Heavyweight - #26 Beverley and Van

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

Ashley’s grandmother, Beverley, had a hard life and an unhappy marriage. But she spoke frequently of a man named Van. Ashley believes Van was the great unfulfilled love of her grandmother’s life. And now, she wants to know: did Van feel the same way? Credits Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein. This episode was produced by Kalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane and BA Parker. Editing by Jorge Just. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Blumberg, Phia Bennin, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.  Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Charles Smith, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem?

Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Imagine being the first person to ever send a payment over the internet. New things can be scary and crypto is no different. It's new, but like the internet,

it's also revolutionary. Making your first crypto trade feels easy with 24-7 support when you need it. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken.com slash legal slash CA dash PRU dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada.

Is it today? Is it today? Happy birthday. It is really humbling for me to have to call you up on my own birthday. First of all, shut your mouth. Do you want to wish me a belated happy birthday? Because my birthday came and went without a word from you. No, no, but do you remember I left you a really heartfelt belated birthday wish? Was it really?

Oh, it was really something. I want you to know something about me and my birthday. Yeah. My birthday is my birthday. It's not my birth week. It's not my birth month. It's my birthday. If you don't get me on the day, don't bother. Don't bother. I'm not interested. Hey, can I ask you, so since it's my birthday, can I ask you

a question? Yeah. Do you do any celebrity impressions? I already regret calling you to wish you a happy birthday. Not to nitpick, but I'm the one who called you. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein,

and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Beverly and Van. Ashley comes to me with a love story. It begins like something straight out of the movies. A young woman meets a young man. They share a first kiss. They pledge their love. But then they marry other people

and live out their days apart. Then they die. And the credits roll. Ashley has never stopped wondering about this couple and why they never received their happily ever after ending. And this is because the young woman in the story was Beverly Kolam,

and she was Ashley's grandmother. Ashley and her grandmother were close. Ashley called her by an affectionate nickname. So she was a mamaw. Mamaw. That's her name. Mamaw.

You called her your mamaw. Mamaman. We called her our Maman, like with a W at the end. In the evenings, Maman and Ashley watched Jeopardy together, shouting their guesses at the TV. During commercials, they pressed mute and quietly read. For Ashley, everything her grandmother did was imbued with a certain glamour. She would roll her hair every evening, and I woke up really early as a kid, and I would help her take her pins out of her hair.

She was so cool. I just wanted to know everything about her. So they'd spend a lot of time talking about movies, the family, and boys. For Ashley, this meant sharing stories about her different crushes. But for Beverly, it only ever meant talking about one person. This man named Van. She would call him Van or My Van.

Beverly's life had been a hard one. Ashley knew her as a widow. But before then, she'd been trapped in an unhappy marriage, raising five kids essentially on her own. She was a serious woman, not given to sentimentality. But when she spoke Van's name, her face would light up. She met Van in New Orleans in the late 1930s. The two worked at the local newspaper.

Van was a salesman, Beverly an entertainment reporter. But when she talked about those days, no matter how big the stars and the stories she told, it was always Van who took center stage. And it was clear that, like, she had kind of set up the stories so that we would ask about him. Because, you know when someone tells you a story and you know that they're really into it,

and they want to tell it more? Yeah. She wanted to talk about him. Yeah. Sometimes the stories were nothing more than a choice detail, barely an anecdote. Van had blue eyes. Van favored vests.

The kind of non-stories one tells when one is in love. But Beverly always insisted that she and Van weren't in love. She said they were just friends. I mean, so, like, I think when

there's just such a disconnect, right? There's a disconnect with, like, how much she mentions him, and then how much she protests that, like, they're just friends. Ashley never bought the whole just friends thing, and she's always wanted to prove that it was more, that Beverly and Van's relationship was a great untold romance. Ashley says that in Beverly's old age, her musings about the past became increasingly frequent.

The family began to record these recollections so they'd have a record of Beverly's life. And in these recordings, the name Van pops up over and over again. I ask Ashley to play me the recordings so I can hear what she heard. The southern-accented delight in Beverly's voice. The romantic tenderness as she speaks of her van. As the tape begins, I'm amazed by the voice reaching out from the past. He had just been read as a book pod.

