The Black Dahlia in Hollywood

Elizabeth Short was born on July 29, 1924 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts to the parents of Cleo and Phoebe Short. She was raised nearby in Medford, where she attended school. Her father deserted the family when Elizabeth and her four sisters were young. Her mother raised the girls alone.

When she was old enough, Elizabeth began traveling, something she would do frequently throughout her brief life. She was an attractive, dark haired woman with light blue eyes and pale, white skin and a feigned air of sophistication. She worked occasionally, but was usually without funds, living from hotel to hotel, often at the expense of others.

She first went to Florida as a teenager for her health and later moved around the country, stirring the attention of young men and creating a sense of mystery about herself. When she was only 22 years old, she disappeared from the streets of Los Angeles and was not seen again until her naked, bifurcated body was discovered in a vacant lot in Leimert Park. Her murder was never solved and her incomplete story has become part of Los Angeles lore.

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1942

In 1942, Elizabeth and her mother Phoebe saw Cleo on the street in Medford.  It had been ten years since anyone in the family had seen the missing husband and father.  Elizabeth conversed with him and wrote to him,  suggesting she go to his home in Vallejo, California and keep house for him. In December, 1942, after he sent her money, she traveled west and moved into his home. Cleo said that he threw her out not long after her arrival.

The Los Angeles District Attorney files indicate that Cleo and Elizabeth moved to Los Angeles and stayed at Mrs. Yankee’s home at 1028 1/2 W. 36th St for about three weeks. In 1942, Mrs. Monte, a tenant, remembered Elizabeth and recalled that she told her that she was going back north to Camp Cooke.

1943

Elizabeth arrived at Camp Cooke on January 29, 1943. She found work in the post exchange, where Inez Keeling, the manager of the PX, said of her later, “I was won over all at once by her almost childlike charm and beauty. She was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen- and the most shy.”

Elizabeth lived in a number of towns in the area over a brief period of time, including Vallejo, West Cabrillo, Lompoc, and Casmalia.

On September 23, 1943 she was arrested in Santa Barbara as a minor in an establishment that served alcohol. Mary Unkefer, the arresting police officer, befriended Elizabeth. The Los Angeles Daily News reported that officer Unkefer let her stay with her in her home for nine days. The January 17, 1947 article quoted officer Unkefer as saying, “She was very good looking with beautiful dark hair and fair skin. She dressed nicely and was a long way from being a barfly.”

Officer Unkefer also said she,  “had a rose tattooed on her left leg. She loved to sit so that it would show.”

She worked at the Camp Cooke Post Exchange in 1943 from January 29 until August 25. By October, 1943 she was on her way back to her mother’s home in Medford. In a matter of weeks, she was in Florida again.

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According to the Los Angeles District Attorney files, Elizabeth was living in Miami Beach in 1943. She arrived at the peak of the Art Deco movement in the area. Hundreds of structures were built between 1923 and 1943, making the Art Deco District of Miami Beach the largest concentration of Deco architecture in the world. The city, which was incorporated in 1915, was also a leading beach resort destination.

In early December, 1943 Elizabeth worked at Miami’s premier delicatessen, Rosedale, located at 1437 Washington Avenue in Miami Beach. The Rosedale was one of the first delicatessens that served Jewish-style fare in Miami. Soon after she worked there, the restaurant moved to Miami. At the time, she lived a little over half a mile away at the El Mar Hotel at 220 21st street. It was at the El Mar that she received the inscrutable telegram from Washington, D.C. that read, “A promise is a promise to a person of the world.”

The Roney Plaza (“Might I remind you Mr. Halliday, this ain’t the Roney Plaza.”:  Alan Ladd, Box 13), the jewel of Miami Beach hotels, built in 1926, was located at 2301 Collins Avenue. It took up the entire block on Collins, between Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Streets. The hotel faced the ocean and offered gracious accommodations for guests. The Roney Plaza was just three blocks from Mammy’s restaurant (“Where the Stars Come Out at Night and Play Until Dawn”), where Elizabeth worked for Meyer Yedlin in the “latter part of 1944,” according to the D.A. Files. Mammy’s was located at 2039 Collins Avenue on the northwest corner of the Vanderbilt Hotel. Another restaurant, Pappy’s, was located at 2001 Collins Avenue, at the southwest corner of the Vanderbilt. After returning home in 1945,  she continued her brief restaurant career at St. Clair’s in Massachusetts, between late March and the beginning of September.

