Some of you may know that I spent the past winter in Indianapolis as a lobbyist at the Indiana Legislature. In addition to booking rooms at one of Indy’s hotels, this job required me to make 18 round trips to the capital city. Mileage from my home in Evansville to the capital via Highway 41 and Interstate 70 is exactly 192 miles. On one of the trips, I went up Hwy. 57 to Hwy 67 which was about 20 miles shorter but took the same three plus hours to get there.
Frequently I thought about the controversy over building a more direct route to Indy or just upgrading the 41-I-70 route. I have some opinions on that but that’s for another day.
To be a good lobbyist one must know his way around the Statehouse, know the issues, and be a good listener. I have listened to a lot of stories, some true, some surely false. But you have to keep your ears open. You never know when some tid bit may be helpful in getting your legislation passed.
That’s why I was all ears when one of the older and more colorful lobbyists asked if I ever heard the story about how Happy Chandler lost his job as baseball commissioner some 50 years ago. Who knows, I thought, it was a slow afternoon and maybe I might pick up something helpful.
The story began when Henry Schricker was governor of Indiana. That’s when a graduate of the Indiana Boys School, Larry Alcorn, came to Indianapolis telling all who would listen that he owed his considerable success in life to the kindness and love he received while a resident at the school. To show his appreciation, he proposed making a movie of his life and filming it in Indianapolis.
The town went wild. No movie had ever been made in Indianapolis. Alcorn talked Gov. Schricker into use of state facilities. The Governor was to appear in the movie as the graduation speaker. Popular star, William Bendix, was cast as the kindly stable hand who was such an influence on the star of the movie, Larry Alcorn.
Newspapers gave the movie great coverage. Large crowds flocked to watch the making of the movie. The first scene shot was the graduation ceremony where Gov. Schricker was featured as speaker. All during this hoopla over the movie, Alcorn was staying at the Lincoln Hotel, a popular watering hole for legislators and lobbyists at the time. He entertained lavishly and ran up some big tabs. But, as a friend of the governor, nobody questioned him.
At the height of all this movie euphoria, Alcorn talked the governor into selling him a herd of prize beef cattle from the State Farm with payment, of course, to come later. About this time, a gentlemen came to town, attracted by all the movie talk and Larry Alcorn, claiming that this same Larry Alcorn, owed him a considerable amount of money. The man got a legal judgement demanding immediate payment. Alcorn, of course, having no money, skipped town promptly.
The State was left with an unfinished movie, a lot of bad publicity, and a stack of unpaid bills. Frank McKinney, a local banker and a power in Democratic politics, decided that to save the state and the city such embarrassment, the party would finance the completion of the picture.
Now enters baseball. McKinney, in addition to being an Indianapolis banker, was also part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirate baseball team. The Pirates wanted to sign a much heralded high school sensation from California to a baseball contract. Rules at the time prohibited the signing of a player who was still in high school.
Frank saw an opportunity to get around these rules when the financing of this movie was thrust upon him and the party. He simply had the new producer and director of the movie hire Paul Pettit, the baseball phenom, to do odd jobs around the movie set for the sum of $100,000. McKinney talked Happy Chandler, a native of Corydon, Ky., and baseball commissioner at the time, into approving the deal.
When Brooklyn Dodger owner Walter O’Malley heard about this obvious violation of baseball rules, he hit the ceiling and by the next year had Chandler removed as commissioner.
What about the movie? My lobbyist friend says it was finished and called "Johnny Holiday." A copy is said to exist at the Boys School.
