THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972: Bombs Away
THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972: Bombs Away
Weekly Compilation March 6-12, 1972
To access all contents, click HERE.
Why do we run this separate item peeking into newspapers from 1972? Because 1972 was part of the ancient times when everybody read a paper. Everybody, everybody, everybody. Even kids. So Steve Bertolucci, the 10-year-old hero of the novel serialized at this Substack, read the paper too—sometimes just to have something to do. These are some of the stories he read. If you’d like, keep up with the 1972 papers every day on Twitter, @RoselandChi1972.
March 6, 1972: The Mighty IC
Chicago Daily News
by Terry Shaffer
“The end of an era—an 80-year history filled with the bustle of thousands of travelers—came quietly Sunday for Illinois Central R.R.’s Central Station at Michigan and Roosevelt,” writes the News’ Terry Shaffer.
“The station, whose archaic clock tower served for years as landmark at the south end of Grant Park, lost its last three interstate trains to Union Station under new Amtrak plans to consolidate passenger services.
“The huge terminal building that houses IC’s home offices, was left astride the tracks with one foot in the past and the other in the future.”
Central Station, built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, will remain for now as office for the railroad. But it is doomed, writes Shaffer. Last May, Amtrak’s predecessor, Railpax, took over most railroads on a national basis, sealing Central Station’s fate. Next, Amtrak shifted all its trains to Union Station.
“And now, with the thirst of high-rise developers for valuable lakefront building sites, there is little room for sentimental attachment to a rust-red antique building with a clock tower.”
The IC commuter train is unaffected, since the 12th Street IC station is separate from Central Station.
Chicago Tribune
by Stephen Crews
The Trib’s Stephen Crews profiles the historic last two people to miss a train at Central Station, University of Illinois-Champaign students Ron and Chuck Schhutz.
“You could almost hear the 79-year-old station snicker as, luggage-bent and puffing, they became the last ones to miss a train from the red brick edifice,” writes Crews.
“Ron, 21, and Chuck, 19, of 6701 S. Bennett Av., stood miserably in the nearly deserted waiting room and watched as the 6:30 p.m. Champaign Special pulled out with nary a toot.
“‘I’ve ridden this thing when it was 30 minutes late, and I’ve seen it two hours behind schedule, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen the darn thing leave on time,’ said Ron, a first-year medical student at the University of Illinois.
“….If we’re lucky enough to catch a bus, we’ll probably make it to campus by 3:30 a.m.,’ [Chuck] said with a sigh.”
Did you miss the IC’s integral part in Chicago’s history? Check it out here.
March 7, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Bomb found on airliner
There was a bomb in the cockpit of TWA Flight 7 flying JFK-LAX.
TWA says it got an anonymous call to check a storage locker at JFK, “where a note and two duffle bags were discovered. The note demanded that $1 million be placed in each bag.
“If the demands were not met, the note said, bombs would go off every four hours during the next 24 hours on TWA planes. Two officials were reported to have $2 million in ransom money at the airport.”
TWA doesn’t say when they got the call. They recalled Flight 7 “shortly after takeoff,” and when the plane got back, they evacuated passengers and found the bomb in the cockpit.
Passengers “were given steak dinners and free drinks while they waited for the plane to be searched. It was not known if TWA was recalling all their flights from New York to search for more explosives.”
March 7, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Full Page ad for Gov. Richard Ogilvie
Current Republican Illinois Gov. Richard Ogilvie is running against Democratic nominee Dan Walker, who walked across the state—get it?—talking to voters.
This is one in a series of full page ads that have been running to remind people what a great governor they already have.
March 7, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Scaffold collapses in Loop, 11 injured
By Barry Felcher and Jay McMullen
Remember last October when the city let wreckers start demolishing the priceless architectural treasure by Adler and Sullivan, the Old Stock Exchange Building? It’s a long process to kill something that beautiful. They’re still at it.
“At least eleven persons were injured Tuesday when a section of scaffolding collapsed on the seventh floor of the Old Stock Exchange building, sending debris plummeting onto La Salle St.
“Fire Comr. Robert J. Quinn ordered wreckers who are demolishing the building at 30 N. LaSalle to remove a 10-foot shield of canvas and plywood. Quinn said the shield ‘acted like a sail’ in wind gusts up to 25 miles an hour, toppling bricks and 100 feet of scaffolding.”
Injuries were relatively minor, but that was pure luck, because “two vehicles appeared to be demolished and at least four others were damaged.”
March 7, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Hijackers shoot 2, fly to Cuba
MIAMI--Two men with shotguns commandeered a twin-engine amphibian plane Tuesday, wounded the pilot and a ground crewman and--after a shoot-out with police--forced the co-pilot to fly them to Havana.
Five passengers were taken along for the ride. They were supposed to go to Bimini and the Bahamas
March 7, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Panda coupons pouring in
By Tony Fuller
The Daily News campaign proceeds apace to get the two giant pandas promised by Chinese premier Chou En-lai to President Nixon on his historic trip to China. Every day the Daily News prints the coupon below to encourage people to write President Nixon, and writes a new article about why Brookfield Zoo should get the pandas, complete with the panda logo.
Recall that the Daily News really owns this story because the newspaper gave Brookfield Zoo its first panda in 1938--the first giant panda in the entire country, actually. There have only been three pandas in the U.S., and none are left.
