Of jewel thieves, stone carvers, and shutterbugs, Vol. I

Arthur T. Barry

By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade

He may have been the greatest jewel thief in American criminal history and he was from Worcester. He was known as the "Second-Story Man of the 1920s," whose most famous victim was the Prince of Wales. His name was Arthur T. Barry, one of 12 children born in the city in 1896, to Irish immigrants.

Barry began stealing at an early age. His first underworld boss was a safecracker by the name of Lowell Jack and before long, the handsome and well-dressed Barry ingratiated himself into New York high society.

Targeting the idle rich, Barry would only rob in the presence of his subjects and high-priced jewelry was his take. No mere petty criminal, Barry was a stickup artist of the highest order. He once lifted $23,000 in jewels from the residence of Harold Tabbott, who later became President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Air Force.

His many exploits are chronicled in Neil Hickey's book, The Gentleman was a Thief. One broad daylight afternoon of 1925, Barry entered Hotel Plaza and walked out with $750,000 worth of jewels from a six-room suite of Mrs. James P. Donahue, daughter of F.W. Woolworth.

Woolworth heiress

She was quite the character herself, the former Barbara Hutton. "The original poor little rich girl," was also once married to Cary Grant. The couple was tagged as "Cash and Cary." She is credited with the famous quip, "Living well is the best revenge."

Eventually arrested, Barry's instigation of the Auburn Prison riot of 1929 resulted in his own escape. Writer Tom Galliher reported that the great American jewel thief remained at large for three years.

New York State troopers and National Guardsmen
help secure the walls in the riots of 1929.

"After his release from prison in 1949 [Arthur T. Barry] led an exemplary life and was a kind and gentle man respected by family and friends alike. He left many admiring nieces and nephews."

Barry died in 1981. He is buried in St. John's Cemetery in Worcester.

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Gene Lester

He is Worcester's forgotten photographer and one of our best. His name was Gene Lester -- a rather obscure celebrity shutterbug -- who was tagged in Tinsel Town as the "singing cameraman." In his long career of capturing images, his work includes priceless pics of Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney, among countless others.

Lester was born in Worcester in 1910 and according to the Los Angeles Times, his given name was Lester Eugene Dephoure. As a young man, he dropped out of journalism school at Boston University because of the Depression.

"His first job was as a singer on a Worcester radio station [probably WTAG], and eventually he sang on NBC's nationwide "Capitol Theater Family Hour."

James Cagney

But photography had always been a hobby, and soon he began photographing his better-known colleagues for Radio Guide magazine. The publication moved Lester to Hollywood, where he later opened his own studio. In 1940, he became West Coast correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, a position he retained for 30 years.

Mel Torme and Artie Shaw

Lester also made short films. In 1959, he produced a CBS television special with Art Linkletter titled, "Christmas in the Holy Land." He died on Dec. 1, 1994 in North Hollywood of congestive heart failure." He was 84.

Among his photographs of notable, Hollywood icons are rarely seen shots of musicians as well.

Helen Walker

File under: Femme Fatale Fatality for this Worcester actress. She had the stuff of greatness, but fate is a cruel mistress. Her name was Helen Walker, born in the big town on June 17, 1920. She died in 1968 at the age of 47. Walker is buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Sterling. Writer Moira Finnie described her as an actress with a cool blonde demeanor, a throaty voice whose "ambivalent, impudently provocative air all indicate a talented, fiercely intelligent woman whose mark on the movies should have been considerably deeper than it was."

Walker arrived in Hollywood in 1942 with a Paramount contract waiting for her. She was all of 22. "She should have had the world by the tail," Finnie said. "Helen Walker had been on her own for six years by then, beginning her hardscrabble climb in show biz as a sixteen-year-old from 'the very far side of the railroad tracks' in Worcester, MA. Helen Walker was the middle daughter in a family of three sisters known as 'the beautiful Walker girls' in that city, as her mother struggled to raise the girls after her husband’s death when Helen was four."

After establishing herself in Hollywood as a star on the rise, tragedy struck. It was New Year's Eve 1946. Finnie picks up the story from here: "That night while driving to Los Angeles from Palm Springs, following a custom of many generous drivers of the war era, she picked up a young serviceman, 21-year-old Pfc. Robert E. Lee, along with two other men, Philip Mercado, and Joseph Montaldo, who were all hitchhiking along the highway. Sometime close to midnight, near Redlands, California, Walker hit a median in the road, causing the car to flip several times, killing Lee, and badly fracturing the pelvis, collarbone and several toes of the actress."

