Speaker 1: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 1: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman and I'm
Speaker 1: Joey Angelfield producer engineer Mike Tomrn is working somewhere behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. Amusing Jews is a project of a Dot
Speaker 1: cavaem Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the
Speaker 1: American West, and Atheist United Studios, Hey Joey. On November
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, nineteen sixty three, an unassuming man leapt in
Speaker 1: front of news reporters and police officers as Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: Oswald was being escorted through the basement of a Dallas
Speaker 1: police station. The man fatally shot Oswald once in the abdomen,
Speaker 1: and it was captured on live TV. The shooter was
Speaker 1: Jack Ruby, who would forever be known as the guy
Speaker 1: who shot the guy who shot JFK. But who exactly
Speaker 1: was Jack Ruby. We're thrilled to chat with Danny Fingera,
Speaker 1: a biographer, cultural historian, and former writer and editor at
Speaker 1: Marvel Comics, whose latest book is Jack Ruby, The Many
Speaker 1: Faces of Oswald's Assassin. He also authored A Marvelous Life,
Speaker 1: The Amazing Story of stan Lee disguised as Clark Kent Jews,
Speaker 1: comics and the creation of the superhero and Superman on
Speaker 1: the Couch. What superheroes really tell us about ourselves in
Speaker 1: our society, Danny too, Amusing Jews.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for inviting me, And as I said
Speaker 2: in the pre show conversation, it's a lot of pressure
Speaker 2: to be on a show called Amusing Jews, but I
Speaker 2: will do my best.
Speaker 1: You spent over ten years on covering the life and
Speaker 1: times of Jack Ruby. What initially attracted you to him
Speaker 1: as a research topic?
Speaker 2: You know, of course, my background is comics and graphic novels.
Speaker 2: I've written a number of books and a ton of
Speaker 2: comic books, and around as it was coming to be
Speaker 2: the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of the JFK assassination,
Speaker 2: I really thought, gee, you know, I had not done
Speaker 2: a full length nonfiction graphic novel before, you know, and
Speaker 2: I'd like to and I'd like to do something that
Speaker 2: people might actually want to buy and read. I wonder
Speaker 2: if there's a lot of people doing JFK fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 2: graphic novels, and I couldn't find anybody doing one. Turned
Speaker 2: out that somebody else was that the Dan Mischkin and
Speaker 2: I'm blanking on the artist. But they did one about
Speaker 2: the warrantormission, but that was I didn't know about that.
Speaker 2: It's a whole different approach. So I started researching the
Speaker 2: Kennedy assassination. I was ten years old when it happened.
Speaker 2: Your listeners and viewers can do the math and figure
Speaker 2: out how old I am, but I was ten years old,
Speaker 2: ten years old when it happened, and so I had
Speaker 2: a ten year, ten year old understanding of it. And
Speaker 2: I was never obsessed with the various conspiracy theories. They
Speaker 2: just it just seemed like a blur to me. It
Speaker 2: just seemed like you could plug in a hundred different
Speaker 2: theories and it just was overwhelming, you know. So it's
Speaker 2: not that I didn't believe that maybe there was more
Speaker 2: going on than the general understanding, but it just was
Speaker 2: an overload. So I started researching, and the more I
Speaker 2: read about Jack Ruby, the more I realized that that
Speaker 2: was my entry point into the story of the JFK assassination.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 2: The greatest generation Jewish guy, you know, first generation American
Speaker 2: born from like a crazy enmeshed Jewish family. One sibling
Speaker 2: nuttier than the next, all of them interesting. And here
Speaker 2: was you know, what I say to people is unless
Speaker 2: you yourself are your craziest cousin, imagine your craziest cousin
Speaker 2: stepping into history and killing Oswald. Either way, whether whether
Speaker 2: you identify, whether or you know somebody, because that's you
Speaker 2: know if. And so that was approaching the the fiftieth anniversary,
Speaker 2: and I did a lot of research and I was
Speaker 2: and then I realized there was a memoir written by
Speaker 2: a Los Angeles rabbi named Hillel Silverman, whose son you
Speaker 2: may know from the movie Weekend at Bernie Jonathan Silverman. Well,
Speaker 2: Jonathan Silverman's father. Hillel, who just died like two years
Speaker 2: ago at age ninety nine, was sort of on his
Speaker 2: career path. He was a rabbi in Dallas for ten
Speaker 2: years and one of his congregants was jet Jack Ruby.
Speaker 2: And Silverman wrote about it in his memoir, and he
Speaker 2: was interviewed a lot, and uh, you know, I was
Speaker 2: able to make contact with him through some contacts of
Speaker 2: vine in the Jewish world, and I spoke to him
Speaker 2: and he said that this was even then, even ten
Speaker 2: twelve years ago. He said, I'm almost ninety. I'm not
Speaker 2: writing my book anymore. Everybody in that Jack re record
Speaker 2: room was writing a book. I'm not writing my book anymore.
