For Immediate Release: Sally Rand Rides Again in New Book...The Girl Who Crashed the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair

 Sally Rand ran away from the Ozarks with the circus and then became a silent movie star under Cecil B. Demille but ended up in Chicago sleeping in alleys during the worst year of the Great Depression. She had one shot to save herself and she took it, crashing the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair on a white horse with only some white makeup on her body. She was arrested and then immediately hired and became famous for forty years, singlehandedly making the Worlds Fair profitable and herself rich. 

In the new book, Sally Rand American Sex Symbol Bestselling author William Hazelgrove holds up Sally Rands seven minute fan dance as a symbol of hope. "It wasn't just sex, people could go in to a darkened theatre for seven minutes and watch a woman with seven pound ostrich feather dance naked to classical music under a blue light...it was escapism and more than that, hope." Just like today, people were looking for some glimmer of hope under the avalanche of bad times. The small five foot blond with girl next door looks provided that. Sally Rand was a rags to riches story in the worst year of the depression. 

A , Chicago Tribune feature and a write up in the  Sunday Express in Britain have given the book the wings that Sally Rand used over a forty year career ending with her dancing for the Astronauts in Houston at age sixty. "She crashed the Chicago Worlds Fair but broke sexual barriers for women all over the world," Hazelgrove concludes. "Without Sally Rand there would be no Kim Kardashian or Lady Ga Ga...I think that is an amazing legacy for a hillbilly from the Ozarks."

Chicago Tribune Feature on Sally Rand who Crashed the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair

 The Chicago Tribune did a feature on my latest book. Sally Rand American Sex Symbol The article is written by Chicago Icon Rick Kogan. Enjoy Chicago Tribune Feature on Sally Rand

Photo Shoot for Sally Rand American Sex Symbol in Chicago

 She danced at the Chicago Theatre in 1933. That is where the Tribune wanted to have the photo shoot so I went down to the city after not being there for eight months. It was a strangely beautiful November day. We had a spate of warm weather for the week and the morning was warm, sunny, and felt like spring. The police were in the streets and the stores were boarded up including the Chicago Theatre. The usual crowds were gone leaving some street people, security guards, the police and one author waiting for the lights to get set up outside the theatre.

And then we started shooting.  The photographer wanted me to think about Sally Rand. She could have related to 2020. She crashed the Worlds Fair during the worst year of the Great Depression. She had been in Hollywood where her career disintegrated then ended up sleeping in alleys in Chicago before a tryout at  the Paramount Club gave her an idea to use seven foot ostrich feathers to hide her nudity. It worked and she got the job and then set her sites on the Worlds Fair. 

Sally Rand tried out but the fair wasn't interested. So she got a boat, a horse, covered her body in white makeup and then took the boat to Northerly island on the opening night and galloped into the celebration which was for only the money set of Chicago. The horse reared up and Sally Rand was arrested and then became famous for forty years. And so that was what I thought about while the photographer snapped away. It was a desperate move during desperate times. In the year 2020, we can relate.  Sally Rand American Sex Symbol

The First American Sex Symbol...Sally Rand Sunday Express Article in Britain

 

Sally Rand American Sex Symbol will be out November 1st 2020. The Sunday Express read a two page spread on the book and Sally Rands life. Enjoy!

Sunday Express on the First Sex Symbol

The First Kim Kardashian...Sally Rand

 She was famous for being famous. We  take this for granted today. But in 1933 Sally Rand was a phenomenon. She became famous overnight for crashing the Chicago Worlds Fair on a white horse with viturally nothing on. She was imediately arrested and then immediately hired. She became the biggest financial draw of the Worlds Fair and was responsible for making it profitable. She made 5000 a week in depression era dollars and ended up dancing for two years behind seven foot ostrich feathers. 

She then went on the road and there she stayed for forty years. She would dance for the Apollo Astronauts end up on To Tell the Truth, give speeches at Harvard, star in movies, have cartoons built around her...but her fame all dated back to the night ride into the Worlds Fair. She had her own television show, nightclub, and flew to her gigs at a time when few people flew anywhere. She got her pilots license when most women didnt even drive a car. She was her own business manager, agent, publicist, and made over a million dollars at a time when few options were open to women besides being a teacher, nurse, or secretary. 

