Here is the radio show companion to my March 13th & 20th and June 19, 2025 articles in the Weekly View newspaper, all of which are available to read on this site.
Original publish date May 22, 2025.
https://weeklyview.net/2025/05/22/the-hilton-sisters-vaudevilles-beautiful-siamese-twins/
I recently ran across a five-dollar box of sheet music at an antique show. It seems like nobody wants sheet music anymore. I suppose, like recipe books, almanacs, TV guides, and car manuals, they are seen as obsolete nowadays. It turned out to be a fun, if not very valuable, box of paper. One was from the 1952 Marilyn Monroe film Niagara, along with a bunch of 1920s-40s songbooks and “how to” manuals for the Hawaiian guitar. The one that caught my eye was a piece of ukulele sheet music for the 1925 Irving Berlin song “I Wanna Go Where You GoāDo What You Do. Then I’ll Be Happy,” performed by a pair of lovely young ladies known as the “Hilton Sisters.” These beautiful young girls are pictured side by side on the cover in a pose that suggests that they were joined at the hip. A closer examination reveals a caption proclaiming the duo as a pair of conjoined “Siamese Twins,” and it turns out, during the Vaudeville era, Daisy and Violet Hilton were the biggest stars of their day.
Daisy and Violet Hilton were born on February 5, 1908, in Brighton, Sussex, England, birthplace of authors Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling. The twins were born to an unmarried barmaid named Kate Skinner. After seeing her babies, Kate was horrified, thinking that her children’s birth defects were a punishment from God for her unmarried status. She refused to look at them, let alone hold them, so she sold the girls to the midwife who had delivered them, Mary Hilton. Hilton looked at those baby girls and saw dollar signs. Hilton immediately began displaying the girls in the backroom of the Queenās Arms pub on George Street, which she ran with her husband. As they grew, she taught the girls how to sing, dance, and play musical instruments. The Hilton sisters toured first in Britain in 1911 (aged three) as “The Double Bosses” and from then on, the twins were on the road touring the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. The twins were the first set of conjoined twins born in Britain to survive more than a few weeks. The girls were connected at the hip and pelvis by a fleshy appendage and shared no organs. Doctors stated that they could have easily been separated at an early age and would have lived independent lives. But the girls were seen as piggybanks in those formative years, so “fixing” them would kill the golden goose.
In 1913, rebranded as the “Famous Brighton United Twinsā, they toured Australia, where they made their debut at Luna Park in Melbourne on Friday the 13th of December, 1912. Despite a massive advertising campaign, the novelty of their act quickly wore off. The show closed after only a week, and the twins, their mother Mary, and sister Edith were abandoned down under by the show’s promoter. Somewhere along the line, the Hilton family came into contact with Myer Myers, a traveling circus balloon and candy seller. Myers formed a romantic interest in the twins’ older sister Edith, and the couple was married. The marriage was not based on love, it was based on financial gain. While the twins were fond of their older sister, they never liked Myer.
In June 1916, Myer brought the girls to the United States via San Francisco. But immigration officials had never seen anything like Violet & Daisy before, so they were detained and quarantined at Angel Island (next to Alcatraz) in the San Francisco Bay for months until they were finally cleared for entry. By 1918, the 10-year-olds were traveling the Orpheum Circuit of Vaudeville Theatres across the country. The adorable little girls were extremely popular, although still categorized as medical oddities and relegated to the sideshow carnival “Freak Show” class. But the Hilton sisters were different, they weren’t just an act, they were talented. The girls were trained in singing and dancing and eventually learned to play the piano, violin, and saxophone. The twins made huge amounts of money in Vaudeville, but regardless of who was managing them, they retained very little of it.
Throughout their lives, Violet and Daisy often voiced their dislike of Myer Myers and how he exerted complete control over every aspect of their lives. Myers insisted that the twins call him āSir,ā that the girls sleep in the same bedroom with their parents, and when they were not performing in the circus, that they spend their days doing school lessons and practicing their musical instruments. The twins were also forbidden to play with other children. Myer Myers promoted the twins unscrupulously and toured them mercilessly. In time, the twins became the star attraction of the āGreat Wortham Showā, a traveling carnival that toured the United States. People around the country flocked to see these beautiful, mysterious young girls. In 1917, while performing at the San Jacinto Fiesta in San Antonio, Myers built a castle-like pavilion directly across from the Alamo. Now, every visitor to the shrine of Texas independence made the trip across the street to see the twins. Myers continued to tour the twins across the USA, and whenever he entered a city or town, he ensured that the first stop was a visit to the mayor or, if it was a state capital, the governor.
The Hilton Sisters exploded onto the American scene at precisely the right time, for the years between World War I and World War II were considered the heyday of vaudeville side shows. On stage, the adorable twin girls sang, danced, and played saxophone & piano. They were exhibited as children as sideshow curiosities, but now they toured the United States in vaudeville theatres and American burlesque circuits in the 1920s and 1930s. Myers reinvented the twins’ biographies, saying their “Mother died at their birth and their father, a soldier, was killed a short time afterward in an accident. Firmly joined together at the base of their spines, the Hilton girls present a curious spectacle, especially so as the odd grafting of nature has materialized into a seemingly uncomfortable back-to-back, half-diagonal position. Despite this, the girls move about with an ease and freedom and movement that is nothing less than astonishing.”
The Indianapolis News for Saturday, March 28, 1925, touted the twins’ first appearance at the Globe Theatre, reporting that the performance got out of hand. Their appearance caused traffic jams, and police were called to control the lines of rowdy curiosity seekers on the streets outside trying to get into the theater. During their act, the girls sang songs, played music, and always concluded in the same fashion: a waltz. Two young men were waiting in the wings offstage. On cue, the men would glide out and dance with the sisters in rythm to an orchestra posed behind them. One of those young men was an unknown vaudevillian named Lester Townsend, soon to be known to the world as Bob Hope. In 1926, the sisters teamed up with up-and-coming comedian Bob Hope, who formed a new vaudeville act he called “Dancemedians.”
