March 10, 1958



He’s a character actor.

In movie circles his name is well known, and if I told it to you you’d probably say it sounded familiar.

But he’d prefer that I didn’t use it. He’s suffered enough embarrassment already.

I’ll tell you, though, that he’s married, with two children. And that
he’s regarded in the business as a very conscientious, mild and
honorable individual.

The only black mark on his record was registered 10 years ago, when he was booked on an assault charge which was later dropped.

But it was enough to get his picture pasted in a police "mug" book–a
volume fingered through almost daily by victims of various crimes.

And this was the cause of his recent trouble.

There was, not long ago, an attempted burglary of the Brentwood
residence of an elderly, prosperous businessman. It was a daylight job
and the businessman caught the burglar in the act. He chased the
suspect off his property and watched him get into a car and escape.

Then he called police.

He gave them a description of the vehicle and a partial license number.
They asked him to go down to the station and look through the mug books.

He did. And when he came to the photo of the actor, he stopped.

"That’s the man," he said.

The police went to work. They found similarities in the vehicle and in the license.

They visited the actor, questioned him and took him to the station. He
wanted to know what it was all about, but the officers weren’t in a
conversational mood.

They were in a booking mood. So they booked him: suspicion of burglary.

The actor says that he wasn’t allowed to place any phone calls for two
days. He was moved from one jail to another. Finally, after the third
day, he contacted his attorney.

He was released on $1,500 bail.

He learned the time and place of the crime he was accused of committing and he checked his appointment book.

It happened that at the time of the crime he was at a rather important interview with an important Hollywood executive.

He didn’t like the idea of having to reveal to the man that he was a
burglary suspect. But when you need an alibi, you need an alibi.

And besides, a Beverly Hills paper had already run the story that he was picked up and booked. Maybe the executive had read it.

As it turned out, the executive and various other persons in whose
company he had been that day willingly testified as to his whereabouts.

And the charge was dropped a few days later, even though, according to
the actor, the burglarized businessman still maintained that his
identification was correct.

When the actor told me his story, he was a very shaken man.

"People are still coming up to me and making cracks like, ‘Hey I hear you were mixed up in a burglary,’ " he said.

"Sometimes," he added, "they make their comments at very inopportune moments. It hasn’t helped me at all."

The man found it awfully hard to believe that a human being could be so badly wrong in making an eyewitness identification.

So I asked him if he’d ever heard the names of Vance Hardy or Clarence Boggie.

He said, "No. Why?"

I told him. In both of the well-known cases, positive identifications by eyewitnesses convicted the men on murder charges.

Boggie served 16 years in prison before it was proven that he wasn’t the right man.

Hardy was locked up for 27 years before his innocence was established.

I don’t know whether the man left my office feeling better or worse.