Loving Couple Goes to Washington

 

Maybe you've never heard of Richard and Mildred Loving, but their's is a fascinating tale.  An interracial couple from Virginia, they were the plaintiffs in a landmark 1967 case, in which the Supreme Court overturned the legal ban on such unions.  More on that later.

They met in their hometown of Central Point, Virginia in 1950, when he was 17, and she was just 11.  They started dating several years later, during Mildred's senior year in high school.  By the time she was 18, Mildred was pregnant with their first child, and after a few years of living together, they decided to make their union official. In June 1958, they drove up to Washington, DC, where they took their vows before God and State.

At the time, interracial marriage was still against the law in Virginia.  An anonymous source informed the Caroline County Sheriff's Department, who proceeded to arrest the couple while they slept in their bed. They were charged with "cohabitating as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth."  The Lovings pled guilty and were sentenced to a year in prison.  The sentence was suspended however, when the Lovings agreed to leave Virginia for 25 years.

The couple relocated to Washington, but whereas jobs had been plentiful in Central Point, they now faced economic hardships.  They also discovered that the city could be unforgiving as well, when their young son was hit by a car on the busy streets.  In their hearts, they knew it was time to go home.

After a few years of legal wrangling, the case of Loving v. Virginia finally went before the Supreme Court in 1967.  In a ruling passed down on June 12th, the Court overturned their convictions and ruled the ban on interracial marriage as unconstitutional.

The Lovings returned to Virginia, where they began to raise a family.  Their happiness would be short-lived, however.  On June 29, 1975, their car was hit by a drunk driver.  Richard, only 41, died on the scene.  Mildred survived the accident, and would spend the next 40 years living a quiet, secluded life in Virginia, often downplaying her role in history, giving the real credit to God.  She ultimately passed of pneumonia on May 2, 2008.  She was 68 years old.

The Lovings are laid to rest in a quiet church cemetery in Central Point, Virginia.  A historical marker lies just outside the park.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• If you want to learn more about Richard and Mildred Loving, take a voyage to Amazon.  It's all in books.
  
  
• Following the Supreme Court ruling, the couple discussed their story with ABC News.  You can watch that interview on YouTube.
  
  
• The Loving story has been chronicled in a number of films, with varying degrees of accuracy.  Of 1996's Mr. and Mrs. Loving, Mildred would state "not much of it was very true.  The only part of it right was I had three children."  Other adaptations include the 2011 documentary The Loving Story and 2016's Loving.
  
  
• In 2009, country artist Nanci Griffith released her single The Loving Kind in tribute to the couple.  Take a listen on Amazon.
  
  
• In honor of the landmark case, June 12th is now an unofficial U.S. holiday - Loving Day.

The Forgotten Grave of John Spencer

 

"I've never wanted to do anything but act.  It saved my life, it's the reason I get up in the morning, it's my opiate.  The prize for me was always getting the next gig so I could do this wonderful thing that I love."

John Spencer was born John Speshock, Jr. in New York City on December 20, 1946.  He was interested in the theatre from an early age, much to the chagrin of his parents, who had immigrated to America and settled in Totowa, New Jersey.

Spencer attended a prep school in Manhattan, alongside fellow future celebrity Liza Minnelli, before enrolling in Fairleigh Dickinson College.  He never completed his degree however, moving straight into the world of theatre.

His first role was on The Patty Duke Show, before moving onto the Broadway stage.  His first theatrical role was in the 1983 Matthew Broderick film War Games, playing a silo commander who was told to "turn your key, Sir!"  Later films included the 1990 Harrison Ford thriller Presumed Innocent and 1996's The Rock.

In 1990, he returned to television for the final four seasons of the hit drama L.A. Law, playing grizzled attorney Tommy Mullaney.  It wasn't until 1999 that he assumed the role for which he is most famously known, that of Leo McGarry on the political drama series The West Wing, a role for which he'd win an Emmy Award in 2002.

Well into his West Wing run, Spencer died quite unexpectedly of a heart attack, on December 16, 2005.  He was just four days shy of his 59th birthday.  He was laid to rest in Laurel Grove Memorial Park in his hometown of Totowa. 

The grave appears to be neglected, as this blogger had to clear away shrubbery and bird residue.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• Like his West Wing character, Spencer was a recovering alcoholic.
  
  
• At the time of his death, Spencer had completed two episodes of The West Wing that were in post-production, each of which featured his character as a candidate for Vice President.  Following his untimely death, the writers gave his character a heart attack as well, having him die on election night. 
  
  
• The episode featuring McGarry's death aired on March 19, 2006.  It came two months after a similar death on the series Smallville, which saw Jonathan Kent, played by John Schneider, die of a heart attack after winning his seat for Kansas State Senate.  
  
