Pardon My Hearse: A Colorful Portrait of Where the Funeral and Entertainment Industries Met in Hollywood (4 page)

John and Allan in front of a 1948 Cadillac Limousine first-call car used for picking up bodies.

Suddenly a gush of embalming fluid squirted from the brain cavity, catching us totally by surprise as we jumped back to avoid getting our faces full of formaldehyde. It happened so fast that we didn’t really have time to think about the bizarre circumstances. Somehow, we were still able to maintain our composure, but inside we were probably both thinking, “Please pass the barf bag.” We tried to act like this was just another typical embalming, which may have been the case for Tony, but was memorable for us because we had just seen our first “no-brainer.”

As we drove home after witnessing this unsettling event, we hardly talked until we got off the freeway. Unexpectedly, Ron pulled into an ice cream parlor and suggested we each get a banana split with all the trimmings. After what we had just experienced, he wanted to see if we had the fortitude to keep them down.

At this point in our careers, we were flying by the seats of our pants. We had no formal training and we would experience situations that left us with more questions than answers. Quite often on house calls, a family member would ask us to pronounce the person dead, realizing that they might just be in a moribund state. There was no one we could turn to, so we just learned by trial and error. If the body was lying with its mouth or eyes open and cold to the touch, we would assure the family that their loved one was in fact dead. It was not as if we had any medical training, and we certainly didn’t have stethoscopes hanging from our necks.

One of our first embarrassing incidents occurred when we were given a removal order from one of Los Angeles’ many infirmaries, where we had already made some first calls. The nurse walked with us to the room where a female patient had died; then she simply pointed toward the open door and left. The dead woman must have been about 90, because she couldn’t have weighed over eighty pounds. We pulled the sheet off her. Ron grabbed her feet while I grabbed her by the shoulders, with my fingers firmly under her arms. Just as we started to lift her up, her eyes popped open and she let out a muffled moan. We were more startled than she was.

The only thing that came to mind as we set her down was to say we were just making sure she was comfortable. As we started to back away, we noticed a second bed in the room with a portable screen around it where the actual deceased was lying.

Because of Inglewood’s new regulation aimed directly at our hearses, our next step was to rent some office space above Bob Walker’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop in Inglewood. The rent was cheap because it was a noisy place, but this first office was a key factor in our first year of operation because of our proximity to the motorcycle dealership.

We began visiting every mortuary in Los Angeles to inform them of our service. One of these visits was to Malloy Mortuary. David Malloy and his wife lived in the upstairs of the mortuary, which was quite common in the business. Dave invited us into his beautiful private office, which was richly decorated with antique furniture. He said, “You can sit in those chairs, they’re paid for.” He was quite dignified and charming. Little did we know at the time that Dave would become one of our most ardent supporters, and through his intervention, we would make a giant leap forward.

In less than a year we were approached by the general manager of Utter-McKinley Mortuary, which had seventeen branches scattered all over Los Angeles County. Utter-McKinley had been using us for flower deliveries and trusted us enough to offer a contract to get all their death certificates (or DCs) signed by doctors, file them at the Los Angeles County Health Department, obtain a human remains disposition permit in return, and deliver it to the main branch downtown. The mortuary offered us $2.50 for every permit we delivered by the end of each day. We saw this as a great way to guarantee a certain level of continual revenue, which meant we could hire additional personnel.

Getting a disposition permit required a signed death certificate. A family doctor could sign the certificate, or the medical examiner’s office would simply do a sign-out based on age and lack of suspicious conditions. However, the medical examiner’s office became involved if the person had died from anything other than natural causes. Then it would
be their responsibility to investigate the cause of death through an autopsy and toxicological blood testing.

The major challenge was trying to figure out how to get an average of ten certificates a day signed by doctors who were spread out all over Los Angeles, particularly during the afternoon rush hour. The last stop each day would be at the Los Angeles County Health Department. It turned out to be more difficult than we had anticipated, especially when the health department closed at 5
P.M
. It seemed that the only answer was to do it on a motorcycle, so I went downstairs to purchase a new Harley-Davidson.

I knew nothing about motorcycles and relied on the shop owner to suggest which bike would be the best one, after explaining the grind it would be subjected to each day. He recommended a small bike with a two-stroke engine that they were promoting. The terminology was not familiar to me, but it did seem strange that you had to mix motor oil with the gasoline.

It soon became apparent that this small motor could not stand up to the strain of the job, because it had to be worked on multiple times during the first year. One afternoon I kick-started it to head back to the office, but as I engaged the clutch the motorcycle started to go backward.
Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, this can’t be happening!
Motorcycles don’t have a reverse gear, so I realized that something was radically wrong. It turned out that a small part in the distributor had broken and the engine was actually running backward.

Allan on his Harley in 1958, prepared to transport death certificates.

It was time to have a showdown with Bob Walker, who’d recommended this disaster. He stubbornly refused to take it back, so I reminded him that he carried the insurance on the bike and that it might catch fire or be stolen. He said, “You wouldn’t really do that, would you?” and my answer was an unequivocal “Yes, I would.” He finally reconsidered and took it back.

The bike had about 10,000 miles on it after only ten months of use. Since the stairway leading up to our office was adjacent to the Harley shop’s work area, I saw the bike on a stand near the door. A red shop towel was over the gas tank, which housed the speedometer. My suspicion aroused, I stepped inside and looked under the towel. Lo and behold, a miracle! Now the bike had only 5,000 miles on it.