The twins appeared onstage with other luminaries like George Burns & his wife Gracie Allen, Sophie Tucker, and Charlie Chaplin. The Twins’ songwriter during their vaudeville years was Bart Howard (then known as Howard Joseph Gustafson), who wrote “Fly Me To The Moon.” That same Star newspaper article reported that the girls were like any other pair of sisters. Sometimes they would fight, and one sister would not speak to the other for days offstage. The article noted that the “girl’s fingerprints were different, one would read while the other slept, one sister may prick her finger, but the other is unaware of it, but,if one has a headache, the other will feel it. Daisy sews, but Violet is not particularly fond of sewing. Daisy enjoys housework while Violet prefers to arrange the furniture and decorate the house. There seemed to be a subtle telepathy between the twins.”
Throughout the 1920s, the twins earned $5,000 per week for 44 weeks on the Orpheum Circuit, over $91,000 weekly in today’s money. They were the highest-paid vaudeville act in America. Myer Myers was their manager, and the girls never saw a dime of that money. The Hilton Sisters were befriended by escapologist Harry Houdini, who taught them how to “mentally separate from each other.” Learning of the twins’ disadvantageous financial arrangement with Myer Myers, Houdini strongly advised the girls to emancipate themselves from their legal guardians and hit the road on their own. In his book Very Special People, author Frederick Drimmer quoted Houdini as telling the twins, “You must learn to forget your physical link. Put it out of your mind. Work at developing mental independence from each other.” Houdini died on Halloween night of 1926 and was never able to help the twins achieve that goal in his lifetime. The girls appeared in Indianapolis many times during their career. Indianapolis had a strong vaudeville, burlesque, and theatre district. The Hilton Sisters appeared at the Lyric Theatre on March 6, 1928, and again on September 6, 1928. Before that appearance, Chicago Commissioner of Health Herman Bundersen declared them healthy and described them as: “Two souls with but a single thought.” While the girls received a clean bill of health, both physically and spiritually, could the same be said of their industry?
PART II
The Hilton Sisters-Vaudeville’s Beautiful Siamese Twins.
Original publish date May 29, 2025.
https://weeklyview.net/2025/05/29/the-hilton-sisters-vaudevilles-beautiful-siamese-twins-part-2/
In the Roaring Twenties, the Hilton Sisters were the darlings of Vaudeville. That circuit ran straight through the heart of Indianapolis. Violet and Daisy Hilton were conjoined twins who were abandoned by a single mother and sold to a Brighton, Sussex, England, saloon matron who subjected them to years of exploitation, only to be adopted by a corrupt manager on the fringes of the sideshow circus & show-business circuits. Despite those obstacles, the twins managed to strike out on their own and become hugely successful stars of stage, vaudeville, and film in the United States.
These personal appearances would most often last for a week or more. Since the Hilton Sisters traveled 52 weeks a year, wherever they laid their suitcase was their home. Five years after his death, their mentor Harry Houdini’s wish for the sisters was realized. The Indianapolis Times of Saturday, April 25, 1931, reported “Verdict Frees Siamese Twins From Bondage. Texas Pair Wins $99,000 in ruling releasing them from Guardian.” The sensational trial made headlines all over the country. After the verdict, the girls told reporters, “It is so wonderful to be free to go wherever we please, choose our own friends, and appear in public as humans rather than as freaks.” However, even though the twins received a boatload of money (over $1.8 million in today’s world), the rigid structure of Myer Myers disappeared, and the girls ran through that money in a relatively short time.
The twins, now aged 24, appeared in the 1932 exploitation movie “Freaks”, which led to another promotonal appearance at the Lyric theatre in Indianapolis (June to July 1932). The Indianapolis Times of July 31, 1932, reported: “The Hilton Sisters, Siamese Twins, were seen going into a subway station recently and a crowd of nearly one hundred people followed them to see if they would pay one fare or two. They paid two.” āWe may seem like one, but everything costs us for two,ā Daisy explained. āWe pay insurance for two, but could only collect for one. The only bargain we get is our weight for a penny.ā (For the record, the twins stood four feet six inches tall and weighed 166 pounds, or 83 pounds each.)
The twins came back to the Circle City in May to June 1936, at the “Chez Paree nightclub downstairs at the Apollo Theatre”, Dec 22-28, 1946, at the “Murat Theatre”, March 26, 1947 at the “Fox Burlesk Theatre”, and from May to June, 1952 at the “Ambassador Theatre.” These appearances all coincided with the slow downward spiral of the Hilton Sisters’ career. The first talkie movie (Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer on Oct. 27, 1927) signaled the end of the Vaudeville Era.
During those years, as Great Depression Era America watched these unique beauties mature to adulthood, the Hilton Sisters remained in the news. The twins resumed their vaudeville careers as “The Hilton Sisters’ Revue”. Daisy dyed her hair blonde, and they began to wear different outfits to distinguish each other. After vaudeville lost popularity, the sisters performed at burlesque venues. But Burlesque reviews were risque, and while the attending patrons were interested in women, they were not necessarily interested in women wearing clothing, talented or not.
After gaining independence from Myer Myers, the Hiltons sailed to the UK, where they spent most of 1933, returning to the States in October 1933. Violet began a relationship with musician Maurice Lambert, and they applied in 21 states for a marriage license, but were always refused. The Indianapolis Star Fri, Jul 06, 1934, reported on the prospect of marriage: “The very idea is quite immoral and indecent. No, there is no law against it, but it just seems indecent.” Maurice grew tired of the newsreel life and one day, simply walked away from the relationship. Afterward, Violet became briefly engaged to Jewish boxer Harry Mason, who later went on to have a relationship with Daisy. In 1936, Violet married actor James Moore at the Cotton Bowl during the Texas Centennial Exposition as a publicity stunt. The marriage lasted ten years on paper, but the couple never lived as husband and wife. It was discovered that Jim Moore was gay, so the marriage was eventually annulled.
At the time of Violet’s wedding, the press noted that Daisy was visibly pregnant. Daisy gave birth, but the child, a boy, was put up for adoption immediately. In 1941, Daisy married Harold Estep, better known as dancer Buddy Sawyer. The marriage lasted ten days when it was discovered that Buddy, like Violet’s husband Jim Moore, was gay.
