Looking Back at Love

Last summer I was in a board meeting at Malabar Farm where the big “Hollywood Returns” promotion for the summer of 2012 was in the early planning stages.   Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s son had been contacted to see if he would be willing to attend such an event, and in the process Russ Hill, a devoted Malabar Foundation board member who has spent a lot of his own money and a great deal of his life over the last year putting it all together, had found the name of Judge Shettler’s daughter.    The Judge married the movie star couple, and I was intrigued and asked for the name of the daughter so that I might contact her.

I wrote to Penny (Shettler) Benzing to ask if she would be willing to speak with me about her memories of that wedding day so many years ago.  She responded that she would be in Mansfield for a high school class reunion and she’d be happy to stop in the office with some things that had belonged to her late father.  

                       Front hall at Malabar where the wedding took place in 1945

Promptly on the appointed day Penny walked into the offices of Sun Graphics carrying a large suit box that had obviously been around for a while.  She explained that this box of memorabilia had been shoved under a bed, and she wasn’t quite sure any longer what was in it.  She handed it to me, we visited and chatted as I made notes, then she was off to do the half dozen things she had to do before her reunion that evening.

     Humphrey Bogart Commemorative Stamp

Heading upstairs with the box I could hardly wait to get it to a surface where I could open and go through the contents.  Pushing aside some papers on an empty desk I lifted the lid, then gently opened the tissue paper that wrapped some of the newspaper articles.  It was as if history opened up for me.  The song “Key Largo” began to drift through my mind and I was submerged in an afternoon of blissful exploration.  I had Bogey and Bacall at my fingertips.

                                    

Old newspaper articles from 1945, some Xeroxed magazine articles and other treasures competed for my attention.   The Christmas card the Bogarts sent out that first holiday as a married couple….with a handwritten note from Lauren Bacall inside.  The receipt for their marriage license….a handwritten letter from Humphrey Bogart to the judge thanking him for all he had done to make their wedding memorable.   There were other letters the judge had kept from friends who cheerfully chided him for his newly found fame as the “judge to the stars”.   Penny told me her father was in many of the popular magazines of the day, some of which she still had at home.

                                                                                                                             

Layered on the bottom of the stack was the original news script that was read on a WMAN news cast on the day of the wedding.   It was especially meaningful for me to hold these papers in my hands, along with a note from Mr. O’Hara, the first general manager at WMAN. The offices were perched above the Ohio Theatre (Renaissance Theatre) back in the day.   He was one of three men who managed the station before me, and I held the note he wrote to Judge Shettler along with those scripts with a feeling of awe.   I wasn’t even born when these scripts were typed by the news person, and here they were moving across all those years and into my hands.   In the time period this was written a woman might be found as a receptionist at the front desk, but certainly not on the air, or in the news room or sales office, and definitely not sitting behind the general manager’s desk.    I was lucky enough to be the first woman to do several of those jobs, and when I retired three years ago as Market Manager for the Clear Channel radio cluster, I left with an abiding affection for radio in general and WMAN in particular.

                                                            

I spent the entire afternoon with the box, breathing in its history and thinking about the article I wanted to write.  Penny had been a seven year old child when the Bogarts wed, and as she described her time observing from the stairs the article started to write itself in my head.   I scanned everything I wanted to use and put the precious items back into the box.

Penny Benzing came back to pick up the amazing box of memories she had shared with me.  She is intelligent, articulate and interesting and I’ve enjoyed every moment I’ve spent with her.   We would meet again when she returned to Mansfield to visit friends and take a tour of the house she grew up in on Glendale Boulevard.   I asked her to have her picture snapped on those stairs, and she was kind enough to do that and to send that photo to me.

                                                Penny (left) presents Lauren Bacall with
                                        the picture of Bogey/Bacall and Judge Shettler

I still have a book Penny loaned me that I need to return to her.  I look forward to her emails and the times we speak on the phone.  Every article that I write seems to add at least one person to my list of friends; I like to think Penny Shettler Benzing is now on that list.

 Hollywood Returns is being held at Malabar Farm Friday, June 1, Saturday, June 2 and Sunday June 3.  Stephen Bogart and Tyrone Power, Jr. will be there, along with an antique car show that will feature some things most of us have never seen before; rumor has it a presidential limousine for one thing.     Tickets and information are available at www.malabarfarm.org   I’m really looking forward to the event, and my husband and I will be volunteering there for the whole weekend.    Come out and enjoy Malabar Farm State Park, all proceeds go to help with restoration of Louis Bromfield’s “Big House”.    I hope to see you there.

                                                         Christmas at Malabar-2011
                                                                   Life is Good