Byte Sized Biographies…

Herman Melville: From Obscurity to Immortality Melville’s Massachusetts Home-Arrowhead Over forty, Melville need not be concerned with actually having to fight for the Union but in 1863, he and his wife decided to move back to New York City, exchanging Arrowhead, which he was unable to sell, for his brother Allan’s East 26th Street home. Herman Melville, Last Photograph, Mid-1880’s Throughout this time period, Melville continued to toil away at his custom’s officer’s job.  When he began working at the Customs House in 1866 he took a horse drawn streetcar to work.  By the 1880’s, so much time had passed that Melville took the Third Avenue El, an elevated railway, to his office on the Upper East Side. Elizabeth Shaw Melville, Later In Life Melville would remain in this position until his resignation on December 31, 1885.  By that time, his wife had inherited a considerable amount of money from an aunt and other relatives, enough to allow Herman to retire.

Ted Ngoy, the ultimate American Dream, including donuts Ted Ngoy’s First Donut Shop, La Habra, California Eventually, in 1976, one of Ted’s customers showed him an ad in the local newspaper, the Orange County Register, advertising a donut shop for sale.  Ngoy had meticulously saved 20,000 dollars, the seller financed the rest of the $45,000 purchase price. Ted and his wife, Suganthini, with Richard Nixon By 1985, Ted was a millionaire and a very respected member of the Cambodian community.  He and his wife moved into a 7,000 square foot home in Mission Viejo and Ngoy became active in the Orange County Republican Party. Ted Ngoy in Cambodia, 2017 Most media accounts of Ted Ngoy end sometime around 2014.  It’s hard to keep up with an individual so far away from the western press, even in the age of the internet. But, judging from his Facebook page, he is alive and surviving quite well. His “photos” page features him, a man in his seventies, with a much younger and beautiful woman who he began dating when she was in her teens.  Judging from the photo they seem quite happy.

Frida Kahlo, Mexican icon Frida Kahlo Photographed By Her Father Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderon was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico. Today, Coyoacan, officially a borough of the Federal District, is part of the urban sprawl of Mexico City.  But when Frida was born it consisted of open space, farm and ranch land.  Although her birth probably occurred at her grandmother’s house, Frida would spend her childhood and much of her life living in the Casa Azul, the blue house built by her father in 1904. Carl Wilhelm Kahlo was born in Germany and emigrated to Mexico in 1891, when he was nineteen, his Hungarian father, a wealthy jeweler, paying for his passage. Frida and Diego Rivera Known during her lifetime as merely the wife of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo subsequently ascended to artistic prominence and popular culture fame in her own right, becoming a worldwide social and political icon. Her sickly childhood, painful existence, tortured relationship with Rivera and brief life provided a tragic backdrop to her artistic accomplishment, now recognized as unique and transcendental.  She remains so revered in Mexico that her works have been designated as national heritage objects, prohibited from foreign export.  Internationally, she is now perceived as one of the most important and original artists of the twentieth century. La Casa Azul La Cas Azul, Frida Kahlo’s ancestral home. Frida and Diego Rivera’s House With Separate Residences In early September, Frida got a telegram from her family back in Mexico City informing her that her mother was seriously ill, her breast cancer now entering a terminal stage.  Accompanied by her American friend Lucienne Bloch, she was forced to take trains and even a bus over the flooded Rio Grande back to the Mexican capital, an arduous journey that took five days.  One week after her arrival, her mother died, leaving her father in a state of grief and confusion.  She would remain in Mexico for a month to grieve with her family and also check on the house that was being built for her and Diego.  Her prospective home would have a bridge that connected two separate wings of the structure, one for her and one for him.

Frida Kahlo: Mexican Icon Trotsky In Mexico Since the death of Lenin in 1924, a power struggle over not only over the Soviet government but also the international Communist movement ensued with the winner Josef Stalin and the loser Leon Trotsky.  But Stalin was not content with merely expelling Trotsky from the party and the country.  His megalomaniac paranoia would subsequently require the physical extermination of his opponent, including Trotsky’s family.  Many of Trotsky’s relatives, including his first wife and children would be imprisoned, exiled or executed.  Initially expelled by Stalin, Trotsky himself fled first to Turkey, then France, where he was initially offered asylum but subsequently rejected and ultimately Norway, which also eventually deported Trotsky to Mexico Trotsky’s Study And Assassination Location, Mexico City In the winter of 1939, Frida would be reintroduced to a Trotskyite sympathizer named Jacques Mornard.  While in Paris, Mornard, who lived in the French capital at the time, claimed that he was moving to Mexico City and aggressively asked her to help secure him a home near hers and an introduction to Leon Trotsky.  She refused, explaining that she and her husband had had a falling out with Trotsky and suggested he find a residence on his own.  Mornard eventually made his way to Mexico, accompanied by his American girlfriend, Sylvia Ageloff, a trusted member of Trotsky’s inner circle.  It would take months, but Mornard, who routinely dropped Sylvia off at the Trotsky compound and did small favors for the entourage eventually ingratiated himself into obtaining a personal meeting with the Soviet exile.  Ostensibly, Trotsky was to review a political article that Mornard had written.  In the late afternoon of August 20, Leon Trotsky ushered the younger man into his study and began to read his work.  Unfortunately for Trotsky, Jacques Mornard was actually Ramon Mercader, a specially recruited Stalinist assassin who took an ice axe from underneath his rain coat and plunged it into Trotsky’s skull.  Although the blow did not immediately kill Leon Trotsky, he would die of his injuries within 24 hours. Frida Painting In Bed Most of the rest of the decade would be consumed by painting, teaching and attempting to find solutions for the various ailments that plagued her which included a chronically infected hand, her right foot which was troublesome and restrictive, a deteriorating spinal column that was also overwhelmingly painful and even possible syphilis that was diagnosed in the early forties.  However, it would be during this time period that Frida would paint some of her most quintessential works. Frida’s Four Poster Bed, Frida Kahlo Museum Frida’s degenerative spinal condition would begin to require surgery and a succession of casts designed to allow her mobility.  She would fly to New York in May of 1946 for surgery that would fuse four vertebrae with bone and a metal rod.  Returning to Mexico, she would be placed in a steel corset and remain bedridden for eight months. Frida’s Life Mask, Frida Kahlo Museum Frida Kahlo celebrated her 47th and last birthday on July 6, 1954.  Drawings and notations in her diary indicate that however it would arrive, she knew the end was near.  Officially, she would die sometime in the early morning of July 13, from what a doctor officially noted as a “pulmonary embolism.”  Wracked by pneumonia, in constant and excessive pain only dulled by massive amounts of opiates, this certainly would not be a far-fetched prognosis.  However, on the evening before her death she insisted on giving Diego Rivera an anniversary present, despite the fact that their anniversary was a month away.  Later, her nurse would claim that Frida intentionally exceeded the number of painkillers she was supposed to take.  Her final diary entry was both ominous and revelatory:             “I hope the exit is joyful-and I hope never to come back.” La Casa Azul Today, Frida Kahlo Museum

Ian Fleming, who proved that a great deal of fiction is factual. Ian Fleming, Naval Intelligence Ian Fleming was born on May 28, 1908, the second son of Valentine and Evelyn Fleming. Both parents came from upper crust British backgrounds, Evelyn, known as Eve, was the descendant of a solicitor paternal grandfather and a maternal grandfather who was the personal physician to Queen Victoria, both of whom would be knighted for their efforts. Valentine, known as Val, was the son of the wildly successful Robert Fleming, a pioneering British financier who originated the investment bank Robert Fleming and Company. Muriel Wright, The real “Bond Girl” Although it would not become meaningful for many years, Ian Fleming initiated a relationship in August of 1935 that would have a profound effect on his future literary life.  In Kitzbuhel, on a summer holiday, he met twenty-six year old Muriel Wright.  Although she came from the type of elite British background that didn’t require that she work for a living, she was a professional model, especially of ski apparel and bathing suits with a figure to back it up.  She and Fleming hit it off immediately and they spent a great deal of time together.  