November 28, 1942: One of the worst fires in American history struck the Cocoanut Grove in Boston.
The Grove was located at 17 Piedmont Street, a few blocks south of Boston Common, and was one of the Hub City's most popular nightspots. It hosted Big Band music, and was basically Boston's version of New York's Copacabana Club. Mayor Maurice Tobin was a frequent visitor.
Maurice J. Tobin
The downside was that it was Mobbed up. Barney Welansky, a lawyer who inherited ownership of the club from a former client, bootlegger Charlie "King" Solomon, used his connections, both with the law (he and Tobin were friends) and outside the law to stay open. He was breaking fire laws left-and-right: Some exit doors were locked to prevent unpaid entry (or leaving without paying your tab), the palm-tree decor was flammable, and, with freon rationed for the war effort, the air-conditioning used flammable methyl chloride gas.
November 28 was the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, and a lot of servicemen who hadn't yet gone overseas had passes and had gone home. The Grove's headliner that night was Arthur Blake, a popular comedian known for his impersonations, especially of women. (Actress Bette Davis, singer Carmen Miranda, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt were specialties.) It was a barely-kept secret that he was gay, and he was so good a performer that nobody who watched him seemed to care. Basically, he was a drag queen who still wore a tuxedo.
"To Stuart and the Great dancers, great people,
great guys, great wardrobe, great guns
& all a haul Love -- Arthur Blake"
So the capacity of 460 people was easily surpassed, possibly even doubled to more than 1,000. Ironically, Welansky was not among them: He was recovering from a heart attack at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he would be joined by some of the surviving victims.
The fire started at 10:15 PM. The official cause was never determined: The Boston Fire Department decided that the leading theory, that a busboy lighting a match to give himself more light to replace a light bulb, and insufficiently extinguishing it, was probably not the cause. Nevertheless, a drape caught fire, and with all the flammable material in the place, the fire spread very quickly.
Being an Atlantic port city, and thus considered a possible target for Nazi sabotage, Boston had been heavily preparing for what would now be called a "mass casualty event," repeatedly rehearsing emergency drills. A city of many renowned hospitals, including Massachusetts General, had its ambulances, blood banks and burn treatment centers on alert, which probably saved some lives and made some recoveries quicker.
But there were 492 deaths. It was the 2nd-deadliest single-building fire in American history. In 1903, the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago burned and killed 602. Technically, those are still the 2 worst: More of the victims of the World Trade Center attack died as a result of the buildings collapsing than from the fires inside.
One of the Cocoanut Grove victims was Buck Jones, an actor known for his Western movie roles, who allegedly pulled someone out of the burning building, rushed back in to see if he could save anyone else, did save a second person, went back in to see if he could save a third, and never made it out. He died from his burns 2 days later, at the age of 50.
The story that Jones went back to save someone was spread by John Wayne, who called Jones his role model for Western acting, but it has never been proven. One legend that is true is that, in his last film, Dawn on the Great Divide, he sang the hymn "Rock of Ages" over an open grave, providing some unintentional foreshadowing.
The tragedy could have been far worse. Boston College began the day as the Number 1-ranked football team in the country. Coached by Denny Myers, led by running back Mike Holovak, who finished 4th in the voting for the Heisman Trophy, and playing all their games at Fenway Park, they were 8-2.
Mike Holovak
They played the team that was then their arch-rival, The College of the Holy Cross, of nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, at Fenway. They were expecting to be invited to the Sugar Bowl to play for the National Championship. And BC had scheduled a victory party at the Grove.
But Holy Cross crushed the Eagles, 55-12. Mayor Tobin, a BC graduate, canceled the party, so the BC players didn't show up. He was so disgusted, he didn't even go himself. Had he gone, he might have been among the victims.
BC dropped to Number 8 in the next poll, but were still invited to the Orange Bowl in Miami. They lost to Alabama, 37-21. After winning their 1st 8 games by an average score of 32-3, they lost their last 2 by an average of 46-16. They would be a college football afterthought for the next 40 years, until Doug Flutie arrived.
The Suffolk County District Attorney randomly selected 19 victims, and charged Welansky with 19 counts of manslaughter. He was convicted on all counts the next year, and was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. Tobin, who had been elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1944, learned in 1946 that Welansky was dying of cancer, and commuted his sentence, so his old friend could die as a free man. Welansky told reporters, "I wish I'd died with the others in the fire." He joined the victims a few weeks later.
The remnants of the Cocoanut Grove were torn down in 1944. Urban renewal has changed the former Bay Village neighborhood tremendously. Part of the footprint of the Grove is now under the Revere Hotel. The rest is covered by condominiums, with an address of 25 Piedmont Street.
Maurice Tobin served as U.S. Secretary of Labor in President Harry Truman's 2nd term. He died in 1953, just 6 months after leaving office. In 1967, the Mystic River Bridge, connecting Charlestown with downtown Boston, was renamed the Maurice J. Tobin Memorial Bridge.
Arthur Blake lived until 1985, having outlived his stardom, but still had a successful nightclub act until the end.
Denny Myers remained head coach at Boston College until 1950, and died in 1957. Mike Holovak went off to World War II, then played for the Los Angeles Rams in 1946, and the Chicago Bears in 1947 and '48. He succeeded Myers as BC's head coach, leading them from 1951 to 1959. When the American Football League was founded in 1960, he was named running backs coach for the Boston Patriots under head coach Lou Saban, father of Nick Saban. Lou left in the middle of the next season, and Holovak served as the Patriots' head coach until 1968, getting them into the 1963 AFL Championship Game.
He continued to work in the NFL, including serving as the New York Jets' interim head coach at the end of the 1976 season, after the disastrous hiring of Lou Holtz. From 1981 onward, he worked in the front office of the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans franchise, building the "House of Pain" Playoff team of the late 1980s and early '90s, and the team that won the 1999 AFC Championship. He died in 2008.
Only 2 people who were inside the Grove that day, 80 years ago, are known to still be alive. Both are now 98 years old: Joyce Spector, then attending a secretarial school; and Robert Shumway, then a student at a nearby prep school. Shumway had gone to the BC-Holy Cross game at Fenway Park.
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November 28, 1942 was a Saturday. Eric Shinseki, a 4-star General in the U.S. Army who served as Secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Barack Obama, was born on this day.
Most college football teams had already finished their seasons, but not all:
* Number 5 Georgia beat Number 2 Georgia Tech, 34-0 at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia.
* Number 10 Tennessee beat Vanderbilt, 19-7 at Dudley Field (now FirstBank Stadium) in Nashville.
* Number 16 Mississippi State beat Mississippi (Ole Miss), 34-13 at Scott Field in Starkville, Mississippi.
* Number 17 Auburn beat Clemson, 41-13 at Auburn Stadium (later renamed Jordan-Hare Stadium) in Auburn, Alabama.
* Michigan State played Oregon State to a 7-7 tie, at Macklin Field (later Spartan Stadium) in East Lansing, Michigan.
* Kansas State beat Nebraska, 19-0 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
* Rice beat Baylor, 20-0 at Municipal Stadium in Waco, Texas.
* Washington and Washington State played to a 0-0 tie at Husky Stadium in Seattle.
* And Navy beat Army, 14-0 at Thompson Stadium on the campus of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
Ohio State went 9-1, but, until the 1946 season, the Big Ten Conference Champion was not guaranteed a place in the Rose Bowl, or any other bowl game. Georgia won the Southeastern Conference Championship, and won the Rose Bowl to complete an undefeated season. The national polls were divided between Ohio State and Georgia for the National Championship.
Baseball was out of season. There was no NBA yet. But there were 2 games played in the NHL that day. The New York Rangers lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 8-6 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. And the Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 6-2 at the Montreal Forum.
Also, Arsenal defeated Charlton Athletic, 3-0 at White Hart Lane. During World War II, Highbury, Arsenal's stadium in North London, was appropriated for the war effort, so they played their home games at The Lane, home of their arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur.
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