An Unfrumptious Wedding

At Las Vegas' raucously elegant Sands Hotel last week more than two dozen Hollywood newspaper, magazine, TV and radio reporters gathered for an event: the wedding of Cinemactress Rita Hayworth and Crooner Dick Haymes, each headed altarward for the fourth time. Only Columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were missing. Louella, who traveled half way around the world four years ago to be at Rita's side when she married Aly Khan at Cannes, this time telephoned her blessings but was "too busy" to attend; Hollywood assumed that she had the word that Rita's studio, Columbia Pictures, did not approve of the marriage. Hedda was miffed because she had not been personally invited, and snappishly told readers: "All I've got to say--and I hope these will be my last words on the subject--is they deserve each other." Louella and Hedda missed something.

Never in Hollywood history had there been such a sample of matrimony-by-pressagent. Although Actress Hayworth at first insisted that she wanted none of the "pomp and frumptiousness" of her wedding to Aly Khan, she meekly surrendered to the greater wisdom of Press-agent Al Freeman of the Sands Hotel. As soon as reporters arrived, he provided them with a mimeographed "Outline of Events -- Hayworth-Haymes Wedding." Sample events: "Wednesday. 2 p.m. Haymes gets his divorce hearing. Pictures and comment available. 3 p.m. Rita and Dick to get marriage license at license bureau. Thursday n a.m. Marriage ceremony in Gold Room, Sands Hotel. Cameras have length of room for movement. No restriction on any picture taking."

"Don't Be Silly." Everything, including Nevada's courts, ran close to schedule. First, Crooner Haymes led a caravan of newsmen to the Las Vegas court, where in seven minutes flat he got a divorce from his third wife. ex-Cigarette Girl Nora Eddington, who had once been married to Errol Flynn. On the courthouse steps he responded to the command of a dozen photographers to "wave your decree," then set out to pick up his fiancee, trailed by newsmen and Pressagent Freeman, who kept booming out: "Is everybody happy?" At the license bureau, while Rita and Dick tried to sign papers for their license, reporters leaned over their shoulders, gleefully pointed out spelling errors, and answered quickly when Haymes asked in desperation: "Anybody know how to spell Clark County?"

Back at the Sands Hotel, there was an impromptu press conference with Rita's two daughters, eight-year-old Rebecca (by her second husband. Orson Welles) and three-year-old Yasmin (by her third, Aly Khan). "Yasmin," Pressagent Freeman proudly announced, "is the only granddaughter of the Aga Khan, and that makes her the onlv female direct descendant of Mohammed." Growled one newsman : "I got news for you. In that religion a woman is nothing." Shortly after, Rita and Dick held their own conference. United Press Newshen Aline Mosby promptly asked an embarrassing question of Argentine-born Haymes: "If you're deported [for illegal entry into the U.S.], what country would you like to live in?" Snapped Haymes: "I won't be deported." Rita rushed to his defense, cooed: "I'll follow Dick anywhere on earth." "Has Rita ever cooked for you?" asked another reporter. That was too much for Dick. "Don't be silly," he answered scornfully. "Who would marry Rita for her cooking?"

Chant of Croupiers. Next day bright and early, reporters were awakened at 9:30 by a ring of the telephone and a voice that said cheerily: "Good morning. This is the Sands operator. We have been asked to awaken you so you could get up and prepare for the wedding." In the Gold Room of the Sands, everything was ready. Newsreel cameras, TV equipment and flash guns lined the wall. Los Angeles Herald & Express Reporter Jimmy Crenshaw spotted a musician carrying a bull fiddle and made for Pressagent Freeman. "I got it in the paper already, boy," cried Reporter Crenshaw. "no music, no wedding march; there better not be a wedding march." Freeman obliged: "O.K. Rita doesn't want music anyway. No music."

When Rita arrived, in a pale blue Irish linen dress with a toast-colored hat, tulle veil and a bouquet of white orchids and lilies of the valley. Groom Haymes was on her arm. Six feet in front of them marched Pressagent Freeman, to give photographers a focusing point for their cameras. (To make sure there would be plenty of time for pictures, Freeman also had arranged to have the judge come half an hour late.)

As the ceremony started, Yasmin plucked at her mother's elbow, whispered: "What are you doin', Mommy, gettin' married?" Even the text for the marriage service suited the occasion. It said: "Will you love, honor and cherish [each other] throughout your married life" instead of "so long as you both shall live."

As Dick slipped the ring on his bride's finger, photographers interrupted, hollering "Hold it!" Then Yasmin jumped up, shouted "Mommy, I want a ring too." A wedding guest quieted her down by slipping off his own ring--a large diamond set in platinum--and putting it on Yasmin's finger. Within two minutes the ceremony was ended and the newlyweds went out, as Columnist Florabel Muir wrote, past "the clanking of the slot machines and the soft chant of the croupiers at the crap tables." to the wedding luncheon for the press.

