An old man on a flight from Southern to Northern California tells the stranger sitting beside him about the famous movie villain that had lived next door to him when he was a boy. An actor once well known for playing pitiless vampires and raving mad scientists, but who in real life had been gentle, caring and kind. And while his fame hasn’t endured the way Lon Chaney's or Bela Lugosi’s have, at the time even the movie critics who panned the low budget films he was in would concede that this startlingly ugly man brought a rare sensitivity to the roles he specialized in. As if he knew these monsters’ private pain.

Then the teller’s story takes a weird left turn. A theory about the actor’s supposed suicide which---as preposterous as it might all sound---would be nice to believe. Saying that rather than having drowned himself on that drizzly spring day in 1941 Max Grosz may have found his way to a second chance at life, and a different kind of movie stardom that would win the hearts of a nation...

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“Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has
taught me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death…”
~~Werner von Braun
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Damn. They really got us packed in here, don't they? These dinky seats, no more legroom than the back seat of a Fiat. Good thing it’s a fairly short trip, huh? So, are you goin’ to the Bay Area on business, or-

Oh. Great place for a vacation. Never? Well you’re gonna love it! Fisherman’s Wharf, the Embarcadero; the bridge, of course; and if you get a chance you should check out the De Young art museum in Golden Gate Park. Yeah I thought you’d want to know about that, you look like an artist or something, I mean with all that, uh ……. Did they let you through the metal detectors with all those in your face, or did they make you take ‘em out? Well that’s good.

Excuse me a second, I'm thinking this should really go in the overhead before we- Would you? Great! Thanks ..... No just go ahead and slam it, there's really nothing fragile in there. And there, that's a little more room for us both.

Me? No, this is family business. Although you could say my whole life’s been a vacation since I retired. I’ll be eighty-four in August.

I don’t? Well I sure as hell feel it! Every damn year of it. Although I know I’m in better shape than some my age, like my brother and his wife up in Pinole. Which is actually who I’m going to visit. She’s not doing so good after this stroke she had. And my wife Donna …… It’s going on ten years since she passed away, God rest her.

But I’ll leave you alone. You don’t need some old fart yammering at you the whole flight. Seems like every comic you see on that comedy channel is doing the bit about the horrible boring jerk they got stuck sitting next to on the plane, so I wouldn’t want- Hey here we go! That's good, I was expecting a much longer line for takeoff. Gets pretty backed up here sometimes. You'd better put on your seatbelt...
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So what’s that you’re reading? IT’S ALIVE! The Men Who Made the Monsters. Do you mind if I …….. Thanks. I’ll give it right back. I sort of have an interest in these old horror films. There was this neighbor of mine, want to see if he’s in here.

I’ll be damned, they got a whole chapter on him! I’m surprised. He wasn’t one of the more famous ones. He could’ve been, he was as good as any of them. Better, actually. I mean sure I loved Karloff’s Frankenstein, scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. But Max’s monster could talk, he wasn’t just: “ROAAARRRRRRRRR!!” And watching them both later, I'd have to say BORN OF THE GRAVE was a better picture. Better scripted anyway. And Max was ……... You weren’t just scared of his character, you felt the hell he was in. Him knowing exactly what he was; that "travesty of life" speech he gave there at the end, when the whole place was going up and the fire was almost to them. Not many monster movies can bring a tear to your eye like that.

A fellow as talented as him really should’ve been contracted to Warner Brothers, Paramount, anywhere but where he was. His agent Zolly and everybody else told him that, but he had a loyalty to that studio, to his friends there. Everyone was his friend.

Colossus? They were about one step down from Republic Pictures---right next to them in fact, out there on Poverty Row---and his were probably the best films they made. The closest to anything you could call art. Mostly what they made was knock offs of someone else’s successes. They had those Mr. Pontifax mysteries, which was their version of the Thin Man; and Merry and Jerry were their Laurel and Hardy. And they had a Lassie-type series called Mutt, but the thing about using mutts was you could more or less tell he wasn’t the same dog they'd used in the last picture. People used to always joke about that.

So it’s nice to see he’s getting some recognition. 'MAX GROSZ, THE GENTLEMAN MONSTER', it says here. Boy they got that right! He was just a great old guy. Didn’t have any family, so we had him over for supper a lot. No, not Hollywood, this was in Encino, which in those days was way out in the sticks. I’m not sure why he chose to buy a place out there, although I’m glad he did, and that we met him, even with as strange as things got.

I only knew Max that one year. His last year, the last place he ever lived. I was just a kid, and he was… I keep thinking of him as old, seemed older than dirt to me at the time, but it says here he was only 62 when he committed suicide. Although I don’t think it was suicide...

No, not murder. I don’t even think he died but that he- Never mind! You’d think I was nuts if I told you what I thought.

Really? You do?! Okay, but like I say it’s not something anyone would believe. The only person I ever told this to was my wife Donna, and she just shook her head, made some joke about my sanity. At least I hope she was kidding. And I don’t really know if I even believe it myself, it’s so crazy. Like a ghost story, or some kind of do-it-yourself reincarnation or- Hell, I don't know! So don’t say I didn’t warn you. I mean Tammy Kirby, for God’s sake!

Yep, “America’s Princess”. I’m surprised you knew that, it was way before your time they were calling her that. Happy Hearts? Yeah, that was one of hers. And that Tammy In Toyland they show every year at Christmas. And oh yeah there’s a connection between them! And when I tell you, that's when you’ll go and find another seat, away from the loony old man. But what the hell, huh? It’s not like we’re ever gonna see each other again; so what the hell…

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The whole neighborhood was excited when we heard an actual movie star had bought and was renovating the old Cooper house next door to us. Because even though we were just over the hill from Hollywood, and it wasn't much further to Burbank, back then in '40, ’41, our little town might as well have been out in Nebraska someplace for as little as any of us had to do with what went on down there. San Fernando Valley was nothing like it is today. Bean fields, orange and lemon groves far as you could see.

Not that my folks and I were farmers, unless you count our vegetable patch. And we did have a few chickens, and our goat Nipper who we’d wound up with somehow, just sort of wandered in from God knows where and decided to stick around. But what my dad did was he owned and managed the Rexall Drug there on Encino’s main drag…

From our front porch we could see the searchlights from those big movie premiers at the Chinese or the Egyptian. In another year or so seein' searchlights in the sky would have a more ominous, uh- You know; looking for those Japanese planes somebody thought they saw. But back then, those beams wandering around the sky had a happier meaning, and used to pull our neighbor from across the street down there like a moth to a flame. Muriel really had the bug for all that Tinseltown stuff; you would not believe how many movie magazines she subscribed to! And she’d come back all excited when she got a look at William Powell, Don Ameche or somebody. She kept trying to get us to come along, go stand out on the sidewalk and watch those stars get out of there cars and go in. And I think my mom would’ve wanted to, but Dad wouldn’t have it. Especially after he read that DAY OF THE LOCUST.

Actually, we didn’t go into LA much at all. Maybe go to Farmer’s Market, the beach a few times every summer. Or some store, like when they opened that big fancy modern May Company down on Wilshire---well it was modern then, it’s “historic” now---although most of what we bought was either the local Five-and-Dime or we ordered it from the Sears catalogue.

So at the time a town like Encino seemed like an odd place for a film star to want to live. But this was what appealed to him about it. That he could have his twenty or so dogs, and those horses that he never got around to buying; things those more prestigious neighborhoods would’ve frowned on…

He sure loved those dogs! Spoiled them like they were his kids. They’d start barking when they heard his Studebaker coming up the lane after his day at the studio, and all go running out to greet him, our dog Buddy running out there too, mobbing him, and him going: “Moody’s home! Moody’s home? Did babies miss Moody? Oh I know you did! And Moody miss you too!” in that weird voice he used with them. I didn’t get that “Moody” stuff. Nobody called him that…

When he bought the place the first thing we saw was this army of guys renovating and fixing it. And my dad kept going: “What is he doing, for Chrissake? Building Hearst Castle?!” He was determined that he wasn’t gonna like our new neighbor. But that didn’t last long, Max was so likeable. He didn’t care about your race or religion, how rich or poor or how educated you were; if he liked you he liked you and you’d have to be a real bastard for him to decide he didn’t.

And the women in the neighborhood all joked how he was gonna sneak into our houses at night and murder us all in our sleep, drink our blood like he really was that vampire he’d played; But with them too this kind of talk stopped as soon as they met him, and then it was “What a lovely man...”

Not physically of course, with that face that’d make little kids start bawling; but even those kids would start to smile and giggle after a minute of him talking to them. Because there was nothing scary about the Max Grosz we knew, except on that Halloween when he put on that show at our high school's auditorium, did all his famous roles to raise money for the March of Dimes.

When he was done fixing his place up it wasn’t elaborate at all. Basically the same except he'd re-plastered it and beefed up the electrical system, and put on a nice new Spanish tile roof. Just a three bedroom house on an acre and a half; You wouldn’t know a movie star lived there except for everyone telling you about him. I mean his car, hell it was even older and crappier than our old thing.

So then my father’s predictions, whatever he’d been nervous about, like this “Hollywood big shot” would be hosting a lot of fancy garden parties---bunch of rich snobs looking down their noses at us Valley rubes, eating weird hors d'oeuvres with their pinkies held up while a string trio played some fussy little Mozart tune---well it wasn’t long before his fears started going in the other direction. The way Max kept bringing home “bums”.

But me, I was in heaven! Ten year old boys love horror movies, and here we had the werewolf from Curse of the Full Moon, the monster in Born of the Grave, the evil space dictator from Jack Hammer and the Sky City Rocket Squadron living right next door and a friend of the family. Because to me he was a bigger star than any of those leading men. Something he could’ve been if it had just been a matter of talent. But as gigantic as he was, and looking like that, I guess Max was born to play monsters. And he obviously enjoyed it somewhat, even though he claimed to never watch his own movies. Because here, this caught my eye, if I could read it to you. Just this, where he says:

“Typecast? I suppose I am, but it’s far better than being out of work. Besides, I like these sorts of roles. I understand these characters in a way. Except for this Emperor Galaxis fellow I’m playing now, who’s just plain rotten, these creatures are usually ‘monsters’ because of circumstances they had no say in. Bitten by a vampire, brought back from the dead in some dreary old Schloss; their damnation was not something they chose. And they’re without a single friend to help make it bearable. With friends a person can face almost any burden. But these creatures have none. They're feared, hunted, they have no place in the world. This could make anyone bitter and hateful, or even drive them mad.”
-Max Gross, VARIETY, July 1940

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It wasn’t that my father didn’t like Max, he did. And whenever he came up with one of his theories he always ended it by admitting we could do much worse than to have him for a neighbor. But to him there was always something “funny” about Max, that he could never quite put his finger on it, so he kept trying on different notions of what it might be. And it wasn’t like he was standing in judgement of him, but was worried for him. Except maybe at first, when he was convinced Max was some kind of socialist.

But it became clear pretty quick he wasn’t one, or very political at all. That Bible he carried around, sneaking a peak at it in the middle of a conversation, and how he talked; not like a straight up Christian but some complicated kind of mysticism. How our souls need to be purified in the fiery crucible before we can be transformed, become who God meant us to be. Or I don’t know, this was a long time ago, but it didn’t sound like any kind of Marxism. So after this my dad was going: “Well he’s not a Red but he’s definitely one of their ‘fellow travellers’. Big hearted to a point where it makes 'em naíve and gullible. An easy touch for any moocher that comes along…”

Because Max really was incredibly generous. With money, time, doing favors.... You’d see him drinking beer and yacking in Spanish with the migrant field hands while a whole pig that he’d bought turned over a fire. And there were a few times when he'd let some ramshackled caravan of those Okies that were still straggling into California camp out in his big side yard, promising us they’d be gone once they found work. And each time his promises proved good before Dad could blow a gasket, although I’m pretty sure Max shelled out a lot of his own money helping these instant friends of his get settled.

Maybe he was giving it away because he knew he wasn’t going to be around long, like in the back of his mind suicide was always his last option. But for real, not faked the way he did.

And every Sunday there were his barbecues, for us if we wanted to come, and his communist movie friends. No kidding though; a lot of them actually were. Talking just like you’d expect they would about “the workers” and “the bosses” and such. But I think he just gravitated toward anyone with strong opinions. Because as often as not you’d find the director Harlan Stone there, who was a big deal in the American Liberty League, and a young actor named Ronald Reagan. Max would stand there with a can of Schlitz in his hand and a boxing fan’s grin on his face, watching the two of them squaring off with those armchair Bolsheviks.

There was usually a few famous people at each of Max's barbecues; My dad was excited to meet the author of Brave New World---who I just remember was English, blind as a bat, and that he seemed to think “cheeseburger” was a hilarious word---but most of his guests were studio employees who had all these obscure jobs my folks and I had never heard of before. We’d never realized what a complicated deal making a movie actually was. And it’s from talking to them that I got my interest in this movie-making stuff. I’d never wanted to be famous, some Barrymore or a singing cowboy, but the idea of getting paid to build something and try and make it look like the real thing, that sounded like fun! I started out as an apprentice and then a rigger and then a foreman at MGM. It was a good job.

And Saul Perleman never missed a Sunday at Max’s, since he wasn’t just his agent but his best friend. We got to know Zolly and his wife pretty good, after Max took us all to the Ambassador Hotel for dinner. It was weird having people gawking, wondering who we were to be eating with Max Grosz, something we didn’t really get back in Encino. Or that one crazy lady who came up to our table and got Zolly’s, Flora’s, Mom’s, Dad’s and my autograph too, just to be on the safe side. Zolly seemed grateful that Max had “nice people” like us for neighbors, who were right there for him.

I remember the day he wandered over from one of Max’s shindigs, telling my folks, "I’m worried about Max. He seems so gloomy…"

At this point we’d only known the fun Max. The thoughtful, considerate Max. My dad pointed over at him---playing his concertina, leading that whole gang in singing some polka---and he just laughed. “You call that gloomy?”

“For him it is," Zolly said. "He puts up a good front, but I can tell there’s something off about him. I’ve known him twenty-five years, and sometimes when he’s carrying on like this, life of the party; that’s when he’s really fighting it. These moods he gets. The other day I tried to warn him about this Emperor Galaxis part. ‘Max’, I tell him, ‘You’re ruining your credibility as an actor with this damned kiddie serial. Rocket Squadron is a joke, they’re laughing at you!' And you know what he says to me? ‘Good,’ he says, ‘It’s fitting then. My whole existence is a joke, why shouldn’t my career be?’ You see what I’m talking about?”

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Then there came a day when my mom and I went over to bring him a basket of fried chicken, and we found him crying in the kitchen, in just his pants and undershirt and his Emperor Galaxis helmet, which I’d never seen in person before, only in black and white up on the screen. And I'd never seen a grown man crying like this, or at least not a sober one.

My mom sat down, scooted her chair up to his, “What’s wrong?”

This was the only time I ever heard him cuss. He said, “Nothing! What could be wrong? Things are getting more wonderful every day. Just ask the Poles, the Jews! We have the broken cross flying over Paris- my beautiful Paris! And my Fatherland, lost in that terrible dream. When Herr Hoffman wrote Deutschland Uber Alles it was a tender song, a hymn about loving one’s country. Not this, what they’ve turned it into, about a mad machine running over everything in its path, grinding it all up! Have you read the Chancellor’s book? Every paragraph on every page screaming: I AM COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE! Yet they believe him. What he says makes sense to them. And now England is next to fall. The Men of Iron are on the march!”

And then sitting there---in that ridiculous helmet with the feather-duster thing sticking up---he started stomping his feet, like he was marching: “Hup two three four! Links, Rechts! Links, Rechts! Hooray for the big men! Big men with big plans! I am the big man! I am ….. A MONSTER!”

Mom put her arm around him, held him. “Shoooosh! You’re not a monster, you’re a wonderful man.”

He looks down at his big shoes, I think he had to have them specially made. “Yes. A wonderful, big man. That child, so sweet and innocent, picking flowers there by the lake ...... I KILLED her!”

“In a movie,” my mom reminded him, but he didn’t hear.

“We’ve got Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin- oh he’s another great leader! The big dreams of big men. Whatever happened to the little dreams of little girls? Whatever happened to nice things?”

“We brought you some nice chicken,” I said, trying to helpful.

He just kept looking at the floor and mumbled, “I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I would like to help people, if possible...”

My mom nodded for me to go, like she wanted to talk to him in private. As I left I could hear Max shouting back there, about how the modern world with all its inventions has made us powerful but more and more heartless. Crying about “machine men, with machine hearts and machine minds-” and begging someone named Hannah to look up to the skies.

When she got home an hour later I asked if he was going to be okay. She said she didn’t know. I asked her what the heck was wrong with Max. It was his heart, she said. I asked what was wrong with his heart, and she said, “Nothing.”

We never mentioned his little breakdown to Dad, who at this point was reading psychology books, and had our neighbor pegged for an involutional melancholic with oedipal tendencies.

For a while after this he was still getting to work on time, to the studio or out to Thousand Oaks or Vasquez Rocks to shoot the Rocket Squadron serial, and he seemed to be holding it together, but not for long…

At his next outdoor meeting-of-the-minds he was arguing against every side, saying we couldn’t hope to find a political system that worked until we were better people; except religions in these “lost times” were in no shape to help us get to that. He pissed off Father Chuy from the Mission chapel, asking him if he could imagine the earliest leaders of the Christian church---those ones who ended up getting martyred in all different horrible ways rather than compromise their beliefs---ever cutting a bargain with the Fascists like Pope Pius did, turning a blind eye to how they were slaughtering people just to stay in business.

He said maybe these big men who had brought the world to the state it was in should all step down, and just let the women run our governments, before we destroyed everything- whole cities wiped out with those Tesla ray-gun cannons he was sure they were about to start producing.

This went over better with the women there than the men; at least until he jumped up and started dancing around all crazy, carrying on like he had for us that day in his kitchen. Screaming, “You ask me about the war? Don’t believe what anyone says. The doctrines, the manifestos, they’re all lies- They know not what is in their own hearts! The real war is between ugliness and beauty. Because ugliness, with a jealousy it cannot even admit to, can only destroy whatever is good!” And then he started singing that stupid song that was a big hit on the radio that year, about the three little fishies who swam all over the dam; real loud and in a voice like Baby Snooks---“Boop! Boop! Dittum dattum wattum- CHOO!”---over and over and over until everyone left.

My dad shook his head. Sad that Max was so obviously a “hophead”, the dope making him act like this.

