AJC

Killing dealt bridge
a winning hand

Author to discuss book about fatal night that put game in spotlight

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Monday, June 22, 2009

By Bo Emerson

 

 

"It draws you in deeper and deeper, and as you consume it, it consumes you,"


After philandering Kansas City salesman Jack Bennett slaps his wife, Myrtle, during a 1929 bridge game, the wronged woman shoots her husband dead – in front of the shocked eyes of their partners.

How does this salacious tabloid murder propel the genteel art of bridge into a million American living rooms? The answer is the improbable tale The Devil’s Tickets: A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age by former Atlantan Gary M. Pomerantz.

Pomerantz examines how the killing helped put the card game on the front pages of American newspapers and goosed the career of bridge strategist and author Ely Culbertson into overdrive. Eventually Culbertson’s books were outselling Pearl S. Buck, and the craze made him a wealthy man.

Once a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Pomerantz is noted as the author of Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, the story of two Atlanta dynasties – black and white. He also penned the nail-biting account of a commuter plane crash, Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds” and the story of basketball great Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, WILT, 1962.

Now a San Francisco resident and a visiting lecturer in journalism at Stanford University, Pomerantz acknowledges that a card game is no match, in thrills, for an airplane crash.

But the story of the rise of bridge captivated him.

“It draws you in deeper and deeper, and as you consume it, it consumes you,” he said.

Pomerantz, who will discuss the book tonight during a free lecture at the Carter Center, outlined the elements of the tale:

Bridge entrepreneur:

“Culbertson knew how to advertise, how to market. In a sense, he was marketing sex and fear to housewives . . . This was the same decade when women got the right to vote. What he’s saying is, ‘The bridge table is the one place where, by dint of intelligence and skill, you can be your husband’s equal and more.’”

The couple:

“Jack Bennett – it comes out in the trial that this was not the first time he had struck his wife. That was one of the most memorable parts of my research, just feeling this systemic chauvinism . . . You feel the restlessness of housewives in America at that time, that they wanted more excitement, and more intellectual engagement.”

The 1920s:

“When we think of the ‘20s we think of the extremes: Al Capone, bathtub gin, the flappers. And here comes a very civilized game: four people sitting at a table, playing bridge. It shocked me to think that such a civilized pastime could emerge at such a breakout period.”

The game:

“Life is meant to be lived with a partner; I think it’s more fulfilling to live it that way, and so too with cards. [Bridge] is really about trying to achieve a certain unity with the person sitting across from you. It’s energizing, it’s at times terrifying, and it’s a timeless game.”