Chapter 11 ~ Glynn Wolfe & The Chancellor
“He even threatened to kill me once.”
~ Anne Toth
Glynn Wolfe, the owner and operator of the Hotel Chancellor on Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood, was Elizabeth Short’s landlord when she lived in Apartment 501 in 1946.
A year after the murder of Elizabeth Short, Glynn Wolfe was charged with battery by a tenant in room 507 at the Chancellor. Sydelle Boyer, the tenant, claimed that Wolfe dragged her from the laundry room in the basement of the hotel and left her on the sidewalk on Cherokee Avenue. Boyer claimed she was doing her laundry when Wolfe showed up in the basement room and ordered her to leave, turned off the lights, then turned them back on when she said she could not see, and then dragged up the stairs and outside the hotel. She brought the suit against Wolfe, claiming shoulder, leg and abdominal injuries.
At the time of the incident, authorities said that Wolfe was known by the aliases, Clifford King, Joe Koenig and George W. Wilson.
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Wolfe, nicknamed “Scotty,” was born in Indiana on July 25, 1908. He was first married in 1932 when he still lived in Indiana. He was married and divorced four times by 1936. A judge asked him not to make his home town into a Hollywood, so “I went to Hollywood,” Wolfe said.
In 1948, Wolfe married Peggy Lou, but divorced her in Mexico in 1952. In 1954, he said, “I’ve had a bad experience since she left. I’ll give her half of the Chancellor Hotel if she comes back.”
Beth’s friend, Anne Toth, called Wolfe “one of the worst type.” She described him as a sexual pervert, maniac, everything. I hate him,” she said, “He even threatened to kill me once.” Anne said Wolfe “was putting four girls into a room, where there should have been two, for $5.00.”
In 1960, he had four ex-wives living at the Chancellor. The same year he was jailed after one of twelve of his ex-wives accused him of beating her.
Wolfe, who preferred young women, once said that “You have to spank them once in a while, but after they’re tamed they make wonderful wives. He said his twelve wives were all teenagers “because they’re happy that they don’t have to work, and they don’t make demands. He said they eventually left him when they get “fidgety and want to run loose. And you can’t hold anybody if they don’t want to stay.”
Bonnie Lee Bakley, married nine times before marrying actor Robert Blake, claimed to have been Wolfe’s 26th wife.
According to the Guinness World Records, Glynn Wolfe was “world’s most married man.” His last wife, Linda, holds the “record for being the most married woman in the world,” with 23 marriages. By the time of his death in 1997, Wolfe had been married 29 times.
