Midway through June, and I hope everyone is doing well!
Not much else to say for this week, happy summer!
Within the lore of Leopold and Loeb there’s a moment I want to take a closer look at. It’s the summer of 1921 and time for Leopold and Loeb to think about where they’ll be going to college next term. They decide to go to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They do so, but that summer while they’re staying at the Loeb’s estate in Charlevoix, Michigan they’re seen in bed together by Hamlin Buchman, a young man who had been their classmate at the University of Chicago. Buchman tells Richard Loeb’s older brother Allan about the incident and is ordered to leave the estate.
When Leopold and Loeb get to the University of Michigan, Loeb joins the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, Leopold does not. They find that Buchman has been telling people about their relationship. They decide to see less of each other in public, and if they do want to go out together, they’ll take at least one other friend along as well, to not arouse suspicion. At the end of the year, Leopold transfers back to the University of Chicago, and Loeb completes another year at the University of Michigan.
These are the facts as we know them, but over the years many new details and contextualizations have been added. Here’s how this situation is described in the 2022 non-fiction book Murder Among Friends:
[Loeb decides to go to Michigan and Leopold follows.] “In truth, Nathan had been content in Chicago, but he hadn’t wanted to be separated from Richard. In Ann Arbor, they’d be sharing an apartment. The idea of living day to day with his lover must have thrilled him…When he finally got there, Richard treated him coldly. He barely spoke to him in public and was rarely home. Nathan confronted him. What was going on? Buchman’s rumors about their relationship had found their way to Ann Arbor, Richard explained. To stop further spread, he suggested they quit being seen so often together. When they did go out together, they should treat each other politely but distantly. No longer could they act like best friends.
Nathan agreed. Any whiff of homosexuality, he knew, could ruin his future. But what about when they were alone together in the apartment?
Richard acted cold there too.”
…
[This is fine for a while, but Leopold starts to irritate the ZBT members as Loeb tries to pledge.] “They made a deal with Richard. They would accept him if he dumped Nathan.
It took Richard fifteen minutes to move out of the apartment and into the Zeta Beta Tau chapter house.
His actions devastated Nathan. The only reason he’d come to Michigan was to be with Richard. Now his best friend had abandoned him.”
I want to go back to the sources, to see what was really said, and what popular parts of this story may not have much of a basis in reality.
The story begins in 1921, with Leopold and Loeb deciding to transfer to the University of Michigan. We know that Leopold and Loeb were at the Loeb’s estate in Charlevoix at least from June 23-26, because a visiting botanist recorded seeing them there in his diary. Of course, they were likely there much longer than the botanist’s short visit, but that at least gives us an anchor point for when they were there and around when the Buchman incident could have taken place.
We also know that Richard Loeb began seeking information about transferring to the University of Michigan on July 15th, because there are letters exchanged between him and an employee of the University. These letters stretch from the 15th-29th, and all of them are sent to and from Charlevoix, rather than the Loeb’s Chicago address, indicating that Richard Loeb was still in Charlevoix for the summer at that point, though it’s unclear if Leopold was with him.
Loeb arrived on the University of Michigan campus on September 24th, registered for classes and secured a single room in a boarding house where two of his friends were also staying. Leopold arrived the following day, secured a room in a boarding house a few blocks away from Loeb, and the semester began on September 27th.
According to Loeb, he didn’t know the rumor about his relationship had gotten out until February 26th, 1922, the day after his initiation into the Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) fraternity. He and Crowe discussed it on June 1st, with Leopold also in attendance:
Crowe: In Michigan you were not initiated into a fraternity?
Loeb: Yes, the night after.
Crowe: The president of the fraternity told you about this rumor that has been spread about the students there?
Loeb: Yes.
…
Loeb: Judge, may I point out at this place? After this fellow told me, this brother of mine, about the rumor, that was the first time I knew that the rumor was around. He told me about the rumor, in order that I might watch my actions; and then I told Leopold about the rumor, and we mutually decided at the time that the best thing to do was to be very careful of our actions and be careful not to be seen alone late at night; so that if anybody did have any suspicions of the thing, that there would be nothing to substantiate that suspicion. That was the reason; it was quite an understanding that we were to be careful and that was how he happened to write me that letter; and we did, because that was in line with everything that we did; in fact, if we wanted to go to the theater, we would bring a third person along.
