By Bruce B. Brugmann
Carl Nolte, who always likes to stay one step ahead of Guardian scandals, tossed a good one into the hopper
in our back and forth on the life and times of Chronicle cartoonist Phil Frank.
He emailed me that Phil was a “real historian” and that Samuel P. Throckmorton was his “PG&E.”
Who in the world is Samuel P. Throckmorton? As attentive Bruce blog readers know, I sent him back an email asking him to identify the peccadilloes and whereabouts of Throckmorton.
Nolte, startled, wrote “You never heard of Throckmorton? He was a speculator who challenged both Richardson and Pabo Briones land grants. According to Phil Frank, he flimflammed poor old William Richardson’s widow out of a lot of his land, then made a ton of money out of the town of Mill Valley.”
Nolte added that the late Hal Peary, who played the Great Gildersleeve on the radio of the l940s, grew up in Mill Valley and was familiar with the doings of Throckmorton the original. Peary played a pompous water commissioner, always in and out of jams, with the marvelous name of Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve. He had a hearty laugh I can remember 60 years later, a mischievous nephew named LeRoy, and friends like Peavey, the wimpy druggist. I loved the show and followed the adventures of the Great Gildersleeve every week. And I always wondered where the name and the character came from.
Nolte cleared up the mystery. He said Peary named his character Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve after Samuel P. Throckmorton of Mill Valley. The two, it turned out, were perfect cannon fodder for historian and cartoonist Phil Frank.
P.S. The memories are good, but they grow dimmer and dimmer, as Woody Allen said as he ended his movie on the good old days of radio. And so I could not remember the name of the undertaker friend of Gildersleeve, who always spoke in a remarkably cadaverous tone. That, Nolte said, was Digger O’Dell, “your friendly undertaker.” He would have said, had he seen you on tv, ‘you’re looking fine. Very natural.'” Nolte was referring to my brief cameo appearance on Channel 2 reporting on the memorial for Frank last week at John’s Grill. B3