The Lady and the Dale (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
Soldier of Fortune
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
JOHNNY OLSON:
A fortune in fabulous prizes
may go to these people tonight
if they know
when The Price is Right.
And now, here's the ultimate:
a three-wheeled car!
(CHEERING)
It's the Dale,
a whole new concept
in automotive design,
a three-wheeled chassis
with a high-impact
plastic resistant Rosen body,
top speed of 85 miles per hour.
For comfort and economy,
it's the Dale
by Twentieth Century
Motor Car Corporation.
NEWS ANCHOR #1:
a rough-talking promoter
named Elizabeth Carmichael.
She's president
and prime mover behind the Dale.
NEWS ANCHOR #2:
The miracle is in the mileage,
a promise
of 70 per precious gallon.
ELIZABETH GERALDINE CARMICHAEL:
We've taken a total concept,
integrated it, and built a whole
new means of transportation.
MALE VOICE:
Mrs. Carmichael is no pessimist.
REPORTER #1:
Think you're going to be able
to take on GM?
We're gonna whip GM.
A couple of nights ago,
on the television show
The Price is Right,
the grand prize was
a three-wheeled Dale automobile.
That embarrassing show
was taped several months ago
when the Dale was getting
reams of publicity.
But is the Dale all
it's been cracked up to be?
Now state officials tell us
that Mrs. Carmichael's
fingerprints
match those
of a notorious conman.
Mrs. Elizabeth Carmichael
is actually
Mr. Jerry Dean Michael.
And the secret life
of Jerry Michael
is the stuff of wildly
imaginative adventure novels.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
There's so much to say
about my father. I
How long you got?
SUSAN STRYKER: She lived
as a man for a long time,
but that doesn't mean
that she wasn't trans.
CANDI MICHAEL:
My father was my hero.
CHARLES RICHARD BARRETT:
I'll tell you what.
There was so much
cloak and dagger going on.
It was a difficult life.
That's all.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: The very first
piece of literature
I can ever remember moving me
was about in the
third grade, maybe,
a teacher reading
a little thing.
It was the story of a spider
who leaped from a windowsill
and failed to reach the side
where it was trying
to string its web,
then climbed back up
and leaped again,
climbed back up
and leaped again.
And the moral of the story
is if you first don't succeed,
try and try again.
That's the first thing
that I can remember
being impressed by
in literature.
-(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
-(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
It's so hard
to explain to people
because Liz is like
two people to me.
The first part
of the transition
was just calling Daddy "Jerry."
And it took several years,
but eventually Jerry
became Aunt Jerry,
then Aunt Liz, and then Mother.
This is a course
of over probably three years.
So from that point on,
my father, Jerry Dean Michael,
became my mother,
Elizabeth Geraldine Carmichael.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CANDI: Jerry Dean Michael
was born a farm boy,
but was too smart
for his own good.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: I was born
on a dirt farm, very poor.
I did occasionally
get to go to the movies.
Here I saw people
driving fancy cars
and living in fancy buildings.
(GUNSHOTS)
And somewhere about
15 years of age,
I realized that there was
a better way to live
than on a dirt farm.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
It was a brick home.
Probably one
of the nicer ones around.
(CHUCKLES)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
("BABY COUNT TEN"
BY THE BELL SISTERS PLAYING) ♪
One ♪
Baby, count one ♪
While you're having fun
With someone else ♪
Don't come around ♪
CARL ZUKUNFT:
Two ♪
Baby, count two ♪
But when you're all through
With your romance ♪
Leave me alone ♪
Ten ♪
ZUKUNFT: Three or four cars
may have passed us
the whole time
we was walking ten miles.
But when you've the yen
To count me in ♪
Count me out ♪
ZUKUNFT: He said,
"Aw, we're just unlucky."
Count me out ♪
One, two, three, four, five
Six, seven, eight, nine ♪
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(LAUGHTER)
(SIREN WAILING)
KENNETH YERYAR :
(CROWD CLAMORING)
YERYAR :
When Jerry was young,
he had a couple marriages
before he met my mother,
and was always going out
for adventures,
whether they'd be business
or just mischief in general.
FBI NARRATOR: FBI case file:
Jerry Dean Michael.
1946 to 1958.
Kenneth Paul Wolf advised
that he is a one-time friend
of the subject,
Jerry Dean Michael,
as they both grew up together
in Jasonville, Indiana.
Wolf advised that in 1946,
he enlisted in the army
and came in contact
with Jerry Dean Michael.
Wolf advised
that he and the subject
were shipped overseas
to Germany.
WAR VIDEO NARRATOR:
The problem now is future peace.
That is your job in Germany.
FBI NARRATOR:
The next time he had
occasion to see the subject
was in 1948.
At that time,
the subject was married
to a German girl
by the name of Marga.
Marga advised that she married
Jerry Dean Michael
during his military service
in Germany
and has two children by him.
(DOOR OPENS)
Jerry Dean Michael was charged
with desertion of his wife,
Marga, and their children
with a penal sum
of 1,000 dollars.
The subject entered
a plea of guilty,
receiving one to three years
at Indiana Reformatory
plus court costs be paid
by Marga
and the subject's mother.
The sentence was suspended
and the subject was released
on his own recognizance.
Jerry Dean Michael
married Juanita Haseman in 1954,
and her father
paid the down payment
on their first apartment.
-(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
-The subject appeared
to be a smooth talker
and sold knitting machines
which he built with the promise
that he would by the products
the customer produced.
(PHONE RINGS, BEEPS)
AUTOMATED VOICE: The number
you are trying to reach
has been disconnected.
FBI NARRATOR: Juanita Haseman
advised that she and the subject
changed residences
twenty-one times
in the three years
of their marriage,
and they resided
in the states of New York,
California, Texas, Louisiana,
Indiana, and Florida.
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
Juanita's father described
the subject as "no-good,
always attempting
some unethical means
of shortcutting to success."
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
In the spring of 1956,
Juanita had finally
had enough of this marriage
and left the subject.
Juanita had two children
by Jerry Dean Michael,
but he has never seen
the youngest child.
