bar,  as well as a Tammany Hall hangout.  It was just another example of the open social horizons about to be crushed by the economic depression already tightening its grip on people's throats. 

On Tuesday, 5 August, Joe stopped by his office in the Foley Square Courthouse (above). He then had lunch with two Appellate Court Judges he had argued cases in front of.  Then he stopped by his stock brokers' office where he instructed him to cash out 2 accounts. Late into the evening he played poker with friends, again at the Abbey Club. 

At about 11:00 am on Wednesday, 6 August,  Crater returned to the Foley Square Courthouse (above), where, alone in his office, he began collecting files, eventually filling 6 cardboard folders.  He also ordered his secretary Joseph Mara,  to collect 2 checks from his stock broker and cash them at the bank. The total was $5,150 in cash.  He left with the files and the cash in two locked briefcases and with the 6 cardboard boxes of other files, and headed back for his Fifth Avenue apartment.   

After showering ,Judge Crater then caught a cab for dinner at a Times Square restaurant called Billy Haas’ Chophouse, with his friend, the successful theatrical lawyer William Klein and the 22 year old showgirl Sally Lou Ritz (above, right).  Sally was one Crater’s mistresses, as well as Klein's. But for this evening Klein was apparently acting as  Joe's "beard".  The trio ate cool lobster cocktails and cold chicken for dinner.

The judge had ordered a single ticket for the 8:00 pm show at the Belasco Theater, at 111 West 47th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues. It was only a three block walk from the Chop House, a little over a half a mile.  For a fit man like Crater, an easy jaunt.

The show was "The Dancing Partner" staring Lynne Overman and Irene Purcell.  Joe Crater had seen the show during tryouts in Atlantic City just the month before.  According to Edward Cushing, the reviewer for the Brooklyn Eagle, the play and the production, "...lacks the grace, the deftness, the spontaneity that might have made it palatable...". 

The only piece of the play to draw favorable reaction from the audience was a single scene which opened Act II....

...set in the interior of an airplane. The set swayed side-to-side as clouds could be seen passing by the windows. 

While the stage effects got a round of applause, neither the script nor the performances did.  So why did Judge Crater want to sit through this play a second time? 

His decision might have been influenced by the price. The spreading depression had forced producers to slash prices to a dollar or even 50 cents for a balcony seat.  Joe also may have been interested in one of the actresses in the play.  But we will never know. Thanks to the lackluster production, and the deepening depression, the play would close on the first day of November after only 119 performances. But it lasted longer than the story that after the Chop House, Joe was going to the theater.

The story that Judge Crater left the Chophouse in a taxi was established when the New York City Police interviewed Bill Klein and Sally Ritz, 6 weeks later.  But that story simply made no sense. If Joe Crater was heading to the Belasco Theatre, at 111 west 47th street, he was only  1,100 feet away.   At the average walking speed of 3 miles an hour, or 264 feet per minute, Crater would have arrived at the theater in less than 5 minutes.  And anyone familiar with the mid-town Manhattan street grid would know, traffic on even numbered streets runs east bound, and on odd numbered streets they run west. Why would the Judge take a taxi headed in the opposite direction from the theater?

Besides the price of the cab ride, there was the time factor. The curtain on "The Dancing Partner" went up at 8:15pm - the delay because of the heat. Taking a taxi would have required him to travel a block west, then a block north or south, then five or six blocks east, then a block north or south before a final block westbound. With midtown traffic in 1930 being only slightly less crowded than it is today, that stop and go trip would have taken at least half an hour in a hot cab.  And although Joe tried to avoid exercise - Stella said he hated to swim -  the quicker and cheaper walk should have presented no challenge. 

When presented with this conundrum at their second interview, both Klein and Ritz insisted they had never claimed Joe took a cab. They had said that they took the cab. Joe walked. Bill Klein now said 

"He was standing near the restaurant, smiling. He said he was going to Westchester for a swim, and was going to Maine the next day to see his wife.”  When they last saw Judge Crater, they both now said, he was walking eastbound on West 47th Street. Toward the Belasco Theater. That was the most logical story. The most likely explanation for the confusion was that the police detectives had made a simple mistake in writing down their notes.  And it is possible it was a simple mistake. 

