THE FILE ON STORMY FOSTER
A Cartoon Movie Serial in Twelve Chapters
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
“THE DEACON’S WIFE”
TIME AND PLACE:
HAWAII, 1990 (and in flashback, 1944)
CAST OF CHARACTERS:
TRIXIE BALL, the BLUES SINGER
IRENE BANG, the CLUB OWNER
DIAMOND FAWS, the DEMAGOGUE
STORMY FOSTER, the GREAT DEFENDER
WILBUR von SCHWEISS, the BUND LEADER
This is Irene again. Our story is drawing to a close.
The Great Defender was sent to Hawaii in 1942 to fight Nazi-generated homophobia. Diamond Faws’ anti-Gay Children’s Protection Committee was Hitler’s stealth vehicle for undermining America’s defenses. Stormy Foster’s goal was to bring about its demise. In 1944 he succeeded, but he couldn’t have done so without help.
My husband, my late brother and I assisted Stormy in his mission. So did a former Nazi sympathizer who called himself Jeff June. Late in the game, a prominent member of the Children’s Protection Committee came over to our side. Let me tell you about this extraordinary woman. She went by several different names, but at the end of her life she was known as Trixie Ball.
Born in rural Kentucky, Trixie’s real name was Patty Jean Ball. She was a pretty, talented redhead who could sing. Her grandmother, a hillbilly musician, taught her to play accordion, too. As a teenager she became obsessed with going to Hollywood and performing in singing cowboy movies. Trixie told me she wanted to be the female Roy Rogers!
Trixie left Kentucky and made her way West but got nowhere fast in Tinseltown. She recalled meeting several movie producers who had what she called “Roman hands and Russian fingers”! Laughing at the memory, she told me they got a taste of her Scotch-Irish temper! After which she was promptly shown the door.
Fortunately, she made the acquaintance of Dorothy Arzner, a pioneering female film director. The discreetly Lesbian Arzner couldn’t make Trixie’s cowgirl dreams come true, but she did hire her as a script girl. Recognizing a kindred spirit, Arzner also introduced Trixie to her first girlfriend, a vocal coach.
The couple began going the rounds of Gay Hollywood parties, of which there were many. She recalled seeing big stars of the day like Edmund Lowe, Lilyan Tashman, Tallulah Bankhead, Antonio Moreno and Marlene Dietrich. Then Trixie met Charles Pendleton Bancrofft. “Penny”, as his friends called him, was the son of a rich Hawaiian planter. A handsome, strapping bachelor, he was so thoroughly masculine that nobody suspected he had an insatiable appetite for closeted B-movie cowboys!
She said he was chasing one when they were introduced. They struck up a conversation about what was then called Hillbilly music, which he loved as much as she did. Friendship blossomed. Trixie had never befriended a Gay man before, and Penny’s ravenous libido amazed her: She joked that he was so adept at seducing western movie actors, behind his back they called him “The Watering Hole!”
When Trixie’s girlfriend dumped her for a famous actress (she’s still alive, so I can’t share her name), Penny surprised her by proposing marriage. His parents were pressuring him to find a wife and naturally, he preferred one who wouldn’t object to his Gay flings. Once assured that she could have lovers, too, Trixie agreed.
She traded her dreams of Hollywood stardom for the promise of wealth and status, and off she flew to Oahu for an elaborate beachside wedding. Before long Patty Jean Ball had morphed into a glamorous Honolulu socialite. Little did society columnists suspect that she had a host of secretly Sapphic debutantes at her feet!
All during the 1930s, Penny and Pattycake Bancrofft were a fixture on the posh island social scene. But in 1940, they had a baby daughter. Little Penny Jean was severely underdeveloped; she survived for just a few days. Her death took the shine off their world of glitter and glamour. Then the following year, Charles Pendleton Bancrofft suffered the first of a series of debilitating strokes. In the last months of his life, his personality changed drastically.
He converted to fundamentalist religion and joined a church whose pastor railed against adultery, debauchery and “the Sin of Sodom”. Penny vowed to stop having sex with men and urged Trixie to swear off women, but she resisted. She refused to believe that Lesbian relationships were sinful, going so far as to remind her husband that nothing in the Bible condemned them!
But on his deathbed, Penny begged her to “repent” and “stop bringing disgrace” to the Bancrofft name. He talked about her grandmother back in Kentucky, who’d raised her in a fundamentalist church; and he insisted that their daughter’s death was “God’s punishment for sexual sin.”
