User:Shoebox2/sandbox

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Hello! And thanks for stopping by. The below was posted in support of a particular request re: a particular article, but it about sums up my general feelings re: being left to work undisturbed in my sandbox. When the results of my work appear in mainspace they will of course be open to all; in the meantime, potentially important info pertaining to the article being worked on can be left on that article's talkpage. Thanks! Shoebox2 talk 02:18, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Editing of sandbox text Shoebox has requested that other editors not directly edit the article as it's in private user space. WP:NOBAN is clear in support of this. Please respect this request. Span (talk) 15:50, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

The aforementioned stuff I'm currently working on

Beverly Rose Potts (born April 15, 1941) was an American girl from Cleveland, Ohio who in 1951 became the subject of a famous missing persons case when she disappeared only a few blocks from her home, after attending a show in a nearby park.

Disappearance

The last known image of Potts prior to her disappearance, showing her newly bobbed hair.

Blonde, blue-eyed Potts was described as a shy, quiet and responsible child, fascinated by the performing arts, who was due to enter the fifth grade in fall 1951. On August 24 she and friend Patsy Swing were given permission to see the Showagon, an annual summer children's performance event which that evening was being held in Halloran Park, less than a quarter of a mile from the girls' homes on Linnet Avenue. This was a special treat, as the park was generally considered unsafe after dark, when large trees dimmed the surrounding streetlights. It was also frequented by the local vagrant population.

The two girls initially headed to the park about 7pm, but at eight o'clock--deciding it would be easier to maneuver on foot through the large crowds--they returned home to drop off their bikes, arriving back at the show sometime before 8:30. A few minutes later, Swing, uneasy at the gathering darkness, suggested they head home. However Potts said she had been given permission to stay for the entire performance, which was not due to end until after nine o'clock, so Swing returned alone. She would later say that she had last seen Potts in the crowd still watching the show.

At about 9:30, with the show over and the park emptying, a thirteen-year-old male acquaintance of Potts' saw her heading diagonally across the park in a northeasterly direction, about 150 yards from the corner of Linnet and West 117th streets. This would have been the quickest route to her home, which would then only be a few blocks away. The boy recognized Potts by her distinctive 'duck-like' gait, walking with toes pointed outward. Several other witnesses claimed to have seen a girl resembling Beverly near a battered black 1937 Dodge coupe idling on West 117th street, apparently speaking to the two young men--one dark-haired and one blond--inside. The various witnesses placed this encounter anywhere between 8:30 and 9:30, but all were in agreement that they had not seen the girl entering the car.

When Potts did not return home by about ten o'clock, her family began searching the area. About an hour later, still not having found her, they called the police.

Investigation

The police immediately began a large-scale search of their own but were likewise unable to find any trace of the missing girl, even after several days' investigation including door-to-door canvassing of nearby neighborhoods, tracing suspicious cars, searching nearby waste land and using a plane to survey open railway cars. They took and thoroughly investigated many thousands of telephone tips, which had been spurred by the extensive press coverage of the disappearance, but none provided any solid leads. They were, however, quickly able to clear her family--father Robert, mother Elizabeth and 22-year-old sister Anita--of any suspicion. Beverley's home life had been stable and by all accounts happy, and there appeared to be no reason for her to have run away.

Further complicating the case was Potts' shyness, especially around men and boys, even those she knew well, and her unusually excessive caution around strangers. Thus it is unlikely that she would have either been lured away by a random predator or gotten close enough to have been forcibly abducted by one. Investigators theorized that the girl had most likely been enticed into a nearby house or car on her way home by someone she knew, perhaps a local woman, with the promise of a babysitting job--despite her youth, Potts was regularly hired as a sitter for local children--or a request to run an errand. It is still rumored that her body may be buried in or on the former site of one of the nearby houses on Linnet Avenue, and at least one search to that effect was carried out in 1973, in the basement of what by then was an auto body shop. However, no signs were found there or elsewhere, and no plausible local suspect was ever uncovered at the time or since.

Suspects

Several other suspects have emerged over the years, but none can be definitively linked to the case.

In 1955 Harvey Lee Rush, a drifter and Cleveland native, told police in California that he had killed Potts after luring her to a nearby bridge with candy; however he placed the murder in 1952, a year after Potts' actual disappearance. Rush recanted his entire story shortly after being extradited to Cleveland, saying that he had confessed merely as a way to get back to his hometown.

In 1980, two retired Cleveland police detectives, James Fuerst and Robert Shankland, revealed that in 1974 they had received a tip from a local attorney's client whose brother had supposedly confessed to abducting Potts. The detectives subsequently found and questioned the brother, who, they said, had readily admitted to having lived near Halloran Park in 1951 and making a habit of picking up and molesting young girls there. The man did not remember abducting Potts in particular, but said he had "flashes" involving a girl named Beverly. Fuerst and Shankland were convinced the man was guilty, but the county prosecutors' office refused to pursue the case, citing a lack of evidence.

