Talk:Lora Crozetti

Identifying Lora Crozetti

This conversation on Wikipedia suggests 'Lora' may have been a nickname or pen name for Ruth.

If so (and I think this pans out), I believe she was born 18 May 1913 as Ruth Gentry Warner to Harry William Warner and Evelyn A. Dae Roberson (née Morgan), who moved from LA to Wisconsin around 1947 with her daughter Mrs. Ruth Krozetti. It looks like she went there to take care of her mom, because in the 1950 census she was back with husband Jay and daughter Jeannette M[argaret].

The 1944 LA County voter list included a Mrs Lora Ruth Crozetti, which ties the first names together.

And Shangri L'Affaires mentioned that "Introduced as '3 generations of fans' were Lora Crozetti, her Mother—Mrs Eva Roberson, and her daughter—Jeanne Crozetti."

So I think Lora Crozetti was Lora Ruth Gentry (née Warner) Crozetti (18 May 1913–24 November 1980), buried with her husband Jay Crozetti (4 August 1915–8 Nov 1952). And I think she was also the author of The Widderburn Horror.

Which... if this Ancestry family tree is accurate, means she was also the sister of Helen Finn.

This is a lot to digest. I welcome comments before any of this goes on her main page. Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 10:39, 16 March 2023 (PDT)

Wow! Impressive research! Unfortunately, I cannot see your Ancestry links (do they have any way to do sharable permalinks? Otherwise, you have to be a member). The rest seems quite valid. The Crawford connection is another clue. —Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 11:12, 16 March 2023 (PDT)

I've put those documents in a Google Photos album for now; not sure if they ought to stay online at that link forever, but you should be able to see them yourself, at least long enough to make copies if you want them. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 11:45, 16 March 2023 (PDT)

Impressive indeed, my hat off. Let me just add here that the Wikipedia discussion was based on Google Books' scan of "Luna Monthly, Issues 13-31, 1970" – alas, the main Google's indexing is not enough to find the exact issue on Fanac.org; Books claims it to be page 10, but it certainly isn't #13 (which seems to have had rather worse typesetting than that snippet). Still, identifying it "by hand", or eyeballs, shouldn't take more than a couple dozen minutes (which I don't have now).

Also, it says merely "an old LASFS member (female) under a pen name" without outing her outright; still, the connection seems persuasive. And finally, it's not really a pen name, is it? The surname Crozetti is pretty unique. But then of course she may have intended a really disguising pseudonym at first (like Rich O'Mahoney, apparently used for the 1967 WWII mmpb Merry Christmas, You Bastards), but then not used it in the end. --JVjr (talk) 06:16, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

Found the news piece: Fisher Trentworth, "The Southern California Scene", in Luna Monthly (#21), February 1971, page 10. Your observation about the typesetting helped greatly, JVjr—that was only the second Luna to be typeset that way. Also, I found a marriage registration in Ancestry Library Edition that says John Finn (b. 9 Apr 1888) married Helen Warner (b. 4 Jun 1904 to Harry Warner and Eva Morgan), which confirms that Lora was Helen Finn's younger sister. They all lived together at 1473 Belmont St, Indianapolis, in the 1920 census. As for the pen name thing, I'd say she seems to have gone by Lora in real life and R. Warner-Crozetti as an author.

It also appears from the 1940 census that she was previously married to Jessie Aredondo. It lists a household in Fillmore, Ventura County, California, consisting of Jessie Aredondo, 26; his wife Lora Aredondo, 26; his daughter Margaret J Aredondo, 1; his mother-in-law Eva D Roberson, 61; his sister-in-law Helen D Finn, 36; and his nieces Dorothy N Finn, 17, and Margaret R Finn, 15. In October of the same year, Genardo Jaramillo Aredondo, who had just turned 27, registered for the draft at a different address in Fillmore, 903½ Third St, as an unemployed man married to Lora Ruth Aredondo. She must have left him soon after that; she was Ruth G Warner when she married Jay Crozetti on October 20, 1942. I've added documentation of all this to the same Google Photos album. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 07:27, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