Unfortunately, Muriel adored Ian Fleming, a situation that he took full advantage of, enjoying her company but not having the slightest intention of moving the relationship forward in any meaningful way. Ann Charteris, before her marriage to Fleming If Muriel was totally smitten and more than a little naive, Ann Charteris, another girlfriend, was more calculating and fully expected Fleming to propose when her husband was killed in the war.  He didn’t so she instead married Esmond Harmsworth, the Viscount of Rothermere. But, even after her marriage, Ann continued to see Ian on the side, a typically twisted Fleming emotional relationship.  When she miscarried with her first child, it was rumored to actually be Fleming’s and not her husband’s. Fleming’s Home, Goldeneye, Jamaica By the end of the war, Fleming was interested in attempting to emulate his brother Peter Fleming, an accomplished travel writer and journalist for The Times.  But Fleming was not ready to forego a steady salary for the potentially financially unrewarding life of a writer so instead he took a job with the Kemsley Newspaper chain as a mid level manager.  Because his position allowed up to three months of annual vacation, Fleming spent all of his time off in Jamaica, which he first visited during the war.  He also began building a home near the northern coastline on Oracabessa Bay.  He would name this property Goldeneye and it would quickly become a destination for various British writers and celebrities who also spent time at the nearby Firefly, a home owned by Noel Coward.  Goldeneye overlooked a beach and a coral reef teeming with exotic fish and crustaceans and would play an important role in both Fleming’s romantic and professional life. Fleming with his first novel, Casino Royale Sometime in early 1952, Fleming began a process that he would continue while in Jamaica for the rest of his life.  After an early morning swim in the reef off of Goldeneye and breakfast in the garden with his wife, he would sit at a roll top desk in his living room and write continuously until noon.  After a nap and an afternoon outside, Fleming would return to whatever he had written earlier in the day and correct it.  The finished pages would then be deposited in his desk.  Although the exact date that Fleming began writing his first manuscript is still up for debate, it was finished in as little as four weeks on the eighteenth of March, 1952.  The novel was 62,000 words.  It was entitled Casino Royale.

Ian Fleming proved that a great deal of fiction is factual Ian Fleming, with his first novel Casino Royal Acquiring a name for his protagonist was simple enough.  When cosmopolitan visitors to Goldeneye found themselves a little bored by the repetitive, tropical languor, Fleming suggested some bird watching accompanied by the book Macmillan’s Field Guide to the West Indies by James Bond, a volume that sat prominently on a shelf near Ian’s desk.  Fleming deliberately wanted a simple name for a character that he described as “an anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a Government Department.” Blanche Blackwell Most likely, this aspect of the annual Jamaica sojourn did not go well, as Ann Fleming would return home in less than a month.  It was probably about this time that Fleming returned to his philandering ways, involving himself with an exotic, wealthy Jamaican neighbor, Blanche Blackwell, a formerly platonic friend who had at some indistinct moment became his lover.  Blanche’s family was among the most prominent of Jamaica’s colonial hierarchy and she was the carefree counterpart to Fleming’s wife’s combative tension.  Part of Ann’s discomfort, hostility and early return to Britain may have been her acknowledgement of this situation. Sean Connery, Amsterdam, during “Diamonds Are Forever” Ian Fleming stayed out of most of the major decisions revolving around the production of Dr. No.  He had no interest in composing the script and while he suggested first David Niven and then Roger Moore as the leading man, Broccoli had other ideas.  As Bond, he cast a relative unknown Scot, Sean Connery and plucked Ursula Andress out of total obscurity for the role of Honey Ryder. Ian and Anne Fleming, later in life On August 11, after dinner with his wife and a friend, Fleming suffered another massive heart attack.  Although he was coherent enough to joke with the ambulance driver who took him to the hospital, he would die in the early morning hours of August 12, aged 56.  It was also his son’s twelfth birthday. Caspar Fleming, far left Although Ian Fleming died on top of the publishing world, his wife and son would both experience great unhappiness following his death.  Although his son showed some academic promise as a teenager, he was expelled from Eton for, among other things, possessing loaded firearms in his dorm room.  He left Oxford after two years, accessed his trust fund at age twenty-one and quickly became an intravenous drug user.  He would commit suicide by a drug overdose of barbituates at his mother’s London apartment on October 2, 1975, aged 23. Grave of Ian, Anne and Caspar Fleming, Sevenhampton Never having come to terms with her relationship with her husband, Ann Fleming was plunged into deep depression and alcoholism after the death of her son.  She passed away from cancer at age 68, on July 12, 1981, at her home, Sevenhampton Place.  Today the mansion is owned by an auto racing magnate.

