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| This week, James Pontolillo gives us a glimpse at the early years of Plan 9 star Criswell. |
"You know, kid… lad like you could be a great mentalist. Study human nature."William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley
Note: The search for information about Jeron Charles Criswell King is complicated by the multiple names that he employed up to the age of 40. He variously used Charles Criswell, Charles Criswell King and C.C. King as his legal name, while using Charles Cris King, Jeron Criswell, J. K. Criswell, King Criswell, and simply Criswell as stage names (along with the dubious titles of Doctor and Reverend). I will simply refer to him as Criswell. It is often claimed that his surname is actually Konig. There is no evidence to support this assertion. Criswell's surname traces back unchanged to his earliest known ancestor, Samuel King (1775 Virginia).
The publication of Edwin Lee Canfield's Fact, Fictions, and the Forbidden Predictions of the Amazing Criswell (2023) has finally provided fans with an abundance of material on the quirky psychic and key Ed Wood repertory player. Canfield corrected a long-standing problem where Criswell was concerned – a lack of basic information and leads to pursue. Nearly all online biographies about Criswell are short and riddled with errors. The man himself provided few clues beyond brief disjointed statements scattered across interviews, magazine articles, and the introductions to his prophetic books. These statements are generally unreliable in their details. If Ed Wood, Jr. was a bullshitter about certain aspects of his life, then Criswell by comparison would have to be called The Amazing Bullshitter.
One particular claim that Canfield reproduced caught my attention: that for two summers Criswell served as a manager/actor at Greenkill Park Theater outside of Kingston, NY. If true, this placed him a mere 19 miles from Ed Wood, Jr. Was it possible that young Eddie had seen Criswell perform on stage with neither man being aware of this connection when they met up yet again years later in Hollywood? I immediately began a deep dive in search of confirmation. Uncovering many previously unreported details on Criswell's life, I realized that there was a much larger story to be told. The story of the unlikely transmutation of a rural Indiana high school boy into the Amazing Criswell.
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| Edwin Lee Canfield's book. |
Criswell's family lived in several locations in Princeton, but by 1916 had settled at 327 North Gibson Street (still exists) which would be their home for many years [1]. The local newspaper (Princeton Daily Clarion) was first published in 1846. The railroad came through in 1852 providing a boost to the town's economy. Some small industries developed there, including a coal mine and the H.J. Heinz plant which used the area's fine tomatoes to make ketchup. Late in Criswell's youth, disasters came to define the town: the 1925 Tri-State Tornado killed 44 residents and a 1926 mine explosion killed 29 people. In some ways, Princeton has changed little over the years. From 1900 – 2020 the town's population only grew from 6,000 – 8,000 residents. Today it is still the small administrative seat of a largely rural county known more for its rich farmland than anything else.
By Criswell's account, he had several brushes with the psychic arts during his formative years. As a young boy his family played a game where each in turn would assume the role of a seer. They would gaze into the embers of a dying fire in order to divine future events. Criswell said that he became quite proficient in this form of prophecy. He also knew an African-American woman named Fannie who would tell your fortune using a deck of playing cards. Criswell also claimed that as a young boy he once paid the exorbitant sum of 50 cents (the price of a good lunch or dinner then) to consult a gypsy palm reader at the Gibson County Fair. All of these experiences led Criswell to practice his deductive skills as he found himself able to help others solve their problems with his increasingly accurate "hunches."
In May 1926 Criswell graduated from Princeton High School. He remained in town working for the summer. On September 10th he left Princeton to attend the Schuster-Martin School of Drama in Cincinnati, OH (2549 Kemper Lane; redeveloped) [2]. The school's claim to fame is that a young Doris Day took voice lessons there. The new term started five days later, but Criswell did not remain at the school for long. By November, he had transferred to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (Handy-Shillito House on the corner of Highland Avenue and Oak Street; merged with the University of Cincinnati in 1955; redeveloped) [3]. Here he studied English and drama under the department head Margaret Spaulding [4], an accomplished singer and stage performer. On November 23rd Criswell was part of the cast of the one-act Booth Tarkington play The Trysting Place put on by the Conservatory's Garrett Players.