In 1952, the twins starred in a second film, Chained for Life, an exploitation film loosely based on their lives. The film’s producer ran off with all the money and left the Hilton Sisters holding the bag. They paid the bills out of their own pockets and undertook a grueling series of personal appearances at double-bill screenings of their two films in theatres and drive-ins across the country. Sadly, the entertainment world had moved on, and few people were interested in the aging vaudevillians, curiously conjoined or not. Afterwards, their popularity faded, and they struggled to make a living in show business. Violet once told a reporter, āWe fooled ourselves that by entertaining others we were making ourselves happy.ā
The Hiltons’ last public appearance was in 1961 at a drive-in theater in Charlotte, North Carolina. Without warning, their tour manager abandoned them there with no means of transportation or income. Charles Reid, owner of the Park-N-Shop grocery store in Charlotte, hired the twins for a commercial advertising “Twin-pack” potato chips. Afterward, they applied for a job at the store, stating they would work for one salary if necessary. Reid, ever the savvy businessman, realized he was getting four hands on one body and hired them as produce handlers and checkout girls. He paid them each a salary. The twins worked at a specially designed and constructed checkout station that looked no different than the others. The only way anyone would know the difference was if they looked back over their shoulder as they walked out the door.
The Hiltons rented a small two-bedroom home courtesy of Purcell United Methodist and settled into a quiet life centered around work and church. Daisy learned how to drive a car because she was the twin who could sit in the left-hand driverās seat. Later, the twins bought a former driving instructorās car with dual controls, so Violet could also drive.
Violet and Daisy had very different political views: Violet was a staunch Democrat, while Daisy supported the Republican Party. During the holidays, they remembered fellow employees and favorite customers with small, inexpensive Christmas gifts. One neighbor recalled that the girls had a phone booth installed in the home to allow for private conversations for each twin when needed and that the twins kept an array of purses around the house, each one containing two or three dollars for cab fare. Later in life, a doctor visited them and declared that they could be separated if they so desired, but they said no. Daisy contracted Hong Kong flu, but Violet refused medical intervention.
On January 4, 1969, after failing to report to work and unable to reach them by telephone, the store manager called the police to investigate. The twins were found dead in their home, victims of the Hong Kong flu. Their bodies were found on the heat grate in the hallway. Daisy’s decomposition was worse than Violet’s, which presents a nightmare scenario. The autopsy determined that Daisy died first and Violet died two to four days later. It was speculated that during those final few days, freezing cold from the Hong Kong flu, Violet dragged her sister to the heat grate and slumped to the floor where she drank heavily and chain-smoked cigarettes while waiting for the end to come. The house was adorned by carefully wrapped Christmas presents, all identified and tagged to go to their friends. They had spent every second of their lives together and had made a pact that they were going out together.
The Hilton Sisters were buried together in one casket in a donated plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Charlotte, NC. At their funeral service, the Reverend Jon Sills said, as he stood next to the sisters’ wide coffin: āDaisy and Violet Hilton were in show business for all but the last half dozen years of their life. In the end, though, they were cast aside by the glittery and glamorous world they had been part of for so long. In the end, it was only ordinary people who showed they cared about them.ā
In May 2018, it was announced that Brighton and Hove City Council in Sussex, England, and the current owner of the house in which the twins were born had agreed that a commemorative plaque could be erected at the property. On May 26, 2022, a commemorative blue plaque was unveiled at 18 Riley Road, dedicated to them. Additionally, the Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Co. honored the twins by naming a bus after them. Upon their death in 1969, Mrs. Luther E. Mason, a longtime friend of the twins and secretary to the lawyer who represented them at their trial, said that they wanted nothing more than to “live normally.”
Original Publish date May 8, 2025.
https://weeklyview.net/2025/05/08/bob-fellers-happy-mothers-day/
So what did you get for Mother’s Day this year? I hope it was something fun, delicious, or useful, but just in case the answer was nothing, this article might make you feel a little better. Every year, as the boys of summer take the field anew, I try to dig up a baseball story that you may have never heard of before. Or, if you’ve heard of it, perhaps you’re not familiar with or don’t recall all the details. I was lucky enough to meet Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller on several occasions. I suppose the most memorable was on July 27, 1984. That was the day of the Cracker Jack Baseball Old-Timers Dream Game at the Hoosier Dome Downtown. I was midway through my term as Deputy Auditor for the state of Indiana, and my office was a short walk to the Dome and an even shorter walk to the Embassy Suites Hotel where the players were staying. So I strolled over and took an extended lunch hour to see if I could meet any of the players as they checked in. I was fortunate that day and had the opportunity to meet Joe DiMaggio, Sal “The Barber” Maglie, Billy Williams, Tony Oliva, Don Larsen, Minnie Minoso, Don Newcombe, Luke Appling, and Bob Feller. Mr. Feller was a gentleman and we talked for a little bit after he checked in. I told him that in my opinion, he was (along with Nolan Ryan and Bob Gibson) one of the three greatest pitchers of my lifetime. I asked him if he could still throw (I think he was 66 at the time) and if so, how fast can he bring it. He answered, “Well, I could still hit 85-90 mph, I guess. If I didn’t want to comb my hair for a month.”
This story is about Bob Feller and his mom on Mother’s Day 1939. Robert William Andrew Feller, nicknamed “the Heater from Van Meter”, “Bullet Bob”, and “Rapid Robert”, was born on November 3, 1918, in Van Meter, Iowa. As a teenager, Feller was a shortstop/outfielder, but by the age of 15, he began to pitch and never looked back. In 1936, Feller was signed by legendary Cleveland Indians scout Cy Slapnicka for one dollar and an autographed Indians team baseball. A prodigy who bypassed baseball’s minor leagues, Feller made his Major League debut at the age of 17 in a relief appearance against the Washington Senators on July 19, 1936. A month later, on August 23, Feller made his first career start against the St. Louis Browns. Feller struck out all three batters he faced in the first inning on his way to recording 15 strikeouts (highest ever at the time for a starting pitcher’s debut) and earned his first career win. Three weeks later, he struck out 17 in a win over the Philadelphia Athletics, tying Dizzy Dean’s single-game strikeout record. He finished that first season with a 5ā3 record over 14 games, 47 walks and 76 strikeouts in 62 innings. Then, Feller traveled back to Van Meter for his Senior Year of high school. The governor of Iowa met him at the door on that first day.
