“How long have you been swiping things?”
“Always.”
“Did you take beautiful things you didn’t need?”
As a flirtation, she explains that she is just a common thief. “Oh no . . . you see, to be a kleptomaniac, you can’t resell any of the stuff afterwards or you lose your amateur standing.”
Stanwyck goes on to say that her mind works “differently” and that MacMurray will never understand her. En route to the MacMurray homestead in Indiana, after a local judge arrests the pair, using her “different mind,” Stanwyck sets fire to a garbage can. The couple escapes. A glimpse of Stanwyck’s unhappy family is enough to make MacMurray fall in love. At the end of the movie, he proposes to Stanwyck after she pleads guilty to shoplifting. But she demurs: If he feels the same way when she gets out of prison, she’ll marry him. Sturges could not end a film in which a district attorney falls in love with a shoplifter any other way. He was no Billy Wilder.
Written by Ben Hecht, Whirlpool, which Otto Preminger directed a few years after his hit film Laura, takes place in traditional noir territory: Los Angeles. The film suggests that shoplifting—kleptomania, really—is a symbol for being a woman. In its first seconds, a shadow falls across the interior of the Wilshire Shops in Beverly Hills. Don’t worry. It’s just a crisp piece of paper that a hatbox is going to be wrapped in. The camera cuts to Ann Sutton (Gene Tierney), a beautiful, icy kleptomaniac leaving the store. She asks the valet for her convertible. But in the next moment, a detective confronts her and demands that she empty her purse. A shoplifted brooch falls out. Tierney feigns shock. On the way back to the holding room, passing David Korvo (José Ferrer), an oily hypnotist, she faints and when she comes to, surrounded by security guards, he vouches for her.
Apparently, Tierney, the wife of a distinguished psychoanalyst who ignores her despite her many décolletage-revealing gowns, shoplifts to get his attention. Korvo at first seems interested in curing the lonely woman, then in having an affair with her. But finally, he frames her for murder. Because she is a kleptomaniac, she is vulnerable to charlatanry. A crook who forgets that she has stolen is capable of worse crimes. “I’m a bad girl! I’m a thief!” she cries, ashamed. Preminger ultimately resolves the Oedipal roots of her problem—her tightwad father—by restoring her husband’s love to her.
A recurrent theme in the era’s movies is the lonely female shoplifter stealing luxury items. “I didn’t need it. I didn’t even like it,” Lee Grant whines about the purse she lifted in the hard-boiled film Detective Story, as though stealing were part of the feminine mystique. I Was a Shoplifter (1950), a cold war noir film preaching against kleptomania’s dangers, is also a love story. Tony Curtis and Andrea King are the heads of a gang of professional shoplifters. After Mona Freeman, a socialite librarian, and kleptomaniac, is caught shoplifting in a department store, King blackmails her into joining them. A love triangle among Scott Brady (an undercover agent on the gang’s trail), Freeman, and Curtis—Pepe, a small-time hood—underscores how shoplifting can lead to that “dark and lonely place” where so many kleptomaniac heroines wind up if they don’t meet Mr. Right. Hitchcock’s Marnie follows a similar arc, tracing Marnie’s kleptomania back to her childhood, when she witnessed her mother killing a man, and forward to marital happiness.
By the early sixties, the crime became less dangerous, a pretty party girl’s lark. It is little more than a ruse to steal a kiss in the movie of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In Truman Capote’s 1958 novella, Holly Golightly says to the “Capote” character, “Let’s steal something,” and the duo lift two masks from Woolworth’s. As he puts it, “Successful theft exhilarates.” In the novella, Holly is a prostitute who swears like a sailor. But in the 1961 movie, as played by Audrey Hepburn, she is an insouciant charmer, a wayward feminist. Thanks to Hollywood’s prudishness, the Capote character morphs into Holly’s beau, Paul (George Peppard), a self-described “bookish type.” Shoplifting becomes a zany lovers’ adventure.
