Combat Sports Historian and Martial Artist
On the evening of June 1, 1879, St. Louis Police Officer Charles Printz was walking his beat near 505 Marion Street on St. Louis’ South Side. It is not clear if Charles Sanders actions attracted Printz’s attention, or Printz just stumbled upon Sanders. Whatever the circumstances, Printz walked up to Sanders, who had a revolver in his right hand. When
Warner Baxter returns for a fourth time as Dr. Robert Ordway in The Crime Doctor’s Courage (1945). The newly married third wife of Gordon Carson asks Dr. Ordway to look into his first two wives’ mysterious deaths. Authorities declared both cases to be accidents. Kathleen Carson, played by Hillary Brooke, has begun to doubt the official verdict. Dr. Ordway arrives
Marvel Studios released the series Iron Fist on Netflix on March 17, 2017. The series based on the Marvel comic about Danny Rand, a young man presumed to have died in a plane crash. Rand is rescued as a child by monks, who teach him martial arts in the Himalayas. The series contains a number of great martial arts fight scenes.
The Scarlet Clue (1945) is the fifth of eleven Charlie Chan films Monogram Pictures produced after Twentieth-Century Fox cancelled the series in 1942. Sidney Toler made eleven films for Twentieth-Century Fox before moving the series to Monogram. After Toler died in 1947, Roland Winters took over the role for seven more films. In this film, Inspector Charlie Chan discovers a
Recently, I was searching for information about my Great Uncle Francis’ marriage to my Great Aunt Rosemary Kalt. What I discovered was an unexpected genealogy treasure, a picture in the July 5 edition of the St. Louis Star-Times of my great grandparents and 12 of the 14 Mosblech children. I had never seen a picture of my great grandparents, Eduard
St. Louis Chief of Detectives William Desmond had respect for the “old school criminals”, who plied their trade in St. Louis during the late 19th Century. However, he did not have the same degree of respect for the thug tactics of the “new school criminals”. These criminals made up for a lack of finesse with great violence. Chief Desmond said
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come back to more traditional bodybuilding training as a supplement to my martial arts training. Traditional bodybuilding is less ballistic and leaves me less vulnerable to injury. When I was younger, I never worried about injury nor did I get injured often. Once I passed 35 years old though, I started getting injured much more
1802 N. Jefferson Avenue was a two-family flat built in 1890 and located in the St. Louis Place neighborhood. I originally wrote about the building in 2013 but it was demolished sometime before March 2015. The building is part of an area being developed for a government complex in St. Louis, so it was not able to be saved. These pictures are
Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) is another entry in the series starring Warner Oland as Charlie Chan. Charlie is returning from his London investigation, when he stops in Paris for a vacation. Actually, the vacation is a cover for his investigation of forged bonds from the Lamartine Bank. Charlie installed an undercover agent named Nardi but the gang kills Nardi
On Thursday, September 9, 1875, George “Mitchell” Gassert and William Salisbury went to Fred Fisher’s Saloon at the corner of N. Jefferson and Morgan (Delmar today). After ordering drinks, the two young men of unsavory reputation refused to pay for their drinks. After trying to illicit payment, Fisher summoned St. Louis Police Officer John Cummings. Officer Cummings, assigned to the