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Patricia Highsmith (born Mary Patricia Plangman; January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Highsmith

She was the only child of artists Jay Bernard Plangman (1889–1975), who was of German descent, and Mary Plangman (née Coates; September 13, 1895 – March 12, 1991)

https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=3568

By the age of twenty in 1907 son Jay Plangman had joined his father and his brother at Texas & Pacific railroad (T&P). That year Jay was appointed towerman at Tower 55. In 1902, when he was thirteen, he had performed a piano solo for the Pocahantas women’s auxiliary of the Red Men fraternal lodge at the lodge’s state convention.

The Golden Age of Lodges: Owls, Eagles, Elks, Beavers, Bovinians, and Moose https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=4639

On January 11, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt was made an honorary member of the Improved Order of Red Men.



The IORM was a fraternal lodge at a time in American history when fraternal lodges were a pervasive social force.


In 1890 the Fort Worth Gazette estimated that Fort Worth had four thousand fraternal lodge members. The population of Fort Worth in 1890 was twenty-four thousand, so by that estimate, one man in six belonged to a lodge.


In 1899 the Fort Worth Register regularly published a lodge directory. Some lodges that did not have their own hall met in a hotel or school, the courthouse, or the hall of another lodge such as Knights of Pythias. Woodmen of the World met in the Red Men hall at Main and 10th streets.



Many male lodges had female counterparts: Odd Fellows had Daughters of Rebekah; Red Men had Daughters of Pocahontas; Knights of the Maccabees had Ladies of the Maccabees.


A lodge of the Ladies of the Maccabees was a “hive.” (Ad from The Bohemian magazine.)

In that segregated era, African Americans had their own lodges in the African-American business community. Two were the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows at 415 East 6th Street and the Key West Lodge No. 5, Knights of Pythias, at 900 East 2nd Street.

Many men belonged to more than one lodge. B. B. Paddock, for example, was an Odd Fellow, Mason, Knight of Pythias, and Knight of Honor. Dr. William A. Duringer was a Knight Templar, Shriner, Elk, Eagle, and Knight of Pythias.


There was also the Tribe of Ben Hur, an order based on the 1880 novel by Lew Wallace. In 1904 the local tribe held a ball at the interurban’s Lake Erie trolley park. Clip is from the April 21 Telegram.

And there was a veritable Ark of animals: Bovinians and Owls, Elks and Eagles, Beavers and Moose and Otters. Construction contractor and mayor William Bryce was a Bovinian. Also an Elk, Mason, and Knight of Pythias.

In 1901 the Red Men claimed six thousand members in Texas, a half million nationally by 1935. Fort Worth’s first Red Men lodge had formed by 1897. Among the order’s tenets were promotion of patriotism, performance of public service, and perpetuation of the traditions of a “once-vanishing race.” Indeed, the order traced its origins to 1765 and the Sons of Liberty, a colonial secret order whose members dressed as Native Americans when they took part in the Boston Tea Party in 1773. The Sons and other orders merged into the Society of Red Men in 1813. In 1834 that order changed its name to “Improved Order of Red Men.”

Tower 55: The Crossroads of Cowtown https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=5789

In the shadow of one of the busiest highway crossroads in the county is one of the busiest railway crossroads in the country. Thousands of drivers on Interstates 30 and 35 pass by it every day; tons of freight pass through it every day bound for much of North America on tracks of Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe; Fort Worth & Western trains pass through it bound for Cleburne or Comanche; Amtrak passenger trains pass through it bound for Chicago or San Francisco.

The term Tower 55 refers to both the railroad intersection where north-south tracks and east-west tracks cross and to the building (yellow circle) that for decades controlled railroad traffic through the intersection.



In 1884 an incident at Ginocchio’s Hotel set in motion the great escape of Jim Courtright. https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=1645
https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=31536

And what connections could a South Side boy switching trains in a tower in 1907 possibly have with . . . actors Farley Granger and Robert Walker talking on a train in 1951? .. a train of connections...