“Ever steal anything?” Holly asks Paul. Wearing a tangerine-colored day coat, she ambles through the aisles of Carter’s five-and-ten until, eyeing two detectives, she picks up a frilly lampshade and sets it on her head. She covers a fishbowl with her mink hat and moves it from one shelf to another. Paul watches. After trying on a Huckleberry Hound mask, Holly slides a kitty-cat one over her face, Paul seizes a doggy one, and the two miscreants flee down the street. They run right into a policeman. “I can’t see,” Holly yells. At the apartment, exhilarated, they rip off the masks, look into each other’s eyes, and fall into each other’s arms. Shoplifting was never more romantic.
SHOPLIFTING CONFIDENTIAL
A biopic about a Hollywood star shoplifting would be terminally depressing. But the real stories about stars and shoplifting rivet us to the crime. The same year that Breakfast at Tiffany’s was released, the Saturday Evening Post quoted Dean Martin confessing to shoplifting from haberdasheries. “Even today . . . I steal a necktie or a pair of gloves or a pair of socks. I’m sure that the owners know it, but I’m such a good customer they don’t really care. Everyone has a little larceny in him,” Martin told the magazine, whose editor worried about the interview: “We better send it to the lawyer. Maybe this guy is libeling himself.”
Stores stopped tolerating celebrity shoplifting a few years later. In 1966, former glamour queen Hedy Lamarr was arrested for stealing a $40 knit suit, $1 worth of greeting cards, a $10 pair of bikini underwear, and an eye makeup brush at May’s department store on Wilshire Boulevard. The luscious creature whose near-naked body and smoldering sexuality had lit up the screen in the German film Ecstasy in 1932 (it was released in 1940 to scandal in the States, where Lamarr was under contract to MGM) was the first shoplifting celebrity to stand trial. For several days, she commanded front-page headlines reminding readers of how far she had fallen: “Ex-Star Seized as Shoplifter Booked,” read one.
On the night of January 28, after shopping in May’s with her business manager, Lamarr left the store. A guard chased her into the parking lot, shook Lamarr from behind, and said, “You’re under arrest.” Later, Lamarr would say that she had protested, “Don’t hold my arm so tight. I just had a shot”—a vitamin shot, she clarified. The guard testified that she had witnessed Lamarr shoplift before but had never made an arrest until now. She was processed as Hedy Boies (her last husband was Lewis Boies).
Fifty-one, cast in her first film in twelve years, a small role in a Paramount thriller, Picture Mommy Dead, Lamarr flung out defenses like an ingénue auditioning for a part. First, she explained, she had attempted to pay for the items by waving $14,000 in checks she was carrying in her purse. Later, at a press conference at a Beverly Hills restaurant, she was “mystified” as to how she could have shoplifted. In February, she collapsed under stress, and Paramount replaced her with Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Both of Lamarr’s children protested that their mother had contributed too much as a patriot to be accused of shoplifting. “For the past thirty years my mother has been doing a good deal for the people of this country . . . and in return she has received a slap in the face, for nothing,” her teenage son said. (Lamarr had collaborated with the composer George Antheil in the invention of an antijamming device for radio-controlled torpedoes, which would later be used in pagers, cordless phones, cell phones, and the Internet, but she never earned a penny from it.)
May’s pressed charges, unheard-of at the time. Lamarr insisted on a jury trial to clear her name. When the trial began in April, the Los Angeles Times covered it in obsessive detail. Hundreds of Angelenos stood outside the courthouse every day to gape at the beautiful star who had raised wartime morale with her pinup photos and lent her brain to the war effort.
During the trial, prosecutor Ira K. Reiner, future district attorney of Los Angeles County, then just out of law school, contended that Lamarr stole “systematically and methodically.” The police report seemed to support his argument. A security guard who said that she had seen Lamarr shopliftin
g sweaters earlier in the year testified that she saw her slipping a suit and blue slippers into her handbag. A salesclerk swore that she spotted Lamarr slipping on a headband underneath her scarf. When the guard stopped the star in May’s, she protested that the same thing had happened at I. Magnin and Neiman Marcus before and they had let her pay.