Speaker 2: Would you like to see my notes? And when I
Speaker 2: visited Jack in prison every other day for four months,
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I wouldn't mind. Uh So, the you know,
Speaker 2: the the notes came and they were just mind boggling.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize how rich they were until, you know,
Speaker 2: until I compared them to like the trial transcripts and
Speaker 2: the newspaper reports and other brand I went, you know this,
Speaker 2: the stuff of the rabbi visiting him and the rabbi's
Speaker 2: own reflections really were just sort of an added ingredient
Speaker 2: that made, you know, it made it for better or worse.
Speaker 1: A very Jewish story.
Speaker 2: Ruby was very Jewish identified. He was very concerned about
Speaker 2: anti Semitism in Dallas. Anyway, I did a lot of research,
Speaker 2: and then I was connected by a book packager named
Speaker 2: Howard Zimmerman, who I knew from working at a company
Speaker 2: called Byron Price. And he put me together with an
Speaker 2: artist who you may have heard a named Rick Eary.
Speaker 2: Rick is a great I guess I don't you call
Speaker 2: him underground or independent? He said, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: he still puts out lots of graphic novels, a lot
Speaker 2: about true murder cases. And really, we couldn't find anybody
Speaker 2: who would passed an advance big enough to Rick to
Speaker 2: spend two years during this two hunder page graphic novel,
Speaker 2: so I back burned it. And then in the meantime
Speaker 2: I wrote the other book, some of the other books,
Speaker 2: including specifically the stan Lee biography, so I had some
Speaker 2: credentials of biographer. That book was generally well reviewed and
Speaker 2: sold pretty well. So as we're coming around the sixtieth anniversary,
Speaker 2: I said to my agent, do you think we could
Speaker 2: revive the Ruby graphic novel project just as a straight
Speaker 2: prose biography, and Chicago we did, and I wrote an
Speaker 2: elaborate proposal at Chicago Review press Board. And you know,
Speaker 2: in the meantime, I wouldn't say I spent every waking
Speaker 2: moment researching it, but obviously my antenna were up, and
Speaker 2: I would just anytime I saw anything or heard anything
Speaker 2: about Ruby. And then, you know, as much as I
Speaker 2: love graphic novels and comics, certainly my I approached for
Speaker 2: a prose biography, I had to do a lot more
Speaker 2: research and I knew a lot more about biographies and
Speaker 2: how they're done, and and so I figured I'm not
Speaker 2: smart enough to figure out all the mysteries of the
Speaker 2: Kennedy assassination. You know, smarter people than me, you spend
Speaker 2: decades trying to figure out what really happened. But I
Speaker 2: know crazy Jews, and so I could figure out try
Speaker 2: to figure out something about what might have motivated Jack Ruby,
Speaker 2: and so and so I spoke to I did a
Speaker 2: bunch of research at the sixth Floor Museum, which is
Speaker 2: the book depository in Dallas. I spoke to Ruby's niece
Speaker 2: and nephew, who before that had not really done a
Speaker 2: lot of speaking to the press or biographers. I spoke to,
Speaker 2: of course the rabbi. I spoke to the children of
Speaker 2: the other Jewish strip club owners in Dallas at the time,
Speaker 2: who you know, who hated Jack Ruby, but how to
Speaker 2: do business. It was I found out a lot more
Speaker 2: about like the semi underbelly of the Dallas nightclub subculture
Speaker 2: and criminal subculture than I wanted to, you know. But
Speaker 2: so that was that was my interest. But it you know,
Speaker 2: it's similar to my interest in writing about the history
Speaker 2: of the Jews who were the creators and publishers of Superman,
Speaker 2: Batman Fantastic, you know, Marvel and DC and and and
Speaker 2: the and Will Eisner in graphic novels. So it was
Speaker 2: sort of a fascination with that generation that was my
Speaker 2: parents and aunts and uncles generation. And yet obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean the comic book people, and obviously people like
Speaker 2: Jack Ruby went different routes, and yet not so you know,
Speaker 2: and yet not so different. There were there were people
Speaker 2: my father had multiple careers, or one of them was
Speaker 2: he was a partner in a kosher banquet catering business
Speaker 2: in the Bronx, and so in that business, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know. He died fairly young, when I was
Speaker 2: fairly young, but I have a feeling he came across
Speaker 2: a lot of shady characters in that in that world
Speaker 2: that you know that there's there's a lot, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot going on behind the scenes of your
Speaker 2: fancy barmits with that you don't want to know about.
Speaker 2: And I have a feeling that my dad probably came
Speaker 2: in contact with and associated with people not unlike Jack Ruby,
Speaker 2: except except Ruby out of Chicago accent, and my family
Speaker 2: had a New York accent joining the show.
Speaker 1: Click like and subscribe. You mentioned in the book that
Speaker 1: you were buying comics at a secondhand magazine store on
Speaker 1: First Avenue in Manhattan when JFK was assassinated. How did
Speaker 1: you first learn that Oswald had been shot?
