'My God....the cruelty!'

Kathleen, Suzanne, Victoria

After the stock market Crash of ’29, Susanna’s father Les Larson lost his job in securities-- he had secretly been saving and by the time of the crash, had saved about $10,000 (under the porch), so the economic decline for the Larsons was not as swift as it was for many in this deep dark Great Depression –

“This was a cruel time, my God, the cruelty!” my mother would tell me.

Beginning in that fateful year of 1996, I had initiated several recorded telephone interviews with what was left of Susanna’s family. On August 16, 1996 I interviewed a 71 year old ‘Haskell Laramie’ who had married Susanna’s sister Kathleen. He met her in a Chicago rooming house in 1951 and they married about six months after their first meeting, and ironically about 8 months before Kathleen’s devastating schizophrenia began to emerge. Haskell was a pretty well rounded stand up guy as far as Les Larson was concerned. They remained deep friends up until Kathleen crushed both his legs, accidently, with his own car. Les died two months later.

Haskell was an ex-navy fellow, a college graduate and played the piano “magnificently”. And really was very much in love with her as he told me himself. He described many nights of Kathleen suddenly hurling dishes along with the rest of the dinner against the kitchen walls. He described Susanna’s mother ‘Adie as a powerful and troubled woman that “seemed like she was possessed by a demon…”, that “where ever she went she left chaos and infighting” among all who were, for any amount of time, in her presence. I mentioned to Haskell how awful it must have been, for anybody, living under the same roof with her. He said that he and Kathleen had for a short time, Adie came to the conclusion that Kathleen's illness was all his fault and that ever since then, “Adie and I were mortal enemies till the day she died!”, on the other hand Haskell described Susanna’s father Les as a quite and gentle, bright man. Who described his estranged wife (they never divorced) “as hell with the blower on!” Haskell also made it a point of how “deep in denial” Susanna always was with the “abuse and insanity” that Adie perpetrated “…on those three little girls.”, and the intense jealousy that Susanna’s sisters held against her. But Les would condone the behavior, putting up little resistance for the swirling chaos, way too much for him to take any kind of stand…it seemed. Adie considered him “weak and spineless”. I guess just the right recipe for her to rule the roost and keep the home fires raging.

Lester Lamont Larson was born in Mendotta, Illinois and had two siblings; Pearl and Fred. Their mother, Althena Garrison (much more on her later, as she is the one that took me on quite a ride!) and father, Martin Larson a butcher, who migrated with his parents from Sweden when he was seventeen. Lester, I would discover was a ‘famous’ college football player. He played the game for the University of Chicago, with ‘The Maroons’, was on the 1905 Big Ten championship team. The Maroons were coached by another ‘famous’ man, ‘Amos Alonzo Stagg’, considered by many the ‘Father of Football’.

In 1925, Les had been offered an executive position with the ‘Utilities Exchange Commission’ in Minneapolis, soon the Larsons would raise up stakes and move to Minneapolis when Susanna was just nine months old. Within the next three years, Kathleen and Victoria would be born. The Utilities Exchange Commission was headed by Sam Insull, the infamous depression-era ‘sleaze-ball’, who would be found in 1936 in a crate (alive) on a Greek freighter by Hoover’s F.B.I.

The Larson’s lived a comfortable upper-middle class life until the crash of 1929, and then all hell would break loose for millions of Americans.

After about 1931 when the dollars mysteriously ran out, things swiftly declined; Les could not find work, if he did it was menial, sold type writers, fixing small appliances etc. They often moved every month, being evicted for lack of rent $$.

There were many ‘episodes’ of witness, here’s just a few mentioned through the prism of my mother’s denial;

• Victoria’s Scarlet Fever-Quarantined sign on the door.
• Gas company turned off the gas- no heat-no cooking.
• Les appealed to the gas company-they would not turn it back on.
• Les was humiliated when he had to steal gas from the downstairs neighbor.
• Adie was paradoxically a “wonderful mother”/ nurse- Svengali- like.
• Waking them up at 4am to clean house (very drunk)- “come on, come on everybody up, we got to clean this place.”
• Dragging the girls across the floor by their hair when rage would frequent Adie.
• Suzanne coming home from school to find the apartment wrecked, human feces on the kitchen walls with Adie slumped over the kitchen table, drunk and puking.
• Terrific fights; where furniture was broken and bones nearly.
• Kathleen would hold her breath and turn blue “…when she couldn’t get her way..”. Maybe just to survive.
• Suzanne’s almost fatal bout with pneumonia.
• Exceedingly lonely times for Suzanne, at 8 years would become the sole caretaker of her baby sisters “Baby” and “Sister.”

But there were also memorable times through mom's prism;

Les and Adie loved music, both sang while Adie played the piano. Les would bring home recordings of Richard Crook, John Charles Thomas, Jeanette Macdonald, BeBe Daniels, and Lily Pons. Suzanne would soul-devour them...eat them up.... never getting enough.