More reasons why Lamarr might have shoplifted emerged. Her psychiatrist testified that his client might be confused, but she was no kleptomaniac. Lamarr’s son ventured that his mother was upset about her fading beauty. When Lamarr took the stand wearing a “dark, one-piece Italian knit suit and high heels,” she played the amateur psychologist, throwing out still more possibilities about her motives: She had neglected to pay because she was upset about the failure of her sixth marriage. She described herself as forgetful, and she pleaded poverty. She was broke. She was about to be evicted from her Coldwater Canyon home; she had an infected tooth. Having just seen the 1964 movie The Pawnbroker, starring Rod Steiger as a Jewish man living in the Bronx who suffers from flashbacks about Nazi Germany, she was plunged into memories of her traumatic escape from that country in 1939. “Our president was killed. I knew him very well,” she said on the stand, referring to the assassination of the German chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.
In his closing argument, Lamarr’s attorney, Jordan M. Wank, said that the star fell victim to the security guards and their “Gestapo tactics.” When the jury acquitted Lamarr, applause erupted in the courtroom. Reflecting on the trial years later, Reiner said, “It was my first celebrity trial and I was too soft on her. Afterward, three or four members of the jury came up to me and said, ‘We all agreed she did it but it was clear you didn’t want her to be convicted.’ ”
The publicity brought Lamarr offers of work as well as attention. Commenting on the case, the Supreme Court justice Earl Warren said, “When poor people are afflicted with the disease they are jailed. When rich ones are, they are given a chance to return the property.”
In 1991, Lamarr moved to a modest condominium in Altamonte Springs, Florida, where she covered the walls with Hollywood memorabilia, including pictures of her and Clark Gable. She wore big picture hats and dramatic scarves to run errands around town. One day that summer, in an Eckerd drugstore in nearby Casselberry, Lamarr, accompanied by her assistant, was arrested for allegedly shoplifting a magazine, laxatives, and contact solution. As years earlier, she denied it, claiming that while the assistant paid, she had absentmindedly walked out holding the items. Eckerd wanted to prosecute, her lawyer, who was chosen because he “spoke German,” said, whereas the police wanted to dismiss the charge. Although Lamarr’s daughter insisted she was not financially insolvent, the seventy-six-year-old actress received money from fans. The daughter protested, “My mother used to go to Nieman [sic] Marcus and Saks, and they used to say, ‘Miss Lamarr, take anything you want.’ ” At the arraignment, the assistant state attorney agreed to drop the charges if Lamarr refrained from shoplifting and shopped with her companion for a year. “Lamarr Gets Off Easy,” one headline read.
“THE BESS MESS”
If Lamarr was the quintessential Hollywood shoplifter, the archetypal New Yorker with sticky fingers was Bess Myerson, who shared beauty with the movie star, as well as a drive to escape her circumstances and transform herself. If Lamarr represented the unattainable studio sexpot, Myerson stood for the troubling possibilities of conspicuous consumption for everywoman. In the 1960s and 1970s, she wrote columns and articles about spending money and her struggles with her weight. What was different from Lamarr was the public reaction to Myerson’s crime, the degree to which and means by which she was punished.
Myerson grew up poor in the Sholem Aleichem Cooperative Houses, a housing project in the Bronx. She was the daughter of a housepainter and a stay-at-home mom, Russian immigrants determined to give their children all the benefits of the New World. Born with a beautiful speaking voice, Myerson became the first Jewish Miss America in 1945, refusing advice to change her name to the less ethnic-sounding Bess Meredith or Betty Merrick. But her principles hurt her. In the aftermath of World War II, before the full extent of the Holocaust had been revealed, many Americans blamed Jews for having lost their sons. “Because of the Jews, we got into this war,” the mother of a wounded soldier screamed at her. Several sponsors declined to support Myerson (she suspected anti-Semitism). She ended her tenure as Miss America before the year was over. Instead, she toured the country, campaigning against discrimination and racism for the Anti-Defamation League.
Myerson married. After her daughter was born, as a spokesperson for What’s My Line, I’ve Got a Secret, and other game shows of the 1950s and 1960s, she proved that she was more than just a pretty face. In 1966, she became the first commissioner of Consumer Affairs for John Lindsay, then mayor of New York. She set about exposing dishonest merchants, from those who sold “shamburgers”—hamburgers made from mystery meat—to those who stuffed shrapnel inside baby rattles. “Bess Myerson on the Prowl for Stores That Cheat Us” was a Life cover story headline. She was enormously popular. Nelson Rockefeller conducted a poll that found her to have a 90 percent approval rating. After backing out of a run for the U.S. Senate in 1974, in part because of ovarian cancer, she worked in private industry. She tried another bid for the Senate, but lost in the primary. After helping Ed Koch win as mayor in 1982, she became the New York City Cultural Affairs commissioner.
