Quick and Dirty Family History
Gram was born Helena Paulina Otter (I'm looking that one up), but was known as Billie Wells, her stage name, which she took on legally after her fourth (? ) husband, James, the Italian from Utah, died. She couldn't see herself going through life as Helene Battaglino.
She was born in Berlin, Germany, when her father was in one of his wealthy periods. She says he used to drive them down the main street, ****, in one of the first cars in Berlin, pointing at large homes and apartment buildings saying, "Das ist minun und das ist minum." His sister was a Polish princess according to my grandmother and she remembers being taught how to curtsey when the princess came to town.
Her mother was Paulina Helene Krause and was born in Sorau, Germany , now Zary, Poland. Her father was Edward Kramny of Austria. She was raised on a farm. Other branches of the family worked in town. One had a sausage factory and another was an ironmonger. We have a picture of some German relatives from the 1880's standing in front of their businesses.
She was the youngest of many siblings and the story I heard was that she fell in love with a local boy and when her father forbid a marriage, she ran away to the big city, Berlin, and worked in a hat shop. My mother said that a millenist was just another word for a hooker. That is when she met John Von Otter , although he probably had lost the "Von" part by then. That story goes something like this: John was a rebel in a wealthy family. During the late 1900s he went to Russia and was caught teaching Russian peasants to read and write, with, I would suspect, a good dose of Marxism thrown in for good measure. Anyway, he was caught by the Tzar's spies and had to be ransomed by his father. His father paid the ransom, on the condition that John drop the Von from his name and disappear from the area. I have no idea where or when this happened. It seems the Polish princess sister kept in touch because she would show up in Berlin once in a while. But the family tree stops with him, at least on that side - for now.
When John Von Otter met Pauline, he already had two children from a previous marriage. A girl, Trudy (Aunt Peggy), and a boy, John. He needed a wife and a mother, Paulina needed a life. But he did not want any more children and when Paulina became pregnant, he did every thing he could to induce a miscarriage. "But I hung on, boy, did I hang on!" to quote my grandmother. According to him, jumping off the kitchen table was supposed to end the pregnancy. It didn't work. After she was born, Trudy and John say that she became his favorite, although she never felt like it.Billie remembered him as an overbearing, strict, Prussian. He would beat her when she erred in her Russian language lessons. He taught her himself and demanded his own brand of perfection from his special child.
It seems he had been somewhat of a wheeler dealer all his life, with the expected violent economic ups and downs. One day he would be buying diamonds for Paulina and the next he would be begging her to give them back so that he could pay some bills. Sometimes he would just turn around and give those same bobbles to his current mistresses.
Nana and Billie came to the USA in 1915. Here are the ship records of their arrival. First half. Second half. They show Nana as being 37 when they arrived and Billie being 8. When I read these documents I finally got that Nana and Billie had the same name: Helene Paulina Otter.
John seems to have been to the US several times, according to the ship's manifesto of his arrival in 1923. Here is one halff of the ship records of his arrival. And here is the second half.
John was handsome, educated, and always dressed well. I picture him always in a top hat and cravat. A man of little love, and lots of passion. One story is that he was buying and selling wheat for the Germans before WWI, and that was why he brought his family to New York. He was in New York when the Americans got into the war so he stayed here, and kept the German's money. They say he died in prison when the Germans eventually got their hands on him. In the meantime, he won and lost quite a few fortunes. Some months the family would be living on Park Avenue, other times in a tenement slum. Billie tells of one time she and her mother came home to their railroad flat to find John standing in the kitchen reading a book with one hand and holding a plug in a leaking water pipe with the other. He stood there muttering about the rotten workmanship of the American pipe fitters while the two women looked at him in disbelief. I wonder if they didn't smiled at each other as they dropped their packages on a small wooden table and went to help the poor hostage. Or did they have to suffer the rath of his indignation?
Many years later, when word reached the two women that he was dead, Billie sat on the back steps and cried. Not because she had lost her father, but because she didn't care whether he lived or died. She once asked Nana (as Paulina came to be known to all) why she stayed with a man who cheated on her and treated her so poorly when she could have left him and lived on her own. She had been the main support of her daughter throughout most of her growing up time. She didn't need John, why did she keep taking him back time after time?? Nana answered that she thought a girl should have a father, no matter what. Typical of the time.
As the years went on, his financial troubles seemed to get worse and worse. He would be away for months at a time and then come back, looking for money. Nana was making ends meet by working as a cook in other people's homes.
And when he came back, he took his rightful position as the man of the house again. Nana waited on him and Billie did as she was told.
Although she was ridiculed in school for being German during WWI, even locked in cloak closet because she spoke with an accent, Billie loved school and was getting straight A's. The only boy she paid attention to was one that she competed with for the best grades. She was proud of her grades and success in this new country. But at 16 he pulled her out, "Girls don't need education," and told her to get a job. So she quit school and got a job clerking at the Woolworth,s in downtown Manhatten. That must have been around 1922. One week, she took some of her pay and for the first time in her life, bought some personal items for herself. Those were the days when people were paid in cash. You would line up at a window at the end of the week and they would hand you your pay in hard cash. After the time she spent some of her pay on herself, John came on paydays and stood at the window with her. He took the money himself.
She remembers going to work in the winter in a coat that her mother made for her out of an old blanket. Quite an embarrassment for a girl who was once curtseying to royality.
Eventually, John stopped coming back and it was just the two women. John's other kids were grown up by then and on their own, although I am told that John senior took John junior with him to South American on one of John's many schemes. It was their only quality time together, so I am told.
Nana continued to work as a cook, but Billie found additonal work. As a cigarette girl in a speakeasy. She says Clark Gable once bought a pack from her and gave her a generous tip. She worked the speakeasy job at night and the Woolworth job during the day. Then a girl that she had met at the speakeasy told her she could make better money as a dancer and there was a dance studio that was looking for girls. So Billie went.
There were many such studios in New York at the time. Large loft areas were mirrored and the girls were trained mercilessly. Never ending stretches, new routines, and repeat and repeat and repeat. This was the first step on the road to being a Broadway dancer. Then she would dance at night and train during the day. While they were practicing, in the center of the space, men and women would walk around the sides observing them, commenting and pointing. These were the producers, director's, choreographers, and sometimes, dancers looking for new partners.
Such a man was Abe. He was a well-known ballroom dancer whose partner was breaking up the team to get married and move away. He was in need of a new partner. So while she never got her high school diploma, she did get a place in the history of Broadway.
She and Abe would rehearse for hours in order to perfect their routines. They would spend many hours in close physical contact, but always with Nana in the wings. Nana came to every single rehearsal, to watch over her only baby. There was no hanky-panky going on with her daughter.
The act was the typical ballroom dance routine of the era. Same kind of thing that Fred Astaire and his sister were doing to rave reviews. Abe and Billie did the usual and some unusual: in the Apache dance Billie plunged off of a second story balcony, backwards, into Abe's arms. He never failed her though he was at the other end of the stage when she turned her back to him and broke through the railing.
Now Billie's clothes were beautiful, expensive and made for her. Her gowns were flowing and seductive. Her shoes were replaced weekly. No more hand-me-downs or coats made from blankets. She needed to look special on stage and off.
But as time went on, the inevitable happened. One of them fell in love with the other and he asked for her hand in marriage. But she was not in love with him. She couldn't marry him and they knew they couldn't continue to work together under those circunstances. So the act broke up and Abe went back to the studio lofts looking for yet another replacement. Billie went on to the Vanities and eventually to Texas Guiniun's speakeasy. Now she was dancing in the chorus line.
Life must have been very exciting for a girl in the twenties. Nana having been raised on a farm in Old Germany, worried for her daughter. Did her daughter have the sense at 16, 17 to take care of herself out in the big world? Billie once told of being on a "date" with two other girls when the "boys" threatened them all with rape. The two younger girls were terrified and there was a gun involved so Billie took this seriously. She and the other young woman were crying and scared. Then the older one said she wouldn't fight them, if they would let the two younger girls go free. Billie and her friend were let out of the car, but she didn't tell me what happened to the older girl, maybe she didn't know herself.
Billie was a dancer, not a singer, but one time her agent, Sid, needed her to fill in at a joint in Yonkers when the regular singer got sick. So Billie took a train out and sang for the audience. She sang "Give Me A Little Kiss" as she walked from table to table and flirted with the bald men. On the way back to the train station she and a friend stopped in a diner for bite. While there an argument broke out among some men. A gun was drawn and a man was shot dead. Billie said she jumped over the body to get out of the diner as quick as she could.
After a stint on Broadway with her partner, she went to work at Texas Guinan's. Texas was a very well known personality in the Prohibition Era. She served entertainment as well as booze. But didn't let them or the customers cross the moral line. Billie was dancing in the chorus. One night, there was a table of two men and one women in the front and a note was sent up to Billie. The man who was without a date would like to meet her. Texas was very protective of her girls, but allowed this note through.
The first thing Billie noticed about this guy was his smile, big as all get out. His name way Marion Mortimer Jack (Jacque), but eveybody called him "Rebel." He was in the Navy now, but he was really a singer. He came from a monyed, Southern family who wanted him to become an engineer, but he wanted to sing and as soon as he got out of the Navy, that just what he did. He went on the Vaudeville circuit. But he was still in the Navy when Billie met him.
They fell in love and were married in Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey on May 20th, 1925. Billie says this was the happiest year in her life. Jack would sing all the time and they had a real love match. Slight fly in the ointment might have been that Nana, Billie's mother, went on the honeymoon and lived with them in their tiny apartment. But Nana was a great cook and from what I can tell a nice person and this was not an unusual practice in those days. Nana and Billie had been through a lot together and Billie always appreciated what Nana had gone through for her sake. They would go all through life together and Nana died in the master bedroom of Billie's house in Pico Rivera, they wanted to be home together to the end.
But I digress. So they were married. She continued to work on Broadway, he went on the Vaudeville circuit. She said that Vaudeville was really grinding. It was a lot of travel and hard work. But Jack wanted to be a singer more than anything else. He wealthy parents from South Carolina wanted him to be an engineer and did not approve of the marriage at all. Seems they disowned him when he married Billie. He had changed his name from Jacque to Jack and that's what it says on the marriage license. We never had any contact with Jack's family.
I guess she did all kinds of jobs. One of the things she got involved with were beauty contests. She never considered herself a beauty, but she was young and must have been pretty enough. She became Miss (Bronx?) and went on to the Miss America contest of 1926.
The contest was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In September. Must have been hot. She was there for the different try outs during the day. One day, she was sitting at a soda fountain with a girl friend, when a man came up and said the police wanted to see her. Of course she got up and went with the man. She had no idea why they wanted to talk to her, but she was a law biding citizen. The man took her to the lobby of a local hotel and then up to a room. There he raped her at gun point and kept her hostage for 5 days. No one knew outside of the room what was going on. Billie knew that Nana must have been frantic with worry when she didn't come home. The room had two beds. He had a gun. He slept in the room, would toss food at her periodically and used her whenever he wanted. He slept in one bed with the gun under his pillow. One night she crept to his bed and took the gun, pointed it at him, but could not pull the trigger.
When he finally let her go, he said that she would be watched and that if she told anyone what happened, he would have her killed. After all, he was the nephew of the Chief of Police of Atlantic City. His name of John Walsh, or something like that, and he really was related to the Police Chief.
Later it came out that he was involved with all kinds of illegal practices. He probably could have had her killed.
She went home. And she was pregnant. Nana was there for her, but her husband was on tour. When she found out she was going to have a baby, she wrote to him and tried to explain the situation, but in those days a raped woman was as much to blame in the eyes of the world as the raper. Maybe even more so. Jack did not believe her. She kept on writing and he did not believe her and time passed and then it was time for the baby to be born. She had little to no money, he had stopped sending his paycheck, she couldn't work and Nana couldn't bring in much. When the labor pains started, she took the subway to the hospital as far as she could and then had to take a taxi the rest of the way. She had been making payments to the hospital, $15 a week, toward the cost of the upcoming birth, but as she was driven to the hospital she was $15.00 short. That was a lot of money in 1927. Here she was, about to become a mother at the age of 20, with a mother to support, no job and not enough money to make the final payment to the hospital.
When Nana met her at the hospital, she had with her one more letter from Jack for Billie. In it was $15.00 and his words of belief. He believed her, forgave her, supported her, loved her.
She had a girl baby: Dolores Yvonne Jack, my mother.
Shortly after her birth, Billie's husband was killed in an auto accident.
Shortly after his death, Billie found articles in the local newspapers all about John Walsh and how he had been involved in white slavery and had finally been arrested. Here was the proof that she could never show her late husband. But she kept the letters and the articles, she kept them together.
So Billie, Nana, and the baby, nick named Bubbles, was the new family unit. Three women, no men, no fathers.
Billie gave up the stage life, such as it was, and took office jobs. Nana ran a boarding house and Billie took on more jobs to support the little family as the Depression came on.
The three of them lived together in various boarding houses. Delores was a stunningly beautiful baby according to Billie. People would stop her on the street to look at Bubbles. Bubbles was even photographed for some commercial product, something like Gerber's or Lux Flakes.
Nana and Billie fell into a normal life. Nana watched Bubbles while Billie worked. But for Bubbles there was always an air of, "You should be very nice to your mother, you don't know what she went through for you." They didn't beat her or mistreat her, at least not by 1920s standards. Billie says the only time she spanked Bubbles was when she stepped into the street without looking. "They don't stop in New York, like they do here in Los Angeles. Here you put your little foot off the curb and they stop. Not in New York, Kiddo."
Billie worked long hours and Nana would work in the boarding house, cooking and cleaning. But while Nana was out of their rooms is seems that someone was going through their possessions and came across Billie's letters to her husband and the story of the rape became a weapon. A man named Juan, a Philipino postal worker, who lived in the boarding house, had an eye on Billie and now he had the tool to make her pay attention to him. He confronted her with the letters and said that he would make life very difficult for her is she weren't nicer to him. Having a child out of wedlock, even as the result of a rape, could be grounds to have the child taken away from the mother. And, he had seen Nana allowing Bubbles to play with all kinds of children, of all different races, on the playgrounds. What kind of a mother would allow her daughter to play with chinks? No, she had better be nice, real nice, to him or he would tell what he knew to the authorities.
And so began another complicated relationship with a man. Ultimately, she says she was forced to marry him. She tells of walking to the court house, with him walking behind her, while she walked ahead holding on to a girl friend's arm. She swears that she never signed the license. He signed it for her. And they were married.
I don't know how long they lived together or if she even got a divorce. She say they did live as man and wife, but only if he used two condoms at a time. She says she hated him and was afraid of him. Cathy (Bubbles) has entirely different memories of him. She remembers him as a nice guy who would practice sorting mail by flipping it into different boxes that he had arranged on the dining room table. He would take her on his lap and let her try. This might have been Cathy's only father figure.
She was a pudgy child, her mother pushed her into dance. We still have her tambourine from dance class hanging on the wall. And in a photo album a picture of her striking a pose with it.
By now Billie had a car of her own and would have a new car every four years for the rest of her life. Like so many Americans of that time, they love to take off in their car and discover the country beyond the big city. There are many pictures of them at camp grounds or at the beach. Along with their friends, Kitty the dance teacher, Mr. & Mrs. Wentzler, Aunt Peggy (Billie's 1/2 sister), but there were no pictures of Juan.
Eventually, Billie decided to escape Juan. She would moved bag and baggage when he wasn't home. But he always seemed to find her. Finally she and Nana decided to leave the city entirely.
During summer vacations they had frequently gone to the Catskills and the Adorondikes. And that's where they found a restaurant for sale in a place called Cold Springs. And that's where they escaped to. Cathy might have been 10 at the time. They set up shop and were making a go of it, when even there, he found them.
That's when they decided to make the long trip to California. There they finally lost him.
I think they came out to California when Cathy was 12, so that makes it about 1939.
The only thing I heard tell about those years was that when Cathy hit her teens, she was pretty wild, at least according to Billie. During the War, she fell madly in love with a soldier named Johnny, and gram said that she was never the same after he was killed. To come: the rest of the story.
Cathy goes on the road with the Earl Carrol Vanities.
Cathy married a guy she meets in a bar in Long Beach.
Billie marries an Italian 11 years younger than her.
Nana makes mashed potatoes and applesauce.
Terry is born
The Squires go to Germany
Burt divorced
Cathy and Terry and Gram and Nana in LA
Cathy marries and unmarries Axel, marries Oakley
Lisa is born
Cathy and Nana in Vegas
