A sign that sprouted recently in the sand of the Marina Peninsula should remind us that the past is always with us, however much we tear it down or pave it over with concrete or myth. Erected by the City of Los Angeles as part of an effort to clear title to three barren beachfront lots, the sign is a window on Los Angeles between the wars, the hard-boiled reality behind the romance of detective fiction and the shallow nostalgia of coffee-table books; a city with its share of grifters, gamblers, and murder.
The sign asks for information about ten persons who once had an interest in the property along Ocean Front Walk. The City’s title to the land, which it acquired in 1949 due to unpaid taxes, is clouded by a series of complex transactions that occurred during the twenty odd years between the two World Wars. Pivotal to each was one person named by the sign, George Kendall Dazey.
Dazey was a prominent physician of the pre-war years with a nice practice among the movie colony. In 1923, he married the first of his three wives, Frances Morton French, a popular young graduate of the Marlborough School for Girls. At the time, Frances’ parents, Morton and Venice French of Ocean Park, owned the three lots along Ocean Front Walk. Apparently, they put the land in trust for the benefit of the newlyweds. Two years later, Dazey decided to build a beach club on it. It was not a novel idea; already along other beaches on the Santa Monica Bay the grand clubs of the twenties were rising, the Edgewater, Breakers, Deauville, Club Chateau, and Miramar. Nor would the club, on less than a quarter acre, match the others in scale. But the members could take advantage of the wide stretch of sand north of Ballona creek, far from the crowds that swarmed each weekend at Santa Monica.
Dazey interested a few investors in his plan and hired a contractor to begin construction, but for some reason things went sour. If Dazey himself is to be believed, the funds for the club disappeared with a couple of salesman he had employed to sell memberships. What happened after that is difficult to untangle, but eventually a mortgage to the property ended up with a Santa Monica bank, which decided to foreclose for failure to make payments. By that time Getty Oil had leased the land and erected a derrick on it. Dazey was named in a suit with a dozen other parties. Before the case got to trial, however, he tried to squirm out of it by asserting that he did not actually own the land — the Frenchs did. Whether or not he made this point clear five years earlier when he rushed about enrolling investors and taking out loans for his beach club is hard to determine. In any case, the legal maneuver did not work; the property went into receivership and eventually the bank got its money. According to another defendant in the suit, it took a visit from Sheriff Biscauliz’s men to convince the doctor to settle his debt. The likely alternative was a charge of fraud.
In another, better world, Dazey might have had his beach club — or fared no worse than to be footnoted in Southland history as another small-time promoter whose dreams had failed. After all, much of the area was built by such men; dreamers who played fast and loose with the law while imagining bustling beach clubs, oases in the desert or never-ending barrels of oil. But Dazey’s place in Southern California history derives from a far darker episode, one which took him from the ranks of cheerful, glad-handing bamboozlers to the company of more sinister figures: In 1940, he became the defendant in one of the decades’ celebrated murder trials, charged with killing his second wife, Dorise Schukow, the leading lady of Hemet’s Ramona Pageant from its inception until 1931, whom he married a few years after his divorce from Frances French.
Like the Joe Hunt and Charles Manson trials, the Dazey trial was one of those courtroom battles which seem to typify an era. The defendant was by this time in his early forties, a pudgy man with a brush moustache and round glasses who wore an expression that could be interpreted as reflecting either tragic self-absorption or cold-hearted malevolence. For his defense he selected Rembert Trezevant, the attorney who had handled his divorce from Frances French, and a legendary figure in LA law: feisty, flamboyant Jerry “Get-Me” Giesler. Across the table were Hugh McIsaac and Joseph Carr, two leading minions of LA’s self-styled war hero and racket-buster, District Attorney Buron Fitts, who was running for re-election in the face of charges that he was too friendly with the county’s criminal bosses. Waiting to take their turns on the witness stand were an array of characters who seemed to spring from the pages of Raymond Chandler; and indeed there is evidence that Chandler used the case for material for one of his novels, The Lady in the Lake.