His dying words shook Trixie to the core. Traumatized and confused, she decided to follow his example. At Penny’s funeral, she made her silent vow of celibacy standing beside his casket. Soon afterward, Diamond Faws arrived in Honolulu and she fell under his potent spell. The former Pattycake Bancrofft was destined to become an integral part of the Deacon’s organization.
THE MISEDUCATION OF
PATTYCAKE BANCROFFT
Influenced by his inflammatory rhetoric, anti-Gay vigilantes began assaulting anyone suspected of being homosexual! From his pulpit, the Deacon tacitly sanctioned these attacks, but he also offered “queers” a path to redemption. If they came out of the closet and appealed to the Children’s Protection Committee for mercy, he promised that a special retraining program would turn them away from "same-sex degeneracy".
So how did Deacon Diamond undertake to change homosexual orientation? Believe it or not, he did it by selling Gay people into heterosexual prostitution. Even more shocking, that’s how he funded the Committee’s activities; despite the popularity of his sermons, private donations were never that substantial. When the Deacon’s true funding source was revealed shortly before his death, it caused a massive scandal!
Diamond Faws had secretly opened two whorehouses, one catering to wealthy men and another one for rich women. Using a roundabout method, the CPC referred “saved souls” to the madam who ran these brothels. This same woman would then supervise their “retraining”, but the Deacon was really directing everything from behind the scenes.
First he subjected the “trainees” to an aggressive drug regimen; supposedly it cured venereal disease but it was really some kind of mind-control agent. Once this so-called medical treatment had begun, Lesbians were directed to sleep with rich men and Gay men with wealthy women. According to Faws, this strange brand of immersion therapy was guaranteed to "cure homosexuality".
Officially, his brothels were known as schools where sex deviants got “rehabilitated”. Most of the “students” were Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Native Hawaiian kids known as mahu. Numerous members of Honolulu’s haole upper class leapt at the chance to help “retrain” them. For a hefty “donation”, they showed these young Christian converts how to have the “right” kind of sexual relations. The kids got a meagre allowance to live on, but most of the money was funneled into the CPC.
How Deacon Diamond managed to keep his brothels a secret for as long as he did, I’ll never know; but Trixie told me that his abusive way of delivering a sermon intimidated Gay people to such an extent, they would just mentally melt down! Then, after submitting to his drug therapy, they pretty much became mindless zombies, willing to do whatever they were told. She knew this because she herself was subjected to that regimen!
Pattycake Bancrofft was too well-known for the Deacon to sell into prostitution, but he drugged her many times. Her narcotic-fueled retraining proved so successful, he was able to draft her into his phony ministry. As the Widow Bancrofft, she appeared on stage with him, playing accordion and singing inspirational songs. She became his primary fundraising tool. Trixie knew nothing about the Deacon’s Nazi ties, though; she thought his whole bizarre set-up was legitimate. She even bought into his faith-based brothel scheme.
THE MYSTERIOUS MRS. TRICKS
The Widow Bancrofft was secretly the woman who ran those brothels: The masked hostess known as Mrs. Tricks! That’s right: Trixie was Stormy’s madam, and his manager Prissy Stockdale was one of the rich ladies she supplied with South Asian gigolos. When Stormy threatened to go public about her affair with his father, Prissy enlisted Trixie’s help in keeping him silent.
Deacon Diamond approved her purchase of his boxing contract; Stormy’s FBI file suggests that Faws already had his eye on Kid Bombay, as he was known then. The Kid’s volatile reputation made it risky, so unusually coercive methods were used to subdue him. The Deacon was willing to take the risk; he not only saw a candidate for “conversion”, but also a potential prize stallion in his stud stable! He anticipated making lots of money off an ex-prizefighter, and for a while he did.
But after Stormy saw Mrs. Tricks without her mask on, Diamond Faws wanted him killed! Trixie was alarmed when he told her so, and she argued against it. Faws wouldn’t change his mind: The Widow Bancrofft was part of his public ministry, and Stormy might well have seen them on stage together. Actually, he knew nothing about the Deacon or the Children’s Protection Committee at that time. He didn’t know who Trixie was, either, and she suspected as much; but when he overheard the plan to kill him, he recognized the Deacon’s voice.
As I’ve told you, Stormy and the other sex workers were subjected to weekly anti-Gay screeds! Their lecturer was a mystery man who always wore a hood and a mask to conceal his identity, and he effected an East Indian accent to disguise his speech. Stormy could tell that the accent was fake; and there was no doubt in his mind that the guru who urged selling sex to rich women as a Gay “cure” was the same one he heard calling for his murder. That fact was confirmed during his sojourn on Pajaro Island: Spirit dreams revealed all of the Deacon's secrets! However, it took many months for him to recognize the Widow Bancrofft as Mrs. Tricks’ alter ego.
