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Tales from a Thirties pressroom (when Dallas reporters didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story)
By Jim Chambers |

BACK IN THE troubled Thirties, the occupants of a dark, dingy nook in the basement of City Hall were too preoccupied with crime news to worry about bank closings, 10 percent salary cuts and massive unemployment. In the police pressroom, seven men toiled daily to turn out stories for Dallas’ four newspapers. It was from this cubbyhole (furnished with three typewriter desks, four telephones and a cot) that the stories about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Raymond Hamilton, the bootleg wars and lesser crimes poured forth.

You could pass the room at almost any time of day or night and hear the clacking of a typewriter reverberating off the white tile floor and dull-green plaster walls. Whether working or loafing, these were the last of the “Front Page” boys.

They roamed the halls, hats askew, ties pulled from their collars, baggy pants flapping as they searched out reports from the robbery, homicide, burglary and juvenile divisions or in the property room. The property room was checked almost hourly, for it was here that evidence gathered from raids on bootleggers was stored.

In the back of the room were tall shelves on which half-gallon jugs and jars of illegal liquor were labeled and stored along with pint and quart bottles. Now and then, a reporter would slip in and quaff some of the blistering evidence. If he found it to his liking, he would siphon enough to take with him in an empty bottle he carried around.

About a quart of evidence a day disappeared-enough to keep the police reporters and their drop-in friends happy. If a reporter drank too much evidence, the others covered for him, either writing stories for his paper or calling his city desk in disguised voices.

These reporters never lacked news to report -legitimate or otherwise. If nothing of interest was happening, they made something up. A rumor of a police department shake-up was always good on a dull day. And there was the proverbial report that Clyde and Bonnie had been sighted on the outskirts of town, even though they were really in Oklahoma. This usually was good for a two-column headline on Page One.

These were the last of the old boys who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. They were showmen -romantics with gigantic imaginations and egos. Each was dedicated to getting the news first for his paper, regardless of what it was.

I was a fledgling in this nest.

As a very green, impressionable young reporter, I was sent to the police beat to understudy and relieve Pat Kleinman, star reporter for the Dallas Dispatch, the workingman’s newspaper. I thought Pat could outwrite Hemingway, and he really knew his way around City Hall.

My first day on the job I met Bill Duncan of the Times Herald, the toothless dean of the police beat; Ken Hand, the flamboyant, florid-faced reporter for the Dallas Journal; Joe Lubben, the young, gentlemanly reporter for the Dallas News; Alfred Andersson, the gangly, fun-loving relief reporter for the Herald; Aaron Grif-fing, the studious, aging night reporter for the News; and Jack Procter, a feature writer for the Dispatch, who gathered much of his fictionalized material from the police.

I remember a story that Procter manufactured right before our eyes one morning in front of City Hall. Police Chief Claude Trammel, looking distinguished and official in his uniform with its stars and gold buttons, stood on the steps of City Hall and presided over the destruction of a truckload of excess white lightning evidence. Standing beside him were the sheriff and a federal alcohol tax agent. As police poured the whiskey into the gutter, it flowed along to a sewer drain, washing against the tires of several cars parked along the curb.

The ceremony was pretty routine and was worth only a small story until Procter, with the deftness of a pickpocket, dropped a match into the flowing alcohol. In a blue flash, the whiskey caught fire and snaked for nearly a block, enveloping the tires of the parked automobiles.

Now that was a story!

The fire department, only half a block away, soon got things under control, but not until the cars were left with blistered paint and flat, smoldering tires.



A DAY AT the pressroom started at about 6 a.m. First, reporters checked the overnight police reports. Then they would call their city editors to fill them in on what they had to write, and the editors would set priorities on the order in which they wanted stories written. After that, typewriters would start clacking, and the twist of a call button on the wall would bring a Western Union messenger to take the stories to the papers.

When the first flurry was over, a call to a small cafe across the street would bring a waiter with coffee, six hot biscuits, butter and jelly for 15 cents. After breakfast, reporters would stalk the halls and check the jail, hunting for story leads.

