A James Ellroy Playlist: The Loves of Freddy Otash Part II

The news that James Ellroy’s latest novel Red Sheet, featuring his current favourite lead character Fred ‘Private Eye to the Stars’ Otash, will be published in June of next year has inspired me to revisit my web series on James Ellroy and music. The previous instalment focused on two women, Judy Henske and Marilyn Monroe, who might be considered the loves of Fred Otash’s life. This episode will focus on two more women – Julie London and Doris Houck – who played the role of mistress and wife to Otash respectively.

Cry Me a River

In Widespread Panic, Otash claims to have had an affair with ‘soaring songstress Julie London.’

London was born in Santa Rosa in 1926. Show business was in her blood: her mother and father had a song-and-dance vaudeville act and three-year-old London made her professional debut on her parents’ radio show. Chance, however, led to her big break. While working as a lift girl at Roos/Atkins clothing store, London met the talent agent Sue Carol, who subsequently took London on as a client. London began acting in films and released her debut album Julie Is Her Name in 1955, which featured her signature song ‘Cry Me a River’. London’s contralto voice imbues this mournful song with both a powerful melancholy and great deal of sass.

Otash’s affair with Julie London is significant. From 1947 to 1954, London was married to Jack Webb, a.k.a. Sgt Joe Friday, the very archetype of the honourable idealised LAPD officer in Dragnet. For Webb to be cuckolded by a sleazebag like Fred Otash, who was drummed out of the LAPD by Chief William H. Parker himself, is a very cruel joke on Ellroy’s part.

Cry me a river, Jack.

I’ve Reached the Point of No Return

In the Otash novels, Ellroy reveals little about Freddy’s marriage and two divorces to Doris Houck. This is unsurprising as Otash treated Houck abominably and this inconvenient fact wouldn’t chime with Ellroy’s portrayal of him as a sympathetic lead character. Doris Houck was born in Wallace, Idaho in 1921. In the 1940s she was a prolific film actress, appearing in over twenty films from 1945-47. She was a formidable presence onscreen, and in the Three Stooges comedy Brideless Groom she persuades her reluctant boyfriend Shemp Howard to marry her by placing his head in a vice. She wanted to be his main squeeze!

Houck married Fred Otash in 1950 and their union would prove short and tempestuous. Their first divorce was vacated after the couple reconciled. Their second divorce would be final in 1952, with Houck accusing Otash of assaulting her while she was pregnant, causing her to suffer a miscarriage. By this time, Houck’s acting career was over and she was working as a clerk at a Santa Monica aircraft plant.

Houck then made something of a comeback as a songwriter. In 1955 she signed a seven-year songwriting contract with T-C publishing corporation. Her lyrics are suffused with romantic longing which might sound touching in the song below, ‘I’ve Reached the Point of No Return’. Listening to this song in the context of her relationship with Otash, however, taints it with melancholy.

Doris Houck died of barbiturate poisoning at the age of 44 on December 14, 1965.