Speaker 2: You know, I really need to make up a good
Speaker 2: answer for this question, because I don't have one. It's
Speaker 2: so stupid. I remember where I was when I found
Speaker 2: out that the JFK was shot, because and you know,
Speaker 2: I was a student at Yeshiva in New York and
Speaker 2: it was November and he got dark earlier on Friday,
Speaker 2: and so we were dismissed early on Friday. But the
Speaker 2: friend I was with and I both lived close enough,
Speaker 2: you know, we went to school close enough to where
Speaker 2: we lived that we could kill some time, and so
Speaker 2: we were both comic fans, and we went to this
Speaker 2: used comic shop like you're in eighty six in Yorkville,
Speaker 2: in Manhattan, and I just remember we were walking in
Speaker 2: some we saw some other French from school and they
Speaker 2: told us, and that's about as dull as it can get.
Speaker 2: And then I just have a memory of seeing Ruby,
Speaker 2: and I honestly don't know if I saw it live
Speaker 2: or if I saw a videotape up, Because here's the thing.
Speaker 2: In the days before the internet, in the days before videotape,
Speaker 2: it was just TV. And if you're ten years old,
Speaker 2: all that was on every channel was the Kennedy assassination coverage,
Speaker 2: and you know the way news is, you know, this
Speaker 2: is really the first, you know, widespread covered event, and
Speaker 2: really it was just repeating the same stuff over and
Speaker 2: over and over, and meanwhile, I'm ten years old, where
Speaker 2: are my cartoons?
Speaker 3: It began with the fatal shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 3: to accused the assassin of John Kennedy by Jack Ruby,
Speaker 3: Dallas nightclub owner, in the basement of Dallas police headquarters.
Speaker 3: Here's how it looked and sounded on live nationwide television.
Speaker 3: The voice is that of NBC reporter Tom Pettitt. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but there is way. He's been shot.
Speaker 1: He's been shot.
Speaker 3: Oswald has been shot.
Speaker 2: I know I saw it, but I don't have a
Speaker 2: great memory of it. It's I really have to just
Speaker 2: make something up and just you know, because everybody else
Speaker 2: has Oh, my mother's face turned white, and you know
Speaker 2: my you know, my father chill over. I mean, everybody
Speaker 2: has a story and I'm like, you know, I'm sure
Speaker 2: we were watching TV because it was obviously a major
Speaker 2: thing my father, you know, my dad, because he was
Speaker 2: at this catering business. He worked on the weekend. So
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sure my dad was trying to figure
Speaker 2: out whether to even go ahead with the weddings and
Speaker 2: bar mits was they had planned that weekend. You know,
Speaker 2: because my dad was a quote unquote famous cantor in
Speaker 2: other words, like being a famous comic book editor. It's
Speaker 2: important to who it's important to, you know. I think
Speaker 2: my dad was trying, you know, I was probably getting ready,
Speaker 2: you know, to go and officiate at a wedding ceremony
Speaker 2: and wondering what the mood would be. So but I
Speaker 2: do remember watching, you know, seeing it on TV. But no,
Speaker 2: and again, you're ten years old. When you're a kid,
Speaker 2: you kind of think, well, maybe this happens all the time,
Speaker 2: and I just didn't know about it because I'm ten
Speaker 2: years old, you know, you know, I or maybe I
Speaker 2: was just an idiot, you know, but the you tell me,
Speaker 2: the the magnitude of it, I knew it. But I
Speaker 2: don't have a great story. So all I can do
Speaker 2: is just try to be amusing and dance around and
Speaker 2: you know, and explain that I don't have a great
Speaker 2: story in.
Speaker 4: Your defense, Danny, one day somebody will ask me for
Speaker 4: an OJ story. You know, I was pretty young when
Speaker 4: it happened. I don't really remember, but it was interrupting
Speaker 4: a lot of my cartoons, but I do remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole kid view of the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then he was on my POGs, you know,
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, okay, well this is another
Speaker 4: cultural outgrowth.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that it turns out the Jack Ruby story
Speaker 2: and Jack Ruby's life intersected with a bunch of my
Speaker 2: you know, culture and sports heroes. I mean, most specifically
Speaker 2: Mickey Mantle, who was, you know, this blonde hair, blue eyed,
Speaker 2: shining baseball god to every Jewish boy who wasn't the
Speaker 2: Dodgers fan, you know, in in New York. So that Mickey,
Speaker 2: I mean, that was that was that when you asked
Speaker 2: me before what led me to want to do the
Speaker 2: Ruby story, It was the Jewish thing. But then it
Speaker 2: was also that this guy, because he was in show business,
Speaker 2: you know, albeit like you know, a sleazy aspect of
Speaker 2: show business, came into contact with all these unexpected people.
Speaker 2: Jack Ruby the last person to give Hank Williams c
Speaker 2: your regular work. And suddenly Mickey Mantle is showing up
Speaker 2: and Louis Arms. I mean, just just this this lineup
Speaker 2: of people that that go you know, and and and
Speaker 2: you know when Rabbi Silverman and then all the celebrities.