For the start of the 1937 season, Feller appeared on the cover of the April 19, 1937, issue of Time magazine. Rookies appearing on magazine and video game covers have been a longtime curse in the sports world. Feller was no different. After that Time cover, during his first appearance of the season on April 24, Feller blew out his elbow throwing a curveball. He spent April and May healing and traveled back to Van Meter to graduate high school in May in a ceremony that was aired nationally on NBC Radio. For the 1937 season, Feller finished 9-7 despite his 0-4 start. He allowed only 116 hits while striking out 150 batters against a paltry 106 walks pn just under 149 innings.
For the 1938 season, Feller led all pitchers with 208 walks and 240 strikeouts. Feller pitched in 39 Major League games during the 1938 regular season finishing with 17 wins, 11 losses, and 1 save. He allowed 225 hits and finished with a 4.08 E.R.A. with no hit batters, no wild pitches, and no intentional walks. On April 20, 1938, Feller pitched the first of his 12 career one-hitters in the Cleveland Indiansā 9-0 win over the St. Louis Browns. His biggest fan, his mother Lena, was bedridden and sick with pneumonia, so she could only listen to her son’s milestone game on the radio and cheer from home. It was the Indiansā second game of the new season Cleveland’s fireballing right-hander was nearly unhittable. The only hit came in the sixth inning off a weak grounder back to the mound by St. Louis Brownsā catcher Billy Sullivan who beat out an infield hit. Two-time all-star and 1935 batting champion Buddy Myer told the papers, “Bob Feller’s fastball comes at you looking like a shirt button-and as easy to hit.”
Since it was her son’s first game of the season, the Feller house was full of Iowa newspaper reporters, hungry for quotes and reactions from the phenom’s parents. āThatās fine,ā Fellerās mother said to her husband, ābut itās a shame he couldnāt have had a no-hit game.ā Her nonplussed reaction was no surprise when it came to her son’s prowess on the mound. Lena C. Feller was quite used to her sonās greatness and habit of throwing no-hitters. In 1936, he pitched five no-hitters for Van Meter High School before he went on to help the Indians in the season, all before graduating high school in 1937. Growing up on a farm west of Des Moines, Feller developed great strength and broad shoulders while performing his daily chores. That work helped him throw blazing fastballs. When he was 8 years old, he threw a baseball so hard it broke three of his father William Andrew Feller’s ribs. The elder Feller built his son a ballfield one-quarter mile east of the farmhouse, complete with bleachers and a concession stand. The ballfield has been called the “original Field of Dreams”. That farm was federally designated as a historic site in 1999. In his 2012 biography, Feller stated that if he could relive any moment of his life, it would be “Playing catch with my dad between the red barn and the house.”
Although already an all-star, 1939 was Bob Feller’s breakout season. He would lead the American League in wins (24), complete games (24), and innings pitched (296 and 2ā3), and he led the majors for a second consecutive year in both walks (142) and strikeouts (246). And while Feller would repeat as an all-star in 1939, it was an incident on Sunday, May 14, 1939, Mother’s Day, that would be remembered by baseball fans for generations to come. Lena and Bill Feller, along with their 10-year-old daughter Marguerite and over 700 fans from Van Meter, made the 5-hour, 350-mile trip from Iowa to Comiskey Park in Chicago to see their 20-year-old hometown hero pitch against the White Sox in front of 28,000 fans. The Feller family sat in front-row box seats on the first baseline behind the visitors’ dugout.
In the last half of the third inning, Indians up 6 to 0, Feller delivered a pitch to right-handed palehose 3rd baseman Marv Owen. Feller threw a fastball at which Owen swung on hard but late. The foul ball screamed towards the first baseline and into the stands behind the Indians’ dugout, and a horrific CRACK! echoed onto the field. Instinctively, Rapid Robert Feller watched helplessly as the ball struck his mother above her eye, breaking her eyeglasses. News accounts differ as to whether it was her left eye or right eye, but the result was certain: the lenses shattered, lacerating her nose, eyes, and forehead. Blood poured from her eyelid and forehead. The crowd gasped, the Iowa fans shrieked, and Bob Feller froze on the pitcherās mound. For a few moments stood “stark still,” visibly shaken and agonizing over the drama in the stands. Bob dashed to the box and watched helplessly as she was led off to Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, where stitches were required. The game was delayed as Cleveland Indians trainer Max āLeftyā Weisman rushed into the stands to tend to Mrs. Feller. Lefty escorted her “to a spot below the stands” where he gave Mrs. Feller emergency treatment. He assured his young pitcher that the wounds were not serious before, aided by Lenaās husband and daughter, helping her to a nearby car and driving her to Mercy Hospital. As soon as Lena was safely on her way, Feller retook the mound and struck Owen out. āThere wasnāt anything I could do,ā Feller later said, āso I went on pitching.ā The incident shook him up, and unable to fully concentrate on the game, Feller allowed the White Sox to score three runs before he regained his composure. Settling down, Feller won the game 9 to 4.
At the hospital, 45-year-old Lena received six stitches to close the deepest cut. Doctors determined that Lena probably suffered a mild concussion, but luckily, an X-ray examination determined that her skull was not fractured and no bones were broken. The hospital announced that they expected her to make a full recovery. With the game now over, Bob sped to the hospital to check on his mom. He walked into Lenaās hospital room to find her sitting up in the hospital bed with her head swathed in bandages. He rushed to the bedside and embraced his mother in a hug and she said, āEverything is all right, I just didnāt see that ball coming.ā Seeing that his mom was battered and bruised, but otherwise all right, Bob reminded her of his promise to win the game as a Motherās Day present, which he did. Ironically, it was Bob Feller Day at the ballpark, so Bob was the one who received a gift that day in the form of a brand new portable radio presented before the game from the Iowa delegation. It was his sixth victory of the season, and Feller held the White Sox to six hits, seven walks, and struck out six batters. Another visitor to Lena’s room that day was Kennesaw Mountain Landis, former Hoosier (Delphi & Logansport) and sitting Commissioner of Major League Baseball, whose office was in Chicago.
