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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 27, 1959)
Many Former Hollywood Stars Find Rough Sledding After Dissipation of Fortunes By RICK DU BROW UPI Hollywood Writer Hollywood (LTD In a mo dest little home near here, old - time movie star Francis X. Bushman, who once had 28 servants, smiled wanly and said: "I made six million dol lars in five years. I spent it as fast as it came in." A few miles away, in a three-room apartment, pickle faced comedian Stan Laurel scratched his head thought fully and remarked: "I guess if I had splashed the money less in the old days, I'd be living in more than just an apartment now." And in the kitchen of his home in the San Fernando Valley, comedian Bud Abbott, who says he' is broke as a result of high living and back taxes, said ruefully: "They should call this town Folly wood." It was Abbott's announce ment of his hard times last May that reminded filmland anew that not all Hollywood stories have happy endings at least, not in real life. Many Fortunes Gone Fortunes have slipped through the fingers of many film luminaries among them, Buster Keaton, Jackie Coogan, Mack Sennett, John ny Weissmuller and the late Bela Lugosi and Maurice Costello. But perhaps no one went through a fortune more ex travagantly - and with more relish than Bushman, who, at 76, still bears the rugged good looks that made him Hollywood's first "great lover." At the height of my ca reer," he said, "I had a dozen secretaries and lived on a 288- acre estate. My home cost a quarter of a million a year to keep up. I had 28 servants and drove a $20,000 Marmon car painted lavender with 'Francis X. Bushman en scribed in gold on the out side." His servants' uniforms were lavender. He smoked monogrammed lavendar cig arettes, and he flashed an amethyst ring as big as a golf ball. "I collected amethysts as a hobby," he said. Reign Ends Then, in 1918, his reign ended overnight. His adoring female fans found out he was married and dropped him j cold. The white-thatched act or has performed throughout the years but never attained the eminence he once had. "I'm not bitter," he said. "I learned a long time ago how to have fun. I had fun when I had millions, and I have fun now. If I had the big money again, I'd spent it faster than the first time." Laurel never accumulated the fortune that Bushman did. Yet he admits he should have saved more money from the comedies he made with the late Oliver Hardy. "Well, I'm human," said the . 69-year-old comedian. "I had domestic troubles. I had three wives but was married six times. Each one wanted to give it another go. There were lawyers to pay as well as wives, and then four years ago I suffered a paralytic stroke. "Fortunately, I had enough good sense to put a little an nuity away, so I didn't have to work after Oliver died. But the problem is the de valuating dollar. The money you put away years ago just isn't worth what it was then. I have a tight budget, and it keeps getting tighter. I have to watch my pennies. Has No Regrets "Of course, in the old days, we didn't get anywhere near the money the stars get nowa days. You wouldn't dare ask for a percentage of a picture. They'd throw you out. But I had fun, and I have no re grets." Abbot said he never thought he'd need an annuity to fall back on. Then the government disallowed $500,000 in tax deductions, and he found him self broke. I know I visited the gam bling tables at Las Vegas," he said, "but it seemed like there was so much to use. There were always parties at my house, and there were $100 bills for friends who heeded it. Now there are no friends because there are no parties or $100 bills." Abbott's long-time partner, Lou Costello, is dead. And Abbot, 63, now is trying to work out an act with Eddie Foy Jr. Mack Sennett, 79, who in vented the bathing beauty, the Keystone Kops and the pie-in-the-face school of act ing, now lives in a - small apartment looking out on a service station on Hollywood blvd., the street his movies helped to build. Owned Property "Once I owned huge amounts of property in Los Angeles county," he said, "but I had nobody to help me carry the continuing taxes -and there was a time when you couldn't get anybody to buy land here, or rent it, to make it pay." "Then there was the stock market. John D. Rockefeller once said a wise thing. He said, 'Buy the best stocks you can get hold of and just sit on them. Live on them Don't gamble." That's what a lot of people here forgot.' One of the great comebacks in filmland has been made by dead - pan comedian Buster Keaton, 63, who once was on top, then hit the skids and took to drink "The bottom dropped out of me for a while, from about 1935 to 1940," he said. "I- was Price 10c Medford 54th Year Tribune Pages 1-4 