Audie L. Murphy Memorial Website Message Boards

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=dW ... rphy&hl=en

This was a business venture of his from the mid/late sixties I had never heard of before.

Christie:

Excellent post! My compliments!
My very first thoughts as I read the piece and the name "Stockblower" was the Audie had been conned by someone.
The name "Stockblower" is just too wierd! Anyway, I culled through licensed New York and California Companies of the era and can find no record of that Company.
Anyway, I used my National Database to search "Stockblower" and there is but one person (woman) in the entire Nation with that surname.
So, it is strange. In any case, I will say this; I am in close contact with someone (can't say who) who was very, very close to Audie throughout the mid-60's until Audie's death. They were very close and traveled together most of the time.
I will follow up with that person who is extremely talkative and who also is very cognizant and has excellent recall of times and events and see if he remembers this Company at all.
I also did check the name of the Florida Developement Commision Chairman C. Shelby Dale who is a retired attorney and found him still living but he is now 97 and I doubt he would have the ability to recall the event although I could be wrong. In any case, I have decided due to his age to not attempt to contact him on this story.
Did the name "Stockblower" strike you as odd as well?

Thanks,


Dave

_________________
"I believe in all the men who stood up against the enemy, taking their beatings without whimper and their triumphs without boasting. The men who went and would go again to hell and back to preserve what our country thinks right and decent."

I read it as "Slockbower", see also this paid article: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract. ... 5F438685F9

(the google search indicated Murphy and a Mr. Slockbower is mentioned here, but I can't buy it from this computer and be sure.)

There are lots and lots of Slockbowers in the Northeast, including a George P. Slockbower who in 1937 was made some kind of advertising manager at one of the major department stores in NYC. Based on my SSDI search, he would have been about 63 or 64 in 1967, and I suppose he could have been the Slockbower in question.

It WOULD be funny if the guy's name were "Stockblower" though.

Thank you for looking into this, as you're better positioned to do so than most if not all of us.

I know we're more concerned about the "business venture", BUT did you read the very last paragraph in the article about the impersonator on the St. Petersburg beach, supposedly impersonating Audie at the same time they were all there in Florida? I wonder who that was?

I guess it was significant enough to mention in the article..............


***Teri

Christie:


Thanks for the correction! My eyesight must be going as well. I am sooooo stupid! Anyway, you probably found the right one (George).
Thanks for the note.

Dave

_________________
"I believe in all the men who stood up against the enemy, taking their beatings without whimper and their triumphs without boasting. The men who went and would go again to hell and back to preserve what our country thinks right and decent."

I wish the picture was cleare, tho.

That part is weird, but not totally unprecedented...there was a case of someone impersonating him in Hawaii (I think) in the mid-fifties, and I skimmed through a biography of Murphy's rodeo friend Casey Tibbs (book was called "Born to Ride"), where Tibbs claimed that since he and Murph were about the same height and build and looked somewhat similar, they would trade identities when they flirted with women. That is, Audie Murphy would claim to be Casey Tibbs, and vice versa. They did this apparently because they found it funny-Tibbs claimed that at least one woman they encountered never did figure out who was who. I found myself wondering if Murph didn't do it and or allow it just to escape from his celebrity status as well, or to confuse the media.

How interesting! I've never heard about that before, but I bet in alot of autobiographies of his friends, there's alot to learn about what he did.

Thanks for sharing that story with me.

***Teri

If there's one thing I've learned in the 18-19 months I've been interested in Audie Murphy, it's that you never know where you're going to find a great Murph-related story. They're all over the place it seems like, only hiding.

On the I & S advertising agency, I managed to buy the NYT article and determine that the leaders were two men named Melvin R. Isaacson and Wayne C. Slockbower, that as of July 10, 1967, they were describing AM as "a new addition to their staff", and that they were teaming up with a Broadway production firm called Fryer, Carr and Harris Inc. to put on an industrial show for a client company called Uniroyal.

Christie,

This is fascinating as I had never heard of anything like this before where Audie was concerned. I too wish the photo had been clearer and I think it was neat that the Florida House and Senate honored him with resolutions while he was there. This was in 1967 so this is another example of how Audie was never forgotten in the South and remained a popular hero to many right up to his death. I wonder what ever became of this venture since it obviously never came to fruition for the 4 remaining years of his life. Thanks for finding this and putting it on for all of us to see. I agree with you that more unusual things on Audie keep popping up every week and just when you think you know it all about Audie something like this comes to light that none of us had ever heard of before.

Sharon

Well, here's what the memorably named Wayne C. Slockbower was up to in 1984: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/22/busin ... s-set.html

He was with a differently named, "tiny" ad agency called W. T. Waters by then, so make of that what you will. I can't tell for sure but both men seem to be deceased.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cG ... ator&hl=en

Here's part of an article dealing with the St. Petersburg impersonator of Murphy. From the reference to "Islanders" I think I'd read this article once before and gotten the impression the whole thing was going on in Hawaii (see my comments to Teri Edge, above). sorry for the mixup.

Christie,

Thanks for adding this to the thread. This was very bizarre indeed. If the guy was 26 how did people think in 1967 that he would be Audie Murphy who in 1967 would have been 43 years old? He must have been one good con man. And then the con was about a James Bond movie, the title being You Only Live Thrice and there would be a Bond film called You Only Live Twice but I think that one was with Roger Moore and made years later. It is amazing how gullible people are when it comes to "show business." This is probably why reality shows are so popular because everyday, ordinary people want a taste of the fame and good life they think celebrities enjoy. I wonder if anyone in St Petersburg told the real Audie someone was impersonating him and what he thought of it...........

Sharon

Unless Murphy instigated it, and I don't think he did, I'd have to guess that he was pretty annoyed when he found out. Hopefully the impersonator was well out of town by then.