Jo and the Ballet Master: Prologue

[Jan Lundquist]

The closest we can come to "knowing Jo" is through the observations of the Wisconsin columnist who met her in Hawaii. Ms. Lambert describes a woman who is enthusiastic, joyful, and capable, with with energy to burn. https://www.ttbrown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=698

But the Brown's peripatetic life style would eventually take its toll on Jo, in more ways than one. And though it now seems unforgivable that Townsend left her in Umatilla, to deal with uterine cancer and a 13 year old girl on her own, I am certain there was some justification that she understood and supported.

Barely recuperated and in the midst of a howling winter storm, she responded with grace and good humor when introduced to the the ramshackle log cabin in North Carolina that was to be the only home the Browns would ever own. Less than a year later, they were on the move again.

It was two more years before home ownership again seemed to be in their reach. The family even found a house and barn they wanted to buy, in Chantilly, VA, the location of the newly created National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO). But when those plans went awry, Jo had reached the limit of her endurance. She determined that they would separate for good this time and Townsend left for Meadville without her.

There had been talk of a breakup before, at the tail end of their time in Hawaii, but there was another man involved, then. Red was the single father of son Joe's BFF and varsity ball team mate. Red and Jo had bonded at the basketball games Townsend was too busy to attend.

To be fair, Townsend warned Jo that if she stayed with him, she was choosing a difficult and dangerous path. Did he also tell her that he had given a successful demonstration for President Truman that was compromised through Admiral/Janitor pillow talk?

If he did, Jo never said. But she would later speak freely with Linda about these times of near-separation. And yet curiously enough, she never mentioned the time that she and Townsend had actually, "successfully" achieved a divorce That fact would only come to light a few years after Jo's death, as Linda and Paul combed through Zanesville news papers.

End, part 1.

[Jan Lundquist]

I learn such fascinating and trivial facts from Newspapers.com. For example, In 1912, Zanesville schools sponsored a Foot Social fundraising event. The ladies of the town prepared box lunches for auctioning off to the gentlemen with the proviso that the lunch would be personally delivered to each winner. To keep things spicy and mysterious, the only clue the men had to whose lunch was up for bid, was by viewing their "dainty ankles" The rest of them was hidden behind a raised sheet.

I am immediately filing this under Customs No One Misses.

But I am quite fretted when I can't find something that I expect to find. The Zanesville press adored Townsend Brown. He was their own local prodigy and sole heir of not one, but two, fabulous fortunes. His activities always made for good stories.

Why, then, did they not feast on his marriage? I expected to find reports of luncheons and showers, and lavish details of a wedding, followed by panting descriptions of a honeymoon in some far off place. And yet,the only indication that a marriage had taken place was this from Sept. 12,1927:

"Mr. and Mrs. Townsend Brown are guests at the Mayflower, Washington DC."

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the ... 29366730/

Sure, the Mayflower hotel was the ritziest hotel in town, but Washington hardly qualifies an exotic honeymoon locale.

If the local press skimped on details of the Beale-Brown wedding, they completely blanked on the 1933 birth of the Browns' first child. This I can understand, as Townsend was a Naval Reservist for the Bureau of Engineering and these officers were frequently called upon to perform technical espionage. They were the Navy's original HUMINT resource and It makes sense that their family lives would be kept quiet.

But Townsend did not join the Navy until 1930, so we have to wonder what he had to hide in 1927, He began the year well enough, with a flashy demonstration of his communications chops:

Had some one even intimated a year ago that one could lift the telephone receiver, in the editorial rooms of The Signal and "listen In'' on two people talking by long distance /telephone between New York and London, that person would have promptly been branded a maniac and ..."Isn't It shame" would' have been hushed when he appeared. But the thing has actually happened. Thursday morning at 11 o'clock i. Pierpont Morgan of New York city, talked with .Vivian Smith of London.England, and the telephone In The Signal news room --was tuned In on the conversation. T'he arrangement sounds almost incredible but It has been done. Townsend Brown of Adalr avenue, who has become nationally prominent for some of his remarkable contributions to the scientific world completed the "hook-up" and operated the radio receiver at his country home on the Newark road,....

See Local Wizard Hooks Up Radio At his Home Zanesville Times Signal 03 Feb 1927.

