Hollywood vs. Hawaii

Mary Astor

     On a Sunday way back on July 19, 1936 a six-hour long radio match, now long forgotten, was played between the Hollywood Chess Club and the Hawaiian Army Chess Club. 
     The Hollywood players met at the home of a LA Police detective, Lt. Donald Praper, who was also a ham radio operator. The Army team met at Schofield Barracks. 
     If you remember, Pearl Harbor was not the only installation that was bombed on December 7, 1941; other military targets were attacked, too. Just a short drive north of the harbor, was the Wheeler airfield. Wheeler was the largest fighter base on Oahu at the time with nearly 150 fighter planes that needed to disabled before the bombing of Pearl Harbor’s ships. The attack killed 36 people and wounded 74 others. The attackers then flew over Schofield Barracks, damaging buildings, wounding many and killing a few others. But those events were five years in the future. Schofield Barracks was also to be the principal setting for the novel From Here to Eternity by James Jones. 

     In Hollywood, a few years earlier Warner Bros. had acquired access to First National's affiliated chain of theaters, but they continued to operate as separate entities. In July 1936, the big news was the stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. voted to dissolve the corporation and distribute its assets among the stockholders to take advantage of the tax laws. 
     Also in Hollywood, the Motion Picture Directors Association was dissolved when members of the helped create the Screen Directors Guild, an official craft union. 
     The real news out of Hollywood though was actress Mary Astor's trial and juicy sex scandal. Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) is best remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon in 1941. 

     She began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. When the talkies arrived her career hit a bump because her voice was considered too masculine, but within a year she was back in the movies. But in 1936 her career was nearly destroyed due to a sex scandal. 
     At the age of 17 in 1923, she was canoodling with actor John Barrymore and when they broke up she married an actor named Ken Hawks who was soon killed while filming a World War I dogfight from a biplane. That left Mary a widow at 23. 
     She soon succumbed to the bedside manner of Dr. Franklyn Thorpe who appreciated her for her income which allowed him to set up his gynecological practice. They were married in 1931 and two years later she wanted out, but an attorney warned her that a custody trial over her daughter could ruin her career.
     At the suggestion of a friend she took a vacation in New York and that's where she met George S. Kaufman, a married and very successful playwright on Broadway. They had an affair and she described him as absolutely sensational in the sack. 
     After her fling with Kaufman she decided to divorce Thorpe anyway, but when he refused, she and her four-year-old daughter moved out. He wasn't surprised and was prepared. He had found her diary and read that his sexual performance was lame, she didn't like his social climbing and found it offensive and she didn't appreciate his reckless extravagance with her money. She had also ridiculed him for growing a mustache identical to Clark Gable’s. 
     In the diary he also read about her affair with Kaufman and used it to his advantage. In 1935 Thorpe won an uncontested divorce, but Mary was worried that he might move away and take her daughter, so in 1936 she decided to challenge the custody agreement. 
     In July 1936 Thorpe began leaking snippets from the diary and he even fabricated some entries. He said Mary’s confessions included a racy scorecard that listed all the men she had bedded along with numerical ratings. Needless to say, panic arose in Hollywood. What if one of the stars had gotten a poor score?!
     Thorpe planned to use the diary to prove she was an unfit mother. He threatened to put her graded scorecard into evidence and had already shown a page of it to the press. 
     Although written in brown ink, the tabloids called it “the Purple Diary.” News headlines of the day screamed MARY ASTOR SOBS ON STAND, ASTOR’S SENSATIONS SCARE FILM MOGULS and ASTOR DIARY ECSTASY-G. S. KAUFMAN TRYST BARED. 
     The diary was never formally offered as evidence during the trial, but Thorpe and his lawyers constantly referred to it. Astor admitted that the diary existed and that she had documented her affair with Kaufman, but maintained that many of the parts that had been referred to were forgeries that were written following the theft of the diary from her desk. 
     A settlement was reached on August 13 and daughter Marylyn was awarded to her mother during the school months and to her father for vacation periods and weekends. The child’s teachers, governesses, and nurses would be selected by mutual consent and the costs shared. 
     The diary was deemed inadmissible as a mutilated document and the trial judge ordered it sealed and impounded. In 1952, by court order, Astor's diary was removed from the bank vault where it had been sequestered for 16 years and destroyed. 
     Astor also authored five novels. Her autobiography was a bestseller, as was her later book, A Life on Film, which was about her career.  Read her NY Times obituary for more dirt.
     On to the match. In Hollywood Detective Praper transmitted the moves in Morse code which were received in Hawaii by an Army radio operator. This represented the first time a Pacific match was played by wireless. 
     Connections were established at 7:30 pm California time (5:00 pm in Hawaii) and lasted until 1:30 am (California time). The match was only two boards with each board having two players in consultation. Arrangements were made by the North American Correspondence Chess League which was headquartered in Beverly Hills and was umpired by Herman Steiner with Albert C. Simonson serving as referee. 
     Hollywood played white on board one and was represent by Dr. Griffith and MacMahon; their opponents were Sgt. Huth and Maconel. It was a hard fought affair that began as a Ruy Lopez Steinitz Defense. Black quickly won a P, but lost if back. On move 19 white went astray and eventually lost. 
     Board two had the Army's Sarella and Roberts facing Hollywood's Johnson (president of the club) and Chern (club secretary). Army opened with an Evans Gambit and lost quickly in only 19 moves.