The subject Jerry Dean Michael
operated a small newspaper
over a local grocery store.
The subject did not enjoy
a very good reputation
-in the community.
-(GRUMBLING)
FBI NARRATOR: The newspaper
had been unsuccessful,
and no paper was continued
after the subject
left the small town of Elnora.
The subject
changed residences frequently,
commenting that it was cheaper
than paying rent.
Jerry Dean Michael worked for
United Vacuum Cleaners in 1957.
The subject
was an excellent salesman
and had
a good mechanical knowledge
of vacuum cleaners
and sewing machines.
The subject was fired,
as he was pocketing
down payments made by customers.
Jerry Dean Michael considered
himself a soldier of fortune,
divulging that
he was going to Cuba
to join the revolutionaries,
and expressed other ideas
which were considered wild
by anyone hearing them.
Jerry Dean Michael
once told an acquaintance
that he hauled guns
for distribution
to Castro's troops,
and that he was put in jail
in Cuba by Batista
and freed by Castro's
revolutionary forces.
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)
The subject said he returned
to the United States
by fishing vessel
and swam ashore
at Bakers Hollow, Florida.
Mrs. Betty Sweet stated
she met Jerry Dean Michael
in Linton, Indiana,
during the spring of 1958,
and after acquaintance
of approximately four weeks,
married the subject,
and thereafter lived with him
for a period of two months,
during which time
she conceived a child.
She related the subject
was continually involved
in trouble with law enforcement,
and she therefore
separated from him
in August of 1958.
She stated
the child, a girl, was born,
and the subject
has never seen her.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
BARRETT: Vivian met Jerry
when she was 16
at Pam's, where she worked.
And she probably
flirted with him,
to be quite honest, you know.
She, uh, had a wit about her,
and she was very intelligent.
She could
talk you into things
(CHUCKLING)
if she really wanted to.
She was beautiful.
She was a really pretty woman.
Guys were always looking at her,
you know, including Jerry.
He was, to me, an old man
because I'm 14 years old
and he took an interest
in my sister,
which I didn't care for
because that's my buddy
he's messing with. (LAUGHS)
And that changed later.
Jerry was really kind of suave,
I guess.
Easygoing, always smiling.
Uh, I mean, you talk to him
for a few minutes,
and all of a sudden,
you've got a friend.
Vivian's older than I am,
but we were the same age.
We were only
a year apart, roughly.
And we plotted
and we schemed about things,
and we were very tight.
I remember the day
that her and Jerry left.
And that upset me,
really upset me.
She came to me and she said,
"Richard,
I'm gonna tell you something."
She says, "I love Jerry
and I'm gonna leave with him."
And I said,
"Okay. What's going on?"
She says,
"Well, we're gonna get married.
We're going to California.
You gotta promise me, Richard,
that you can't tell
Mom and Dad."
I said, "Oh. Are you sure?"
She says, "I'll be fine."
She says,
"He loves me. We're leaving."
(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Well, I'm crying.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
Gets toward late at night,
and my dad comes home.
He's mad.
He gets me out of bed,
and he says, "Where is she?"
He said, "Is she running around
with that guy?"
I said, "I don't know."
I said, "I haven't seen her
since school."
And I'm trying to lie
as best I can.
Bottom line, she left, and I
I just could not believe it.
It was-- I was torn up.
And my dad was abusive,
he was bad.
Jerry offered Vivian a way out.
I mean, uh
man, she gets to leave
and start her own real life,
you know, and she did.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
They complemented each other.
There was something
in their psyche
that both of them clicked,
and they did.
They knew what the others
were thinking.
A year later, my sister, Vivian,
said she was pregnant.
She said,
"I don't know what to do."
And Mom said, "Well,
there's a house next door.
Why don't you come over
and see if I can get that house
and you can be here
for the baby being born."
So they moved in there.
Jerry had a very endearing,
charismatic personality.
When Jerry made a friend,
they were friends for life.
BARRETT: I just followed him
like a puppy dog
(CHUCKLING)
'cause he was so cool.
We did a lot of
I guess you'd call them
illegal things.
At the time,
it was just an adventure.
I learned things from Jerry.
I learned how to create
any kind of identities.
It used to not be difficult
to change your identification.
BARRETT:
You take certain emblems
off of different things.
You can laminate it if you want.
Back then,
we didn't have fancy equipment.
But you know what? It worked.
You are now a graduate
of Yale University.
You have a pilot's license.
You're a full-time pilot.
He'd gotten
that new check writer.
You can put in any amount
and just hit it,
and it embosses it,
makes it look real.
And then just a signature,
and then you've got the ID
that you're an employee
at that company.
He'd always got money,
and it was easy money,
and, um, like
And I thought, "Man.
Doesn't get
any better than this.
-Sixteen years old"
-(ENGINE REVS)
got me a Lincoln,
and living good.
(LAUGHS)
(BOTTLES CLINK)
He would always tell me,
"It's so much easier
to get 75,000 out of somebody
than it is to get
a twenty-dollar bill.
The people that think about
twenty-dollar bills earned it.
And some of these
other people didn't."
And he said,
"They wanna give it away
and I'm here to take it away."
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
We got in trouble for it.
(SMASHING)
We had gotten arrested,
and we were in the courtroom.
And he leans over to me
and he says,
"Did this make the papers?"
And I said, "Yeah. It did."
He says, uh, "Front page?"
And I said, "No, no.
A little blurb down here
on the back page or whatever."
He says,
"Get me a copy of that."
I said, "Okay."
It seemed to please him.
I said, "Are you worried about
going to jail for a long time?"
And he says,
"Don't worry about it.
Everything's fine."
And I was afraid that I was
gonna go in jail with him.
They tried to identify
who all the other people were.
ATTORNEY: Did anyone else
help you commit these crimes?
BARRETT:
And he would not open his mouth.
He always protected me.
He will protect you
to the bitter end.
And he'll take the heat
because he says,
"I can handle the heat."
It was that little cat smile,
and I knew
that he was in charge.
That judge was not in charge.