In early 1927 Criswell garnered additional stage experience. On January 29th he took part in a one-act sketch with the Garrett Players that was broadcast on WFBE radio from the Hotel Garfield (Race Street and Garfield Place; redeveloped). Then on March 16th Criswell had a part in the Garrett Players production of the one-act Maurice Maeterlinck play Interior at the Conservatory's play house. For the first part of the summer break, Criswell returned to Princeton to visit his family. By June 30th he was back in Cincinnati working at the Granada Gardens Restaurant (15 East Sixth Street; redeveloped) whose motto was "Dine and Be Happy in the Atmosphere of Old Spain."
Criswell returned to his drama studies at the Conservatory for the Fall 1927 – Spring 1928 term. During that term, he appeared in four productions presented by the Garret Players: the one-act plays Enter the Hero (November 29 and December 6, 1927), On the Shelf (May 1, 1928 – for which he received plaudits from a normally critical local press), and J.M. Barrie's Rosalind (May 22, 1928). Criswell also attended a spiritualist church while in Cincinnati. Which church is anyone's guess as there were no fewer than 15 spiritualist churches in the city at that time.
At the end of the term Criswell returned to Princeton again to visit his family.
On June 18, 1928 he left to attend summer school at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY [5]. Founded in 1874, the Institution was a non-profit educational and recreational resort located on 2,000 acres in the Western Southern Tier of New York State. It birthed the Chautauqua movement popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which aimed to provide educational instruction and entertaining performances on important political, social, and cultural issues. The institution provided summer programs in the various arts (music, stage, dance, lecture, etc.) and was a favored destination for artists, educators, thinkers, and faith leaders. Still in operation today, the Chautauqua Institution is listed as a National Historic Landmark.
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| Grossinger's inspired Dirty Dancing. |
Later that summer Criswell began work as the assistant day clerk at the Grossinger Hotel in Ferndale, NY (aka Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel; bankrupt and left for ruin in 1986; remnants destroyed by fire in 2022) [6]. It was a year-round kosher resort that catered primarily to a Jewish clientele from New York City. The hotel featured a large play house and it's likely that Criswell performed there given his prior experience. At this time, Criswell claimed to have received a commission from a musical publishing house to collaborate with Hungarian composer and songwriter Miro Mosay (Miroslav Mojžíš) on a series of magazine articles on racial music. Criswell also claimed that he had previously authored lyrics for some of Mosay's scores including the Greenwich Village play The French Model and the silent motion pictures The Son of the Sheik (1926; Rudolph Valentino's final film) and Convoy (1927; lost film).
In February 1929 Criswell left his job at the Grossinger Hotel, and his whereabouts for the next two months are unknown. Perhaps he returned to Indiana again. On May 18th Criswell signed up to work as a waiter aboard the cargo and passenger steamship S.S. Excelsior operated by American Export Lines Inc. from a pier at the foot of Kent and Java Streets in Greenpoint, Brooklyn [7, 8]. The ship left on May 22nd on a Mediterranean cruise with stops in Casablanca (Morocco), Egypt, Turkey, Italy, France, Spain and the Canary Islands. Criswell was one of four waiters on board seeing to passenger needs. The coverage in Criswell's hometown newspaper gives the impression that he was on a pleasure cruise. The S.S. Excelsior returned to Boston on July 15th after two months and Criswell was discharged from service upon landing. He would later use this cruise to bolster a claim that "he had toured his stage plays across Europe and North Africa."
Criswell spent the last two weeks of August 1929 visiting his family in Indiana. On September 4th he departed for New York City to attend the City College of New York. Classes began on September 26th, and Criswell apparently pursued a pre-medical study course which, by his own account, he did not finish. At the end of October, the Stock Market crashed heralding the start of the Great Depression which would last until the outbreak of World War Two nearly a decade later.
