When one reads about Lucius Beebe a few subjects almost invariably come up: trains (naturally), his private railcars, his manner of dress, his gourmet tastebuds, T-Bone, Chuck Clegg, and of course his Rolls-Royces––plural.
The exact amount of Rolls-Royces Beebe owned––let alone all his & Chuck's merry automobiles––has yet to be authoritatively published. The fact that Beebe frequently traded in his cars for the latest and greatest model makes the endeavor a rather difficult task.
Submitted for you here is a brief look at the automobiles both Lucius Beebe & Charles Clegg are known to have owned. It is by no means a complete list, but it hopes to one day grow up to be so, and will be updated accordingly.
To call Lucius Beebe "a car guy" may miss the mark by a few degrees. When Beebe was on his way to be a judge at the Pebble Beach Cup car race in Pebble Beach, California in 1954, he told a small pool of Los Angeles reporters, "this is singularly inappropriate since I haven't the faintest notion what makes a car run, let alone what makes a good race."
But the event organizers in Pebble Beach knew Beebe's strong suits: judging others and being an official arbiter of elegance and all things gentlemanly. Instead, he was put in charge of judging the event's luxury car showcase, the now-world famous and prestigious Concours d'Elegance. "After gazing at the cars he was to judge he described, as his favorite, a 1913 Rolls Royce tourer," reports Art Lauring in the Los Angeles Times. "'This vehicle,' he informed your scrivener, "is the only truly 'gentleman's car in the entire entourage!'"
Even to this day––as the Concours d'Elegance's prestige has grown exponentially and Beebe's star has waned to an equal but opposite degree––the Lucius Beebe Trophy is awarded at each annual Concours d'Elegance showcase "to the Rolls-Royce considered most in tradition of Lucius Beebe, a bon vivant who served among our early judges." It was the first perpetual trophy the show offered; instated as a memorial honor to Beebe upon his death in 1966. Therefore, it's the longest running honor bestowed by Concours and remains a coveted achievement amongst Rolls-Royce owners.
For all that Beebe admired in fine cars, it was Chuck who loved fast cars. His palate lent more towards sports cars, muscle cars and convertible coupes. Ever since he was a boy Chuck demonstrated mechanical intrigue and competence. There are stories that as a youngster he'd drive his family nuts by disassembling the family radio to see how it worked and how to put it back together again. If Beebe was the aesthetics, Chuck was the mechanics.
Chuck's most well-known car is his white Jaguar; there's a fabulous photo of him in a deerstalker cap escorting T-Bone riding shotgun around Virginia City. The photo accompanied the best of very few obituaries written about him. It was penned by Warren Hinckle, the eye-patch wearing columnist, for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1979. The photograph, just as much as Hinckle's words, encapsulated Chuck keenly.
If the old saw is even partially true that "the car maketh the man", then what follows might help us all glean a little more insight into these two men, both in outward appearances and under the hood.
Rolls-Royce
Phantom III Sedan
Year: Between 1936 - 1939
Plates: ??F 625 (Nevada)
Black
Beebe's Rolls-Royce Phantom III was often used as a fine photo prop and backdrop during the media blitz that surrounded Beebe & Clegg in 1952 and 1953 after they restarted the dormant Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada.
"Sharing with such other newspaper notables as William Randolph Hearst, Arthur Brisbane, Odd McIntyre and Mrs. Ogden Reid* a passion for Rolls-Royces, Publisher Beebe of the Territorial Enterprise poses his Phantom III sedan," remarks a multi-page feature on Beebe, Clegg and the Territorial Enterprise in the Nevada State Journal from Dec. 20, 1953.
Rolls-Royce
Silver Dawn
1954
Right-hand drive
Two tone yellow & burgundy
"[Lucius Beebe] boasts that his burg, Virginia City, has more Rolls Royces per capita than any city in America. It has two, and he owns both of them," says Earl Wilson in the San Francisco Examiner in his July 10, 1954 column about a visit Wilson took to Reno. He goes on to explain Beebe ordered a custom Rolls in a creme color from London and waited for months for it to arrive.
"At last it arrived; creme color in London is yellow––the same color as the yellow cabs," Wilson wrote. "As lanky Lucius pilots his yeller Rolls down past the gamblin' hells, many a varmint staggers out and yells at him 'Hey, taxi.'"
However, over six months earlier in January of '54, Herb Caen, the legendary San Francisco columnist at the Chronicle said in his column that Beebe had been in town recently to order new Rolls Royce to be custom made in a yellow two tone. So perhaps the yellow was indeed intentional. Caen notes that among the other customizations is a full leather backseat just for Mr. T-Bone Towser, though in most photos of course we see T-Bone riding shotgun.