Speaker 2: You know, my joke used to be, and maybe you
Speaker 2: guys in La can double a triple check. I used
Speaker 2: to joke that Silverman got burned out into Aallas and
Speaker 2: went to LA and became Buddy Hackett's rabbi. But you know,
Speaker 2: it turned out he was Buddy Hackett's Rabbi. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: so there was so many weird intersections of you know,
Speaker 2: and then and then it turned out that Jack Kirby,
Speaker 2: who you know, co created all the major Marvel characters,
Speaker 2: drew a Jack Ruby comics for Esquire magazine in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven. You know, so all just all this stuff
Speaker 2: just it just it just it seemed I was faded
Speaker 2: to write a book about Jack Ruby.
Speaker 1: You spent most of your career as a Marvel comics
Speaker 1: writer editor. Did any of that experience come in handy
Speaker 1: when piecing together the convoluted story of Jack Ruby. One
Speaker 1: thing we deal in a lot in superhero comics is
Speaker 1: conspiracy stories, you know, just you know, doctor Doom is
Speaker 1: behind this and the Red Skull and and it goes,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean sort of layer upon layer, so
Speaker 1: that that view of the world was not unfamiliar to me.
Speaker 2: And I think the thing that I tried to do,
Speaker 2: you know, I've read biographies of really interesting people, and
Speaker 2: the biographies were so boring. It's like, and you go,
Speaker 2: how did you take this really interesting person and make
Speaker 2: such a dull book? You know, And and so I
Speaker 2: guess one thing that I learned in the world of
Speaker 2: you know, of genre comics, of superhero comics was, if
Speaker 2: not every page, certainly every chapter has to end on
Speaker 2: some kind of cliff hunger and ideally you know, several
Speaker 2: of them. So I tried to do that. I tried
Speaker 2: to without sensationalizing it. I tried, and I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it's you know, you have a story with you know,
Speaker 2: people getting shot and suspicions of conspiracies and you know,
Speaker 2: anti semitism and racism and just American history, and you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, you just have all the ingredients for a
Speaker 2: great story, you know, whatever else you may think. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's you know there you know, that is one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that people are still talking about it. They're
Speaker 2: still having congressional hearings the sixty plus years later. So
Speaker 2: I mean, there's you know, it's a compelling story, and
Speaker 2: I just tried not to mess it up.
Speaker 1: During the trial, Ruby's defense tried to argue that he
Speaker 1: had a temporary blackout at the time he shot Oswald.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's any validity to that.
Speaker 2: I think there was. Yes, The short answer is yes.
Speaker 2: But like everything else with the Kennedy assassination, it's complicated
Speaker 2: in their layers upon layers. So Ruby's muddy family they
Speaker 2: banded together because they just saw their brother kill Lee
Speaker 2: Harveyaswold on television, and so they pooled their resources. And
Speaker 2: most of the resources were in the hands of his
Speaker 2: kid brother, Earl Ruby, who was a dry cleaning mine
Speaker 2: and in Detroit, and Earl really looked up to Jack.
Speaker 2: You know, Jack, Jack had a Jack was a violent
Speaker 2: temp you know, uh, short tempered guy. But some of
Speaker 2: that violence and short tempered was devoted to beating up
Speaker 2: Nazis and you know, in the thirties in Chicago, so
Speaker 2: you know, he had had some you know, positive aspects.
Speaker 2: So his family got together and and and they and
Speaker 2: they hired and fired lawyers like hopping cold running water.
Speaker 2: You know, they just went through the most famous lawyers.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Imagine you're a lawyer and you think you're hot stuff,
Speaker 2: and you you have a chance to get the job
Speaker 2: of getting a guy acquitted who shot somebody in cold
Speaker 2: blood on live television. Imagine if you're a lawyer, what
Speaker 2: a great challenge that is. So every famous lawyer in America,
Speaker 2: you know, was going to wave their fee or they
Speaker 2: or they whatever it was. And the Ruby family just
Speaker 2: hired and fired one after the other until Melvin bell
Speaker 2: I came along. And bell at that point was one
Speaker 2: of the most famous lawyers in America. And people say
Speaker 2: he never tried a murder case. He actually had tried
Speaker 2: one murder case, but that's not his specialty. Also, he
Speaker 2: had the judge in the case had a long standing
Speaker 2: grudge against Bali, which is not not very not a
Speaker 2: good thing. But but he was the most famous lawyer
Speaker 2: in America, and he talked a good game. And since
Speaker 2: it was quite clear that Ruby had done that, the
Speaker 2: question was what was a state of mind? And in
Speaker 2: those days, in the state of take this. There were
Speaker 2: you could get somebody acquitted of like a crime of passion,
Speaker 2: it was unlikely that that would work with Ruby. So
Speaker 2: that so bell I came up with this experimental He
Speaker 2: didn't just say he was insane, right, I mean, it
Speaker 2: was basically insanity plea, but it was such a novel.