One newspaper, the May 15, 1939, Lancaster (Ohio) Eagle-Gazette, snarked off after the incident. “Bob Feller will ring up around $10,000 (in today’s money) on the side this year from his endorsements of candy, baseball equipment, breakfast foods, and what have you. That little sum should take care of Master Robert’s [problems].” As detailed above, Feller would recover nicely from the incident and have one of the best seasons of his career. It must be noted that the next year on April 16th, Opening Day of the 1940 season, Bob Feller threw his first no-hitter against, you guessed it, the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park. This time Marv Owen was not in the lineup, having been sold to the Boston Red Sox in December 1939, and Feller’s parents were safely at home listening to the game on the radio.
Part I
https://weeklyview.net/2025/03/13/nazis-at-arsenal-tech-what-part-1/
Original publish date March 13, 2025.
It’s true. In the years leading up to World War II, there was at least one eastside Indianapolis family openly identifying with the American Nazi Party. And three of those proud young Nazis graduated from Arsenal Technical High School. It all came to a head 87 years ago this Saturday when the Soltau home on North Summitt Street (where the La Parada Mexican restaurant now stands) came under attack by an angry mob of Circle City citizens seeking to enact their own “Night of Broken Glass” on March 15, 1938, seven months before Adolph Hitler’s Kristallnacht in Berlin, Germany in November of that same year. In March of 1938, Indianapolis newspapers were dominated by reports of German Wehrmarcht invaders poised at the gate, prepared to annex Austria into a āgreater German Reichā and threatening the entire Western European theatre. Those same front pages reported on an organization of Hoosier ethnic Germans who were resolutely pro-Nazi, vehemently anti-Communist, deeply anti-Semitic, and staunchly American isolationists. In 1938, an estimated 25,000 Americans were members of this German American Bund. Indianapolis boosters hoped to swell that number by appealing to the large German immigrant community by advocating āclean American nationalism against Communist international outlawry.ā
However, the German-American Bund secured very few Hoosier followers and gained little sympathy for their cause. Indiana had a well-deserved reputation for xenophobia and white nationalism that is most clearly reflected in the Ku Klux Klanās ascent to power just over a decade before. The number of Hoosiers in league with the German-American Bund was certainly much smaller than the number of members of the 1920s KKK. Still it was committed to many of the same ideological issues as the Klan. Its history confirms the complex range of xenophobic sentiments simmering in the 20th-century Circle City.
The Soltau family was closely associated with Indianapolis, particularly the east side and Irvington. John Albert Soltau (1847-1938) was a German immigrant who founded the first grocery chain in Indianapolis, the Minnesota Grocery Company. Soltau arrived here in 1873 at the age of 10. After marrying Miss Elizabeth Koehler (1851-1920), Soltau opened the first of what would become a chain of twelve grocery stores at 208 North Davidson Street. The couple had five children: William, Edward, James, John, and Benjamin. The elder Soltau remained in the grocery business for over fifty years. Three of his sons joined him, managing stores of their own. Mr. Soltau was a member of the First Evangelical Church near Lockerbie Square (where New York crosses East Street). The family residence was located at 837 Middle Drive in Woodruff Place.
In 1894, John was a Republican Ward delegate in Indianapolis. In 1902, he was an unsuccessful candidate for Marion County Recorder on the Prohibition ticket, and in 1916, he was a delegate to the national Prohibition Party convention. His long adherence to the temperance cause smacks of social conservativism, but offers no clear evidence for why his family embraced the Nazi ideology. Hoosier Prohibitionists allied themselves with the Klanās cause in the 1920s, and in 1923, Johnās brother James Garfield Soltau (1881-1932) was identified as one of the first 12,208 Ku Klux Klan members in Indianapolis. John died of “uremia and carcinoma of the prostate” on July 18, 1938, and is buried alongside his wife, Elizabeth, at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.
John’s eldest son, William Soltau, was a realtor who operated his agency in room 202 of the Inland Building at 160 East Market Street in the city for a quarter century. William and his wife Laura E. (Hansing) Soltau (1879-1943) were the parents of three children: Pearl Brilliance Soltau (1905-1968), Charles William Soltau (1909-1971), and Opal Margaret Soltau (1920-2008). All three children graduated from Arsenal Technical High School, Pearl, in 1922, Charles in 1926, and Opal in 1938. Pearl graduated from Butler University in 1925, Charles from Purdue in 1931 (with honors and a perfect 6.5 GPA), and Opal attended Butler University until at least 1940. The Soltauās moved to 339 North Summit Street in 1916 and while the Soltau family was residing under that roof, it appears that all five were emersed in and sympathetic to the Nazi cause.
The front page of the March 9, 1938, Indianapolis News ran a photo of the Soltau House with a notice that a meeting of the German American Bund, described as a “Patriotic Fighting Organization of the German Americans”, was to be held there. Regardless, the Soltau family denied that a meeting was to be held in their home. The next day, the news ran a copy of the invitation with the address of the home and the announcement that Wilhelm Kunze, National Publicity Director of the Bund, would be the speaker and that admission was free and open to the public, especially to “All Truth-Seeking Americans”. Again, the family denied that Kunze was in the city at all, let alone scheduled to appear at the house. Kunze was fresh off his January 1938 appearance in a March of Time newsreel that the Library of Congress called “the first commercially released anti-Nazi American motion picture.” The News article announced the meeting’s date as Monday, March 14, at 8:30 pm.