According to his own account, Dr. Dazey returned to his Santa Monica home one evening in early October, 1935, to find Dorise lying dead in a thin nightgown near the exhaust pipe of her idling automobile. The police speculated that she had started the car, realized that the garage door was closed, and fainted on the way to open it. Their theory was supported by the dead woman’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Walter B. Schukow of Los Angeles, who reported that the attractive 31-year old mother and former actress had been ill since the birth of her son in June and was subject to fainting spells. In fact, she had been recovering from a nervous breakdown in a sanitarium and had returned to her home only a few weeks before. An autopsy revealed the cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning. Several days later, a coroner’s jury, after a full investigation “to stop idle rumors,” concluded that there was no evidence of foul play.
For four years the matter rested. The Schukows took charge of the baby, Walter Kendall, and Dazey moved from his home into an apartment. Over the next few years he enjoyed the company of a number of women, among them Frances Hansbury, his lover prior to his marriage to Dorise Schukow. Not until he met 37-year old Hazel Dorcas Timmons, however, did he decide to try marriage a third time.
Soon after the wedding, Dazey and his new wife took possession of Walter. Unfortunately, the grandparents did not want to give the lad up and for months he bounced back and forth between the Schukows’ home and the Dazeys’. Finally, in September, 1939, after Dazey refused to let the grandparents take Walter for a few days, the situation reached a crises. Dr. Schukow complained that his wife could not live without the boy. When Dazey refused to relent, Schukow became furious, warning Dazey that he’d be sorry. Soon thereafter, the Los Angeles County DA’s office began to look into the death of Dazey’s second wife.
In early December, one week after George and Hazel filed a petition to adopt Walter Kendall, Los Angeles newspapers trumpeted the news that the doctor had been arrested for Doris’ murder. On December 7, LA County District Attorney Buron Fitts appeared before the Grand Jury with the case. Dr. Dazey had killed his wife, Fitts charged, because he suspected that another man had actually fathered Walter Kendall. Dazey had knocked her out, possibly with some drug given by hypodermic injection, and carried her to the garage, where he laid her near the exhaust pipe of her car and turned on the automobile. Afterwards, he lamented his crime in the presence of two witnesses. At one point, this lament had become a boast of having committed a perfect crime.
To answer the charges, Dazey immediately retained Rembert Trezevant. After the Grand Jury indicted him, he brought in Jerry Giesler to direct his defense.
A rather unimpressive looking man with bald pate and a high-pitched voice, Giesler was known for his thorough preparation and skillful cross-examination. He made his reputation by representing prominent Angelenos like Dazey who had run afoul of the law. In the early 1930s, he rescued Hollywood impresario Alexander Pantages from a charge of rape brought against him by an underage actress; later he would do the same for actor Errol Flynn. Other Giesler clients would include transplanted East Coast gangster Bugsy Siegel, accused robber Edward G. Robinson Jr., and accused pot-smoker Robert Mitchum. In his day and his city, he had few peers as a courtroom strategist. In 1939, if you were wealthy and in trouble with the law, you did what Dazey did: you got the master, you got Giesler.
It quickly became apparent that the Giesler and Trezevant would have to wage Dazey’s battles on two fronts. Within days of his indictment, the Schukows were in court arguing that Dazey could not provide for Walter while behind bars. Trezevant and Giesler retorted that Dazey’s wife could care for the boy and charged that the grandparents neglected his health when he lived with them. The judge agreed, leaving Walter in Hazel’s care until after the murder trial was completed.
On December 18, the doctor pleaded not guilty to the murder charge while reserving the option to enter a second plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Ten days later, Giesler and Trezevant settled on their strategy and informed the court that they would not use the insanity defense. The case was scheduled for trial in February, 1940.
During the next few months the city was treated to one of those sordid glimpses of the elite fighting among themselves which makes life a little more enjoyable for the rest of us. Each day the courtroom was packed with spectators who tittered and gasped at the testimony while others waited hopefully in the hallways for an empty seat.
Arguing for the State, Deputy DAs McIsaac and Carr based the prosecution’s case almost exclusively on the testimony of witnesses, relying little on physical evidence. Foremost among their witnesses was a night watchman with a dubious past and three women who shared a common goal of keeping George Dazey behind bars: the deceased’s sister, Mildred Guard; her mother, Jennie Schukow; and Dazey’s former girlfriend, Frances Hansbury.
The defense’s strategy was to discredit the testimony of these witnesses by impeaching their character and motives. At the same time, it advanced two counter-theories: first, that Dorise Dazey committed suicide, and second, that George Dazey’s prosecution was motivated by an ugly conspiracy, engineered by the Schukows and captained by Frances Hansbury, to deprive him of the custody of his son. Presenting Dazey as a loving husband of a tragically unstable wife, Giesler and Trezevant also tried to establish that the defendant spent the entire afternoon of Doris’ death either at the Santa Monica Hospital or his own office and could not possibly have murdered his wife.