It seems the car may have even had a brief stint as a Hollywood star. "When 20th [Century] needed a postwar Rolls Royce with a right-hand drive to match up with the one used by Clark Gable in Hong Kong in "Soldier of Fortune" they ran into difficulties," says a Jan. 13, 1955 CTS article. According to this article, Beebe rented his Rolls to the studio for $1,000 a week. "The car arrived, an eye-popper in tones of plum and cerise which had to be sprayed black, but must be returned to its highly original color scheme before it goes back to Lucius."
Writer Jan Morris* actually got to drive Beebe's Silver Dawn when it was brand new in 1954. Morris was a journalist on the crew of the Edmund Hillary expedition in 1953, which was known as the first expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The following year, Morris visited Virginia City, Nevada and got to drive Beebe's 1954 Silver Dawn.
"I shall never forget the feeling I felt," Morris recalled of driving Beebe's Rolls in a 1975 article for the New York Times. "You must not laugh at me –– I felt like Botticelli's Venus emerging from her shell, so pearly was the ambiance, so sensual the breath of wind as we swept along, so gentle the tick of the engine, so gaily but majestically did the silver Spirit of Ecstasy, the perennial mascot of Rolls-Royces, dance on the radiator before me."
The experience inspired her to purchase a Silver Dawn of her own.
Jeep
Territorial Enterprise work vehicle
The Jeep was less a Concours candidate and more of a work vehicle for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper when Beebe & Clegg restarted the historical/hysterical newspaper in 1952. I'm not sure as of this writing what year the Jeep was exactly, but one can safely assume it was between 1940 to 1952.
Austin Woodward, an early editor of the rebootedTerritorial Enterprise, has a fabulous close up picture of the Enterprise Jeep in his article "Virginia City Remembrances" in Journal of the West (1998). The pictures give us just about the most information I've been able to find so far about the Jeep. We see in the photograph of Austin and wife Rosalie Woodward in the fall of 1952 that the Jeep had hand-painted lettering that read "The Territorial Enterprise" and "Nevada's First Newspaper" we see the beginnings of a date (185?) and the beginnings of "Virginia City".
The Jeep was purchased primarily as a work vehicle for the paper. Because some of the roads were still dirt roads in Virginia City in the 1950s, the Jeep could take the beating of driving twenty miles each way to the printer shop in Sparks instead of the Rolls.
In a unique coincidence, writer Katherine Hillyer (who worked for the Beebe-Clegg Territorial Enterprise as 1/2 of "The Two Katies") is credited with writing the first article that ever used the word "Jeep" while working as a WWII correspondent for the Washington Daily News in Feb. 1941. Up until then, it was officially referred to as a Willys, with "Jeep" being one of many unofficial nicknames. No word yet on Katie H.'s opinion of the T.E.'s Jeep.
Jaguar
Color: "Snow White"
Year: Likely 1953
Plates: (possibly) ST104, Nevada
"Clegg, besides editing the The Enterprise, is a confirmed motor car enthusiast and racing driver," writes Beebe in his book Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise, published in 1954. "The week after he had editorially urged the harshest treatment at the law's discretion for hot-rodders who hurrah the Comstock, he purchased an imported, snow-white Jaguar racing car warranted to achieve 115 miles an hour."
"Two nights later, when the Editor of The Enterprise was arrested and fined $20 for disturbing the peace with his unmuffled horsepower and exceeding the Virginia City speed limit by seventy miles an hour, the press of the nation was happy over the event," Beebe continues. "'Either it proves the power of the press Newsweek quoted Clegg* as saying, "or it proves that the press has no power at all. I don't know which.'"
Hopefully Clegg would temper his lead foot while chauffeuring the beloved Mr. T-Bone around Virginia City in the Jag. Locals recall how funny a sight it was to see a big dog towering over the windshield of a little car. The photo shown above of Clegg in Deerstalker cap and western string tie (as clipped from "Boardwalk Bon Vivants" by Andria Daley in Nevada magazine) escorting T-Bone about Virginia City shows us that Mr. T-Bone was indeed accustomed to traveling by Jaguar.
Ford
Thunderbird
1959
Red
There's little record of Lucius Beebe's Thunderbird, which is surprising because he was said to have purchased a new T-Bird "every other year", according to the homage to Beebe written by Gordon Pates, (the managing editor at the San Francisco Chronicle during Beebe's tenure at the newspaper).
"Lucius Beebe added a red Thunderbird to his stable of Rolls, Bentleys, and Jags," Cholly Knickerbocker––a pseudonym for a few different New York City society columnists––wrote in his column in 1959, "but luscious Lucius insists on referring to it simply as "my Ford."