The first connection in that train is here: Mary Coates (1895-1991). In 1910 Mary, age fifteen, was giving a music recital at First Baptist Church. (And, yes, in the quartet Nenetta Burton at age fifteen is the future Mrs. Amon Carter.) https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=30087

Meanwhile, back on the railroad Jay Plangman soon had more ink than steam in his veins. He left the railroad to attend the Chicago Art Institute. By 1912 he was back in Fort Worth and drawing for the hometown newspaper.. Jay initially signed his newspaper artwork “Plangman.” Then his signature became “Plang.” Jay Plangman registered with the draft soon after the United States entered World War I. By 1918 Plang had a very different canvas: He was in the Army, painting camouflage on ships and guns.


Jay and Mary married in 1919.

Connections: From Horizons to Hitchcock (Part 2) https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=3582

In 1920 Jay and Mary Plangman (see Part 1) moved back to Fort Worth from Manhattan, and mother-to-be Mary filed for divorce. On January 19, 1921, a week after Mary’s divorce was granted, she gave birth to Patricia Plangman at Mary’s mother’s boardinghouse on Daggett Street. Patricia is our second connection linking Jay Plangman to Alfred Hitchcock.

Another member of the Coates household on Daggett Street was Patricia’s older cousin Dan. Dan Coates would become active in local Golden Gloves in the 1940s, including serving as announcer. Note the ad on that page for wrestling at the North Side Coliseum. That ad was prophetic because by the 1960s . . .Dan Coates would host Channel 11’s broadcast of wrestling matches at the North Side Coliseum at the conclusion of Channel 11’s country music programming on Saturday nights.

In New York, as Patricia studied writing at Barnard College, her mother and stepfather pursued their art careers. ..

After graduation Patricia Highsmith continued to suffer demons as she wrote and sold short stories. “Obsessions are the only things that matter,” she once said. “Perversion interests me most and is my guiding darkness.”

Patricia Plangman Highsmith put those demons to work for her. In 1950 the daughter of the boy on the railroad and the girl in the music recital saw her first novel published. Its plot centered on a psychotic socialite and a tennis pro who conspire to swap murders. In 1951 the novel was made into a movie Strangers on a Train. Robert Walker and Farley Granger starred.. When the movie premiered in Fort Worth at the Hollywood Theater, the Star-Telegram referred to Highsmith as a “Fort Worth girl.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Highsmith

After graduating from college, and despite endorsements from "highly placed professionals,"[10] she applied without success for a job at publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Good Housekeeping, Time, Fortune, and The New Yorker.

Based on the recommendation from Truman Capote, Highsmith was accepted by the Yaddo artist's retreat during the summer of 1948, where she worked on her first novel, Strangers on a Train

Voat Yaddo ref: https://archive.searchvoat.co/v/pizzaga ... 59/8797597

ANDREW SOLOMON, serves on the boards of PEN; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the World Monuments Fund; Yaddo; and The Alex Fund, which supports the education of Romani children.

a writer and lecturer on politics, culture and psychology, and a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University. https://pen.org/biography-of-andrew-solomon/

How Truman Capote Cultivated New York’s Elite—Then Exposed Their Secrets https://www.history.com/news/truman-cap ... ns-scandal

In 1943, Highsmith had an affair with artist Allela Cornell who, despondent over unrequited love from another woman, died by suicide in 1946 by drinking nitric acid.
https://archive.org/details/beautifulshadowl00wils

During her stay at Yaddo, Highsmith met writer Marc Brandel, son of author J. D. Beresford. http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/k ... andel.html [Brandel was bi] Even though she told him about her homosexuality, they soon entered into a short-lived relationship. He convinced her to visit him in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he introduced her to Ann Smith, a painter and designer with a previous métier as a Vogue fashion model, and the two became involved..

After ending her engagement to Marc Brandel, she had an affair with psychoanalyst Kathryn Hamill Cohen, the wife of British publisher Dennis Cohen and founder of Cresset Press, which later published Strangers on a Train... Kathryn Hamill Cohen, a showgirl in New York in the 1920s, died in her Chelsea home on January 2, 1960. She took her own life by taking an overdose of barbiturates. Her husband, Dennis Cohen, an official of a publishing firm, found her dead in bed.


https://stglibrary.wordpress.com/2020/1 ... 1905-1960/

Kathryn Hamill Cohen was one of the first female students to enter the Medical School when St George’s again admitted women in 1945, for the first time since the First World War. Cohen was admitted to study at St George’s alongside with four other women in 1945: Ruth Clare Cornford (Chapman), Patience Proby, Adrien Patricia Dunlop and Zaïda Megrah (Hall / Ramsbotham).
Prior to her medical studies, she had led an eventful life. Born in New York in 1905, she had worked as a dancer at Broadway with the Ziegfeld Follies, who were hugely successful, glitzy revue performers with elaborate choreographies.