  
• Spencer was an avid gardener, who once presented Ellen DeGeneres with a bouquet of flowers on her daytime talk show.  You can watch the clip on YouTube.
  
  
• Spencer was a regular participant in L.A.'s annual AIDS Walk fundraising event.

The Luckiest Man in America

 

Last year, Hollywood finally made the documentary that this blogger had been waiting 20 years for - sort of.  The 2024 film The Luckiest Man in America tells the improbable story of an ice cream truck driver named Michael Larson, who in 1984, won more than $110,000 on the TV game show Press Your Luck.  Starring Paul Walter Houser, the film does an adequate albeit fanciful job of showing how Larson beat CBS at its own game, but it failed to delve into his life prior to 1984, nor did it disclose his fate.  Enter Six Feet Under Hollywood.

Paul Michael Larson was born in Lebanon, Ohio on May 10, 1949.  He was the youngest of four children to father Robert, a butcher with a local grocery store chain, and mother Ruth, a stay-at-home mom.  While his older brothers took on great responsibilities, including college, military service, and joining the workforce, Michael leaned more towards get-rich quick schemes, which often blew up in his face.  During the 1970s, he was arrested on three separate occasions for larceny, possession of stolen goods and petty theft.

Larson also had commitment issues, with two failed marriages under his belt, each of which produced a single offspring.  By 1984, he was living with his common-law wife Teresa, with whom he had a third child.

By the 1980s, he had turned to television for the next big thing, amassing twelve sets in his living room, from where he would launch his next attack.  In 1983, he discovered a new game show called Press Your Luck, which featured a supposedly random prize board.  For those who haven't seen the film, and it is worth a watch, Larson used his VCR, a new technology then, to slow down the board's blinking lights. 

He learned that despite the show's claims, the lights did indeed have a pattern, five in fact, all of which he memorized.  He also discovered that two squares on the board never held a "Whammie," the dreaded demon who would steal all of a contestant's earnings.  Armed with this knowledge, Larson made his way to Hollywood, was cast on the show, and took CBS for more than $110,000 in cash and prizes, more than ten times the amount that any previous contestant had ever won.

Larson returned to Ohio with his winnings, quickly losing much of it in a shady real estate scheme.  CBS, embarrassed by the event, aired Larson's episode in two parts, locked them away in a vault for 20 years, and did their part to move on.  Press Your Luck would run for another three years before ultimately being canceled in 1986.

Larson resurfaced in 1994, when he was interviewed by Good America, America.  In a raspy voice, he said that it had taken him six months to memorize all of the patterns, and that he hoped to one day be cast on Jeopardy, as he had figured out a few angles on their board as well.  He'd never get the chance to implement them however, as he died of cancer five years later while living in Florida.  At the time of his death, he was in hiding from the law, the result of another of his get-rich quick schemes.  He was just 49 years old.

Michael Larson was laid to rest in the family plot at Lebanon Cemetery in Lebanon, Ohio.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• If you want to learn more about Michael Larson, take a voyage to Amazon.  It's all in books.
  
  
• While this blogger missed the initial 1984 broadcast (it was a school day), you can watch it in its entirety (both parts) on YouTube.
  
  
• In 2003, Game Show Network pulled Larson's episodes out of mothballs and incorporated them into an excellent documentary called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal.  In this blogger's opinion, the two-hour basic cable presentation does a better job of telling Larson's story than its big brother Hollywood counterpart would do twenty years later.  Check it out on YouTube.
  
  
• As noted above, Larson lost most of his winnings in more get-rich-quick schemes, one of which involved a local radio contest.  Larson withdrew half of his winnings in $1 bills, attempting to match a serial number that the station was looking for.  While he and Teresa were out one evening, their home was robbed, and the bills were never recovered. 
  
  
• To say that the film's producers embellished the story would be an understatement.  Whereas the film shows us Larson driving his ice cream truck from Ohio to Hollywood, he actually flew in coach.  Producer Bill Carruthers is portrayed in the film, but he's joined by executives who simply did not exist, thrown into the film to present a more diverse cast than was present in 1984.  Also, ludicrously, the movie shows Larson stepping out during the taping to appear as a guest on a talk-show hosted by Johnny Knoxville. 

Space Monkey!

 

When I first started this blog, my goal was to showcase the grave photos that I have taken in my travels and to help the reader locate them for themselves.  That said, I do have spies in the field, and, on occasion, I will showcase someone else's photos.  When my friend Neil told me that he had just visited the grave of the first monkey in space, I knew this would be one such exception.

Miss Baker, as she is known, was a squirrel monkey born in Peru in 1957.  She came to the U.S. shortly thereafter, eventually ending up in a Miami pet store.  Around 1958, she was one of 26 monkeys bought and sent to the Naval Aviation Medical School in Pensacola.  

