Meriwether, Lee. Jim Reed, Senatorial Immortal: A Biography. Webster Groves, Mo.: International Mark Twain Society, 1948.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem. New York: The Viking Press, 1949.
Miller, David. The History of Browning Firearms. Guilford, Conn.: The Lyons Press, 2006.
Miller, Nathan. New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003.
Mitgang, Herbert. Once Upon a Time in New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age. New York: The Free Press, 2000.
Mollo, Victor. The Bridge Immortals. New York: Hart Publishing Company, 1968.
Montgomery, A. E., ed. Great Speeches by Famous Lawyers of Southwest U.S.A. Tulsa, Okla.: Southwest Publishing Company, Inc., 1961.
Morehead, Albert H., Richard L. Frey, and Geoffrey Mott-Smith. The New Complete Hoyle Revised: The Authoritative Guide to the Official Rules of All Popular Games of Skill and Chance. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
Nasaw, David. Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
——Andrew Carnegie. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.
Ohman, August R. Historical Sketch of the Knickerbocker Whist Club: Playing Cards, Whist, Bridge, Auction. New York: Knickerbocker Whist Club, 1926.
Olsen, Jack. The Mad World of Bridge. New York: Pyramid Books, 1962.
O’Malley, Terence Michael. Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time (companion to the film Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time). Kansas City. Mo.: The Covington Group, Inc., 2006.
Pepper, George Wharton. Philadelphia Lawyer: An Autobiography. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1944.
Pole, William. The Evolution of Whist: A Study of the Progressive Changes Which the Game Has Passed Through from Its Origin to the Present Time. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1895.
Reddig, William. Tom’s Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
Rice, Grantland. The Tumult and the Shouting: My Life in Sport. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1954.
Rosa, Joseph C. Wild Bill Hickok: The Man and His Myth. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
Sandburg, Carl. The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg: Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969.
Schenken, Howard. The Education of a Bridge Player. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973.
Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.
Sheinwold, Patricia Fox. Husbands and Other Men I’ve Played With. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976.
Silverman, Kenneth. Houdini!!! The Career of Erich Weiss. New York: HarperPerennial, 1996.
Sims, Dorothy Rice. Curioser and Curioser: A Book in the Jugular Vein. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940.
Sontag, Alan. The Bridge Bum: My Life and Play. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1977.
——Power Precision: A Revolutionary Bridge System from a World Champion Player. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1979.
Spears, Timothy B. 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.
Steiner, Jesse Frederick. Americans at Play. New York: Arno Press, 1970.
Teachout, Terry. The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken. New York: Perennial, 2003.
Teukolsky, Roselyn. How to Play Bridge with Your Spouse… and Survive! Toronto: Master Point Press, 2002.
Tosches, Nick. King of the Jews. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.
Truscott, Alan, and Dorothy Truscott. The New York Times Bridge Book: An Anecdotal History of the Development, Personalities and Strategies of the World’s Most Popular Card Game. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
Walker, George. Chess and Chess Players: Consisting of Original Stories and Sketches. London: Charles J. Skeet, Publisher, 1850.
Walker, Stanley. City Editor. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
——The Night Club Era. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999.
Watts, Steven. The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
White, E. B. One Man’s Meat. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1944.
Woollcott, Alexander. While Rome Burns. New York: Viking Press, 1934.
Zeitz, Joshua. Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
DISSERTATIONS
Bain, Jack M. “A Rhetorical Criticism of the Speeches of James A. Reed.” Ph.D. diss. University of Missouri, 1953.
Bell, William Jackson. “A Historical Study of The Kansas City Star Since the Death of William Rockhill Nelson, 1915-1949.” Ph.D. diss. University of Missouri, 1949.
Hults, Jan E. “The Senatorial Career of James Alexander Reed.” Ph.D. diss. University of Kansas, 1987.
Oitzinger, Kathleen D. “Competition Patterns of Married Couples in Tennis and Bridge.” Ph.D. diss. Adelphi University, 1979.