Hoosiers were shocked. After all, in February, the Athenaeum, the Liederkranz Hall (1417 E. Washington St.), and the Syrian-American Brotherhood Hall (2245 East Riverside) had all canceled the Bundās reservation and refused to host the event. On February 25th the Indianapolis Star identified āan American-born Nazi agentā¦born in Indianaā attempted to secure a venue āto organize Brown Shirt Nazi units in Indianapolis.ā That local organizer was revealed as Charles W. Soltau from the near-Eastside. Charles wrote a letter to the Star complaining that āthe German-American Bund has been accused, maligned and condemned without a trialā and suggested that the Bundās right to meet had been undermined by “Jewish business interests”, arguing that āa certain powerful minority group, which seems to have gained almost complete control of the press, fears the effect of public enlightment.(sic)ā Charles further declared that the Soltau family was āanxious to have our house filled with German-Americans who have enough backbone to assert their constitutional right of peaceable assembly in the face of opposition by these boycott racketeers.ā He closed his letter as āYours for a cleaned-up, white manās U.S.A. Charles Soltau.” Shortly after that revelation, 27-year-old Soltau announced that the meeting was called off.
The front page of the March 15, 1938, Indianapolis Star reported, “Rocks hurled through the windows at the home of William A. Soltau, 339 North Summit Street, broke up an organization meeting of the Indianapolis affiliate of the Nazi Amerika Deutschen Volksbundes (German American bund) late last night.” William Albert Soltau (1875-1950) called the police for help after it was learned that Gerhard Wilhelm “Fritz” Kunze (1882-1958) and a small entourage had joined the Soltau family for dinner earlier that evening. Fritz Kuhn, often referred to as the āAmerican FĆ¼hrer”, was the leader of the fledgling German-American Bund (Federation). Fearing for his dinner guests’ safety, Soltau asked police to escort Kunze and his guests to safety. Although Kunze refused to divulge his identity to any of the officers present, his “tooth-brush mustache”, proper Sturmabteilung brownshirt, and swastika tie-clasp made the physical connection to German Chancellor Adolph Hitler unmistakable.
When escorted from the home, Kunze declared to the officers and crowd gathered on the sidewalk, “I am a guest of Mr. Soltau, and he does not want my name known.” Kunze eventually admitted his identity to the police after they discovered the Bund application blanks Kunze held in his hands, wrapped up in a newspaper. An Indianapolis News article claimed that visible through the broken windows were, “Fifteen chairs had been arranged around a dining room table, and on it were application blanks for Bund membership.” The article noted that the “photographer for the Associated Press was ordered off the Soltau property by a man who carried a gun.” Soltau repeated his denials that a Bund meeting had been held in his home, claiming it was just “a few guests in for dinner.” The shades of the house were drawn, and a police squad car remained in front of the house from dusk to 10:30 pm when the officers went off duty. At 10:43 pm, a barrage of rocks crashed through the north windows of the Soltau house. Cars buzzed Summit Street for days afterward as curious motorists drove past the Soltau home and a near-constant gang of 40 or 50 youngsters “milled in the neighborhood”. Further exacerbating the situation, on July 18, 1938, just 4 months after the attack at his son’s home, family patriarch and Indianapolis grocery chain magnate John Albert Soltau died at age 90. Over the years, the elder Soltau and his son had purchased 4 tracts of land totaling 234 acres along State Road 46 in Gnaw Bone, 8 miles east of Nashville in Brown County. Newspapers speculated that the land was to be used as a Bund camp for Nazi activities, but the Soltau’s denied it.
Next Week: Part II: Nazi’s at Arsenal Techā¦What?
Nazi’s at Arsenal Techā¦What?
Part II
https://weeklyview.net/2025/03/20/nazis-at-arsenal-tech-what-part-2/
Original publish date March 20, 2025.
On March 15, 1938, an eastside Indianapolis house was rocked (quite literally) by an angry crowd after the city learned about a formational meeting of the German-American Bund, an organization formed to follow the ideals and edicts of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi party. The Soltau family, who lived at 339 North Summit Street, welcomed a controversial visitor to their home, a German transplant named Fritz Kunze. The Nazi’s visit was greeted by Circle-City residents hurling rocks through the front windows of the Soltau home. Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze was the Bundās publicity director who invented derogatory names for people (Franklin D. Rosenfeld) and programs (The Jew Deal) he disapproved of while extolling Jim Crow laws, warned against immigrants, and advocated for the Chinese Exclusion Act. Fritz warned white Americans: āYou, Aryan, Nordic, and Christiansā¦wake upā and ādemand our government be returned to the people who founded itā¦It has always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation.ā
Despite the Eastside Indianapolis Nazi recruitment session debacle, the Soltau family stayed committed to Nazi ideology. In November 1938, Charles and his youngest sister, Opal, fresh off her graduation from Tech High School, returned from a Bund indoctrination trip to Germany. Some of these trips included meetings with Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Hitler himself. Whether the siblings were in the Rhineland to attend a German youth camp or to enjoy a post-graduation vacation is unknown. While 18-year-old Opal fit the profile, Charles was almost 30 and may have aged out of that group. They left Hamburg on November 3rd, arriving back in New York on the 11th. The Soltau family quietly supported the Bund cause by subscribing to The Free American newsletter and other Nazi propaganda publications including a liturgy of anti-Semitic tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler’s Mein Kampf manifesto. A November 1941 FBI investigation identified the Soltau family as 4 of 38 stockholders in the Press (The publishing house had issued 5000 shares of preferred stock at $10 a share in 1937). The FBI noted that the Soltau family were the only stockholders from Indiana. While the Free American had local news columns in Fort Wayne and South Bend, there were none in Indianapolis.
The German-American Bund was at its zenith in 1938-39, but after 20,000 people attended a Bund rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia instigated a series of investigations that would ultimately bring them down. In September 1939, after the Nazis invaded Poland the FBI and federal government went after the Bund. Fritz Kunze was detained by the South Bend Police on May 12, 1941.
