LUCIUS MORRIS BEEBE - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 04/09/1954 - HFSID 31813

LUCIUS MORRIS BEEBE
Author and cultural critic Lucius Morris Beebe signed this letter to columnist Louis Sobol in 1954 about a meeting of friends on his private railcar, the Gold Coast. He and longtime companion lived and travelled on the Gold Coast from 1948 to 1950. Typed letter signed "Lucius" in pencil. Pencil notations and corrections in unknown hand. 1 page, 7x10½, on stationery of Beebe's private rail car the Gold Coast. Written on Southern Pacific's Train 71, April 9, 1954. In full: "Dear Louis, You will be glad to learn that the West Coast Cahpter [sic] of the 21 Alumni Association met aboard this card as guests of Chuck Clegg and your correspond-ing secretary yesterday in Los Angeles to pass a number of resolutions and destroy a case or so of Bollinger whole facing in the direction of the Mother Shrine in Fifty-second Street. Present were Gene Folwer, [sic] Dave Chasen, Hedda Hopper,Mike Connolly and Bill Herbert. Bill Herbert and Nunnally Johnson. Messages of good cheer were forwarded to Stanley Walker, Harry Staton and Joe Cowan and themeeting [sic] adjourned to Chasen's where it collided with Ed Wynn and Nicholas Joy. Fowler described the meeting as The Field of the Cloth of Burlap. Best of everything, Lucius Beebe". Beebe bought the Gold Coast, the first of two private rail cars, in the late 1940s. He and longtime companion Charles Clegg lived and travelled on the Gold Coast from 1948 to 1950. The car is now in the collection of the California State Railroad Museum. CHARLES CLEGG (1916-1979), a longtime companion of Beebe and co-owner of Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News in Virginia City, Nevada. The two met in 1940 and stayed together until Beebe's death in 1966; both were homosexual, but their relationship was remarkably public for its time. Clegg also co-authored many of Beebe's books. "Louis"is possibly New York journalist LOUIS SOBOL (1896-1986), who wrote a gossip-oriented entertainment column for 40 years, initially focused on the Broadway stage but also covering film and TV personalities for the New York Journal American. His books include The Longest Street, a Broadway memoir and Along the Broadway Beat. LUCIUS MORRIS BEEBE (1902-1966) was a newspaper columnist, author, editor and publisher, not to mention a gourmand and a bon vivant who cracked life's bones and sucked out the sweet marrow. Beebe had an aristocratic upbringing but was a wild child; he got thrown out of both Harvard and Yale, not a bad feat. He became a journalist after college, working briefly as a with the Boston Telegraph and later with the New York Herald-Tribune (1929-1950). He also contributed to magazines like Gourmet, The New Yorker, Town and Country, Holiday, American Heritage and Playboy. A cultural critic, Beebe was a sophisticated gentleman who transported his readers into a world of elegance and extravagance and who never used a ten-cent word if he could use a five-dollar one. From 1952 to 1960, he and lifelong companion Charles Clegg were owners of the Virginia City News in Virginia City, Nevada, which they renamed the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News and built into one of the premiere weeklies in the U. S. They moved to San Francisco in 1960, when Virginia City started to get too touristy. Beebe wrote a column there at the San Francisco Chronicle until the year of his death. Beebe was also a noted gourmand, with a regular column in Gourmet, and was fascinated with railroad travel; he owned two opulently furnished private railroad cars, the Gold Coast and the Virginia City, which still exist today. Lightly toned, soiled and creased. Folded twice and unfolded. Otherwise in fine condition.