Both had previously talked about this with Crowe as well. Leopold told Crowe that because of the rumor “Dick and I were very careful when we were alone together for over a year, in fact, we were very seldom alone together, and when we were, we took a chaperon along.” Loeb explained in more detail: “We did everything in our power to avoid any possible scandal in regard to that thing for two years since it happened. That was three years ago when this rumor started, for two years we were very careful never to be alone together, to be seen alone together any place or to be alone together any place where we could be seen. We were careful if we wanted to go to a theater on a particular evening we would be careful to have somebody come along, purely and simply on the advice of my brother, who had told me to be careful and not to see too much of Leopold and if I did to be sure there was somebody else around.”
There is a bit more elaboration on this in the Bowman-Hulbert psychiatric report in which they state [‘he’ being Leopold and ‘his companion’ being Loeb]:
“When he entered the University of Michigan he expected to keep in rather close touch with his companion, of whom he was quite fond. He found that his companion rather tended to avoid him, and his companion finally stated to him that his fraternity brothers at the University had told him there were rumors of homo-sexual relations between him and the patient, and while they didn’t believe this rumor at all, they felt that it would be an advisable thing for him not to be seen much in the patient’s company.
The two, therefore, made an agreement that they would not have a great deal to do with each other, and that they would carefully guard against appearing together in a way that might cause any unfavorable comment. During the year they did get drunk together a number of times.” … He continued on terms of friendship with his companion.”
Both Loeb’s statements and the HB report seem to indicate that Leopold and Loeb didn’t know about the rumors until after Loeb had already pledged to ZBT in February.
This is all the information researchers had to go off of for several decades, and this time period was usually not discussed in any significant way in non-fiction accounts of the case that came out before the 1970s. It was sometimes mentioned that there were rumors about the relationship, and that Loeb graduated from the University of Michigan, but nothing significant was read into about the way Leopold or Loeb may have felt about this development. The only fictional adaptation to touch on this event before the 70s was the Compulsion novel by Meyer Levin.
In Compulsion, Artie [Loeb] goes to the University of Michigan for a year first, skipping the year the real pair spent at the University of Chicago together, then Judd [Leopold] comes up for the following two years. The reader gets the information about the turbulence at Ann Arbor from Artie’s internal monologue: he’s ruminating on Judd insisting on coming up to Ann Arbor after Morty Kornhauser [Hamlin Buchman] caught them in bed together. “Even with Morty Kornhauser away from the frat, Judd should never have insisted on coming to Ann Arbor,” Artie thinks to himself. He’s annoyed, remembering the way Judd reacted when his family received a letter from Morty about finding them in bed together. “Instead of simply gabbing his way out of it, Judd had to make an issue, declaring that just for that, the family had to show they trusted him by letting him go to Ann Arbor even though Artie was there. And then another mistake. Mr. Judd Steiner had to insist he wanted to get into the frat!”
Though he doesn’t think about it, it seems that Artie tried to get Judd into the fraternity at first. He thinks about a conversation he had with Al, the fraternity president: “Al told Artie, Why not face the facts? The thing wasn’t only because of Morty’s tales. Judd simply was not well liked, so why make an issue of getting him in?”
When the fraternity doesn’t want him, Judd concedes defeat and becomes anti-fraternity, coming over to the frat house to talk about this with the fraternity brothers, which obviously makes him unpopular. “He would drop over to the house and spout this stuff, and some of the fellows would laugh, but a lot of them didn’t like it. They started telling Artie to keep his friend away from the place. On account of Judd he’d almost become unpopular.”
So while the bones are here, this isn’t quite the story that we’ll come to see in the decades to come. Judd doesn’t leave Michigan after being rejected, and he also doesn’t seem to hold any of this against Artie, he just thinks that it was hard to have spent two years so close to him without being able to have sex.
Then came Hal Higdon’s The Crime of the Century in 1975. During the course of his research, Higdon interviewed Max Schrayer, who had been a fraternity brother of Loeb’s. Schrayer recalled the incident in some detail during his interview:
Schrayer: One of the fellows in our fraternity took a liking to [Loeb] and after some months – not usually when you pledge guys to the fraternity – in december this one fellow who is dead now Irv Goldsmith tried to insist we consider, all of us, Dick Loeb to our fraternity. I was one of the last ones to consent because I had no use for him, and this is one of the deals you make in a fraternity house-there was another guy they wanted to get in and I agreed that if they dropped the other guy I would pass on Loeb-providing that he separated from Leopold, none of us liked Leopold.
Higdon: Was Leopold trying to get into the fraternity too?
Schrayer: I don’t think either of them were trying to get into the frat but one of our members was anxious for Leopold to get in. They were living together at the time and there was a big ruckus because there was a story these kids were homosexuals and when they were kids in Charlevoix they were caught in bed together or some wild story.
So we called Allan Loeb who was Dick’s oldest brother and he came to Ann Arbor without Dick knowing it and we confronted him, told him we were considering it and wanted to know about it and he gave us quite a sales talk: the two of them were kids, he thought it was exaggerated, there was nothing to it, and so we finally decided that providing he would leave Leopold we would take him in. So this guy who was promoting him asked him and he accepted within two minutes – and within 15 minutes he was moved in on our fraternity house – he just walked out on Leopold – he left him – he brought all his stuff over and I’d say that afternoon he was in our house – a pledge – Leopold quit school as a result.
In his book, Higdon whittled this down to two short descriptions:
“Finally, the members agreed to accept Loeb as long as Leopold not also be pledged. Goldsmith informed Loeb of his acceptance, and within fifteen minutes Loeb abandoned his closest friend and moved into the fraternity house. Leopold was affronted. He transferred to the University of Chicago at the end of the school year.”
…
“The fraternity had called Allan Loeb to Chicago to inquire about the charge [of homosexuality], and Richard’s older brother showed such concern that he traveled to Ann Arbor to talk to the members. He told the chapter that the two of them were just kids at the time, that the incident had been exaggerated. The fraternity had accepted Loeb for membership, provided he abandon his friendship with Leopold.”
And with that, the story had taken on a new identity. Schrayer added several details which would become crucial to the story: Leopold and Loeb were sharing an apartment in Michigan prior to Loeb moving into the frat house, ZBT would only allow Loeb to join if he broke friendship with Leopold, and Leopold was upset about Loeb joining ZBT and this caused him to leave Michigan. Higdon twice uses the word “abandon” and “abandoned” to describe this moment of Loeb choosing the fraternity over Leopold.
Unfortunately, I think, Higdon trusted someone recalling an incident which had happened over 50 years ago from memory instead of the documents from the time period. For instance, there’s no evidence that Leopold and Loeb shared an apartment at any point during their time in Michigan, or even that they ever planned to. In the student directory they are listed at separate addresses, Loeb’s letters from that time period are all from the address listed in that directory, and a notebook of his mother’s lists that address with a list of other addresses she kept. Leopold and Loeb themselves never claimed to have lived together, and years later Leopold would speak of “Dick’s landlady” and “my apartment” rather than saying “our.” It seems likely that either the pair had concocted an elaborate scheme to live together while appearing to live apart, which Leopold maintained even four decades later, or Schrayer’s memory was fuzzy on that point.
And going off of that possibly fuzzy memory, Higdon takes the next leap to say that Loeb “abandoned” Leopold and dropped friendship with him in order to get into the frat. All of this despite the psych report’s statement that they “continued on terms of friendship,” multiple statements that Leopold and Loeb themselves made about talking the matter over when they heard about the rumors and mutually deciding that they should avoid each other to try and quench the rumor. It also ignores that the pair reportedly would find a third party to join them if they wanted to do something together, that they “went frequently to Detroit together to drink.” We also know from the psychiatric reports that Leopold and Loeb got together several times that winter to plot about killing Hamlin Buchman.