When the pressroom radio announced a major accident, shooting or robbery, reporters would rush into the City Hall driveway and flag down a squad car to take them to the scene. If they heard an urgent medical call, they would dash to the emergency hospital next-door to City Hall and try to bum a ride in an ambulance. If they missed, they’d take a cab.

When a reporter fluffed a story, it was cricket to ask his colleagues for details, but he never looked over someone’s shoulder while he was writing. What a reporter put down was his personal version; it belonged only to him and his newspaper.

One day, Ken Hand was banging away at his typewriter when Alfred Andersson walked in after a two-hour lunch. Andersson tried to read over Hand’s shoulder, but Hand stopped writing and hovered over his machine to cover the paper. Andersson persisted. Hand told him where to go.

Incensed, Andersson got a scrub pail, filled it with water and poured the whole thing over Hand and his typewriter.

Hand, coughing and sputtering, walked over to Andersson’s desk, picked up his typewriter and dropped it.

Hand had been writing a letter to his mother.

One of the most hilarious moments in the pressroom occurred when Pat Klein-man began sailing paper airplanes at Bill Duncan, who was trying to sleep on the cot. Finally, Duncan had had enough. He rolled off the cot, grabbed an ice pick that was stuck in the doorjamb near the water cooler and hurled it at Kleinman. Klein-man caught the pick in midair and pressed it to his chest as he fell to the floor, groaning.

Duncan, who couldn’t see very well, had his glasses off and thought he had stabbed Kleinman. Duncan fell to his knees beside Kleinman, yelling for someone to call a doctor. Duncan began to cry, and Kleinman began to laugh. When Duncan saw that Kleinman was okay, he grabbed him by the ears and banged his head against the floor. Then Duncan got up, reached for his personal jug and his hat and walked out, shouting profanities.

One cold night, I was napping when the emergency bell sounded, and I jumped from my cot to see what the call was. It was a bad car accident on Grand Avenue near Fair Park. The doctor ran for the ambulance, and I followed. I didn’t have an overcoat, and since it was cold, I grabbed a white medical jacket. When we arrived at the scene, we found three people dead and several others hurt.

I was talking to witnesses and taking notes when a man grabbed me by the arm and shouted that there was a woman in some nearby shrubs. Since I was wearing the white coat, he thought I was a doctor, and he shoved me toward the woman. I found her unconscious. There was nothing for me to do but bend over her to see if I could help.

As I lifted her head, she regained consciousness. It became obvious that she had just been knocked out. I helped the woman to her feet and untangled her from the shrubs.

Her husband showed up, thanked me profusely and asked my name so he could write the mayor a letter of commendation.

On the way to Parkland Hospital with two patients in the ambulance, the real doctor turned to me and said, “Doctor, take care of that guy with the crushed ribs.”

And then there’s the Christmas Day that I set a record that can never be broken: I had stories on Page One of all three afternoon newspapers!

That morning I had arrived at the pressroom to find Hand and Duncan sleeping peacefully on the cot. They had celebrated too long and too well and couldn’t be budged. 1 wrote my copy for the Dispatch and then fashioned stories for the Journal and the Herald.

Later, Hand’s only comment about the incident was that the lead paragraph I had written for one of his stories wasn’t as good as the one I had written for Duncan.



EARLY IN MY career on the police beat, I learned the importance of checking and double-checking facts -the hard way.

One morning a report came in that a double murder and suicide had occurred at a little white cottage on Bowser Street in Oak Lawn. When I arrived, several squad cars and an ambulance were already there. A hysterical man had kicked in the front door, walked into the kitchen and blasted his estranged wife and her mother with a shotgun.

The odor of burned bacon and eggs filled the room. Coffee and toast were still on the table where the two women had been preparing breakfast. Their bodies were slumped in their chairs. After killing the women, the man had gone into the living room, laid down on a couch and shot himself with a pistol.