Rasputin, the wrong man in the right place. Rasputin, Early Years Grigori Rasputin was born on January 9, 1869, in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoe, one of nine children of Efim and Anna.  Even the number of surviving siblings of Rasputin is a matter of dispute. Possibly all of his nine brothers and sisters died only a few days after they were born and the only sister to perhaps survive was born in 1875 and named Feodosiya. That such biographical information is unclear is due to both the disorganization at this level of Russian society and the remote location of Rasputin’s birth and early life. Pokrovskoe was a small town located on the Tura river between the Siberian cities of Tyumen and Tobolsk. Tyumen is 1300 miles east of Moscow, even today an eighteen-hour automobile journey. In the late nineteenth century, this would have been a remote and isolated part of the world. Nicholas, Alexandra and Family Few individuals have generated as many legends and falsehoods as Grigori Efimovich Rasputin, the so-called “Mad Monk” of Russia. That Rasputin was neither mad or a monk is typical of much of the characterization of this Siberian peasant who would achieve a position of great influence over the government and court of Nicholas II of Russia, the last Tsar of the Romanov dynasty. Rasputin, Royal Family and Governess By the spring of 1907, Alexandra decided to introduce Rasputin to Anna Vyrubova, officially a lady-in-waiting at court but also the Tsarina’s closest friend.  Anna was another deeply religious woman from an aristocratic family, who married briefly and unhappily and became one of Rasputin’s most devout disciples.  Her opinion only strengthened his appeal to the Tsarina who trusted Vyrubova implicitly.  This connection further ingratiated Rasputin with other members of the aristocracy, although the staretz was starting to engender feelings of either great enthusiasm or profound disgust, a consistent thread throughout the rest of Rasputin’s life. Pyotr Stolypin By 1911, Stolypin had survived numerous assassination attempts, including a bombing that killed 28 people and almost killed his daughter.  As a result, Stolypin moved into the secure confines of the Winter Palace.  Pragmatic and politically astute, after a single interview with Rasputin, Stolypin came to the conclusion that the man’s influence over the ruling family was dangerous and should be eliminated.  However, historical accounts indicate that he repeatedly brought up the matter with the Tsar, who typically responded by deflecting any confrontation.  To his daughter, Stolypin said in the summer of 1911: “Nothing can be done about it. Every time I had an opportunity to warn the Tsar, I did.  And here is what he told me recently:  “I agree with you Pyotr Arkadievich, but better ten Rasputins than one of the Empress’s  hysterical fits.  That’s what the reason was.  The empress is ill, seriously ill, she believes that Rasputin is the only person in the whole world who can help the heir and it is beyond human capacity to dissuade her about it.”  

Rasputin, the wrong man in the right place. Rasputin, later years Rasputin routinely spent his summers in Pokrovskoe and June, 1914 found him back in his home town.  On June 29, Rasputin emerged from his house in order to hand a telegram to his postman.  He was greeted by a mysterious female stranger, dressed in black with a white kerchief over her features, only her eyes visible.  She silently bowed in front of him and Rasputin paused to reach for his wallet, thinking that she was a beggar in search of money.  The woman then produced a large dagger and rapidly stabbed Rasputin in the naval.  He fled with the stranger chasing him down the street, stopping only when Rasputin was able to knock her to the ground with a stick that was lying on the ground.  Both he and his wife screamed for help and a crowd quickly gathered, securing the attacker and taking her to jail.  Rasputin was taken into his home, losing consciousness and initially thought near death. Prince Felix Yusupov and the Grand Duchess Irina Yusopov continued to meet with Rasputin and then offered the ultimate bait, a visit to his home to meet Yusopov’s wife, Irina, an invitation that the lecherous Rasputin, having never met the glamorous and beautiful Irina, couldn’t conceivably turn down.  He didn’t.  Yusopov notified his conspirators that they would carry out their plan on December 16.  