Appendix B Biography: Hank Halstead

Henry Halstead was born November 16, 1897 in and died on March 19, 1984

As a young boy, Halstead learned to play violin. After studying the violin for 10 years, Hank Halstead turned professional when 19, playing clubs and hotels at the tables. In 1919, Henry Halstead played violin with 2 other men that went on to become famous Big Band Leaders, and.Gus Amheim The 3 young men played in a band together at the Sunset Inn in Santa Monica, California. Abe Lyman played drums and played piano. , not well known in America but later a ranking bandmaster in England, played the trumpet on occasion with them. Even early on Halstead dressed the part, a tuxedo was a must and he must have worn out a few of them over the next 20 years.

Henry Halstead was married to blues vocalist Marjorie Whitney. Marjorie went on to be the female singer in a group known as the King’s Jesters that played together in the 1930s. Marjorie died in 1994.

The early Henry Halstead Orchestra was enormously successful at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco during the early 1920s for about three years. This was the early days of radio, and the group had the good fortune to broadcast over the very powerful (for those days) KGO in San

8/20/2014 Appendix B 1 | P a g e Francisco. The orchestra was "on" for about an hour a night, six nights a week. As a consequence, his band became the best known organization in the western United States and Hawaii.

The band broke up in the late summer of 1925. Hank decided that he would go out on his own and form a new band, literally "hire a hall" and run his own enterprise.. The band consisted of: Ted Schilling, Glenn Hopkins, Ross Dugat, Ernie Reed, Chuck Moll, Abe Maule, Hal Chanslor, Zebe Mann, Phil Harris and Craig Leach. When they joined Halstead in Seattle the band was a huge success. In the spring of 1926, the Halstead band came to Los Angeles to play Miller's Lafayette. joined the band for this opening. He worked in the musical field through to the mid 1940’s.

Following their rise to national fame over the air and in the grill rooms on the West Coast, Henry Halstead and his band gained the reputation as being the "Favorite Band of Movieland". During his career as the West Coast's premier dance orchestra Hank Halstead's boys played for nearly all the movie people at their private entertainments.

Halstead was on the cover of Billboard Magazine’s issue of July 27, 1935 at that time he was known as Henry "Hank" Halstead and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra playing at the Hotel-Park Central, New York.

Time in Big Bear

Halstead's band went on to play extended residencies at hotels and clubs in Los Angeles, Seattle and Santa Monica up until early 1944 when he disbanded the orchestra because he was losing so many of his musicians to the war effort.

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Halstead first appears in the Big Bear Grizzly in September of 1945 as holding a Chamber of Commerce meeting at the Navajo Ballroom and Cathey Inn. He was part owner of the establishment with Sam Wong.

From a article in the April 12, 1946 Big Bear Grizzly, a birth announcement is made concerning Hank Halstead jr. and that Halstead sr already has a daughter. (No other photos or reference is made of them or of his wife during their time period in Big Bear.)

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In May of 1946 Halstead gives up his part ownership of the Club Navajo and buys into a partnership of the Big Bear Airport with it’s current lease holder, Etienne Noir, a Hungarian immigrant that was naturalized in April 1943. Noir was a pilot. Noir joined the US Army in November of 1942 but was then discharged in March of 1943. Noir had recently obtained a 10 year lease on the airport facility.

Halstead and Noir with an attorney formed a corporation named the Big Bear City Airport Inc. They had plans of bringing in tourists from Los Angeles by air. The mountain roads at that time were still difficult and time consuming. It is interesting to note that Halstead was not a pilot unlike the Devine, and Probert (also Parish), so this venture into the airport was purely a financial decision, and had nothing to do with “love of flying”.

Halstead invested heavily in the airport to make many of the improvements that can still be seen today. He worked closely with a local contractor Ross Dana, as can be seen in this front page Grizzly photo from May 24, 1946. (It is interesting to note that in this same May 24 edition of the Grizzly there is an article concerning Andy Devine buying a home in Big Bear and looking to build up his Los Angeles based airline charter service.) It is most likely though his relationship with Dana that Halstead later on meets Paul Parish and Perry Warren. Throughout the next several years Halstead appears in various airport and social gatherings as the lead person for the airport.

8/20/2014 Appendix B 4 | P a g e It is in March of 1947 that Andy Devine and Dick Probert who already had ownership of an airport in Los Angeles, bought into the Big Bear City Airport Inc. There is no mention of Etienne noir after this date. It can only be assumed that he was bought out or may have left due to the high amount of debt that was being incurred with the building of various airport facilities.

After a falling out with other partners in the Sportsman’s Tavern and the Big Bear Airport Halstead sells or gives up his part of the partnerships and leaves the Big Bear area. He moved to San Francisco where he booked talent at the St. Francis Hotel for a couple of years. After that he moved to Los Angeles and then later on to Phoenix where he acted as a booking agent. In his later years he got into selling resident real estate.

At some time during or after Halstead’s stay in Big Bear, Marjorie Whitney divorces him. Halstead marries for a second time to Mary Hawkinson in June of 1980 while living in San Diego.

In March of 1984 Hank Halstead dies while living in Hemet California.

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