WHO KILLED THE MASKED MARVEL?
by tom christopher
copyright 2003
It was a little after 5 PM on
Sunday,12 September 1943, in Venice
California. A small English
Austin sedan drove drunkenly eastward on
Washington Blvd. Mrs B. Waterson observed the car and itﾕs
passenger, a
man with dark hair, from her
house on Washington.
Moments later 12 year old
Lorraine Smith saw the car almost hit a
telephone pole before jumping
a curb near the corner of Thatcher Street,
and crashing into a
beanfield. Neither she nor her mother left their
house at 1006 Harrison Street
because they believed the driver to have
been drunk. Probably the
mother expressed this opinion. Loraine got her
telescope, and running back
to the window, watched as a man clad only in
swimming trunks staggered out
and fell to the ground. She watched as her
neighbor, Wayne Powell, of
1022 Harrison ran to the man.
Wayne Powell rushed to the
manﾕs side in time to hear him say “help me,
help me”.
“Who did it?” asked Powell, but there was
no answer. David
Bacon was dead.
Gaspar Griswold Bacon Jr. was
born 24 March 1914 in Barnstable,
Massachusetts. He was the son
of Gaspar G Bacon, who had been the
Lieutenant Governor of
Massachusetts, professor of law at Boston
University, and lieutenant
colonel in the Air Corps in England. The
elder Baconﾕs father
had been Robert Bacon, Secretary of State for
Theodore Roosevelt and
Ambassador to France during the Taft
administration.
The younger Bacon was a school
friend of Franklin D Roosevelt Jr and was
a frequent visitor at the
White House and Hyde Park. He attended
Deerfield Academy, Groton,
and Harvard, where he wrote and performed in
the annual Hasty Pudding
show. He graduated in 1937. Bacon joined the
University Players in
Fallmouth, Mass, a company which already contained
Henry Fonda and James
Stewart. He left the company hoping to find movie
work in New York, and ended
up being a master of ceremonies in a silent
movie theatre.
During this time he also
pursued an interest in aviation, learning to
fly and working as a commercial flyer in Hyannis, Mass, before
becoming
a U.S. Army Airforce Cadet at
Randolph Field in Texas. He was dropped
because of health problems,
and went to L.A. to break into the movies.
Bacon was tall, thin and good
looking. Six foot two with brown hair and
green eyes. He got a screen
test in 1939 with Metro, which was seen by
Ginger Rogers, who helped him
get further tests. He was signed by Howard
Hughes and changed his name
to David Bacon
Davidﾕs first movie
was called Ten Gentlemen from Westpoint, released in
1942. In 1943 David acted in
the movies Crash Dive and Gals
Incorporated. He also played
the roll for which he is best known, The
Masked Marvel. The Masked
Marvel was a 12 chapter serial from Republic,
who produced the best known
of the serials. In it the Marvel, a hero
dressed in a business suit
and a face mask fights the Japanese saboteur
Sakima. The hook of the story
is that the audience doesnﾕt know who the
hero is until the final reel.
The Masked Marvel was a ‘jinx’
role. Bacon
got it because four previous
actors had injured themselves and were
unable to work.
David Bacon married Austrian
opera star Gretta Keller in 1942. He and
Gretta lived in a mansion called
Castle Hill, at 8444 Magnolia Drive on
Lookout Mountain in
Hollywood, an exclusive area above Laurel Canyon. By
Fall of 1943, Gretta was
pregnant with their first child.
It was a complicated
pregnancy somehow. Grettaﾕs health was poor, and
David enjoyed swimming. He
would often swim at the Santa Monica beach
house of their friend
Geraldine Spreckles, and he and Gretta had been
planning to go there on the
afternoon of 12 September, 1943.
Gretta had been ill and
phoned her doctor who advised her not to go.
David didnﾕt want to
go without her. Gretta sat up in bed writing
letters and dropped off for a
nap. When she awoke David was gone.
Davidﾕs death was only
briefly noted in the next days papers, but the
story took some funny twists
and newspaper stories inevitably turned on
these mysteries and the name
of the Masked Marvel.
Los Angeles Detective
Lieutenants Harry Fremont and Lloyd Hurst were
assigned to the case. At
first they believed Bacon had been killed by a
hitch hiker or chance
acquaintance, but they immediately made some
discoveries.
Firstly, David Bacon had
never arrived at Geraldine Spreckles home, and
he had not taken his three
dogs with him as he usually did. This
indicated to the detectives
that he had a specific destination or
appointment.
Next it was discovered that
he had recently rented a cottage in Laurel
Canyon, at the bottom of
Lookout Mountain. His wife explained it was for
the use of a man who was
going to do some work on their house, but
police noted that there was a
trailer on the Bacon’s property that was
suitable for that use. The
wallet recovered from Bacon’s body contained
a key for that cottage.
The owner of the cottage, Dr
Charles Hendricks, a retired physician, had
met Bacon at the cottage in
the company of an unidentified man less than
48 hours before his death.
Hendricks and Bacon met in order for them to
finalize their rental
agreement. Hendricks stated “The friend was rather
red in the face and I
gathered that they had been quarreling before I
came in, though Bacon himself
was quite calm”. The man was described as
about 35 years old, five foot
eight inches, weighing 140 pounds and ‘evidently
an Austrian’.