Soon after I arrived, the ambulance attendants rushed the man (who was still alive) to Parkland Hospital.

I grabbed a phone in the hall and called my story into the Dispatch city desk. When I came to the part about the man, I said, “…and he has been taken to Parkland.”

A police sergeant standing near me said, “Jim, the man died, too.”

“Wait a minute,” I told the city desk, “the man is dead, too.”

I returned to City Hall to write my story for the next edition. It was standard procedure to call the hospital to find out which funeral home the bodies had been assigned to. When I asked the person at the admitting desk where the man had been sent, I got the shock of my life: The admitting clerk told me that he was in surgery.

When I called the correction to City Editor Bill Payne, there was a short silence at his end of the phone. To say that I got a severe tongue-lashing is putting it mildly- more than 20,000 papers had been put on the street with the story stating that the man was dead.

Stunned to the core and not knowing what action, if any, would be taken against me if the man lived, it was hard to react. I certainly didn’t want to wish anyone dead, but if the man lived…

My dilemma was solved the next day – the man died.

From then on, I never took anyone’s word that an event had taken place until I had checked for myself.



WE USUALLY didn’t pay attention to what was going on at City Hall above the basement, but there was one exception. When John Edy, Dallas’ first city manager, came aboard in 1931, the gray-haired, dignified executive soon got the reputation of being tough-minded. Early in his administration, he noticed that many City Hall employees were leaving the building between 9:30 and 10 a.m. for coffee and that some of them took their time about returning.

The reporters on the second floor, who covered administration, told us about a memo that Edy had circulated to all departments forbidding employees to leave the building for coffee. They also reported that each morning Edy stationed himself at a window overlooking Harwood to see if he was being obeyed.

We decided to see just how alert Edy was: Four of us went to the first floor of City Hall, walked down the steps and across the street to a cafe. We had been at the counter about five minutes when Edy walked in.

He asked if we worked at City Hall, and when we said “yes,” he asked if we had gotten his memo about coffee breaks. We said “no,” and he became angry and told us about the new rule. Then he suggested that we get back to work. After we told him we were reporters, his demeanor softened and he shook hands with all of us. We invited him to have coffee, and damned if he didn’t.



THE NIGHT it rained nickels at the corner of Harwood and Main streets sticks in my mind because Capt. Will Fritz of the homicide division played a key role in the adventure. We never paid much attention to the property room except when we were foraging for booze. But on this particular night, we saw that about 20 nickel slot machines had been confiscated and stored away. Hand, Duncan, Kleinman and I saw the machines as a real opportunity for a little fun.

While Hand lured the officer in charge of the room away for a cup of coffee, the rest of us broke open the glass fronts of several machines and poured their contents into our hats. It was illegal money, so we figured it was there for the taking.

When we got back to the pressroom, we realized that we had more than $20 in nickels and immediately began to plan how to spend it. We finally agreed that we would go across the street to the White Plaza Hotel, get a room and get a big steak dinner sent up. At some point, Duncan decided that it would be fun to throw a few coins out the window and watch the people below scramble for them. It looked like so much fun that the rest of us joined in. Pretty soon, a small traffic jam developed as people stopped their cars to grab for the nickels.

Capt. Fritz was coming out of City Hall when he noticed the commotion. Pretty soon, he was at our door. Just about the time he entered the room, the last of the nickels went out the window.

Fritz told us to cool it and was about to leave when I realized that all the nickels were gone, so we had no way to pay for the room or the meal. 1 suggested that he make us a loan, which he refused to do, but Hand began to tell him how much publicity we had given him and softened him up to the point that he bailed us out.

It took me four paychecks to dole out my share of the debt. I think Kleinman and I were the only ones who ever came up with any money.



DUNCAN WAS affectionately known as “Putt-Putt” because of the noise he made with his lips and toothless gums when he was nervous. He was assigned to the police beat for many years; when he was finally pulled into the office to write obituaries, he killed himself.

