May 26, 2005 – Introducing my Friend Don

May 26, 2005 – Introducing my Friend Don

Sometime in 1980 I sat down with a tape recorder in a San Francisco Restaurant and asked Don S. to tell me a story. With Don that was the only prompting he needed. I needed a tape recorder to capture the steady stream of words that poured out of him any time he spoke. He stood six feet tall, a big frame guy with an imposing yet engaging presence—you just liked being around him: a 60-something man with the pent-up energy of a adolescent child. What follows is a portion of what he said. I’ll provide the rest as I extract his words from the background noise of the restaurant and the conversations going on all around us. Ev is Don’s lovely wife and lifelong love. Where the people Don mentions are still alive, I’ve used capital letters to protect their names. Some of the names are not spelled correctly—I neglected to have Don spell them for me as we spoke. Where possible, I’ve tried to find the correct spelling. Also, I’ve tried to keep true to the way Don spoke to me, making changes to correct the meaning of what he was saying.

“The BART system was my idea. If you can, get Cyril Magnin (apparently Cyril was financing ML for San Francisco City Supervisor in 1945 by retaining Don to be get ML elected) to tell about how I got ML elected supervisor with a newspaper called the Straphanger. (Ev: Seriously, we have a copy of it around). ML didn’t have a chance. He was (in a) panel—you have to get the figures from either ML or Cyril—but ML’s chances were so bad—in a panel of 20 people running for supervisor, he was 20th—that Cyril called me in and said “I’m not going to give you any more money for the campaign because—and I want you to quit wasting your time—he (ML) hasn’t got a chance. So I went on the cuff for 100,000 copies of this newspaper called the Straphanger.

“ML didn’t have a single labor vote—he didn’t have many (vote) at all…. So I went to elevator operators in his building and I said, “Are you going to vote for ML?” Anyway I got 20 or so union people and got them to endorse ML and underneath their names I put the union they belonged to. Nothing wrong with that. (Actually, the Straphanger listed 13 endorsements on its front page some showing names followed by their union affiliation—Gus Katsarsky, office for Steam Fitters Union, others the union itself—National Maritime C.I.O. Union. Big headline: “ML for labor, labor for ML.” (Actually, the headline read “ML For People.”)

“And then I had that he was going to change the street signs because no one could read them, which came about (the headline read “Let’s Have Street Signs That Can Be Read”). I also said he was going to get rid of all the street cars and I drew a cartoon with the caption “There was a lady named Futter who rode on the number two Sutter, it giggled and twisted…da da da…and turned baby’s milk to butter. In a picture in the paper, she’s carrying her baby. (Actually the limerick reads as follows)
(“A strap-hanger named Van Futter
Has to ride on the number two Sutter
It shakes and it shimmies
Til it gives you the jimmies
And turns babies bottles to butter.”)

“And ML promised them a new transit system for the whole bay area and new street cars and to improve the airport. I don’t recall how many other things but by golly he got in and he got the BART system started. He was elected Chairman of the Board of Supervisors first time out. He stayed in politics until he got beat out for Congress and he never tried again. He didn’t use me for his Congress bid. (Ev: he never used Don again.) He got in with political advisors who told him that I wasn’t a political PR man. I never really went after the position in his campaign either. (Ev: our one and only political venture). One and only time.”

JM: Is ML still around?

“Oh yeah. He got a full page in the Examiner the other day. He’s president of the Trial Lawyers Association. He was the lawyer who took the case of a woman hurt in a cable car accident that caused her to have a change in sex drive. He sued the city and got a couple million dollars for her.
…

“I’d been a singer for 10 years and I was on radio almost every day for over ten years. I was performing on NBC—KFRC the network’s local affiliate in San Francisco. I was with Phil Harris Orchestra, which was at the St. Francis. That’s where I met Ev. I was living at the St. Francis when I was 19 or 20 years old. I came down from Montana. I’d won the Atwater Kent Singing Contest for Montana and I placed second in the San Francisco for the Western States. The manager of the hotel, Jimmy McCabe, thought I had a gift, thought I could learn. He hired me and put me in the Sunday Concert Orchestra singing light operatic music at the St Francis every Sunday afternoon or evening. Then he put me into the orchestra as a lead singer. I sang all the Sinatra songs with the orchestra. (Ev: Crosby came on NBC network) I would go on the air for 10 minutes from quarter to 11 until five minutes to 11. Crosby was on at 10 minutes past 11 to 11:20 on the same network.

“Phil Harris dropped me because I married Ev. In those days you couldn’t be (married and) in show business. He said you can’t come with me because you’re married. He was on his way to Los Angeles to be on the Jack Benny Show. He said, “you’re throwing away your career.” I did a common man King Edward. I married Ev and lived to regret it, ha ha. (Ev: all the time he was singing he was also doing art work. He had a studio in the lobby of the St Francis.) I had a studio with a fireplace in it. I was designing candy boxes. I did all the candy boxes for (tk). I did 250 designs for candy companies on the West Coast. I won three packaging awards during that time.

“In school I had no interest in anything excepting the school paper. I excelled in English because I was always editor of the school paper. I put out my first school paper in San Diego in the 8th grade. I went to school all over the United States. My father was an engineer and my mother and he didn’t along too well. (Ev: he was raised with the Seven Day Adventist faith and he would go to these schools where he would do something they didn’t like and he was expelled.) They wanted me to be an evangelist and all I could think of was being put into the position of going (abroad) and converting the heathens to Christianity… For eight years, Ev and I represented a Japanese sect in America—converting Americans to this Japanese form of religion. (Ev: before San Diego, you were much younger then about 9 years old when you put out your first paper in Missoula or where ever it was and I think it was remarkable because he not only put it out but he sold ads and collected money for the ads…) I could do anything circulation, editing, etc…

“I came to California before the Atwater Kent Contest. I was in California before in Mountain View. I talked a Methodist minister into letting me sing hymns. The minister would say his sermon and I would come in a do a song. We called it Sermon and Song. That went on for year. I really enjoyed that and I thought I might like to be a religious singer. So I went to San Jose and spoke to the CBS affiliate (KCSM?). I got an Adventist minister who thought it was a good idea even though I was considered the black sheep of the Church. He figured on the radio no one would know the difference. We put this on and it became the “Voice of Prophesy” which was on 400 stations nationwide. I would estimate that millions of dollars have come into the Adventist church through this media. I did this for a time and then they replaced me with a quartet. I have a chip on my shoulder for this religion because I spent so many unhappy years in their schools and I didn’t know that—the flower children hadn’t come along then and I didn’t know you could rebel against your family at 15.

“When I was approaching 30 I was with Meredith Willson on NBC after I left Phil Harris. Willson had an orchestra on NBC. And I sang in Hollywood with Ben Alexander who had a show. I worked in hotels, nightclubs. I worked several years: seven nights a week without a day off in nightclubs. When I was approaching 30 (Ev: One time he was singing … and it was jammed packed and he had just made his way in. Our son was only a baby at that point—I think, six weeks old. He telephones me one night and says ‘I’m leaving and going to Los Angeles’—right out of the clear blue sky. ‘So and so is opening a brand new … down in Corona—called the Merconium.’) It was built at the beginning of the war for the navy as a recuperation center for naval officers. (Ev: they want to go down and I’m leaving tonight. Doesn’t give anybody any notice. He says, ‘You pack up everything and come down.’ Here I was with a baby. Anyway we get down there and the man had no idea of hiring Don. He was just inviting Don to come down for a weekend. So there we were.)

“He gave us a house and for several months I had an orchestra and we played rotary clubs and so on. (Ev: that was his first public relations job.) I drove all over Southern California in a big Stutz. During this time I tried out for the Great Ziegfeld. They liked the idea that I was named Steele. John Steele was the singer with the Ziegfeld Follies. So they thought it was very good if a Don Steele sang the song “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody.” So I went down and I auditioned with MGM for about five times for the part. I had a falsetto high C. Tony Martin was also trying out and he could hit the full note. So he won and I lost. To be second in Hollywood is to be in the desert. That kind of broke my heart. (Ev: the only time and he came back.) I came back to San Francisco. (circa 1936)

“Yeah, I realized then that I had (a lot of) competitors: Tony Martin, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haynes (Ev: Perry Como) Perry Como, the Eberle Brothers—Bob Eberle—with Tommy Dorsey. I was closer to Eberle in style than any of them. So I got together with Perry Como and I said ‘I sound so much like Eberle’ and he said ‘I sound so much like Crosby,’ so he quit to become a barber and I quit and became a press agent. (Ev: He (Como) came back later.) He came back later but he was a barber for about three years after he left the Ted Weems orchestra. He was with Ted Weems when we had this conversation and I was the Master of Ceremony at the Deauville, which is where Macy’s (on Union Square in San Francisco) is now.

“When I really quit, I was booked into the Golden Gate Theater and was held over for five weeks. At the end of the fifth week—I was doing five shows a day so there wasn’t much room to get out and run around. I did a lot of thinking. I could hardly get off the stage because of signing autographs. April 17th 19xx that was the last time I ever sang.

Don’s midlife crisis in the next installment.