“‘Just remember’, Ryan raised a warning finger in jest, ‘years from now when they finally catch us and ask us what we were up to, your story and my story may be wildly different and yet totally the same.'”
– Jack Fritscher “Some Dance to Remember“; Knights Press 1990.
Since the award-winning documentary “The Thin Blue Line” (1988, written and directed by Errol Morris), television and movie viewers have been treated to a slue of stories depicting differing views and angles of the same happening. As a story unfolds, we witness different sides of the same occurrence. At first the varying views confuse the viewer in details as diverse as they are numerous. Then (either slowly or with the speed of a single scene), the relative truth of the issue is revealed. They cut through the facts to the “chase”, through the lies to the “truth” and through all the flotsam to find what is significant that ‘floats’.
Sometimes they don’t ‘float’… they leave us with unanswered questions about the reality or logic of the conclusions brought forth. Details are left dangling and threads are left un-pulled (I unravel more clothes that way). So, when something in history is recorded and accounted for in more than one way by more than one person, it irritates the ‘thread pulling section’ of my brain until eventually I have to look into it.
Yes, I am one of those people.
I am one of the people that cannot let well enough alone, despite the fact that all the evidence points to a conclusive (yet speculative) solution that many accept as a fact.
While in search of the elusive beginnings of the term “Old Guard” (as it relates to the American leather community) I read significant disparity from solid sources about the way of living for the folks who fall under that title, I am not one to sit idly by and accept it as written.
I can’t.
Is this a personal fault of mine? Perhaps, but that is the way I am mentally constructed, regardless. And, let’s just look at this ‘anal retentive behavior’ as something that benefits us all
One of the key images we have from the days when the ‘Old Guard walked the earth’ (sorry for the poor alliteration) is visions of leather bars with gleaming rows of Harley Davidson motorcycles aligned outside, basking in the glow of the setting sun, as men clad in leather and the dying sun sat with cold beer to usher in the evening.
Since the days of the movie “The Wild One” (1954) and the Harley 74 Shovel Pan, leather has been synonymous with this image of the motorcycle rider outlaw gang roving the land in search of the next fight.
At least I have held this image in my mind.
Visions of solid leather on two metal wheels eating pavement along America’s highways permeate the culture of leather as much as any other. But, the reality of the predecessors of the “Homo-muscular” movement, were apparently not the shady characters that are legendary and (in some instances) real visions of the outlaw motorcyclists of yore.
Where did this image come from?
Popular culture has always marketed the ‘rough and tumble hero’ in a significant and timely manner. During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s while America whiled away the time watching the newly popular televisions, and the Korean War gave everyone pause to contemplate trouble outside a “perfect” United States, several events conspired to allow this to occur again.
On July 4th, 1947, in the heat of a farm community’s celebration, the American Motorcycle Association sponsored the annual hill climb meet in Hollister, California. Among the purported 2,000 to 4,000 attendees and approximately 4,000 inhabitants, arrived two motorcycle groups: the ‘Booze Fighters’ and another named ‘The Pissed Off Bastards’ (one member would later leave the latter group to form the ‘Hell’s Angels’).
These 6,000 to 8,000 people all settled down that first holiday evening looking forward to the week’s festivities. (1, 4)
Controlling and directing all these throngs of people was the local police force of seven officers. After that first night, they were exhausted from the frenzied running about assisting people and ensuring the “public safety”.
In the years that followed the Second World War, there was a sincere and existing alliance between the ‘citizenry’ and the police forces. This was a time when (should something happen) the cops could always count on the local populace to assuredly come to their assistance. Because of this feeling of community and mutuality… the police did not have (as in today’s American society) agreements between themselves and the other regional police departments, and did not believe any more than the 7 officers would be necessary to control the masses present there that week-end.
Unfortunately that three day period in Hollister, California was to end this vulnerable and naive nature for most of America. It was the beginning of one of those rare historical moments that often goes unnoticed, but reverberates through the society it drops into. The days of innocence were on their way out.
Within 24 hours, the town had been turned upside down. No one was killed… there were a few minor injuries; but, the police had failed at stopping a group in the process of (what in later years would be referred to as) ‘civil unrest’ because they were ill equipped for the task; and the citizens, unprepared to face such a “foreign” entity as a motorcycle gang, failed to assist as was supposed they would.
If this was all there was to this story, you and I would not be writing and reading this… there was more.
“I’LL BE RIGHT BACK!”
~ Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) to his fiancée, Kelly (Helen Hunt) (while boarding the Fed Ex flight that crashes) in the movie “Castaway”
The story became more than a simple disturbance in rural America… it became “an event”.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported this happenstance with a flair and sensationalism seldom found outside of “big cities”:
Motorcyclists Take Over Town, Many Injured – by C. I. Dougherty Jr., Staff Writer
Hollister. July 5 (1947) – State Highway patrolmen tonight imposed informal marshal law in downtown Hollister… …The outburst of terrorism – wrecking of bars, bottle barrages into the streets from upper story windows and roofs and high speed racing of motorcycles through the streets… …As state police moved in {at the request of the local police chief}, hundreds of cyclists roared through the streets… defying traffic regulations… …Many were in spills and crashes… …One mans left foot was virtually severed. Riders, both men and women, steered their machines into bars, crashing fixtures and bottles and mirrors… … Bartenders halted sale of beer, believing the rioters could not afford whiskey… …As many arrests were made as possible… …The emergency room… …was jammed to overflowing… …more than 40 cases had been treated.”
No one will ever say with a straight face that logic has anything to do with mass insurrections or their control… a kind of madness takes place with the people on the street.
I am a firm believer that everyone interacting in this sort of insanely violent civil disobedience is psychologically and radically affected. Whether it is from pheromones, hormones, the 76 trombones, instinct, or simply “letting go with the moment”, we often times see the damnedest things occur at the height of a “real riot” (is that an oxymoron?). The people on the street running, looting, smashing things and the officers or military responsible for regaining control all become infected with the hysteria and madness.
Considering this, you have to wonder who the ‘brain trust’ was that made the decision that if you take away the beer and leave the whiskey, they will settle down.
Yeah… …good plan.
Newspaper accounts often ‘travel’.
This one definitely had wings… it caught the imagination of more than one person out there in the world that was America. A few of those who saw it and paid attention, were the authors and the screenwriters.
Frank Rooney noticed. In 1949, he wrote a story for Harper’s Magazine entitled “Cyclist Raid” that loosely depicted and sensationalized the Hollister event. The article was later picked up and published by Life Magazine as a serial feature article. Although the piece was labeled ‘fiction’, Life’s publishing of it coupled with the ‘feature’ status, led to a mistaken and popular belief that the atrocities and happenstance of Mr. Rooney’s fabrication were the facts of that ‘Hollister 4th’.*
“Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks.”
~ Alistair Cooke; “America“; Knopf 1973
Compounding this journalistic endeavor in creating myth, Hollywood took notice.
Stanley Kramer’s 1954 classic film
Stanley Kramer noticed Rooney’s article and in 1954 released his (soon to be classic) film, “The Wild One” starring Marlon Brando. Sociologically speaking, it could not have come at a more advantageous or disparate time. Society of early 1950’s America was in a significant disparity between angst and apathy.
American society, upset about the changing face of the world political scene and rather complacent about the internal issues, which are always present in a society, was awakening to itself in a sleepy sort of way.
The country watched the movie. It did well in the box office (after all, it was a Brando film). Then they quickly forgot about it in an effort to get on with the importance of nothing else. It was one of a ‘billion’ cultural issues and icons that dropped into this new world of media, public opinion and nuclear proliferation.
I don’t want to over emphasize the impact of the movie; it was rather muted at the time. The only sensationalism attributable to it was the general and regular uproar from the right winged elements and the backlash against the ‘immoral and indecent things being portrayed on the screen, therefore to impressionable American children’ (do I have the mantra down well?).
The fact is: it was a good film (not great) with a great actor in a decent part, but it was the first to effectively use the issue of ‘teenage rebellion’ as a central focus, and therefore set a sort of ‘genre’ for the decades to come.
More importantly, many of the children at the time had a seed planted and grew up wanting to be “Marlon Brando” and this (along with the all pseudo “Wild One’ knockoff movies and the decent ones such as James Dean’s “Rebel Without a Cause”) would account for some of the explosion of motorcycles on the highways in the early 60’s.
I don’t want to overstate the case with this movie, but it was a pivotal point in America’s opinion on the motorcycle and it’s riders. As time went on and this type of exposure was generated, you either wanted to BE them, or you became pre-dispositioned that they were all evil, against social values and out to do damage to your personal property for no discernible reason.
It was one of the first times that Hollywood made a film which both influenced other movies for decades to come and society through its children.
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
So then, can we assume that this film led to the popularity of the motorcycle and therefore the leather “revolution?
Hell no.
We have to remember, that the culture shapes itself… and, the beginning of the articles and film were (indeed) an incident in real life. This went on before, during and after all of the public bull. This was one of those cultural indicators that make you wonder between the choices, “Chicken Vs Egg”. It definitively would not be the last film to impact how we perceived ourselves as a culture, in society and in leather (but more on that later).
Right now, we have to look at the people and the issues that were ongoing during (all) this BS that were also shaping what we would become. Let’s face it: Movie stars, Movies and their impact on us is always a topic for fascination and they always influence us in subtle and insidious ways (and, they definitively have affected us on a societal level – that much cannot be disputed). But WHY we do things we do as individuals is always more complex and (for myself) much more interesting. We may never know what the actual impetus for leather organizations had for founding (beyond a commonality for interchange among like minded folks), but we can at least talk about and document the significant occurrences that may have influenced the individuals in their choices for joining.
Of course, formation of these groups was made between folks who were acquainted and friends. No one forms a group arbitrarily just to run through the exercise (well, except the US Congress). So what groups were formed and influence us as we are today? What other social icons and happenings occurred that were instrumental in forcing our sort of issues into the public eye and therefore (for many of us), lead us directly or indirectly to find places such as this web site to find out more?
This is what we will be exploring next.
* Ironically but deservedly, the article won first place in the 1951 O’Henry Award for Best Fictional Short Story and Mr. Rooney was a later recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship Award.
1. "Hell's Angels - A Strange and Terrible Saga", Hunter S. Thompson, 1999, Modern Library Edition 2. San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1947, "Motorcyclists Take Over Town, Many Injured", by C. I. Dougherty Jr., Staff Writer 3. Emails between Mr. Guy Baldwin and KJPS Howe, November 2002 4. "The Leather Restoration: Sacred Cows make the best Hamburger", Guy Baldwin, Speech: Leather Leadership Conf 6 / 04-14-2002 (copyright) 5. "The Old Guard (History of Leather Traditions)" By Guy S. Baldwin (copyright) 6. http://bfmcnatl.com/index.html Booze Fighter National Website 7. Original Hells Angels The Missoulian "Paratroopers Were Probably Original Angels", by Michael Jamisson 8. http://www.satyrsmc.org/ , Satyrs Motorcycle Club National Web Site
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