Food, 3 women’s
purses, towels, linens, personal effects, a booklet
titled Facts of Life and two
books, Noel Coward’s To Step Aside, and
Deliah
by Marcus Goodrich were found in the cottage and removed as
evidence, but discounted when
a man named Wilfred V Buckland Jr, who’s
name was found in the books,
stepped forward and told police he had lent
the items to a friend, Harry
Frazee who had stayed briefly in the
cottage while in Los Angeles.
Detectives Fremont and Hurst
found four persons who recognized Bacon as
someone who often frequented
a certain stretch of Venice Beach, either
alone or with his dogs. Gretta
Bacon expressed surprise at this news
stating that David would
never let her go to Venice, nor accompany her
there.
Gretta revealed that Bacon
kept a secret diary written in code. She did
not know it’s
location and the police searched the house for a couple of
days before her deteriorating
health led them to call off the search.
Bacon was killed by a single
knife wound that pierced his lower heart.
According to Dr Frank R Webb,
county autopsy surgeon, a person could
live for twenty minutes with
such a wound. The interior of Baconﾕs car
was soaked with blood, and
there was no blood on the outside. It was
never clear whether Bacon was
stabbed inside or outside the car. The
knife was never found,
despite the beanfield being thoroughly searched
and local businesses
questioned.
Mrs Watterson, one of the
witnesses claimed to have seen a passenger in
the car. Lorraine Smith had
claimed to have seen a man and woman. Donald
Roberts of 15 Clubhouse
Street, while at a gas station on Washington
Blvd claimed to have seen a
man and woman with Bacon. “I saw them pass
at 4:30 PM Sunday driving
toward the beach and return about 35 minutes
later. The man was about five
feet four inches and dark complected.”
A heavy blue wool sweater was
found in the back of Bacon’s car and later
identified as a type given to
Venice High School athletes about 6 years
previously.
The blade of the knife that
killed Bacon was about 6 inches. With a
handle that would make it a
foot long. Medical Experts doubted that such
a knife could have been used
so lethally in the small car. Had Bacon
driven his assailants around
for as much as twenty minutes while he bled
to death?
One strange turn occurred on
20 September when the Los Angeles Examiner
was contacted by Blakely A
Patterson, identified as a band singer and
actor. Patterson, a recent
arrival from Hibbing Minnesota claimed to
have known Bacon for about 2
months. He said he had met Bacon while
swimming at Santa Monica
Beach, and they exchanged names and addresses
after a casual conversation.
Patterson allegedly had dinner with Bacon a
couple of times, once in the
company of another man. On the day of his
death, Patterson claimed that
Bacon had told him the man they ate with
was blackmailing him for an
unspecified reason. He said Bacon asked him
to go and meet the man but
that he was unable to do so.
The next day Blakely recanted
his story, saying he had met a man named
David who he mistakenly
identified as David Bacon, and admitted the part
of his story about the
extortion was a fabrication. He claimed to have
had a nervous breakdown as a
medical student before coming to Los
Angeles and having made up
the story to get his photo in the paper.
Patterson was arrested and
released the next day, along with Glenn
Shaum, an AWOL sailor who was
arrested when his phone number was found
in Baconﾕs address
book. He stated Bacon has hired him to do yardwork,
but then canceled the deal a
few days before the murder.
Detective Captain Thad Brown
revealed on 20 September that Gretta Bacon
had been hospitalized and
that her condition had worsened. Later that
week it was revealed that the
baby had been still born that day at
Hollywood Hospital.
Detectives Hurst and Freemont had been quoted in the
press as saying that the
investigation was being delayed because of Mrs
Baconﾕs ill health.
The newspaper report of the baby’s still birth
mentions Mrs Bacon was
expected to be in the hospital for another ten
days and then travel to her
husband’s family, and after that, the story
slips off the pages, except
for a brief time weeks later when Charles
While, a 23 year old from
Santa Monica confessed to the police of
committing the murder, but he
knew so little of the circumstances that
the police never took him
seriously.
And that’s
how the story will probably end. Wealthy playboy David Bacon,
who as the Masked Marvel
saved America’s war industries from the
sabotage of the insidious Dr
Sakima was killed by a mysterious stranger
who committed the perfect
murder. Recent requests to the Los Angeles
Police Dept and the FBI have
revealed that all files pertaining to this
case have been destroyed.
SOURCES:
(unknown
source) 4 line biography, David Bacon
Pic
(magazine) 15 Feb 44 page 47, following
Biography
of David Bacon. Promotional Press Release, 20th Century Fox, circa 1941
Who
Was Who on the Screen (E.M. Truitt)David Bacon entry
To
Be Continued... (Weiss and Goodgold) Masked Marvel entry
Revenge
of the Creature Features Movie Guide (Stanley) Masked Marvel entry
Los
Angeles Examiner:
13
Sept, 14 Sept, 15 Sept, 17 Sept, 18 Sept, 20 Sept, 21 Sept, 24 Sept 1943
Denver
Post
14 Sept, 22 or 23 Sept 1943
Correspondence
with FBI, LAPD re: destruction of files, 1996 – 1998
All Text Copyright tom christopher
Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved
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