1944

In March, 1944, Elizabeth was in Atlanta, Georgia, and in April she was back in Miami Beach, where in September, she met Gordon Fickling, a man she would live with in California. In November, she returned to Medford for Thanksgiving, but she was back in Miami in December, staying with Carmelita Devaul, hotel operator at the El Mar.  On New Year’s Eve,  she met Matt Gordon, the man she would later claim was her husband.

Two people stated she had been in Hollywood as early as 1944. In a Los Angeles Times newspaper article, Gordon Fickling, her boyfriend who lived with her in Long Beach and in Hollywood in 1946, was reported to have said he met her in Southern California in 1944. Arthur Curtis James, Jr., a self proclaimed artist, who claimed to have sketched her and painted her over a three month period. According to a newspaper story, he said he met her in a cocktail lounge in Hollywood in August, 1944. James is quoted as saying, “I was sitting alone at the bar, making pencil sketches on a bit of paper, when a girl who turned out to be ‘Beth,’ sitting beside me, showed an interest in my sketches.” James, who was also known as Charles B. Smith, was convicted of violation of the Mann act, after being arrested in November, 1944 in Tuscon, Arizona. His story remains largely unsubstantiated.

1945

On August 22,  Elizabeth was sent a telegram that told of the death of Matt Gordon, the pilot that she claimed as her betrothed. Word was sent from the young man’s mother, Mrs. Matt Gordon, Sr., who said, ” Just received word from War Department that Matt was killed in crash. Our deepest sympathy is with you.” Afterward, Elizabeth would carry a newspaper clipping of the incident with her, altered to suggest she was now a widow.

She did not work from the latter part of 1944 until the first part of 1945.  She was employed at St. Clair’s in Boston from March 30 until September 1, 1945. Late in December, 1945,  she was registered at the Colonial Inn at 2104 Riverside Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida until she moved on January 9, 1946, one year to the day before Robert Manley would drop Elizabeth off at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Her mother sent her checks to the Jacksonville address.  No employment records in Jacksonville could be found for her.

1946

The next month, February, Elizabeth was back in Medford with her mother. By June, she was on the move again.  This time she was heading west.  “The shipping records of her trunk were dated June 1, 1946,” according to the District Attorney memorandums.

Her first stop was Indianapolis, and then it was on to Chicago, where she stayed at the Park Row Hotel from June 24 until July 12, 1946. She also stayed at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago with Jack Chernau.

While in Chicago, Beth became interested in the Suzanne Degnan murder.  William Heirens, a young man from the area, was accused of killing the young girl and dismembering her body. The Los Angeles Examiner reported:

In Chicago, Freddie Woods, 23, who described himself as a “friend” of the slain girl, revealed that she was “fascinated” with the brutal slaying of six year-old Suzanne Degnan, which took place in Chicago a year ago.

Woods said he met Miss Short last August when she was in Chicago for 10 days.  She told him she was a Massachusetts reporter covering the trial of William Heirens, who was convicted of the Degnan kidnaping and slaying.

“Elizabeth Short was one of the prettiest girls I ever met,” Woods said.  “But she was terribly preoccupied with the details of the Degnan murder.”

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Later, she continued west to California, and Gordon Fickling, who picked her up at the bus depot in Long Beach. She checked into the Washington Hotel, living there from July 22 until August 3, 1946. While staying at the Washington Hotel on Linden, she became a regular customer at Sheldon’s drugstore on the corner. Waitress Jadell Arnold knew her, as did druggist Arnold Landers. She sat at the counter in Sheldon’s, attracting men in uniform, just as she would all across the country.

When Elizabeth moved out of her hotel room in Long Beach, acquaintances described her as “radiant.”  She told them that she was planning to marry an army officer. Days later, witnesses said she boarded a Pacific Electric streetcar to Hollywood.  Investigators believed she  lived at the Sunset Motel on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood for about a week in August.

Elizabeth and Gordon Fickling settled into the Brevoort Hotel on Lexington Avenue, near Vine Street in Hollywood from August 20 until August 27, 1946.

On August 28, Elizabeth moved to the Hawthorne Hotel at 1611 North Orange with a friend from Massachusetts, Marjorie Graham. The Hawthorne was located just below the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, walking distance from the Brevoort.

On September 20, Beth and Marjorie and Sid Zaid, a musican, moved into the Figueroa Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Elizabeth and Marjorie Also lived with Zaid at his home for about five days, until October 1

A little over a week later, on October 1, Zaid took Beth and Marjorie to Mark Hansen’s home behind the Florentine Gardens at 6024 Carlos Avenue. They were there for about two days when Ann Toth, returning from San Diego, met Beth for the first time. Beth and Mark had just returned from  Hansen’s restaurant on the Boulevard.

Beth and her friend Marjorie Graham stayed at the Carlos Avenue house until  October 12, when “-Marjorie drank up all of Mark’s liquor, so he kicked her out, and out went Betty too,” Ann said. “I don’t blame him,” she added.

Shortly after, Beth and Marjorie and two U.S.C. students, Bill Robinson and Marvin Margolis, moved to the Guardian Arms Apartments on Hollywood Boulevard.  Less than two weeks later, on October 22, Beth was on her own again. She decamped from the Guardian Arms and spent the night driving around town with Glen Kearns, an amateur photographer who worked in his fathers service station, looking, unsuccessfully, for another place to stay. The next day, Kearns left her at Mark Hansen’s home.

Towards the end of October, Beth returned to Hansen’s home, without Marjorie this time, and stayed until November 13.  She annoyed Hansen by starting an argument with one of his girl friends. Ann said she and Beth were sleeping in the same bed, when Beth got up and told the girl that, “she should go home to her mother where she belonged-.”  The argument escalated, and “- words were flying back and forth and there was almost a beef and a fist fight, and Mark stepped in between them and he ordered Betty to move the next day,” Ann said.  “She was right though, I’ll tell you that.”

On November 13, Ann Toth borrowed a car and moved Beth to the Chancellor on Cherokee Avenue, two blocks north of Hollywood Boulevard. On December 6, Carl Balsiger, another new acquaintance, drove her to Camarillo, California for the day and then brought her back to Hollywood, where he dropped her off at a motel on Yucca Street. The following day, he took her by car to the bus depot.

On December 9, Beth arrived in San Diego by bus at 6:00 am. She went to the Aztec Theatre, fell asleep during The Jolson Story and was awakened by employee Dorothy French, who, feeling sorry for her, took her to her mother’s home in Mission Beach.

Hats

Leo Hymes,  Ann Toth’s boy friend and Mark Hansen’s friend, worked  in ladies apparel.  In late 1946, he  lived at 356 N. Alfred Street, near La Cienega Boulevard and Beverly Boulevard, but  spent time visiting Ann at the Carlos Avenue house, about five miles east.

He recalled once that, “Easter was getting around there – Easter is in April; we were shipping early in November, December and January.  I had been packing and I got over there one night.  There was an argument between Beth and another girl.”

Frank Jemison and Finis Brown asked Leo about Beth. “I always felt that she had – her hair; she had real dark brown – more on the black side -.”   And,  “Appeared to be dyed.  She just didn’t look attractive.”  “Another thing I remember about that Short girl was her teeth.  There was something about her teeth.  Were they protruding, or bad or something?” Brown replied, “Bad.”

Leo saw a picture of Beth wearing a hat and wondered, “That wasn’t one of my hats was it?” He said that, “Mark got a couple of hats for her from my firm when I was in the hat business.” Speaking of Hansen, Hymes told Brown,  “I know he got her a couple of hats one time.”

* * *

Ann was the one who introduced Leo to Beth at Mark Hansen’s house. Leo said, ” – I saw her there about, oh, I’d say half a dozen times altogether.”  He said, ” – I always felt he [Hansen] did like her pretty well.”

When questioned about Hansen and shown photographs of him, Leo remarked, “What a guy.  He’s fantastic.” And, “There is a character.  He’s plenty smart too.” And, asked if Hansen was a good businessman, he answered,  “Oh yeah, he’s plenty shrewd.”

In 1950, Leo recalled Hansen’s January, 1947 trip to Long Beach:

This is the only thing I have always been thinking about, even back in 1946.  Mark called from Long Beach, said he was staying out at Vandersteen’s house – or It was right around the time she was killed.  Now he was some place in Long Beach because he never got back that night.

Bernardus van der Steen was a businessman and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Pig n’ Whistle restaurants. Mr. van der Steen and his wife, Iris van der Steen, knew Mark Hansen socially and entertained him and his friends in their home in Redondo Beach.  At the time of the Long Beach trip, Hansen was in negotiations with van der Steen to increase van der Steen’s interest in the Florentine Gardens. The purpose of the trip was to celebrate the opening of the new Crest Theatre in Long Beach. After the opening and the showing of a new movie, Charlie Skouras threw a  party at the Long Beach Hilton. The party broke up at about 2 am.

