What’s a girl to do? Home alone, hubby at the garage getting all greasy and nasty. Time for an afternoon tryst with Mr.Handsome from down at the workplace. He brought the hooch, she brought the gun. You know how these things go. One thing leads to another until Harry gets shot in the back while putting on his coat and hat. Beulah May Annan, nee Sheriff out of Owensboro, Kentucky. Came to Chicago with second husband Al in 1920. Chitown, where the action is.
Harry Kalstedt was married and had a kid but this was the roaring twenties, hubba hubba. Times are good, Al’s raking in 60 smacks a week. Like the man said, though, the best of times, the worst of times. A girl can’t even take a lover without it going sour. He has a conscience or something, maybe another squeeze. Says he’s gonna leave her flat, she’s having none of that. Things get said. She calls him a four-flusher and a jailbird. That does it. He grabs his hat and coat, she grabs the gun and pow, take that buddy.
But Harry doesn’t go quietly. Oh no. He drags it out. Poor Beulah has to sit there four hours watching him bleed. It’s awful. Luckily, there’s still wine left and the phonograph. Her favorite song is “Hula Lou”, “the gal who can’t be true”, “she has more sweeties than a dog has fleas”, “you oughta see her shake her BVDs”. Beulah plays it over and over. Finally Kalstedt can’t take it any longer and croaks.
Beulah calls Al. Hi Sweetie, you should come home. I just killed a man, in our bedroom, defending my honor. Al, uxoric to a fault, rushes home, tells the cops he did it. They look at him, look at her, look around at the empty wine bottles and don’t buy what Al is selling. Cops are so cynical.
So Beulah May becomes “Cook county’s most beautiful slayer” and the “girl with the man-taming eyes”. Here’s a pic. Warning: untame men should not gaze directly into her eyes without a pinhole viewer or number 14 welder’s goggles.
After Al’s confession didn’t work Beulah used the multiple choice approach to explain what happened. She shot him because
A. He was trying to make love to her and she had to save her honor
B. He was going to leave her, for his wife no less
C. He was a meany and scolded her for doing things she shouldn’t do
D. She was pregnant and I guess you have to shoot your lover when you’re pregnant
E. No reason, accompanied by a dreamy smile
Whatever the reason or reasons, after an hour or so of drinking an argument ensued. She called him “Billy, the boy with an auto”. Doesn’t seem so bad these days but back then, a real zinger. Long story short, there was a gun on the bed (naturally) and they both reached for it. When the prosecuting attorney asked Beulah why Billy didn’t get the gun first she said, “Darned good reason. I shot him”. That explains that.
She caught him as he fell to the floor. His hands and face were soft but she didn’t feel anything else, like a pulse, because he was “so bloody”. Well, these things are awfully messy.
For the record, she shot him around 2PM and he died a little before 6, when Beulah finally called Al. Speaking of Al, he was pretty shook up. According to Maurine Dallas Watkins, who totally objectively wrote the story for the Chicago Tribune, Beulah “posed prettily for the photographers, but her husband hid his face with his rough, scarred hands”. The .38 was his and I have been unable to find out why it was on the bed. Maybe that’s where Al kept it. Pretty handy for certain situations.
He told the cops “I’ve been a sucker, that’s all! Simply a meal ticket! I’ve worked ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day and took home every cent of my money. We bought our furniture for the little apartment on time and it was all paid off but a hundred dollars. I thought she was happy.” Then he spent his savings on the best lawyers in town. Love’s that way.
Ms. Watkins reported the trial under the heading “Tells Sordid Story”. She said Beulah was “Beautiful – but not dumb”. She said Beulah “answered the questions in child-like southern voice, pleading eyes to jury and attorney”. Hey, maybe that’s just how she talked. Poor little cutie. All these city slickers harassing her. Gee whiz. Twenty three skiddoo.
Once Beulah had been in the hoosegow a few days and dried out she could better recount what had actually happened. In this version Kalstedt had dropped by in the morning trying to borrow six dollars for booze. He returned in the afternoon with two quarts of moonshine. Some accounts say wine, some moonshine, some gin. Hey, hooch is hooch. And never you mind where he got the money. Maybe he robbed a bank. This was Chicago in the roaring twenties, remember?
Time we went to the transcripts:
BEULAH: I saw he was drunk and begged him to go but he refused, and asked me to take a drink first. So I did—just to get him to leave.
(That usually works of course, but unaccountably…)
BEULAH: But still he wouldn’t go, though I begged him to, told him my husband might come home and that he would shoot us both.
(He keeps his gun on the bed.)
BEULAH: He said, “To hell with your husband!” Then he insisted that I take another drink and I did.
(Naturally.)
BEULAH: Then he said “Let’s have a little jazz” and we played the Victrola.
(Well, they didn’t have a live band there, for pete’s sake.)
BEULAH: And then, he said, “Come on into the bedroom” and I refused and begged him to go. And finally I told him…
At this point Ms. Watkins tells us that Beulah “faltered, and sent an appealing glance to her attorney.” And who can blame her? This is emotional stuff. Raw, ripped from the headlines. Ms. Watkins goes on, “She closed her eyes a moment, then bravely went on”:
BEULAH: I told him of my—delicate condition. But he refused to believe me—and boasted that another woman fooled him that way and that he had done time in the penitentiary for her. And I said “You’ll do another!” And he said, “You’ll never send me back!” And I said, “I’ll call my husband! And he’ll shoot us both!”
Boy, I’m on the edge of my seat now.
And then, in this version, when they both went for the gun, Kalstedt got it first. That’s one of those plot twists you hear so much about. Then he put up his hand and threatened to kill poor Beulah. And then?
BEULAH: He started toward me, and I pushed his shoulder with my left hand—and shot.
OK, so it’s a bit disjointed. The lady’s under a lot of stress here. All these nosy men. When the prosecution ungallantly reminded her of her previous, supposedly contradictory, statements, she couldn’t quite remember them. Ms. Watkins says she replied to these questions “with a childishly petulant, ‘I don’t remember’”.
Ms.Watkins says Beulah’s attitude was “’That’s my story and I’ll stick to it.’ And stick she did, till she “stepped down demurely from the witness stand with the settled complacency of a school girl who has said her her piece.”
That is some straight up reportage right there.
The prosecution seemed to feel obliged to point out a few things they termed “inconsistencies”: that a woman should try to “soothe” a man who was threatening to attack her by drinking with him; that he knew where the gun was—in a totally strange house; that he was shot in the back.
Yada yada yada. You know how these lawyers are.
They finished with this bon mot: “You have seen that face, gentlemen. It’s probable that she hadn’t had many men tell her to ‘go to hell,’ and that was why she went for the gun!”
Hey, why should the prosecution make any more sense than the defense?
Well, back to Ms. Watkins:
“Beulah, the tender hearted slayer, broke into gentle sobs. She had played the Victrola while the man she murdered lay dying, she had laughed at the inquest, she had sat calm and composed [during the] descriptions of the crime but she broke down when she heard her attorney’s impassioned account of the suffering she had undergone at the hands of the police and assistant state’s attorneys”. Makes a fella feel all funny inside.
“And again, she was overcome with emotion when Mr. O’Brien painted the picture of ‘this frail little girl struggling with a drunken brute’—and the jury shook their heads in approbation and chewed gum more energetically.” Well, yeah. Us men aren’t made of stone y’know.
The prosecution closed with “The verdict is in your hands and you must decide whether you will permit a woman to commit a crime and let her go because she is good looking”.
Sit down now, because you’ll never guess what happened. It took nearly two hours for the jury of twelve men, tried and hetero to return a verdict of “Not guilty”.
And weren’t Beulah May and Al just plumb tickled! You bet they were! It was swell! “O, I can’t thank you!” said Beulah May. “Flashing a glance at each [juryman] as she pressed his hand”.
“I knew my wife would come through all right!” said Al proudly. Here’s a pic of the happy couple. That’s Al on the right, their lawyer on the left and two dudes in the back just punking the photo op.
The very next day Beulah May announced “I have left my husband. He is too slow.” Poor Al. To think he learned about women from her.
Well, the story would not be complete without mentioning that Maurine Watkins wrote a play about all this, made millions, and then Bob Fosse made the movie “Chicago” and Beulah May ended up being Rene Zellweger.
Oh, and one last note. Being a four-flusher has nothing to do with how big a dump you took. In poker a flush is five cards of the same suit. When you only have four of them and bluff that you have all five, you’re a four-flusher.