ACADEMIC AND LITERARY JOURNALS
Adler, Jeffrey S. “‘I Loved Joe, But I Had to Shoot Him’: Homicide by Women in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern University School of Law) 92, nos. 3-4(2003): 867-97.
Crespi, Irving. “The Social Significance of Card Playing as a Leisure Activity.” American Sociological Review 21, no. 6 (Dec. 1956): 717-21.
Fischer, Claude S. “Change in Leisure Activities, 1890-1940.” Journal of Social History 27, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 453-75.
Fisher, James J. “History and Newspapering.” Missouri Historical Review LXX, no. 2 (January 1986): 123-33.
Grossman, Joanna L. “Women’s Jury Service: Right of Citizenship or Privilege of Difference?” Stanford Law Review 46, no. 5 (May 1994): 1115-60.
GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS, ORGANIZATION,
AND CLUB JOURNALS
Blue Diamond. Monthly newsletter of Kansas City Athletic Club, Kansas City, Mo., 1927-1930.
Bridge Bulletin. American Contract Bridge League, Memphis, Tenn.
Culbertson Studio Journal. Published by The Bridge World, New York, 1933.
Kansas Citian. Journal published by the Chamber of Commerce of Kansas City, Kansas City, Mo., 1929.
Official Bulletin of Bridge Headquarters. Published by Bridge Headquarters, New York, 1932.
The Congressional Record. Official publication of the proceedings, including speeches and debates, of the United States Congress.
Ward and Roanoake Parkway Building Corporation: 100% Cooperative Plan. Sales brochure of Park Manor Development, Kansas City: CO. Jones Building Company, 1929.
FILM AND VIDEOTAPE
Animal Crackers. Paramount Pictures, 1930.
Auntie Mame. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1958.
Championship Bridge with Charles Goren. Four-disc DVD set of show that aired on ABC from 1959-1964. American Contract Bridge League, 2007.
Kansas City. Fine Line Features, Inc., 1991.
Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time. A documentary film by Terence Michael O’Malley. O’Malley Preferred Media Production, 2006.
Three Knaves and a Queen. A film short, part of Ely Culbertson’s series entitled “My Bridge Experiences.” RKO Radio Pictures, 1933.
UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS
Culbertson, Ely. Elys, in Corpore: An Autobiography (Years 1938-1954). Archived at the American Contract Bridge League Library, Memphis, Tenn.
MAGAZINES CONSULTED
American Magazine; American Mercury; Auction Bridge Magazine (U.K.); Bridge Forum; Bridge Magazine; Bridge World; Collier’s; Contract Bridge; Good Housekeeping; Guns a
nd Ammo; Ladies’ Home Journal; Liberty; Literary Digest; Nation; New Republic; Newsweek; The New Yorker; North American Review; Outlook; Psychology Today; Saturday Evening Post; Saturday Review of Literature; Sports Illustrated; Success; Time; Vanity Fair
NEWSPAPERS CONSULTED
Arkansas Gazette; Atlanta Constitution; Atlanta Journal; Boston Evening Transcript; Boston Globe; Brooklyn Daily Eagle; Carmi (Ill.) Democrat-Tribune; Carmi (Ill.) Tribune-Times; Chicago Daily Tribune; Cincinnati Enquirer; Kansas City Journal; Kansas City Journal-Post; Kansas City Post; Kansas City Star; Kansas City Times; London Daily Telegraph (U.K.); London Evening Standard (U.K.); London Star (U.K.); London Times (U.K.); Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express; Los Angeles Times; Louisville Courier-Journal; Manchester Guardian (U.K.); Memphis Commercial Appeal; Memphis News-Scimitar; Minneapolis Tribune; New York American; New York Daily Mirror; New York Daily News; New York Herald-Tribune; New York Post; New York Sun; New York Times; New York World-Telegram; Philadelphia Evening Bulletin; Philadelphia Inquirer; Sacramento Bee; San Francisco Call-Bulletin; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Seattle Times; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Tampa Daily Times; Variety; Washington Post; Washington Star; White County (Ill.) Democrat.
INTERVIEWS
All interviews were conducted between December 2005 and September 2008. A number of subjects graciously agreed to multiple interviews. Bill Armshaw, Frank Bessing, Henrietta Biscoe, Augie Boehm, Tim Bourke, John Clay, D. J. Cook, Steve Culbertson, Carolyn Davenport, Jim Dean, Al Ebert, Sue Emery, Barbara Fox, Gerald Fox, Joan Fugina, Chuck Haddix, Roy Hoppe, Kathleen Hoyt, Walter Jacobs, Bruce Keidan, John Kranyak, Lisa Laico, Bobby Levin, Jill Levin, David Levy, Cassandra Mani, Brent Manley, Chip Martel, Alex Marvin, Laverne Simpson Mitchell, Kathyrn Mittelberger, Michael O’Connell, Terence O’Malley, Sharon Osberg, James A. Reed II, Peter Reed, Tinker Reed, Carolyn Scruggs, Gene Simpson, LeRoy Simpson, Walter Simpson, Gary Soules, Jan Soules, Rebecca Rice Stanley, Joanna Stansby, Lew Stansby, Peter W. Steinwart, David Treadwell, Anne Marie Vingo, Bill Worley
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The idea for this book came indirectly from the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a man I’ve never met. Several years ago, in a conversation in Omaha with my literary agent, David Black, Buffett cited his love for bridge and marveled about how once there had been a bridge craze in America.
That night, David phoned me. “I’ve got a book idea for you,” he said. David is, by nature, excitable; his metabolism moves like the second hand on a clock. On the phone his words tumbled out quickly, and I heard him say something about bridge.
Bridge?
I thought he meant bridge as in the Brooklyn Bridge. (David McCullough already handled that subject, quite handsomely, in The Great Bridge.) “No,” David Black clarified, “I mean the card game of bridge.” Buffett had told him about a time when contract bridge was all the rage. Buffett said it happened during the Depression. He said bridge hands were analyzed on the radio, and bridge how-to books filled the bestseller lists. He said there was even a bridge-table murder.
A bridge-table murder?
I agreed to take a look, and what I found captivated and stirred me.
My first thank-you, therefore, goes to Warren Buffett and to David Black.
Librarians and archivists are the unsung heroes of historical nonfiction. They know where all the bones (or at least all the documents) are buried. Sherrie Kline Smith, archivist at the Missouri Valley Special Collections at the Kansas City Public Library’s central branch, befriended my project early, and stayed late. Her e-mails and phone calls brimmed with energy and optimism. Sherrie is a consummate professional. I also received many kindnesses from David Smith at the New York Public Library; David Boutros of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; Randy Sowell at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri; Chuck Haddix at the Marr Sound Archives at UMKC; Jim Miller, Brent Manley, and Tracy Yarbro at the American Contract Bridge League in Memphis; editor Jeff Rubens at The Bridge World; and Christel Schmidt at the Library of Congress in Washington.
Gerald Fox once taught economics at Smith College and later demography at the University of California-Berkeley. For the past thirty-seven years he has been a bridge instructor, and he’s one of the finest. During this project, Gerry became my bridge guru, sharing his wisdom, his bridge books, and his collection of Bridge World magazines from the age of Culbertson. Gerry adores bridge and its history, and we discussed all of that, and more, at his home in Napa, over lunches, and on the phone. He introduced me to instructor Cassandra Mani, who taught me bridge in lessons, and Tim Bourke, an Australian now compiling a comprehensive bridge bibliography, who generously shared insights about bridge and its history.
I received research assistance from April White, a database whiz in Philadelphia, Susan Jezak Ford in Kansas City, and from Simi Wilhelm in London. Alan Henry, owner of Marin Firearms in northern California, allowed me to shoot his .32 Colt automatic pistol to learn the sensations of the firing act. Barry Cleveland, editor of The Carmi (Illinois) Times, the paper of record in what once was Jack Bennett’s hometown, published a notice that helped me reach out to Bennett family members still in the area. From London, John Clay, author of a 1984 biography of Ely Culbertson, generously sent cassette tapes of an interview he conducted a quarter century ago with the bridge writer Alfred (Freddy) Sheinwold. I also received support and cooperation from members of the Culbertson and Bennett families. Steve Culbertson and Alex Marvin shared old Culbertson family photographs and letters as did Myrtle’s cousins Carolyn Scruggs and Leroy Simpson. I counseled during this project with my esteemed Berkeley history professors from three decades ago—Leon Litwack and Larry Levine. With Levine, it was my final conversation: he passed away in the fall of 2006. In their teachings, Litwack and Levine brought the past to life, and vividly so. Both, in their way, inspired. Because of them, I write history.
I’m indebted to a panel of readers who read all or parts of earlier drafts of this manuscript: Sharon Osberg, two-time world champion bridge player; Don Samuel, noted criminal defense attorney at Garland, Samuel & Loeb in Atlanta; Bill Worley, professor of history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; the aforementioned Gerry Fox and his wife Barbara; David Levy of San Francisco, a savant of bridge and other games, and a rare books collector who counts among his most cherished tomes a first-edition Hoyle and a Milton Work bridge instruction book that once belonged to the legendary Cavendish (in it, there is a signed letter from Work to Cavendish); also Camille Lefkowitz of Atlanta; Bruce Keidan in Florida; my bridge partner Melanie Haddad in northern California; and, as ever, Dave Kindred, the bard of Locust Grove, Virginia, a wry and economical writer, who over the past seventeen years has sliced his stiletto through my overstuffed early drafts. In the process, Kindred has saved forests, and me.
This is my third book for Crown, where Tina Constable guides the ship; from the start, Tina’s friendship and support have been steady, and heartwarming. For this book Kristin Kiser handed the editing baton to Rick Horgan, whose wisdom (and insistence on understanding bridge) made this narrative sharper and more cohesive. Rick’s assistant, Nathan Roberson, was a model of efficiency.
At home, our kids, Ross, Win, and Leigh, added new words to their vocabularies during the past three years, including trump and trick. They know never to pronounce E-Lee as E-lye. My wife, Carrie, lived this book with me, as she has lived each book with me. Carrie doesn’t know how to play bridge, which, I have come to believe, is one of the secrets to marital bliss.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GARY M. POMERANTZ is an author, journalist, and visiting lecturer in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. His first book, Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, was named a 1996 Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. The Times named his third and most recent book, Wilt, 1962, a narrative about race, celebrity, and Wilt Chamberlain’s legendary 100-point game, a
2005 editors’ choice selection. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Pomerantz worked for nearly two decades as a daily journalist, on staff for the Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, initially as a sportswriter and then writing columns, editorials, and special projects. He later served for two years as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at Emory University in Atlanta. His second book, Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds (2001), about an air crash, has been published in China, England, and Germany and was termed by The London Evening Standard “a masterpiece of nonfiction storytelling.” He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and their three children. Visit his website at www.garympomerantz.com.
Copyright © 2009 by Gary M. Pomerantz
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of
the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pomerantz, Gary M.
The devil’s tickets / Gary M. Pomerantz. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Bennett, Myrtle, d. 1992. 2. Reed, James A. (James Alexander), 1861-1944.
3. Culbertson, Ely, 1891–1955. 4. Murder—Missouri—Kansas City—Case studies.
5. Man-woman relationships—Missouri—Kansas City—Case studies. 6. Contract
bridge—Social aspects—Missouri—Kansas City—History—20th century. 7. Bennett,
Myrtle, d. 1992—Trials, litigation, etc. 8. Trials (Murder)—Missouri—Kansas City.
The Devil's Tickets Page 32