That prosecutor over there
was not in charge.
Jerry was.
That was his courtroom.
This was not a challenge to him
because these people
were not on his intellect level.
He was having fun.
And when he'd wink at me,
I knew it.
I said,
"Son of a gun, he's got it.
He's confident."
Matter of fact,
I think he got out of it.
So he--
He's just Jerry, you know.
What can I say? He was cool.
(HAMMERING)
Before I was born,
Jerry actually owned
a newspaper,
a very small newspaper.
My father told me
that it was his partner's idea
to start making fake money.
Jerry said that
the money never looked right,
and it was Vivian's idea
to stain the paper
using coffee and tea,
and it made it look
very realistic.
(TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING)
FBI NARRATOR:
From February 9th, 1961,
to May 15th, 1961,
Jerry Dean Michael
photographed and printed
a series
of bogus Federal Reserve Notes
in five, ten,
and twenty-dollar denominations.
The subject used
the fictitious business
of Los Angeles
Distributing Company
as a front for
his counterfeiting activities
located above David Eisner's
Monarch Frozen Food Company.
(BUZZER)
Once Jerry Dean Michael
printed the bogus notes,
he turned them over to Eisner,
who, in turn,
passed them
in the West Los Angeles area
with the assistance
of Ralph Wheeler,
an employee of Eisner's.
Wheeler's girlfriend,
Elizabeth Harper Colton,
also assisted Wheeler
in passing some of the notes.
(LAUGHTER)
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
The first break in the case came
when certain
Federal Reserve Notes
were traced
to defendant David Eisner.
Jerry Dean Michael
was taken into custody
by Secret Service agents
on August 4th, 1961,
at his Granada Hills home.
Jerry Dean Michael,
described as
a highly intelligent
and cunning criminal,
refused to cooperate
with Secret Service agents.
The federal grand jury
on August 30th, 1961,
returned an indictment
charging Jerry Dean Michael
with conspiracy and possession
of counterfeit currency.
On September 18th, 1961,
the subject failed to appear
in US District Court
in Los Angeles
for arraignment
and plea to the indictment.
A bench warrant
for the subject's arrest
was issued the same day.
A search
of Jerry Dean Michael's home
disclosed a large number
of library books
dealing with various
phases of criminal law.
The subject was intent
upon following a criminal career
and would probably
not be easy to locate.
CANDI: My parents, they were
released on bail, and ran.
I believe Vivian was pregnant
at the time with me.
That's what started the run
for his life or for his freedom.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
The FBI was actively pursuing
Jerry and Vivian
for the counterfeiting.
And it was just part of life.
As a child,
we rarely lived in one place
for more than two months.
There was always the fear
that they were found.
I grew up all over
the United States,
from California to Florida,
as high up as Chicago, Illinois,
and, well,
down at the tip of Florida
was the farthest we went south.
But usually,
we stuck around the Sun Belt,
is what my father called it.
We all had last names
which were made up.
You look at old newspaper
clippings about deaths,
preferably deaths of children.
Then you write to
the Bureau of Vital Statistics.
You get that
dead child's birth certificate.
That is now
your identification.
We didn't attend school
so there'd be no paper trail.
Vivian taught our letters,
and our father, Jerry,
taught us how to write.
We might have had
a strange family,
but we were a tight-knit family.
My brother Brian
was very precocious.
Is that the nice way to say
"a horrible little brat"?
(LAUGHS)
Always, like my father,
running off for adventures.
My sister Wendy
was the quiet one,
never caused any trouble,
just pretty much tried
to stay invisible.
And then my sister Shawn
was the princess of the family.
I think it's 'cause
she came along
at a better time in life.
And then there's
my youngest brother, Michael.
Oh, he was a handful as a child.
MICHAEL MICHAEL:
I enjoyed being on the road.
We-- I got to see things
that I know, you know,
a lot of people never get to see
in their lifetime.
We stopped at
all kinds of places,
like, uh, trading posts
and truck stops,
and I've got those memories,
you know?
CANDI: There was this newspaper
called the Free Press.
They would put in coded ads.
And there'd be words.
"The red horse
is still available."
Or, "If you're still interested
in the Impala, call Ted."
This was how
they would find people.
For the longest time,
I never understood
how extended family members
would find us.
We were moving
every couple weeks,
or we didn't have an address.
Next thing you know,
there's a relative meeting you
in a state park.
It's because somebody
had placed an ad,
and that was the response.
BARRETT:
They floated in and out.
They'd be here,
and then they wouldn't.
The FBI or somebody
was always coming back
and wanting information on 'em.
-CANDI: One of the signs
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
if somebody
had tapped your phone,
which means listening in
on private conversations,
was you heard this unusual
clicking on the other end.
(STATIC AND CLICKING)
In my house,
when you heard that clicking,
it means they found you.
And come nightfall,
we were sneaking into the car
and gone off to another town.
To you, waking up and having
your mother make breakfast
and your father
going off to work
might be a normal thing.
To me, a normal thing
was just getting used to a house
and finally getting friends,
and then sneaking off
in the middle of the night,
the kids piling in the car
and winding up
sleeping in the car
on the side of the road,
10 hours later,
in another state.
That was normal life.
BARRETT: He had those kids
trained so well
that if there was a conflict,
something happened,
they were to immediately
drop what they had.
If they were riding
their bicycle,
just leave it in the street.
Leave everything.
The police could be knocking
on the next-door house
-(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
and we would be gone
before they ever got to ours.
Just gone.
One of the times
we were being chased,
we were in Indiana.
This is the middle of the night.
We're on a dirt track
that's no longer used as a road.
Jerry was driving.
All of a sudden, he said,
"Someone's following us."
My sister and I are turning,
we're looking out
the back window.
There was a car following us.
Jerry started driving
like a maniac
turning corners on two wheels,
going probably 80 miles an hour
on city streets.
We did get away, but that was
a terrifying experience.
Growing up, we were
either devastatingly trash poor
or we lived quite comfortably
in very nice houses.
I don't know how to describe it.
He would make a business
out of basically nothing.
He could.
(MONKEYS CHITTERING)
CANDI: When I was very young,
my father had a pet store.
My father specialized
in exotic pets.
My father would bring
some of the pets home
so they weren't left
in the store overnight.
Not only do you have a houseful
of rambunctious children,
you've got monkeys
climbing up the drapes.
It's no wonder my mother
was so stressed.
Jerry couldn't do anything
on a small basis.
Buying fish from South America
was too expensive,
so they decided
to breed their own fish.
He said if you had a little fish
that didn't cost anything,
and they reproduce so fast,
then you just needed
a thousand aquariums.
CANDI: My father
would go and pitch people
to flood their basements
and turn their basements into
hatcheries for tropical fish.
So he had a constant supply
of healthy tropical fish,
grown right here
in the United States of America.
And son of a gun, it made money.
(CHUCKLES)
CANDI: I remember
this home Jacuzzi thing,
where they designed this machine
that kind of looked like
a sewing machine.
It sat on the edge
of your bathtub
and would make the water
in your bathtub swirl around.
And I remember
being excited, thinking,
"Oh, we're going to be normal.
We're gonna stay in house,
everything's gonna be fine,
because they just came up
with this great idea,
and everything
is gonna be wonderful."
And two months later,
we're sneaking out the back door
and on the run again.
And then I remember
a year later,
seeing these machines
that my father designed
being advertised on television.
AD NARRATOR #1:
A perfect way to relax
-is with a Jacuzzi
whirlpool bath.
-(APPLAUSE)
It really upset me at the time,
and I was thinking,
"That could've been us
if my father wasn't a criminal."
(SLOW PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Jerry had a connection through
some of the old Detroit friends.
Jerry came to the house.
He brought a friend with him.
And he was a concert pianist.
And we had a piano there,
and he played that piano
like, my gosh,
I didn't know that old piano
could sound that good.
But he had a problem
with his hands.
After he played for 30 minutes
or so, his hands would freeze.
They would seize up
and, and, and all that.
And he made a comment,
something about that, uh
"They're not good for pianos,
but I could break somebody
in half.
They still work."
(KNUCKLES CRACK)
INTERVIEWER:
-Yeah.
-INTERVIEWER: Yeah?
Yeah.
I'm gonna tell you something.
To this day, I'm still cautious
about what I say
about these people.
They don't play games, okay?
I don't know how to say this.
(SIGHS)
Don't go there, 'cause
these guys will hurt you.
(PHONE RINGING)
BARRETT: Jerry called me.
He said,
"You're gonna hear some things.
Don't worry about it.
We're okay."
And that was
the end of conversation.
I didn't know what it was.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(CRASH)
-(TIRES SQUEAL)
(ELECTRICITY CRACKLES)
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(GUNSHOTS)
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC
CONTINUES) ♪
But he's still alive.
(CHUCKLES)
(TAPE REWINDING)
(CRASH)
And the only way he could do it
to get rid of them,
and hopefully get rid of the FBI
and everybody else
that was starting to come in
well, he shot up his car,
I guess.
(GUNSHOTS)
And away he went.
After that, he went underground
for a little while.
(PHONE RINGING)
He would call me later.
"I don't have any money.
I need some cash."
I said, "Jerry, someday
you gotta give me some money
to put in the bank for you
so that I don't have to take it
out of my savings account
'cause I take it away
from my family."
"I'd really appreciate it,
Richard,
if you would just forget that
and give me some money.
Vivian will be by."
What do you do? I owe him.
He kept me from going to jail.
He did me a--
He protected me. I owe him.
My wife did not like that.
(LAUGHS)
When Vivian (SIGHS)
Each time
that she came and left,
it didn't change anything.
She was my sister,
and I would do anything for her.
In all that time,
you would think
that they would get tired
of all this.
'Cause I would sit there,
and I'd be driving her
to Cincinnati that one time
in the middle of the night,
three o'clock in the morning,
and I gotta be at work in,
you know, like at five
or six in the morning,
so I gotta get back home.
And I go down there,
and I says, "You know,"
I said, "This is really bad."
I said, "What are you guys
gonna do one of these days?
Are you ever coming back
to a normal life and all that?"
And she said, "No."
She said, "This is normal.
This is a normal life."
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
CANDI:
On this one particular day,
my father, Jerry,
took me for a car ride
and we got stuck in traffic.
The traffic was backed up
because there was a Christmas
parade going on.
And I wanted
to go meet Santa Claus.
My father told me that there was
no such thing as Santa,
and I was devastated.
And I think to cheer me up,
he said,
"Would you like me
to be your mommy?"
And I was thrilled about it.
Vivian was not a happy mother.
I think there was just
too many bad things
that happened in her life
right at the time I was born
that somewhere in her mind
she might've blamed me for it.
So having my daddy as my mommy
was a wonderful thing to me.
I thought my daddy
was doing it for me.
I didn't realize that my daddy
was unhappy being a man.
When my father, Jerry,
told my mother, Vivian,
that he wanted to be a woman,
that led
to the first separation.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CARMICHAEL: Dear Vivian,
I don't know
when or how my problem started.
Some authorities believe
there's a chromosomal
imbalance in people,
and others say
environmental conditioning,
while others (SIGHS) feel
it's a glandular misinformation.
Whatever the cause,
there have been signposts
along the way
ever since I can remember
that indicated I was not
what I could have been
in the sex department.
And that wasn't
because I didn't try.
I guess I'm not sure
that I had some sort of
(CHUCKLING)
youth screw loose.
I'm not a man anymore,
at least
not in the sexual sense,
if I ever was.
As I got to know you,
I found you
to be truly worthy of deep love
and a lasting respect
and admiration.
Even with the irritants,
the arguments,
the recriminations,
and the hard words,
the love has continued on
stronger than ever.
As I grow older,
and hopefully wiser,
I have come to realize
that love is pretty important.
The passion is gone.
Like the ocean, the wind
and waves have died down
and left a placid surface,
but the underlying current
goes on strong and stable
and everlasting.