Amazed, that is, and offended as an audio producer by how crappy the sound quality is. Ashley tells me the family employed the questionable interview-qua-Watergate-bugging technique of hiding a dictaphone under a couch cushion. They believed that in this way, Beverly wouldn't know she was being recorded and grow self-conscious.

Ashley then had the tape transcribed. And then you told your grandmother, you were like, hey, surprise. Yeah. We were recording you and we transcribed this and she wasn't upset. She was touched. No, she hated it. Oh. She hated that we hadn't spell checked it.

There were like a lot of typos. Oh, that's what she took exception to, was the fact that there was bad spelling. It wasn't that you had actually, like, wiretapped her personal history or anything. Yeah. I remember, like, her even fixing them, like, circling them in, like, red pen.

Because the recording sounds like David Sedaris stuck in a gym locker, I ask Ashley to read the role of Beverly from her poorly spell-checked transcriptions. So when she first introduces him, she says, Van was a salesman at the time in the display advertising department of the paper, and we gradually became friends through encounters in the elevator halls and his frequent visits to the newsroom. So that's how she talked. This was not written language. No, that's how she talked.

People talked like that back then. A little copy editor in the mouth, red pen circling the jibber, crossing out the jabber. Van and Beverly developed an office flirtation, and eventually Van declared his true feelings about Charlie Wicker, a sports writer in the newsroom. Van stopped by my desk and abruptly asked, do you date Charlie Wicker? No, why? I replied, to which he explained, I've been wanting to ask you for a date for a long time, and I couldn't bring myself to date anyone who would go out with Wicker.

With Wicker out of the picker, Beverly and Van began to date, which led to their first kiss. For Beverly, all of 19, it was her first kiss ever. When Beverly shared the story of the kiss with Ashley, her granddaughter took it as proof positive of their romance. But Beverly corrected her, claiming that it wasn't a romantic kiss. She only kissed Van because she was so comfortable with him

and she wanted to see what kissing was like. According to Ashley, Van was something between a dance partner and a partner in crime, the Fred to Beverly's Ginger. He escorted her all over town. He nicknamed her Duck. When the U.S. entered World War II, Van enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed in North Africa. While overseas, he wrote to Beverly back home in New Orleans.

And after her death, Ashley discovered the correspondence. Beverly had kept the letters her whole life. So June 18th, 1944. Dearest Duck, it's about 5 p.m. here now, and I was thinking how nice it would be if I were in N.O. for the weekend. I would be just getting up in order to get dressed and pick you up for 1130 Mass. We would have a whole wonderful day in front of us. Of course, the highlight of the whole affair would be just being with you.

You are so close to my thoughts that it's sometimes difficult for me to realize that there are so many thousands of miles separating us. I would gladly spend $1,000 just to see you for 10 minutes, or even just to talk to you on the telephone. I'm thinking of you every minute of the day and night. Love you with all my heart. Van. Well, that really, I mean, that really sounds like a love letter. That's a love letter.

Yeah. It's a love letter. Ashley pulls out more letters. I might add to Duck that now, almost three years later, you look even prettier, and I thrill as much or more every time I see you. out more letters. Evidently, Ashley's not the only one who didn't buy the whole platonic routine. Here she is reading from the transcripts again. None of my friends or family could understand

how two people could see so much of each other and not be a hot romance. Everyone in the newsroom teased them constantly. Van's own mother was so eager for her son to propose to Beverly that she gave him an heirloom diamond ring to present to her. But Van never did present the ring to Beverly. He proposed to someone else.

After the engagement was announced, one of Van's close friends, Dick, approached Beverly conspiratorially. When Van became engaged to his first wife, Frances, Dick cornered me one night and told me that all I had to do was, quote, say the word, and the engagement would be off. But Beverly never did say the word. Poor Dick, Beverly said. He never could understand my and Van's relationship.

Beverly said. He never could understand Maya and Van's relationship. Not long afterwards, Beverly also became engaged. So she got a proposal from... From... Ashley struggles to remember the name, and I'm taken aback because the name is, in fact, that of her own grandfather.