Speaker 2: Untried to pardon the pun version of insanity called psychomotor epilepsy.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think bell I, I mean, for
Speaker 2: what bell I first tried to do was have the trial,
Speaker 2: the case thrown out, and you know, and just on
Speaker 2: the grounds that there was no way Ruby could get
Speaker 2: a fair trial in Dallas, because that's where it happened,
Speaker 2: and you know, sort of Dallas in the public just
Speaker 2: was what the whole city was induided in the both
Speaker 2: of the murder of Kennedy and the murder of Oswald,
Speaker 2: you know, in guided in the public consciousness. So bell
Speaker 2: I tried every other thing he could, and you know,
Speaker 2: and tried to pick right the jurors who would, uh
Speaker 2: who were who would give him a fair verdict or
Speaker 2: you know, or an acquittal or at least a very
Speaker 2: an insanity vertic. But ultimately couldn't you know, they they
Speaker 2: the case, the judge would not declare mistra would not
Speaker 2: move the case because for the judge was a big
Speaker 2: deal too. Again, imagine the judge and the Jack Ruby case.
Speaker 2: So bell I tried the thing called psychomotor at a policy.
Speaker 2: Ruby had a history of mental illness, you know, the
Speaker 2: thing about both him and Oswald, there's no doubt they
Speaker 2: were not They both had long histories of erratic behavior
Speaker 2: and you know, and and psychiatric treatment. The question is
Speaker 2: with a loan notes. That's of course the big thing
Speaker 2: that people want to know. So it was, it was
Speaker 2: so I think ultimately bell I went with that defense,
Speaker 2: and he brought in again just like the most famous
Speaker 2: lawyers wanted to be involved, the most famous psychiatrists wanted
Speaker 2: to be involved. So until the Chicago seven trial in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy, this was probably the biggest circus trial. Well
Speaker 2: one of the you know, maybe the scope was monkey trial,
Speaker 2: but aside from that, this was the biggest circus trial
Speaker 2: in American history. You know, Plus you had Jack Ruby,
Speaker 2: you know, giving impromptu press conferences at every break in
Speaker 2: the at every recess. So I think it was it
Speaker 2: was a long shot. It was show off. He on
Speaker 2: Belly's part. Probably his ego got the better of him,
Speaker 2: you know, because the jury ended up convicting Ruby in
Speaker 2: like two and a half hours. And I think they
Speaker 2: just I think they really convicted in a much shorter time,
Speaker 2: but they thought, just for the sake of appearances, they
Speaker 2: should wait at least a couple of hours.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't you know that it was actually a
Speaker 2: group of very you know, people say, oh, it was
Speaker 2: the Dallas jury. Dallas was a big city, and and
Speaker 2: there was some very intelligence sophisticated people on the on
Speaker 2: the on the jury, but they just bell I did
Speaker 2: not make his case.
Speaker 1: As you were alluding to. Jack Ruby born Jacob Rubinstein
Speaker 1: comes across as a self styled defender of Jews against
Speaker 1: anti Semitism. Can you tell us a little more about that?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Ruby grew up in the Maxwell Street
Speaker 2: ghetto of Chicago that also produced in the same era
Speaker 2: Benny Goodman, william S. Paley, who founded CBS Chief Justice
Speaker 2: Arthur Goldberg. You know, it's sort of a classic kind
Speaker 2: of you know, Jewish ghetto assimilation, escape the ghetto store,
Speaker 2: you know, and and Ruguby with his best friend growing
Speaker 2: up was a boxer named Barney Ross who was actually
Speaker 2: studying to be a rabbi till his father was murdered
Speaker 2: in a hold up. It's kind of like the Batman's
Speaker 2: so Ruby. If you look at any video Ruby, or
Speaker 2: the video Ruby shooting Oswald. He the person he's reminiscent of,
Speaker 2: which kind of tripped me up for a while was
Speaker 2: Jackie Gleeson and the Honeymooners. He moves like a heavy
Speaker 2: set but graceful guy, which he was. He wasn't. He
Speaker 2: was a boxer. And I think from what I hear
Speaker 2: a very good answer too. And he would and he
Speaker 2: would MC. He would be his own MC. He wanted
Speaker 2: to be a stand up comic and he you know,
Speaker 2: he had country Western clubs besides the strip club. So,
Speaker 2: but he was very Jewish identified. He was very conscious
Speaker 2: of himself as Jewish. He was very sensitive to any
Speaker 2: anti Semitism. He'd often come home at night, you know,
Speaker 2: with like blood all over his clothes and having been
Speaker 2: in a fight with some guy at a bar who
Speaker 2: made an anti Semitic comment. And and at the time
Speaker 2: leading up to the Kennedy assassination, there was a you know,
Speaker 2: the reason Kennedy came to Dallas was to shore up
Speaker 2: his support in the Democratic Party in Dallas for his
Speaker 2: reelection camp campaign, and then the following year in sixty four.