As funny as it sounds,
I'd walk through the fire
for you and the kids.
I'd give up my food and clothing
and my bed,
and yes, even my life.
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
BARRETT: My sister, Vivian,
called me and said that,
"We're coming by.
And I don't want you
to be surprised or shocked,
but there's a lot changing.
A lot."
She said, um
"Jerry's changing."
( SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
When they pulled up
and Jerry got out,
he looked like a man in drag,
and I thought,
"Okay, well, wow."
(LAUGHING)
"Quite a change. She was right."
So I went out
in the garage out there,
and I said,
"Jerry, I think I know
why you want
to become Elizabeth.
Because you can hide."
(CHUCKLES)
And he said, "No."
He said, "That's not it."
He said, "I've always had
this feeling that, um,
I didn't belong
in this body, and
I just thought that, uh,
I should be a woman."
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE)
I know it's right for me.
I used to go behind the bushes
with my two female cousins
and put their dresses on
with them.
(LAUGHTER)
When I was 18 in Germany, I used
to go to out-of-town taverns
and walk back
with my trousers off.
It felt good. The wind made me
feel like I was wearing a dress.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
BARRETT: And he says,
"Liz is a good name."
'Cause he--
he liked Elizabeth Taylor.
He thought Elizabeth Taylor
was the epitome of woman.
She had jewelry,
she had friends,
and she had power.
And he liked all those things.
And that's where that came from,
as far as I know.
STRYKER:
In previous decades, uh,
it was often harder
to transition as a young person.
So it was not uncommon at all
for people
who had transgender feelings
to not be able to figure out
how to do what they wanted to do
until they were older.
How did you actually
find somebody
who would, like,
give you hormones
or perform surgery?
That wasn't
a well-known process.
Like, how do you, like,
actually do this?
So it doesn't surprise me
at all that Liz Carmichael
didn't figure out
how to transition
until she was in her 40s.
There was no
"Daddy disappeared,
and all of a sudden,
Liz was there." It wasn't that.
It was a true transition that
all of us were familiar with,
and we were all part of.
My father would lock himself
in the bedroom,
-and you could hear him talking.
-I play tennis with my right
CANDI: He was talking
into his tape recorder,
practicing being a woman.
Possibly, had I, uh,
tried when I was younger
Because there wasn't
all this money
to go to specialty surgeons
and so forth
to start the transition,
my father
was self-transitioning,
giving himself
his own hormone injections.
(WATER BUBBLING)
In breeding fish, you learn
that if you put certain hormones
in the water,
it would
cause the fish to spawn.
So Jerry would get hormones
through veterinarians.
STRYKER: There were a lot
of barriers to accessing, uh,
transition-related medical
services before the 1990s.
If you had children, you know,
they might say,
"Oh, you know,
you're already a parent,
and we can't do that
to the children."
If you were married,
they might require you
to be divorced
before you could transition.
Vivian was a pretty
strong supporter.
Vivian taught Jerry
how to wear makeup,
taught Jerry
how to wear clothing.
When Jerry was first
trying to dress as a woman
and going out into public,
they'd go to a nightclub
as just friends
or sister-in-laws.
And you've got to admire Vivian
for doing that.
STRYKER: It can be difficult
for a trans person
to visually reproduce
what cisgender versions of
manhood and womanhood look like
after you're well
into adulthood.
You might be more visually
perceivable as trans,
which could then have
consequences
for how you're able
to support yourself
and how safe you are in public.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I remember going shopping
and being a little nervous,
and this was--
these were test runs--
and deliberately walking up
and saying "Mommy, Mommy,"
so that people around
wouldn't think it was--
something was fishy.
"Mommy, Brian's hitting me!
Make Brian stop! Mommy, Mommy!"
You know,
and doing it on purpose
and it-- it helped,
and it helped us, too,
calling her "Mommy."
BARRETT: I said, "Well, um,
how do the kids feel about it?"
And they said,
"We've got two moms now.
We have two mothers."
He says,
"And moms are the best."
And that's what he said.
Isn't that nice?
CANDI:
And we were all fine with it
because she was a great mom.
BARRETT:
She was ahead of her time
because she knew the pain
if somebody was at a restaurant
and they said something to her,
making a snide remark or a joke,
she would get up and go over,
and she'd say,
"You're very rude."
Wasn't mean.
"You're a very rude person."
And she was big enough,
probably, to intimidate 'em.
(LAUGHS)
But that's the way Liz was.
Liz came to my house to stay
with Vivian and the children.
There was a gentleman there
in the house
that was watching Liz.
And they carried on
a little flirty conversation,
and she immediately
responded to that
because it warmed her up.
I said, "Do you know what?
You're amazing."
And that's what I told her.
Truly amazing.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Once I accepted the fact
that she was a woman
it started to make sense.
Having a transgender person
in our family,
uh, it definitely did change
my viewpoint and so forth
because it became
acceptable to me,
because I understood them now.
I understood
from personal experience now
what happened here.
And here was
my six-foot macho man,
and now my six-foot
(LAUGHS) feminine woman.
Yeah. I understand it. I get it.
She's family.
STRYKER: If you're not
being the person
that you understand
yourself to be,
you don't often follow that
sort of normative life path.
If you feel resentful
that society is organized
in a way that is, like, really
not good for you as a person,
if you feel that interacting
with people and institutions
and the public
and the government,
um, is something that,
at every step, it invalidates
who you are as a person,
maybe you're resentful
about that,
and maybe you, you know,
engage in more so-called,
you know, "antisocial" behavior
out of those unresolved feelings
that are based on your,
your transness.
I have approached
many numerous firms,
asking them for any kind of work
that they had to offer
over a period of eight months.
The same response,
"We can't hire anybody
of your caliber.
We don't want any of your people
working for us."
So what else was I supposed
to do when you get damn hungry?
If you're living in any kind of
non-normative gender role,
you know, publicly,
the employment discrimination,
the housing discrimination,
the kinds of police violence
that gets directed at you,
the criminalization
of your life,
the psychiatrization
of your life,
uh, it puts you
in a very vulnerable
and marginal position,
where sometimes, like,
your only options then, uh,
are criminal ones because,
you know, you wanna eat,
you know, need a place to sleep,
and how are you
gonna get that money?
If that's what's
in front of you,
like, that's what you do.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CANDI: Liz could not get a job
for anyone, and this was--
she was freshly a woman,
and not an attractive woman,
and she just
could not get a job.
Sam Schlisman,
my favorite person of all time.
Old man Sam. Liz loved Sam.
Sam gave her a job
in real estate.
Sam fixed her car
so she could take customers
out to see land
and put a phone and--
a phone in her car!
These things were outrageously
expensive back then.
That was Sam.
And then she got a job
at a marketing company.
LOU LINDSTROM:
Sam Schlisman and Liz Carmichael
worked at USMI.
(PHONES RINGING)
It was a cutting-edge company
involved in sales and marketing,
uh, goods and services.
Home inventors
would come in with ideas,
and this company was supposed
to tell them all the things
they needed to do,
how to get your patents
and how to go about marketing
and getting investors.
LINDSTROM: There were rumors
about Liz at that time
because her appearance,
she was six feet two,
two hundred and twenty pounds
or whatever, a muscular person,
well-groomed.
She wore a lot
of pancake makeup.
That was the number one thing
that I noticed.
This thick pancake makeup
all the time.
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE)
LINDSTROM:
People were pretty professional,
she was pretty professional,
and she was, like,
treated like one of the guys.
She was, uh,
a powerful salesperson.
A company like this might hire
a hundred people,
and maybe one person
would sell something
and the other ninety-nine
wouldn't.
She was always one of those
one out of a hundred people
that could sell anything.
Elizabeth Carmichael would never
have gotten to see the Dale
if she hadn't been
working at her position at USMI.
CANDI: One day, she came home,
talking about this car,
this three-wheeled car.
And she showed us
pictures of it.
I'm looking at it,
just thinking,
"It's a dune buggy.
No one's
gonna drive this thing."
But this was just
going to be the answer
to America's gas problem.
-(MACHINE GUN FIRE)
-(EXPLOSION)
NEWS ANCHOR #3: Good evening.
The Middle East War
produced developments
all over the world today.
The oil-producing countries
of the Arab world
decided to use their oil
as a political weapon.
They will reduce oil production
by five percent a month
until the Israelis withdraw
from occupied territories.
REPORTER #2: Prices
for Arab oils are going up,
a huge increase
voted in an overnight meeting
without even consulting
Western buyers.
NEWS ANCHOR #4: By next summer,
the shortage will be
far more serious
than it was
this past summer.
Why didn't they come out
and tell us there was no gas?
Gasoline shortages are spreading
across the country.
DRIVER: I've been here
since 4:30 this morning.
It's ridiculous,
waiting on line here.
REPORTER #3: What sort of things
do people say to you
when they come in
to buy a car nowadays?
Gas mileage,
that's the number one topic.
How many miles to a gallon
would this get?
CANDI: Well, in an era
where cars were getting
eight to twelve miles
to the gallon,
this car supposedly got
70 miles to the gallon.
Hello again. Here we are
with the most unique show
in the United States.
The name of it's
What's the Big Idea?
But our big ideas
are really inventions.
We have a very unusual
inventor with us,
a successful inventor.
Dale Clifft, I welcome you
to the Big Idea show.
RICHARD SMITH: Dale liked
to work on just about anything
that would stir his imagination.
His first love, I believe,
was the two-stroke motor,
and of course, that brought him
to the motorcycles.
He had a way of almost
doubling their horsepower.
He would ride his
back and forth to work
on quite a number of occasions,
and it dawned on him
that he couldn't ride it
during the wintertime
when it was raining.
He started thinking
about a way around that,
and that wound up
being the start
of the Dale automobile.
It was a vehicle
that was welded together
out of half-inch
electrical conduit.
He'd take the front wheel
off his motorcycle
and attach it to the back end
of this vehicle,
with two wheels on front,
and that way, very quickly,
he could use his motorcycle
to power this vehicle.
That really worked out
quite well.
My field is-- is energy
and energy-related inventions.
HOST: That's your background?
That's the reason I gotta have
one of your future
Dale automobiles,
is that 100 miles per gallon.
I don't think we can quite
do that on the Dale.
-(CHUCKLING)
-Seventy-five, maybe.
SMITH: The Dale automobile
became quite a hit
locally around town,
you know, because Dale drove it
every chance that he got.
So one evening, he and his wife
went to a restaurant,
and they were enjoying
themselves dinner
when a man approached them.
He knew somebody who could
actually produce the automobile.
This particular person
set up the meeting with Liz.
LINDSTROM:
If she had an appointment,
you could depend on her
being there.
If Liz is there,
the client walks in,
the client might not walk out
for five hours
because Liz had a way of
getting engaged with the clients
and getting excited
about their product.
SMITH: After that meeting,
Dale signed some contracts
and that's where it all
got started.
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE) So I
bought that car from Dale Clifft
and kind of in honor of him, uh,
I named it after him.
But there's no connection.
He doesn't work for the company.
He walked
in the door one day.
And I said, "Hey, Dale,
what do we name this damn car?"
And then I said,
"Hell, we'll name it the Dale."
LINDSTROM: I think
that's where Liz's genius was.
She saw the importance
of the moment,
she jumped on it, and, uh,
started running with this idea.
That was the big deal, you know.
Seventy miles
to the gallon, really?
This could end the gas crisis.
CARMICHAEL: General Motors?
I'll kick the shit out of them.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CANDI: She started a company.
LINDSTROM: Twentieth Century
Motor Car Company.
They rented offices on
the first floor of our building.
CANDI: She brought Sam along,
and she would always
bounce ideas off of Sam.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE) And
the tests we wanted to make then
that we had never documented
were stability tests,
what the car would do
when making all the turns
at high speeds.
AD NARRATOR #2:
The Dale is taking these turns
at 55 miles per hour,
no sway, no tipping,
and no feeling
of loss of control.
CANDI: To this day,
I don't know how she did it.