MEDFORD, OREGON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1959 2nd SECTION working as a writer, but I had a disagreement with Louis B. Mayer at MGM, and he fired me. I had domestic trouble, and I did over-drink, which didn't help." Now Keaton has a large in come from TV commercials and acting parts, and he got $50,000 for allowing the mov ies to make his life story. Sued Daughter "The trouble with most actors," said Keaton, who lives on a lV-acre farm near here, "is that once they get famous, they never dream things will change. So they don't invest in annuities or other insurance. At least, not many of the old-timers." No one went more complete ly broke than Maurice Cos tello, who lived to the hilt with the fortune he made as DRAWING CARD, Senator Hiram L. Fong (left), (R), Hawaii, wins six-year term while his colleague, Senator Oren Long (right), had to be content with four-year term in U. S. Senate. Earlier Fong won toss of coin, became senior senator. Center is Sen ate Secretary Felton M. Johnson, who conducted preference gambles. Steel Stocks Said To Merit Place in Any Good Portfolio By ELMER C. WALZER UPI Financial Editor New York (DPD Steel is such big business that if one wanted to enter it in compe tition with present companies, he'd have to raise at least $2 billion and possibly as much as $5 billion in capital. Even the big steel compan ies can't raise big money like that - and they are organized. They have to finance expans ion through reinvestment of earnings and from deprecia tion that's inadequate to re place obsolete plants. This situation is brought out by Edmund A. Mennis, a steel - specialist, director of research and an economist for the Wellington Management Fund. He has analyzed the steel industry and his research is published in the current An alysts Journal. . Mennis' finds the steel com panies have brought up earn ings, smoothed out cyclical fluctuations, established regu lar dividends, and produced capital gains for investors in many instances better than the glamorous growth stocks. He believes the constant in crease in steel prices may not continue, and that significant further growth of the econ omy will be very difficult to achieve. Little Capital Gains Potential "Steel equities merit a place in any well-balanced port folio," he holds, "but the capital-gains potentials of the past decade, based on an up ward revaluation ,of the in dustry by the investing pub lic, is largely completed." Mennis holds that the steel industry is definitely compe titive with respect to quality, service, and availability of steel and also with respect to price. . "Prices do not have to fluctuate day - to - day to be competitive," he says. "In fact, - such fluctuations are characteristic of few prices in our economy today." He explains that demand for steel is inelastic and that price reductions would have little effect on demand. "The effect of wide fluctu ations in steel might lead to many business failures in a high capital cost industry and result in uneconomic use of resources and perhaps inade quate capacity over the long term," he says. He notes that substitutes for steel are limited in scope, but there are other factors holding down prices, includ ing" pressure of steel custo mers, threats of government investigation and interven tion, and import threats "Steel imports may not be any immediate threat to the industry in this country,' Mennis says, "but potentially. could be a serious threat so long as the relative labor cost disparities- between European production and U.S. produc tion continue." Foreign Plants Competitive European and Japanese steel plants have been built up to the point where they are fully competitive with ' 1 MOST OF THE VV A sutson 45 a If SALE AT xMa- ftll BARKERS J fk I $34.99 . '--f.- J I AND UP, ( I ssa " BUT A FEW UM ' I 4Q are as low jH II V AS$15.99! J I ours in term of quality. But the free world outside of the U.S. is plagued by raw ma terial problems. Major steel imports into the U.S. include barbed wire, nails, pipe and tubing. "These products, says Mennis. ' are not all considered high-profit items, and, as yet, imports do not seem to be a serious com petitive threat to domestic steel producers. As a fore shadowing of .future develop ments, however, they are sig nificant." Also, he notes exports of steel are a relatively small part of the total steel ship ments. In 1957 they were 5.2 million, tons or 6.5 per cent of steel shipments. In 1958 they fell to 2.7 million tons, or 4.5 per cent of shipments. The steel , industry has as its customers thousands of manufacturers whose pro ducts are sold to consumers. The steel makers worry more about loss of manufactured steel products to foreign com petition than about the loss of some fabricated steel. Intelligence Can Be Created Washington (Science Serv ice) - Intelligence