His wife would actually be at another family palace in the Crimea. Grand Duke Dmitri Several theories about the actual shooter have also evolved, the conspirators not wanting Grand Duke Dmitri, a royal, to have to take the blame for the murder.  Perhaps Yusopov or even Purishkevich might have initially wounded Rasputin, prompting the physically strong and probably intoxicated man to attempt to flee the palace. Whatever the sequence, a bullet into the forehead of Rasputin is what ultimately killed him.  Who actually shot him and exactly how will never be ascertained. Basement Room Where Rasputin Was Attacked The most familiar story of what ensued came from an account written by Yusopov in 1927.  Rasputin and the Prince entered the house from a side door and made their way to the cellar, sounds of music and voices supplying the background of the cover story.  Yusopov and Rasputin exchanged small talk, and the holy man ultimately ate the cakes and drank some Madeira, the prince becoming alarmed when the poisoned items seemed to have no effect. Rasputin began to grow impatient and made vague suggestions about knowing what Felix was up to.  Panicked, Yusopov went upstairs and retrieved the Grand Duke’s revolver.  He went back downstairs and after a few moments of hesitation told Rasputin to say a prayer and shot him in the midsection. Moika Palace Courtyard, Rasputin Fled Through Small Lower Right Door When the men returned, the group congratulated each other until Yusopov claimed he became concerned and wanted to make sure that Rasputin was actually dead.  The body was as they had left it, but suddenly Yusopov noticed that one eye was twitching.  As he moved closer, suddenly both eyes, “the green eyes of a viper” opened wide and Rasputin, foaming at the mouth, leapt to his feet and tried to grab Yusopov around the neck.  This from an individual who was shot in the midsection and allegedly poisoned with enough cyanide to kill a half a dozen men.  Yusopov managed to get away from Rasputin’s grasp and ran up the stairs, screaming for help.  The rest of the group quickly pursued Rasputin out into the side courtyard, the wounded staretz crawling on all fours, bellowing that he would tell the Tsarina everything. Rigor Mortis Photo of Rasputin Purishkevitch then drew his own revolver and put two more bullets into the lurching Rasputin, slowing him down until two more rounds finished the job.  The body was dragged back inside, quickly wrapped in a rug, driven to a bridge on the edge of the city and tossed into the freezing water. Autopsy Photo Of Rasputin, Note Bullet Hole In Forehead It would take divers to find the body, which had actually frozen to the bottom of the ice.  It was removed, photographed, placed in a wooden coffin and driven away in an ambulance.  Rasputin’s autopsy would ascribe the cause of death to gunshot, one in the chest, one in the back and one administered at close range directly into the forehead.  There was no poison in his system.  His face was horribly bruised, most of the damage probably administered by hitting the side of the bridge on the way into the river. Dmitri and His Wife, 1930’s Grand Duke Dmitri’s banishment to the Caucasus meant that he avoided the clutches of the vengeful Bolsheviks who murdered most of his relatives.  Via Teheran and the help of the British embassy he made his way to Europe.  Living first in England and then in Paris.  His major claim to fame was his subsequent relationship with prominent women, among them Coco Chanel.  Broke, he ultimately married a Cincinnati heiress, they divorced a decade later and Dmitri died of tuberculosis, aged 50, in 1942, in Davos, Switzerland. Maria Rasputin, Circus Performer Needless to say, Rasputin’s immediate family had a rough go of it after the revolution.  Their large house in Pokrovskoe was seized by the Bolsheviks, only Rasputin’s daughter Maria was safely able to emigrate to the west.  His wife, other daughter and son, all harassed by the Bolsheviks, were dead by 1933.  Maria was able to capitalize on her famous name and performed in cabarets and even as a circus performer.  She eventually settled in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, teaching foreign language and writing her memoirs, which only added more contrived melodrama to the Rasputin legend.  She died in 1977 and is buried in of all places, a cemetery on Venice Boulevard in metropolitan LA.  

Georg Elser’s failure is one of the most remarkable stories in European history. Georg Elser, Circa 1939 The contrast between Adolf Hitler and Georg Elser could not have been more dramatic.  Hitler was a fanatically driven over achiever who had overcome his lower middle class background, lack of education and early personal failures to become one of the most charismatic and extroverted political figures of the twentieth century.  Elser was a simple woodworker, with an intermittent work history, an unmarried loner with little interest in politics or the world beyond the small towns of Southern Germany where he lived and grew up.  But, on November 8, 1939, the lives of these two individuals would intersect in a manner that today seems inconceivable. Burgerbraukellar, After the War. November 8 was an important date in the history of Nazi Germany and the life of Adolf Hitler.  It was on this date in 1923, that Hitler rushed into Munich’s Burgerbraukeller beer cellar with a group of followers and attempted to disrupt a speech of one of the political officials charged with ruling the German state of Bavaria.  Behaving theatrically, Hitler leapt onto a table, fired a pistol shot into the air and proclaimed “The national revolution has broken out! The hall is filled with six hundred men, nobody is allowed to leave!”  Hitler’s poorly conceived revolt would end the next day, after a march of Hitler and his followers was fired upon by soldiers and police in Central Munich. Hilter Addressing the “Alte Kampfers”, Burgerbraukellar Less than ten years after his release from prison, Hitler would be named Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.    To commemorate the success of the Nazi party and the sacrifice and struggle of what he called his Alte Kampfers, “Old Fighters” who had been with him from the beginning, Hitler began a tradition of addressing this group at the site of the start of the Nazi political struggle, the Burgerbraukeller, annually on November 8. Hitler, Burgerbraukeller, 1939, in Front Of Pillar Despite the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939 would be no different.  On November 8, Hitler flew with his entourage from Berlin, landed in Munich and in the early evening proceeded to the raucous hall jammed with Hitler’s most fanatical adherents.  Shortly after eight PM he proceeded to the dais in the reception hall, a giant Swastika flag draped on the massive pillar behind him framing Hitler dramatically.

Georg Elser’s failure is one of the most remarkable stories in European history. Burgerbraukeller, After Explosion At precisely 9:20, the first of George Elser’s clocks activated perfectly the bomb detonated with a tremendous blast that pulverized the speaker’s platform, shattered the pillar behind it and brought the roof of the building down upon its inhabitants.  Dust and debris filled the air, the room now shrouded in darkness with beams falling and screams for help.  Seven people were killed immediately, one would die later at the hospital. Gestapo Headquarters, Berlin, Prinz Albrecht Strasse Surprisingly, it took a while for anyone to connect Georg Elser with the bombing, but he was eventually brought to Munich.  Himmler was placed in charge of the investigation and he quickly delegated direct authority to his immediate subordinates.  By November 12, several employees of the Burgerbraukellar, including the manager who had confronted him in the storage closet incident, positively identified him as a habitual customer.  This was enough to bring on what could be termed “enhanced interrogations” essentially beatings that left him moaning and bloody according to one eyewitness.  Stuttgart Gestapo officer would descend on Konigsbrunn and quickly talk to the daughter of one of Elser’s benefactors who let him live in their home in exchange for carpentry.  She told of Georg showing her pictures of the Burgerbraukellar and his funny wooden suitcase with the false bottoms and his work at the quarry with dynamite.  This must have arched a few Gestapo eyebrows in Munich and intensified the physical thrashing typical when a suspect needs to make a confession.  Elser was eventually taken to Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Dachau, Crematorium Building On April 9, an SS officer came to Elser’s cell and ordered him to prepare for an interrogation.  Elser was confused, he had not been formally interrogated for many years, now so close to the end of the war, what questions could he possibly answer?  He walked out of his cell, escorted by another SS man who lead Elser in a general direction that might hopefully end at the camp entrance.  But suddenly the guard directed Elser along the path that lead to the crematorium in the rear of the camp.  Elser knew then that the end had come. Georg Elser Plaque, Site of the Burgerbraukeller, Munich The Burgerbraukeller was finally demolished in 1979, ten years later a plaque would be installed at the site of the pillar where Elser’s bomb was detonated, a small square was named after Elser near the home in Munich where he stayed briefly before the attack. Elser Memorial, Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin In 2011, official recognition of Elser as a national hero was evidenced by the dedication of a fifty-five foot steel profile sculpture installed on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin.  Elser never set foot in the German capital, but today any pedestrian who passes by his memorial will have to pause and reflect on the remarkable determination and sacrifice of a simple man who only wanted to save his country.