Reporter Tony Fuller usually gets what must be the thankless job of writing this up every day. A sampling from today’s installment:
“Some of them implore, others pun, still others reminisce, but all say virtually the same thing--the pandas belong here!”
“The Daily News has received the first mailing of coupons, first printed in the paper last weekend, which urge President Nixon to donate to the Chicago area the giant pandas given him by the Chinese.…All coupons will eventually be forwarded to the President. There were scores of coupons in the initial return mailing. Most of them urged Mr. Nixon to donate the two pandas to Brookfield Zoo, although some bid for Lincoln Park.”
“Others adopted a political strategy. ‘Illinois has a lot of electoral votes. Why not make extra friends in Illinois?’ wrote E.S. Powell, of 2243 Illinois, Northbrook.”
“There was one discordant note among the mail, but one wonders if it can truly be interpreted as anti-panda. One gets the impression that the writer would have reacted the same way to a gazelle or an ostrich.
“ ‘To hell with the pandas--let’s take a vote to end the Vietnam War NOW,’ said an unsigned coupon.”
If you like THIS CRAZY DAY, you’ll love the Chicago Newspapers Circa 1972 chapter—check it out here.
March 7, 1972
Chicago Daily Defender editorial: Triton black suspension
“The suspension of the black students who used force in order to obtain certain concessions from the faculty at Triton College, was in keeping with the gravity of the offense. Much as we sympathize with the students’ objectives with regard to the establishment of a black center and incidental studies, the process employed for acquiring such accommodations was distasteful and highly inconsistent with rational behavior of matured college students.
…. “Doors of one of the campus buildings were barricaded, five members of the faculty were held hostage, chair legs, sticks, baseball bats were used by the students to enforce their demands.
“There were suitable alternatives to the threats of violence and commission of overt acts. The black students could have appealed to the faculty or to the administrative officers or could have held mass meetings to air their demands or brought community pressure to bear on the college if other strategies had failed.
…. “Under no circumstances should they have resorted to violence and what is equivalent to mob action. In these days when black studies and relevant departments have been instituted in all first rank colleges and universities as a vital adjunct to the expansion of academic knowledge and long neglected historical inquiry, Triton college faculty must be marked down as lacking in intellectual buoyancy and academic perspective for not following an intrinsic, rewarding trend. No doubt the college’s indefensible indifference to a sensitive ethnic issue invited this excessive and equally indefensible and rude emotional behavior.
March 7, 1972
Chicago Today: Bruce Vilanch’s TV Report
How tube flick is put together
Bruce explains the new phenomenon of made-for-TV movies, in which TV networks have put together their own studios, now that Americans stay home and watch TV instead of going to the theater.
“The demand for movies on television--not great, old ones, but mediocre, recent ones--has become so great that the networks have not only gone into production. with the studios to make tailored-for-television quickies, they have become their own studios.”
….“Watching a movie demands concentration, and persistence, and a certain amount of patience…Watching TV asks none of those things. In fact, it demands almost exactly the opposite. Commercial TV, whose main aim is to sell things, is interested in programming that will keep you awake from one advertisement to the next, week after week.”
…. “only the kind of shows suited to constant interruption, suspense, development, suspense, interruption, and so forth can make it as TV movies. So you can look at the Movie of the Week week after week and catch a steady diet of thrillers, courtroom dramas, supernatural effects, weird little melodramas, and the like.”
That’s why “a ridiculous script like ‘The Night Stalkers’ (vampires in Las Vegas) is such a hit.
“Which isn’t to say that ‘The Night Stalker’ was bad. It wasn’t. It was fun bad. Which can be good. But that’s not important. What’s important is that ‘The Night Stalker’ fun-bad as it was, was one of the best TV movies ever produced. And there will be more like it..… ‘The Night Stalker’ indicates what level we can expect TV movies to reach. Generally, a very low one.”
March 8, 1972
Chicago Daily News: ‘Fast-drawing’ boss, 82, and clerk, 65, foil bandit
By Barry Felcher
The feel-good story of the day! 87-year-old store manager Benjamin Franklin Johnson said, “I wanted to beat him to the draw. I’m pretty fast for an old man.”
“Johnson said he was in the back room when he heard his clerk, Mrs. Willie Green, screaming for help” in the store at 5701 S. State. “Johnson said Mrs. Green grabbed a gunman by the arm while he reached for his revolver near the cash register.”
“One shot was fire at Johnson, the bullet missing his head by a few inches. He then fired two shots into the stomach of the gunman while his accomplice fled. Police identified the wounded man as James Morris, 25, of 7404 S. Chappel.”
March 8, 1972
Chicago Tribune: Bomb found on Jetliner in New York
This is the same jet-bomb story from the evening Daily News on March 7, but with more details in the morning Trib:
A TWA employee who saw the anonymous note says it was typed, it demanded $2 million placed in two duffle bags and ready to be dropped somewhere, or a bomb would go off in four TWA planes--one bomb every six hours, starting at 1 p.m. and ending at 7 a.m. the next day. TWA officials say “this was done”--but nobody says whether the drop was made.
Bomb-sniffing dogs have been going over TWA planes all over the country. “One plane, carrying Democratic presidential hopeful Eugene McCarthy, was searched at Tulsa, Okla. A flight from Chicago to Hartford, Conn., came down at Dayton for a check.”
“The bomb found in the plane at Kennedy Airport consisted of about five or six pounds of plastic explosive that ‘would have blown the plane apart,’ said William Schmitt of the city police’s bomb section, which defused the device.”