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All Max’s seriously political friends had stopped coming around, but he was inviting new batches of people. Different religions now, a weirder one each week, until the day his yard was full of these men in robes and bowler hats, all bowing to a guy they’d carried in on a sedan chair. The Great Samson, who had been a wrestler until he realized he was the Messiah after landing on his head in the ring. We knew there had been some strange cults springing up in California but we’d never seen anything like this bunch. Max tried to call us over to meet his new friends, but Mom wouldn’t go over there and wouldn’t let me go either.

But I guess the Samsonites didn’t have what he was looking for either, and after them he stopped having anybody over, and stopped coming by our place. He’d wave back if we waved but seemed too lost in his thoughts to do it first. We’d see his lights on at all hours, and pretty soon he was missing work more days than not.

Zolly knew the studio was about to sack him and find themselves another Emperor Galaxis, but he talked to them and they agreed to let him try and get help for Max. Max went along quiet when Saul drove him to the sanitarium, but they sprung him after a few hours. Said he was fine. Max was a good actor, and I guess could act as rational as he had to. Until he could get out and get home and be crazy again…

Our dropping in on him had turned into checking up on him, trying to figure out how bad he was, what we could do. We’d go in to see him reading some huge heavy book that looked like it was so old Gutenburg himself might of printed it; which he would put away quick, smiling like everything was fine. But you could tell he wasn’t sleeping.

A few days before he vanished we found him with a book that he didn’t try to put away. He wasn’t even trying to pretend things were normal now, he was so beat down. Almost like he was in a trance, which with that face of his was very spooky. He said it was about Hinduism. That he was looking for a way out of Hell.

And when my mother said he didn’t need all this weird stuff for that, just Jesus, he said 'Not that Hell, this Hell!'; and he thumped his chest.

He said that he believed this book, translated from something written before the Egyptians started building pyramids, about how when we die our soul gets reborn. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, depending on our karma. When I asked him what he would want to be in his next life he just shook his head. And then he started crying again, like even this book was just a bad joke. Saying what good was it to be reborn if you wouldn’t remember? You weren’t really you anymore if you didn’t remember.

My mom pretty much repeated what she’d said the first time, to not give up on God. The real God, not that weird one with all the arms. He smiled and quoted something Jesus said in the New Testament---humoring her---and we left.

And two days later, on March 21st, 1941 he walked off the set in the middle of a scene, dropped his helmet and metal vest there in the parking lot, got in his car and drove off. That was the last anyone saw of Max Grosz, dead or alive.

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When Zolly called us that night asking if we’d seen Max, what Max had said to me that morning suddenly made sense. And I went uh-oh…

It was a school day and I was up before the sun, going out to get eggs from the chickens, when I spotted him setting up a strange device that I couldn't see too clearly but would get a better look at it later in the day. It was a 12 foot stepladder with an electric motor bolted to the top and a big copper washtub on top of that, with wires leading into his house. I waved and he waved back.

"So you going in to work?" I asked. Casual, trying not to sound like I was pressuring him.

"I'd better," he chuckled, "And there's not much more I can do around here."

I pointed, "What is that thing?"

"It's a starlight collector."

"Oh that's good," I said. Later during the war I would see radar antennas that looked something like his homemade gizmo, and nowadays just about every other house has a satellite dish on the roof; but at the time it was just some crazy thing that I couldn't see any use for. A starlight collector? That sure didn't sound like anything real. I asked him, "So how have you been?"

I could sense him smiling there in the dark. Hear it in his voice, “Wonderful. Truly wonderful! I’ve found the key!”

This was good to hear. He hadn’t been “wonderful” in months. I said something encouraging.

He jumped our picket fence and came toward me, excited. “There’s an intersection. Where alchemy and the Vedas come together. These passages, from books thousands of years and continents apart- they line right up. That can't be coincidence! They both talk about transformation being attained by means of 'a flower, made of light' that the Great Phoenix carried across the night in her bosom, the Hindu text telling about how the flower 'sings in a voice no man can hear', And for the longest time I would just skip over all that stuff---the phoenix, the flower singing to us in its 'silent tone'---thinking it was just more of the poetic sort of mumbo jumbo those old books are full of. Until I realized it was trying to describe something they didn't have a name for back then: Radio frequency! And suddenly it's all so obvious! I mean isn't it?!"

I didn't know what the heck he was babbling about, but with the way his emotions had been lately it seemed like agreeing with him was the thing to do. I told him yes it was.

"And the Phoenix, that's the constellation Phoenix, and her 'bosom' means right in the center of those six stars. So now I know the 'where' and 'when' of it, and through tuning my device I've found the wavelength. It really is a voice. Not a human voice, but like a-" There was a pause where he realized he didn't have a name for whatever it was, then decided the name didn't matter---it was something beyond words---and he said: "My life, it starts today! Or tomorrow at the latest; whenever I've collected enough of the signal. The song- that's the catalyst! I just need to be ready for it---mentally and spiritually---when it starts; The process... I will be reborn, and I will remember!"

Crazy, and talking so loud he was practically shouting, but on the plus side he'd showered and shaved and was going to work on time. I told him 'great!'

"You have no idea," he laughed.
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I was ten years old, for Christ’s sake! It seems obvious to us now, but THE 10 WARNING SIGNS OF SUICIDE wasn’t the kind of magazine article they ran back then, and I didn't have a clue. Not even when he handed me that roll of bills.

He’d done this before, and my folks didn’t like me taking money from him, but they weren’t around and if he wanted to give me a few bucks, then hell yeah! And later, when I saw it wasn’t a roll of ones but well over a thousand dollars I figured he’d made a mistake, and was going to tell him. That he’d handed me the wrong bunch of bills.

“Take care of my babies,” he whispered, meaning his dogs. And I said sure, we’d keep an eye on them today.

“No, take care of them,” he said. He got in his car and off he went. And still I didn’t get it. Just thinking he was hating being away from them for eleven hours, the way they must’ve hated it too from how they carried on when “Moody” came home.

That’s something else that came to me years later, when I was with the Occupation forces in Germany. He hadn’t been calling himself Moody when he talked to them, it was Mutti. German for "Mommy"…

His car was found two days later, clear up in Pismo Beach. Parked on that ugly gray rocky sand, the only car out there on that drizzly day, with an envelope on the dashboard.

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The powerful rip tides around Pismo made the search for his body difficult, and they gave up and ruled it a suicide pretty quick, especially after that note they found in his car in his very distinctive handwriting, and everyone they talked to having some “last days of Max” story for them…

The sheriffs went through his place with Zolly, and Colossus Studios’ press agent, all showing up together. They did this sort of thing back then.

Following the wires that led into the house from Max's radio telescope thingamajig one of them found the secret room he'd had built. The hidden door behind the bookcase there, that they told us had lots of very large dresses and sun bonnets, women’s things. And I don’t know who all got paid off, but nothing about this got leaked to the press. That’s something else they did then, the studios the cops and even the press all in bed together. And in this case I’m glad they were, so that nobody was saying the late Max Grosz was anything but a fine actor and a very nice person. Which is exactly what he was.

And they sure didn’t have to tell us not to say anything. He wasn’t related to us but over the past year he’d become family. Although privately my dad was pretty shook up about the skirts and things. And now he was saying, “So that’s what his problem was. Max was a fairy!”

Which you know, that was the times. Gay, transsexual, whatever, we lumped it all together. And to tell the truth I probably still wouldn’t know there’s all these distinctions---that they're not all just different degrees of the same thing---but after knowing Max, and especially later when I started putting this together I looked into the psychology of all this more than I would’ve otherwise.

Poor guy. I don’t care what you think about that stuff, you have to feel sorry for him. Feeling like a woman and looking like that, it must’ve been killing him. My mom had thought it was odd how Max didn’t had one single mirror in his house. It must’ve been too painful a reminder.

In that same hidden room they found a bunch of weird old books in Latin, a blackboard scribbled with more latin, and a modest-size Frankenstein's labaratory set up on a workbench; pots full of sulphur and mercury; plus a Cockroft-Walton generator---which at the time was a state of the art atom smasher---hooked up to some kind of big iron cooking apparatus. They didn't know what to think of that, whether it was a bomb or maybe a still for making booze; but when they found the doll in the chamber they wrote it off as just more craziness.

I’m not too clear on what alchemy even is, but I figure that’s what it was. Some kind of way to change himself. And I hope it worked.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
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A very beautiful empty coffin was buried at Max’s plot in Forest Lawn Memorial Park. It was the very first funeral I ever attended, and it was a “gala event”. Lots of movie stars there at Forest Lawn that day, both above and below the ground.

Mourners took turns remembering him. His kindness, his optimism (at least until recently), younger actors saying how Max had encouraged them when they were first starting out; and no one mentioning having seen him out in the moonlight in his skivvies two weeks before, signaling to something up in the clouds with a flashlight. Zolly read the eulogy, just weeping openly for his friend.

Nobody noticed it when she showed up uninvited, this eight year old girl. Everybody must’ve thought she was with some adult, since she was dressed for the occasion, black. The smart little hat with the veil not quite hiding those adorable curls she’d wind up being so famous for-

Right, Tammy Kirby! The girl he turned himself into---however he did it---and now for these past two terms a Senator from the state of Wyoming. Didn’t I warn you this was gonna sound crazy?! I mean, hell ....... And it must’ve been a real irony for her, to be decked out like that at her own funeral. Exactly! “Greatly exaggerated”...

And it’s all circumstantial, the evidence, but there’s so damn much of it! The things I saw and heard, the habeas corpus, all the irregularities about where this kid supposedly came from. Her birth records “lost in a fire” like that, and her having no parents. I mean, there’s six or seven biographies on her, two of them by her, and even those two don’t quite match when it comes to her early years. And it’s a known fact that this funeral is the first place anyone remembers seeing her; except for that so-called aunt that Tammy was keeping in furs and Cadillacs. But even if I had evidence, I wouldn’t try to sell this story. As deep dark conspiracies go it’s a pretty harmless one, don’tcha think?

I only noticed her when she came up to me and my dad and Zolly after his eulogy. My mom was someplace, I’m not sure where. There was a rifle party, five guys in powdered wigs and Redcoat costumes firing blanks as they lowered him into the ground. I don’t know why, it’s Hollywood! And she came up to us, right up to Zolly and said, “Mr. Perleman, I understand you were Max’s agent.”

He nodded, “I had that honor, yes.”

“And I hear you’re quite a good one,” she said.

So now he seemed suspicious, or like his ulcer was kicking up. The way he said, “I’ve had some success for my clients. The ones with talent. I just wish Max had taken my advice more…”

She giggled at this, and said, “Well I’m an actress, and despite my tender years I’m quite good. And I’m in need of an agent. If you would see fit to let me read for you-”

That yarmulke practically went flying off his head when he started yelling, “This is a FUNERAL! Have you no decency?! I just lost my best friend…” And he said, “Listen Girlie, you might have the ruthlessness it takes to go places in this town, and you might even be talented---the next Shirley Temple---and will make some agent a rich man. But I’d sooner be a rag picker than speak another word to you!”

He stomped off across the grass, through the tombstones and the palm trees, just wanting to get away before he really lost his temper. And she took off after him. Caught up with him over by Tom Mix’s big monument.

He turned, I could see their mouths moving, their arms flapping. After a while they were just talking. Then he gave her a big hug. So you can call this story crazy but I saw this! I mean Zolly didn’t hug someone just because he’d become their agent. But when they returned it was like they were best friends. Had his arm around her…

I noticed she had a slight German accent, like Max’s- I swear to God! And her losing that was one of the first things they worked on. He didn’t announce her as his newest client, I mean this was a funeral, but he would soon. Mostly he just kept shaking his head. “Well I’ll be a son of a bitch …… I’ll be damned,” and like that.

We found my mom---that’s right, I remember now; she was hunting up autographs to take back to our Hollywood-crazy neighbor Muriel---and as my folks and I were getting into our car he was opening the door of his Rolls for her- “And you don’t got a place to stay here in town? No I guess you wouldn’t. But I’m sure the Missus will love having you as our guest. She’ll want to feed you, put some meat on those skinny little bones…”

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
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As it turned out Tammy Kirby did have what it took to succeed in Hollywood. And it wasn’t any ruthlessness either. She was about the nicest girl you ever met. Zolly and Flora brought her around to visit us a few times...

Flora had always made it a point to stay out of Saul’s show business dealings, she didn’t much care for the kinds of people you met. But with their new daughter starting out on her career she took a big interest in whatever film Tammy was working on. A proud mom, that was for sure. I don’t know how they managed the adoption, getting it squared away legally, but I suspect it’d cost them.

I didn’t immediately go: “Hey! This little girl must be my sixty-two year old neighbor come back from the dead!” Who would? Even after his dogs---our dogs now---went running up like they just loved her to pieces, and our own dog Buddy, who doesn’t take to people immediately. So there was a lot of things I could of asked her on those times they brought her by to play with me, the only kid she knew, to try and trip her up about knowing something a girl her age wouldn’t, or vice versa. But I didn’t put the pieces together until years later…

I had fun with Tammy, playing catch, playing Monopoly---she slaughtered me---and exploring the groves and the canyon where the LA aqueduct goes through. But this only lasted until she got busy making movies. Promises were made to stay in touch, but theirs was a busy world, and with our famous neighbor no longer next door, none of us begrudged her or her folks when they didn’t. They were Beverly Hills and we were still Encino.

Tammy never did work for Colossus Studios. And she never signed a real long term contract like Max did. Warner Brothers did try to mold her into “the next Shirley Temple” with her earliest flicks, which were fairly successful, until it occurred to someone that her talents were being wasted on these sugary wide-eyed and innocent roles.

If she had a sweetness to her, and took a real delight in a lot of girly stuff, there was also something oddly grown-up about her. Odd because it didn’t seem odd, but totally natural for her. A “wisdom beyond her years” that she carried off without seeming vulgar or annoying. Like in that one about the army base brat, The General’s Daughter. That song she sang for those GI’s up on that table in the mess hall, “America’s Fighting Men”. Like she knew all too well what they were facing when they shipped out, and she respected the hell out of them. Or taking on those Nazi saboteurs with those cherry bombs and her slingshot? That look on her face- like Bruce Willis! Like it was personal…

Or that screwball comedy she made with Tracy and Hepburn. Everyone was amazed at how she could go toe to toe with them both, never missing a beat, just a total professional. That picture there was when folks started to see that she really had something. And after that she was everywhere. Going on the radio to sell war bonds, everywhere! And then a teenage role model, setting the style for that whole Bobby-Soxer generation...

And the people who were predicting: ”These child actors, they never last long”; they had to eat their words. I mean there she was, twenty years old, getting the Oscar nomination for that Tennessee Williams one she was in. It was another eight years before she was nominated again, but that’s when she got Best Supporting Actress. Yeah! The Stepchild, with Betty Davis and Anne Bancroft. Spooky wasn’t she? Terrorizing those two poor old women like that; and then so innocent, so convincing when the police detective came around; until she got the drop on him, rammed that pitchfork through his gut!

But that’s when it clicked for me, this crazy idea! Or maybe it was always in the back of my head, but two things put it all together. First was her acceptance speech for that. Nobody remembers it, it was so short; how she just said, “It’s taken me two lifetimes to get this. Thank you!”

And the other thing was reading the VARIETY review of that same picture. Something like: “Who would have thought that the girl once known as America’s Princess could convey an evil screen presence not seen since the days of Max Grosz?”

I tell you, the hairs on my neck went straight up! And I knew. I mean logic, all the things everyone says can’t happen? Sitting there on the can reading that, it all went out the window.

I didn’t tell my wife, not yet. And she never knew I went to visit Tammy. I don’t know why, maybe so it wouldn’t feel so crazy. I wrote her a letter, care of Zolly’s agency. And it got to her, and she remembered me. Sent me her phone number.

I called her and I went up into the hills, that big place she had. All modern. Meeting each other, both grown up now, a lot of water under the bridge. But at first it was okay, it was nice. Small talk, remembering Zolly and those few times we’d hung out as kids. But then...

Maybe I was coming off as a little nervous, so she knew something was up with me; that I wasn’t just there to reminisce. A whiff of something obsessed about me, because believe me stars had “stalkers” back then too.

So then she started to get nervous herself; all of the sudden remembering she had someone she needed to meet in an hour, trying to run me out of there. And so I just asked her, ‘How much do you know about Max Grosz?’

And then she knew. She knew I knew. And she was afraid. She jumped up: "OUT! OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

And I did, I started moving away, toward the door. And I told her I didn’t care, I just wanted to know, that I wasn’t imagining something or crazy for thinking this, but it was too much for her. She’d buried Max, anything to do with that life, and my just being there was…

I didn’t want for this to threaten her. I told her if she ever wanted to call, I was someone she could talk to about this, and I’d keep her secret. But just saying that word "secret" made things even worse. Like I was some blackmailer now. And she started threatening me then, with cops, that they’d lock me away in the booby hatch if I went around telling people she was Max Grosz- Which, you know, I’d never even said.

So I left. I told her she’d never hear from me again, and she hasn’t. There wasn’t any point. You could see how unhappy she’d been as Max. And this girl, this woman, she was so in love with life. Did good things, and still is. Being a mayor and now a senator …… You know, she practically singlehandedly got that anti-discrimination law passed, in a state where they said something like that would never happen. “Her people” I guess you could say, even if she’s way back in one of those closets they have about it. And other things, the charities, I’ve got one of those search engines where any news about her pops right up, and it's usually something good.

And so the last thing I said, in that second before I stepped out the door was, “I’m just happy for you.”

She locked eyes with me, still scared but I saw just the tiniest smile creeping onto her face, and she nodded like: 'Thank you Jimmy. You’re a good boy…'
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And I still don’t know if this is real. Maybe I am just crazy. When you’re crazy you’re usually the last one to know. But I do know that if she did use to be him, and she did whatever she did and got a second chance in life, one that felt right to who she was inside, well it would be nice. I mean ...... good for her!

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NOTE: In the nine years since this story was first posted several versions of the Max-Grosz-became-Tammy-Kirby legend have appeared in various form. There have been conspiracy blogs, YouTube videos and recently even an episode of the paranormal speculation series Weird Hollywood on TMC. One of the more disturbing of these is the supposed “deathbed confession” of Tammy Kirby herself, which with its claim that Max's transformation required a human sacrifice to take place paints him in a far less innocent light.

Which is the “real” version of this astonishing tale? Decide for yourself.
AMERICA'S PRINCESS by Maryanne Peters appears here:
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/86052/americas-princess