I don't know how she came
from this vinyl-coated,
tubed metal dune buggy
into the gorgeous Dale.
It just seemed like last week,
this was just a thought,
and now all of a sudden,
it is a full-blown company
with an office
on Ventura Boulevard.
For those not familiar
with Ventura Boulevard,
this is the high-rent district.
I thought that
this would change our lives.
There'd be no more sleeping
in cars on the side of the road.
No more getting up
in the middle of the night
to move to another town,
no more high-speed car chases
on public roads.
I thought this was
the beginning of a real life
where we could be
a normal family,
because this was real.
But my secret self
was wondering
when it was going to end,
when they were
going to find out
that my mother
was really my father
who was in trouble with the law.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
COLIN DANGAARD:
This was an underdog.
LESLIE KENDALL: The Americans
were ready for her.
GERRY MCGUINNESS: People were
all putting in 50, 60 hours.
CARMICHAEL: My full
intention and expectation
is to become the biggest
automobile manufacturer
in the world.
DANGAARD: This was a woman
who had everything against her.
GREG LEAS: I don't know
if it's real or not.
One person ever looked
under the hood? We did.
DENNIS SMITH: There were
some bribes involved.
DICK CARLSON:
State of California
issued an order.
DENNIS:
There was something off
from the moment he met her.
NEWS ANCHOR #5: This woman
was going to revolutionize
the auto industry.
CARMICHAEL: We are
at war with the big three.
CARLSON: Nobody had ever
known this person.
So who the hell was she?
CARMICHAEL: Protecting
our industrial secret.
LEAS: They were afraid
of spies from the big three.
It was scary.
MCGUINNESS:
These were mobsters.
CARMICHAEL: It's a situation
of David fighting Goliath.
(GUN SHOT)
("TIP TOE TO THE GAS PUMPS"
BY TINY TIM PLAYING) ♪
Mr. Gasoline Man
Please give me some gas ♪
My tank is almost empty
So fill it fast ♪
If you will just fill her up
I promise you this ♪
I'll put a tulip in your hair
And blow you a kiss ♪
Let's tiptoe to the gas pump
Fill her up ♪
Give me all you've got
'Till I scream I've had enough ♪
Everybody clap your hands
And sing in harmony ♪
Come tiptoe to the gas pump
With me ♪
Put a tiger in my tank
Please don't delay ♪
I've been waiting in this line
Since early yesterday ♪
So Mr. Gasoline Man
Fill her to the brim ♪
So I'll have enough gas
To go through this line again ♪
Let's tiptoe to the gas pumps
With me ♪
ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL:
I'm going to fill one hell
of an important gap
in the car market.
SPEAKER:
It looked like a spaceship.
It sounded good.
SPEAKER: I couldn't believe
that it was real.
CARMICHAEL:
There are thousands of people
writing to cheer me on.
SPEAKER 2: People
were flocking to make deposits.
SPEAKER 3:
She had stacks of cash,
and next to it, a revolver.
(DINGS)
When you're in a pool of sharks,
you're gonna get bit.
SPEAKER 4: Three guys walk in
They're afraid of spies.
SPEAKER 4: Something is wrong.
SPEAKER 5: Who the hell was she?
JOHNNY OLSON:
A fortune in fabulous prizes
may go to these people tonight
if they know
when The Price is Right.
And now, here's the ultimate:
a three-wheeled car!
(CHEERING)
It's the Dale,
a whole new concept
in automotive design,
a three-wheeled chassis
with a high-impact
plastic resistant Rosen body,
top speed of 85 miles per hour.
For comfort and economy,
it's the Dale
by Twentieth Century
Motor Car Corporation.
NEWS ANCHOR #1:
a rough-talking promoter
named Elizabeth Carmichael.
She's president
and prime mover behind the Dale.
NEWS ANCHOR #2:
The miracle is in the mileage,
a promise
of 70 per precious gallon.
ELIZABETH GERALDINE CARMICHAEL:
We've taken a total concept,
integrated it, and built a whole
new means of transportation.
MALE VOICE:
Mrs. Carmichael is no pessimist.
REPORTER #1:
Think you're going to be able
to take on GM?
We're gonna whip GM.
A couple of nights ago,
on the television show
The Price is Right,
the grand prize was
a three-wheeled Dale automobile.
That embarrassing show
was taped several months ago
when the Dale was getting
reams of publicity.
But is the Dale all
it's been cracked up to be?
Now state officials tell us
that Mrs. Carmichael's
fingerprints
match those
of a notorious conman.
Mrs. Elizabeth Carmichael
is actually
Mr. Jerry Dean Michael.
And the secret life
of Jerry Michael
is the stuff of wildly
imaginative adventure novels.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
There's so much to say
about my father. I
How long you got?
SUSAN STRYKER: She lived
as a man for a long time,
but that doesn't mean
that she wasn't trans.
CANDI MICHAEL:
My father was my hero.
CHARLES RICHARD BARRETT:
I'll tell you what.
There was so much
cloak and dagger going on.
It was a difficult life.
That's all.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: The very first
piece of literature
I can ever remember moving me
was about in the
third grade, maybe,
a teacher reading
a little thing.
It was the story of a spider
who leaped from a windowsill
and failed to reach the side
where it was trying
to string its web,
then climbed back up
and leaped again,
climbed back up
and leaped again.
And the moral of the story
is if you first don't succeed,
try and try again.
That's the first thing
that I can remember
being impressed by
in literature.
-(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
-(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
It's so hard
to explain to people
because Liz is like
two people to me.
The first part
of the transition
was just calling Daddy "Jerry."
And it took several years,
but eventually Jerry
became Aunt Jerry,
then Aunt Liz, and then Mother.
This is a course
of over probably three years.
So from that point on,
my father, Jerry Dean Michael,
became my mother,
Elizabeth Geraldine Carmichael.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CANDI: Jerry Dean Michael
was born a farm boy,
but was too smart
for his own good.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: I was born
on a dirt farm, very poor.
I did occasionally
get to go to the movies.