Speaker 2: This was late sixty three and and and and it
Speaker 2: was a big deal for the president to come to Dallas,
Speaker 2: even though it was a big city. I don't think
Speaker 2: it had a lot of visitors, certainly certainly presidents. I've
Speaker 2: been there in a long time. And and so there was
Speaker 2: a leaflet that came out attacking Kennedy, you know, a
Speaker 2: flyer that they get in the days before the internet,
Speaker 2: people would hand out leaflets and you know, and it
Speaker 2: was signed by there was some committee that you know
Speaker 2: that people you know, made up who were putting it out,
Speaker 2: but it was signed by Bernard Weissman. And Ruby thought,
Speaker 2: it turns out correctly that the people that the you know,
Speaker 2: extreme right wing people putting this out put a Jewish
Speaker 2: name on it, so that if anything bad happened to
Speaker 2: Kennedy while he was there, it would be blamed on
Speaker 2: the Jews, I think. And and it turned out that
Speaker 2: it was like really like four people with the whole organization,
Speaker 2: and one of them was that there was at Bernard
Speaker 2: Weisman and they put his name on it kind of precisely,
Speaker 2: you know, for that reason, which is really weird, you know,
Speaker 2: but they did. I think maybe he gives themselves credibility.
Speaker 2: I don't think so much to foment that, I says
Speaker 2: it semitism to say, well, look, if this Jewish guy
Speaker 2: is anti Kennedy, you know, then you should be too.
Speaker 2: So Ruby was really concerned about that, as you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, and as Rabbi Silverman was, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: Silveran is on record as saying, you know, when they
Speaker 2: when they arrested Oswald, you know, thank god it wasn't
Speaker 2: somebody black and some thank god it wasn't somebody Jewish.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was you know, that was America. Then
Speaker 2: that could never happen now. But so and this and
Speaker 2: this was one of Ruby's obsessions. And he belonged it's
Speaker 2: he was. He belonged to a up and coming, upper
Speaker 2: middle class synagogue in Dallas really so he could network
Speaker 2: with the Jewish professionals there. And then he did, you know,
Speaker 2: he did identify his Jewish, especially after his father died.
Speaker 2: His father died in fifty eight and he started going
Speaker 2: to school the psy cottage regularly. But it's weird because
Speaker 2: Jack Ruby's rolo decks if he had one. Jack Ruby's
Speaker 2: network of acquaintances and friends included like low life criminals,
Speaker 2: weird you know, fringe show business guys and like dermatologists
Speaker 2: and rabbis. I mean, he had just like this, you know,
Speaker 2: Jewish dermatologists or just this very strange group of people.
Speaker 2: And I think he was a fairly unpleasant guy. I
Speaker 2: sort of It's one of those stories I kind of
Speaker 2: get found more to cringe about. I had thought of
Speaker 2: him as kind of Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners and
Speaker 2: maybe you know, maybe going a little more extreme than I'll,
Speaker 2: you know, to the moon Alice. You know, I thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: but no, he was really like a low life you know, thug.
Speaker 2: But nonetheless, if you do the if you research about it,
Speaker 2: you know, so many people claimed that they were Jack
Speaker 2: Ruby's best friend, and it was like really a big
Speaker 2: thing of honor for them that you know, it was
Speaker 2: really interesting. You know. Then they would say something horrible
Speaker 2: about him and something really like you know, vile that
Speaker 2: he'd done or that they heard about, but they really
Speaker 2: they wanted you to know that he that they were
Speaker 2: Jack Ruby. So he had some kind of charisma. He
Speaker 2: would hire and fire, you know, his weight staff and
Speaker 2: the dancers at his strip, you know, like you would
Speaker 2: hire and fire them multiple times a week, the same people.
Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, again, if it wasn't so
Speaker 2: weird and and history changing and dire, it would kind
Speaker 2: of be almost a sitcom.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about your impression of Michael Lerner's portrayal of
Speaker 1: Jack Ruby in Ruby and Oswald, the TV movie from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. I thought Michael Lerner played it as a.
Speaker 2: New York Jewish cliche. I lot Michael Lerner, but I
Speaker 2: found that kind of a cringey kind of performance. Having
Speaker 2: said that, there are sometimes when I picture things that
Speaker 2: I talk about in the book that I read about,
Speaker 2: I do imagine the scene from that movie, because you know,
Speaker 2: some of it was well written and well acted. But
Speaker 2: I thought his character was just too much of a cliche,
Speaker 2: especially the New York the Bronx accent. It would be
Speaker 2: like Ruby was so shit, you know. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: sure there must have been a meeting and they thought, well,
Speaker 2: people will identify the New York accent more with somebody
Speaker 2: Jewish on the Chicago accent or you know, so I
Speaker 2: think he's a wonderful actor, but he wasn't my I
Speaker 2: didn't love that role.