Five years later, Myerson had to resign due to accusations of bribery and conspiracy. She had allegedly tried to lower the alimony payments of Carl Capasso, a wealthy, hunky, formerly married contractor who had been her lover for six years. Capasso himself was under investigation for tax evasion—charges that were eventually dismissed. In the spring of 1988, Myerson was already occupied with publicity from the pretrial investigation (the trial would be prosecuted by the up-and-coming district attorney Rudolph Giuliani) and had taken the Fifth Amendment in front of a grand jury. Capasso was in prison.
On Sunday, May 8, 1988, the New York Daily News reported that while vacationing in London eighteen years earlier, the then Consumer Affairs commissioner had shoplifted from Harrods. When the Metropolitan Police chased Myerson, she ran. In 1987, she paid a $100 fine. But neglecting to mention the theft when filling out paperwork for a stint as Cultural Affairs commissioner was a felony, the prosecution pointed out.
Nineteen days after the Daily News story, the police arrested Myerson for shoplifting at a Hill’s department store near Allenwood prison in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where she was visiting Capasso. Myerson had entered the store carrying a Hill’s bag. She walked out with a pair of white espadrille flats, a pack of AA batteries, several pairs of plastic earrings, and four bottles of nail polish. She left through the side entrance. When caught, she was carrying $160 in her pocket. She supposedly asked the store detective who caught her, “Can’t I just pay for the stuff?” as she signed the store’s confession. After being told at her arraignment that the court had to report the incident, she turned philosophical. “So be it,” she said. Publicly, she denied the charges. “I was leaving the store to go to my car to come back and pay for the merchandise,” she told reporters. With the help of a local lawyer, she made sure that the shoplifting charge could not be raised at the New York trial.
The photo of Myerson taken at the crime scene in the Susquehanna River town that spring bears no resemblance to the elegant sophisticate once beloved in New York. She looks nothing like the vibrant young woman who won the Miss America pageant, the habitué of swank nightclubs and power restaurants, and friend of the glitterati. Her hair is flattened back across her head, her face wan. In July, after failing to delay her hearing until after her New York trial, she pleaded guilty.
Twenty years after Abbie Hoffman and “Lizzie Liftwell” advised Americans to shoplift as a revolutionary tactic, the shoplifting of the ex–beauty queen with the sparkling smile inspired the first trend story blaming the women’s movement for the crime. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s sho
plifting was understood to be part of the youth protest, now journalists were pinning it on women’s lib. Newsmagazines attacked Myerson as a menopausal shrew who, thanks to feminism, had missed out on stay-at-home wives’ happiness and stole as compensation. They borrowed clichés from nineteenth-century kleptomania to evoke women rushing stores to satisfy their desires. “Why Do Aging Women Steal?” “Midlife Shoplifters Often Feel Robbed of Love.”
Writing about Myerson in Ms., Shana Alexander intoned, “As for the women’s movement, I often think we may have opened Pandora’s Box.” In the group biography of four women involved in “The Bess Mess” that grew out of this article, Alexander painted Myerson as Venus, the goddess of love. She attributed Myerson’s problems to excessive self-sacrifice and to men and to what New York women “would and would not do for love.” Other unsympathetic articles about Myerson’s shoplifting that year expressed contempt for a celebrity who was stupid enough to make up stories about why she committed the crime. Life published a color photo spread of the shoplifted objects and depicted Myerson as representative of the shoplifting crisis trickling down to all Americans. “It could be you,” Life cautioned in an article highlighting the social problem.
Initially, Myerson was concerned that the shoplifting, along with her other erratic behavior, would cause the jury to find her guilty. In the fall, when the trial started, the defense was leery of calling character witnesses whom the prosecution might ask about the crime. But in the end, “the Queen of the Jews,” as she had often referred to herself half-mockingly in more prosperous years, was acquitted of the charges levied against her. She disappeared from the public eye.
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