After the usual wrangling over jurors, the trial began in earnest on February 8, 1940. At the start, things went poorly for the prosecution. Its first witness was a Santa Monica real estate man named George Merritt, who Dazey summoned to the death scene when he found his wife’s body. According to McIsaac, Merritt told him the previous fall that while they looked upon Doris’ body Dazey repeated “Why did I do it? Why did I do it?” On the stand, however, Merritt hedged on Dazey’s exact words — he was no longer sure what he had said. Other witnesses, including policemen, also had trouble recalling what they witnessed on the days surrounding Doris’ death. Four years had blurred their memories.
The prosecution’s case gained some momentum with the testimony of Mary Bates, a black maid, who claimed she worked briefly for the Dazeys a few months prior to Doris’ death. Bates testified that Dr. Dazey drank heavily on the weekends, beat his wife and called her a “bitch” and their baby a “s.o.b.” Her statements came as a shock to Giesler and to Dazey as well; the defendant whispered to his attorney that he had never seen the woman before, and Giesler promptly set an investigator on her trail.
Bates was followed on the stand by two of Dazey’s former neighbors. The first, Winifred Westover Hart, a silent screen star and the ex-wife of cowboy star William S. Hart, told of hearing loud crying or screams on the afternoon of Doris’ death. She also testified that a few days later she had received a threatening phone call. Due to Giesler’s objection, the contents of this phone call was never revealed in court, but the implication that it had something to do with what she had heard was clear. The second neighbor, a teenage boy, reported seeing Dr. Dazey’s automobile parked by the residence about 4:30 on the tragic afternoon — at a time the doctor insisted he was at his office in Santa Monica.
Several witnesses took the stand to relate tales of Dazey’s abusive behavior towards his wife. Sometimes this was petty: he objected to her table manners and embarrassed her in front of guests. Other times it was chilling. Doris’ sister, Mildred Guard, told of hearing her sister scream one evening when she was visiting the Dazey home. She rushed to her room to find Dorise”partly sitting up in bed” with a “frightened look on her face.”
“The doctor was standing about three feet from the bed,” Mrs. Guard recounted, “Fully dressed and apparently sober. He looked very mean. His hands were clenched, his face was purple and he was grating his teeth. She had a look of terror in her face.” The scene had an anticlimax worthy of John Candy: Dazey explained that he was “only fooling” and asked Mildred to leave the room. Afterwards, neither he nor Doriseever referred to the incident.
Guard also claimed the doctor sometimes joked caustically about Walter’s parentage. Her testimony — supported by Doris’ mother, who followed her on the stand — alleged that Dazey had good reasons for his suspicion. Dorise ended an affair with a society man just before her marriage. The lover’s identity was never fully revealed; in court, he was referred to only by his first name — Carl. According to Guard, Dr. Dazey threatened to kill both the mother and baby if the newborn looked like Carl. Carl was not the only candidate for fatherhood of the child: Dorise’ first husband, Alexander Sparks, testified that he too continued to see her up to the time of her wedding.
The testimony of Frances Hansbury, the prosecution’s next witness, deepened the shadows on the dark nature of George Dazey. Hansbury related that after Doris’ death they often took automobile rides. Invariably during these outings Dazey would drive by his former home, slowing to a crawl as he passed the garage until she demanded that he go on.
Hansbury also described Dazey’s fascination with ways of rendering people unconscious and related a bizzare incident that developed from a phone call she received from him one night. Dazey muttered something — only enough for her to recognize his voice — and then collapsed with a loud thump, leaving the receiver off the hook. Rushing to his apartment, she found him on the floor, intoxicated. “Why did I do it? Why did I do it?,” he muttered. The next day, she claimed, Dazey visited her apartment and demanded to know what he had told her the night before. When she refused to tell him, he forced her onto the divan and pressed his thumbs into her eyes. With a little additional pressure, he warned, he could kill her.