She married three different husbands who squanderd her money. She took care of her family her entire life. She kept dancing well into her seventies. When she died Sammy David Junior gave her ten thousand dollars for her medical bills. Her name was Harriet Beck but Cecil B. Demilles changed her name for the movies and the world would remember her as SALLY RAND 

Capone Stories from the Tour: Capone's Dentist

Yeah I was Capones dentist. I had just finished my speech and was shutting down my computer. The man held onto his wifes arm. The woman nodded. He was Capones dentist. What was that like I asked. The man grinned. Dangerous He always came in with his goons. They were big guys in loud suits and they always had their guns out. It didn't matter how many people I had in the waiting room they  just walked in and nobody said a thing and Capone he just put himself in the chair. It didn't matter what I was doing. His goons would pull the guy out of my chair and Capone would sit down.

The woman nodded. Nobody wanted to mess with him. The man shrugged. Yeah. So Capone would sit down and his goons would take out their guns and hold them in front of him while I worked on him. And every time I had to do something I would say to the goons. This is going to hurt. The would look and then say to Al Capone. This is going to hurt Al. And then I would work on his teeth and the whole time they had their guns out.

So then I finished up. The woman nodded. He worked real fast on Capone. Yeah. So I finished up and then the goons would walk out in the waiting room and look around and then Capone would leave and the goons would give me a big fat envelope of cash. The woman shook her head. Just like that they would leave the money. The man shrugged again. It was a lot of money and those were hard times. It was the woman said. But I was Capones dentist. The woman nodded. He was Capone's dentist.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Capone Stories ---Al Capones Girlfriend

I have given over fifty speeches and done just as many book signing on Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair. At the speeches and signings people bring memorabilia from the fair and their stories of Al Capone. Here are a few....

He had on a brimmed cap and walked up my book table. Yeah, I knew Capone. I was in the Barnes and Noble doing a book signing. I looked at the man. Really? Oh yeah. My mom was his girlfriend. She was a number. Real good looking see.  Anyway she and Capone got into a fight. She was real good looking and so they get in this fight and Capone gets mad and I'm only ten years old but these two goons come to the apartment and take me down to a a speakeasy on Maxwell Street.

So Im pretty scared cause these guys have guns. So they take me into this speakeasy and its real dark and I cant see nothin. My mom had told me she and Al were in a fight. I think he hit her or something. So these guys sit me down at a table and this big fat Italian guy comes in and sits down in front of me. He starts hitting me all over the place, slapping me around. I don't know who the guy is but he starts asking me whats wrong with  my mother. Like I said she was a real number.

So after a while he stops hitting me and the goons take me back to my apartment. The man looked at me and smiled. And that was Al Capone? Yeah. That was Capone. Yeah. He and my mom got back together for a while but then they broke up. The man paused and shrugged. But she was his girlfriend. My mom...she was Al Capones girlfriend.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Sally Rand Rode Naked into The Worlds Fair of 1933 and Became a Star

Sally Rand looked like something from the heavens on her white horse, her bare skin painted white. Holding onto a bridle, she sat bareback atop the skittish horse and glided across Lake Michigan toward the back of the fairgrounds. The lake whooshed softly against the gurgling motor as the pumping horse blood warmed her thighs. The fair’s colored lights jumped in the cool, rushing water. Sally was pimply with goosebumps, even though it was late May.

The low-riding wooden Chris-Craft could barely contain the horse, and as water slapped up, she leaned close to his ear. “It’s fine . . . it’s fine, baby. We are almost there.” She pulled the white velvet cape around her and felt the wind pass over her loins and breasts. Except for the ankle bracelet, her blond wig, some makeup, and the cape that barely covered her breasts, Sally Rand, a.k.a. Harriet Helen Beck from Missouri, was naked from her painted toes to her dimpled smile. Who would turn away this gliding nymph approaching the opening of the 1933 World’s Fair?