In the room was a four-layer cake (the bottom two layers were wood). Freeman announced that "to keep things simple and avoid any resemblance to her last marriage--on the Riviera," no champagne would be served. But one indignant reporter pointed out that "we weren't on the Riviera," so Freeman agreeably changed the pitch. "You want champagne," said he. "O.K., champagne." During a fast and heady wedding luncheon, reporters toasted Rita and Dick. Then the happy but weary couple made for Rita's apartment on the hotel grounds, followed by an entourage of newsmen and hotel employees. As they disappeared behind the door, Phil Stern, a fan magazine photographer, grinned and said with satisfaction: "This was great. Ordinarily, we can't get new pictures of this babe for the fan books. But yesterday and today I got enough to last us for two years."

Death on the Phone

Sid Hughes, 45, assistant city editor of the Los Angeles Mirror (circ. 188,453), is a cigar-chewing, tough-talking newsman who never got to high school. But in 23 years of covering the police beat for Los Angeles papers he has earned his own graduate degrees in crime and criminals. He mixes on such familiar terms with the underworld that the front-door of his apartment has a one-way mirror in it so that Hughes can see who is coming without the visitor's seeing him; on "tough" stories he often carries a .38 revolver, just in case. Last week in the Mirror city room, Crime Reporter Hughes got a phone call from a business acquaintance; on the long-distance line from Baltimore was an ex-convict named Johnny Johnson, 34, out on parole after nine years in Alcatraz for a series of bank robberies.

Johnson, headlined as the "blitzkrieg bandit," met Hughes several months ago when he came to the Mirror to ask help in getting a driver's license so that he could work as a truck driver. Hughes got him the license, from then on frequently got calls from Johnson. "He was a mixed-up guy," says Hughes, "who has been in crime ever since he was a kid. He likes to talk and I like to sit back and listen." Two months ago, Johnson stopped calling, after police started looking for him as a suspect in the strangulation murder in a Los Angeles suburb of one Richard Fagner, who had befriended Johnson.

Pretty Hot. When Johnson phoned last week, Hughes recognized his voice immediately. He scribbled a note to a copy boy standing at his elbow: "Call the FBI and tell them I got Johnny Johnson on the phone." Then Hughes went on casually talking: "How are you, Johnny?" "Not too good," Johnson answered. "I understand I'm pretty hot out there." Hughes told him he didn't know how hot he was, but would check and call him back. Johnson volunteered to call back himself in an hour. An FBI agent hustled to the Mirror office, set up a monitoring phone to listen in on the call when Johnson phoned back. In Baltimore, every outgoing call to Los Angeles was monitored, so that FBI agents could swiftly trace the call and nab Johnson. In an hour, he called back.

Hughes kept him on the line to give the FBI time to close in, talking about the murder case. "If you're not guilty," said Newsman Hughes, "turn yourself in to the FBI." Johnson answered that with his record; "I wouldn't have a chance." Then Hughes said bluntly: "I want you to tell me something. Did you pick up a heater? Dammit, tell me the truth."

"Yeah, I got it in my hand right now," answered Johnny. "Pitch it into the river," urged Hughes, "and turn yourself in." Replied Johnson, "I'm not going back to Alcatraz, not for one hour ... I learned to hate up there in Alcatraz."

A Feeling. While Hughes and Johnson talked on and on--for 55 minutes--the FBI agents traced the call to a phone booth in the mezzanine of Baltimore's Town Theater, where Mickey Spillane's blood and thunder 1, the Jury was playing. The FBI rounded up a small task force of its agents, including Agent John Brady Murphy, 35, who had already started home to his wife and three children when he got orders to come back to his office. At the theater, four agents, led by Murphy, cautiously made their way up the stairs.

Johnson paused in his phone conversation, then said ominously: "I got a funny feeling." "What do you mean?" asked Hughes. "When you live like I do," said Johnson, "you get these kind of feelings and you play them." Suddenly, after talking some more, Hughes heard "the damnedest clatter on the phone, as if someone took a stack of quarters and poured them into the coin box in spurts. The phone went dead."

Johnson, playing his feeling, had pulled out his gun and was waiting for the agents as they came up the stairs. He fired through the glass door, fatally wounding Agent Murphy, seriously wounded another FBIman before he died in the booth under a rain of bullets. Next day Hughes gave Johnson an appropriate epitaph: "You can't mess with a mad dog and Johnny was a bad guy and that was that."

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