In the inventory of Kunzeās papers confiscated by the Police were cards with the names and addresses of Bund members, including the Soltau family, the only members from Indiana. Kunze was charged with espionage, and in November 1941, just a month before Pearl Harbor, he fled to Mexico, hoping to escape to Germany. Kunze was captured by the Feds in Mexico in June 1942 and sent to jail for espionage, where he spent the rest of the war. The German-American Bund disbanded officially immediately after Pearl Harbor. Regardless, some Bund members had their American citizenship revoked and were deported, while others were prosecuted for refusing to register for the draft. Kunze was eventually deported himself in 1945.
In September 1940, when the draft began, the Bund instructed its members to boycott registration, and soon, former Bundist members began to be prosecuted by the Selective Service System for failure to register. 33-year-old Hoosier Charles William Soltau was among those who refused to report for induction. In August 1942, draft dodger Soltau was arrested, and his home was raided by US Marshals who discovered a large cache of Nazi propaganda there. It included issues of The Free American, a portrait of Hitler, Swastika banners, and Nazi memorabilia. In a four-page letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soltau argued that āin all my association with the German-American Bund I never was guilty of any subversive activity.ā After spending a couple of nights in jail, Soltau posted a $5000 cash bond. When he appeared in court in November, he argued that, āMy conscience will not permit me to bear arms against the German people.ā He informed the court that āThis war is a war of aggression by the United States against the Germans. I am a man of German blood, and I donāt think it is right or fair or just for a man of German blood to bear arms against the German people.ā It took the jury six minutes to deliberate and deliver a five-year sentence to Soltau. Judge Robert C. Baltzell concluded that āI have never seen a more contemptuous fellow in this court,ā and āI am going to do all I can to see that you serve as much [time] as possible.ā In December 1943, while serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Milan, Michigan federal prison, Soltau’s mother Laura died. Charles was released in 1946, and with his sisters, Opal and Pearl, he moved to their secluded Brown County property near Gnaw Bone.
Their father, William Albert Soltau, died there on October 6, 1950, at age 75. His funeral service was held at Shirley Brothers Central Chapel in Irvington, and he is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery on Washington Street alongside his brothers, whose funeral services were also held at Shirley Brothers. At least one brother, Benjamin Harrison āBenā (1889-1963), was a member of Irvington Masonic Lodge 666, and another, James Garfield Soltau (1881-1932), was an admitted member of the KKK. The Soltau siblings quietly left Indianapolis and moved to Gnaw Bone, where they lived together in Brown County for the remainder of their lives, and none of the three ever married. The siblings started with three goats in 1952, and by 1962, their “trip” (or tribe) had reached 44 head, so they created Pleasant Valley Goat Farm on their 200-acre Gnaw Bone property. The family sold goatās milk and yogurt in local farm markets. Pearl Soltau also moonlighted as an accountant for a local hosiery mill, preparing tax returns on the farm. After a two-year illness, Pearl died at the Gnaw Bone farm in May 1968 at the age of 62. Charles died there on July 5, 1971, at age 61. Although Charles’s membership in the āGerman-American National Congressā was mentioned in his obit, Pearl betrayed no history of continued xenophobic activism after the war. Both are buried at Henderson Cemetery in Gnaw Bone.
However, the youngest sibling, Opal, remained committed to neo-Nazi causes for more than a half-century after the war. Even after the deaths of her siblings, Opal continued to agitate for unpopular political causes. Opal had been a standout at Arsenal Tech High School. She was a straight-A Honor Roll Student and received the scholarship medal from the Tech faculty in 1938. In the 1980s, Opal Soltau was accused of mailing neo-Nazi propaganda from the post office in Nashville, In. In September 1996, Opal sold her parcel of 120 acres in Brown County and by January 1997, she had moved to Nebraska. That same month, she became a Director for the National Socialist German Workersā Party-Overseas Organization. Opal Soltau died in Lincoln in August 2008 and is presumed buried there. No one knows how the pilot light of Nazi fervor was lit in the Soltau family and, for that matter, how it burned out of control within the hearts and minds of these three Arsenal Tech graduates. Political ideology grows unchecked when surrounded only by like-minded individuals living in a silo of misinformation. Sometimes, it is the better part of valor to explore divergent opinions. The flame of Nazism burns through everything it touches. Characterized by extreme nationalism and steered by blind faith in misguided authoritarianism, its victims don’t realize what has happened until it’s too late. And by then, no matter what, they will never admit that they were ever wrong in the first place.
For a more thorough study of the Soltau family, I recommend the blog Nazis in the Heartland: The German-American Bund in Indianapolis by the late Paul R. Mullins (1962-2023), Anthropology Professor at IU Indianapolis (formerly IUPUI).
Originally Published in December 2011. Republish Date December 21, 2023.
https://weeklyview.net/2023/12/21/james-dean-in-gettysburg/
There is an item on my office desk that calls to me every time my mind wanders, I’m gathering my thoughts, or most often, while I’m waiting for a document to load on the computer. It’s a ticket stub, smaller than an index card, from a Tuesday, February 19, 1957, double feature movie at the Majestic Theatre in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I bought the ticket in an antique mall just off the Gettysburg town square while on a trip with friends to the famous Civil War battlefield this past Spring. Native Hoosier that I am, my heart jumps a little whenever I see something with an Indiana connection so far away from home.
The ticket is for a movie touted as being “Direct from Hollywood” (Where else would it be from in 1957?) called “Dracula in House of the Living Dead”. The ticket features the cartoon image of a young woman on her hands and knees crawling away from a house whose disembodied eyes follow her, and oh yeah, she’s in a skimpy bathing suit. I’m not an expert on Dracula movies, but my guess is that this movie was just a rehash of an old well-known film with a brand new title designed to lure unsuspecting people into the theatre believing they were seeing a new release. A despicable practice common amongst studios back in the 1950s Era.
While the Dracula ticket and its promise of an additional unannounced “Thrilling Horror Movie”, were intriguing to be sure, they were not the reason for my purchase. Above the terror-stricken swimsuit-clad woman, there was an eerie floating head of someone very familiar to me and many of my fellow Hoosier baby boomers. It was Fairmount’s own James Dean. The printed promise near his image read: “Seeā¦the materialization of James Dean BACK FROM THE GRAVE!” On Stage in Person” Cool, James Dean in Gettysburg, why that’s soā¦Wait, that’sā¦impossible. James Dean died in a car crash on September 30, 1956, and this ticket is dated after Valentine’s Day of 1957! How could that be?