Somehow she extricated herself from this unhappy situation, but their friendship was over. She demanded $300 that he had borrowed from her to fund, of all things, Walter Kendall’s birth. When he balked, she sued. Afterwards Dazey began calling her up every night between 3 and 4 a.m., invariably prefacing the conversation with “start saying your prayers.” When she warned him that killing her would land him in San Quentin, the doctor was unruffled. At worst, he told her, he would be sent to an insane asylum. “You know I’m crazy and so do I,” she quoted him as saying. “I have committed one perfect crime and I can fix you in the same way.” Hansbury retorted that she had no garage.
The prosecution’s star witness was Roland De Witt Seal, the operator of a private security patrol in Dazey’s neighborhood in 1935. Seal claimed that on the afternoon of Doris’ death he heard screams coming from the Dazey home. Later, he entered the residence through a gate in the garden wall just as Dazey emerged from the house with the limp body of his wife. Seal said he slipped away before Dazey saw him, but later returned to overhear a man — whom he identified at the trial as George Merritt — exclaim “This is a hell of a mess!” When Dazey and the man went in the house, Seal peeked into the garage where he saw Dorise Dazey’s body.
Seal explained that his fear of a police investigation into his own past dissuaded him from reporting what he saw. He had a good job as a watchman and did not want to lose it. He claimed that he went as far as to hint to police that they should take a closer look at Dorise Dazey’s death. Shortly afterwards, Dazey called to inform him that Doris’ death “was purely accidental and you had better believe that.” Other phone calls from other voices followed with more threats and warnings.
As luck would have it, Seal lost his job anyway a few weeks later, when he blasted a carful of teenagers on Halloween with his gun, wounding one of them. They had engaged in the high crime of unlawfully discharging eggs at parked cars. Seal, as he put it, “lost his temper.” Afterwards, he shipped out for Hawaii. When he got off the boat in Honolulu, he sensed that Dazey’s spies were watching him.
Such testimony looked bad for Dazey, but witnesses like Seal were made to order for Jerry Giesler. He portrayed the former watchman as an inveterate loser with a life-long fantasy of playing private detective and a penchant for telling tall, self-serving tales — including one in which he represented himself as Dorise Dazey’s lover. Under Giesler’s probing, Seal admitted that he had been arrested in Bakersfield in September, 1939, when he tried to rob a laundry wagon driver. Perhaps even more damaging to his credibility — and to the prosecution’s case as a whole — was his revelation that the charges against him had been reduced to a misdemeanor on the intervention of an emissary from the LA County DA’s office.
Seal went on to admit to a second arrest at an LA pawnshop in December, 1939, after he tried to purchase a gun using an assumed name. He claimed at the time that he needed the gun to protect himself from Dazey. The next day Dazey was brought in for the murder of his wife. Although the newspapers implied that, on his second arrest, Seal furnished the final element necessary to bring Dazey to justice, it was evident from the DA’s intervention in his previous arrest in Bakersfield that Fitts and his deputies already had an investment in Seal and were willing to help him out of a few jams.
Giesler also established that Seal had recently snooped around Dazey’s house, measuring the garden wall separating the back yard from the public sidewalk. Reading from the former night watchman’s testimony before the Grand Jury, Giesler quoted his statement that he was standing on the public sidewalk and looking over the garden wall when he observed Dr. Dazey with his wife’s body. During the trial, however, Seal said that he stepped into the yard through a garden gate and was hiding behind some shrubbery when the doctor emerged from the back door. When Giesler presented witnesses and photographs to prove that in 1935 the wall had been overgrown with a thick hedge, the significance of this discrepancy became clear: Seal’s had changed his story to overcome the fact that he could not possibly have witnessed the crime from the public sidewalk.
Turning his guns on Frances Hansbury, Giesler characterized her as a woman “twice scorned” who was “trying to get even with Dr. Dazey” and his present wife. The defense witnesses portrayed her as a jealous, vengeful, and hysterical woman. One recounted how she banged on Dazey’s door after he denied her entrance to his apartment shortly before his marriage to Hazel Timmons. Other women whom Dazey dated reported her threats and warnings to stay away from the doctor.
To emphasize his claim that Dazey was the victim of a conspiracy, Giesler presented several witnesses who testified to Hansbury’s boasts that she would see Dazey in a gas chamber if he did not return the little boy to his grandparents. He also forced her to admit that, since returning from Chicago the previous fall to testify against Dazey, she had been living with the Schukows.