“The device was taken to a garage in a remote section of the airport, where it was defused by New York City bomb squad experts at 12:48 p.m., 12 minutes before the letter had said it would go off.”
The bomb was in a black attache case in the cockpit. “Police said the pilot had paid no attention to the black case containing the bomb during his preflight inspection, because it had a crew tag tied to the handle.”
This is the first time a bomb has been found aboard an American plane after a threat was made--and the threats are being made pretty consistently throughout the ‘60s and early ‘70s. There was one bomb explosion aboard a United Airlines jet in 1965, but not as part of a bomb threat. Forty-four people died after that plane crashed, but “it was later determined that the bomb had been planted by John G. Graham in an insurance plot to kill his mother, a passenger aboard the plane.”
One of the bomb-sniffing dogs is named Brandy.
March 8, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Bomb rips TWA jetliner
Check of all passengers stepped up
Daily News Wire Services
Some time after the Tribune went to press, one of those TWA bombs blew up, making it into the evening Daily News.
“A bomb ripped apart the cockpit of an unoccupied Trans World Airlines 707 jetliner parked at a Las Vegas airport early Wednesday, less than 24 hours after a live bomb was discovered in another TWA jet at New York.”
The passengers and crew had left the jet a few hours earlier. The bomb “blew a large hole in the top and right side of the cockpit area and scattered debris over a wide area of the parking ramp.”
TWA’s Las Vegas manager said that jet had been searched before it left JFK, and again after it got to Vegas.
“The blast triggered a worldwide bomb alert for all TWA jetliners, and an intensified security check by all airlines of passengers and their baggage.”
Yesterday, TWA got an anonymous call to check a storage locker at JFK, where there were two dufflebags and a note. The note said to put $1 million in each dufflebag, or bombs would go off in TWA planes every four hours.
After getting the note yesterday, TWA recalled a JFK-LAX flight and searched it as the evacuated passengers ate a steak dinner with free drinks. They found a live bomb with six pounds of explosives in the cockpit.
March 9, 1972
Chicago Tribune: Running from Chicago Police, Hijackers Say
The two guys with shotguns who hijacked an amphibious plane from Miami to Cuba earlier this week after shooting the pilot and then having a shootout with police? They’re Chicagoans.
The co-pilot, who was forced to fly the plane after the pilot got shot and thrown off the plane before take-off, says the Swiss embassy in Cuba told him the hijackers were in a Cuban jail.
The co-pilot “said the hijackers told him they were going to Cuba because ‘Chicago police are looking for us.’ The hijackers did not reveal why police were seeking them but told him they were members of the ‘Black revolutionary army which is planning a revolution in Miami. Wallis said the hijackers told him they had hitchhiked from Chicago about a month ago and ‘reseacrhed the hijacking.’”
March 9, 1972
Chicago Tribune: Rash of Bomb Threats Plague Airlines
Since a bomb actually blew up a TWA jet in Las Vegas, all the airlines are getting bomb threats, including:
A Northwest Orient Airlines jet flying Newark-Minneapolis landed in Detroit after a bomb threat. Dogs didn’t find a bomb…and then apparently everybody got back on. Even though the Las Vegas plane that blew up had been searched twice.
An Eastern Airlines NYC-Miami flight got a bomb threat, delaying the flight for an hour while they searched it. No bomb found, and then definitely everybody got on the plane and took off, even though the Vegas plane that blew up had been searched twice.
“National Airlines reported it searched six of its jets without finding any explosives after receiving a phone call from ‘a child-like voice’ which said there was a bomb aboard either a 747 or a DC-10 belong to National.”
March 9, 1972
Chicago Tribune editorial: These Fiends Must Be Caught
The Tribune has had enough of bombs on planes. There were 25 skyjackings last year; bombs apparently cross a line and require an editorial.
The one thing the Tribune doesn’t think to suggest is that planes be kept guaded and secure so there’s no opportunity to plant bombs in them.
“At least two domestic airlines have been victims of perhaps the most atrocious extortion schemes ever attempted. Trans World Airlines received a telephone warning that four of its planes were about to be blown up, perhaps in midair, unless it paid $2 million in cash. The caller obviously meant business, because one bomb was discovered in a plane in New York and another blew up later in an empty plane at Las Vegas airport.”
“Later it was learned that United Airlines found a dynamite device aboard a plane at Seattle after a phone caller demanded $250,000.”
(The papers didn't bother giving that dynamite incident a separate news story. Small potatoes in a skyjacking/bomb environment like 1972.)
…. “The real solution is to make it clear to would-be extortionists and hijackers that they can’t win. Every time an airline pays the ransom demanded, and every time one of these madmen escapes capture, the job becomes harder. The present extortionists doubtless knew that a previous extortionist is still at large after parachuting from a plane on the west coast with $200,000 in ransom.”
“Of course it is hard to say that ransom should never be paid under any circumstances, nor have we been told whether T.W.A. paid the $2 million.…Everything possible must be done by the airlines to avoid paying ransom and by the FBI and the police to track down the villains. And there is another question worth raising in view of the movement to abolish the death penalty. Is execution too severe a punishment for crimes like these?”
So, never pay ransom, but maybe pay ransom if you really need to.
March 9, 1972
Chicago Tribune: Curb ‘Glory’ in Air Piracy, Press Urged
UPI
A bomb blowing up the cockpit of a TWA jet at the Vegas airport does what 25 hijackings last year could not:
The U.S. government’s point man on hijacking holds a 90-minute closed press conference to chew out the media. Benjamin O. Davis, assistant secretary for transportation for safety and consumer affairs, is a retired Air Force general. He blames the press for a lot of the hijacking problem.
“We are concerned, and hope that news media is reporting what happens, not make a hero of a psychotic nut,” said another official at the meeting, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) president J.J. O’Donnell.
Davis “urged that newsmen refrain from disclosing techniques of dealing with hijackings and threats lest the information be of use to the criminals. Immediately after the briefing, Davis and O’Donnell appeared before television cameras to discuss some of the very details that had been described as possibly harmful to security if publicized.”
“On television, they deplored the publicity given to the use of military chase planes to follow hijacked aircraft, and to the employment of homing devices in parachutes made available to hijackers.”
“The two officials also referred to a newly published book, by an airline public-relations employee, about sky piracy. They said the book, among other objectionable features, shows potential hijackers what they should do to avoid getting caught. Observers at the interview suggested that the remarks would have the effect of publicizing a book that might otherwise have escaped the attention of would-be hijackers.”
Score: Sarcastic but totally deadpan UPI reporter 1, Benjamin O. Davis a big fat zero.
March 9, 1972
Chicago Today: Bruce Vilanch’s TV Report
Bruce is sincerely head over heels in love with James Whitmore’s one-man show portraying Will Rogers, which was an absolute phenomenon of the time period.
Bruce starts by contrasting Will Rogers with Sarah Bernhardt. Bruce says he’s a great fan of Bernhardt, due to the many books and pictures about her. But nobody really knows what her acting was like, because she lived so long ago.
Bernhardt made one bad silent film as an elderly woman. “It’s a very sad film. She has one wooden leg and is quite fat. Not the glamorous tragedienne of the wonderful books and articles. It’s almost enough to make you think Sarah Bernhardt and the legend that grew up around her are all frauds.”
Thanks to James Whitmore, that won’t be the case with Will Rogers.
Bruce knows Will Rogers was a staple of American show business, a “political pulse comedian, like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl in later years,” because Will Rogers has been written about in so many wonderful books and articles, plus he was in many films.
“But even if I had never seen or heard of Rogers, it wouldn’t matter. Because James Whitmore, who has always been a lively, talented actor, has brought it all together for us.
“With Whitmore trekking across the country, the marvelous character that Will Rogers was is brought alive again and exposed to millions who were born so far after Rogers’ death that they associate his name only with hospitals that hit you up for money in between shows at the movies.”
“Luckily, CBS filmed a performance, and airs it tonight [in 1972].” Bruce notes “it’s a bit of that magic that only the theater can provide. But television is now helping to provide it. And in doing so, it’s not only preserving one of the great talents of our century--Will Rogers, who twirled a rope and spun philosophy and never met a man he didn’t like or a politician that money couldn’t buy--but another.
“And that’s the theatrical treasure of James Whitmore’s performance. In decades to come, if the theater is still alive, they’ll be talking about his performance. And maybe this TV show.”
The only other one-man show that I think approached the saturation point in 1972 in the same way as James Whitmore’s Will Rogers was—Marcel Marceau. People were briefly nuts for mime. But Whitmore/Will Rogers was probably bigger.
James Whitmore started performing “Will Rogers’ USA” in 1970, and by the time this special aired, people revered it so much, the show took on an element of going to church--until you relaxed and realized how funny and interesting it was.
Will Rogers was a real American character of the 20th century deserving of this kind of show, too. Born in 1879 in Oklahoma as a Cherokee Nation citizen, he became a true star of stage and screen, starting in vaudeville and then making more movies than you can shake a lasso at. He started out doing a trick rope act and took that from vaudeville to the Ziegfeld Follies, then turned himself into a homespun but trenchant topical comedian--as Bruce Valanche points out, akin to Lenny Bruce. But Will Rogers was able to make his point without offending people. At the time, his shows were called a “lecture tour.” He also wrote a newspaper column syndicated by the New York Times, from 1922 to 1935.
As for James Whitmore, he was a one-man one-man show machine once he started with Will Rogers’ USA. He toured off and on as Will Rogers for 30 years, also appearing as Harry Truman in “Give ‘em Hell Harry” and as Theodore Roosevelt in “Bully.”
If you still can’t picture him, James Whitmore was the wonderful older prisoner-librarian Brooks in “The Shawshank Redemption”--
—and of course, he was the pitchman for Miracle Gro for what seemed like 50 years.
Here’s a video of Whitmore as Will Rogers as part of the “presidential Inaugural Festival” in 1997. Whitmore starts the show as himself talking about Will Rogers as he gradually changes into Will Rogers, after donning a cowboy hat and picking up a lariat. In this video, Whitmore turns into Will Rogers at the 7:44 minute mark.
One of the fascinating bits of information Whitmore drops about Will Rogers is this: “He never ever knew what he was gonna say in advance.” And elsewhere, I’ve read that Whitmore himself changed his Will Rogers monologue for every performance, drawing on the reams of Will Rogers in his head to comment on current events over his 20-year portrayal.
March 9, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Irving and Wife Indicted
Finally, Clifford Irving and his wife are indicted by a New York grand jury for many things including mail fraud and forgery, for Irving’s alleged autobiography of Howard Hughes.
As always, the Irvings are front page news, right under the masthead, across all columns.
Recall, this is the book that spawned the meme of Hughes with nine-inch finger and toe nails. He was supposed to be absolute bonkers. But Hughes emerged from a 15-year disappearing act to deny he had anything to do with the book. Publisher McGraw-Hill tried to insist the book was real, but gave up when it turned out the Swiss bank account for “H. Hughes” where their check got cashed was for a woman, whose passport had the same number as Clifford Irving’s wife.
So here we are.
“Manhattan Dist. Atty. Frank S. Hogan said Suskind and the Irvings believed they could ‘defraud’ McGraw-Hill Inc., which was to publish the book, ‘based upon their belief that Hughes was either deceased or not of sufficient mental or physical capacity to denounce the autobiography as fake.”
March 9, 1972
Chicago Today: Full-page ad for itself
Chicago Today runs ads for itself frequently, boasting it has the largest circulation of the afternoon papers—so more than the Daily News. I have no idea how true this is, except that Chicago Today boasts about it so consistently, I assume there is some basis to the claim. Either way, this is a good story in the ad copy—and Chicago Today often has very good stories.
March 9, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Find Swibel land taken off tax rolls
By William Clements and Charles Nicodemus
Mayor Daley’s pal Charlie Swibel, real estate developer and head of the CHA, has a new scam.
First, the president and chairman of Holiday Inn gave Swibel a FREE 15% share in a planned gigantic 7-10 year development called “Place Du Sable” bounded by Madison almost all the way south to Monroe, and Clinton west to the Kennedy Expressway.
“The project was named after Eugene Baptiste Point Du Sable, a black fur trapper who was Chicago’s first resident.” Which just shows that any time you think you’ve seen every possible way to render Du Sable’s name, there is always one more.
The company set up to create this monster development spent almost $6 million acquiring the land from the city--which is $40 million in 2022 money.
The president and chairman of Holiday Inn say they gave Swibel that free 15% stake because they needed him as “a local man, familiar with local problems and local personalities.”
“Swibel said he ‘earned’ his share because ‘I was the one who put the whole thing together.’” Swibel will also receive $100,000 for 10 years.
But this isn’t even the actual scandal today. That’s an old scandal that everyone is used to by now.
Today’s scandal is that the Daily News, working with Citizens for a Better Environment, just discovered that about half the gigantic property had been taken off the tax rolls. This would result in a $150,000 tax break for 1972 alone.
Per this investigations, when the city acquired the property, its Department of Urban Renewal didn’t ask Cook County Assessor Parky Cullerton’s office to take the property off the tax rolls. Instead, they did that one week after Swibel and partners officially bought the land—precisely when Swibel et al should have started paying taxes on it.
“I just don’t know how it happened,” says Lewis Hill, who’s head of both the city’s Department of Planning and Development and the Department of Urban Renewal. An assistant city corporation counsel admits they were lax not to notice.
Swibel insists to reporters Clements and Nicodemus that “I didn’t even know it was exempt--so help me God.” He also claims the “mistake” would have been uncovered as soon as his firm got the tax bill and noticed it was low.
So what about that Place Du Sable, right? That’s some development--not! Architecturefarm has a fabulous 2021 post on the entire project that never happened. I would be a fool to try to replicate it--and I would be woefully unqualified to do so in any case. Just go look at Architecturefarm for more details.
This crazy thing has it all, from a Chicago POV:
Swibel, a Dickensian character with a Dickensian name; Mayor Daley, since they’re pals; it’s possibly the biggest real estate development that never happened here, with a footprint that would have included Presidential Towers and a whole lot more; it’s designed by C.F. Murphy; there are these missing taxes in 1972, and more missing taxes later; and so much money in Swibel’s pockets for a project he may never have figured would ever get built anyway.
As Architecturefarm puts it,
“Did Swibel and his shell company have the capabilities--or even the intent--to pull such a vast, impactful scheme off? Or was Place du Sable a cynical land banking venture, designed simply to earn one of the best connected operatives in Chicago an easy profit without any real commitment to the difficulties of building an actual project? Swibel narrowly avoided criminal charges over his role in the affair, eventually agreeing to pay back nearly half a million dollars in back taxes, but this was a fraction of what he earned for essentially sitting on an empty piece of land for nearly a decade.”
BTW, Architecturefarm is a quite amazing website on Wordpress. I just signed up for email posts.
Friends don’t let friends read the 1972 newspapers without reading Mike Royko too. Check out MIKE ROYKO 50 YEARS AGO TODAY here.
March 10, 1972
Chicago Daily News: TWA bomb-ransom talks reported; payoff try fails
“Trans World Airlines officials were reported Thursday to be negotiating with extortionists who planted bombs on two jetliners and demanded $2 million ransom. Police said one unsuccessful ransom delivery attempt had been made.”
Recall that after an anonymous threat of bombs on four TWA planes, a bomb was found on a plane in New York and a defused, and another blew up in a TWA jet cockpit in Las Vegas after the crew and passengers debarked.
TWA refused to say “whether, or under what circumstances, it would agree to pay ransom.” But police say $2 million was flown to Atlanta for a hand-off that somehow never happened.
Investigators think “the bombs were planted by one or more persons who were present or former airlines industry employes because of their obvious intimate knowledge of airline operations.”
“The FBI disclosed in Seattle that an explosive device was found aboard a United Air Lines jet Tuesday after a telephone tip but that the device proved inoperable.”
Another anonymous caller told TWA there was a bomb on one of their planes at O’Hare. “All arriving and departing TWA flights at O’Hare were under constant search at the airport, and a special police check turned up no evidence of a bomb.”
March 10, 1972
Chicago Tribune: Crush Terror in Air: Nixon
By Edward Rohrbach
President Nixon promises the government is going to help the airlines.
Former General Benjamin O. Davis, assistant secretary of transportion and point man for hijacking, released a statement from President Nixon saying that new federal measures to control bombs and skyjacking that were supposed to go into effect in 90 days will go into effect immediately, after Transportation Secretary John Volpe meets with airline officials.
Also, Davis says the FAA recommends that TWA shouldn’t pay that $2 million ransom to the bombers that blew up one of their planes in Vegas.
March 10, 1972
Chicago Tribune: Air Threats Suggest Conspiracy
The corpse of Colonel McCormick apparently typed this via reporter Wayne Thomas.
“The bombing of a Trans World Airlines jet at Las Vegas, Nev. and a swelling chorus of similar bomb threats against virtually every domestic airline--more than 500 coast to coast since last Monday morning--now are regarded by security authorities as opening moves in a broad scale war against the United States commercial air system.”
“It is believed in Washington, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE learned yesterday, that the purpose is to so disrupt the scheduled air carriers that the entire network ceases to function. Analysis suggests the assault is being coordinated by some central group.”
“In London, last November, Peter Masefield, recent chief of the British Airports division of the Department of Transport, reported in a private meeting that ‘classes of air guerillas have been graduating in Cuba and dispatched around the world with the goal in mind of disrupting the non-Communist air transportation systems.’ Masefield said that the information came from British intelligence sources and was ‘solid.’”
So solid you’ll never hear about commie guerilla flying schools again, even in the Tribune.
March 10, 1972
Chicago Today editorial: Gary’s black convention
“What’s going on in Gary this weekend has been described as equal in importance to the Emancipation Proclamation. It is certainly historic--a national convention of blacks, representing every important organization and such disparate points of view as those of the Black Panther party and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”
“The purpose is to get the widely scattered and sometimes conflicting goals of blacks all together and fashion out of them a national platform; to distill from the voices of 22 million blacks a single, powerful presence that will be heard and felt by the white majority and by whatever political party heads the next administration.
“To accomplish this, the delegates were chosen to represent the fullest cross-section attainable…Speakers will include Shirley Chisholm, congresswoman and Presidential candidate;
Bobby Seale of the Panthers;
the Rev. Jesse Jackson;
Louis Farrakhan of the Black Muslims;
former Cleveland Mayor Carl B. Stokes.”
“Moderation and extremism will rub shoulders among the expected 10,000 visitors and delegates.”
“If the convention in Gary can reach its goal of a unified platform, it will be a tremendous step forward--and the event will justify its billing as a major moment of American history. We wish the delegates and their organizations, separately and collectively, good luck.”
March 10, 1972
Chicago Daily News: DeStafano starts flap in role as a legal eagle
by John Linstead
“There are only two great lawyers in this world, according to Sam DeStefano—himself and Perry Mason. And Mason isn’t available.”
“So DeStefano, 62-year-old reputed chieftain of the crime syndicate’s juice loan operation, is acting as his own lawyer in a trial that has become a circus at the Federal Building.
“DeStefano has had no formal training in the law—except when he was shrewdly observing some of the best attorneys in the city defend him in his previous trials.
“The 25th floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge Richard B. Austin was filled Thursday with assistant U.S. attorneys and criminal lawyers who came to watch DeStefano match legal wits with federal prosecutors.
“DeStefano was indicted Tuesday for threatening a witness in another case Feb. 22 in a Federal Building elevator.”
Judge Austin agreed to start the trial immediately after a “15-minute tirade” by Stefano on Wednesday.
“DeStefano, who has been saying he was dying for four years, periodically gulped pills from an array of bottles on the defense table, and at one point asked for a recess and reclined on the prosecution table, his handkerchief over his face.”
Friday, narcotics agent James Braseth testified about what happened when he took witness Charles Crimaldi on an elevator in the court building on Feb. 15, before Crimaldi was to testify in a narcotics case again a friend of DeStefano’s. DeStefano got on the elevator at the second floor along with his co-defendant in the current trial, Edward Speice.
According to Braseth, DeStefano loudly said, “My memory is dimming, but I think I know you. My eyes are dimming, too. I think it must be old age. I understand your eyes are dimming and memory fading permanently, this week.”
Braseth said Speise then asked, “Done any fishing lately?”
When DeStefano got to question agent Braseth today, he asked, “Mr. Braseth, are you afraid of me? Do you believe that anybody in this courtroom including Judge Austin is frightened of me?”
Braseth said no, and Judge Austin leaned back in his chair and said, “Let the record show that I am not.”
March 10, 1972
Chicago Today: Bruce Vilanch’s TV Report
“Questions that can no longer be unanswered on the desk:
“Q. I was reading a book some time ago and the book said that the black and white TV’s are supposed to change to color in some way during the fall season. Is this true?--MARC KILGORE, Chicago
“A. Some sets are onto the trick already. My black and white set turns black, white and grey when ‘Elizabeth R.’ comes on. [NOTE: “Elizabeth R.” was a massive BBC series costume spectacular on Elizabeth I starring Glenda Jackson, shown on Channel 11—see end of item for more.]
“In fact, I tend to pick up many new colors, and a few distress calls from the O’Hare tower, whenever I dial Channel 11. But this is to be expected from a public television station. I also get streaky beige lines on some Channel 7 shows. This surprises me, as Channel 7 is usually so straight and narrow.
“Q. Could you please tell me what makes the people [in the audience] laugh so hard when ‘Truth or Consequences’ comes on? -- DEBBIE W., Chicago
“A. I happen to know the answer to this because I have seen the spectacle. A man, often a large one, is forced to get into women’s clothing, often small ones, in 60 seconds. For some unfathomable reason, the audience always howls. It is the oldest joke in the book and Ralph Edwards himself told me he created it at a Chicago Theater matinee in 1936. And honest, I’m not making this up.”
Hats off to Bruce Vilanch. This guy clearly knew how to network, network, network. No wonder he was able to leap from Chicago Today to Hollywood via this TV column.
“Now, onto matters of weight: Channel 11 will bring live coverage of the National Black Political Convention this weekend in Gary, Saturday from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Sunday from 1:30 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.”
FYR, two points: Ralph Edwards and “Truth or Consequences”; and next, “Elizabeth R.”
Ralph Edwards/Truth or Consequences
Ralph Edwards has two stars on Hollywood Boulevard, one for radio and one for television. He was a game show host on both radio and TV, and a producer. Edwards did the first commercial TV broadcast ever on July 1, 1941 (according to Wikipedia) on what is now WNBC in New York, doing an episode of the game show “Truth or Consequences.” Edwards created the famed “This Is Your Life,” and also produced and hosted it. This is what he’s really known for. But he kept coming up with new shows, and was an executive producer for the original “People’s Court” too.
And if we’re talking “This Is Your Life,” what you really have to see is the “Your Show of Shows” parody, “This Is Your Story,” with Carl Reiner playing the host, and of course Sid Caesar as the shocked guy picked out of the audience to be the subject. If you’ve never seen “Your Show of Shows,” you won’t even believe how hilarious it is.
Elizabeth R.
This six-part BBC series on Elizabeth I was a costume extravaganza. It was also a bravura performance by Glenda Jackson, who went from “teenage princess to elderly queen,” as the BBC notes, adding, “She achieved the transformation by shaving her hairline back to the crown to accommodate a succession of wigs, and by wearing a prosthetic nose, which became bonier and thinner as she aged.”
“Elizabeth R.” was the first British series to win an Emmy, ahead of the probably more remembered “Upstairs, Downstairs.” But then “Upstairs, Downstairs” ran for what seemed like 20 years.
Glenda Jackson also won an Emmy for this series. In our 1972 timeline, the show is just wrapping up, having started in February on Masterpiece Theater—the show so famously hosted by Alistair Cooke.
The BBC is all about “Elizabeth R.” They showed it again for its 50th anniversary. For its 40th anniversary, BBC head historian Robert Seattler wrote about Glenda Jackson’s struggles with the outrageous costumes:
In 1971 Glenda Jackson endured physical agonies with costumes that were so heavily padded she had trouble breathing and was unable to bend her arms. Some were also so heavy that she had to remain seated, others so big she had trouble walking through doors. And that was after she had already spent six hours in make up and prosthetics ageing herself up for the later programmes.
The costumes were almost more important than Glenda Jackson, the point being to take advantage of many people finally having color TVs. So when Bruce says his black-and-white TV adds grey when “Elizabeth R.” comes on, that’s a joke about the famous colorful costumes.
Wikipedia says “Elizabeth R.” was parodied on Monty Python, in a sketch I vaguely remember. Wikipedia label calls the sketch “absurdist,” which seems redundant for a Python sketch. They say it features a Japanese director pretending to be Italian, and Elizabeth’s court performs on motor-scooters. That’s the part I vaguely remember.
March 11, 1972
Chicago Daily Defender: Text of Payne’s testimony to Black Caucus
“Editor’s Note: The following is the text of the testimony given before the hearings on The Mass Media and the Black Community sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus with Congressman William L. Clay (D. Mo.) as chairman by Ethel L. Payne, Washington Correspondent for the Sengstacke Publications on March 6, 1972 at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington.”
Payne:
“I have been covering for the papers since 1953. I wish to address myself to a problem that is shared by small papers in general and the black press in particular--that is the inaccessibility of reports to the president of the Unite States….
“Presidential styles in relationship with the press adapt themselves to the personality of the Chief Executive. Since Mr. Nixon took office, he has had only nine formal press conferences, fewer than any other president; but he has given preferential treatment to individual reporters or select small groups, granting them exclusive interviews. No such privilege has ever been given a black or minority reporter, nor has the opportunity to question him during a formal press conference arisen. This Administration confines itself to the first three rows of the reserved seats in the East Room that are set aside for the larger papers, the wire services and the television reporters.
…. “President Nixon was asked by the Capitol Press Club to give an interview to five selected reporters, with Metro Media, Channel Five, offering to give free televised coverage of the session. That was declined by Herb Klein for the president.”
March 11, 1972
Chicago Daily Defender Editorial: Gary and beyond
“A new chapter in U.S. domestics politics is making its way into the pages of history. It is the era of Black political power whose full implication will be unfurled when the Black Convention begins its session this weekend in Gary.
“The convention will map out the path that America’s black electorate should follow to obtain maximum results from the consortium of white political power which far too long has held the destiny of black Americans in the palm of its hand.
“Such fundamental questions as underrepresentation, minimal allocation of power and lopsided differential in the allotment of significant national functions must come within the purview of the resolutions that the delegates will be called upon to act.
“The convention must not waste time on petty, meaningless partisan politics. Our difficulties have not resulted solely from impersonal politics and inconsequential party loyalties. Our difficulties are rooted in our failure in the past to galvanize our political strength into a solid unit of aggressive action.
“We have the strength now. The black vote more than ever represents the strategic balance of power.…The convention’s high watermark should be a declaration of political independence which should serve as a catalyst for needed change. Henceforth, black leaders won’t have to go begging hat-in-hand for a piece of pie.”
March 11, 1972
Chicago Daily Defender: Question rights groups’ role at Gary meeting
By Faith C. Christmas
“Speculation mounted Wednesday over the input civil rights organizations will make in the development of a black political strategy for 1972, after two key groups indicated that no voting delegates will attend the first national black convention in Gary this weekend.”
A NAACP official “told the Daily Defender” that the group is sending 15 delegates, but “they will understand clearly that they are not to commit the NAACP to any position, nor endorsement of any kind.”
“The executive director of the national Urban League, Vernon Jordan said the League is prevented from sending delegates because of the organization’s tax-exempt status which prohibits active involvement in political activities.”
Operation PUSH president Rev. Jesse Jackson was “a key participant in several preliminary strategy sessions” for the convention and will address it Saturday night. “Mr. Jackson said it is ‘quite possible’ that agreement on a single political agenda will not be reached by convention delegates.”
March 11-12, 1972
Chicago Daily News: 10,000 at ‘family’ dinner for PUSH
by Lu Palmer
“Some 10,000 persons crowded into McCormick Place Friday night for Operation PUSH’s ‘A Family Affair’ dinner.”
“The dinner was a testimonial to the new human rights organization, People United to Save Humanity and its president, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.”
Note: Jackson was head of SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket economic program in Chicago, but quit late last year and started PUSH after SCLC head Ralph Abernathy gave him a 60-day suspension for “repeated acts of violation of organizational policies”. Reports all agreed it was a power struggle between the older, staid Abernathy and young outspoken Jackson.
Lu Palmer writes the dinner was a “three-way ‘first.’ It was the first soul food dinner ever served in McCormick Place. The menu was hamhocks, red beans and rice, pickled beets, corn muffins, and sweet potato pie. It was the first banquet without any speakers. And, in the words of former Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes, ‘never before in one place has any one black earned the attendance of so many other people.’” Meaning, of course, Jesse Jackson.
Instead of speeches, there was entertainment including Harry Belafonte. Nearing midnight, Jackson took the stage to a standing ovation. “Once we’ve got national unity, we’ve got national power,” he told the audience.
March 11-12, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Lu Palmer Column
Historic look at bias in U.S.
Lu Palmer thinks the impact from two days of hearings on Blacks and the media by the Congressional Black. Caucus will be “enormous.”
“‘Rep. William Clay (D-Mo) said at the opening session…”To my knowledge no one has dared to question the role, policies and practices of the mass media relating to various segments of our society.’”
…. “He was just as right when he said, after the caucus had heard 23 witnesses, that the hearings had shown that there is ‘widespread, long-standing and deeply entrenched racism within the mass media all over the United State.’”
“Clay announced plans for the caucus to form a national task force of black elected officials and black media specialists ‘to work towards the elimination of discriminatory practices and for the creation of a variety of viable, black communications instruments.”
March 11-12, 1972
Chicago Daily News: Swibel land profit told
by William Clements and Charles Nicodemus
Remember that gigantic parcel of West Side land the city cleared for renewal and sold to a partnership headed by Holiday Inn, with a sweet 15% cut to CHA head and Mayor Daley pal Charlie Swibel?
Besides getting “accidentally” taken off the tax rolls, Daily News reporters William Clements and Charles Nicodemus find that Swibel is making about $50,000/year on his part of the land, which is leased to a Swibel associate who’s running a parking lot there.
“A giant, illegal parking lot operating on two square blocks of prime land owned by a firm headed by Chicago Housing Authority chairman Charles Swibel is raking in cash for Swibel at a rate of $50,000 a year,” is the lede in this front page story.
City Collector Marshall Korshak says he’s ordered the parking lot operators to court next month to explain why they’re parking 400 cars where they’re only licensed to park 85. The lot made $120,000 in 1971, and Swibel’s company gets half.
The city Building Commissioner says he’ll close the parking lot until it’s paved and drained per city ordinances.
Do you dig spending time in 1972? If you came to THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972 from social media, you may not know it’s part of the novel being serialized here, one chapter per month: “Roseland, Chicago: 1972” —FREE. It’s the story of Steve Bertolucci, 10-year-old Roselander in 1972, and what becomes of him. Check it out here.
It was a little funny to read about FHA appraisers that missed glaring problems. They must have fixed the issue within the next 15 years. My VA appraiser nearly kept me from buying a house because of chipped paint on a decorative railing. Because she was too "busy" to come out and verify the repair, I was a day away from losing my lock on my mortgage rate. It would have been a percent higher and priced me out be able to afford the house. 25 years later, I had to spend several thousand dollars to repair a house that I wanted to sell "as is" to satisfy the FHA appraiser. BTW Merkin was based on Adlai Jr, the presidential also ran, not the III.