This story was followed with a brief announcement that Townsend Brown was leaving the next day to spend the rest of February in Miami and he would be traveling by himself. His trip was "entirely for pleasure." IOW, nothing to see here...just a wealthy playboy dilettante, escaping a northern winter. That was the last word on the Townsend Browns until the even briefer Mayflower Hotel announcement, six months later.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/zan ... 129378595/




A a few nights ago, I caught a brief snippet of a TV show, of two secret agents getting into an elevator. When the door closed, one asked the other, "So...when did you tell your wife you were a spy?"

This is the same question i would have for Townsend today: When did Jo know?

[Jan Lundquist]

By 1935, the Townsend Browns seemed well-rooted in Zanesville. That autumn, Jo, ever the doer, played an instrumental role in the production of a highly-praised musical revue fundraiser for the hospital. Local talent performed skits, songs, and dances under magical lighting that provided special effects of snowfalls, underwater scenes, and dancers with luminous hands. It was the crowning act, however, that was praised as "something different" and “absurdly comic.”

The presciently named skit, "The Ballet Master Invades the Drama", aptly, if accidentally, describes the next year of the Browns' lives.

When Jo and took over management of the fabulous, family owned Hawthorne club, with its 165' long pool and parking for 400 cars, she brought her theatrical production skills with her. The opening night program included an 11:00 pm floor show by dancers from the Jorg Fasting studio, directed by the great master himself.

Fasting, a Norwegian immigrant, had studied in Chicago with Adolf Bolm of the same Ballet Russe lineage that produced the world famous Anna Pavlova. A private in in WW I, he grew to be an imperious and legendary figure to aspiring dancers of the forties and fifties. But before he went Hollywood, he went Zanesville.

His dancers continued to perform there throughout the 1936 season and he and the Browns were nigh-besties for a while. Jo and Townsend attended the opening of his Columbus studio. They were the invited guests of honor at one of his gala dinners. Jo would be asked to serve as a hostess in for an upcoming reception and ball for special guests from Chicago.

I doubt this last plan ever came to fruition. Townsend and Jo were apparently on the rocks by then. They let the Hawethorne Club go for less than a tenth of its value, Jo filed for divorce, Jorg Fasting faded from the scene, and the word “Balley,” as one Times-Signal reporter spelled it, was nevermore spoken in the Brown household.

So, why did this dance fever come and go so quickly?

Stay tuned...

[Jan Lundquist]

1937 was a baaaad year for the Townsend Browns. Their to-ing and fro-ing with Jorg Fasting ended abruptly. The Club went out of business. Their marriage broke up.

I had to wonder if the divorce was the result of a hot and heavy affair between Jorg and Jo or Jorg and Townsend. But, in looking at events on the larger scene, I think a different type of Norwegian wood was burning then.

The world’s quest for atomic energy became achievable in 1935, when Norsk Hydro, the world’s first and only heavy water factory, went into operation. Research Institutions everywhere signed up for a share of this product, essential for the manufacture of nuclear fuel. After the plant fell to the Nazis in 1940, Norwegian Intelligence and Allied special forces tried, repeatedly, to sabotage or destroy it. Many lives were given in that effort before success was obtained.

I have no direct proof that Norwegian Intelligence (cough, cough. Oslo Report) and Norwegian ballet dancers were connected to each other in any way in 1936. But, hypothetically speaking, Jorg Fasting, with roots and family in the southwestern region where the factory was located, might have been a useful asset for the development of inside sources there.

Nor do I have any direct proof that Townsend operated secret missions from the Hawthorne club in 1936. But this small story, a grace note from that year, deserves to be told. Make of it what you will.

James Ervin spent the summer after he graduated from high school as a lifeguard and equipment manager at the Hawthorne pool. Five years later, when the war broke out, Townsend, who encouraged Ervin to enlist in the Navy, arranged for him to go straight into Radio Intelligence, skipping boot camp, altogether.

Lifeguarding is an unlikely qualification for a job classification that was to become the most secret of all the Military Occupation Specialties. All recruiters knew about it, in later years, was that it didn't include much sea duty. USN Cdr. (Ret.) Ervin who spend his entire career in Naval communications, never said what he did to earn such a recommendation, but we can be certain that it was something more than fishing floaters from the pool.


Epilogue

Townsend and Jo remarried in 1940 and took up residence in an elegant town home D.C., in the tony NW sector near Rock Creek Park. I have seen a photograph of Townsend and Jo in the park there, with George Gamow. I have also seen a photo of Jo, said to be taken while acting as a an OSS courier between NY and DC/ She is wearing a snazzy 'forties suit and big hat, and you just know this is a woman with something important going on.