actually may be increased by using new ideas of perpetual psy chology, according to a Flor ida educational expert. Although it has been thought that the intellectual capacity a person is born with can be changed very little by environment and experience, Dr. Arthur W. Combs, profes sor of education and psychol ogy at the University of Flor ida . at - Gainesville, contends that rather than being limit ed, intelligence is a "func tion" that can be increased by helping a person to broaden and deepen his perceptions. In "Learning More About Learning," a newly, released publication of the National Education Association here, Dr. Combs explains that be cause an individual's percep tions cannot be affected di rectly, new ways of teaching must be devised that will em phasize the student' skinner development rather than out- Small Worlds Around Us By Lynn M. Watkins, Brown Eggs Are Not Richer Than While There are still many folks who stoutly maintain that brown eggs are richer in food elements and are more nutri- Magnetic Poles Will Be Moved Little Northward Washington (Science Serv ice) - The earth's two mag netic poles will be moved a little northward on a new map to be published early next year by the U.S. Navy's Hydrographic Office here. Since the old isogonic map was published in 1955, the North Magnetic Pole, north of the Canadian mainland, ap parently has moved about 100 miles due north across Vis count Melville Sound from Prince Wales Island to a point just off the southwest tip of Bathurst Island. The South Magnetic 1 Pole will be shown near Adelie Coast, Wilkes Land, in Ant arctica. Its new position will be about 100 miles north and west of the 1955 location. Better Instrumentation Although some movement of the poles themselves is be lieved to have occurred, the apparent movement may be a result of better instrumenta tion for measurement, said J. H. Nelson, chief of the U.S Coast and Geodetic Survey's geomagnetism branch. Coast and Geodetic Survey gathers the data for these periodic Navy maps. The Survey compiles 125,000 ob servations, obtained in part through exchanges with other countries, on degrees of com pass-needle variation in point ing to true north. The isogonic map thus enables its user A.o determine true north based on his compass reading any where in the world. Officially the 1960 North Magnetic Pole will be shown at 74.9 degrees north latitude and 101.0 west longitude; the South Magnetic Pole will be at 67.1 degrees south latitude and 142.7 degrees east longitude. With 17,000 carloads, Yaki ma, Wash., boasts the third largest cold storage capacity in the nation-second only to Chicago and New York. side coercion. This will help him to find important person al meaning in whatever ma terial is to be learned. To factors generally ac cepted as determining intelli gence, such as the physical endowment, age and exper ience of an individual, Dr. Combs adds four new ones: Need, values, self - concept, and threat. He theorizes that a person will perceive what he needs, values and feels ap propriate to himself, while a sense of threat actually will hinder his perception. tious than white eggs. There actualy are entire sections of our country where house wives steadfastly refuse to buy white eggs for this sup posed reason. They argue that "brown is a richer color than white," and therefore an egg with a dark colored shell is -just naturally "richer" than an egg with a white, pasty col ored shell. This is just as ridiculous as the young moth er who asked her milkman for calf's -milk because she thought cow's milk was too strong for her child. Whether the egg 'is white, brown, spotted, or techni colored make's not the slight est difference in the richness or healthfulness of the egg. The color of the shell depends on the species of chicken that laid it, and the amount of pigment in the shell. First Food , Eggs were probably the first food that primitive man ever ate. He ate them raw, even up until, and perhaps after, he discovered fire. Of course, he was eating wild birds' eggs. . Later he domes ticated the chicken from the early jungle fowl and made the hen work for him. The ancient-Chinese ate eggs a couple of thousand years ago, and they still are their favor ite food. They even like their eggs ripened with age, or 'even in an advanced stage of incuba tion. Naturally the Chinese placed considerable signifi cance on the fact that eggs could generate life, so the egg was looked upon as the "sym bol of creation." Early Chris tion peoples believed the egg was symbolic of the resurrec tion as well as the promise of renewed life. Superstitions , Many superstitions were built about these objects that hatched into living beings. It was though that eggs eaten on Easter Sunday would bring good luck to the diner throughout the entire year. Others