After a few minutes, I realized that this surely must be one of the earliest attempts at the exploitation of a dead celebrity ever attempted. Today, Hollywood barely waits for the body to get cold before cranking out biopics and making cable movies about dead celebrities. Anna Nicole-Smith, Heath Ledger, and Michael Jackson are recent examples. But in 1957 Gettysburg, really? One can only imagine the theatre owner dreaming up this stunt to draw a crowd, finding a good looking blonde haired kid from nearby Gettysburg College, paying him a small fee, and instructing him to walk out on stage wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, a red cloth jacket, and sunglasses before exiting speedily amid the gasps, squeals and screams of the frenzied teens in attendance.
Did I mention that the Majestic Theatre is built so close to the historic Lincoln train depot station that you can almost touch it? The very same train depot where Lincoln arrived the night before he delivered his incomparable Gettysburg Address on the battlefield, on November 18, 1863. A spot many consider to be hallowed ground. But how could this be? Was this an isolated incident of gross exploitation or part of a larger movement? A little research reveals that shortly after James Dean’s death on a lonely California highway, a “James Dean Lives” cult was born.
The first indication that the “James Dean Lives” cult was getting out of hand appeared in January of 1956, just three months after Dean died on the last day of September of 1955. Since October, Warner Brothers studio had been deluged with frantic fan letters expressing shock and disbelief that the teen idol was really dead. The letters continued to flow into the studio past Thanksgiving, but by December, the letter stream dramatically increased, both in volume and in spiritual tone. It now seemed that fans didn’t believe Jimmy was gone at all. New rumors claimed that he was being kept alive in a California nursing home and that the studios were stalling for time, just waiting for his recovery and a comeback. Hollywood Gossip columnist Walter Winchell printed the rumor that Dean was disfigured but still alive in his column. Other stories insisted that it wasn’t Dean at all who died in the car wreck, but rather a hitchhiker. Still more farfetched was the rumor that the actor was in hiding learning to operate his artificial limbs or that he had been placed in a sanitarium to recover. Three thousand letters came in during January and increased so steadily that by July, that number had increased to seven thousand. By the first anniversary of his death, Warner Brothers had received over fifty thousand fan letters from all over the world.
However, some of the “Mass hysteria” attributed to the “James Dean Lives” rumors can be rationally explained away. Much of this fan mail came from remote regions of South America, Australia, and Western Europe. While these areas still received the movies, albeit posthumously, they did not receive much news and were most likely unaware that James Dean was dead. Many times, these letters were addressed simply to: “James Dean Warner Brothers Studios Burbank California USA” and contained notes that read “Dear James Dean-I love your movies. Will you send me a picture?” That first year, the studio obliged and sent out the photos as requested, which undoubtedly did little to quell the rumors.
But that didn’t explain all of the letters. From the day of his death, it seemed that young people would not let Dean die. Warner Brothers hired a special fan mail agency, the first of its kind in Hollywood, to deal with the deluge of mail that poured into the studio addressed to the dead star. Mattson’s, a Hollywood clothing shop, received hundreds of orders for red jackets identical to the one Dean had worn in Rebel Without a Cause. Griffith Park, where pivotal scenes from the movie were shot, became a tourist attraction overnight. Fans lined up inside the Observatory, hoping for a chance to sit in the same seat Dean had occupied in the film.
Although today’s generations might not be familiar with James Dean, over the years, an impressive list of actors and performers have claimed to have been influenced by him, including Bob Dylan, Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, and the late Jim Morrison, poet and lead singer for the Doors. Humphrey Bogart, who outlived Dean by two years and also knew a thing or two about cool, once said: “Dean died at just the right time. He left behind a legend. If he had lived, he’d never have been able to live up to his publicity.” Eventually, the realization that James Dean was gone set in. The world of cool moved on to others like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Terre Haute’s own Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman, to name just a few. The Paul Newman comparison is not a random one. Not only will readers of my column recognize my admiration for Newman, but they might also be surprised by the ethereal connection between Newman and Dean.
James Dean’s final screen test for East of Eden (1955) was shot with Paul Newman, who also was in the final running for the role of Dean’s character Cal’s fraternal twin brother Aron. At the time of his death, Dean was signed to star as the lead (as Boxer Rocky Graziano) in the 1956 MGM movie “Somebody Up There Likes Me” and the 1958 Warner Brothers movie “The Left Handed Gun” (as Billy the Kid). Both roles subsequently were taken by Paul Newman and both helped make him a star. Some film experts have claimed that Newman’s career may never have gotten off the ground at all if Dean had lived. Both young actors often competed for the same roles and there just weren’t enough scripts to go around. When Dean died, he was signed to play in “The Battler” on the “Playwrights ’56” television series. The role went instead to Paul Newman. To further illustrate the Dean-Newman connection, Jimmy was the front-runner to star alongside Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Released in 1958), when he died, the role went to Paul Newman. The role earned Newman an Academy Award nomination and established Newman as a star once and for all.
The two megastars mug for the camera for a few seconds when Dean says to Newman, “Kiss Me” to which the older Newman replies “Can’t here.” Watch closely and you’ll see that Newman is sweating profussely under his armpits. More importantly, the clip instantly transports the viewer back to a time before James Dean climbed into the driver’s seat of his Porsche Spider and rode towards the California horizon, and immortality.
Just before his death, Dean’s agent, Jane Deacy, negotiated a 9-picture deal over 6 years with Warner Bros. worth $900,000. In 1956, Dean became the first actor to receive an Academy Award nomination posthumously, for his role in East of Eden (1955). He did not win. A year later, in 1957 Jimmy was nominated for his second Oscar for “Giant”, thereby becoming the only actor in history to receive more than one Oscar nomination posthumously. James Dean was nominated for Academy Awards in two-thirds of his films, a record which will probably never be bettered.
