Tuesday, June 09, 2026

Today -100: June 9, 1926: Of liberties, bunk, and smoking


Cook County (Chicago) Sheriff Peter Hoffman begins a one-month contempt-of-court sentence for having, in his role in running the county jail, granted special liberties to gangsters Terry “Machine Gun” Druggan and Frankie Lake. I’m not sure what those liberties were besides being allowed to come and go from the jail, but that seems like kind of a big one. Alliterative Warden Wesley Westbrook, who like Hoffman took large bribes from the Valley Gang, will also go to jail, and yes, it’s the same jail. In fact, Hoffman will still be sheriff while incarcerated, presumably with authority over the jail, but he’ll resign in December. 

NY Supreme Court Justice Aaron Levy grants an injunction against the citizens’ play jury order that The Bunk of 1926, a musical revue written by Gene Lockhart (father of June Lockhart and performed as the second Willie Loman in the original run of Death of a Salesman) be closed because it is “incurably objectionable.” The jury has no legal power to close a play, but their ruling resulted in Actors’ Equity banning its actors performing in it. Producer Ramsey Wallace points out that 8 of the 11 jurors “are named in the Social Register and they take it upon themselves to decide arbitrarily what the masses shall see and approve.” The play will close on the 19th, it’s not clear why, or indeed what was so incurably objectionable.

Gen. Erich von Ludendorff’s wife Margarethe recently filed for divorce. He responds, blaming the breakdown of their marriage on her smoking. He thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to smoke.

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