By the way, the Ancestry family tree claims she was widowed in 1940; that incorrectly refers to a census record for a Ruth Warner who was born in Pennsylvania and had a daughter (b. 1935) named Maria. — Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 07:37, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

Glad to be at least of minor help! (Strangely, the OCR of that paragraph is perfect; guess Google search engine just skipped the PDF when indexing.) Meanwhile, I was coming with two more things I forgot:

Venus #1 p30 (sadly, poorly OCR'd) gives the editor's address as "Lora Crozetti, 1542 W. 11th Street, Los Angeles 15" just like the voter listing, also from 1944, of Crozetti, Mrs Lora Ruth. (But where was Jay, in the Army?)

Yes (EDIT: Seabees were Navy; he was Army); I just uploaded the application for his headstone, which shows he served in the 1398th Engineer Construction Battalion, 2 Dec 1941–20 Oct 1945. So he would have been on Oahu. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 08:38, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

Even more importantly, the Wikipedia contributor also linked to the Bleiler entry for Ruth G. "Lora" Warner Crozetti, LASFS member (also formerly working as a secretary, like in the list above). This clinches it – there is no way there could have been two Lora Crozettis active at the same time. You can certainly proceed to editing the article itself.

(The entry, through some mixup or coverup, attributes her 1937 marriage, and implicitly 1938 daughter, to Jay, losing the no-good G. Aredondo of the picture. By the way, did you just delete an article about him evading the draft? I saw it somewhere and can't find it in the album now. I didn't realize who the other people in the 1940 Census were, a great catch.)

Ah heck, I did, because I didn't see that as relevant to her life since it happened after she married Jay. I've restored that screenshot though. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 08:38, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

It also lists her as "full-time writer" since 1960, which certainly doesn't fit her known output. Yet she apparently never remarried, so this doesn't seem to me to be just a pretentious form of "homemaker". Might she be producing some kind of potboilers under pseudonyms she kept really secret? Or perhaps did she work for the (off-)Hollywood?

Well, there's Merry Christmas, You Bastards, which she wrote as Rich O'Mahoney. There may well be others. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 11:19, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

And, just out of academic interest, does LASFS still have archives/files from those times, or has Death released them sometime in their rich history? --JVjr (talk) 08:20, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

If LASFS has anything, nobody can get at it, because they don’t have a clubhouse now; their website is a mess, which they don’t appear to be working on; and their last historian was Fred Patten. I have pried a few historical details out of Matthew Tepper and John Hertz by calling them on the phone, but they only really know about their own eras. —Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 18:28, 18 March 2023 (PDT)

Incidentally, there's another entry at ISFDB which I've submitted changes to in the hopes of getting them merged. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 11:17, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

Yet again it didn't occur to me to check this as well. Reginald says "Interests: Painting, drawing, costume design", so all that cover art makes sense.

Anyway, excellent research in the article! The few details that seem problematic and phrasings that could be improved I will simply edit when I have the time (you know, tomorrow I have a big convention event and haven't done much preparation yet), but let me note here first that "in 1947 Lora moved briefly to […] Wisconsin to take care of her dying mother" seems like an over-interpretation without support in sources. The mother died at 69, but we know nothing about hear health before that – actually, not even when Lora moved; the 1947 obituary says just that "Mrs Roberson came … from [LA] … a year ago" and "died at the home of her daughter". It is most plausible that they moved together, for whatever reason, and remained living together like they were through the 40s (with Jay, as in-laws seem skipped from the obit?), but we can never know for sure, and it really doesn't matter.

Oh, and could you upload the 1950 census as well? Again, just out of curiosity; "back at home with Jay and their daughter" might create a misleading impression that they had another one together although he may have adopted her. Thanks! --JVjr (talk) 11:28, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

OK, I've uploaded the 1950 census. As I noted below below, it's also possible that Lora's daughter was Jay's daughter in the usual fashion even though she was married to Jesse at the time. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 14:31, 20 March 2023 (PDT)

It looks like her remains may have been cremated in Mountain View, near Tucson, two days after her death, before they were buried with Jay. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 15:01, 20 March 2023 (PDT)

Thanks. BTW, would you be able to locate the Warners/Robersons in the 1930 census? It would be nice to narrow the move to LA somewhat… The Gale screenshot is, I presume, from https://www.gale.com/c/literature-contemporary-authors ? --JVjr (talk) 07:38, 23 March 2023 (PDT)

Style

Really a great piece of work, Bee Ostrowsky! I’ve made some minor style changes and added a line re the film made out of her book, although the respective dates are puzzling. However, IMDB has the film in 1971, same as the book. Also Richard Mahoney is credited as a costume designer so that fits, but some of his credits are after her death.

Should there be some brief indication in the article as to why her first husband was undesirable?

Normally, Fancy standards put family connections and mundane life toward the ends of articles, with fan and sf accomplishments first, but you worked them in so seamlessly, I didn’t change them. Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 13:49, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

Hmm. I guess they were married, either as a logical deduction that based on how they were listed in the census and his draft card they probably did have a government-recognized marriage that I didn't find evidence for, or as a common-law-ish result of saying so on government paperwork. But then again, I didn't find a birth record for anyone with a similar name being born in San Bernardino on the birthdate he gave. As for a brief indication, I don't know why he was undesirable; I only know that she married someone else a few years later, from which I inferred it.

I think the Laney quote is a bit too long, or I think that 'admitted' is the wrong verb in the context of the current version of the quote. I intended to say Laney admitted she "could perhaps have been of considerable value to the club" had they not been so awful to her. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 14:45, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

Well, I believe that she did marry in 1937: beside the Census, both Ancestry and Bleiler say it explicitly, I suppose the record could be found if one had a reason to dig hard enough. About the first husband we know just about two things: he registered for the draft as unemployed, despite having a wife and a small daughter to feed (not to mention the rest of her family - Helen and her daughters living with them, with Mr Finn conspicuously absent, suggests the marriage was over by then), in the war boom; and then he went to evade the draft, as a dishwasher. I can see how she was better off without him.

As for the quote, I am all for including relevant quotes in extenso; it's not like we run the risk of being overly long, like some Wikipedia articles. I also recommend her editorial in Venus #1 (how Forry roped her into editing, saying all proper fans do), which is unexpectedly funny, even self-deprecating… strange there isn't any photo preserved, even though her sister and nieces had a group one. --JVjr (talk) 17:19, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

"Why don’t you put out a fanzine?" he wanted to know. "Sooner or later, everyone who is big or important does."
"I don’t want to be important," I mumbled, "And don’t make cracks about my figure." 
[…]
"I am trying to help you […] be one of the really big people in fandom."
"Hmmm." Mel studied me a moment, shuddered and said, "Trying to improve on nature again? She’s the largest member of the LASFS now."
"I was built when meat was cheap and not rationed," I quoted, before someone else could.
"I think it would be a fine thing if she would put out a fanzine. After all, Finn put out one, and she ought to carry on the family tradition, or something."
"I ought to take it out and bury it, the family, I mean," I said bitterly. [sic! …] Besides, if I put out a fanzine, everyone will think I did it just because Helen did."

Good editorial, but it is pretty long. It might be best to recommend and link to it rather than quote at length. Let people read the unexpurgated original.

There might have been photos that haven’t turned up, she might not have been at the party the Finns were in the photo of, or she could have been camera shy.

It’s also weird that no fan materials besides Venus mention the family connection.