Les and Adie would often take Suzanne, Kathleen and Victoria to the movie-musicals. One afternoon in 1934 they all set out to see 'Babes in Toyland' with Laurel and Hardy. Across the street in another theater was 'One Night of Love' with Grace Moore and Tullio Carminati. Adie, after spotting a Grace Moore film, knew this was the movie her young prodigy would have to see. The family split up with Les, 'Sister' and 'Baby' going to 'Babes in Toyland' and Adie and Suzanne were off to 'One Night of Love'. Seeing this movie thrilled Suzanne, the music, the voices, the Grand Opera on the screen. " ...all of it, I was immersed in all it’s beauty!” Suzanne was nine years old just before her almost near fatal bout with pneumonia.

Suzanne was ten years old when Mary McCormick, a well-known opera singer was making a personal appearance in Minneapolis.

The-not-to-be-denied Adie Larson telephoned the star at her hotel room and asked for an interview. Miss McCormick agreed and Suzanne sang for her in an empty ballroom at the hotel. Performing two songs and throwing in a burlesque imitation of Miss McCormick. Miss McCormick, a bit taken aback, sat up in her seat, cleared her throat, paused, and predicted big things for the youngster. Doors began to open…

“I always had an ardor to sing, an inordinate passion for music”.

“I really thought when I looked in the mirror that I was Jeanette MacDonald, whom I had seen with Nelson Eddy in ‘Naughty Marietta’ sixty eight times (and then stopped counting). Actually, I was an ugly little thing-all eyes and nose." As my mom would passionately describe herself.

In 1930’s Minneapolis, the ‘hub’ of entertainment was the Palace Theater. Every Saturday and Sunday there would be three vaudeville shows and a double-feature.

Adie’s persistence would pay off...

The Larson’s would frequent The Palace- One afternoon in 1936 Suzanne and her mother heard a violinist by the name of Carl Johnson, play "...beautifully”, 'Kiss Me Again'. Suzanne was familiar with the song so Adie took her backstage to sing it for Mr. Johnson. He was so impressed with her that he had her sing at his following weekend show at the Palace, singing “Ah Sweet Mystery of Life” and the “Waltz Song” from Romeo and Juliet, earning a very welcomed $5 for the eleven year old and her family. For the next month, almost everyday, Johnson went to the Larson home coaching the little girl, she sang with his show wherever he happened to be leading the band.

On stage 'The Palace'.

These spots netted Suzanne $5-10 a week. “I was eleven years old,” Susanna recalls. “I got $5 a day for three shows a day at the Palace theatre and wore a turquoise blue taffeta dress with a royal blue velvet sash. Can you imagine every time the curtains parted, hearing a horrid kid like me hollering the waltz song from Romeo and Juliet at the top of my lungs!” It was a $5 the Larson’s needed badly, more often than not she was the only breadwinner. The wolf of The Great Depression howled at the door incessantly.

She became an instant local star, and was soon singing on the radio and at Minneapolis/St Paul Conventions.

That same year Carl Johnson and Minneapolis Star drama editor Merle Potter sent a recording of Suzanne singing “Italian Street Song” and “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer William Koenig. Without seeing her in-person, the studio signed her to a one-year contract.

The studio had only recently let Deanna Durbin out of her contract, whereupon she had gone straight to Universal and rescued them from bankruptcy by her popularity. MGM was therefore quite receptive to having under contract a pretty little girl so young and talented. She wasn’t as cute as their Judy Garland or as pretty as Deanna Durbin, but her voice was phenomenal, and it was the era of the child star.

Adie, Suzanne, Sister and Baby set out for the milk and honey of Hollywood.

“In February 1937, my mother, two sisters and I boarded the train for Hollywood,” recalls Suzanne (Lester, Suzanne’s father didn’t join the family until later that year).

“I was 5’4” tall, weighed 69 lbs., wore a tailored suit, a little derby hat, a blouse from the dime store, and carried a Pomeranian Spitz dog. I was an anachronism! Well, we got off the train, and there was Ida Koverman, Louis B. Mayer’s right -hand lady looking at this thing the studio had just signed.” A limousine promptly escorted Suzanne and her mother to the Culver City lot for an audience with “L.B.” himself.

“There was a long carpet, and Louis B. Mayer sat at the end, almost like a dais, like a God. As soon as I put my dog down, the Spitz piddled all over Mayer’s carpet. It was not an auspicious beginning.”

Still, Suzanne and Mayer hit it off, “There was an Oscar in his office, and I asked him what it was for. ‘I got that for the best-looking man in Hollywood,’ he said. I replied, “Oh, don’t give me such blarney; you got that for being the best producer in Hollywood.” He laughed. “I must say, he was very nice to me.”

MGM was the aristocracy of the Hollywood studios, and Mayer soon sent Suzanne on a tour of his Kingdom; meeting Jean Harlow, she remembers, “She was so sweet to me, she was so much more than sexy, she was simply beautiful and adorable. She was the best-loved person on the MGM lot. They took me to meet Clarke Gable, who was making “Parnell”, the man treated me like I was the Queen of England. He took my hand, and I thought, what a great gentleman!” Their paths would cross again......