"Allen was Hollywood's most prosperous madam, in part because she was so cautious. Rather than take on the risks that came with running a 'bawdy house,' Allen relied on a telephone exchange service to communicate with clients who were vetted with the utmost care. She prided herself on serving the creme de la creme of Los Angeles. By 1948, she had 114 'pleasure girls' in her harem."
JOHN BUNTIN, L.A. NOIR: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City (2009)
It's funny what stands out as important in memory --- the tiny bits and pieces that rise head and shoulders above all others for any given event from the past. I remember lot of little things about Brenda Allen and two major things when I first met her and the two major things are just as strong in my memory today as they were at that first meeting.
It was 1953, I was around 15 years old and spending the summer on a ranch in the Mojave Desert owned by my Stepmother, or ex-stepmother by then as the case may be. Early one morning she told me she had to drive into Los Angeles for some meeting or the other and asked if I would like to go along. What I thought would be a more formal meeting, say like at a lawyers office or some other equally important happenstance, turned out to be basically no more than eating at Tiny Naylor's Drive-In restaurant in Hollywood followed by a trip to Forest Lawn Cemetery --- all the while my stepmother looking at her watch as if she had to be someplace at a certain time. She bought a bouquet of flowers as we entered the cemetery then drove along the roads just as though she knew where she was going or had been there before. She pulled up behind a taxi, the only car parked anywhere in the area and stopped, telling me to stay as she got out.
She hurried across the road going many rows deep, with each step sort of wobbling because of her high heels sinking into the grass until she reached the site of a grave where a lone woman was standing. After what seemed to be not much more than a slight cursory hug and a cheek touch between the two she put the flowers next to some already there then the two women just stood next to each other over the grave for quite some time looking down. However, even at the distance I was I could tell the two were talking a good part of the time as they stood there. After awhile they both walked back toward the car and it was then I was introduced.
As my stepmother was getting out of the car, although she told me to stay she didn't say a word about me not getting out --- so I did. No sooner than I did than the taxi driver got out of his cab and came right up to me asking me, "Who's the dame, kid?"
Catching me off guard I sort of squinted my eyes and jolted my head back as if asking what sort of a question is that, I mean, after all the so-named "dame" just happened to be my stepmother! Before I could utter a word he said, "You know who that is out there, it's Brenda Allen. Brenda Allen!" Then the driver told me he had picked her up at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and that she was in Los Angeles for a couple of days from New Jersey. Then, continuing on like I was a lifelong friend and I knew what he was talking about he told me when he picked her up he asked, "Where to, Miss Allen?" She shook off the 'Miss Allen' part as if denying she was Brenda Allen, although the driver told me he recognized her 'without one iota of a doubt' as he had ferried customers back and forth to her various operations for years, waiting many times in the process and had seen her up close often. Of course the name Brenda Allen meant nothing to me, but the way the taxi driver said her name it was as though she was somebody.
Somebody or a nobody, although I never heard of her at the time, the mention of the name Brenda Allen by the taxi driver set into motion the first of the major memorable things that disallowed me from ever forgetting her from that first meeting. When I was in the 7th and 8th grade the school I attended was a combination junior-senior high, meaning the 7th grade ran straight through to the 12th grade at the same school. The junior high classes operated the same as the high school classes, that is different classes and teachers at different periods with some levels and teachers overlapping. I developed a really strong crush on a girl by the name of Barbara Allen. We walked together between classes. I carried her books. We sat in the quad and talked. The only thing was she was going with and was the girlfriend of guy in the 11th or 12th grade, a guy who went by the nickname "Blackie." He pulled me aside one day throwing me up against the wall and making it clear Betty was HIS girl and to stay away from her. I learned quickly never to have designs on the girlfriend of a guy who had a nickname, especially if it was something like "Blackie." The thing was, her name was Betty Allen and she was the first person I thought of when I was introduced to Brenda Allen.
The second of the major memorable things had to do with the introduction itself. My stepmother introduced her only as Brenda with no mention of a last name, so as far as my stepmother knew I didn't know her last name, and even then I didn't really know who she was. However, what stayed with me right up to this day is what Allen said upon the introduction. Taking notice of the cleft in my chin she rubbed her finger slightly along the groove, then pointed to hers and said, "Are you sure we aren't related? I could be your mother," with a strong emphasis on the word "I" while turning to look at my stepmother and continuing with, "Or your sister!"
As for Brenda Allen herself, who she was, what she did, and why for example the taxi driver felt compelled to throw an emphasis on her name as though she was "somebody," we have to go back in time some years before the introduction.
In the months and years leading up to and during World War II thousands and thousands, if not millions, of young viable men from all walks of life and all ranks of society --- with a good portion of them single --- were uprooted from wherever they came from all over the United States and plunked down in large numbers in small geographical areas such as army bases, naval bases and air bases. No sooner had the numbers grown than services designed to provide for any number of their needs in any number of areas popped up all around the peripheral of those bases, some legal, some illegal. A lot of those services, although known to exist, were simply overlooked.
However, when the war ended the turning the other way carte blanche attitude disappeared rapidly as those same thousands, millions even, began wending their way back into civilian life. A whole new wave crested over the nation as former military personnel returned home and began getting married, buying little houses in suburbia on the G.I. Bill along with matching sets of white Kenmore washing machines and dryers from Sears and started raising families.
It was then that what was being offered by people such as Brenda Allen began coming into the crosshairs of the same people that before were willing to overlook the offerings or even be on the payroll. Allen went through all the war years unscathed, but by 1948 she was headed to jail, her empire in shambles.
Before the war Brenda Allen, born Marie Mitchell, or so it has been alleged, was a young girl in her late teens to early twenties plying her trade on the streets of Los Angeles as an independent operative when she was noticed by, and, albeit unsolicted, came under the wing of the leading lady of L.A. prostitution of the time, Ann Forrester, known in the press as the Black Widow. Forrester had been riding high under the umbrella of L.A. corrupt mayor Frank Shaw and his enforcer brother Joe, but when Shaw's regime tumbled down in the late 1930s the edges of Forrester's huge prostitution ring began to crumble as well. By 1940 she was in jail, some say because of Allen's testimony, which by the way, was just not so. That was left to the testimony of at least three other people connected to Forrester in one fashion or the other, The Three Canaries, Donna Stewart, Joan Farrell, and Pauline Skevenski, but not Allen.