Giesler then attacked the testimony of Mary Bates, the black maid who told of the Dazeys’ quarrels. He produced a baggage check from the Santa Fe railroad, dated late 1937, which seemed to prove that Miss Bates had not even arrived in California before Dorise Dazey’s death. The prosecution countered with a letter of recommendation from one of Bates’ former employers, dated March, 1936, which mentioned six months’ of faithful service. This would have put her in California before Doris’ death. Giesler asked to see the letter. Pulling out a large magnifying glass, he examined the date carefully, and then declared that it had been altered. During his closing arguments, he turned over both the letter and the magnifying glass to the jury.
In the closing days of the trial, Dazey himself went on the stand. Angrily denying that he murdered his wife, he recounted his quarrels with the Schukows over custody of Walter Kendall. He was a testy defendant, refusing to answer some of the prosecutor’s questions because, as he asserted, the prosecutor did not know enough about medicine to understand his answers. “I’m not going to educate you,” he replied when the prosecutor pressed him about his assertion to police that Frances Hansbury was a hophead, “There’s no use going into medical details and using terms you wouldn’t understand. If you want to look it up, you can read books on it.”
The defense concluded its testimony with several alibi witnesses who claimed to having seen or talked with Dr. Dazey during the afternoon of Doris’ death. How convincing this testimony was to the jury is difficult to guess; the trip to his home on 23rd Street in Santa Monica takes only a few minutes, whether it originates from Dazey’s office at 327 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, or from the Santa Monica Hospital, where he visited a patient during the afternoon. Even if one accepted the testimony of the alibi witnesses, there were still times when Dazey was out of everybody’s sight — time enough for him to have driven home, knocked out his wife, carried her to the garage, and started the automobile engine. But the alibis were marks in his favor, as were letters Giesler produced from Doriseto George’s mother, in which Dorisespoke affectionately of her husband and gushed over how much he and the baby looked alike.
The case went to the jury after two days of closing arguments. In his summation, Giesler charged that the prosecution witnesses were “ghouls, vultures, and vampires in human form, who have blackened and violated the dust and ashes of Dorise Dazey to serve their own ends.” Deputy DA Carr, perhaps recognizing how thoroughly Giesler had discredited the prosecution’s witnesses, chose to focus in his closing arguments on physical evidence and inconsistencies in George Dazey’s testimony. Carr pointed to the mysterious burn marks that were found on Doris’ throat — were they caused when her head was forced down near the exhaust pipe of the automobile? He noted that George Dazey’s account of finding his wife varied with each retelling. If he turned off the automobile and opened the garage door when he found his wife, Carr asked, how was it that the door was closed when the police arrived, and a “wave of hot air” rushed out when they opened it? If Dorise committed suicide, why was there no note? Why would she, a fastidious woman, lie down in a pool of oil to kill herself when she could have sat comfortably in the car seat and waited for the monoxide to overcome her?
As the jury retired to deliberate, the inkslingers on the courtroom beat were betting that it would either reach a quick verdict or be hung. Their reasoning seems to have been that Giesler would either win his case outright or be forced to settle with a draw. Things turned out a little differently than they expected, however. On the initial ballot, eight jurors voted for acquittal and four voted for conviction. Over the next few days, those voting for conviction were slowly worn down until, by the fourth day, only one remained convinced of Dazey’s guilt. After he suddenly became ill, the judge granted his request to be replaced by an alternate. On the following day the jury voted unanimously for acquittal.
A month later, the DA’s office indicted Mary Bates on perjury charges stemming from the altered date on the letter of recommendation. Bates pleaded guilty to the charge and was given three years probation, the judge noting that, although she acted “through fright,” the offense was too serious to ignore. Later, Giesler would point to her conviction as evidence that his client was rightly acquitted. The threats of his own investigator, however, who warned her brother that “witnesses were being taken right from the stand and thrown in jail,” may have driven her to alter the date to protect herself from perjury charges. Why she claimed in the first place that she had worked for Dazey remains a mystery. Giesler would have it that she was a pawn in the conspiracy against George Dazey; under his probing, Bates admitted that Frances Hansbury recruited her to testify against the doctor.
The District Attorney’s office took no action against Roland Seal. Years later, Giesler contended that Seal “had been promised immunity by somebody if he got into trouble as a result of his testimony.” The DA’s intervention in Seal’s arrests lent support to this charge.