The boat bumped the dock, and the horse stepped down from the low bow as if he had done so all his life. Sally Rand clamped his sides with her legs and dug her heels in. The horse jumped to life as her blond hair flew back. They raced down the deserted streets heading for the grand opening, where people gathered around the stage. A Century of Progress, the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, was about to open during the worst year of the Great Depression, with a gangster-ridden city at its back. It was a perfect setup for a naked woman on a charging white steed.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

How was Capone Really Brought Down?

It wasn't Elliott Ness. When I am signing books of Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair I ask this simple question of people. Who brought Capone down? Elliott Ness and the Untouchables is the fast answer. Most people have either seen the movie or even the old television show or heard it through the lore of Capone that makes people profess being related to the big man, having seen the gangster, having been past his home, his grave, worked on his car, his stills, gone to his home in Wisconsin, eaten in his restaurant hideout along the Fox River. But the truth of what really happened to Capone has not seen the light of day.

Elliott Ness in 1957 was a drunk who met a Sports writer Oscar Fraley. Fraley like a lot of writers myself included was on the lookout for a new story. So he asked Ness if he had any good stories from the Prohibition years about Al Capone. Ness produced a dogeared manuscript of about twenty pages and gave it to Fraley. It wasn't much and Oscar went to work by the time he was done the tale of the Untouchables was complete. Then Ness died and Fraley published his books and sold about a million copies. Then he sold it to television and Robert Stack was set for life and then it was sold to the movies and Kevin Kostner became famous.

But the real story is much more fascinating. Six Chicago millionaires banded together to get rid of Al Capone. They had a Worlds Fair coming and it was going to be a disaster unless they got rid of the gang violence plaguing the city. They hired their own investigators and their own police force. They began a witness protection program, set up a speakeasy, and sent their own gangsters into Capones organization. Then they started to study his operation and began to attack his profitability. In the end they famously got him on tax evasion.

So that is the real story. Fraleys story was good but the real story of the Secret Six is even better.


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All Those Capone Stories

When you write a book on Capone then you hear lots of stories. What happens is you are at a signing or giving a speech and someone comes up to you. They lower their voice and get close and then say, you know I'm related to Al Capone. This is usually through some distant relation that married someone who was married to someone who was the great aunt of Capone. Then come the truly weird stories. One involved a welder.

The women who told me this story said her father had been kidnapped by Al Capone. Men had driven up and pulled out some guns and put her father in a car. They blindfolded him and drove him to an undisclosed location. When they took the blindfold off he was facing Al Capone. I need someone to fix my stills Capone told him. The welder did the job for Capone but the men in the car came back and he was kidnapped again. After the second time he moved his family far away. He just feared for his life the woman told me.

The other stories involve other gangsters who worked with Capone or houses he owned or his vacation home in Wisconsin. Some people ask me if i have been to his grave and many tell stories about how as kids they had a chance sighting of the gangster. They described his heavy black Cadillac passing by the way someone might speak of a rock star. And then there are the stories of places he ate, bars he frequented, people he murdered. The way the book is selling convinces me more than ever that Al Capone is the ultimate superstar that time cannot dim. He has been dead for seventy years. Rock stars should have such longevity.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

How the Thompson and Valentines Day made Chicago get rid of Capone

It was Valentines Day in 1929 that sealed Capones fate. The German Shepherd tied to a bumper was the only witness and he wasn't talking. The smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air when the cops arrived. The Thompson Machine gun fired .45 ACP cartridges and fired them one after another. General Thompson wanted a gun to kill the Germans in World War I and so he invented The Annihilator. That's what he called it but everyone else called it The Thompson. Soldiers called it a trench sweeper. 

Whatever the name the angry gun fired one bullet after another from the gas of the last one. The war ended and the annihilator was very rarely used and it was expensive for civilians at 400 per gun. The British thought it was too loud. But a new group of men really liked it. The cost wasn't a factor and it fit nicely in a violin case. Just like a man going to a recital of death. So the Thompson did its dirty work in that garage on Clark Street on St Valentines Day and killed off seven of Bugs Moran's men. 

