Ancillary Characters: Bradford W. Shank

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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Jan Lundquist
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Ancillary Characters: Bradford W. Shank

Post by Jan Lundquist »

I tend think of Beai, and Mason, and Bradford Shank as Townsend's West Coast posse , though I suspect that Bradford and Sarbacher were connected in some other way, as both of them seem to have corresponded with Actress/Producer Gloria Swanson over a period of years. (Papers held in her archives at the University of Texas).

Bradford Shank was identified as his business partner in one of Townsend's early LA ventures, and he shows up again, later, in the story as the person Jaques Cornilion met with on the West Coast, who informed him that Townsend had relocated to DC.

What do we know about him?

He was born in 1910, in Indiana. He authored Photoographic Filters and Their Uses in 1939 ,the first ever book on the subject He spent the war years working on the Manhattan project, and the immediate post war years as a techincal consultant for two productions on the atomic bomb: the 1947 docudrama movie, (The Beginning or the End, and the animated short, Where Will You Hide (1948).

That was the year he produced an updated version of his first book:
Schank.png

His second and last book, a volume of poetry, Fragments, Crystalized Reflections on the Meaning of Life was published by Prentiss Hall in 1959 and did well enough then to earn a second printing. Some of his poems have been reproduced here. They leave me with an image of a sensitive and philosophical soul.

http://primal-page.com/shank.htm
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Re: The Original French Connection?

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Purportedly Bradford Shank pointed Jacques Cornillion toward Townsend, during the time Townsend was operating the Embassy Laundry in DC. Although, oddly enough, when the family moved to Washington, Jo told Linda that because they were living in a Mr. Cornilion's home, filled with fine antiques and he did not want children around, Linda would be staying with her grandparents. Young Linda held a strong grudge against Cornillion for that statement.

However,the aforementioned Shank/Swanson communications made me curious about Gloria Swanson..

She came to fame as a leading actress in the silent film era, and her passage through her life (1899-1983) through life was marked by the men (several) with whom she had relationships, 8 of whom she married. TLDR, from the Wikipedia bios of her and husband number three, Henri de la Falaise

Swanson married the impoverished French Marquis in 1925. His position at that time was as the US representative of Pathe, the groundbreaking French company of the day. Their contributions to the technical art of film making are many, but they are best known for their introduction of newsreels. During the time of his marriage to Swanson, Falaise also produced and directed three French/English films for RKO

Sometime between then and 1927 Swanson began an affair with her (also married) financial advisor, Joseph P "Joe" Kennedy, who helped her to avoid bankruptcy. As their affair was ending, three years later, he took steps to see that Falaise was given the title of European Director of Operations for Pathe.

After their divorce in 1931, Swanson and Falaise remained close. Eight years later, they engaged in an operation to rescue scientists fleeing from the Nazi plague:
...Falaise became a partner in her World War II efforts to aid potential scientist refugees fleeing from behind Nazi lines.[147] Swanson described herself as a "mental vampire", someone with a searching curiosity about how things worked, and who pursued the possibilities of turning those ideas into reality.[72] In 1939, she created Multiprises, an inventions and patents company; Henri de la Falaise provided a transitional Paris office for the scientists and gave written documentation to authorities guaranteeing jobs for them.[148] Viennese electronics engineer Richard Kobler, chemist Leopold Karniol, metallurgist Anton Kratky, and acoustical engineer Leopold Neumann, were brought to New York and headquartered in Rockefeller Center.[149] The group nicknamed her "Big Chief".[150]
The Multiprises offices in New York were located in the Rockefeller Plaza building. Canadian spymaster, William Stephenson, operated his British Security Co-operation out of the same building in the critical years, before, during, and after US entry into WWII. Linda still has a telegram from him to Jo. IIRC, it was sent to inform her that Townsend had been wounded.

Side Note: See also Gloria Swanson, Woman of invention Cary O'Dell for Library of Congress Blog 30 March, 2022. https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2022 ... invention/
Last edited by Jan Lundquist on Thu Mar 02, 2023 12:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Gloria Swanson, an ancillary to an ancillary

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The evidence points to the possibility that Swanson and former husband, the Marquis de la Falaise. operated her Multiprises effort as a subset of, or in conjunction with Stephenson's network. From Kolb on Stephenson, 'British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas 1940-1945' Author: William S. Stephenson, ed. Reviewer: Charles C. Kolb
"Part VIII: Organization for Secret Activity Outside the Western Hemisphere" ....Organizing "free" groups among the various foreign nationalities in the Western Hemisphere involved much more than strengthening resistance movements in the occupied countries, such as France and the Low Countries, but also involved enlisting the sympathies of resident minorities and collecting external intelligence (see Part IV). Exiles and refugees from Nazi tyranny were key targets of the BSC, (emphasis mine) which maintained contact with representatives of 21 different nationalities in eastern, central and western europe.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/r ... ry-british

But datewise, the Multiprises group preceded the BSC, so Swanson might be the original French Connection.

"Remember the women," Twigsnapper said.
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