William Henry Redmond, an Ohio native and former carnival worker, was indicted in 1988 for the 1951 Pennsylvania murder of ten-year-old Jane Marie Althoff. While in prison, Redmond reportedly told a cellmate that he had killed three other young girls. When questioned about the Potts case in particular, Redmond refused to make a statement one way or the other. He was in the general area at the time of Potts' disappearance and had a record of child molestation convictions dating back to 1935; however Potts would have been considerably older than his previous victims.

In 1994, a letter was discovered under a carpet in a Cleveland house, written by a woman who claimed to have caught her husband disposing of Potts' body in their furnace. Upon being traced and questioned by police, the woman said that the allegation was false; she had written the letter solely as a revenge fantasy against her abusive husband.

More letters were sent to reporter Brent Larkin of the Cleveland Plain Dealer beginning in 2000, purporting to be from an elderly and infirm man who claimed that he wanted to confess to molesting and murdering Potts before his imminent death. The anonymous author pledged to turn himself in on August 24th 2001, the fiftieth anniversary of Potts' disappearance, but shortly beforehand wrote again to say he had had to enter a nursing home and would be unable to honor his promise or reveal his identity. An extensive investigation failed to turn up any clues; Larkin now believes the letters to have been a hoax.

Aftermath

The enduring mystery of Potts' apparently random disappearance and the extensive investigation quickly captured the imagination of the press and by extension the entire city. It has since become one of Cleveland's most notorious missing-persons cases. Thea Gallo Becker, author of Legendary Locals of Cleveland, says that it "remains one of the most haunting and heartbreaking mysteries in Cleveland history.".

Potts' mother died in 1956--reportedly hastened by "heartbreak" over her daughter's disappearance--and her father in 1970. Beverly's only sibling, Anita, continued to search for her until her own death in 2006. There is a memorial marker to Beverly situated next to the graves of her parents.

Further reading

• Badal, James Jessen. Twilight of Innocence: The Disappearance of Beverly Potts (True Crime Series). Kent State University Press, 2005. ISBN 0873388364, 9780873388368.

External links

• Beverly Potts at the Charley Project
• Beverly Potts at Find a Grave

Production

The film was adapted from a successful stage play, which in turn was based on Sinclair Lewis' 1929 novel of the same name. Playwright Sidney Howard suggested to producer Samuel Goldwyn that he could purchase the film rights to the novel for $20,000. Goldwyn refused, waiting until Howard had developed the property into a hit Broadway production in 1934 before making an offer. When Howard pointed out that the price had greatly increased, Goldwyn explained that "This way, I buy a successful play. Before, it was just a novel." Upon hearing that David O. Selznick had offered $150,000, Goldwyn eventually closed for $165,000.

There was otherwise a notable lack of cinematic interest in the property. Scott Berg, in his biography of Goldwyn, suggests that this was because the storyline of the novel was heavily character-driven and introspective, with little overt dramatic action. In addition, the protagonists and the majority of their supporting cast were explicitly commonplace, middle-aged folk, providing little opportunity for studios to showcase their glamorous stars; Goldwyn himself had once claimed that "even middle-aged audiences aren't interested in a middle-aged love story." Location shooting in Europe might also prove difficult and expensive.

Once the rights were secured, Goldwyn had planned to give the project to director Gregory La Cava. He changed his mind, however, after being impressed by William Wyler's handling of These Three, a concurrent adaptation of a theatrical drama for Goldwyn's studio. Wyler in turn was deeply impressed when Goldwyn subsequently took him to see Dodsworth on stage; the director's evident enthusiasm for the idea of bringing it to the screen was what finally convinced Goldwyn to go ahead with it.

Howard was retained as screenwriter, so that the film is based largely on his stage adaptation. Howard had in turn been disappointed at not being able to capture the full scope of what he called Lewis' "panorama of two Americans in Europe", the multiple settings required alone would be obviously impractical. Lewis, however, fully approved and even applauded the changes, going so far as to agree with Howard that many of the characters' speeches in the novel sounded "lousy" on stage. The final version largely eliminated the novel's digressions into social observation (in particular, Sam's extended musings on being an American abroad) and brought human elements that it had merely summarized to the fore. Lewis' broad satire was thus boiled down to a close study of two individuals and their emotional needs.

On coming aboard the film project, director Wyler was concerned "to loosen it up a little more", to humanize the characters and ensure they had relateable motives. He worked with Howard on a number of additional scenes in this vein--including a prologue set much earlier in the Dodsworths' relationship, showing Sam struggling to build his company--but ultimately none of these scenes were used. A legendary perfectionist, Wyler was characteristically meticulous about all aspects of the production, drawing on his European background to write detailed instructions to the camera crews sent over to film background shots on location. Although the finished film--reflecting the play--takes place largely on indoor Hollywood studio sets, the few glimpses of authentic local color thus captured ended up playing a key role in setting mood and tone. Visually, Wyler's attention to detail is perhaps most visible in the sequence in which Fran and her would-be lover, Issen, read and then discard a letter from her husband. In her own memoirs, Mary Astor recalled that an entire afternoon was spent shooting the crumpled letter blowing away across the terrace in order to exactly mirror Fran's dilemma: "He wanted it to go slowly for a way, then stop, and then flutter along a little farther."

Casting

Walter Huston, who had created the role of Sam Dodsworth onstage, was the only actor considered for the film lead. Huston was eager to recreate what had already become the most successful role of his career, and moreover had a clause in his stage contract that if he were replaced in the role on film he would then be entitled to 10% of the fee paid for the film rights. His solid, dignified reading of the character would translate equally successfully to film, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. It reflected his belief that the story was successful because audiences could relate to the simplicity of the characters: not only "the earnest, plodding chap who has devoted himself to business so unrelentingly that he has forgotten all about play and romance", but his "pathetic wife... who craves the things that quicken and color life before... youth [is] gone forever." Wyler described his star as "not an actor you had to hold down. If anything, he was underacting. He was first-class." Huston would recreate the role again for a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast in October 1937.

Goldwyn chose veteran British stage and screen actress Ruth Chatterton as Fran Dodsworth, replacing Fay Bainter, who had originated the stage role. It would prove to be Chatterton's next-to-last Hollywood role, and one of her most personally fraught filming experiences. Astor suggested that Fran Dodsworth's obsession with maintaining an image of youth and beauty struck entirely too close to home for the then 44-year-old actress, then facing the same issues in the context of her own career. Chatterton made this aspect of the character the cornerstone of her interpretation, attempting to play Fran as purely unsympathetic. This brought her into direct conflict with director Wyler, who again--and in company with screenwriter Howard--fought for more softening nuance and understanding of a woman who had after all, they noted, loyally stood by her husband for twenty-five years. "This is important," Howard wrote in his notes for the film adaptation, "because Fran will never convince the audience if she is presented as a demon of vanity and ambition."

"It was like pulling teeth with [Chatterton]," Wyler said later. "She played Fran like a heavy, and we had momentous fights every day. She was very haughty; she had been a big star." Astor said that the director's consistently "stubborn and smiling" demeanour when Chatterton disagreed with him drove the actress to "furious outbursts". Relations between the director and his leading lady rapidly disintegrated into open hostility; Astor said that Chatterton even objected to the white shirt and slacks Wyler wore on-set, claiming they were distracting her. When Wyler asked if she would like him to leave the studio, she replied "I would indeed, but I'm afraid that can't be arranged." David Niven, then a young discovery of Goldwyn's whose turn as Captain Lockert represented his first major film role, would later describe Wyler as "kind and cozy at all other times" but a "fiend" on-set, intent on "breaking actors down completely". Niven recorded as proof an incident in which Chatterton slapped the director's face and locked herself in her dressing room. Wyler also clashed with Goldwyn, at one point shutting down production entirely in protest when the producer visited the set.

Several actresses were suggested for the role of Edith Cortright, including Huston's wife Nan Sutherland (who had portrayed Edith onstage). Other candidates included Geraldine Fitzgerald, Dolores Costello and a then-unknown Rosalind Russell. Wyler particularly vetoed Russell, saying that "her personality is not striking enough... as you know Mrs. Cortright's should be." The role eventually went to Astor, then in the prime of her career. She reported no difficulties with Wyler; however her experience on the film was tumultuous for other reasons.

At the time Dodsworth begain filming, Astor was embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with ex-husband Dr. Franklyn Thorpe over their four-year-old daughter. Thorpe had threatened to enter as evidence Astor's diary, which allegedly detailed her numerous affairs. He meanwhile leaked several passages to the media, who leapt on this potentially lurid scandal. Goldwyn called an emergency meeting with Astor, her lawyer and several other studio heads to discuss the impact a trial would have on the industry as a whole; when Astor made it clear that she would proceed, Goldwyn refused all pressure to fire her via the morality clause in her contract, citing her as "a woman fighting for her child". Hearings in the case were held at night to accommodate Astor's shooting schedule, and she slept at the studio to avoid reporters. The actress later credited her character--the calm, sophisticated voice of reason within the film--with helping her to remain composed during this time: "I was completely rattle-proof, thanks to Edith Cortright. She was my shield. Without her... I would have been shattered emotionally by the ugliness of that trial." The character would become Astor's favorite of all her roles.