The brick wall behind the men would be sold to a restaurant in Indiana so people could sit and stare at the chipped brick. The Annihilator fired like a garden hose and that's how the two men dressed as cops fired it. One low and one high so they could be sure each man was shot at least a dozen times. And that is what made Chicago realize Capone was out of hand and had to go. The Annihilators rendezvous with Americas holiday of love. 

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Selling Books in Barnes and Noble in the year 2017

Its amazing how many authors still sit behind their table. That is what happens when you arrive at your signing. There is a chair and a table and your books. There is also a sign announcing your book and a picture of yourself. So the author then takes a seat behind the table and waits for the hordes to arrive. They don't. Even NY Times Bestsellers don't pull in the people. Yes if you are Erik Larson you will get a crowd but even that can be a crapshoot. Selling books in the year 2017 is just different from before. If you don't have a television show then you better not sit in that chair.

I just had another signing and sold 27 hardcovers at 32.00 a piece. The reason I bring this up is that no one was there to see me or to find my book. The difference is I never sit down. The whole passive experience of selling books is responsible for many good bookstores going away. People come into a bookstore to look for a book, to look for a great story. I tell them a great story and out of three people one of them will buy. It is not hard to tell the story of our First Woman President, or how Teddy Roosevelt went to the Badlands after his wife and mother died on the same day or how Chicago held a fair in the worst year of the Great Depression and had to get rid of Al Capone ad the same time.

The author who sits behind his table will be asked if he knows where the bathroom is or if he knows where that new Harry Potter book is or if he knows where the magazines are. But he or she will not sell any books. You cant blame bookstores for not wanting to have book signings. Most authors just don't sell. Which is sad when writers are really story tellers and really all people want to hear is a really good story. And they are really happy to get a book signed by the author.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Woman Who Charged in Naked to the 1933 Worlds Fair

Sally Rand looked like something from the heavens on her white horse, her bare skin painted white. Holding onto a bridle, she sat bareback atop the skittish horse and glided across Lake Michigan toward the back of the fairgrounds. The lake whooshed softly against the gurgling motor as the pumping horse blood warmed her thighs. The fair’s colored lights jumped in the cool, rushing water. Sally was pimply with goosebumps, even though it was late May.

The low-riding wooden Chris-Craft could barely contain the horse, and as water slapped up, she leaned close to his ear. “It’s fine . . . it’s fine, baby. We are almost there.” She pulled the white velvet cape around her and felt the wind pass over her loins and breasts. Except for the ankle bracelet, her blond wig, some makeup, and the cape that barely covered her breasts, Sally Rand, a.k.a. Harriet Helen Beck from Missouri, was naked from her painted toes to her dimpled smile. Who would turn away this gliding nymph approaching the opening of the 1933 World’s Fair?

The boat bumped the dock, and the horse stepped down from the low bow as if he had done so all his life. Sally Rand clamped his sides with her legs and dug her heels in. The horse jumped to life as her blond hair flew back. They raced down the deserted streets heading for the grand opening, where people gathered around the stage. A Century of Progress, the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, was about to open during the worst year of the Great Depression, with a gangster-ridden city at its back. It was a perfect setup for a naked woman on a charging white steed.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Chicago's Forgotten Fair of 1933...Hold the popcorn

Microwave popcorn. That is among the many things the 1933 Worlds Fair in Chicago brought to the populace 33 years after the turn of the century. That and a star in the flag of Chicago. There are four stars in the flag, one for Ft Dearborn, one for the fair of 1893, one for for the fair of 33 and one for the incorporation of Chicago into a city. But because the fair was held during the Great Depression it is overshadowed by HH Holmes and the Devil in the White City fair.

You could make a long distance call at the fair. Call anywhere in the United States. You could see yourself on a crude television. You could watch popcorn appear out of the air from microwaves. You could watch peas get canned and get a souvenir can yourself. All you had to do was press a button. Or you could watch your next car get built. Chrysler had a whole assembly line at the fair and cars rolled off the assembly line every hour. You could watch a woman in grease paint hide her body behind two huge ostrich feathers .