Walker was charged with manslaughter in the death of the soldier, although the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence. "The actress was later sued for over $150,000 by both of the other surviving passengers, who testified that Walker may have been drinking and was driving at a high rate of speed, though the actress publicly said it was closer to half that rate," Finnie said.

One can only imagine how the incident impacted her life and career.

Andrew O'Connor, Jr. 

Now let us praise local talent: Consider Worcester-born (1874) sculptor Andrew O'Connor. Townies pass by his public work every day without ever knowing who created it. His best known local piece is "1898 Soldier," dedicated to the men of Worcester in the war with Spain. It is a statue of a soldier standing in repose located at Wheaton Square.

My personal favorite is the "Fisher Boy" in Elm Park. His sculpture can also be found in monuments, galleries, and museums around the world. Young Andrew learned the rudiments of carving from his father, Andrew O'Connor, Sr., who for a time, had a studio on Grove Street across from Hope Cemetery. Andrew Jr. chose to set up his workshop in Paxton. He was a great admirer of the French master, Auguste Rodin and some of his work reflects the influence. O'Connor once had a one-man show at Galerie A.A. Hebrard in France and had been recognized as a great artist in his lifetime. He died in Dublin, Ireland in 1941.

Composer Jonathan Klein was born in Worcester in 1948. He is the author of "Hear, O Israel, a piece that is considered by many critics to be a "Jewish jazz masterpiece." Of course, it didn't hurt that the recording had the likes of Herbie Hancock, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Jerome Richardson, Ron Carter, and Grady Tate in the studio. Klein played French and baritone horn.

"Hear, O Israel" was composed in 1967 when Klein was a student at Brown University. In his review of the composition, Allan Ripp said, "An aspiring composer and son of a Reform rabbi from Worcester, Massachusetts, Klein had taken a traditional Jewish prayer service—complete with candle blessing, Kiddush, psalmist meditation and the Sh’ma—and set it to jazz tunes, from snappy to bluesy to bossa nova and even modal. Congregations around New England—including his father’s—enjoyed his adaptation, and now Klein was getting a chance to record the work, as part of a recruiting effort by the National Federation of Temple Youth to attract new members."

Klein (left), Herbie Hancock (top left), and Ron Carter

The composition may have garnered said attention, but Klein hated it. Ripp reported that "Fifty years later, Klein got testy when reminded of the project: “The two singers were totally wrong for the job, and whoever transposed the tenor sax part pushed it up an octave too high, which threw the voices off,” Klein said. “There were amateurish writing mistakes, and the arrangements were weak—it took me years to compose well for vocals. Plus, I never should have performed—my horn sounded flat and didn’t mesh with the others. It was a harsh lesson to learn as a student not to play on your own project.”

Klein now resides in Framingham. He taught film scoring at Berklee College of Music for many years before retiring in 2014.

Artist Nancy Holt was born in Worcester in 1938. According to London's Parafin Gallery, Holt was a key member of the "Earth, Land and Conceptual art movements and a pioneer of both site-specific installation and film and video work. [She] is best known for her iconic work Sun Tunnels located in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, but worked in many media including concrete poetry, audiotapes, videos, photographs, site-specific installations, artist’s books, and major public sculpture commissions."

After graduating from Tufts University in 1960, Holt moved to New York City and along with such "colleagues and collaborators" as Michael Heizer, Carl Andre, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra, and her more famous husband, Robert Smithson, she began "working in film, video, installation, and sound art."

Holt and Smithson

You can find Holt’s work in museums, galleries, and open spaces around the world. It has been exhibited internationally in such prestigious settings as the Musee d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Nancy Holt died in New York in 2014.

Actor and singer Anthony J. Cannon, AKA "Tony Hart," was born in Worcester on Hill Street in 1855. At the age of 13, his parents sent him off to the Westboro Reformatory School -- just to keep him away from the stage. Young Tony ignored his parents and ran away. He supported himself hustling gigs in carnivals and circuses, as a newspaper boy, and street corner singing.

Entering the world of minstrelsy, with his high-reaching angelic voice, he became known as "Master Antonio, the Boy Soprano." As was the practice of the day, Hart honed his craft working in blackface, impersonating women, and parroting ethnic groups.

Young Hart's stock rose nationally when he partnered with the established vaudevillian songwriter Edward "Ned" Harrigan, a partnership that brought the team fame. Harrigan & Hart are said to have been the first to integrate storytelling, song, and dance for the vaudeville stage. "The Mulligan Guards" was a signature piece. So great was their popularity, that they were able to build their own minstrel house. The duo broke up in 1881 after Hart married actress Gertrude Granville. Unfortunately, Hart would never again achieve the notoriety that he received with Harrigan.


According to Wiki (theater), in the late 1880s, Hart began to experience serious health issues. "He developed dementia and spent most of his last years in a state mental institution. He died in Worcester, Massachusetts, at the age of 36 from complications of paresis and advanced syphilis. He is buried in St. John's Cemetery in Worcester."

Hitchcock and Hayes

Writer John Michael Hayes, Jr. was born in Worcester in 1919. He died in Hanover, NH in 2008. According to the Baltimore Sun, he was an avid reader as a child and "discovered a love of writing and wrote for his school newspapers, his high school yearbook and his Boy Scout weekly, which earned him a job writing about Boy Scout activities for Worcester's Evening Gazette. He is best known for his association with Alfred Hitchcock, having written the screenplays to such classics as Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Wiki reports that much of Hayes' career was spent writing "for glossy, big-budget melodramas like Torch Song with Joan Crawford, Butterfield 8 with Elizabeth Taylor, The Carpetbaggers with Carroll Baker, and Where Love Has Gone with Susan Hayward and Bette Davis. His adaptation of Grace Metalious' steamy bestseller, Peyton Place, earned him an Academy Award nomination."

Stewart, Kelly, and Hitchcock on the set of Rear Window.

Ethel (Doris Wald) Winant was born in Worcester in 1922. She was one of the first woman executives in television. In 1999, Winant was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She first earned her bones as a casting director on the show "Studio One."


Writer Rip Rense once asked her how she came to prominence. She answered, “When I first came to New York, I knew nothing. .... I didn’t even know what a (producer/agent/casting director) was. .... Life is all about being in the right place at the right time, and dumb luck,” she said. “New York after World War II was like Paris after World War I. Everyone came to New York!"

Winant made a name for herself working on such popular shows as "The Twilight Zone," "Hogan's Heroes," and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." According to the New York Times, Winant also worked on such hits as ''The Waltons,'' ''Rhoda,'' ''Lou Grant'' and ''The Bob Newhart Show.''

She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999. Winant died in Canoga Park, California in 2003. She was 81.

Actress Rita Johnson was born in Worcester in 1913. She was the daughter of a single mom who owned a hot dog house on Rte. 9. After high school, Rita attended New England Conservatory of Music. According to the online film database, IMDb (Internet Movie Database), Johnson did summer stock before moving on to Broadway in 1935. "She was an extremely versatile actress, who played virtually every type of role. Unfortunately, her career came to a halt in 1948 when a hairdryer fell on her head causing brain damage. Brain surgery was performed, but thereafter her screen time was very limited.

In his remarkable feature on Johnson, called Booby-Trapped Life, writer Matt Weinstock considers the theory of the actress being attacked by something more menacing than a hairdryer.

"Was Rita attacked by someone bigger than coma-inducing assault and battery?" he asks. "Rita herself was unable to remember how she’d been injured, but a theory appeared in Walter Winchell’s syndicated column (adored by the young Philip Roth for “the three dots separating — and somehow magically validating — each hot news item ever so tenuously grounded in fact”). 

Winchell wrote, 'Hollywood wonders if Rita Johnson’s concussion was caused by a former flame (screen actor-tough guy -- not a writer), famed for knocking his darlings cold.' 

This was code for Broderick Crawford, a onetime pro fighter who’d been engaged to Rita in the late 1930s, and would soon win an Oscar for All the King’s Men (1949). During their engagement Rita had taken “Broddie” to Worcester to meet her parents, who “did not like him at all, for some reason,” said Barbara Coulter, Rita’s niece. “And they liked everybody.”

Broderick Crawford

She died in Los Angeles County General Hospital on Oct. 31, 1965. Miss Johnson was only 52 years old." There is so much more to the story.

This is a work in progress. Please send all suggestions, comments, and corrections to walnutharmonicas@gmail.com.   Thank you.