After Stormy escaped from her boy brothel, Diamond Faws lied to Trixie. He convinced her that he hadn’t really wanted to kill the young man; his homicidal bent had been an over-reaction, brought on by the stress of his workload. He’d already gotten Trixie to believe in prostitution as conversion therapy, so by then she was ripe for any outlandish claim. In retrospect, she felt foolish and ashamed but she was no match for his potent charisma. Few people were: He’d duped all of Hawaii, after all!
SNOOKS, FANNIE, TRIXIE, IRENE,
TONI AND PRISSY: THE FEMALE CAST
Trixie told me that, in spite of his homophobic doctrine, she always suspected that there were Gay relationships in the Deacon’s past. Once she even tried to broach the subject with him, but he reacted with such ferocity that she never dared do it again. “And that’s when he started pressuring me to marry him,” she said.
Trixie may have been a fervent believer in the Deacon’s message but she never wanted him as a husband; she was still committed to celibacy. Besides that, the very thought of him making love to her was nauseating! But the Deacon kept insisting that God had chosen her to be his “helpmate in life”. She finally broke down and consented.
Their wedding took place at Honolulu’s Central Union Church; it was attended by Children’s Protection Committee members and some of the Widow Bancrofft’s high society friends - what she described as “an unseemly mix of people.” But just prior to the ceremony, as she waited to enter the wedding chapel, Trixie was confronted by one of her former “students” – Stormy Foster! The sight of him terrified her, but he hadn’t come to expose her and he told her so. He was there to try and stop her from marrying the Deacon!
Stormy accused Diamond Faws of using his ministry to conceal both criminal and anti-American activities. He warned Trixie that, as his wife, she would be drawn into a Nazi organization. “I know how deeply involved you already are in his schemes,” he said, “but it’s not too late to break away from him.” He offered to help her do it.
Trixie knew how right he was about the Deacon’s criminality; but she rationalized it as “unconventional working methods”, necessary to fight sexual perversion. She was still clueless about her future husband’s Nazi ties, and she dismissed Stormy’s warnings as “wild talk”. She even taunted him, saying: “Isn’t the perverted pot calling the unorthodox kettle black?” When he pressed the point, she slapped his face and demanded that he leave. Joan Crawford drama notwithstanding, his allegations had alarmed her. Soon enough, she would learn how true they were!
Trixie was already miserable, dreading the moment when she had to say “I do”. To reflect her profound unhappiness at becoming Mrs. Diamond Faws, she had commissioned a black satin bridal gown. When the Deacon saw her enter the chapel wearing it, he was furious!
After the ceremony and wedding reception were over, he ripped it off her body and forced himself on her. “I never, ever gave myself to him willingly,” she told me, wiping away tears. As his wife, every day was a horror story; there was both physical and psychological abuse. It took matrimony to make Trixie finally see Diamond Faws as the monster he really was!
PATTYCAKE BANCROFFT
CHANGES HER TUNE
After they married, the Widow Bancrofft’s mansion in the Kahala neighborhood became Deacon Diamond’s new home base. He fired all her servants and installed people of his own choosing. A couple of them had been members of Mrs. Tricks’ security staff, but most of them she’d never seen before.
“When I supervised escort houses, having crude, coarse guys around was a necessary evil,” she said. She’d gotten used to dealing with them, and knew how to make them respect her; but she couldn’t do anything with this new group. “They showed me nothing but contempt,” she recalled, “and their behavior was frightening.”
Trixie was already thoroughly frightened of the Deacon. He wasted no time taking control of her finances; she found herself limited to a small monthly allowance just as her “students” had been. Complaining was forbidden: He expected her to be a charming hostess, a respectable preacher’s wife, and most of all, an obedient slave, eager to carry out his every command. Drugs were no longer in the picture, but the Deacon kept the threat of them hanging over her head!
Of all the roughnecks who started showing up, the one Trixie disliked most was Wilbur von Schweiss. He became a constant presence! Von Schweiss and the other interlopers made themselves at home in her mansion and Trixie started feeling as though she were the visitor. The Deacon was anxious to fund-raise among her socialite friends, but they were uncomfortable with these men, too. Before long, they stopped coming around. She felt isolated and trapped! All she could think about was how to escape the nightmare her life had become.
One day, an urgent telegram came for the Deacon and he wasn’t at home. Trixie didn’t know where he was and had to track him down. After she did, she decided to deliver the message herself instead of sending it with one of his men. She recalled being at the end of her rope that day. “I was going to give him the telegram,” she said, “and then go my own way. I wasn’t planning to return for a while. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone back at all!”
