CONFIDENTIAL FILE

Junks ‘Junk’; Grads Applaud

It’s commencement week, but the proudest graduate in Southern California today isn’t from any institution of learning.

He
went through his ceremony in a shabby Ocean Park store-front dwelling
crowded with friends whose combined arrest records could overflow the
filing cabinets of any middle-sized town in the country.

Most of the guests, like the graduate, were former gutter dope addicts.

A couple of months ago I wrote about their experiment in "communal kicking" of the habit.

The group calls itself Synanon.

This week’s "grad" was a man named Jesse, who at 35 — for practically the first time in his adult life — is free.

The arrests for narco, burglary, theft and half a dozen other crimes are behind him, he thinks.

‘Clean’ for Seven Months

At
the weird exercises Jesse was honored for (1) receiving his discharge
papers from his parole officer, and (2) having stayed "clean," off the
junk, for a personal record of seven months.

Last Saturday I devoted this space to a situation which I considered a very unfortunate one.

At that time, the body of Carl (Alfalfa) Switzer,
a onetime "Our Gang" star, lay in the County Morgue, and because of
legal technicalities which delayed its release, a funeral planned by
his parents had to be postponed.

The body was being held at the morgue by coroner’s officials, who claimed they couldn’t release it to the family until Switzer’s ex-wife, Dian Collingwood Switzer, gave them approval. The family indicated to me that they had tried unsuccessfully to contact Mrs. Switzer at her home in Hutchinston, Kan.

I printed the story. And it’s one of the perils of journalism that as it was going to press, Mrs. Switzer’s wire arrived in the coroner’s office.

Wanted Legal Advice

It
should be made clear that the young lady wasn’t deliberately avoiding
giving consent to release of her ex-husband’s body for burial. Because
of the divorce situation, she wanted the telegram to be dictated by her
Los Angeles attorney. And, as soon as she was able to reach him, the
telegram went out.

The
question of who wrote the original story for the motion picture "The
Brave One" has been dumped into the laps of the Screen Writers Guild
this week.

A leading contender for the honor is the deceased Spanish-born writer-dancer-actor, Juan Duval, whose posthumous candidacy I revealed last week.

And
adding new support to his claim is Dale Robertson. The western star
telephoned me after reading my column- with the information that he,
personally, had taken Juan Duval’s script about a boy and a bull to a number of producers in town.