If she’d have walked into any other Cadillac dealership in July of 1941 and paid cash for a brand new Series 62 convertible at the age of 21, eyebrows would have been raised higher than American flags.  But when Sheila Ryan walked into Hollywood Cadillac and did just that, it was just another day of selling cars and seeing stars.  Or potential starlets, anyway.

Born Katherine Elizabeth McLaughlin in Topeka, Kansas, when she left the wheat fields of Kansas and headed for the hills of Hollywood in 1939 she was deemed perfect for the burgeoning film and television industry.  Her looks stood out amongst a town of lookers.  Within a year, she was named one of thirteen “Baby Stars of 1940”.  In her earlier films her name appeared in the credits as Bettie McLaughlin.  The following year brought a new name, a new contract with 20th Century Fox, and a new car befitting her quickly earned place in Tinseltown.

Tank Tussleman, the salesman at Hollywood Cadillac, did all he could other than discount the convertible to try to bed the buyer, but found her defenses to be stronger than those of Pearl Harbor and had to settle for just a healthy commission.  A notch in his wood desk just off the showroom rather than one in the bedpost at his place at the Coronet apartments.

Sheila cut an imposing figure.  At 5’2” and 107 pounds, she was described in a 1940 newspaper story as one of a group of actresses  “whose alluring curves alone might have disqualified them from screen careers not so long ago.”  There was debate around the studio as to whether Sheila made the Cadillac look good or vice versa, but her raven hair paired well with the metallic blue curves of the Body by Fisher.  More than one male extra at the time admired the Flying Goddess hood ornament and compared it to the one behind the wheel.

Sadly, Sheila was soon to learn that life, careers, and success are never linear affairs, but rather a series of peaks and valleys.  In her case, the peaks were choice film roles in films like The Gang’s All Here, Great Guns, and several Charlie Chan movies.  The valleys included two failed marriages in three years.  By the late 40s, she and the Cadillac both had more miles on them than were thought to be dependable.  She went straight to a string of B-movies.  The Cadillac went to a used car lot.

By then just a used car, that could be picked up on the cheap, it was just the thing Charlie Stroer was looking for when he finally got hired on full time as third chair trumpet in Benny Goodman’s band.  Knowing the fickleness of the industry, Charlie knew he could easily end up living in the drop top coupe if he found himself without a gig or a girlfriend, so he appreciated the fact that he could stretch out in it if he needed to.  An added plus was the fact that it would almost make him look successful when he’d go back home to visit his folks in Alameda.  After all, it was a Cadillac, and a convertible at that.

His folks only got to see the Cadillac once.  Less than eight months after he bought it he lost it in a card game betting on what he thought was a sure hand.  What he wasn’t betting on was the fact that the guy across the table from him, a backup dancer on contract at MGM, was just as good at cheating at cards as he was doing the foxtrot.  Not one who liked to lose, much less to an underhanded backup dancer, Charlie neglected to give the Bunny-Hoppin’ card-cutter the title or spare set of keys, claiming he only had one set and the title was in a safe deposit box at the bank.

The next morning Charlie packed up what little he owned, looked up the address of the dastardly dancer in the White Pages in the phone booth on the corner and proceeded to steal his own car back.  Not wanting to see what the next move was in that Cha-Cha, he got in the Cadillac and kept on driving.  All the way to the other coast.  The Series 62 looked right at home in front of the best night clubs in The Big Apple, Charlie playing with some of the biggest bands of New York City for more than three years.  That was about when Charlie and the Cadillac headed south.

It seems that Theresa Thorensen, Sister Thelma’s cousin, was on a two week long vacation to NYC with a group of friends to celebrate their recent graduation from South Texas College of Theatrical Arts when she stumbled into Bop City, where Charlie was playing.  She immediately filled a hole in his heart he didn’t even know he had.  She sold her return ticket to Fort Stockton on the Greyhound Scenicruiser to some poor schmuck who thought oil wells were like trees, just waiting to be picked clean.  Marty Roth remembers helping Charlie and Theresa load up the Cadillac out front of the 3 Deuces and watching them pull away from the curb and head towards fate.

The fourth day on the road, Charlie and Theresa made it as far as Mobile, Alabama before she made him pull over and get a room at the Ramada Inn for the night.  Turns out the hole in his heart wasn’t a result of the love he’d been looking for.  It was an actual hole.  An undetected atrial septal defect he had since birth, but never was even aware of.  The unadulterated enthusiasm Theresa displayed there at the Ramada apparently put such a strain on his condition that what started out as a passionate round of doing the horizontal greased-weasel tango ended up in Charlie crossing the River Styx.

Theresa made arrangements there in Mobile for Charlie to be planted, not having a single clue if he had family or where they might be found.  The folks over at the Mobile Mortuary said the hardest part of the whole thing was getting the smile off his face for the viewing. “At least he went out with a bang, not a whimper,” the embalmer said.   It was a long drive back home to Fort Stockton in the Cadillac.  When she pulled into the driveway of her parents home, she was not the same woman she’d been when she left.

Theresa never married.  Never wanted to explain her past.  Feared another man falling prey to her apparent talents.  She got a job at Jim Bowie High School teaching Musical and Theatrical Arts, where she stayed for nearly fifty years.  Her production of Death of a Salesman raised eyebrows with how he died in the end, but got good reviews in Stockton Telegram-Dispatch, nonetheless.  

In the late 90s, with the advent of the internet, Theresa was able to research the history of the Cadillac using public records and was heartened that it had apparently always been owned by people in The Arts.  She still drove it to school every day, a reminder of just a few weeks of her life that charted a different course for her future.  She tracked down Charlie’s closest living relative in Alameda using an ancestry website.  “Charlie who?” they asked.  As she hung up she felt fairly certain they would not be making a trip to Alabama to pay their last respects.

“It’s been long enough now that I can share all this with you,” Sister Thelma told us all at The Grounds for Divorce a while back.  “She wouldn’t mind.  She just didn’t want folks at the Piggly Wiggly looking sideways at her if it got out while she was still alive.”

We all nodded.  So much information to digest all at once.  

“She said to sell the Cadillac on Bring-a-Trailer.  Donate the money to the Drama Club over at the high school for a production of Cabaret that will knock everyone’s socks off,” Sister Thelma told us all.

“Can’t afford the Cadillac, but I’ll kick in a Benjamin for the cause.  I’ll make it $500 if they’ll do HAIR instead,” Lucinda said as she refilled everyone’s Folgers.

“Too soon,” Sister Thelma said. “Too soon.”