Hi Walter. I’ve read a good bit of your autobiography, and I
agree with your assessment that you have lived a very unusual life. I thought
we’d take a moment to explore your childhood in your own words. It seems to me
that your son, William Windsor, is simply following in the footsteps of you and
your father.
Let's get started - Your father, he was actually the very first of the
Windsor name. Since it wasn’t immaculate conception, can you please tell our
readers how the Windsor name came to be.
My father was born Walter Winkopp.
In his early days in vaudeville, his act was due to play a theatre in The
Bronx, New York, and the fellow putting up the “billing” complained that
Winkopp was not a suitable name and should be changed. My father looked up at the marquee and saw
the name of the emporium was Windsor Theatre.
Then and there he became Walter Windsor, and subsequently so did I. I was named after a theatre!
Wow, too weird. I recently heard something on the news about a fellow who named himself “Clark Rockefeller.” It seems he's pretty famous now too!
So, your mother died when you were quite small. That must have been hard.
At the age of one, I was placed in
the care of my paternal grandmother, who, along with assorted aunts and uncles,
harbored me for several years.
Harbored? Isn’t that what they do with crim . . . Nevermind . . . uh. . . So, where was your
father?
All this while my father had mostly been “on
the road” staging shows, occasionally popping in with a gift and a “hello,
Pal!” One day he stuck his head in the door and said, “Guess what I brought you
this time - a new mother!”
Well, that certainly was a
lovely gift, wasn’t it?
He and his new wife, and a new baby half-brother named Howard, came to
visit and ended up staying with us in what was already a crowded house. Not long after that he announced that he had
made a big deal and we would be moving as a family (pop, mom, two boys) to California.
Oooh California.
We traveled by train to Youngstown, Ohio, where, nearly as I can tell, Dad
was booked to put on a holiday show, then move on to Los Angeles. We had Christmas and New Year’s in
Youngstown. The highlight of Christmas
was my receiving a beautiful tenor saxophone.
A saxophone for Christmas?
My, you were a lucky lad, weren’t you?
Soon after that, we were on another train, heading west, all except the
saxophone, which I have since deduced was one of a number of items that ended
up in a Youngstown pawn shop to raise the money for the trip.
Ummmmm. That’s just sad.
Moving on . . . . So, about
this big deal in California, we’re all excited to hear about how Walter Sr hit
it big.
The “big deal” that took us to California became
tragically entangled in the maelstrom created when “talking pictures” took over
from silent movies and sounded a death knell for most live entertainment of the
day, particularly for vaudeville.
Oh, no, not the maelstrom?
Golly Gee. Nobody could ever have foreseen that the "talkies” would stick
around.
My dad’s deal with the theater tycoon Alexander Pantages
was to produce and stage live shows to accompany the showing of silent movies
in his many theaters across the nation.
Just as the hopeful young Windsor family hit L.A., the stuff hit the
fan. Pantages backed out on the deal.
Well at least your father
can say he nearly had a deal with Pantages, what a claim to fame! So, what
exactly happened with the “stuff hit the fan?”
I have never been privy to the details, but I know he welshed on the
contract. There were many long telegrams back and forth (I think this was the only way that Mr.
Pantages communicated), and litigation existed for some time, all to no
avail. At first, Dad passed up other
work opportunities, feeling he would win out in his war with Pantages.
Litigation ensued? The
Windsor legacy is born!
Soon there were no offers for stage work, and he was forced to accept
directing burlesque shows to keep bread on the table.
So what did your father do
once he burned all his, err, I mean, after the work dried up?
He opened a dancing school called Windsor Castle . . .
He started a business and named it after
himself?? How very Windsoresque!
. . . but it failed, just after I
started taking tap-dancing lessons.
A Windsor business failed?
Say it isn’t so!
That was the end of my dancing career!
Well, knowing the Windsor
family, I’m sure it was onto something bigger and better.
There was a feeler from the Warner Bros., even then a big force in the film
industry, suggesting that Dad might choreograph and/or direct musical
movies.
Warner Brothers! Musicals
were HUGE! Wow, perhaps it was best that the previous partner welched on the
deal. It put him precisely in the right place at the right time. Warner
Brothers!
He was thoroughly convinced that sound movies would fade out as a brief
fad, and vaudeville would revive, so he spurned the idea. I think the fellow they eventually hired was
named Busby Berkeley.
Oh, well. . . uh. That’s alright. He’ll get the next
one.
This “fork in the road” of Dad’s life was most
costly. He could not support his
family. He continued to dream of great
productions and plan them on paper, but nothing ever came of them. His wife went to work for a real estate
company that was then developing a large parcel of land that today is West Los
Angeles. She would sit all day in empty
new houses, to show them to prospective buyers.
He would sit at home, dreaming dreams of his comeback and the return of
the two-a-day, sending me to wherever she was working to borrow a quarter for two
packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes. He
was a chain-smoker, and had been so since the age of fourteen; there always had
to be cigarettes, even when there was no food.
Hmm. Chain-smoker who forced
his kid to go beg change from his mom while she was working and dad was home day
dreaming. . . . umm. I’m not feeling too good about this guy.
I have to do my father justice on one point. He always took temporary work during the
Christmas season, usually in the toy department of a local department
store. He saw to it that there were
gifts and toys, although most of them were defective or damaged items the
customers had returned, which the employees could purchase at a great bargain.
Broken toys totally make up
for no food and begging for him.
So . .California! Such a fun
place for a young boy to grow up!
It was there that I had my twelfth birthday. My greatest wish for some time had been to
own a bicycle. Every other kid had a
bike. With a bike, you could become a
newspaper carrier and make money.