And if this wasn't enough you could ride on the Skyride 625 feet up across the lake to Northerly Island. You could watch the Zephyr the first diesel electric train set a new speed record from Chicago to Denver. And you could do all this for a nickel unless they threw the gates open on "kid days" which they did frequently because a lot of people didn't have a nickel. And you could go to the fair secure int he knowledge Al Capone had just  gone to prison and there was less chance you would get shot by some Thompson machine gun toting gangster.

You could even watch an unknown singer named Judy Garland.  She would bump into a man at the Biograph and get his autograph right before he was gunned down by the police. John Dillinger would not make the 33 fair.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Problem with Print on Demand for Authors

Publishers love print on demand. They can hedge their bets now. Sure we will buy your book does not have the same import any more as the print runs really don't exist. So lets talk about this. Traditional publishing goes this way:  Good advance. Good print run. Books in the stores. That is traditional publishing. But technology morphed and suddenly a publisher no longer had to make a stand on a book. Doing a print run requires the publisher to say I think I will sell x amount of books and it lets the author know that books will be there for the stores, events, signings, whatever the author does he can rest assured the book will be behind him.

Now lets talk POD. Small advance. The publisher will print maybe a hundred books. Maybe 50. The technology is such that if there is a demand then a book will be printed. But there is a lag. So the author notices there are no books in the stores. Then you notice that the publisher is showing no books in stock. Now you have another event and the printer cannot get the books to the press because there are lots of presses using this technology and they have books in cue. So the author shows up a at his signing with no books.

The author does not do well with POD technology. The publisher cannot react to a surge because the printer has other jobs ahead. Worse there will be no surge because books are not out in the marketplace pinging around. Now you are over nighting books talking to harassed book sellers and publishers. It becomes publishing lite. The assumption the book will be there is gone. Books create energy. But if the books is not there then there is a vacuum. So the question is where do authors sell their books?

The truth is for the author the traditional is still better. It is the publishers job to produce the book and the authors job to sell the book. Both must do their jobs for a book to be profitable.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

What Happens When Your First Print Run Sells Out

You pop your cork on the champagne and raise your glass and then you freak. As an author you always want your books to sell. Then when it happens you go to the dark side of freaking out because people are running out of books. Recently my book Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair A Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair sold out the first print run. In publishing publishers try and guess at demand and it is hard to do. You can print too many or not enough.  Authors usually fret about books not selling and so you go from that to there is not enough books.

Print on demand technology has largely solved the problem of warehousing books but you still have to take a stand and print enough for the warehouses. The economics of publishing are such that anyone can publish a book. But to get books into the system you still need to have supply. Supply and demand is king and if there is no supply then you have a problem.

Many will say well that is a good problem to have. It is but you want the storm to continue and for that you need books and you want them as soon as possible. Books are due from the printer tomorrow. 

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair Still in stock

Was Devil in the White City A Novel?

Not technically. But it was told in a novelistic style. This would be narrative nonfiction which uses the technique of a novelist to tell a historical story. HH Holmes would have been less terrifying if he was not described the way a novelist would describe a character. We were privy to his thoughts and his horrible deeds as if we were there. History could not do this only a novel could pull this off. Historians give us exactly what happened and that is pretty much it. They interpret the historical data but we do not know what characters feel, see, sense. This is the purview of fiction.

So what is the difference? Scenes. Novelists build scenes and so do writers of narrative nonfiction. I had a Masters in History yet I wrote ten novels before switching to nonfiction. Granted some of my novels could have been considered historical fiction but they were fiction. When I switched I ended up using the same techniques as writing a novel. When I wrote Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson I imagined what Edith felt like running the White House when her husband became ill. I wanted the reader to feel the pressure she was feeling.

Same with Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt  I wanted the reader to be in the Badlands with Teddy. And finally in my latest book, Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair I wanted people to smell the popcorn and know how Sally Rand felt when she galloped into the opening ceremonies. In this way, we get the best of both worlds and the story is more real for the reader. Verisimilitude means what is most true. That is what we are all after.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

How Al Capone Became Scarface

Young Al Capone got a job in a bar along the Jersey boardwalk. A woman and a man came in and sat down at a table. Capone gave them their drinks and went back to the bar. The woman was a real Italian beauty. Al couldn't keep his eyes off her. He went back to get their glasses and that was when he said it. I tell you honey, you got a really nice ass. The man who turned out to be the woman brother jumped up with a knife and started slashing at Capone.