The research team there noted that she was smarter than the other test subjects and was also much more loving.  As a result, she was moved to the head of the pack along with another female.  They were later christened Alpha and Beta by the Army, but just before flight, their names were changed to Able and Baker, in conjunction with the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet.

On May 28, 1959, the two were packed into a Jupiter rocket and launched from Cape Canaveral.  Their flight lasted for 16 minutes, more than half of which was spent in weightlessness.  They traveled more than 1,500 miles and were recovered off the coast of Puerto Rico.  Able and Baker were the first animals launched into space by the United States who safely returned.

In 1971, Miss Baker moved to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.  There, she was a popular museum exhibit, who welcomed guests to the center on a daily basis.  She also received up to 150 letters a day from schoolchildren all around the world.  Her birthdays were four-star affairs, as were the anniversaries of her historic flight.  Miss Baker ultimately passed of kidney failure on November 29, 1984.  At age 27, she was the oldest living squirrel monkey on record.

Miss Baker was buried on the grounds near the museum.  As seen in the photo below, her grave is often decorated with bananas and some of her other favorite foods.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• In 1960, author Olive Woolley Burt released a children's book entitled Space Monkey: The True Story of Miss Baker.  You can pick up a copy from Amazon.
  
  
• Upon their return to Earth, Able and Baker attended a NASA press conference, where they addressed a crowd of eager journalists.  You can watch this fantastic news account on YouTube. They also appeared on the cover of Life magazine.
  
  
• Popular podcast The Space Shot devoted a 2017 episode to the pair, entitled Able & Miss Baker: The Monkeynauts.  You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, or you can watch it on YouTube.
  
  
• So what happened to Able?  Her body was taxidermied and later put on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.  It has since been archived, but you can see a picture of it here.  YouTuber Jacob the Carpetbagger vlogged Able back in 2019 when she was still on display and you can watch that video here.  Fast forward to the 11-minute mark.

Creepy David Carradine

 

"I'm perhaps the most gifted actor of my generation."

David Carradine was born John Arthur Carradine, Jr. in Los Angeles on December 8, 1936.  He was the son of celebrated actor John Carradine and his first wife Ardanelle.  John Sr. would later remarry (again and again).  As a result, John Jr. was brother to a handful of half-siblings, including Bruce, Keith, Christopher and Lewis Skolnick himself, Robert.

After a tour with the army, Carradine decided to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming an actor.  It was at this point that he legally changed his name to David, so as to avoid any confusion between the two.

He had early roles on such TV series as Gunsmoke, Ironside, and Night Gallery.  Then in 1972, he landed the role that would not only define his career but would change his life as well, that of martial arts expert Kwai Chang Caine on Kung Fu.  The series ran for three seasons with reruns continuing for years in syndication.  Although Carradine had no previous experience in the martial arts, he embraced the techniques and the culture into his daily life.  This was evident years after its cancellation, when he was cast by Director Quentin Tarantino as the title character in the martial arts film series Kill Bill.

With his career reinvigorated, Carradine flew to Bangkok in late May 2009, having signed on to appear in the film Stretch.  He was last seen alive on June 3rd.  When he failed to report to the set the next day, investigators went to his hotel room, where he was found dead, hanging in a closet.  While there was no suicide note, authorities did find rope attached to his genitalia, leading them to conclude that he accidentally died by his own hand, a case of auto-erotic asphyxiation.  He was 72 years old.

David Carradine was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. 

There is a lot of text on this one, which this blogger suspects that Carradine wrote himself.  It reads as follows:

He will ever more be revered as one who popularized the spiritual values of the east in the west.  

Dancer, musician, artist, actor, producer, director, writer, composer, storyteller, poet, philosopher, aesthete, academician, martial artist, master, teacher, Kung Fu.

Devoted and loving brother, husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, uncle and friend.

"I'm lookin' for a place where the dogs don't bite, and children don't cry and everything always goes just right and brothers don't fight....."   --David Carradine

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• Carradine authored a series of martial arts book as well as an autobiography.  Check out his library of work at Amazon.
  
  
• Five years after his death, Carradine was posthumously inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum in Glendale, California.
  
  
• Unhappy with the relationship of his father and stepmother, Carradine attempted to commit suicide when he was just five years old.  His preferred method?  Hanging.
  
  
• Carradine appeared with his father and two half-brothers, Keith and Robert, in a 1984 episode of The Fall Guy entitled "October the 31st."  Adding further titillation to this Halloween-centric episode is an appearance by TV hostess Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, aka Cassandra Peterson.  You can watch a recording of the 1984 broadcast, complete with commercials, on YouTube.  
  