Karl Larson, who worked as Beebe & Clegg's "yardboy" as a teenager in Virginia City, Nevada, has confirmed for us that they did indeed have a Thunderbird in their stable among the others noted by Champagne Cholly above. Larson recalls having to wash their cars (he recalls them owning a Rolls, Bentley, Jaguar, T-Bird and Jeep) as part of his duties, along with landscaping and fishing empty liquor bottles out of the swimming pool after a raucous party the night before.
It would be interesting to know for certain if Beebe did indeed buy a new Thunderbird every other year, and if so which years. The Thunderbird was introduced in late 1954 with their 1955 model and continued past the duration of Beebe's life, which ended in 1966. So, he could have owned several years of the T-Bird between 1955 and 1966. Scott Newhall, the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle during Beebe's tenure there, recalls Beebe in a posthumous article as having "a Thunderbird or two".
"The personal experience of this department, which drives a Ford of sorts on occasion," Beebe wrote in his column in 1965, "is that, if the clock on the dashboard of a Rolls-Royce is the loudest audible thing in this triumphant product, the loudest thing about at least one Thunderbird is the sound of gadgets falling form the dashboard to the floor. The number of manual controls, dials, switches, handles, levers and throttles which came from the factory in my Thunderbird in un-attachment is one of the amazements of the automotive world.
"Once you have them all replaced, however, there is almost nothing a T-Bird won't do including the spooning of a Martini and singing 'God Save the Queen.'"
Oldsmobile
Likely early-mid 1950s.
The only mention of this merry Oldsmobile is on an 1950s receipt from the Peter Satori luxury automobile dealership in Pasadena, CA where Beebe purchased several of his Rolls. It appears this Oldsmobile was offered as part of a trade in for––you guessed it!––another Rolls-Royce. This receipt was viewed and is on file at the California State Railroad Museum Archives in Sacramento, CA.
Jaguar
XK 140
1956
C Type, Drophead Coupe
Body: P4003
Plates: ST596 (Nevada)
This Jaguar and the above specs was listed among Chuck Clegg's estate according to records housed at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. I currently have no other information on this Jag, but of course will add more information as it surfaces.
Bentley
S-1 Drophead Continental
1958
Serial: BC 43LC H
Body number H. 54
Plates: ST5957 (Nevada)
This Bentley and the above specs was listed among Chuck Clegg's estate according to records housed at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. I currently have no other information on this Jag, but of course will add more information as it surfaces.
Rolls-Royce
White
Plates: ST??? (Nevada)
All I know about this one is what you can see here in this photograph. I will add more details again as they arise.
Studebaker
Gran Turismo (G.T.) Hawk
Number 15
This advertisement for Studebaker's G.T. Hawk from the early 1960s tells us quite a bit about Beebe & Clegg's car collection at the time. We see three luxury automobiles on a curved driveway in front of a two story home. If there's any truth in advertising, each of these three cars belong to the Beebe-Clegg family. I believe the home in the background is Beebe & Clegg's manor in Hillsborough, California (south of San Francisco).
If that's so, we see that Beebe & Clegg had quite a "stable of cars" at their Hillsborough home as well as their Virginia City home, including what looks to be a white Jaguar and a third luxury car to the right.
The Studebaker GT Hawk was only produced from 1962 to 1964 and it was the top of the Studebaker line at the time. According to the ad, Beebe owned GT Hawk number 15. Actor James Mason, who also appeared in the same ad campaign, owned number 12. Harrumph!
Learn more about the GT Hawk and see the interior in this video from Studebaker circa 1962.
Mercury
Cougar
1969
Coupe
Little is publicly known about Chuck's 1969 Mercury Cougar. I've seen no photos and no reference to it outside of a copy of the registration included in the Lucius Beebe papers collection at the California State Railroad Museum.
The 1973 registration paperwork shows Chuck owned it and listed his Virginia City address. Of course I'll add more information here as it surfaces––I'd love to see a picture of Chuck racing this baby with the top down––but in the meanwhile, enjoy this 1969 promotional video from Mercury on the Cougar. I'm going to sign off now before the urge to make a cougar joke overcomes me. Enjoy!
This is by no means a complete list but we'll add to it as more automobiles from the Beebe-Clegg stable surface!
* Beebe's former boss at the New York Herald Tribune
** If Beebe was a pioneer in living as a relatively openly gay celebrity reporter in the United States in the mid-century, Jan Morris was a pioneer as a transsexual journalist in the public eye. She began her life and career as James Morris and began her transition in 1964.
* Indeed, Clegg did make a headline in Newsweek in the magazine's September 21, 1953 issue for his transgression. When we look at the exact article called "Clegg at the Wheel" (on Page 88, as in Rocket), we learn Beebe was paraphrasing Clegg. The exact quote from Newsweek has Chuck as saying as his only comment: "I'm not sure whether the affair is an infringement on the freedom of the press or evidence of its editorial power."
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