Once twice the knife slashed Capones cheek. Blood flowed down his neck. Capone went crazy and the man barely made it out of the bar. Capone was stitched up but the scars remained. At first they were deep red and angry. Capone was very touchy about the scars. He never wanted to be photographed on that side. He didn't let anyone call him Scarface. Many times he would powder the scars over so they wouldn't be as prominent.

The man turned out to work for a local mobster. Capone was told he could not retaliate. As Capone rose up the man came to work for him and Al harbored no ill will. He had popped off and the woman's brother did what any brother would do. Scarface would not be so benevolent to other men who crossed him.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Sally Rand was the #1 Money Maker at the Worlds Fair

She did it all with her clothes off. She came from a small town in the Ozarks. Her real name was Harriet Beck. She wanted to be a dancer and follow the sun to Hollywood. She ran away when she was twelve and of course she ran to the circus. Her parents brought her back but she ran away again. She learned the trapeze and found she was very athletic. She was barely five feet tall and compact. This time she made it the coast and began to get big parts. Cecil B. Demills noticed her and asked Harriet her name. He frowned and looked around and saw an Atlas. Your name is Sally Rand he pronounced.

Sally Rand did well in the silent movies. She was a WAMPAS Baby Star which was basically a whos who of up and coming actresses. Everything was going fine until sound came along. Her screen test was a disaster. Sally Rand had a bad lisp that ended her Hollywood aspirations. Demills showed her the door and she ended up taking a bus to Chicago to look for work. She found it at the Paramount when she showed up with two giant Ostrich feathers and took off her clothes. Her dance was a hit and in three years the Worlds Fair was going to open.

Sally Rand crashed the opening ceremonies on the back of a white horse. She was naked of course and the people thought she was part of the fair. She was hired and quickly her fan dance became the number one draw. The fair had to hire extra accountants to take in all the money. Her fame lasted but the money did not. She had to go on the road and never got off. Sally Rand died penniless and obscure, only to live on in Youtube videos and rare 1933 Worlds Fair viewers.  Her dressing room was bought by a millionaire on the North Shore. Irony upon irony.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Devil in the White City and the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1933

The two fairs were forty years apart. The fair made famous by Eric Larson's book Devil in the White City was to show that Chicago had arrived and was a world city like Paris or New York. Daniel Burnham and his architects had this in mind when they designed the neo classical buildings of the White City. It was a celebration of culture in a city that was the slaughter house for the world. The Ferris Wheel made its debut along with Cracker Jacks and the first Hootchie Koo dance. People came away from the fair amazed that such a world existed in the rough and tumble coal burning city that at times smelled so bad people would not go out doors.

The 1933 fair was entirely different. Officially it was to celebrate the incorporation of Chicago but that didn't seem enough so it was changed to A Century of Progress. Technology and industrial might became the themes in a fair held in the worst year of the Great Depression. The fair quickly became a quest against the naysayers who pointed out that Chicago was broke and nobody would come during a Depression where a third of the banks had failed and a quarter of the work force was unemployed. The fair would be built on gold notes and corporate funds. No public funds would be used.

The Ferris Wheel became the Sky Ride, a cable car that went over the lake to Northerly Island 625 feet up. For people who had never been in a plane this was amazing. Television and long distance phone calls made their debut. An unknown young girl named Judy Garland sang and another unknown named Sally Rand danced behind two ostrich feathers. It was not white but multi colored earning it the name The Rainbow City.  It was the first disposal fair and was torn down a year and a half later.

People could watch peas get canned and cars get built. There was no Dr. Holmes but there was Al Capone. How Chicago got rid of Al Capone is a whole another story. President Roosevelt asked that the fair stay open an extra year. It was the only bright spot in a very dark world.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair