Chapter 2 ~ The Road to 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.
December 27th, 2009 at 7:37 am
it is a shame nobody was able to teach her how to get along with people since she was reliant upon them taking her in and paying rent for her, so to speak. like her dad, he kicked her out because she didn;t keep house for him, but also he could have been a slave driver and a drunk anyhow, but the hansen thing too, she even took the man’s property to use as her address book. not very good for a guest to act like that. so when she needed him, oh well. in the case of the san diego frenches, she didn’t make that a good guest visit either, according to what i read, if its true. so a lot of the problems were due to the way she lived her life not just the other people. have to look at it in its perspective. she is the real life noir person, incredible as it seems, like a fictional character in real life. and what a shame for her life to end that way. but if she had stayed at home, things would have turned out differently for her. she loved adventure and took the chance. life is tough.