As long as you forget the part about the man who hated to swim, now taking a cab to either a hotel at Bowery and Broome streets (above) once called the Westchester, which had last been a Tammany Hall  hangout twenty years earlier, or a ride 30 miles north to the town of Westchester, New York, where their was a private club he had visited in the past. 

So a little after eight, on this hot humid evening, the three friends, Joseph Crater, Sally Lou Ritz and Bill Klein stepped out of Billy Haas' Chophouse. They spoke for a few moments before Judge Crater disappeared into the night, either on his way to the theatre - either in a cab or on foot - to see a bad play he had already seen, or to take swim, when he hated to swim.

Before he had even gone missing, something about Missing Person File # 13595, the disappearance of Judge Joseph Force Crater , was already very wrong. 

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BY ANY OTHER NAME

I can think of no more misbegotten group of failures, frauds and grief stricken dullards than the people who collectively are responsible for one of the most vital and fundamental inventions of the modern world. But I have to wonder, if we called it something else, would it have become so ubiquitous? A rose may be a rose by any other name but would it inspire poets? But the subject of this essay...if it had been called anything else it might not have made it down this tortured path to fame and ubiquity.

It all started with a Parisian tailor named Barthelmy Thimonnier (above), who invented the sewing machine in 1830. I know, you think it was invented by Elias Howe, but that is because Elias Howe was a “patent troll”, an opportunist and a liar.

And it took so long because in January of 1839 a mob of 150 or so French "Luddiet" tailors smashed 80 of Thimonnier’s machines, burned down the factory making them and almost lynched Barthelmy. On 23 February five of the rioting tailors were sentenced to a month's imprisonment, 69 to eight days, and the 75th defendant was acquitted.

Not that the trial mattered to Barthelmy. With his investment left smoldering, Thimonnier died flat broke and forgotten in 1857. But first he had invented the sewing machine.

The vacuum he left behind was filled by the American Walter Hunt, who was a mechanical genius and a business boob from upstate New York.

Among other things, Walter invented the safety pin, U.S, patient #6281 (above), and a repeating rifle, and a bicycle and a road sweeper.

And then, in 1834, he improved on Thimonnier’s sewing machine (above).

What Walter Hunt actually invented was a sewing machine needle (above) with the hole - aka, the eye - at the pointy end. Regular needles, invented almost a million years ago, have the eye at the blunt end. But Hunt reversed that.

As the needle pushed through the cloth the eye carried the thread with it. When the needle stopped it formed a loop in the thread behind it, and a second thread (from the bobbin) was pushed through the loop. The needle was then withdrawn, pulling the loop tight or “locking” it, around the bobbin thread. This “Lockstitch” was sheer genius and a brilliant insight. But Hunt never did anything with it because he didn’t want to be lynched by American tailors and he was safely making plenty of money from his safety pin. And that opened the door for Elias Howe to slink through.

Elias Howe told at least two versions of how he "invented" the sewing machine.

In the sympathetic version he spent hours watching his poor wife Elizabeth (since dead, and unavailable to testify) support her family doing piecemeal sewing work . In the Freudian version, Howe dreamed about Indians shooting arrows through a blanket. In fact, both stories were pure horse manure.

In fact Howe had been a mechanic repairing looms in a textile mill, before he started living off his wife's sewing abilities, and that is where he learned all about shuttles and bobbins, and probably saw a version of Hunts sewing machine needle. Like a loom, Howe’s sewing machine, patient #4750 (above) granted in 1846, fed the cloth in vertically and the needle and bobbin worked horizontally. Because of this uncomfortable assembly, Howe’s sewing machine only worked sort of, and it was so clumsy that Howe couldn’t find anybody to buy it. He never made a dime selling what he claimed was his actual invention.

Then in 1850 Howe saw a demonstration of a machine which did work, built by a mechanic and an actor and one of the most foul-tempered bigamists in antebellum America, Mr. Isaac Singer (above).

Singer’s sewing machine put the needle vertical and fed the cloth in horizontally, which made the whole thing functional. But Howe noticed that Singer had 'borrowed' "his" lockstitch, which you may remember Hunt had actually invented but never patented. But Howe did. Anyway, Howe immediately demanded $25,000 in “royalties” (i.e. blackmail).

One of Singer’s long suffering business partners observed that, “Howe is a perfect humbug. He knows quite well he never invented anything of value.” Singer was typically more direct, offering to “kick (Howe) down the steps of the machine shop.”

But what eventually made Howe (above) a wealthy humbug was his patent for Mr. Hunt's lockstitch. As a magazine at the time noted, Howe had “litigated himself into fortune and fame.” But then this story is not about the sewing machine.

This story is about another patent Elias Howe trolled for, this one granted him in 1851. And just like his sewing machine, Howe’s patent for an “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure” (above) did not work. And just like his sewing machine, rather than improve it, he just filed it away and waited to see if anybody else ever fixed it. But, since nobody else made his ugly and clumsy device work during his lifetime, Howe had nobody to sue and the device remained an obscure little footnote. And people continued to live with the original “Clothing Closure” device, the button.

Until civil war veteran, and traveling salesman Whitcomb Judson, desperate to support his wife and three daughters, missed with his street car invention.

See, originally Whitcomb was not interested in replacing the button. This rather odd man liked to eat bananas and mushrooms because he thought the mushrooms gave him psychic powers. Judson’s “mushroom visions” told him was going to get rich designing pneumatic street cars. He was granted 14 patents for them,

They were a mode of transport powered by, as described rather unhelpfully in his advertising “…a screw, but without a thread; and this screw though always revolving in one direction, will send the (trolley) cars in either direction, and do this by a pure and simple rolling and not a sliding friction..”

It sounded mysterious and magical and vastly overly complicated, and was actually used for a few weeks briefly in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1890 before it broke down completely.

So, in 1893, as a back up invention, he marketed his patent #’s 504038 and 504037 as a “claps lock” for ladies high button shoes, and “…wherever it is desired to detachable-ly connect a pair of adjacent flexible parts.” Judson was clearly no technical writer.

Mr. Judson explained that “...each link of each chain (4 links per inch) is provided both with a male and a female coupling part…”. But sadly this coupling had a tendency to pop open, leaving the lady in question barefoot on the public way.

So, in 1896, Judson added “….a cam-action slider…” to his invention, now calling it his “C-curity Fastener”. The company he formed to exploit the C-curity (The Universal Fastener Company) did well, and the fungi lover was making money, but he never got as rich as he had expected. It was a shame the mushrooms never warned Whitcomb Judson about the dangers of eating too many mushrooms because he died of liver failure in 1909.

And that brings us to the dull Mr. Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback (above), a Swiss emigrant to Canada, working as an electrical engineer for the Universal Fastener Company, and married to the plant manager’s daughter, Elvira. In 1911 Elvira died, and to distract himself from his grief Gideon started fiddling with Judson's “C-curity Fastener”.

He added more teeth (the male coupler), ten to an inch, and widened the slider, and then he realized he could do away with the couplers entirely. All he needed was the teeth and the slider. Gideon called his invention the “'Separable Fastener”. It was granted Patent # 1219881, in 1917. Gideon even designed a machine to mass produce his fastener. But it remained a curious thing, attracting very little attention except on what were once ladies hi-button shoes, which were soon out of fashion And that was the death of the Separable Fastener... Until!

In 1923, Mr. B.F. Goodrich saw the new fasteners used on a pair of rubber galoshes his company was trying to sell the U.S. Army. B.F. was delighted, and in demonstrating the new rubber boots he told an employee to “Zip ‘er up.” And thus was born the onomatopoeia of the new invention, the name that sounds like the sound the Separable Fastener makes when it is used; the zipper. And the world has been a better place ever since.

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