believed that a person afflicted with stomach trou ble could be cured by eating an egg "that was laid on a Friday." The ancient Greeks likened the universe to the egg. The shell represented the earth, the white represented water and the yolk stood for firer-all the necessary elements for the continuance of life. Although eggs have been a staple food for mankind since the very beginning, the complete mystery of the egg, whether it's white or brown, has never been understood or explained. Even the scientists of today is but little further .ahead than the schoolboy in one of the lower grades who listened to his teacher finish her ex planation of an egg with the question, "Isn't it wonderful how the little bird gets out of its shell?" The small boy pondered the problem a min ute, then said, "What gets me is how it got in there in the first place." (Released by The Register and Tribune Syndicate, 1959) "Dimples," one of the screen's He died less than a year later. Poached. soFrBoiiED.OMEiiT RMl. OREGON FARM FRESH EGGS Guaranteed fresh! great early lovers. As an old man, he sued his famous daughter, Dolores (ex-wife of John Barrymore), for support and eventually got some, bit parts before he died in 1950 at the age of 74: Costello once said: "I'm as poor as a church mouse, and I guess that's life. But it's better to be a has been than a never-was, and I guess the world knew' 1 was there." Johnny Weissmuller, who became famous as "Tarzan," had a financial problem when movie roles stopped coming and his ex-wife sued for more alimony and . child support. But he- is working to pull out of his troubles. "I have some TV residuals from the 'Jungle Jim' series and some royalties from the swimming pool company that uses my name," he said. "But this doesn't go very far. That pool business doesn't come close to the one that Esther Williams has. But we. keep each other honest." Went for Narcotics Bela Lugosi, the movies "Dracula," saw most of his fortune dissipated for nar cotics. In 1955,. at the age of 72, he was committed to a hospital at his own request as an addict.' I "I've been using narcotics for 20 years," he told physic ians. "I don't have a dime left, but I am anxious to re habilitate myself." Several months later, he was released from the hos pital and took a fifth wife. Jackie Coogan, famous as "The Kid" in early films, is one of the few actors who made it back financially but most of his income is from business investments, not per forming. . 5 Center of Suit Coogan, 48, was the center of a sensational suit in. 1938 when he sued his mother and stepfather and learned his fortune had evaporated. Betty Grable, then his wife, had to support him. But since World War II, he has made another fortune selling surplus air planes and buying a hotel and apartment houses. "Anybody worry about me? Don't be silly." There are, of course, movie stars who made big money and handled it wisely. These include Mary Pickford, Shir ley Temple, Charlie Chaplin, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Ging er Rogers and Clark Gable. For them, and others who knew how to handle their dollars, the sweet smell, of success is not likely to turn sour. Intellectual Work No Curb To Life Chicago (Science Service Professors do not die any earlier than streetcar conduc tors, a Swedish researcher re ports here. Following a study of some 2,000 case histories. Prof. E. Ask-Upmark of Uppsala says that the intellectual strain to which professors are exposed does not increase the risk of brain tumors or cerebral hemorrhage. Causes of death were not different from those reported for persons in less intellectual work. Actually, the "intellectuals" had a longer life-span, Prof. Ask-Upmark says in the Jour nal of the American Medical Association. Swedish profes sors with an average lifetime of 68 years and American pro fessors with an average of 67 years lived longer than the streetcar conductors (61 years) or the typographers (58 years). Non-Fat Milk nider9s Quality DAIRY FOODS OREGON FOOD STORES OPEN 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. - 7 DAYS A WEEK Items listed below good thru Sunday 1475 Siskiyou Blvd. - ASHLAND RED MAPPER 2h. Quart Quart SUCJQt Spreckels JQ lb. Bag 89 " 25 lb. Bag Mayonnaise Oregon Food Salad Dressing Oregon Food . Canned Milk Nestles-No. 1 Tall Eggs Coffee TUna Del Monte - Halves 4 $259 49 39 AO NuLade AA Medium Schillings Doz, Mb. Tin S Rider's 20-oz. bottle Marco Dog Food BeanS Rose Cut - 303 ! Catsup Pineapple BeanS Red Dart Seasoned Spinach I -lb. can 75 4 Del Monte-Crushed No. 1 Flat 7 -5 Del Monte -303 Tomato Hot Sauce Del Monte . for for for for for for for for 39 59 1.00 1.00 $1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 LETTUCE PEACHES Yellow Onions 5 lbs. for 29 3 heads for 29' Elberta 18 to 20-lb. Lug $1.69 ml GREEN STARK