George Dazey was free, but his legal problems were not over. Shortly after the murder trial, the Schukows sued unsuccessfully to gain custody of Walter Kendall, asking the court to declare him illegitimate and name Doris’ first husband as the real father. Then, in December of 1940, Hazel sued him for divorce. The divorce was still pending in 1942, when, with less than a year to live, Dazey gave up the boy to Mrs. Schukow, who remarried after the death of her husband in 1940.
Dazey died in 1943 from complications following pneumonia. Most of the other principals in the case faded into anonymity; even Walter Kendall, the lad who was the focus of the alleged quarrel between the doctor and his ill-fated wife, disappeared from public records after 1946. DA Buron Fitts’ political career might have been helped by Dazey’s conviction; in any case, it was not saved by his acquittal. Fitts was defeated for reelection in 1940 by John Dockweiller and the reform forces of Clifford Clinton. Years later, old and still haunted by allegations of corruption, he shot himself. As for Jerry Geisler, the energetic lawyer continued his successful career of defending the mighty against the people until his death in the early 60s.
The story of Dr. Dazey might have ended here were it not for a detective novel and a sign on the beach. In Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake the Dazey case moved from historical fact to the realm of fiction and myth. Chandler’s sleuth Marlowe is hired to investigate the death of the wife of Santa Monica physician Albert Almore. Mrs. Almore’s body was found in her garage, an apparent victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. Although the police declared the death a suicide, Marlowe soon discovers that their investigation was slovenly. He also learns that the first private investigator hired by the woman’s parents, the night watchman of the neighborhood, has been framed by the local police, who are doing their best to prevent anybody from nosing into the suspicious death.
This sounds remarkably like the Dazey case. (One writer found the similarities compelling enough to be “actionable” without realizing that Dazey, the only man who could sue Chandler, was already dead by the time the book was published.) The novel was drawn from an earlier short story, published prior to Dazey’s indictment, entitled “Bay City Blues.” In both the short story (in which his name is Dr. Austrian) and the novel, the deceased’s husband is described as a “dope doctor . . . whose practice is largely with people who are living on the raw edge of nervous collapse, from drink and dissipation.” Dr. Almore runs around town with his “busy little needles” to keep the “local fast set from having pink elephants for breakfast.” Did Dazey do the same?
After almost fifty years, it may be unfair to speculate, but a few items in historical records are intriguing. The Santa Monica Evening Outlook noted at the time of Doris’ death that Dr. Dazey, who claimed to be an expert in narcotics abuse, had an “extensive practice, including many prominent movie folk.” This specialization is intriguing in light of a law suit Dazey filed in 1931 against the estate of actress Mabel Normand. The doctor claimed that in 1927 and 1928 he made thirty-six visits to Normand’s home. We know now — and many knew then — that the actress was addicted to narcotics. What we don’t know is the nature of Dazey’s treatment — and whether it was the cure or the cause of Normand’s condition.
As for the million and a half dollars worth of drifting sand on the Marina Peninsula, already more than a dozen persons have filed a claim to it. According to Carl Goss of the city’s Real Estate Division, most of the claimants descend from the French family, the last holder of any clear title to the land. Unfortunately, Dazey continued to act throughout the thirties as if he owned the property entirely, giving it at one point, along with a number of other holdings, to his attorney, Trezevant, who then turned it over to his future wife. Given the twisted title trail, it is not unlikely that claims could come from other “heirs or designees” of the persons named by the sign on the beach.
One way or another, it is probable that the property will remain undeveloped for some years to come. If the ownership of the land is settled in favor of the City, the Coastal Commission will undoubtedly act before the City can auction the property. The Marina Peninsula’s lack of public parking for beachgoers has been a point of contention for some years; one could argue for a few dozen ugly parking spaces to help solve the problem. But asphalt on the sand should be prohibited by aesthetics if not by law. Maybe the best solution would be a public park — a bit of green space and one or two palms. With a plaque to George Kendall Dazey in the center.
True, LA had more than its share of promoters and boosters during the twenties and thirties and Dazey may simply have been the era’s unluckiest man. However, the hint that he may have been a dope doctor for the Hollywood set and the prototype for a Raymond Chandler character make him a significant figure in Southland history and mythology, part of the unseemly side buried just below the surface of its proud present. He deserves to be remembered.
(This article was originally published in LA Magazine, March 1988)