  
• In 1987, Carradine marketed his own tai chi workout video.  Check out this hilarious commercial for it on YouTube.
  
  
• In 1993, Carradine returned to television in a revival of his signature series, now titled Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.  The series ran for four seasons in first-run syndication, surpassing the original series, which had only lasted for three.
  

Mummified Nun on Display!

 

Odds are you've never heard of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini.  No worries, I hadn't either, until a recent trip to New York City.  She'd come to be known as the Patron Saint of Immigrants, but would ultimately be famous for something much macabre.

She was born in Italy on July 15, 1850.  She was the youngest of 13 children and one of only four to survive past adolescence.  As a young girl, she fell into a river and was swept downstream, later attributing her survival to divine intervention. 

After years spent as a teacher and in service to the church, Cabrini came to America in 1889, eventually becoming an American citizen in 1909.  Over the course of her career, she helped open and establish nearly 70 institutions throughout the United States, including schools, hospitals, and orphanages.  Today, there are 41 churches named in her honor throughout the United States as well as six hospitals, one near you. 

By 1917, her health was failing, so she traveled to Chicago to be cared for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.  There, she was diagnosed with chronic endocarditis, which ultimately took her life on December 22nd.  She was 67 years old.

She was initially interred at what is today known as the National Shrine of Saint Frances Cabrini in Chicago.  Her remains were exhumed in 1933 however, when the church began her sainthood campaign. 

As part of the canonization process, her remains were divided up.  Most significantly, her head was removed and sent to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Motherhouse in Rome, where it is currently on display.  The rest of her body was sent to the Saint Frances Cabrini Shrine in Hudson Heights, New York, a quiet residential neighborhood just a few miles from Manhattan.  Today, it remains on permanent display, complete with a fake head.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• If you want to learn more about Mother Cabrini, take a voyage to Amazon.  It's all in books.
  
  
• Mother Cabrini was officially canonized by Pope Pius XI on November 13, 1938, more than 20 years after her death.  She was the first American to be recognized by the Vatican as a saint.
  
  
• In 2020, Colorado officially renamed Columbus Day "Cabrini Day" in her honor.  That same year, Inside Edition took its viewers on a video tour of the shrine.  You can check it out on YouTube.
  
  
• The shrine is a functioning house of worship, where the faithful come to pray and pay their respects on a daily basis.  If you go to visit, please be respectful.
  
  
• The 1989 John Candy film Uncle Buck contains a reference to Mother Cabrini when a drunken clown arrives at a children's birthday party.  Check out this clip on YouTube to see what happened next.

Tallulah Bankhead - Unlikely Bat-Villain

 

"Nobody can be exactly like me.  Even I have trouble doing it."

Tallulah Bankhead was born in Huntsville, Alabama on January 31, 1902.  Her mother died in childbirth, something Tallulah would never forgive herself for.  Her father, a democratic politician, would later serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives during the 1930s.

Like many aspects of her life, Tallulah took an unconventional route to fame and stardom.  At 15 years old, she submitted her photo to Picture Play magazine, in response to a contest seeking new starlets.  She forgot to include her name and address however, and only learned she had won some months later, when the magazine published her photo and asked for the public's help to identify her.  She set off for New York to begin her career, but before leaving, she was warned by her father to avoid alcohol and men.  As a bisexual, she'd later famously quip "he didn't say anything about women and cocaine."

Tallulah made a name for herself on the Broadway stage as well as in films and television.  Over the course of her career, she amassed more than 300 credits, including an Academy Award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 film Lifeboat.  Her last credited role is the one that this blogger knows best - that of arch villain Black Widow on the 1960s Adam West Batman TV series.

By this time, she was already feeling the effects that a lifetime of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes were having on her health.  By the end of 1968, she was being treated for pleural double pneumonia, which ultimately took her life on December 12th.  She was just 66 years old.  Reportedly, her final words were a request for bourbon and codeine.

Tallulah Bankhead was laid to rest on the grounds of St. Paul's Church in Chestertown, Maryland, near the Eastern Shore.  While she never personally lived in that community, it was the home of her sister Evelyn, who saw to her final arrangements.  When Evelyn herself passed away in 1979, she was laid to rest next to her sister.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• If you want to learn more about Tallulah Bankhead, take a voyage to Amazon.  Its all in books.
  
  
• Tallulah was named after her paternal grandmother, who was herself named after the community of Tallulah Falls, Georgia.
  
  
• An advocate of civil rights. Tallulah was the first Caucasian woman to appear on the cover of Ebony magazine.
  
  
• Tennessee Williams wrote a number of characters for Tallulah in his plays, the most famous being Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
  
  
• Tallulah is referred to in the 1958 Blossom Dearie song "Give Him the Ooh-La-La."  Take a listen on YouTube.