April 1930 found Criswell residing as a lodger at 150 West 77th Street [9] in the unit #22C household of Mellicent Frambach, her 16-year-old son Charles, a female servant, and three other lodgers, one of whom was the aforementioned Hungarian composer Miro Mosay. Criswell's occupation was listed as a self-employed "Reader of Plays" (i.e., playwright). A June 16th press account reported that Criswell was preparing Semi-Centennial for stage in the autumn. The production was to be a 50th anniversary commemoration of the famous Augustin Daly (a highly influential 19th century America dramatist) stock company, combining a play with a motion picture dream sequence and the services of a symphony orchestra. There is no evidence this production ever made it to the stage.
Newspaper records and city directories from 1931 – 1935 offer few clues about Criswell’s activities during this time period. In July 1931 he was back in Indiana visiting his family. On October 29, 1931 it was reported that Criswell’s play Span would be staged the following month. There is no evidence that this ever occurred. Criswell later claimed numerous activities for this period of his life including directing drama festivals in upstate New York, lecturing at schools, colleges and universities through the lyceum bureaus, producing plays at state fairs and expositions, working for a mortuary, working at the NY city morgue and as an ambulance attendant, becoming an authority on international copyrights, and attending bible school.
One of Criswell's more interesting unproven claims is that "The Redpath Chautauqua" became interested in him while he was a student in Cincinnati. The Redpath Bureau (based in Iowa and Chicago) was the premiere talent booking agency for the Chautauqua circuit of schools and theaters. It supposedly offered Criswell an actor-manager contract and for two summers he operated the Greenkill Park Theater south of Kingston, in Ulster County, N.Y. In a separate account, Criswell claimed that one of his plays The Indiana Venus (set in Evansville) was staged there.
Greenkill Park was a 177-acre summer resort which included a large hotel, forty bungalows and out-buildings, a restaurant, a theater, a nine-hole golf course, ten tennis courts, a ballroom, stables, and a swimming pool [10, 11]. It was located one mile southwest of Eddyville and about 19 miles from Poughkeepsie, where young Ed Wood Jr. was entertaining his Hollywood dreams. The resort and its buildings no longer exist, although stone pillars which once marked its front and rear entrances (on Eddyville-Creek Locks Road and DeWitt Lake Road) are still evident to the discerning eye. The site today is a sand and gravel quarry known as Duke's Pit operated by New York Crushing & Recycling (728 DeWitt Lake Road).
If Criswell's Greenkill claim is true, then he must have been there for the 1932/1933 seasons since he was not available before that time. Despite it being the depths of the Great Depression (with 25% unemployment and salaries down 43%), Greenkill Park managed to do business in 1932 and 1933. It received considerable press attention from May to June 1932 when German world heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling trained there in preparation for a June 16th rematch against Jack Sharkey at Yankee Stadium in New York City [12, 13, 14]. Schmeling would lose in a split decision.
The excitement was such that even New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Greenkill on May 31st to watch the champ spar. The multi-lingual Roosevelt greeted Schmeling in fluent German [15]. While 1933 seemed equally busy, Greenkill Park succumbed to the Depression and went bankrupt prior to opening for the 1934 season. Its physical holdings were auctioned off in May 1935. The property then lapsed into abandoned neglect until sold in March 1937 to African-American New Thought spiritual leader Father Divine [16].
It appears that in 1934 Criswell taught for one term at a school in Jersey City, NJ. After that he returned home to Princeton for part of 1935 and worked for the town newspaper. As a result, Criswell was listed as a clerk in the 1935 Princeton City Directory. By June 13th, however, he was back in New York City and renting an apartment at 171 West 76th Street (still exists) [17]. Criswell later claimed that it was at this time that he became a freelance writer for confession magazines which directly led to writing assignments for radio programs such as The Romance of Helen Trent and Backstage Wife.
Criswell also claimed that he eventually began writing financial news, analyzing stocks, and hosting a radio program about Wall Street. With regard to his financial insights, Criswell claimed, "As I predicted more accurately, I became less reticent to predict. I kept score, writing my predictions for my eyes only, then checking to see if they came to pass. My accuracy increased with each year, and I began writing my predictions for others to see and hear." The Wall Street Journal allegedly ran an article stating that Criswell's economic predictions were 76% accurate.