Speaker 1: It's weird because whenever I think of Jack Ruby, I
Speaker 1: just picture Michael Lerner.
Speaker 2: I know, I hate to say it, but because there
Speaker 2: have been other movies about Ruby. JFK included and the
Speaker 2: movie called Ruby, and they sort of use they take off,
Speaker 2: you know, they take off into especially the Ruby, the
Speaker 2: movie called Ruby, they take off until into fantasy and speculation. No,
Speaker 2: I think JFK does too. You know. What I thought
Speaker 2: was a terrific Ruby was in the Umbrella Academy that
Speaker 2: season where they went to Dallas in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: I thought the guy who played Jack Ruby in that
Speaker 2: was terrific. If my book would have become a movie
Speaker 2: or a streaming series, I would want the seth Rogen
Speaker 2: to play Ruby.
Speaker 1: If Ruby wasn't insane at the time of the shooting,
Speaker 1: he veered in that direction while behind bars, among other things,
Speaker 1: he became convinced that millions of American Jews were being
Speaker 1: killed in a pogram. What do you make of this?
Speaker 2: Well, I think Ruby was crazy, and I think he
Speaker 2: was and you know, although it's not impossible that he
Speaker 2: might have been somehow trying to please somebody. Jack Ruby,
Speaker 2: as a Jack Ruby had never killed anybody. He had
Speaker 2: beaten up a lot of people, but he had no
Speaker 2: history of being indicted or convicted of murder, you know,
Speaker 2: so he he wasn't a professionally professionally man. So I
Speaker 2: think there was some somewhere he became concerned about his
Speaker 2: family's well being, and somewhere he got in his mind.
Speaker 2: I used to have a simple theory. I used to
Speaker 2: think that Ruby wanted to be the Jew that killed
Speaker 2: the guy that killed the president. And he thought he
Speaker 2: was doing public relations with the Jews, he thought, and
Speaker 2: for a while, and actually it kind of worked temporarily.
Speaker 2: He was getting fan nail by the by the bagful,
Speaker 2: just you know, hundreds of letters and telegrams. But a
Speaker 2: weird thing happened where when people realize, oh, now we'll
Speaker 2: never know what Oswald was going to say, or what
Speaker 2: he who he might have implicated, or just what is
Speaker 2: real reason if he did it? And in some weird
Speaker 2: way the public knew was that Ruby had killed Kennedy.
Speaker 2: It's just this strange shift in now. I don't I
Speaker 2: don't even know. I don't think anybody said it out loud,
Speaker 2: but that was sort of the vibe, and that was
Speaker 2: the tone of tenor of the nail he got. So
Speaker 2: he I think he was insane from the time he
Speaker 2: was a child, you know, I think he sort of
Speaker 2: I don't know if he I don't know if his
Speaker 2: club's ever made any money. I mean, so, either he
Speaker 2: was just being bled by the mob, which is possible,
Speaker 2: or maybe his family was just sort of keeping him
Speaker 2: afloat because they he didn't want him sleeping on the couch.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's you know, he I don't think he ever made
Speaker 2: a profit, you know, in his in his legitimate or
Speaker 2: his criminal activities. You know, once he was in jail
Speaker 2: what you're alluding to with the program, you know, it
Speaker 2: turned out his jail, he was in a cell that
Speaker 2: was near the psych ward of the prison, and so
Speaker 2: very often there were like prisoners screaming at night. And
Speaker 2: Ruby interpreted that, or claimed the interpreted as Jews being
Speaker 2: boiled and oil in the prison, and that his family
Speaker 2: was already dead and being tortured, and and and that
Speaker 2: he had started the second Holocaust in America, and you know,
Speaker 2: there are people and then but then a minute later
Speaker 2: he would like be saying to his his jailer, oh,
Speaker 2: who wants to play jin rummy? You know what I mean? So,
Speaker 2: you know, and then the Rabbi would come to visit him.
Speaker 2: He would hide under the table because he didn't want
Speaker 2: to be killed by the Nazis invading the So there
Speaker 2: are those who think he was faking it, just trying
Speaker 2: to emphasize the insanity plea, but that he kept it
Speaker 2: up for so long. I mean, unless he was the
Speaker 2: world's greatest actor, then it does you know, it does
Speaker 2: seem that that he was nuts before and that and that,
Speaker 2: and that having killed Oswald in a way, it liberated him, right,
Speaker 2: I mean as a smile on his face, you see.
Speaker 2: And of course the smile could be haha, my plan worked,
Speaker 2: But the smile could also be My troubles are over.