Faws was at Kewalo Basin Harbor, a strange place to be because it was under construction at that time. The address Trixie was given turned out to be an old ramshackle building, set to be demolished. A man at the front door directed her to the basement, where she found a locked room. She could hear people talking inside, so she knocked loudly and announced herself. Someone responded, his voice raised in alarm. He angrily told her to leave; she had the wrong address! But she’d heard the Deacon’s voice and knew he was inside.
Determined to give him the telegram, she pushed at the door. A rusty lock gave way, the door flew open, and Trixie found herself facing a wall draped with a swastika flag! Several men were having a Nazi bund meeting, and her husband and Wilbur von Schweiss were among them. That’s how she discovered that Stormy’s accusations were true!
Trixie tried to run, but von Schweiss grabbed her and dragged her into the room. She never forgot how the Deacon stood there, smirking at her. He coolly remarked that she “had to learn the truth sooner or later”. Then he said it was high time she followed his example and pledged allegiance to the Führer - Adolph Hitler! Trixie said those words nearly drove her crazy; she began to struggle and scream. Diamond Faws shoved a crude gag into her mouth, and then von Schweiss produced a rope from somewhere and tied her up with it.
The Deacon stood over her as she lay sobbing on the floor. With a look of pure contempt in his eyes, he gave her an ultimatum: Join him in supporting the Nazi cause, or face dire consequences! Von Schweiss loosened the gag so he could hear her answer. “I spat in his ugly face,” she told me.
TRIXIE BALL BRINGS THE BLUES
I’m going to tell the rest of this incident by reading from a transcript in Stormy’s file. This is what Trixie Ball told the FBI: Somebody hit me from behind, and I blacked out. When I regained consciousness, Wilbur von Schweiss was stuffing my body into some kind of canister. The Deacon was watching him do it from across the room. He was smoking his pipe and smiling!
He said: ‘I really do hate having to kill you. You’ve been so helpful to me for so long, first as an acolyte and then as my wife. Someday I’m going to be richly rewarded by the Führer, and you could’ve shared in that bounty; but now, you redheaded bitch, you’re going to disappear without a trace!” And then he added with a laugh: “I will play the part of a grieving widower quite convincingly.’
Von Schweiss came up behind me and covered my face with a cloth soaked in some kind of stifling chemical. He shoved me down in the canister, and the last thing I saw before blacking out again was him closing it up with a lid. I must not have stayed unconscious for very long. I felt myself being lifted and carried away. I sensed being put in some kind of vehicle, maybe a truck.
We drove a long way and then we transferred onto a boat. I don’t know how long we sailed, but suddenly there was a falling sensation, then a splash, and then water began seeping through the canister lid. They had tossed me into the sea! I tried desperately to break my bonds but all that did was deplete my dwindling air supply. I remember praying for an Allied victory over the Nazis as I slowly drowned!
There’s one part of what happened that Trixie didn’t tell federal investigators, but she told it to me. This happened back at Kewalo Basin Harbor, just before she was sealed up in that canister. Only Deacon Diamond and Wilbur von Schweiss were left in the room. Von Schweiss started chuckling with fiendish delight and he said something strange: “Leibchen, shall we put on a show for the little wife before she goes bye-bye?” Diamond Faws responded with a wicked grin. He turned to the bund chief and barked an order: “On your knees, slut! Pleasure me.”
At these words, the big blond Austrian effected a startling physical transformation: His alpha male demeanor vanished and he became grotesquely effeminate: Fluttering his eyelids, pursing his lips and daintily waving his hands. Hastening to obey the order, he kneeled before the Deacon and unbuttoned his fly. The next thing Trixie saw was von Schweiss fondling her husband's penis; then he began to perform fellatio, right there in front of her!
The sight of it turned her stomach. So she had been right all along: The great scourge of “homosexual perversion” was a pervert his damn self! And far worse than the vulnerable Gay kids he shamed and then exploited. As his secret Nazi lover serviced him, Diamond Faws looked at Trixie again with that same cruel smile on his face and sneered: “Just so you know I won’t lack for tender loving care when you’re gone.”
You've just read Chapter Eleven! Click below to read
Tenth chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
Then be sure to read
Final chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
Concept by HAMPTON JACOBS and PATTY BALL
Art by STUFFED ANIMAL
Costumes by HENRIETTA la del BARRIO
Project Assistance by RODERICK MACK and DAVE PEARSON
Text by HAMPTON JACOBS