Murray to Lane Morgan, 31 October 1972--birthday letter

Hi, Birthday Girl….

Rosa has been burning the midnight pugetpower as if a Nancy Bare special were to be on stage tomorrow, while I’ve been pondering the possibilities for a paternal type present for an anti-materialist of twenty-two. The result is refurbished teeth from me, a poncho from Rosa, and we both hope they fit. 

It will be great if you can make it up for Thanksgiving. The beach last weekend was marvelous. Pete and Ellie were there; she was stringing morels and russellas on fishline leader to dry over the big stove, and Pete, whose handlebar has turned dark red in contrast to his pepper gray elsewhere, was saying of the blustery day, “this kind of day is what this place is all about.” Leslie was supposed to be about to tell her boyfriend that she wouldn’t go steady but they didn’t look like it walking the beach. Otto was in S.F. to see Johanna and the Wheelises and Fred Straus, and Phyllis stayed in Shelton, but Mary  had a beautiful specialist in lung diseases who is giving the Walker Ames lectures and admired Skid Road. Dorothy was bemoaning the fact that her biology teacher is an authority on the electricity of cells and specializes her lectures in that direction. Gene was contemplating the impending special session of the legislature with some equanimity: there’s nothing more they can take away from the U., he thinks: over-optimistically, I suspect.

We woke up Wednesday morning with the power off. Rosa said she’d been awake most of the night feeling something was odd but resisting the urge to wake me up to help her worry. When I looked out the window: snow.  Several inches of wet, heavy snow. It came with the leaves still on the trees and two of the three Chinese elms by the badminton area snapped off about half-way up, the poplars lost quite a few branches, the tulip tree and the flowering plum some more, and one of the three cottonwoods over by the old laundry tubs next to the paddock gate broke off. No damage to the house, but the yard looked like a stump ranch. I’ve been busy with the Swedish fiddle for the last couple days and most of the debris is cleared away now and we’re over the shock, but it rekindles awareness of impermanence. (I’ll think I’ll write a short story about a man who wants to build an absolutely secure house, and see what it gets me.) [Murray is referring to Allen Wheelis’s “The Illusionless Man and the Visionary Maid,” which is online at http://vk.com/doc401440_3186463?dl=91d06c098f9a0998bd]

Otto and Phyllis and Lisa came by on Otto’s way home from the airport on Wednesday afternoon and we had a fine report. Otto quotes himself as turning to Fred, when they were all alone in a theater one afternoon watching "Death in Venice" and saying, “You know, Visconti didn’t read the book either.” I think I told you we saw Bergman’s "The Touch" while in Portland: it was godawful. We didn’t like the Rep’s first play either, “Ring Round the Moon,” but the UW students had a fine version of Albee’s “The American Dream,” and a broad by pleasant comedy by Chekov, “The Marriage Proposal.” Next Wednesday, “The Three Sisters” at the Showboat. 

School rocks along, taking time but not much mental effort. I’ve just graded the first set of book reports, 87 of them, mostly routine. There was one unusual one from a Fox Island Bircher (who likes me, I think) and who explained she finds in the class confirmation of her literal interpretation of the Bible. Education is a many-splendored thing. 

 

We received a fine letter from Howard Daniel during the week. He retires in four weeks, and will stay in Geneva, and plans to write more art books. The Encyclopedia of Themes and Subjects in Painting is out and has been nicely reviewed…

Jim Faber (right) and Ivar Haglund, via historylink and Paul Dorpat

[Jim] Faber had his gall bladder out on Tuesday. We’re going to present him a plastic box in which to preserve it in case he ever runs out of gall and needs it. 

 

Rosa and I trimmed Balzac [their standard poodle] on separate days and got somewhat carried away with the effort. He’s still shaggy but looks as if he’d stuck his head in a pencil sharpener.

The New Statesman’s current contest is: Write a letter from any prominent person declining an invitation to the Last Supper. I can’t wait for the answers. 

Seattle icons: Skid Road guy, Murray, the stolen Tlingit totem (actually a recreation, which was paid for this time), and Chief Seattle, taken by equally iconic Mary Randlett in Pioneer Square

The second printing of Skid Road is now on the stands. They’ve corrected the errors. It’s back up to 10^th on the Seattle charts. Faber says all the young people in his office are enthusiasts: didn’t know Seattle had a sinful past, and look on Jim with new respect.

It’s Hallowe’en and the first of the little monsters have been here. I must go out and set the traps.

Have a good birthday, this year, every year,

Your doting father, 

 M

Jim and Ann Faber to Morgans, spring 1954 -- "yours in poverty"

Soon after we left to live cheaply in Mexico for a year while Murray finished writing The Dam, KTAC radio terminated Murray and Jim Faber's news program. Murray and Jim had planned to share the job, six months on and six months off, to allow for travel and other writing opportunities. The Fabers were living in our house, and it must have been no fun at all to write the letter explaining their mutual unemployment. It salted the wound that they were replaced in their time slot by Burt McMurtrie, who had produced Bing Crosby's Woodbury Soap show in the 1930s before turning to political commentary in Tacoma. Jim and Murray considered Bing a better use of his talents. 

The firing was made less routine by suspicions that it was in retaliation for Murray and Jim's support for Tacoma's switch to a city manager form of government. That move in turn was part of the reaction against the city's infamously open town approach, with its accompanying gambling, prostitution, police payoff scandals, and unsavory stories galore. 

Then-state senator, later governor, Albert D. Rosellini chaired hearings on local corruption, held at the Tacoma Armory in the winter of 1951 and broadcast live just as widespread TV ownership was taking hold. Rosellini used the exposure to jump start his first, unsuccessful, run for governor in 1952 and his winning campaign in 1956. The hearings were a news bonanza for journalists like Jim and Murray, who enjoyed holding local officials' feet to the fire. Murray's friends also placed copies of Skid Road, published earlier that year, wherever a TV camera might be likely to linger. 

Rosa with her Rollei

Rosa also stirred things up. Dispatched to cover a press conference put on by one suspected open town enabler, she listened to him complain that he was being treated as though he had buried payoff money in his back yard. My mom was soft-spoken, pretty, and way tougher than she looked. I expect he was relieved to call on her among the sea of familiar newsroom faces: "Well where did you put the money?" she asked him. 

Sam Angeloff, another salty Tacoma reporter of the era (and father of Sam Angeloff Jr., "Young Sam" to us, who followed his dad to the Seattle P-I before becoming a foreign correspondent for Life and a founder of People Magazine) alerted a friend in the FBI about the firings, with suggestions that the FCC should hear about this. But the tempest soon died down, Murray found a spot at KMO radio when we got back to the U.S., and Jim had a varied career in journalism and public relations.

Ann Faber to Morgans -- 1954

Dear jobless Morgans:

Ann Faber

This is just to second everything my friend, former boy newscaster Jim Faber had to say.

aside from our stomachs, things seem to be settling down after last Wednesday's execution....i think you would have been proud of the tastefully done farewell song of faber and morgan....and interested to know that in jim's modest statement of the sterling virtues of the show, morgan received star billing.

the only halfway good news we've heard recently is that mcmurtrie has diabetes....which will make it extremely difficult for the medical profession to determine when he is in an insulin coma....

...

ann

(The sympathy sent
to Rosa was due to a recent miscarriage.)

Jim Faber to Murray and Rosa, 1954 -- "write when you find work"

Jim and Murray, typically rumpled, in their Mexican shirts

In 1954 we moved to Puerto Vallarta (then a little-known village) to live cheaply while Murray was working on writing projects in the absence of his radio journalism income. He and Jim Faber had been reporting together, and the position was downsized to one person. Murray and Jim's plan had been to take turns on the job, with the Fabers staying at Trout Lake while we were in Mexico.  Shortly after sending this note, Jim got fired for both of them. Although he was not, as claimed, the illegitimate son of Jean Harlow, he was in fact the cousin of Gypsy Rose Lee.

 

 

dear turists..

finally got around to bailing out the morgan mailbox today- and found this in it…i took the liberty (as social secretary) in dispatching a letter off to brother moskin saying you were in mexico city attending a bund meeting and that i was forwarding your letter.

Otherwise, your mail is most uninteresting. we’ve settled down to enjoying the morgan manse, and all is under control. your suit came back from the cleaners, and I think with a few alterations, it will be ok. drove rosa’s car the other day, and found it most satisfactory, except that I noted a tendency to shimmy whenever it hit 90. ann is a little miffed at me for breaking the bean pot, but I did it in a fit of pique when I found she had painted the front room pine boards in alternate stripes of red and white.

 

The pine boards, unstriped

And we managed to meet a few of the neighbors the other night—it was my first realization that most people out here belong to the volunteer fire department. 

hope you're enjoying yourself. the weather here has been wonderful, and I am the illegitimate son of jean harlow. write when you find work. 

jim und ann

ps…rosa – did you really tell ann to put in a cupful of detergent when operating the dishwashing machine?