He said he was going over to see van der Steen in Long Beach and then he called about ten o’clock I guess, or ten-thirty; said he was going to stay out there; wasn’t coming back that night.  It was right around that time.  In fact, I asked Ann a lot of times if she ever recalled whether it was two or three days before or right at that particular time.  I know I recall I was there.

After the party broke up at about 2 am, Mark Hansen and a male friend followed the van der Steens to their home. It was a very foggy morning and van der Steen first said that Hansen spent the night at his home and left early in the morning.

In March, 1950, van der Steen was interview by Frank Jemison and he said, “That is, I still don’t know – I don’t recollect right now – that is with all fairness to all parties concerned, I don’t recognize – I don’t remember if he did stay.”

Leo said that trip stayed in his mind long after the murder. He and Ann talked about it. He said, “It was seldom he ever stayed away.

“He never got back that night.”

The unpretentious home of Mark Hansen, a block north of Hollywood Boulevard, behind the Marcal Theatre and the Florentine Gardens, was also home to young girls who were down on their luck.

Ann Toth lived there while she pursued her acting career. Her boyfriend, Leo Hymes, was a friend of Mark Hansen, and according to Ann, she was the one girl that was not approached by Hansen. Ann said that Mark approached all the girls that stayed at his house, “-every one, outside of myself.”  She was asked by investigators what happened if he was turned down.  “Out they go,” Ann replied.  She also said that Mark Hansen discovered that Beth was a virgin, “so he didn’t want to bother with her.”

Investigators determined that the girls that lived at Hansen’s home “were financially embarrassed at the time they were living there.”  Ann was unaware whether any of them paid rent.  Sergeant Finis Brown said he couldn’t determine if the girls were paying rent or not.  “As far as I know, I couldn’t state.  Some say they were and some say they weren’t.”

Besides Beth and Ann, some of the other girls that Mark allowed in his home were Connie Starr, Rosalind Kingston, Lola Titus, Marjorie Graham,  Carol Fisher, Sara Lee Testa, a  girl known only as Barbara, another named Cecile, as well as other unidentified young women.

The men who visited the Carlos Avenue home included, Leo Hymes and Marvin Margolis, the man that Beth called her cousin.  Finis Brown felt Margolis was still a good suspect in 1949.  He said Margolis,  “was interrogated at first, but it was not – there was nothing to tie him to the case at that time other than being a medical student.  He could possibly be a very good suspect.” By then, Margolis was living in Chicago.

Ann said that Beth got in trouble with Mark one day when she had an argument with another girl who worked in pictures.  Mark told Beth to leave. Ann’s boyfriend, Leo Hymes, recalled that, “This short girl wanted to chase that other girl out of the house.”

“I walked in there at that particular time.  We were going out to eat and Mark -the argument was over but you could tell, the atmosphere – Ann told me, ‘you remember that girl.  She really let her have it then.  Wasn’ t there – she was a little short girl.  Ann told me, ‘You remember that girl.  She was that little short girl that used to come over there all the time; little stocky girl, blonde.’  I could be off on that but that was the story on it at the time.”

As for Beth, Leo said, “-I don’t think he had anything to do with that girl.”  Investigators asked him if Hansen said anything that would indicate that. “Oh, I guess it is just- Ann told me- second-hand information, but it is just a strange thing about that setup there.  I don’t know, she – naturally I’d kid Mark about it at different times, but I’d never see her there enough to get to know her.  The few times I did see her – Mark said he never had anything to do with that girl; it just so happens it is one time I believe him”

Another time, Hansen found out that Beth had made a long distance call and left him to pay the bill. Leo said, “She called somebody down in Texas, an army camp or somewhere it seems to me.  Ann was telling me about it, because – I came over there the early part of the afternoon and I never did see that Short gal around there very much – she was gone.  In fact, I think she said Mark told her she worked for the T.W.A.  T.W.A., that’s why I think that Biltmore came into the thing, but  he was pretty hot about a phone call.  He must have found it on his bill;  he must have caught her in a lie – she must have said she didn’t  call or send a wire  collect or something like that.  I know he was upset about it.  I don’t believe I ever saw her around there  in the daytime, except twice.  She would leave there and – went to work.”

Beth was frequently in hot water with Mark. He would throw her out and then let her back in.  Shortly before her death, Ann said Mark told her that he was going to allow Beth to return for a few days when she got back from San Diego.

“As far as I am concerned, I think she sought more refuge with Mark and myself than anybody but I don’t know all the conversation and I think if she had more encouragement from  Mark to come back, she would have come back in a minute, if he would have asked her,” Ann said.

It wasn’t until 1949, when Lola Titus shot Hansen, that investigators were finally able to conduct a search of the Carlos Avenue house. Finis Brown said, “Jones of the Crime Lab went over the whole house, checked for blood in other rooms.  During the time that I went out there, I have checked myself, the various rooms, when the opportunity presented itself, to check bathroom and such.”  When asked by investigators why such a search was made, Brown replied, “Connected with death of Elizabeth Short, if any possibility that I could have been committed there. “Brown also said, “I talked to Lola Titus and from what I could gather the girl talks in riddles.  She is – she told me that she didn’t  know the Short girl at all.”

Brown also said he found two pictures of Beth in Mark Hansen’s home.  “There was a photograph of the Santa Barbara photograph, and another one taken by a boy named Glenn Sterns.” Brown further said that listening devices were installed in the Carlos Avenue home from roughly March to October, 1947, under the direction of Chief of Police Horrall.

On January 16, 1947, the day after Elizabeth Short’s body was found, investigators were looking for an “Ann Todd.”  Ann Toth heard the story, and at 11:00 am, she called in and said she was probably the person they were seeking.  Ann and Mark went to Homicide about an hour later to tell what they knew. Ann and Mark told them what they could, but Hansen was cautious around the press.  According to investigators, there were about “twenty reporters and photographers in the office.” Ann told them who she was and the photographers took her picture. Mark told reporters he was just her chauffeur.

* * *

Mark Hansen was a family man, but he was separated from his wife and daughters during the time he lived in the Carlos Avenue house.  In July, 1949, he moved back with his family in Beverly Hills. Mark and Ann kept in touch with each other for years after the murder.

Where does Elizabeth Short fit in Hollywood lore today? To those who know little of her, she may have been a loose woman or prostitute who was killed years ago in a sex slaying. For others, she was a beautiful, young aspiring actress, the victim of a terrible murder. To others still, she was a sponger, a teaser that stuck men with the tab and was eventually made to pay for her sins. To her family and many who knew her, she was simply a nice girl.

In the days and weeks following her death, investigators and journalists asked everyone they could find who knew Elizabeth Short to describe her. One newspaper article said, “although she spent long hours in the night spots, barmen recalled that she usually ordered soft drinks.”

* * *

The young women who knew Beth Short usually spoke well of her. Ann Toth called her “Young and tender” and “we used to think the world of that kid.” In San Diego, Dorothy French recalled, “There was something so sorrowful about her ~ she seemed lost and a stranger to the area, and I felt I wanted to help her.”

But others did not think well of her. Mark Hansen said that “she picked up with bums.” Harry Hansen called her a tease.

In all the records and interviews, it is nearly impossible to find mention of a favor returned or a gift of thanks. Beginning with her mother, who sent her checks to Jacksonville, and her father who said any money he gave her in Vallejo disappeared, Beth Short appears to be a taker, never a giver.

She sponged off Mary Unkefer in Santa Barbara and Mark Hansen in Hollywood and the French family in San Diego. She asked Red Manley for a ride to Los Angeles. Sid Zaid let her stay at his home. Bill Robinson and Marvin Margolis let her stay at their apartment. Ann Toth found her a room at the Chancellor and borrowed a car to move her. Gordon Fickling put her up in Long Beach and Hollywood. Carl Balsiger found her a room in Hollywood on Yucca Street. Glen Kearns tried to find a place, but failed and took her back to Mark Hansen’s, where she had already been thrown out. She accepted money, rides and places to sleep. She borrowed Ann Toth’s beige coat when she left for San Diego. Perhaps, Ann did the most. “-I helped her move before. I did an awful lot for that girl-.”

And she lied to almost everyone. She lied to her mother about working in San Diego. She lied to the Frenches about working for Western Airlines. She lied to Ann Toth and Mark Hansen about going to Oakland and Berkeley. She lied to Red Manley about meeting her sister at the Biltmore and about never having been to Los Angeles before. She told Mark Hansen that she worked at the cafe in the Burbank airport, and according to Ann, “- she was working all the time that she lived at Mark’s house, she was supposed to be working. She went to work in the morning and came back at night like she did.” “I just assumed that she was working at Western Airlines where she said she was. After all, you got to believe some things some people say.”

* * *

Beth Short has become myth and is probably as misunderstood now as she was when she roamed the streets of Hollywood. Today, Boardner’s, an old Black Dahlia hangout, won’t allow her photo to be displayed. The Biltmore Hotel, however, celebrates her life and death with a cocktail named after her.