Of course they did all of that in secret, so it would make sense that Schrayer, from his outsider perspective, saw Loeb as truly breaking friendship with Leopold. It’s actually a compliment to how well the pair apparently were able to pull off their separation charade that he thought so, but it hardly seems like anyone was actually “abandoned.”
But Higdon had hit on something which resonated with people looking into the story, especially as the narrative of Leopold as a shy, friendless, nerd archetype who loved Loeb while Loeb only tolerated his presence and manipulated him into becoming a criminal partner were also growing in popularity. The use of Schrayer’s story would forever change how people saw this moment, turning it into a break up between Leopold and Loeb, and after this point there was no stopping the story, in either fiction or non-fiction.
Playwright Daniel Henning took inspiration from Higdon for his 2008 play Dickie and Babe, in which they have this exchange after Loeb announces he’s joining the fraternity:
BABE: You make me leave my sick mother to be with you and keep you company; and now you have new friends, so you’re leaving me?
DICKIE: We can’t have everyone thinking we’re a couple of cocksuckers. It’d ruin us. Don’t you see?
BABE: What I see is a scared little boy who has no idea how to tell the truth; or treat a friend.
Then it was launched into even more popularity by the best selling nonfiction book For the Thrill of it by Simon Baatz, also out in 2008:
“In 1921 [Loeb] suddenly announced to his parents that he intended to transfer to Michigan to finish his degree.
“Nathan was devastated—his closest companion, his most intimate friend, was to leave Chicago for Ann Arbor! He would lose Richard— perhaps forever! In his desperation, Nathan announced that he too would transfer to Michigan.
…
“Nothing could have given Nathan more pain than to realize that Richard had abandoned him for new friends at Zeta Beta Tau.”
Both Henning and Baatz declare that Leopold followed Loeb to Michigan, but in actuality we have no information about who made the decision, or if they decided to transfer together. The only information in the psychiatric reports is: “[Leopold] suggested to his father that he go away to school, to the University of Michigan, the following year. This was agreed to,” which gives no clues. Both Leopold and Loeb had connections to the University: Leopold’s older brother Sam had attended the university in 1919-1920 and Loeb’s cousin Robert Loeb had started there during the 1920-1921 school year and became a member of Zeta Beta Tau. Richard Loeb would even sometimes stay with Robert’s former landlady, even after he moved into the fraternity as well. So while someone could speculate that Loeb had more connections to the University and more reason to transfer there, so he must have made the decision and Leopold followed along behind him, that’s all it would be: speculation.
All of the fiction published after this point furthers this narrative as well. In Brad Walton’s Dialogues of Leopold and Loeb from 2016 the pair have this exchange:
Leopold: Do you think I don’t know what went on with you at Michigan—after you dumped me for that stupid fraternity?
…
Loeb: I know why you made those plans. It’s to get back at me for supposedly leaving you high and dry at Ann Arbor. I didn’t know you were so vindictive.
In L. A. Fields’ Homo Superiors, Noah, the Leopold character, follows Ray, the Loeb, to Michigan, but Ray ignores him, avoiding and not speaking to him once from November to June. Noah thinks to himself:
“And of course [Ray’s] all the more irresistible now that he’s grown tired of Noah, but it’s time to stop following him around. Noah’s mother would want him to have at least half the self-respect God gave a worm, so it’s back to Chicago, for sure. Dad will be happier to have him back home, probably, and Ray will be relieved to get rid of him. Everybody wins.”
And it is especially egregious in K. C. Krantz’s Nothing But the Night from 2018. Loeb agrees to break friendship with Leopold in order to get into the fraternity, which Leopold doesn’t take well. After Buchman told the frat about walking in on them:
“Naturally, I told them he was lying,” Dick continued. “They believed me, but still want me to stop associating with you just as a precaution.”
“And you agreed to that?” I asked quietly.
“I-I had to, Babe. For the sake of our reputations.”
“For the sake of your reputation, you mean,” I shot back, my face hot, “and because you wanted to get into that stupid fraternity at any cost. Even at the cost of our friendship!”