Regardless of what Criswell was doing at the time, hints of the metaphysical continued to crop up in his life. Criswell claimed that about this time he had his fortune read with great accuracy by a nameless tealeaf reader at the Gypsy Tea Kettle (503 Fifth Avenue; redeveloped) [18, 19]. The Gypsy Tea Kettle was a chain of several New York City restaurants. People ate their meal, drank their tea, and then a house seer would read their fortunes in the tea leaves left at the bottom of their cup. Tea room restaurants like this could be found in every U.S. city at the time. They were among the first businesses owned and operated by women and a direct outgrowth of the female suffrage movement.
Around this same time Myrtle Louise Stonesifer [20] began appearing in New York City to pursue her dreams. She was born on May 1, 1905 at Littlestown, in the rural countryside southeast of Gettysburg, PA. The only child of an affluent and locally-prominent family, Myrtle grew up in Littlestown and in 1923 graduated fourth in her high school class. In 1927, she received a B.A. in English from Hood College (Frederick, MD) and later a Master's Degree in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
Myrtle returned home where she studied piano for a year and was active in amateur dramatics. In 1932 she attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the Lyceum Theatre (149 West 45th Street, New York; still exists) [21], after which she joined Hendrickson's Shakespeare Company touring college campuses across the United States. Sometime in early 1935 Myrtle returned to New York City where she lived in the Allerton House (130 East 57th Street; current-day Hotel 57) [22] and began writing plays full-time under the name of Louise Howard. She also briefly worked at radio station WHMS.
Over the years, Myrtle used the professional names Louise Howard and Halo Meadows; for simplicity's sake I will refer to her as Louise. She first gained public attention through a June 24, 1935 press account that Louise was cast in P.W. Tell's comedy New York Interlude presented for two nights at the Artef Theatre (247 West 48th Street; redeveloped). The Artef (Arbeter Teater Farband, Yiddish for Workers Theatrical Alliance) was organized in 1929 by the Young Workers' League, and its repertoire included many plays with strong Communist ideological content [23].
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| Ivan Albright's Picture of Dorian Gray. |
The first half of 1936 passed by without any press notices concerning either Criswell or Louise. From July 20th to August 1st Criswell's three-act play Dorian Gray [24] – based on Oscar Wilde's novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) – was performed at the Comedy Theatre (110 West 41st Street, redeveloped). It lasted for 16 performances before Actor's Equity withdrew the cast after it became aware that non-union stagehands were being used. Perhaps it was just as well. The reviews scathingly derided the play as a terrible adaptation performed by a talentless cast. The only laughs to be had were said to be unintentional. To quote one critic, it was more of a calamity than a play.
Despite what should have been a fatal setback, Criswell's Dorian Gray was relaunched on August 17th as Life and Loves of Dorian Gray [25] written by Cecil Clarke. Criswell had an uncredited hand in the script. It played again at the Comedy Theatre – only this time with a non-union cast and non-union stagehands – and lasted for 32 performances into early September. Criswell was scheduled to play the starring role but was replaced at the last minute. The year 1936 closed on a sour note for him on December 8th when the Karlopat Realty Corporation won a legal judgment of $30.45 against Criswell and his business partner.
While 1937 held no press notices for Criswell, Louise was hitting her stride in the Off-Broadway stage scene. She founded her own troupe, the Louise Howard Players, which began to regularly perform at the Villa Venice (14 East 60th Street, currently commercial space) [26]. April 22nd saw a single night only performance of her comedic play City Pace. June 29th was the opening night of her play Live Again and the start of a summer repertory season of her original works and those of other playwrights in an invitational setting. In August 1937 Women's Hotel, The Clouded Pane, and G. Lipkind's play Here's Hoping were performed. Twentieth Century Fox would later plagiarize Women's Hotel in the production of their 1939 movie Hotel for Women. In 1942 Louise would win a nearly $6,000 settlement against the studio.