Speaker 2: You know, all the people I owe money to, all
Speaker 2: the people I owe favors to my nutty family. Although
Speaker 2: the family turned, I got more and more comeshed, you know,
Speaker 2: just I have no more responsibility. I'm now going to
Speaker 2: be in prison, you know. And even if they let
Speaker 2: me out, then I'll be a celebrity, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. I think in some weird way because he
Speaker 2: definitely you know, and there's conflicting things after the course,
Speaker 2: they claimed that it was spontaneous, that he just snapped,
Speaker 2: But you know, he also kind of said to his
Speaker 2: roommate he had somebody creation with him, and he kind
Speaker 2: of said to the guy, I'm going to you know,
Speaker 2: not these are not the exact words, but he kind
Speaker 2: of said to the guy, I'm going downtown to shoot
Speaker 2: ushold and and you know, yeah, you know, and the
Speaker 2: roommate basically said, yeah, bring home a quarter Melton, you're
Speaker 2: on your way back. I mean, you know, it was
Speaker 2: just like Jack being crazy.
Speaker 1: So, Danny, what's the verdict? Was Jack Ruby a hero,
Speaker 1: a villain, something in between, none of the above.
Speaker 2: I think he was a villain. I think I think
Speaker 2: it's you know, I you know, I think it's funny.
Speaker 2: I think he was always a hero to his brother,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean that's sort of touching that Earl Ruby,
Speaker 2: who didn't who died you know, not that long ago,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of kept the faith that that his
Speaker 2: brother's motives were pure and that he just wanted to
Speaker 2: kind of express the rage the country felt that Kenry's assassination.
Speaker 2: But look, he's just the fact that Ruby prevented us
Speaker 2: from ever you know, not that we necessarily would have known,
Speaker 2: or that Oswald would have told the truth or whatever
Speaker 2: you know, or or a full truth, but you know,
Speaker 2: Ruby made it impossible to ever get beyond you know,
Speaker 2: Oswald saying I'm a patsy. I'm just a patsy, right,
Speaker 2: I mean that you know, which you know seems to
Speaker 2: have a specific meaning but could have a variety of meanings.
Speaker 2: But but will you know, I mean, you know one
Speaker 2: thing that blows my mind, and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: gives fuel to a lot of conspiracy theories. You know,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three, you guys weren't even born, But
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three, many middle class families, including my mi,
Speaker 2: had it working, had a tape recorder. I mean, my
Speaker 2: father was a canter, so we you know, we had
Speaker 2: but I mean it was not uncommon for people to
Speaker 2: have tape recorders. You know, we didn't have a working
Speaker 2: tape recorder. The Dallas Police Department, that's who we know,
Speaker 2: even though they were in downtown Dallas, and you know,
Speaker 2: unless there was strictly shower shabs, they could have gone
Speaker 2: and bought a tape recorder. If the one in the
Speaker 2: in the station wasn't working, so that that's maybe in
Speaker 2: my research. I'm just grateful I didn't try to research Oswald.
Speaker 2: Is that I think is an even more convoluted story.
Speaker 2: But you know that, yeah so, but we won't so
Speaker 2: we won't know what he might have said in those
Speaker 2: closed door sessions. Nobody, as far as I know, took
Speaker 2: elaborate notes and certainly no tape recording. And Ruby did
Speaker 2: try to get into one of those rooms, which is
Speaker 2: as yet another log to the you know, conspiracy fire
Speaker 2: of Ruby trying to get in. But was eight was
Speaker 2: he just going to try to kill him? Then? Who
Speaker 2: knows what? So, Yeah, I think I think a really
Speaker 2: interesting villain and you know, like any human, you know,
Speaker 2: I came across many stories of Jack's incredible generosity, you know,
Speaker 2: the people to people who worked for him, the people
Speaker 2: he didn't he barely knew. So the guy could be
Speaker 2: very generous and kind when he wasn't.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, you asked before about you know,
Speaker 2: was he blackout or not know what he was doing
Speaker 2: he went into fugue states, he would you know, he
Speaker 2: acted as his own bouncer and if somebody, especially somebody
Speaker 2: made some kind of antisemitic crack. Jack would throw them
Speaker 2: down the stairs. He'd be pounding their head into the sidewalk,
Speaker 2: and then he would just go, what am I doing?
Speaker 2: He would just like snap out of it, and then
Speaker 2: he'd like literally give the guy a is a pizza,
Speaker 2: don't sue me. Here's a pizza, you know, which often worked.
Speaker 2: Apparently apparently the pizza and Dallas was hard to come
Speaker 2: by in those days. So yeah, I think a villain,
Speaker 2: but a very interesting one.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if Jack Ruby reminds you of any comic
Speaker 1: book super villain, you know, in.
Speaker 2: Terms of his build, he reminds me of Ben Grimm,
Speaker 2: the Jack Kirby thing, that sort of barrel chested, burly,
Speaker 2: tough talking guy. Maybe the thing when he was hypnotized
Speaker 2: by the Frightful Four and into turning against a Fantastic
Speaker 2: Four and in an early FF story by a Lee
Speaker 2: Kirby and Coletta. Maybe that version of the thing. That's
Speaker 2: a question I've never been asked. Thank you well, thank
Speaker 2: you Danny for joining us my pleasure, and I hope
Speaker 2: I've been a somewhat amusing jew anyway.
Speaker 1: And to our audience. Now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
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