Golden Age of Hollywood Halloween

Maybe more so than other holidays (if you consider it one), Halloween memories are often crystal clear. Something about wearing something uncommon and meaningful can make a memory vivid even decades later. Don’t let the memories fade. Happy end of October to all.

Janet Leigh, all rights to the owner. Getty Images

The Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers of Flatbush

The opening sentences of a piece like this inevitably always begin with something like: “with the crisp fall air…” There is a reason for this, as baseball is a game of hope, repetition and reconciliation. Over the course of a six-month season, baseball fans go from hope springs eternal to there’s always next year.

Few teams experienced more “there’s always next year(s) than the Brooklyn Dodgers during the middle of the 20th century. Having lost four in a row during the late 1940’s and well into the 1950s, proved to be agonizing for the residents and fans of Brooklyn borough. This futility would also spawn a secondary nickname that was rather unflattering, The Bums.

In spite of an extended track record of losing, Brooklyn fans stuck by the Dodgers year-after-year and showed up in droves to the stadium in Flatbush. The Dodgers took their name, which eluded to pedestrians “Dodging” the many streetcars of Brooklyn in 1911. Owner Charles Ebbets began buying up lots along Sullivan St. in 1908 with plans to build a stadium on the site with construction beginning in 1912. The park at its largest iteration held only 35,000 fans, small by today’s standard.

We will no doubt revisit Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers in future posts.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE PLIMPTON (PART I)

You can make the case that George Plimpton was one of the more interesting men of the 20th Century. A true East Coast Blue-Blood who could trace his lineage back to the Mayflower, George had the kind of prep lineage that seemed straight out of The Official Preppy Handbook.

Educated in the most exclusive and elite prep schools of New England, Plimpton benefitted from a privileged youth that most could only imagine.

A writer for the Harvard Lampoon and a reported original founder of the Paris Review, Plimpton’s main profession (if forced to pick one) would be journalist and writer. However, his list of side-gigs would be hard to count on two hands. Having appeared in numerous movies and commercials, George was a person many knew they knew, but often didn’t know from where. Knowing who George was like being in on a private joke.

Image property of Larry Fink Estate

George pioneered a style of journalism called “participatory journalism”, which was the act of putting himself into the activity being covered. Plimpton boxed, played quarterback in an NFL scrimmage, pitched in an MLB exhibition among many other notable events.

George Plimpton passed away in 2003.

The Life and Times of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Part 1)

Francis “Scott” Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul Minnesota in September of 1896. In a few weeks I will be older than he was when he died. I also share the same birth week as he did. I wonder if he celebrated his birthdays. Although he seemed like the type to celebrate all occasions both large and small.

Photo property of Fitzgerald estate.

During his short life he managed to write a handful of novels, one of which is considered THE great American novel. Although it was considered a failure upon its initial release.

He was a tortured soul to say the least. Never having done well in school, despite attending and subsequently dropping out of Princeton University, some 85 years after his death, he remains an enigma. We can never fully understand his genius nor his inner torment.

Photo property of Princeton University 1917

Fitzgerald’s exploits have been well documented, but it is not as well-known that he was named after Francis Scott Key, who was a distant cousin.

Fitzgerald is also credited with the first use of the word “t-shirt”, used in the novel “This Side of Paradise”.

Navigator Archive will continue to cover the life of Fitzgerald in future Field Guide posts.