Forrester was charged with the crime of pandering, a felony. Legally, the charge of pandering, at least under Section 1 of the act in relation to pandering, provides a variety of situations in of which a person can be deemed guilty. The strength of the first clause of Section 1 circulates around the term or word "procure. " Procure as used implies within it's context the use of persuasion, solicitation, encouragement and/or assistance in achieving the unlawful purpose of pandering --- with the key word being "achieving" meaning in the end result, to have actually accomplished the goal. Thus, if a defendant is charged with "procuring" a female as an inmate for a house of prostitution, he or she can be found guilty of such procurement if it is proven that he or she either assisted, induced, persuaded or encouraged her to become an inmate. In the end the meaning behind pandering basically boils down to what is found in the second clause which reads roughly:
"(A)ny person who 'by promises, threats, violence, or by any device or scheme, shall cause, induce, persuade or encourage' a female person to become an inmate of a house of prostitution, is guilty of pandering."
In the trial, Allen, going by the name Brenda Allen Burns, was called to testify that Forrester had in fact "did" the above relative to Allen being associated with Forrester. Allen was straightforward in stating that Forrester was in no way responsible in any fashion so cited by the statute.[1] Because the "girls" that worked for Forrester liked the way Allen conducted herself, by neither incriminating others or throwing Forrester under the bus, she was elevated to such a status that she quickly established herself into a leadership position.
Under Allen's enterprising leadership the operation quickly grew to what some say was an $80,000 dollar a day business with payoffs up and down the scale. Police and politicians on oneside, the mob on the other --- the mob in Allen's case being Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen. Jack Dragna, the L.A. Don and his henchman Johnny Roselli had reached a mutual agreement with Siegel and Cohen in the distribution of vice in Los Angeles and Allen fell under Siegel and Cohen purview, although she, Dragna, and Roselli would have been the better match.
If someone came forward to rat them out or in someway hindered the operation, a generous payoff was in order --- OR, if they were somehow not cooperative, they were rendered mute in some capacity. During her hay-day Allen was arrested 18 times, all the while bragging she never spent a day in jail. One of the reasons was, of course, the payoffs, but so too was when she started her operation how she skirted the law. While going through the trial of Ann Forrester, Allen learned the law was quite clear in how it interpreted pandering. The law read "procuring a female as an inmate for a house of prostitution." A house of prostitution. So Allen didn't have a house of prostitution. She operated everything through a phone service and meetings were arranged in a clandestine fashion.
However, with the aforementioned change in climate following the end of the war, among other things, people began trying to figure out ways to bring her down. Eventually members of the LAPD put into place a sting operation wherein her phone was tapped, albeit unathorized, followed by a female police officer, over the phone, posing as a potential candidate for a job as a prostitute. In the process of staging the conversation between the two she attempted to set Allen up for a charge of pandering. The police officer gave testimony under oath to the Grand Jury that Allen solicited her to exchange sex for money with a male customer at a given place, a charge Allen denied. In a trial without a jury Allen was found guilty of pandering and sentenced to five years, the sentence to be served at the State Institution for Women in Tehachapi. Later it came out the female police officer lied under oath and, even though she personally admitted to the act of perjury, the sentence against Allen was not rescinded. Allen filed an application for probation which was granted on condition that she serve one year in the county jail in addition to five years probation. In May, 1949 she commenced to serve her time. Less than four months later, Friday, September 2, 1949, Allen was released from jail on order of the California Supreme Court based solely on the fact that the police officer had perjured her testimony.[2]
Following all the uproar and publicity over the trial Brenda Allen was a person who wanted no more than to just disappear, taking on nothing but a low profile after her release from jail --- with just a couple of blips now and then like quietly slipping back into L.A. in 1953 to visit the cemetery and again in 1959 for reasons unknown. Marrying a man named Robert H. Cash in 1960, then divorcing him in Los Angeles in 1961 --- after which she totally dropped out of sight for a second time.[3]
ALLEN IN COUNTY JAIL CIRCA 1949 WEARING MATRON'S
GOWN SANS USUAL HEAVY MAKE-UP AND SUNGLASSES
Some years after meeting Allen and me no longer being a kid, an opportunity arose basically out of nowhere wherein my ex-stepmother and I had a chance to discuss Brenda Allen at some length. My father died in 1972 and my younger brother, going through our father's effects found a few things he felt should be passed on to our ex-stepmother. Since I was the only one who continued to maintain any sort of a standing relationship with her he gave the stuff to me. Since the mid-60s or so me catching up with her had become spotty at best, plus, by the time what my brother had filtered down to me to pass onto my stepmother a couple of years had passed --- so, it wasn't until sometime in 1974 that my ex-stepmother and I actually crossed paths.
Among the effects my brother gave me was a jewel encrusted brooch. When he found it in with our dad's stuff he asked the woman he had been married to at the time of his death if it was hers. She grabbed it out of my brother's hand and threw it across the room saying, "That ugly piece of shit belonged to his ex-wife!" My brother dutifully retrieved the brooch and put it in with the other stuff I eventually took to my ex-stepmother. My ex-stepmother recognized it right away. The brooch belonged to Brenda Allen. Allen had loaned it to her one day for some social event or the other and she simply forgot to return it. How it ended up with my dad she wasn't sure. I stayed a couple of days at my ex-stepmother's and during that time the brooch set into motion a series of intermittent discussions surrounding Allen[4] and then my last with Brenda Allen.[5]
My ex-stepmother admitted that she and Allen may not have been friends per se' in the classical sense, but were, she felt, much, much closer than simply just friendly business associates. She wasn't even sure if Allen had any friends, at least close friends, although she was quite popular in all the upper social circles they both traveled in. She was somewhat aloof yet approachable up to a certain point. She liked my dad, but, as my stepmother said, most women did. Matter of fact one of her girls, Pauline Page, who I mention in my works elsewhere, had fallen in love with my dad and when she saw it was not going to work, left the business and married some man she met during the war. Allen used to say she couldn't afford to have my dad around.[6]
My stepmother's take on the whole thing is that Allen came of age during the height of the Great Depression. Simple as it may seem, one of the things she learned was the poor don't have any money. It's the upper class where the money is and that is what she aimed the core of her business towards. Also, to be successful, especially with the wealthy, well-to-do or upper class, you have to present yourself as successful, so Allen took on all the trappings of the wealthy --- which was easy to do because for the most part money was pouring in. She was generous, smart, forgiving, and, even though the business she was in was suspect in the wider sphere of things, how she ran it was honest. Her word was her bond and she had an innate tendency to treat everyone, at least initially, regardless of their level in society, with respect. However, even the dumbest of those around her knew that lurking in the shadows just below the highly polished veneer was the unforgiving power of the mob. A snap of a finger and you were done --- something she was well aware of for herself. A catty actress could end up with a cut face and a customer who abused one of her girls could end up in an alley with a couple of broken legs or worse. Over time she developed a short fuse, but always expected results, crossing her she could be ruthless. On the personal level my stepmother said Allen, after learning how, reeked with class, was an impeccable dresser always remembering she was a business woman and not a party girl, had an almost obsession with cleanliness, and as well, for some reason not clear, a near fetish about having exquisitely manicured and well shaped nails at all times. Matter of fact there is a link further down the page that takes you to a photo of Allen reputedly at age 21, and even at that young age her nails were exquisite.