I had seen an article in a movie magazine stating that James Dean had purchased a Triumph motorcycle from Ted Evans Motorcycles in nearby Santa Monica. It must have been a good choice, because he could surely afford the best. I went to the store and purchased a two-year-old British Triumph. It was a screaming machine and sure to get me into a lot of trouble.

When the bike needed service at Ted Evans, I would chat with other customers in the waiting area. On several occasions, there was another rider waiting for his bike who looked very familiar. He seemed to think he was very talented and didn’t mind telling everyone. It finally occurred to me that it was the up-and-coming film star Lee Marvin. This was early in his career, but the swagger in his character was already evident. After his successful TV show
M Squad
, he began getting better roles until he eventually got on Hollywood’s A-list. Unfortunately, he is probably remembered just as much for the precedent-setting court case he was involved in with his live-in girlfriend, Michelle Triola. She sued him for “palimony” and tried to make him pony up some big bucks for years of companionship, but lost.

I was often riding over 100 miles some days and got into two accidents the first year. One was fairly minor, but the second one was pretty serious. While speeding along a very curvy road along the side of the Silver Lake
Reservoir, I was really tempting fate because it was impossible to know what was waiting for me around the next curve. Someone had left on lawn sprinklers, and water was flowing down onto the street from a hillside. Applying hard brakes would be the worst thing to do, but the next sharp turn was coming up fast, and I was still doing about thirty miles per hour. Lying the bike down on its right side seemed like the only option, but when my right foot peg came in contact with the pavement, the bike went airborne. My uniform was ruined, and there was about $400 in damage to the bike. Situations like these are one reason motorcycles got their bad reputation, but that hasn’t stopped me from riding to this day.

Going to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office to pick up DCs became a daily task. I overheard the deputies talking about one of the pathologists who worked there. They called him a “working fool,” but not in a pejorative sense. He was just very dedicated and worked long hours. His name was Thomas Noguchi, and he eventually became head of the office. It was no surprise because he was by far the best candidate for this position, in great contrast to his boss, Dr. Theodore Curphey, who never spent much time in the lab as Noguchi did.

The coroner’s office, commonly known as the morgue, was downtown on the ground floor of the Hall of Justice building, made famous during the Charles Manson trial when his clan of groupie female followers occupied the adjacent corner for weeks. The building’s seventh floor housed the Los Angeles City Jail. The entire bank of north-facing windows of the coroner’s office gave them a panoramic view of the large parking lot where every day the county sheriff ’s black-and-white buses, with bars on their windows, would park and unload prisoners. These men were all handcuffed and connected to each other by a long chain. Uniformed officers would herd them into the elevator at one corner of the lot and take them upstairs to get booked.

The deputies always let me use their phone, and late one afternoon I called the doctor at my final stop that day to confirm my arrival. The doctor’s office was about twenty miles away in Huntington Park, and his receptionist told me that he would be leaving in thirty minutes. After I exited the freeway, the street traffic slowed me down considerably. Within a few blocks of his office I slowed down for an upcoming red light, but it turned green as I entered the crosswalk. Since my motorcycle was still in motion, I cranked it and shot a fast left turn before the oncoming cars had time to start moving. To my dismay, two California Highway Patrol
(CHP) motorcycle officers were parked near the corner. This bonehead stunt was going to cost me, because oncoming traffic always has the right of way. To stop and get ticketed would surely make me miss the doctor, so I pulled out all the stops and blasted off.

Getting ticketed wouldn’t have been anything more than part of the cost of doing business, but my impulse to run was brought on by the fact that only five minutes were left. Still, it occurred to me that the consequence of my reckless behavior might end up causing me to take up temporary residency on a cold slab, in the company of my friends at the morgue.

The sound of the pursuing motorcycles was barely audible, but looking back would be too obvious, so some high-speed hijinks were in order. Come on, Allan, you can outrun these guys with some fast moves! At that time, all police officers were riding big Harley-Davidsons referred to as “hogs.” I was riding a TR3, which was much faster and more nimble. It was getting dark, so I turned off my lights and made a rapid series of turns. Amazingly, I then noticed a house with a large bush halfway up the driveway behind which I could hide.

Well, so much for my grand scheme, because ten seconds later the first CHP officer came around the corner and pulled into the driveway. He got on his radio and called his partner with the street address. Three minutes later his fellow officer arrived and approached me, drawing his fist back to clean my clock. Luckily, his partner grabbed his hand and said, “Come on, he’s just a kid”—probably because I looked about 15 at the time. The angry officer replied, “This guy almost got me killed.” It was clear that this was a terrible mistake, and I feared what would be coming next.

The second officer commented about my turning off my lights. The light switch had actually been having problems, which required me to flip it a few times to get them to work. With that in mind, I ever so gently flipped the switch into the on position, while praying that it wouldn’t function. The plan worked. I demonstrated to the officers that it was in the on position but not working. After I flipped it a few times, it finally came on, making me look a little less guilty.

Now it was time to face the music. They called a tow truck for the bike, handcuffed me, and made a radio call for a transport vehicle. They drove me to the CHP’s Firestone Substation until it was time to do a prisoner transfer to the Hall of Justice. Yes, that’s right, the same Hall of Justice where my phone call had originated half an hour earlier.

The really pressing issue now would be to contact the office and apprise them of my plight, but the jailer said that no one got to use the phone until after booking. One of the officers seemed friendly, so it was worth a shot. After asking his name, I took the opportunity to explain the importance of the contents of my briefcase. If he were to keep me from informing the office about the whereabouts of the DCs, then he would have to deal with the consequences. These were legal documents, so it was imperative to let someone know where they could be recovered. He pondered for a few minutes and finally decided to make the call himself.