October 17, 1937 saw Louise's play Whims of '37 performed to a full house. Shortly after that, Criswell and Louise met for the first time while he was walking his Pomeranian named Trampy. For Louise, it was love at first sight – with Criswell's dog! She told Criswell, "I'll be that dog's slave as long as I live on this earth." To which he deftly responded, "Well, I go with the dog." The two were a couple from that day forward.
The following year (1938) saw a decline in the couple's stage production activities. They devoted a considerable amount of time from January through July in an unsuccessful campaign to launch Ladies and How. A musical comedy set in a bordello whose ladies are interested in unionization, social security, and old age pensions, it was written by Criswell with music by Arthur Jones and lyrics by Louise. Casting and rehearsals occurred but the production was never able to get off the ground. On April 21st Louise appeared as a guest star on a program called Salute to Broadway as part of the inaugural broadcasts of radio station WMCA.
In July, Criswell and Louise traveled to their respective home towns to visit with family. Afterwards, they met up in Chicago to fulfill an unspecified stage commitment. They returned to New York City [27] and spent the remainder of the year appearing at a number of dining/dancing/show venues including the Zebra Club, the Swing Club (35 West 52nd Street; redeveloped), the Halliday Club, and the International Casino (Times Square at 45th Street; redeveloped). The nature of their performances is not known. One event undoubtedly caught Criswell's attention: the Third Annual Convention of the International Fortune Tellers Association was held that September at the Ice-Skating Casino (West 57th Street) [28].
Early in 1939 Criswell and Louise established a vanity press (Howard & Criswell, 12 West 44th Street; current-day Mansfield Residence) [29]. They published her play Evasive Joy, as well as a pair of self-help books drawing heavily on the positive thinking and personal power aspects of the New Thought movement. The couple's deepening interest in metaphysics had resulted in a collaboration with Florence Scovel Shinn [30]. Shinn (1871-1940) was an American artist and book illustrator who later in life became a New Thought spiritual leader. She is best known for her book The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925) which remains in print today.
The couple published four additional books between March and September that were how-to guides for breaking into the New York show business world. These books generally received dismissive reviews. The couple ended 1939 entertaining Louise's parents who were visiting for Christmas and the New Year.
Sources
- Adams County (PA) Independent
- Billboard Magazine
- Brooklyn (NY) Daily Eagle
- Cincinnati Enquirer
- Cincinnati Post
- Daily News (New York City)
- Dayton (OH) Herald
- Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer
- Ebony Magazine
- Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman
- Los Angeles Evening Express
- Nassau (Long Island) Daily Review-Star
- New York Herald Tribune
- New York Times
- Poughkeepsie (NY) Eagle-News
- Princeton (IN) Daily Clarion
- Sunday Courier and Press (Evansville, IN)
- The Evening Sun (Hanover, PA)
- The Gettysburg (PA) Times
- Times Union (Brooklyn, NY)
- 1930 United States Federal Census, National Archives and Records Administration.
- Massachusetts, U.S. Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820-1963. Ancestry.com
- 1932 Sailing Schedule and Fares to Mediterranean and Black Sea Ports, American Export Lines, 25 Broadway, New York City.
- Canfield, Edwin Lee, 2023, Fact, Fictions, and the Forbidden Predictions of the Amazing Criswell, Oxford (UK): Headpress.
- Criswell, 1968, Criswell Predicts From Now To The Year 2000!, Anderson (SC): Droke House Publishers.
- Gresham, William Lindsay, 1946, Nightmare Alley, New York: Rinehart & Company.
- Roberts, Dr. Peter, 2021, Greenkill Park: A Kingston Resort with a Fascinating History, Friends of Historic Kingston Newsletter.
- "The History of Greenkill Park in Kingston," Interview with Dr. Peter Roberts, Kingston Community Radio, AM920, 6 April 1921.
- "The Story of Father Divine's Peace Missions In ‘The Promised Land,’ Ulster County, New York from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s,"
- Father Divine: International Peace Mission Movement (http://peacemission.info).