Nothing was promised, but on the birthday I was instructed to come
straight home from school and not leave the house. I disobeyed and left for a short time. I was properly punished, but was also led to
believe that the bicycle was to have been delivered and I wouldn’t get it
because I wasn’t there. I soon realized
that, if not a terribly cruel punishment,
this was a cover-up for not being able to provide a bike.
The Windsors have great
parenting instincts. Nobody wants to disappoint a little boy by telling him he
can’t have a bike. Instead, just make it “his fault” he didn’t get it. That is
brilliant!
Well, maybe you didn’t have
wealth, but at least you all had each other!
The unfortunate domestic situation brewed conflict
between husband and wife, which was complicated when some of her relatives from
Nebraska moved into the house. After numerous battles, Virginia
took Howard and left some time in 1930.
I was then in the sixth grade.
Oh well, they had a good run
- second grade to sixth. . . . I bet you
sure were sad without your brother though?
One day my father used me as a tool in an attempted
abduction of Howard, but the law soon prevailed. I never could figure out how he proposed to
support three when he had no income with which to support two. Virginia sued for divorce and charged him
with a crime called, in California, “non-support.” He was found guilty and sentenced to six
months in the Los Angeles County Jail.
Umm. Well I’m positive
Walter Sr was justified in trying to abduct his son. Food and shelter are
overrated. I can’t believe Walter was jailed for this! I am shocked that
corruption runs this far back!
So what happened to you
then?
During much of this time, I had been living at 1936 Greenfield Avenue, in
the house we had formerly rented, as the “guest” of an elderly woman who had
been our landlady. She loved to play the
card game Casino, and I more or less earned my room and board playing this game
with her. Not gambling; she just wanted
someone to play with.
Not gambling. Right. Just
like how we read that Bill doesn’t gamble. He just bets on green every time he
passes a casino. . . .
One day my father, released from his incarceration during which he had
worked as librarian, came walking up the
driveway. He obtained a small apartment
in downtown L.A., and was involved in
some proposed business transactions with two lawyers whose acquaintance he had
made during the earlier legal proceedings.
Earlier legal proceedings, I
understand. But, friends? With lawyers?? A Windsor???
One of these ventures was the operation of a souvenir stand at the 1932
Olympic Games. I helped out in selling
items at the stand, and was rewarded with a ticket to attend the track and
field events for one day. Dad had also
developed a board game, called OLYMP-O, which we tried vainly to sell at the
Olympics.
I find it hard to believe
that something developed by a Windsor would not become and an immediate
success.
About this time, Dad opened, with the backing of his
attorney friends, a little sporting goods shop in Westwood Village, about half
a block from the entrance to the UCLA campus, called the Diversion Shop.
Such a small world. Bill
opened a similar shop right next to the Texas Tech University Campus!
I never knew what happened to this short-term venture, except that it ended
quite abruptly.
UCLA and TTU must have a poor sports
programs – only explanation.
Then the attorneys got the idea they wanted to own and operate a game
attraction on The Pike in nearly Long Beach, to be managed by my father. This was a great amusement park in its day,
rivaling Atlantic City in its variety of rides, shows, games, dance palaces,
and other diversions. The game chosen
was basically what we know as Bingo, except it was called OLYMP-O, and was
based on the flags of the various nations on cards, with marbles shot to
determine on which countries you would
place your markers.. I think we used
dried beans.
So, your dad invented Bingo?
Or he just made it “better?” You must have been raking in the dough!!
Of course, we were broke, except for whatever compensation Dad received for
managing OLYMP-O.
Oh. Hey well, still, it must
have been pretty fun to be a kid surrounded by games and prizes?
It was really a gambling
operation by this time, the prizes being cartons of cigarettes, which the
winners could redeem across the street for cash.
I’m sure it wasn’t soo bad
to be raised around gambling so long as it brought in the money and taught you
the value of hard work, right?
The bingo game was closed down when the City of Long Beach decided to clean
up The Pike. Again my dad had no means
of support. We were “on relief,” which
principally meant we could go stand in line for free food, usually potatoes and
beans. Dad was too proud to stand in the
line, so I was elected to this honor. It
certainly did nothing to improve my self-esteem.
Well, the Windsors are
nothing if they aren’t proud. It’s very
important to stick to your core values.
My father was again dreaming of the big show he was going to produce.
Well, there you go. The
seeds of the Sundance Film Festival were sown.
He was always able to “con” people into believing in these projects and
advancing cash for their preparation.
Con is such a harsh word to use about your own father; it’s very important to have “investors.”
The Clarkes, owners of the apartment house, the Natalie, were also the
parents of Caryl, my best friend through
most of the scout years. I think we
escaped rent-free for some time while these folks were involved in backing
Dad’s latest fantasy. There was an old
piano in the lobby, and I nearly drove the residents crazy teaching myself to
play by ear in the key of C. Even today
this is the only key in which I can play.
I’m with you. Who needs
black notes?
One day there was a huge celebration at the Natalie. Dad had spun his tales of his high times in
vaudeville to one and all. Mrs. Clarke
was listening to the radio, and they introduced a song as being from, as she
heard it, “a Walter Windsor Production.”
This seemed the first real proof of Dad’s high-flying past, and everyone
in the apartment house knew about it and celebrated the occasion with a party
at which Dad was the guest of honor. It
was years later that I realized it was a “Walter Wanger” (rhymes with “danger”)
production. But it was a great day at
the Natalie, and my father took the accolades with modest grace.
Bravo for him!
Well Walter, we have waaaay exceeded the time alloted for our interview. We'll just wrap it up on this high note in Bill's grandfather's career. In our next interview we'll delve into your adulthood and see exactly what you did to pass the Windsor ways on to Bill. I can hardly wait!