Kleinman was recognized as the peer journalist of our group. He could outwrite all of us, and he knew how to make valuable contacts. One of his claims to fame was befriending Raymond Hamilton’s girlfriend and writing a series of Page One stories about the infamous Hamilton from her point of view. She worked in a candy store on Elm; Pat would meet her in a drugstore in the old Santa Fe Building to get his information. From her he learned that Hamilton had a thing for silk shirts, new shoes and chocolate, along with an endless thirst for her companionship. Hamilton finally went to the electric chair sans any of the things he had lusted for.

World War II broke into Kleinman’s newspaper career, and he joined the Navy. After the war, he entered the printing business with a friend, Harry Kaplan.

Ken Hand lived in another world from the rest of us. He was a frustrated actor and was on stage every minute of the day.

When he had time on his hands, he would pace the pressroom floor quoting from plays, particularly The Front Page; when he grilled someone for a story, he interrogated them in his best courtroom manner.

His specialty was stealing pictures. He would show up at the residence of a shooting victim or a prominent criminal, posing as a long-lost relative, detective or funeral director. Having talked his way into the house, he would steal a photograph and vanish.

When the Dallas Journal and the Dispatch were bought by Karl Hoblitzelle and combined into the Dispatch-Journal, Ken opted to return to his hometown in Kansas and go back to work for the paper where he had learned journalism. He later developed a respiratory condition and came back to Dallas to work at the News.

After a disagreement at the News, he came to see me at the Times Herald, where 1 had become publisher. I gave him a job on the wire desk reading copy; he remained at that position until he died. Besides working on the desk, he volunteered to coach young reporters. During sessions with them, he would often revert to his acting.

Joe Lubben was the socialite of our group. Always well-groomed and well-mannered, he was a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin. He walked with a limp that gave him a certain flair. Joe’s father was chief finance officer of the Dallas News, which is why he was there, but he had earned his spurs. He was on the police beat as part of his training program. He took me to my first shooting, then showed me how to write the story. He worked his way up through the ranks at the News and retired several years ago as executive vice president.

Alfred Andersson was the son of Alfred O. Andersson, publisher and part-owner of the Dispatch. He and I were best friends outside the pressroom but were fierce competitors on the job. Alfy went to work at the Herald because he didn’t want to work for his father. He was very innovative and always looked for the story behind the story.

When he went to Huntsville for Raymond Hamilton’s electrocution, we were all engrossed in the electric chair and how Hamilton died. Andersson hooked a ride back to Dallas in the hearse that brought Hamilton home and wrote about the trip and the family gathering to claim the body. It was good journalism.

Later, he went to work on the Memphis Press-Scimitar, where he became managing editor. He chose early retirement to move to Alabama.

Aaron Griffing, night police reporter for the News, covered his beat as meticulously as a surgeon performing an operation. Nothing went on in the police department that Griffing didn’t know about. He wrote factually and in depth and had the respect of all of us. In his later years, he was shifted to the rewrite and copy desk of the News, where he spent his last days quietly doing his job.

Procter faded from the scene when his journalistic fantasies caught up with him.



THE YEARS HAVE been rough on Dallas newspapers. Where once there were four, there are now only two. The Journal (which was an afternoon copy of its owner, the News) faltered because it lacked freshness. The Dispatch was the paper for the masses; as Dallas grew, it lost its punch.

When the two were combined by Hob-litzelle, he tried to emulate The New York Times, but the city wasn’t ready for the Dispatch-Journal. The paper was later sold to Jim and Wesley West of Houston, who soon tired of playing publisher. They changed the paper’s name to the Journal; and shortly before World War II, it closed.

Some of the Journal staff went to the Herald or the News, where a few are still in harness, but it was tough for them to conform to a regimented newsroom after working at relaxed, loosely knit organizations.

Today, crime news is presided over byeducated, well-groomed young professionals who are both factual and objective. And as they go quietly about theirdaily tasks, reading computer printoutsand well-documented reports, they willnever know what they missed when reporting was more fun and less factual.

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