“Nathan, please, if I hadn’t agreed, we’d both look like the campus fags. Now, this doesn’t mean we actually have to end our relationship, and I don’t want to. We can still meet discreetly.”
“So we can remain friends, but we have to sneak around.”
…
“So…when we see each other around school, and I act distant, please don’t take it personally.”
“Oh, of course not! My best friend-and my lover-is publicly repudiating me. Why would I ever take that personally?”
So often in these fictional adaptations, and even the nonfiction, Leopold is shown to resent Loeb and not understand why they should avoid each other in public. Leopold is shown as more bold, wanting to stay together, sometimes not even caring if he’s thought to be gay, while Loeb is scared, and backs down under the scrutiny, which is seen as cowardly rather than a practical solution in an extremely homophobic time. Leopold and Loeb’s statements that they came to a mutual decision to avoid being seen alone in public, while still sometimes seeing each other in company or in private have been completely ignored.
Everything coalesces in the latest nonfiction account of the case, Greg King and Penny Wilson’s Nothing But the Night from 2022, where every single bit of trope and misinformation is on display:
“[Nathan] noticed that his friend was suddenly distant, preoccupied. Richard was out on his own for the first time, under no restraint, and wanted to find new friends and explore new possibilities. He may have come to regard Nathan as a cloying, effusive, and socially unpopular anchor around his neck; perhaps he was tired of having to soothe Nathan’s fragile ego. As Richard began pulling away, it was obvious to Nathan that their relationship was at a turning point. He couldn’t ignore the fact that he cared more about Richard than Richard did about him.
…
After Allan’s intervention, the brothers at Zeta Beta Tau agreed to pledge Richard, but only on the condition that he stop seeing Nathan. It was a lifeline that Richard was apparently eager to seize, and he took little time to make his choice. Never as enamored of Nathan as Nathan was of him, and unsettled by the rumors, he decided that the fraternity was more important than the friendship. Shattered and feeling rejected, Nathan finished out the year at Ann Arbor before transferring back to the University of Chicago for the fall term of 1922.”
So that’s the story of the ZBT break up and how the present narrative came to be. How it went from one of Leopold and Loeb deciding how to navigate homophobia together while maintaining their relationship, to one in which Loeb chooses the fraternity life over Leopold, avoiding all contact with him until Leopold, confused and abandoned, slinks back to the University of Chicago alone. I think it’s fascinating to see how often fiction and nonfiction tends to build off of each other, rather than the original sources, allowing these stories to drift further and further from the truth over time.
Hello everyone! A bit of a different post than usual today. In honor of pride month I thought I would gather together all of the information I’ve accumulated while researching what the gay life was like in Puerto Rico during the 1960s and 70s and put it into its own wordpress site. This includes a list of all of the destinations I could find that were active during that time period (bars, baths, hotels, theatres, etc.) There are also separate pages for each of the places that have enough info, giving everything I’ve been able to find about them including descriptions from travel guides, letters, interviews and even photos in some cases. I still have to add information about cruising the beaches and plazas, so stay tuned for that!
If you’d like to start with the pages which mention Leopold (either because he commented on the institution or someone else talked about him being there) check out the pages for Arturo’s, Finale, and Main Street.
Right now the site is called Gay Puerto Rican Tourism because 100% of my information comes from tourists rather than Puerto Ricans themselves. I’ve also only been able to find information on male dominated spaces, nothing about lesbians or trans people. I would love to incorporate those perspective, and in the future if I manage to find those kinds of sources I’ll add them and probably change the name. I just didn’t want to convey the idea that the information on the site conveys anything other than the perspectives of male tourists from the States or (in Leopold’s case) someone who moved to the island fairly recently.
In other news, I’ve added some new charts (with drawings!) to the Astrology post, added a couple poems written by a fan of Leopold’s to the fiction page and I continue slowly adding friends to the Friends page. I swear it’ll be finished eventually!
Thank you to everyone who tuned into the livestream on the 30th, it was wonderful to answer your questions and be able to spend an hour hanging out with you! For anyone who wasn’t able to make it, I’ll post a link to the video on my Publicity page once it’s up.
The Lives and Legends of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold 