Friday, June 03, 2005

Bad Good Bowler

June 3, 1947
Los Angeles

Max Stein may be the American Bowling Congress all-events record holder, but that hasn't stopped Charley Bragg, president of the Los Angeles Bowling Association, from suspending Stein's membership.

The trouble started during the recent $10,000 tournament at Hollywood's Sunset Center, when Stein was found to have listed two fake (and doubtless high scoring!) names among the leaders. These names were discovered before the close of competition, and all winners were paid off.

Stein was called before L.A.B.A.'s executive committee on May 28 based on a complaint filed by the tournament's sponsor, Mort Luby. Luby is publisher of The National Bowler's Journal and Billiard Review. During the hearing, Stein admitted inserting the fictitious names. The transcripts are being forwarded to the A.B.C.'s head offices in Milwaukee for a final ruling on Stein’s status. Stein himself is en route to St. Louis, and plans to drop in on the A.B.C.’s leaders to discuss his case.

The Belleville, Illinois-bred Stein settled in Los Angeles in 1939, and has been employed as an instructor at the Sunset Center alleys. His lifetime average in 1939 was 202, and he averaged 231 when he set the all-time high score record for nine games in 1937. Reporting on his astonishing 855 series rolled at Pico Palace in October 1939 (the second highest score in forty years of A.B.C. record keeping), the Times dubbed him “the sensational Jewish kegler.”

The sensational Mr. Stein seems to have felt he was too good a bowler to be limited to a single prize package. We’ll have to wait and see if the bosses of bowldom agree.

1 comment:

notarysojack said...

Enlisted Men
Want Chance
to Wed Japs

TOKYO, June 3 (U.P.) Thirteen
enlisted men today urged the
Army to allow them to marry
Jap girls “in spite of racial dif-
ferences.”

In a letter to the Army news-
paper Pacific Stars and Stripes,
the soldiers asked why the “dem-
ocratic” U.S. Army has banned
marriages between them and
Japanese girls. The men asked
that their names be withheld
from publication.

The letter said that during a
tour of duty in Japan, “many of
us have become quite fond of the
girls over here.” They pointed
to examples of G.I. marriages
with German, French and Brit-
ish girls.

“We are supposed to impress
the Japanese with the truth that
all men are created equal, etc.,”
the letter said. “Why don’t we
practice what we preach?”

The Pacific Stars and Stripes
answered that marriage between
an American and a Japanese was
not approved because an alien
marrying an American does not
automatically become an Ameri-
can citizen.

“Present immigration laws re-
strict Japanese nationals from
going to the United States,” the
newspaper said, “and there is no
guarantee that Americans dis-
charged in Japan will be author-
ized to live indefinitely in Japan.
Hence any marriage between an
American solider and a Japanese
girl may result in permanent sep-
aration.”

+ + +

It was a tough problem for the armed services. In March, an Air Forces lieutenant at Tachikawa Air Base and “a beautiful Japanese girl” killed themselves in a former geisha house at Hinomachi, and the week before, another couple committed suicide at a Shinto shrine because they were going to be separated.

Also in June, a former soldier who renounced his U.S. citizenship to marry a Japanese woman was sentenced to six months in prison for illegally buying merchandise using his American ration card.

Finally, Congress granted a one-month period in which veterans could marry Japanese women, resulting in 823 unions. The Times reported 597 marriages between Nisei men and Japanese women; 211 marriages between whites and Japanese, and 15 marriages between blacks and Japanese.

Source: Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1947; June 1, 1947; June 4, 1947; Aug. 22, 1947



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