Tab Hunter, Young Love, BHS, & The Spirit of St. Louis

A couple weeks ago a friend forwarded a link to a curious piece of Brookline trivia for sale on eBay.

It was a 1957 photo of the Brookline High School auditorium showing a group of students being addressed by Warren Bartlett, housemaster of the school's Lincoln House, and the young movie and recording star Tab Hunter. (The seller has placed a watermark on the online image and didn't want it reproduced, but you can view it here.)

Today's high school students may never have heard of Tab Hunter, but he was quite the heartthrob in 1957. Hunter established himself playing a young soldier in the 1955 Word War II drama Battle Cry.  The following year he co-starred with Natalie Wood in two movies: the Louis L'Amour western The Burning Hills and the romantic comedy The Girl He Left Behind.

Like many young actors today, Hunter then went into the recording studio. His 1957 hit "Young Love" spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts. (You can listen to it here; tastes have certainly changed.)

But what was Tab Hunter doing at BHS?

The eBay offering showed a note taped to the back of the photo that said Hunter came to Boston to promote the Warner Brothers movie The Spirit of St. Louis starring Jimmy Stewart. But why would Hunter be promoting a movie he wasn't even in, and why at Brookline High?

Hunter himself explains in his 2005 autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star. It seems Jack Warner, head of the Warner Brothers studio had Hunter under contract and wasn't happy about his recording success.

At first [wrote Hunter], Jack Warner wanted to suspend me for making money for anybody other than him. Money was always on his mind, but that winter he was particularly concerned about having spent more than $6 million on Billy Wilder's film biography of Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis.  He hit on a unique way of exploiting me and, in the process, teaching me a lesson in humility.

The Lindbergh biopic, it seems, had not proved appealing to young audiences, so Warner sent his young star on a 24-city tour to drum up excitement for the film. But the tour may not have turned out the way Warner expected.

Every place I stopped on the Spirit tour, radio stations, theaters, colleges, high schools — the response was the same. "Yeah, yeah, we know —he landed safely at Le Bourget. There was a fly in the cockpit that made the trip with him. Now tell us about 'Young Love.' " 

Warner Bros. was, in essence, paying me to make public appearances that drove sales of my records ever higher.

Hunter's appearance at BHS, reported on in the school paper, The Sagamore, fit the pattern.

Squeals and shouts must have been heard clear to Brookline Village, as Tab tried to tell the students about "Lindy" and the "Spirit of St. Louis." He presented an autographed copy of Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh's book, bearing the above title, to Lincoln House for the BHS library, as a memento of his visit. However, the demand for the "Tab Hunter autograph" has been so great that the book has had to be placed under lock and key, for all to see but not to touch.

The Sagamore, March 8, 1957

After Hunter's departure, reported The Sagamore, students returned to class, but

who was in a mood to study? Teachers gave up trying to teach and make their classes concentrate, believe it or not, for Tab Hunter had been to BHS! 

• Tab Hunter (Wikipedia)
• Tab Hunter (IMDB)

Calvin Coolidge in Brookline - At Last!

To mark Presidents Day a few years back I started compiling a list of U.S. Presidents who had been in Brookline before, during, or after their presidency. I identified 7 at first including, of course, John F. Kennedy who was born here in 1917. The list grew with more research and had reached 21 when I last updated it on Presidents Day last year.

I felt sure that Calvin Coolidge, who had been governor of Massachusetts, must have been in Brookline at some time.  But evidence of Coolidge in town remained elusive, and I left him off the list.

Until now.

This morning, I found a reference to a letter Coolidge wrote to his father in 1908 from the Corey Hill Hospital where he was visiting his step-mother, Carrie Coolidge, while she was treated for an unknown ailment there.

I'll wait until I have more details before adding it to the full list, but there is no doubt that Coolidge makes #22.  (In the meantime, you can read about the other 21 presidents in Brookline here.)

Ghost Building #4 Revealed

The gas station shown below, which began as an auto supply store in 1922, stood at 720 Washington Street, just north of Beacon Street behind what is now the Fireplace restaurant. (The auto supply business actually began in the space now occupied by the restaurant, in 1917.)

The building was torn down in 1998 and replaced by a parking lot. But the cupola from the gas station was saved through the efforts of Barbara Soifer, long-time owner of The Little Swiss House jewelry store.  (Soifer was know as "the mayor of Washington Square" for her efforts to reshape and promote the neighborhood.)

Soifer's dream to restore the cupola was not realized before her death from cancer in 2009. But friends and neighbors saw her idea through to fruition, and the cupola was installed in 2010 on the Beacon Street median, across from the Fireplace, and dedicated in Soifer's memory on First Light 2011.

• "Barbara Soifer, fierce advocate for Washington Square, dies." Wicked Local Brookline, May 18, 2009
• "Friends, neighbors to restore gas station cupola in Brookline merchant's memory." Wicked Local Brookline, October 15, 2009
• "A new icon for Washington Square." Brookline Patch, November 28, 2010

Ghost Building #4: Brookline Gas Station

This Brookline gas station began life in 1922 as the Daniel Carr & Co. auto supply store, selling tires and other automotive goods. It became a Beacon Oil gas station in 1930, then Colonial Beacon Oil and later a Gulf station. It is shown here as the Speedwell filling station and auto repair shop.

The building was torn down in 1998. But like the other "Ghost Buildings of Brookline" in this series, a piece of it remains behind.  

Do you know what and where it is? Check back next week for the answer.

Photo courtesy of Brookline Preservation Office. 

Boston Globe ad for Daniel Carr Co. auto supply store, June 16, 1929

Happy 80th Birthday Coolidge Corner Theatre!

The Coolidge Corner Theatre opened on this date in 1933 after years of opposition that kept Brookline theaterless long after movies had come to neighboring communities.

Read more about the 20-year fight to keep motion pictures out of Brookline in this two-part post from 2009.

Ad in Brookline Chronicle, December 21, 1933

Ghost Building #3: Bell & Cornerstone

Baptist Church 1907-1973

Not only are there two remnants of the old Brookline Baptist Church left behind, but one of them is actually a "ghost" of two different buildings.

When the Baptist congregation moved from its 1858 church in Brookline Village to their new building (left) at the corner of Beacon and Park Streets, they installed their old church bell in the tower of the new church.

That bell, a remant of two former churches, now sits on the site of the 1907 church, between the 13-story office and apartment building (1371 Beacon Street) that replaced it in 1973 and the Marriott Courtyard hotel.

Three current views of the Baptist Church bell: aerial; street view; and close-up.
(Click for larger image)

The bell is actually an 1879 replacement for the older church's original bell which was damaged beyond repair when the steeple of the 1858 church was destroyed in a gale in July 1879. Both bells were cast by a foundry that was started by Paul Revere and eventually taken over by partners of his grandson Paul Revere III.

The 1858 building became a Presbyterian church in 1910 after the Baptists (and their bell) moved to Beacon Street.  Rebuilt after the 1879 gale, it was destroyed in a fire on New Year's Eve 1960/61.

July 19, 1879 Brookline Chronicle headline (left) about the gale that destroyed the steeple of the Baptist Church; and an 1897 view (right) of the church with its rebuilt steeple at the corner of Harvard and Pierce Streets. It was lost to fire on New Year's Eve in 1960.
Click for a larger view

The second remnant of the 1907 Baptist Church is its cornerstone, which can be found today on the grounds of the United Parish church at Harvard and Marion Streets.  (It was moved there after the demolition of the Beacon Street building in 1973.)

Cornerstone of the Baptist Church on the lawn of United Parish.  The original 1907 inscription can be seen in the photo on the left, with the 1973 inscription, added after the stone was moved, on the right.
Click for a larger view

United Parish was formed in 1970 in a merger of three Protestant congregations: the Harvard Church (United Church of Christ, formerly Harvard Congregational Church), St. Mark's Methodist Church at Park and Vernon Streets, and the Baptist Church. The Harvard Church became the home of the new merged congregation; St. Mark's was converted to condominiums; and the Baptist Church was torn down, leaving only this stone and the bell as physical reminders of its existence. 

1927 map showing the three churches that merged to form United Parish four decades later.
Click for larger view

Check back in January for another "Ghost Building of Brookline."

Ghost Building #3: Brookline Baptist Church

The Brookline Baptist Church on Beacon Street was the fourth building to serve as home to the Baptists, Brookline's second oldest congregation. Designed by architect Julius Schweinfurth, the church was built in 1907.

It was demolished in 1973, a few years after the Baptist Church merged with two other congregations to form United Parish.

As with all of the "Ghost Buildings of Brookline" in this series, a part of the original building remains. In this case, there are two pieces of the building to be found: one on the original grounds of the church and another nearby.

Do you know where and what they are?