The big thing for me though, is how she was brought down and how it speaks toward her character. When Forrester was brought down for example, it was her own people who did it --- and even then Allen was unwilling to be a part of it. The thing is, if you look at how Allen was brought down, not one of her girls came forward to testify against her. In the Forrester court proceedings and trial it was Allen who stood alone against the whole of the law machine, all of the prosecutors, and the unfettered singing of The Three Canaries.
In the case against Allen the police had to put into place an artificial situation, bringing in a police woman presenting herself as something she wasn't because in real life they were unable to get anybody real to come forward. Why? Because the women who worked for her loved her. It was simple as that. Please note as well, that in the cases of both Forrester and Allen, even though huge sums of money was earned by their enterprises, no evasion of income tax schemes such as lodged against Al Capone were brought up against either them. Nobody, especially in the Allen situation, wanted to open a money trail can-of-worms that could implicate so many --- hence the charge of pandering. That all fell apart when it came to light the female police officer lied under testimony and a deeper investigation ensued. However, to this day, nobody knows where the money went.
The last known time Allen received news coverage at any level in a major media account, at least relative to her background as "Brenda Allen," was in 1961. There is a copyrighted photograph of her that traces back to the Los Angeles Times with a photo date of March 7, 1961 related to her divorce from a short lived marriage to former Navy pilot Robert H. Cash who she had married a year or two before. The photograph, which was taken at the court proceedings ten or twelve years after her heyday in Los Angeles, can be seen by clicking HERE. A similar photo related to the same divorce proceedings in Los Angeles dated March 17, 1961 at age 41 can be reached by clicking HERE. For a photo of Brenda Allen at age 21 as well as The Three Canaries click HERE.
If you have not done so, please be sure to visit Footnote [3] for a full accounting of Allen and her short lived marriage then divorce of Robert H. Cash, which also has newspaper articles covering the incident. Plus as well, my own last personal meeting with Allen of which happened after I reached adulthood and no longer a teenager sometime around the same time frame reference as found in Footnote [5], which opens with the following quote:
"(R)ight around the time of my 21st birthday, I had stopped to see my stepmother on the way to Las Vegas. The results of that trip ended with me meeting up with Brenda Allen once again, only this time in the early 1960s, with me no longer being a young high school teenager as before, but an adult, and Allen long out of her height of power."
(see)
There are reports Brenda Allen, who, during her life also went under a number of other names and aliases such as Brenda Allen Burns, Marie Mitchell, Marie Brooks, Marie Cash, Brenda Burris, and Marie Balanque, passed away in 1998.[7]
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SAIGON TEA GIRL
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Footnote [1]:
47 Cal.App.2d 1 (1941) THE PEOPLE, Respondent, v. CHARLES W. MONTGOMERY et al., Appellants. Crim. No. 3420. California Court of Appeals. Second Dist., Div. One. Sept. 29, 1941:
"The court instructed the jury that Brenda Allen Burns, one of the girls procured by defendants, who testified for the prosecution was not an accomplice. Appellant contends that the evidence showed this girl to be an accomplice. It does not appear that the Burns girl joined with defendants in procuring any other girl and the contention appears to be based solely on the ground that she willingly complied in her own procurement. Appellant's contention is completely answered by People v. Brown, 61 Cal.App. 748 [216 P. 58], cited by respondent. Appellant's attempt to distinguish between 'persuading' and 'procuring' is without substance. If a person could not 'persuade' himself or herself, by the same token he could not 'procure' himself. In the Brown case it was held that the person 'induced, persuaded and encouraged' to become an inmate of a house of prostitution could not be held an accomplice in the act of pandering based upon such inducement."
(source)
Footnote [2]:
For article referencing Brenda Allen's Friday, September 2, 1949 early release from her one year jail sentence please click HERE and/or HERE.
Footnote [3]:
As with most things regarding Brenda Allen, in that she used so many names and aliases and never clear about her history, telling different stories to different people and sometimes different stories to the same people --- often totally uncomparable even with some given under oath --- when the stories became recorded by the press, printed in books, or said to have come from interviews or court records, her background becomes extremely murky.
None of her actions, however, should be confused or taken as being the works of a pathological or compulsive liar. All of Allen's smudging or camouflaging of facts about herself was pure subterfuge, designed to send the bloodhounds down a false trail in able to ensure her previous and private life, her family back home, and those she held dear to herself, etc., was not compromised. In an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Mirror dated October 19, 1960 she is quoted as saying:
"'The only people who don't know about me are my family,' she went on. 'To this day, they don't know that I'm Brenda Allen. They live in a small town in the East and I don't think they'll ever find out. That's why I always wore a big hat and wide dark glasses.
"'That way, when the newspapers took my picture all those times, even if they were printed back in my hometown paper, my family wouldn't recognize me. Different name. Different face. I even wore my hair different when I visited back home.'"
As inconsistent as Brenda Allen's view of family may sound to some considering the profession she was in, and a lot of things about Brenda Allen, especially so as viewed by outsiders, was seen as inconsistent and worse, albeit mostly by outsiders, tainted in the lowest possible regard by their own unknowledgeable and inconsistent views of what she did. The thing is, as I have stated previously, how she ran her business was honest. Her word was her bond and she had an innate tendency to treat everyone, at least initially, regardless of their level in society, with respect. That's more than what can be said about any number of people, many of whom cast stones. In an interview in the Chicago Daily Tribune dated Wednesday July 21, 1948, she is quoted as saying she never accepted phone calls from clients on Sundays. When asked why she answered, "Oh, I keep the Sabbath holy."
In the main text above I write that Allen slipped back into L.A. in 1953 to visit the cemetery and again in 1959 for reasons unknown and in the following year, 1960, marrying a man (in California) named Robert H. Cash.
During the 1953 visit, after having left Los Angeles a few years before, she ended up living in New Jersey, saying she had been making a living as a $33 a week beautician. By her own admission she lived in the east for nearly ten years. Then, a trip to California in November 1959 intentionally or unintentionally morphed into being a low key permanent relocation back into to the Southern California area. She even transferred her alleged New Jersey beautician skills to practicing the profession in the city of Long Beach after having taken up residence at 1405 E. Ocean Boulevard. Somehow, before or after the decision to stay, and possibly even the cause of the decision, Allen found time to meet and marry Cash who was living a few blocks away on Pacific Avenue, a union that according to records occurred May 1, 1960, then immediately fell apart.
Below are two articles referring to the aforementioned Robert H. Cash, their marriage, divorce and her reported beautician work in Long Beach. The first article appeared in the Long Beach Independent, September 9, 1960, Page 7:
PILOT SUES, SAYS WIFE IS REALLY BRENDA ALLEN
A crop-dusting pilot has filed a complaint in Los Angeles court seeking annulment of his marriage to a Long Beach woman whom he accused of being Brenda Allen, notorious Los Angeles vice queen of the 1940s. Robert Henry Cash, 41, charged that his wife, Marie 40, had misrepresented herself to him before their May 1 marriage as "a law-abiding honest, respectable and honorable woman."
She was a former prostitute and a former madam of prostitutes and had been formerly known as Brenda Allen 'The Queen Bee of Los Angeles Prostitutes,' the complaint stated. Cash informed Superior Court that Mrs. Cash had used Marie Brooks as her maiden name at the time of he marriage here. He, through his attorney, James J. Oppen of Los Angeles, further charged that she had been involved in scandals involving the Los Angeles police department and the underworld and that she had been convicted numerous times for prostitution.
Although Mrs. Cash was said to be a Long Beach beautician, Oppen declined to say so Wednesday night. His answer to the question was "No comment."
The following article appeared in the Redlands Daily Facts, September 8, 1960, Page 7:
CHARGES WIFE MISREPRESENTED HERSELF FALSELY, LOS ANGELES (UPI)
Robert H. Cash, 41, a crop dusting pilot, charged in court Wednesday that he just recently learned that his wife of four months is notorious former madam Brenda Allen. Cash, in seeking annulment or divorce of his brief marriage, said his wife Marie represented herself to him as an "honest, law abiding, respectable and honorable woman." Actually, "she was a former prostitute and a former madam of prostitutes and has been formerly known as Brenda Allen, 'the Queen Bee of Los Angeles prostitutes,'" claimed Cash's attorney, James J. Oppen. Cash said his wife used the name Marie Brooks when they were wed in May. She was operating a beauty parlor in nearby Long Beach at the time.
Marie Brooks, AKA Mrs. Robert H. Cash come Brenda Allen, was said to be a Long Beach beautician and even quoted in an interview elsewhere as having been a beautician in New Jersey after leaving Los Angeles. Robert H. Cash's attorney James J. Oppen, when questioned about the subject of her being a beautician and/or operating a beauty parlor in Long Beach, raising more questions than answering, skirted the issue for reasons unknown by replying with, "No comment."
Although I have no reason to doubt it one way or the other and, although UPI, a national news syndicate, might be given a pass to have overlooked confirmation of Miss Brooks being a practicing beautician, I find it interesting that the local paper, the Long Beach Independent, that could easily field a reporter to go out a visit the scene (and may have), was interested to the point they were questioning it.
Being a practicing beautician on an official or legal level typically requires the so said beautician to be licensed by the state they practice in, the beauty operator granted a license via a state certified agency or bureau after a certain educational process and passing a test of some sort. An electronic search through the officially mandated licensing agencies of both California and New Jersey under all known names and aliases used by Brenda Allen turned up no credible candidates. If you go to the "Marie Brooks" link below, information regarding the marriage license between she and Robert H. Cash, obtained from the California, Marriage Index, 1960-1985, easily comes up. Why nothing related to her being a licensed beautician in either California or New Jersey comes up is a mystery, unless she wasn't licensed or the name she used is not known. It is quite possible the name Allen used to obtain a beauticians license, if there was a license, may be her "real name," thus then opening up the possibility to her birth and death records.
Interestingly enough, it should be noted, unrelated to any of the above, that on August 22, 1979 Cash's attorney, James J. Oppen, was found by the U.S. Coast Guard aboard his 41 foot yacht, shot to death. The yacht was floating adrift with the engine idling in Scorpion Cove on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Santa Barbara after a late night frantic distress call from Oppen wherein gunshots were heard in the background. Upon arrival some hours later, other than Oppen's body and the cabin full of bullet holes, the Coast Guard found no signs of intruders or others. The murder has never been solved.
MARIE BROOKS
JAMES J. OPPEN
Footnote [4]:
Toward the end of his life my father fell into a deep coma, after which his wife, against the recommendations of a variety of doctors, had him put on life support --- even though for all practical purposes his major faculties and primary physical abilities were basically non-functional. The woman my dad was married to was not particularly warm toward me, most likely because of how I continued to hold his second wife, the person I call my stepmother, in such high regard. Instead she seemed to have taken that misplaced animosity she aimed toward me and blanketed it broadly across a number of other family members I was close to, of which one included my dad's brother, my Uncle. When my father was caught in a fire in 1970 and seemed he was on his last legs, my uncle came to see him. However, my uncle was treated so shabbily by my dad's wife he vowed never to return regardless of the situation, a vow he held on to even to the point of not going to the funeral.
Several months prior the coma, around the start of the summer of 1972, my dad called me to his bedside without the knowledge of family or friends, including his wife. He told me he had long rented a small, single-car garage-size storage unit unknown to anybody. In it he said was all kinds of stuff, all of which, any time from then forward and especially so before he died and before others became privy to it, was to be divided between my two brothers and myself as we saw fit. Also in the storage unit was a large locked trunk clearly marked with his brother's name that he wanted me to take to him unopened without anybody's knowledge, even my brothers. It was going through the stuff in the storage unit after I had long retrieved the trunk and delivered it to my uncle that my younger brother came across the brooch that had belonged to Brenda Allen.
Unrelated to that facet of the story, but adhering to my father's request to deliver to my uncle the trunk post haste (my dad's words), put me in Santa Fe unexpectedly on a quick couple of days turn around during late June early July of 1972. I say unexpectedly because as soon as I walked out of the hospital I went straight to the storage unit, picked up the trunk, and drove all night right to Santa Fe. Doing so put me into my uncle's schedule of doing things instead of the two of us designing time around me being there.
During that couple of days stay my uncle had to meet up with, for some undisclosed reason, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who just happened to be in town, and I went along. I wasn't introduced or meet Ginsberg, staying off some distance milling around the car as requested by my uncle while the two of them talked.
So said, I never met Ginsberg. Although it was apparent the two of them knew each other, why my uncle requested me to remain by the car while the two of them talked was never clear. I could have easily overridden the whole thing if I so chose, and perhaps I should have. I carried a major ace-in-the-hole relative to Ginsberg that would have elevated me quickly with him had I selected to do so --- that ace being me having met a few years prior a major high-profile woman in his inner circle that had disappeared, a woman by the name of Hope Savage. She had been with the Beats ever since Ginsberg's top player Gregory Corso brought her into their circle. She had gone to Paris and Corso had went in search of her with no luck. Ginsberg ran into her in India a few years later and was the last to see her when the two of them said goodbyes in Calcutta in 1962. However, I had inadvertently crossed paths with her wandering in a remote section of the Himalayas since then. He would have flipped had he found out about it.
The above three-photo strip was taken at the 1972 meeting in Santa Fe. The first photo shows Alan Ginsberg. The center photo has Bhagavan Das and Ram Dass shown together. The third photo shows him with Ram Dass and Ginsberg. Ram Dass, again, IS Dr. Richard Alpert, the author of Be Here Now, the 1971 book that shot Bhagavan Das as well as both Ram Dass and Bhagavan Das' guru Neem Karoli Baba to fame.
ALLEN GINSBERG: WICHITA VORTEX SUTRA
DOING HARD TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY
BHAGAVAN DAS
Footnote [5]:
MY LAST WITH BRENDA ALLEN
Some sixteen years before the above mentioned 1974 meeting with my stepmother came about, right around the time of my 21st birthday, I had stopped to see my stepmother on the way to Las Vegas. The results of that trip ended with me meeting up with Brenda Allen once again, only this time in the early 1960s, with me no longer being a young high school teenager as before, but an adult, and Allen long out of her height of power.
I had turned 21 some months before and of which afterwards I bought my first new vehicle, a brand new low-slung British sports car with two rows of louvers along the hood, held down by a leather belt.
Since I was 21 and had a brand new car I decided to go to Las Vegas for the first time on my own. On the way I stopped by my now ex-stepmother's hovel in the desert to see how she was and slip her a few bucks like I often did since I graduated from high school and got a job. When she learned I was going to Vegas she asked if I remembered our trip to Santa Barbara when I was a young boy and the man I met in the hospital. When I told her yes she scribbled a few things on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope and told me to look him up and give him the note. She told me his name was Johnny Roselli and most likely at the Desert Inn.
After I arrived in Vegas I found someone who pointed out Roselli. When I started to go up to his table a man with folded arms stepped in front of me blocking me from going any further. I told him I had a note I was asked to deliver to Mr. Roselli. The man took the envelope and told me to wait. Roselli opened the envelope, looked at the note then told the man who had stopped me to have me come to his booth. The man frisked me then let me by. I told Roselli who I was, that we had met once before and that my stepmother had asked me to deliver the note to him. He motioned me to sit down, asked how my mother was doing. I filled him in as best I could, telling him she had fallen on hard times, but I do what I can for her, it's just that she is unwilling to accept any help.
When I delivered the note it just happened to be when Roselli was at the absolute top of his game. At the time I had no clue who he was, his stature, or his deadly power. After he read the note he asked where I was staying. When I told him he picked up a phone on the table, dialed a number, told them he was Johnny Roselli, talked a few more minutes, then hung up. He told me he had "comped" my room for me, moved me up to a suite, and that during my stay, except for gambling, everything was on the house. He said if there was any problem tell them to call him. Then he told me to make sure I looked him up before I left as he wanted to return something to my mother.
When I went back to the Desert Inn I didn't see Roselli but there was a large manilla envelope waiting for me with one of my stepmother's old aliases written on it. On the way home I stopped by her place and gave her the envelope. When she opened it inside was $5000 in cash.
When I picked up the envelope intended for my stepmother that morning at the Desert Inn the man who gave it to me was the same man that initially blocked me from seeing Roselli a few days before. At the same time he gave me the large envelope for my stepmother he also handed me a smaller business-size envelope that felt like it had at least two pages or more and possibly even a key in it. The man told me that although Roselli was helping my mother he was doing so indirectly through me. In return for that help Roselli expected me to do something for him. That something was to hand deliver in person the smaller envelope to the person to whom it was addressed and NOT to lose it, and under no circumstances not leave it with anybody else, give it to anybody else or let it fall into anybody else's hands and for sure not to open it. I was also told the envelope had to be delivered in the next couple of days and after I did, to call a certain number and confirm it. He also told me incase it was undeliverable for any reason to call the same number and wait for further instructions.
The envelope had a type-written address to one Miss Marie Brooks, 1405 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, California and no return address. I went to the place and after waiting a good part of the day and into the early evening I was finally able to catch up with Miss Brooks and hand deliver the envelope.
I was almost stunned that I recognized Miss Brooks immediately. When I told her I knew her and under what circumstances we met she seemed quite relieved, saying she recalled our meeting six or seven years before quite well. She had been extremely nonplussed when I first stepped up and told her I had something for her from Roselli, turning away almost running, exhibiting a strong reluctance in taking the envelope and wanting to know how I found her. Showing her the address on the envelope and after hearing of our previous meeting she changed her mind, even opening the envelope in front of me. She tipped it up and tore off the end rather than along the top above the sealed flap, that way, in the process, any key, if there was one, stayed deep in the end of the envelope. The short term relief she exhibited a few moments before turned quickly into an almost full-body collapse after she read or saw the contents of the envelope. When I asked if everything was OK and if she was alright, she quickly recomposed herself and indicated things were either fine or soon would be. With that we shook hands and I left.
If you recall from the main text above, Miss Brooks of 1405 E. Ocean Boulevard, Long Beach, California was actually Brenda Allen. As it stands, because of the envelope exchange, I am probably one of the last if not the last of the old-line people who came up through the system to have had contact with her prior to her more-or-less disappearance following the failure of her marriage. If there was any contact or follow thorough between she and Roselli related to the envelope or anything else, say the quick falling apart of her marriage, is something I am just not privy to.
I saw Roselli in Las Vegas again in April of 1961 and about two months later there was another meeting --- actually a series of several meetings that sort of added up to one meeting because they were all connected and interrelated into a single issue --- slot machines. See:
JOHNNY ROSELLI, SLOT MACHINES, AND THE FBI
MY LAST, LAST WITH BRENDA ALLEN: THE NO SHOW
On May 1, 1960, Brenda Allen, got married. Three short months later, in September 1960, her husband, Robert H. Cash, reportedly a former U.S. Navy pilot, filed for divorce. Starting during the Spring of the next year, from roughly around the middle of March 1961 to sometime into the next month, i.e., April, Allen was in court in Los Angeles on-and-off related in some aspect to finalizing that divorce. At some undisclosed point in time during those court proceedings Brenda, knowing there was a connection between me, my stepmother, and Johnny Roselli --- because the last time she and I crossed paths was through that connection --- had a letter hand passed to him in Las Vegas asking if he knew how to get in touch with me. The letter contained a business card from a lawyer and a note asking me to contact her.
On the weekend of April 29th and 30th 1961, unrelated to any of the above Brenda Allen stuff, I was in Las Vegas. On Monday May 1st I visited Hoover Dam for a few hours then drove south for a little casino action and other possible extra curricular activities in the El Rey Club located in the little speed trap town of Searchlight. Roselli had one of his gorillas deliver the letter, which had been opened, through to me on the 1st while I was in Searchlight. A couple of days later I called the lawyer who told me Brenda had left a message for me.
Over the phone the lawyer said the message asks that I meet her outside her old place in Long Beach on Wednesday the 19th at 10:00 AM. Well, the 19th fell on Wednesday in April alright, but I didn't get the letter until May 1st, so, as it was, I wasn't in a position to call the lawyer until after May 1st. I presume Brenda got the letter to Roselli sometime before the 19th, apparently thinking I would get it right away. However, while looking at the calendar I noticed that July has the exact same dates for the exact same days, meaning that in July the 19th also fell on a Wednesday. So, although it wasn't likely, not knowing what Brenda was thinking of or up to, just as a precaution I went to her old address on East Ocean Avenue in Long Beach on Wednesday the 19th, but after waiting over two hours beyond our agreed upon time, she never did. I never saw or heard from Brenda Allan since that letter and my failed attempt to catch up with her per her request.
Regarding the death of Brenda Allen, if you haven't done so already please see Footnote [7].
CONTINUING:
Thinking I would come back and check on Brenda later, since our designated meeting spot was close to the Long Beach Museum of Art, I wended my way over to the museum when, once inside, the following happened:
"(As) I was walking around the gallery in the museum --- and totally unprepared for such an event --- I saw a woman that up to that point in time I think was absolutely the most beautiful woman I had ever personally seen in my life. Unwittingly staring at her almost as though I was frozen in a trance, she turned from the exhibit painting on the wall toward my direction and when she did the two of us made eye contact. The exact moment our gaze connected it was a though my life force had been sucked out of me, my knees even buckling from the weight of me standing. Having lost a total sense of dignity and somehow feeling a need for air I immediately went outside, crossing the short distance across a park adjacent to the museum overlooking the ocean. Within minutes if not seconds, for reasons I am yet to fathom to this day, the woman was suddenly standing next to me saying something like, 'Didn't you like the exhibit, you left so abruptly.' I don't recall what my answer was or how one thing led to the next, but soon the two of us were agreeing to have lunch together, although instead I ate breakfast, at a little restaurant she knew just a couple of blocks away called The Park Pantry.
"She said she may have been to the museum before but couldn't remember a specific instance, only stopping in for no other reason except to do so, then she saw me. She said when I left so abruptly she was overwhelmed with the strangest inner feeling, as though she had found something valuable I had lost and she had to return it --- yet she had nothing except for a strange feeling that felt so real."
ENTERS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD
By the time the many years later 1974 meeting with my stepmother rolled around, despite efforts of people such as Roselli and others, the once rich and powerful woman she was, she still remained in dire straits, barely able to keep her head above water. Roselli had personally interceded on her behalf at least twice big time in the early 60s including the aforementioned slot machines, although both times had more to do with donuts to dollars than dollars to donuts. However, by 1974 Roselli was basically out of the picture having only just been released from prison after several years and having fallen out of favor with the mob, retiring to live in Florida with his sister and brother-in-law.(see)
So said, as far as my stepmother was concerned, since she was edging toward or just into her 70s with no visible means of support, I felt if another large influx of cash could be obtained somehow it would contribute to her overall well being as well as relieving some anxiety on my part. For as long as I could remember, from being a little boy to an adult, she owned a very rare and expensive pistol, a black powder revolver from before the Civil War known as a Colt Walker. I convinced her, because the Colt was worth so much --- and it was basically just languishing away somewhere in some old box stashed away someplace --- that selling the Colt would be a good idea. I told her that I had just the buyer for it, the cowboy-western author Louis L'Amour. Quite rare and long known for pulling in hefty prices because of that, the 1847 .44-caliber Colt Walker was the largest, heaviest black-powder revolver Colt ever produced, known for their firepower and shooting distance --- and they found their way into L'Amour's novels often.
L'Amour was a friend of my uncle's and it just so happend that a few years before L'Amour and I had discussed the pistol at length one day while my uncle and I were visiting him. During our conversation he expressed an interest in seeing it. I took the Colt to show L'Amour, then returned it to the care of my stepmother after giving him all the contact information. After that, except for a phone call from her just before she died I never heard from or saw either of them again. There is no record that any financial transaction cumulated between my stepmother and L'Amour regarding the pistol, or anybody else for that fact. When my stepmother died the Colt was not found among her effects, nor to my knowledge, nothing has surfaced in any of her records or to indicate that she ever received any sort of a sudden, large influx of cash from any source from the time I saw her last in 1974 until her death in 1985.
If the Colt is not just buried or lost in the desert someplace, somebody must have it, and, if so, it seems they got it for nothing. It is my strong suspicion, although I have no proof, in that my ex-stepmother seemed to have fallen into the company of a variety of low-lifes, ne'er-do-wells and clinger-ons, that once it became known she had the Colt (thanks to me) and that it had a potential high value to it, somebody absconded with it before L'Amour was able to act on it. In any case, it wasn't like the old days when a certain Cowboy Code of the West permeated the air.
PHYLLIS DAVIS CIRCA 1980
(click image)
"If you have ever read what I have written about a woman named Brenda Allen, you would have run into the fact that just before high school I had a crush on a certain young blonde that was at the time the girlfriend of a guy in the 11th or 12th grade nicknamed 'Blackie.' I mention he and his buddies pulled me aside one day and threw me up against the wall making it clear that the girl was HIS girl and to stay away from her. I also said I learned really fast never to have designs on the girlfriend of a guy who had a nickname, especially so if it was something like 'Blackie.'"
The same type of event as above repeated itself a second time many years later with me as a full grown adult, also involving a blonde, but in Las Vegas under invite and no longer high school toughs. It was moved up several notches as well and dangerously so, the situation smothered with strong overtones of downstream Roselli-like tactics.
Phyllis Davis (1940-2013), although long after the days of Brenda Allen and absolutely no connection with Allen-type enterprises or dealings, was an actress of exceptional beauty and true natural talent who, in the early to mid-1980s, formed a strong one-on-one relationship with actor-singer and big time Las Vegas headliner Dean Martin, actually living with him for a year.
About that same time she became as well, enamored with the super normal perceptual states known in Sanskrit as Siddhis. Although she loved the idea of Siddhis, because of the personal commitment and severities of the regimen and difficulties in mastering them she took a deep breath and unwillingly moved on. Prior to that moving on, as a favor for a friend, I had been discussing with her on-and-off the Fine Art of Siddhis. When she decided to move on, because of a personal request to do so for whatever reason, I peripherally stayed more closely available than I would have otherwise normaly done. Related to that request, albeit unbeknownst to her, I was yanked off the street one day by a couple of heavyweight growlers almost in the same way as the aforementioned Blackie had done with me in my youth and told, "Roselli's dead you monk-ass prick, you got no protection so fuck off."
Years went by. Then one day out of the blue while I was in Rangoon, Burma, now called Yangon, Myanmar, Davis mysteriously caught up with me. She told me she never stopped being captivated by stories I told her about mysterious hermitages existing beyond the reach of time high in the Himalayas and ancient monasteries perched high up somewhere along the mountainous edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau in areas nobody knows who they belong to and over the years it became all she could think about. She decided she had to go to Asia --- to Burma, Thailand, Chiang Mai, maybe even the Himalayas themselves. She figured if Hope Savage was able to do it she could do it, and if in the process she and I were to cross paths, all the better, otherwise she was going into the mountains and jungles of Asia by herself alone.
PHYLLIS DAVIS
For the record, on July 16, 1976, Roselli, along with his sister and her husband, went to dinner with known bigtime Mafia don Santo Trafficante. On July 27 a mob-connected lawyer called Roselli from Los Angeles and told him to get out of Miami immediately. The next day, July 28th, Roselli disappeared on the way to play golf. On August 9, 1976 Roselli's body was found stuffed into in a 55-gallon drum floating in Dumfounding Bay near Miami, Florida. He had been strangled, shot, and his legs sawn off. The barrel was punched full of holes and wrapped in chains.
JOHNNY ROSELLI
Footnote [6]:
PAULINE PAGE
"Matter of fact one of her girls, Pauline Page, who I mention in my works elsewhere, had fallen in love with my dad and when she saw it was not going to work, left the business and married some man she met during the war. Allen used to say she couldn't afford to have my dad around."
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The photo on the left shows Pauline Page standing with the infamous Redondo Beach madam Fifie Malouf outside of Fifie's Happy Hour Cafe located on the wide concrete waterfront thoroughfare called The Strand in Redondo. The photo on the right depicts Page with the famed aviatrix Pancho Barnes at Pancho's high desert "Happy Bottom Riding Club," a so called dude ranch she built basically right on the edge of Edwards Air Force Base. Pancho's "ranch" featured a motel, an abundance of riding horses and thoroughbreds, a restaurant, three landing strips, a dance hall, gambling den, an ever present bevy of hostesses, and a world-famous bar that catered to military personnel from the nearby air base along with all of her Hollywood friends. In the Fifie photo above, Page is standing to the right of Fifie, albeit on the viewers physical left. In the Barnes photo, Page is photographed, it would seem, in connection with her sometimes association with an ever present bevy of hostesses. She is shown sitting next to Barnes in the middle row, also on the viewers left.
Page had been an entertainer with the USO during World War II, billing herself as Pauline Page and Her All Girl Band. Near the end of the war she became associated with both Brenda Allen and Fifie Malouf as well as my stepmother, and then, eventually, after meeting my father through my stepmother, to whom of which he was still married, falling madly in love with him. Seeing it was not going to work she married a former sergeant she met while touring with the USO who had never stopped pursuing her. They moved into one of those look-alike every other house had a reverse floorplan tract homes that were springing up all over after the war and while he went to work for an aircraft factory she stayed home running around all day wearing an apron and no underpants.
My dad and stepmother left for a two year sojourn to Mexico and South America around 1950 or so and in the process our de facto family disintegrated, with my brothers and I again being parceled out. Both of my brothers had somewhere to go but nobody was really stepping up to the plate to take me. My uncle, after relentlessly begging non-stop for hours as he recalled, was finally able to convince the foster couple who was taking in my younger brother to take me as well. That foster couple was Pauline Page and her husband, Pauline only taking us in to maintain some kind of a connection with my father. I know, because years later my uncle revealed to me that part of his negotiations included my uncle ensuring Pauline that he would lobby my father into being friendlier, which if you get my drift and read the next paragraph, seemed to pay off.
Then one day, sometime late in the spring of 1952 and completely unannounced, my dad, now divorced, showed up at Pauline's under the auspices of seeing my younger brother and me. As I recall it she and my dad seemed to have spent more time behind closed doors together that day than he did with either my brother or me. When my dad and I did talk and I asked him as to the whereabouts of my stepmother, or ex-stepmother as the case may be, he told me the last he heard she was in the desert trying to work out some business deal with an old associate of hers, the famed aviatrix and stunt pilot Pancho Barnes.
When my brother and I were sent to Pauline's, the house she and her husband lived in was located in a small but growing community about 12 miles south of downtown Los Angeles --- and a world away --- called Gardena. It wasn't too many years before, maybe months, that most of the area had been nothing but miles of stoop-labor farmland, but as we were moving in, and although you would never know it today, it was quickly becoming more and more of a bedroom community as new houses continued to be built all over former cabbage patches. In a quasi biggest little city in the world scenario, Gardena was also quickly becoming known, if it hadn't already, as the card club, poker capitol of the world.
Unbeknownst to Pauline, before my stepmother left for South America she wrote a letter to the owner of one of those poker clubs, in turn getting me a fairly good part-time after school and weekend job at The Normandie Club. With that job I was soon able to put together enough resources to run away. Under the guise of spending the day with a friend and without anybody's knowledge, including even my younger brother, I took a Greyhound bus north to the Mojave Desert searching for and eventually finding my then just divorced-from-my-father stepmother basically with the following results:
"Although impressed that I ran away just to be with her she thought it best to get in touch with my dad and see what she should do next. Unwilling to talk with my grandmother she called the woman of the foster couple I ran away from, who she knew and was friends with, hoping to find out if I should be returned to them or to locate my father, telling the woman that I was in good care and everything was OK. The woman of the couple, Aunt Pauline, told my stepmother to 'keep the fucking little asshole, I don't give a shit what happens to him.' Then she added, 'Don't forget his prick of a little brother, either.' My stepmother, taking into consideration there were no subtle or hidden messages in her response, being quite clear as well as taking her at her word, contacted my uncle to see if he had any idea where my dad was. He didn't, but told my stepmother if she could find no other solution and she could get me to Santa Fe he would deal with situation until everything could be hammered out. With that, having no success locating my dad for whatever reason, rather than sticking me on some grungy multi-day cross desert bus ride to my uncle's and not knowing for sure if I wouldn't just get off somewhere on the way, she arranged for the same former World War II P-47 pilot that flew my uncle and me to Sacramento a few years before to fly me to Santa Fe, ensuring, she hoped, I would be less likely to get out mid-trip."
(source)
After that, long gone from Pauline and her various escapades, I spent many a summer on my stepmother's ranch during my high school years. One of those summers, the one between my freshman and sophomore year, included an excursion flying into Searchlight, Nevada, with my stepmother and I staying at the infamous El Rey Club. While my stepmother was engaging in some sort of serious business negotiations with the club's owner Willie Martello, during a small talk discussion in the casino's cafe with one of the hostesses I met, and apparently on break from plying her trade because I was quite clearly under age, knowing my stepmother, brought up both Pauline Page and Fifie Malouf, re the following:
THE EL REY CLUB: RESORT, CASINO, BROTHEL
THE HOSTESSES
Footnote [7]:
THE DEATH OF BRENDA ALLEN, SANS OBITUARY
"There are reports Brenda Allen, who, during her life also went under a number of other names and aliases such as Brenda Allen Burns, Marie Mitchell, Marie Brooks, Marie Cash, Brenda Burris, and Marie Balanque, passed away in 1998."
On an overwhelmingly regular basis I get contacted by any number of interested parties wanting to know where is it that I obtained or was the recipient of any kind of information or proof that has led me to belive, or at least state "there are reports," that Brenda Allen died in 1998.
A great proportion of those contactees have informed me that not one place in any of their searches, internet or otherwise --- with some of their searches being quite exhaustive or elaborate so it would seem --- have they been able to come up with any sort of concrete, conclusive, or substantiated proof one way or the other regarding ANY date of death for Allen, let alone the 1998 year I cite. So how is it they ask, have I?
Sometime between the months of November 24, 2014 through to around February 27, 2015 I was in contact with a person via email and phone who had informed me she was from New Jersey and who identified herself, albeit not by name but only as being the niece of Brenda Allen, referring to Allen in her emails and phone conversations as "Aunt Marie." Now, if she still lived in New Jersey or simply from New Jersey and residing elsewhere was never made clear. However, in that I knew Allen had onetime family connections to New Jersey and was known to go by the name Marie, something in the emails I received as well as our phone conversations seemed to carry a very high level of authenticity to them. Both of those bits of information, New Jersey and Marie, could of course be garnered by just about anybody doing even a menial amount of research into Allen's background. The thing is, I met Brenda Allen on more than one occasion and I was able to question the "niece" about a couple of things that aren't necessarily media level information. Considering as a niece what she may or may not have known, in that Allen seems to have returned to her general family environs --- but always known have held her real cards close to her vest --- a niece, at least a potentially trusted one, could have come to know her at a level the rest of her family didn't. I only say that because, as in Allen's own admission, members of her family were always kept in the dark as to her "other life."
It was her niece who gave me the 1998 date.
If any of you have additional or other information, especially documentation one way or the other, I would be most pleased to hear from you:
THE WANDERLING
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