Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Remembering David Kammerer

 

David Kammerer


Today -- August 14 -- was the anniversary of David Kammerer's death in 1944. We wrote about Kammerer on his birthday in September 2020 HERE. Kammerer appeared in Visions of Cody as Dave Stroheim, Vanity of Duluoz as Franz (Swinburne) Mueller, The Town and the City as Waldo Meister, Ramsey Allen in And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, and Alfred in The Haunted Life (Source: Character Key to Kerouac's Duluoz Legend).

Kammerer was most likely a stalker if not a sexual predator, and we remember him only because he figured into the early Beat Generation -- if only as a dark presence. Regular readers will recall that Jack was put in jail as a potential accessory after-the-fact when Lucien Carr stabbed Kammerer to death for trying to rape him, and then-girlfriend Edie Parker's lawyer would only agree to post bail if the two were married (Jack's father, Leo, refused to post $100 in bail money). Which is not to say that the two wouldn't have married anyway since to my knowledge marriage plans were underway regardless of this sad event taking place.

I won't use my usual RIP closing for obvious reasons.



 




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