A man named Llewellyn Bricken. It's funny that that's hard for me to remember, but he was from, like, a fancy family in Alabama. And she said yes. Growing up, I never heard stories of this guy, of my grandfather. Like, from my grandmother, nothing. Nothing good, nothing bad. Just, like, he was a ghost. The grandkids grew up knowing nothing about their grandfather,

but everything about Van, a man who had no role in the family. Ashley's older brother, Lloyd, remembers finding it all very confusing as a kid. I remember her talking about Van and being, like, confused about whether Van was Gamps, my grandfather.

Like, as if Van was Gamps at a younger age. His name had been Van earlier. It wasn't until age five that Lloyd discovered he even had a grandfather. The family never saw Llewellyn. He was always in his room.

On a visit to Beverly's house, Lloyd and his younger brother spotted a figure shuffling through a dimly lit hallway. So, the, like, who is that man? Terrified, Lloyd tried to tell his mother what he'd seen. My mother sat down, like, somberly, and she was like, that's your, his mother what he'd seen. My mother sat down somberly and she was like, that's your grandfather. Huh. Would you like to go and meet him?

Lloyd did not want to go meet him. Still, their mother ushered him and his baby brother into the bedroom where the man sat dozing in a chair. Lloyd's mother nudged Lloyd forward until he was almost up against his grandfather's knees. And she touches him on the shoulder and she says, Daddy? And his eyes open up. And she says, Daddy, I want you to meet your grandsons. And he seems a little disoriented. And he looks at us for some seconds.

And he says, when you get older, you need to go to Argentina. The most beautiful women in the world are in Argentina. And I swear to you, he just kind of goes back to sleep in the chair. And that was that. Ashley has always wondered why her grandmother chose Llewellyn, a ghost who gave unsolicited travel advice, over Van, the man she was meant to be with. So, I try to find out.

Hello, Jonathan, you're quite prompt. This is Lloyd and Ashley's mom, Knox, and being called prompt in that southern accent of hers makes me happier than a dead possum laying in the sunshine. While I can't say I've spent much time in the American South, I have seen a lot of foghorn leghorn cartoons, and so I try my best to respond in kind.

Just try to be on time, ma'am. Just try to be on time, ma'am. Okay. Whatever. This is Marion. I also phone up Ashley's aunt, Marion. Why do you think,

in the end, your mom chose your dad? Well, you know, when she would tell us, she said he was the smartest, had the cutest personality, the most fun, just could light up a room. You know, who knows

what makes people really fall in love. As a kid, I mean, did it seem as though it was a loving marriage? At first. At first, Llewellyn doted on Beverly, hiring a staff of people to look after their home. At first, Llewellyn was charming, the kind of guy who'd never drink at parties

so that he could drive everyone home. At first, it must have felt like Beverly was embarking on a wonderful life. And it must have felt terrible when it didn't last. My father wasn't happy about being wealthy. He wanted to be super wealthy. So he did a lot of investing in a lot of not very safe companies. And his wealth disappeared very rapidly. And he wasn't able to handle that.

And so he became an alcoholic and stayed an alcoholic his whole life. Llewellyn went from charming to mean. He was exceedingly violent toward our mother. Never was violent toward us, but he would wreck rooms, okay? Llewellyn lost everything, and thus, so did Beverly. She went tumbling from a life of luxury to one of struggle, forced to work two jobs in order to provide for five kids and a husband who sat in a room and drank all day.

Mother never threw him out. She did not believe in divorce. You know, she was a very strong believing Catholic. And she never looked back. Oh, I don't know. She never would have told us that.

She just said, you make your bed, you lie in it, and just made the best of everything. But to quote my podcast brother, Alex Baldwin, here's the thing. Through it all, Beverly still had Van. Even though they married other people and lived hundreds of miles apart, Van and Beverly remained close. Though neither Knox nor Marion ever met Van, they felt his presence all throughout their childhoods. Van's phone calls were frequent. Marion remembers how the spiral cord of the hallway phone

would snake into Beverly's bedroom when he called. We knew when Van called not to interrupt her. It was sort of like she was back in the good old days, like she was on a, I'm not saying on a date with him, but maybe like that. She normally talked to him at least once a month. They would joke. They would have conversations for hours if they wanted to. Over a course of how long was this the case?

Probably 40, 50 years. Oh my goodness. Many, many years. Yeah. Mother had gone through Francis' cancer and her death and supported him. That was his first wife? Yeah. And after when Van's wife died

and your dad died, why do you think Van and your mother didn't marry at that point? Oh, well, okay. These things did not happen at the same time. Okay. My father didn't die until mother was in her 60s. Van had already remarried. By the time Llewellyn died, Van had been remarried six years.

Beverly, for her part, never remarried, remaining stubbornly alone. To Ashley, it seemed the couple that was meant to be had missed their moment. And after that, the timing was never right. Ashley visited Beverly a few months before she died. Because she knew it always lifted her grandmother's spirits, she asked after Van.

She said that she hadn't heard from him in a while. And I told her that she should call him. And she refused. And her explanation to me at the time was that women don't call men. And I thought it was a joke, but she was serious. Yeah. And she never called him. Beverly and Van never spoke again.

And later that year, Beverly died. So Ashley is left with the burden of her grandmother's tale of what never was. And now, she wants to know if somewhere out there, there are people who share that sense of loss over a thing that never existed. She wants to find out if the same way Beverly's family had a van, Van's family had a Beverly. I just think like, did they hear about us? Do you know what I mean? Like, were we as important? Was my grandmother as important in, like, Van's stories? Or not? What would that bring? I think it would mean that she meant something. You know, that her life wasn't this kind of sad, like, struggle,

but that she had had, like, a bigger life than the life that I saw. That she was, winning, which beats even the the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino. Where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. I get to work researching Van's family tree. Maybe like Beverly, Van had a special relationship with one of his grandkids, someone he might have shared his heart with.

So I phone up his grandson, but in the way of romantic Beverly stories, someone he might have shared his heart with. So I phone up his grandson, but in the way of romantic Beverly stories, he doesn't have much to offer. Next, I email his granddaughter, who writes back, My interactions with my grandfather were sparse and perfunctory. I love and respect him dearly,

but that's just how it was. I actually have some regret about this now that he is gone and I am older. Hello? Hi, is this Webby? Yes. Hello, is this Debbie? Yes.

I decide to move up the family tree to Van's daughters, Debbie and Webby. Debbie owns her own store. I'm in the middle of Will and then Dale. And Webby works in design. Is it web design? Interior design. Oh, because I thought it would be fun if you're...

because you do web design and your name is Web. No. I want to know if Beverly Kolam was a presence in their lives. And so I put the question to them with an elegant economy. Um, uh, Beverly? Oh, Beverly that he used to date way back then? Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, he referred to her often. I was crazy about Beverly. And I just know that he really, really liked her. As soon as you hear the name, it just brings back, you know, a warmth. I'm hoping to find some proof of an abiding romance

that I can share with Ashley. But Webby and Debbie don't have many Beverly anecdotes. So I ask who else might be able to illuminate what Van and Beverly meant to each other. Who is

alive that would still remember that? They're all gone. Webby tells me that if Van were still alive, he'd be more than a hundred years old. His brothers, his war buddies are all gone. His youngest daughter, who he was closest with,

died young. I talked to a couple of Van's sons-in-law. No dice. But it occurs to me that Van has one last family relation who might remember Beverly. Someone, in fact, who might have been in the house

puttering around in the background during those marathon telephone calls. What about your stepmother? Oh, I haven't talked to her since I split up. That ended badly. We don't even talk about the stepmother. Oh, God, I wish it had been Beverly. Van was married to his second wife, Barbara, for 25 years.

Towards the end of Van's life, Debbie remembers showing up one day to their home in New Orleans. I walked in the house and she had him walking around with a diaper on, with a robe open while she had three other people playing cards, playing bridge. And I said, that's the end. You know, I just started taking over. I was horrified. I mean, I quit my job, everything. I mean, because's the end. You know, I just started taking over. I was horrified. I mean, I quit my job, everything. I mean, because I was the one...

Anyway. Van was showing signs of dementia, and his health was deteriorating rapidly. After that visit, Debbie decided to move in. It was around this time, a time when Van might have most wanted to hear Beverly's voice, that he'd stopped phoning. And so for the first time in 50 years,

Beverly and Van were going at life without each other. All possibly because Van had forgotten her phone number. And then came Hurricane Katrina. Those last months of his life were really very tough. Yeah. Very, very tough from Katrina because he died in October. The storm, of course, was in August. His wife, she moved out when he was dying.

That had to have been very hard for your dad. Very hard. She left him alone at his worst time of need. So we all gathered around him, and we had his three girls, and he was happy enough. But, you know, yeah, where's my wife? Hello? Hi. This is Jonathan Goldstein speaking. Oh, yes, Jonathan. Hold on. I'm going to hand the phone

to my mother. Okay, hello. Hi, Mrs. Bailey. Fine, fine. I hope I can be some help, but I don't know if I can. Van's second wife, Barbara, is now 93, and she experienced the end of Van's life differently than his daughter's. Around the time of Katrina, Barbara was almost 80. She was scared and wanted to leave New Orleans,

but couldn't get Van to leave with her. Katrina was just terrible. I couldn't handle Van. He was ill and had to be helped in and out of bed and everything, and Debbie was there doing that. And so I couldn't take him. I wanted to leave. I wanted to evacuate. And they didn't want to evacuate. And I couldn't take, they wouldn't go with me to my brother's. And they

were just going to stay there. And of course, then they got caught. In the end, Van couldn't even be buried. All the cemeteries in New Orleans were flooded. It was a mess. You know, there was a lot of Katrina that we wished didn't happen. Most of Van's keepsakes were destroyed in the hurricane. So while Beverly's family has letters and photographs, Van's family has nothing.

The record of his inner life is rapidly disappearing. I asked Barbara if the name Beverly means anything to her. I remember the name. The name was very familiar, but I don't remember anything else, really. And in fact, thinking about it, I don't remember hearing a lot about Van's life with the paper. Barbara married Van in 1980. Van was 60 years old. His newspaper days far behind him.

Being a second wife, you don't talk about the old time with the other wife. You know what I'm trying to say? Yeah, I can imagine that. That would make sense. Was this a second marriage for you as well? Yes, yes. How did you guys meet? Well, we met, my daughter Becca and his daughter Debbie were friends. Okay.

And I was having a party and Debbie said, would I invite her daddy? And so I did. This is my favorite story. And then at the end of the evening, she said, why don't you ask Ms. Rutledge to dinner? And he said, which one is she? And I had been his hostess. He was at my house. And he says, which one is she?

How would you describe the courtship? I guess you'd say low-key, you know. Yeah. I don't know if your second husband is ever the great love. You know what I'm trying to say? Is there someone, when I do say, like, the great love of your life, is there someone that comes to mind? Well, I was in love with my first husband.

Yeah. And I won't say that I didn't love Van, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like young love. Yeah. He liked her a lot, but he didn't love her in the way he loved my mother. This is Webby again. She says that like Barbara, Van's feelings for his second spouse couldn't compare with the kind of love you can feel when you're young.

It wasn't the romance of a lifetime, but he was a man and he loved her and he didn't want to be alone. On the subject of young love and romance of a lifetime, I bring up Beverly again, presenting a theory that Van and Beverly were in love and meant to be, but that Beverly had chosen the wrong suitor. She'd refused Van until it was too late. He was not shot down by Beverly.

That I know. Uh-huh. I mean, the sense that I get from... He never indicated that he was in love with Beverly Kolon. There was something deep between them, but it wasn't love and marriage and baby carriage. Do you have any sense of why that was, why they didn't end up going in that direction?

Well, haven't you had a friend that you adore but you're not in love with? Sure. There you have it. Because if it was not that way, they would have been married. Even the letters Van wrote Beverly during the war are taken differently than Ashley had taken them.

I think this was all pre my mother was Beverly and Van. You know, they were that was before he met my mother. The reason Webby and Debbie don't have much in the way of Van and Beverly anecdotes might be because they just never needed them. They're not invested in unearthing some great love story for Van

because they believe he already had one. With their mother. Whereas Beverly and Llewellyn had a bad marriage, Van and Frances had a good one. You've had some water? I've had a lot of coffee, and I've had a lot of coffee. And you will have coffee. I will.

Should you choose to have some. Having talked to everyone I could, I get back in touch with Ashley. So we talked with Webby and Debbie, and then I spoke with... I tell her that while I couldn't find anything to support a romance, that didn't mean Beverly wasn't important to Van's family. I explain how instantly everyone recognized Beverly's name. ...knew your grandmother's name. That had resonance for them, yeah.

And there are two other things I'd come to learn during my conversations with Van's family. The first comes from Webby. Well, she was my godmother. Who was? Beverly. Over the years, Van's wife, Frances, became close friends with Beverly, too. And Van and Frances wanted Beverly to remain connected to their family forever.

They made her my godmother. You know, that's quite an honor to bestow upon a friend, to ask them to do that for your firstborn. Oh, my gosh. You didn't know about this, right? This is news to you? No, I didn't know anything. I didn't know.

No. No idea. Yeah, no idea. And my grandmother was pretty—her faith was really important to her. And I am sure that that meant the world to her. I'm sure she took that really seriously. And then there's the second thing I learned. A small, strange thing that I'm not even sure is a thing.

Throughout my conversations with Van's family, there was one oddly specific Beverly and Van story that everyone seemed to know. In fact, it was the only story they all seemed to know. No matter who I spoke to, kids, grandkids, sons-in-law, it kept

popping up again and again. Back in their newspaper days, Van escorted Beverly to the showbiz party she reported on, and they met the biggest stars of the day. Among them? Mickey Rooney. Mickey Rooney, who appeared in more than 300 films over the course of an 88-year career. Mickey Rooney began as a child star, appearing in a half dozen movies opposite his friend Judy Garland. But, according to Vanity Fair, he was also, quote,

the original Hollywood train wreck. One who, by the accounts of Van's family, train wrecked his way into Van and Beverly. I just heard one story about Mickey Rooney at one of the parties. I know he was disappointed in Mickey Rooney. I remember him saying something along the lines, Every telling is slightly different, but all of the stories have one thing in common. Something crude and lewd, sexually lewd, to a woman at the party. He was making crass remarks. Crass remarks in the presence of Van's date for the evening, one Beverly Kolom.

And my father went over there and kind of pulled him by the collar and said, you say that again and I'm going to knock you out. I do recall him saying something like, I punched that guy right in the nose one time. You know, coward over him, my father was 16, so he was much bigger. He said he had to be restrained not to want to throw him out the window. Do you know who Mickey Rooney is?

Oh, um, yeah, my grandmother hated him. That's hilarious. She really hated Mickey Rooney? Do you know why? No, no. Every person that I spoke to practically from Van's family had a story that involved Van, your grandmother, and Mickey Rooney. Stop it. grandmother and Mickey Rooney. Stop it.

No, I'm not kidding. Some variation on it. Because, you know, so he was her escort, and there was a Hollywood party. I searched for newspaper coverage of this fight between Van and Mickey Rooney. And while I didn't find that exactly, I did find an article Beverly wrote about a big celebrity party in New Orleans in the fall of 1943. The exact party where she and Van would have met Mickey Rooney and where Mickey Rooney would have met Van's

fist. Found some of your grandmother's articles? Oh, you did? Have you ever read any of them? Never. Here, take a look. Oh my god! Ashley gazes down at the article, a big smile on her face. Movie stars are all a twinkle as they go out to do the town.

Ooh. If you didn't already know, the mass of film fans jamming the Roosevelt soon made it plain. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were on the scene. I mean, look, at least she reserved her personal feelings about Mickey Rooney from the paper, right? She was a journalist. And so am I. A journalist, that is. I am too a journalist. Which is why I read, in its near entirety, Mickey Rooney's autobiography, Life is Too Short. A fun bit of wordplay as Mickey was a scant 5'2 in his stockinged feet. I searched for confirmation of his having scuffled with the 6' tall van, and while I learned that Mickey was born on a dining room table

and that he was once visited by an angel while eating breakfast at Harris Casino, there's no mention of a party in New Orleans in 1943. Hello, this is Kelly. Kelly Rooney? Hi, Jonathan. And so, I phone up Kelly, Mickey Rooney's daughter. I explain how her father might be the leading man in the most prevalent story anyone has about Van and Beverly.

And Van got into, I guess, an altercation with your father. Uh-oh. And so I guess I was just wondering, like, how likely does that seem to you? I hadn't heard of that situation, but I had heard of situations where my dad had been in heated discussions. Like it wouldn't be so out of the ordinary that perhaps your father... Yes, exactly. Exactly. You know, my dad was a force to be reckoned with. So I don't doubt that maybe he could have gotten into a ruckus with somebody.

Kelly was born well after the van incident. Her mother was Mickey Rooney's fifth wife. He was married eight times in total. He spent his whole life hoping that the next marriage would be the one where the love would stick. But Mickey ended up spending his final years alone. By the end of his life, he'd arrived at a simple conclusion about why to be with someone that he passed on to his children.

My sister said to him one time, Dad, you know, I'm getting divorced. And he says, well, let me ask you something. Did you love him? And she said, yes, Daddy, I did. I loved him. And he says, well, did you like him? Did you like the way he treated you? Did you like the way he treated you? Did you like the way he treated others?

And he really taught us that it's not about all the I love you babies and the sex and this and that. He said, you really have to be in like. His relationship with Judy Garland, that was never romantic? No, I don't believe so. I mean, they met so young. Yeah. You know, we used to ask him that. Why didn't you marry Judy?

He said, well, it would have been like marrying my sister. He said, I was in love with her. I was in like with her. She was my world. So I felt, I mean, he really loved her. He really loved her. And he would have done anything to have tried to save her. And did try to.

Judy Garland died at the age of 47 from a drug overdose. In Life is Too Short, Mickey writes of Judy, It seemed as if we'd known each other forever. That we were destined to be best friends. Mickey would take Judy out for chocolate malts to cheer her up. He'd answer the phone when she called at 3 a.m. Anytime, Judy, he said. You call, and I'll be here for you.

It's always been that way. Like Judy and Mickey, Van and Beverly had been just friends. Only, it wasn't just friends. For a man and a woman, especially at that time, to have a friendship that spanned decades and great distance, war and marriages and children, was a rarer thing than a mere

romance. And maybe that's why no one believed Beverly when she said they were just friends. So while the story of Beverly and Van might not be the love story Ashley was hoping for, Beverly Kolam had been loved. There's something really big about someone who knows you so well and continues to want to know you. Can you imagine that?

No. I think it's really hard to stick with people through their many iterations in life. Right? It's really hard to meet somebody at 16 and be with them as they change into a totally different person by, I mean, I'm only, I'm 33, right? Have you already seen this even at 33? Yeah, of course. I mean, there are people that, like, I loved so much. And we don't have much in common anymore. I think it was the biggest relationship of her life. You know, you began this thing,

imagining this great untold love story and wanting to actually learn about it. Yeah, I don't care about the love story anymore. I really don't. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good with the multi-year friendship. I'm just so happy that they had each other. How lucky these people were, Van and Bev.

Beverly's life was a struggle. She would come home exhausted after a long day of work, and there would be five mouths to feed, and Llewellyn drunk. But then, the phone would ring, and Beverly would smile and duck into the other room. And there, reaching out from hundreds of miles away, was her van.

It was always that way. අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home home now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit take this moment to decide if we meant it if we tried or felt around

for far too much from things that accidentally touch. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Kalila Holt and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Stevie Lane and B.A. Parker. The show is edited by Jorge Just. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Fia Benin, and Jackie Cohen.

Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight, or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. To see a picture of Beverly and Van, Thank you. If you listen anywhere else, please don't tell my boss, Alex.