In 1930 she moved to the UK; her arrival is recorded on a passenger list from New York to Plymouth on 30 Dec 1930. She was 25 years old, and her occupation on this list is given as actress. Later that year she married Dennis Cohen, a publisher at the Cresset Press, who may have been an MI6 officer, and who was also involved in organising Kindertransport from Germany during the war.
They eventually moved to Chelsea, where they had commissioned an avant-garde house still known as the ‘Cohen house’ at 64 Church Street, Chelsea


At some point prior to 1945 Cohen worked as a secretary to Nye Bevan, who in 1948 went on to establish the NHS: perhaps this work prompted her to consider medical studies, rather than politics. Between 1941 and 1944 she was a student at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied anatomy, physiology and biochemistry.
Later she was employed as psychoanalyst at the hospital and appears to have practiced psychiatry from her home office. She was also interested in genetics, and published on the use of hypnosis in treating skin diseases. Although psychoanalysis may now have a dubitable reputation, it was a respected field of study at the time. .. Highsmith asked Cohen to accompany her on a trip to Italy, although the affair does not appear to have continued after that.

https://erenow.org/biographies/the-tale ... ith/19.php

Pat had asked Rosalind Constable pointedly if the Cohens’ address was the “best address” she had to offer in England...

The fact that Kathryn’s husband, Dennis, founder of London’s Cresset Press (an imprint of Bantam Books), was interested in Pat’s work and would go on to publish Strangers on a Train, The Blunderer, and The Talented Mr. Ripley practically assured that a seduction was in the offing.

During Pat’s fortnight at the Cohens’, Kathryn took her on a small cultural tour of London, out to lunch with the actress Peggy Ashcroft, and then to Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon, where they saw Kathryn’s friend Diana Wynyard play Desdemona and then visited her backstage...

Two months after she’d left London, sick and solitary in her hotel room in Rome and feeling deeply sorry for herself, Pat took a chance on her feelings and wired Kathryn Cohen in London, asking her if she’d like to come to Italy. .. When Kathryn arrived at the beginning of September, the two women drove to Positano—this was Pat’s introduction to the enchanting hill village that would prove to be a catalyst for The Talented Mr. Ripley—and took a romantic boat trip to Palermo and Capri...

Barbara Roett, who observed Pat’s behavior in London in the spring of 1971 when they spent a night on the town together, had another kind of story to tell: “Pat looked at the whole evening as though we were two men going to pick up tarts. Not even women!” They ended up at the “famous old lesbian club,” the Gateways, just off the King’s Road and a fixture in Chelsea since the 1930s...

Ellen Blumenthal Hill, the woman who had the longest, strongest influence on Pat’s life (after Mother Mary) and never one to suppress an opinion, spent four years instructing Pat in a succinct sociologist’s “analysis” of her “past pattern” in love. Like the good student of psychology she was, Pat took notes. “She says, I fit the person to my wishes, find they don’t fit, and proceed to break it off.”10 Proust and Procrustes each had a hand in Patricia Highsmith’s ideas of love...

..in October of 1950 in New York City, Pat was introduced to the brilliant Austrian Jewish émigré novelist, political activist, and adventurer Arthur Koestler. ..The people who found Pat frank may have been confusing her famously candid responses-in-the-moment with her deeper fidelity to an operating principle which made deception, evasion, and secrecy, as well as silence, exile, and cunning, her most important emotional and artistic tools...

Pat and Lil Picard’s tempestuous friendship lasted for thirty years; and Lil, an Alsatian Jew who fled Berlin in 1936 and was au courant with every art movement in New York from Abstract Expressionism to Fluxus (and was photographed by, amongst others, Lotte Jacobi and Andy Warhol) became an identifiable figure in New York’s avant-garde.