I removed the editorializing on Jesse and Laney. I don’t know that you can “admit” things for other people, anyway. He didn’t admit he was a Crozetti baiter. I also changed “fandom” to “LASFS” there. Even in the ’40s, LASFS wasn’t all of fandom. —Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 18:55, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

Film

House of the Black Death aka Blood of the Man Beast aka Blood of the Man Devil was by all accounts (alas, not summarised on Wikipedia) an unholy mess: see https://eofftvreview.wordpress.com/2022/09/13/house-of-the-black-death-1965/ or, if Google will let you, the telling, tell-(almost)-all recollection by the last of its THREE directors. (Now it is all at https://dailymotion.com/video/x1refic but to quote Gandalf, I don't go there… except to check that the opening titles say only that the script was by Mahoney, no sign of any novel.) While much of it was shot in 1965/6, it is quite possible it was distributed only in 1971; and then quite conceivably Crozetti could be asked only to "novelise" it to support the release somewhat – the book indeed sold at least two translations in Europe, in countries where the Ackermann Agency had the biggest clout.

As for Mahoney, I've seen a case where IMDB conflated three different namesakes, of three different career branches. The name is not unthinkably rare (and she certainly couldn't have gone on to work for quite different TV series after she died in 1980); so on one hand it is possible that the rest of https://imdb.com/name/nm0537179/ is by somebody else, and on the other that she had nothing to do with the original shooting script either (and the similarity to her pseudonym would be just a coincidence, however strange). One has to accept there are some Mysteries We Were Not Meant to Know. --JVjr (talk) 17:19, 17 March 2023 (PDT)

In the film itself, the screenwriter is credited as Rich Mahoney, not Richard as on IMDB, so you’re right, it’s very possible they’re conflating two people. Since the film makes no mention of the book, though, I wonder where that connection was first documented. [Leah Zeldes Smith 07:50, 19 March 2023‎ ]

Oh, foolish me again – I watched it for the credit, but didn't consciously realize the difference. There are two Riches on IMDB, however obviously unrelated.

Wikipedia cites the connection to a 1996 book by Stephen Jones. It's not in Google Books and his "official website" is dead, so we can't even ask him as suggested in the original Wikipedia discussion… --JVjr (talk) 09:42, 19 March 2023 (PDT)

Daughter

She’s referred to as Jeanne, Jeannette, Jeanette, Margaret J. and Janice. In quotations, that’s ok, but if we know which is definitive, we should use that editorially. I arbitrarily made it two N’s, but Bee Ostrowsky, have you come across a birth certificate? —Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 06:01, 18 March 2023 (PDT)

What I found was an entry in the California Birth Index for a Margaret Jeannette Crozetti born 4 September 1938 in Ventura County to a mother whose maiden name was Warner. I assumed when I first looked into this that this was an index of birth certificates that might reflect amended certs after adoption, but the other possibility is that she was biologically Jay's daughter, which could have something to do with divorcing Jesse Aredondo! —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 14:26, 20 March 2023 (PDT)

Mother

Helen was dead by then, but it’s curious that Evelyn/Eva’s obit mentions only a single grandchild. What of Peggy and Dorothy? —Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 18:16, 18 March 2023 (PDT)

A good observation, I didn't make that (yet again). But I find it quite naturally explainable that with them being far away, they would have been ignored by the newspaper, which had access just to the immediate family, or perhaps even left out from the original announcement. (How did such obituaries work anyway, what was the information flow? Did the family phone the paper, or did they just collect reports through funeral parlors? Was this a paid service? Rock County had some 90k inhabitants, so on the order of 3 deaths each day…) Or could maybe the paper somehow confuse them being mentioned as Lora's two nieces, and report them as Eva's? --JVjr (talk) 07:11, 19 March 2023 (PDT)

Lora seems like she was most likely the newspaper's source. And given that she wrote in Venus #1 "'I ought to take it out and bury it, the family, I mean,' I said bitterly", perhaps she decided to exclude them. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 14:50, 20 March 2023 (PDT)

Forrie's archives

Box 94 of Forrie's papers appear to include something dated 1986 from/about Mark Jacobs, grandson of Lora Crozetti. (Janice divorced Richard C Jacobs in Los Angeles in October 1966.)

The finding aid mentions "Warner-Crozetti, Ruth [circa 1939], 1970-1971" in Box 173 and "Crozetti, Lora R. 1970-1971, undated" in Box 46. Also, in Box 536, "Crozetti, L. R.", in a section titled Stories.

—Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 15:07, 20 March 2023 (PDT)

Since Janice died in 1986, this is probably the topic of the correspondence between Forry and Mark. I've emailed Syracuse to ask whether I can get a scanned copy, and if so how. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 15:23, 20 March 2023 (PDT)

Good find again – the 1970/1 correspondence is certainly related to the novel he agented, and might explain more about the film as well. --JVjr (talk) 07:38, 23 March 2023 (PDT)

OK, Syracuse says: I have accessed the Forrest J. Ackerman Papers and identified a total of 28 pages that are available to be duplicated for you. In Box 46, the folder titled ‘Crozetti, Lara R. 1970-1971 undated’ contains 21 pages. In Box 94, the folder titled ‘Jacobs, Mark J. 1986’ contains 1 page. And in Box 73, the folder titled ‘Warner, Crozetti, Ruth circa 1939, 1970-1971’ contains 6 pages. ... Normal turnaround time for orders is 4–8 weeks.

The duplication cost is 25 cents a page, for a total of $7. I don't usually spend money on fandom research, but if anyone else thinks I should proceed, my curiosity might get the best of me. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 07:51, 24 March 2023 (PDT)

I’m not going to tell you how to spend your money. Perhaps, if you can identify specific questions, you can ask the librarians to see if the answers are there for free? (If it were Iowa, they’d probably be curious enough themselves to do it.)

If you think there’s anything there that’s important to fanhistory, FANAC might reimburse you. I don’t think Mark is following this Talk page, but you can email him and ask.

—Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 10:09, 24 March 2023 (PDT)

Marriage

Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II says "Married Jay Crozetti, October 16, 1937." But this is at odds with the marriage certificate I've just added to the album, which says she married Jay Crozetti on October 16, 1942, and that it was each party's first marriage. The date (ignoring the year) is the same, though.

And Jesse Aredondo's 1956 marriage license, to Raquel (Anaya) Lewis, says that it was his first marriage. This is also in the album now.

One possible explanation is that Lora wasn't in a relationship with Jay Crozetti when her daughter was born, and wasn't legally married to Jesse Aredondo but he told the census taker this was his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law. Then when she gave her anniversary as October 16 to the compilers of reference works, she backdated the marriage to a year before her daughter's birth, for the sake of propriety. —Bee Ostrowsky (talk) 12:46, 21 March 2023 (PDT)

If they were just shacking up, it’s really weird, especially for the time, that Eva, Helen and daughters would be living with them.

It could be that for some reason, their divorce was hinky, so they told officials at their subsequent nuptials they hadn’t been married before. (I have seen something like this among Jewish families, where people didn’t/couldn’t go through a proper Jewish divorce.) Or the officials messed up the forms because second marriages weren’t routine. It’s also entirely possible that the Aredondo marriage was a real but common-law arrangement — I am not sure what California law was then — but the second marriage would be the first “official” one. There are similar odd marriages among other fan couples: Warren Fitzgerald’s first wife, for example, and Joy and Vincent Clarke.

This is fascinating, but going way beyond what Fancyclopedia needs to document her fannish life. You should consider writing it all up and your research path in an article somewhere — a fanzine, or maybe a genealogical publication.

—Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 16:13, 21 March 2023 (PDT)

Another possibility, of course, is that Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II has it wrong.

—Leah Zeldes Smith (talk) 16:25, 21 March 2023 (PDT)

I've mentioned this discrepancy before, but was convinced that the 1937 marriage was legit. If not, I have no idea how to explain all this – could they have eloped to Tijuana, and so be absent from US records? --JVjr (talk) 07:38, 23 March 2023 (PDT)