Here I saw people
driving fancy cars
and living in fancy buildings.
(GUNSHOTS)
And somewhere about
15 years of age,
I realized that there was
a better way to live
than on a dirt farm.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF)
(MUSIC CONCLUDES)
It was a brick home.
Probably one
of the nicer ones around.
(CHUCKLES)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
("BABY COUNT TEN"
BY THE BELL SISTERS PLAYING) ♪
One ♪
Baby, count one ♪
While you're having fun
With someone else ♪
Don't come around ♪
CARL ZUKUNFT:
Two ♪
Baby, count two ♪
But when you're all through
With your romance ♪
Leave me alone ♪
Ten ♪
ZUKUNFT: Three or four cars
may have passed us
the whole time
we was walking ten miles.
But when you've the yen
To count me in ♪
Count me out ♪
ZUKUNFT: He said,
"Aw, we're just unlucky."
Count me out ♪
One, two, three, four, five
Six, seven, eight, nine ♪
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(LAUGHTER)
(SIREN WAILING)
KENNETH YERYAR :
(CROWD CLAMORING)
YERYAR :
When Jerry was young,
he had a couple marriages
before he met my mother,
and was always going out
for adventures,
whether they'd be business
or just mischief in general.
FBI NARRATOR: FBI case file:
Jerry Dean Michael.
1946 to 1958.
Kenneth Paul Wolf advised
that he is a one-time friend
of the subject,
Jerry Dean Michael,
as they both grew up together
in Jasonville, Indiana.
Wolf advised that in 1946,
he enlisted in the army
and came in contact
with Jerry Dean Michael.
Wolf advised
that he and the subject
were shipped overseas
to Germany.
WAR VIDEO NARRATOR:
The problem now is future peace.
That is your job in Germany.
FBI NARRATOR:
The next time he had
occasion to see the subject
was in 1948.
At that time,
the subject was married
to a German girl
by the name of Marga.
Marga advised that she married
Jerry Dean Michael
during his military service
in Germany
and has two children by him.
(DOOR OPENS)
Jerry Dean Michael was charged
with desertion of his wife,
Marga, and their children
with a penal sum
of 1,000 dollars.
The subject entered
a plea of guilty,
receiving one to three years
at Indiana Reformatory
plus court costs be paid
by Marga
and the subject's mother.
The sentence was suspended
and the subject was released
on his own recognizance.
Jerry Dean Michael
married Juanita Haseman in 1954,
and her father
paid the down payment
on their first apartment.
-(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
-The subject appeared
to be a smooth talker
and sold knitting machines
which he built with the promise
that he would by the products
the customer produced.
(PHONE RINGS, BEEPS)
AUTOMATED VOICE: The number
you are trying to reach
has been disconnected.
FBI NARRATOR: Juanita Haseman
advised that she and the subject
changed residences
twenty-one times
in the three years
of their marriage,
and they resided
in the states of New York,
California, Texas, Louisiana,
Indiana, and Florida.
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
Juanita's father described
the subject as "no-good,
always attempting
some unethical means
of shortcutting to success."
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
In the spring of 1956,
Juanita had finally
had enough of this marriage
and left the subject.
Juanita had two children
by Jerry Dean Michael,
but he has never seen
the youngest child.
The subject Jerry Dean Michael
operated a small newspaper
over a local grocery store.
The subject did not enjoy
a very good reputation
-in the community.
-(GRUMBLING)
FBI NARRATOR: The newspaper
had been unsuccessful,
and no paper was continued
after the subject
left the small town of Elnora.
The subject
changed residences frequently,
commenting that it was cheaper
than paying rent.
Jerry Dean Michael worked for
United Vacuum Cleaners in 1957.
The subject
was an excellent salesman
and had
a good mechanical knowledge
of vacuum cleaners
and sewing machines.
The subject was fired,
as he was pocketing
down payments made by customers.
Jerry Dean Michael considered
himself a soldier of fortune,
divulging that
he was going to Cuba
to join the revolutionaries,
and expressed other ideas
which were considered wild
by anyone hearing them.
Jerry Dean Michael
once told an acquaintance
that he hauled guns
for distribution
to Castro's troops,
and that he was put in jail
in Cuba by Batista
and freed by Castro's
revolutionary forces.
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)
The subject said he returned
to the United States
by fishing vessel
and swam ashore
at Bakers Hollow, Florida.
Mrs. Betty Sweet stated
she met Jerry Dean Michael
in Linton, Indiana,
during the spring of 1958,
and after acquaintance
of approximately four weeks,
married the subject,
and thereafter lived with him
for a period of two months,
during which time
she conceived a child.
She related the subject
was continually involved
in trouble with law enforcement,
and she therefore
separated from him
in August of 1958.
She stated
the child, a girl, was born,
and the subject
has never seen her.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
BARRETT: Vivian met Jerry
when she was 16
at Pam's, where she worked.
And she probably
flirted with him,
to be quite honest, you know.
She, uh, had a wit about her,
and she was very intelligent.
She could
talk you into things
(CHUCKLING)
if she really wanted to.
She was beautiful.
She was a really pretty woman.
Guys were always looking at her,
you know, including Jerry.
He was, to me, an old man
because I'm 14 years old
and he took an interest
in my sister,
which I didn't care for
because that's my buddy
he's messing with. (LAUGHS)
And that changed later.
Jerry was really kind of suave,
I guess.
Easygoing, always smiling.
Uh, I mean, you talk to him
for a few minutes,
and all of a sudden,
you've got a friend.
Vivian's older than I am,
but we were the same age.
We were only
a year apart, roughly.
And we plotted
and we schemed about things,
and we were very tight.
I remember the day
that her and Jerry left.
And that upset me,
really upset me.
She came to me and she said,
"Richard,
I'm gonna tell you something."
She says, "I love Jerry
and I'm gonna leave with him."
And I said,
"Okay. What's going on?"
She says,
"Well, we're gonna get married.
We're going to California.
You gotta promise me, Richard,
that you can't tell
Mom and Dad."
I said, "Oh. Are you sure?"
She says, "I'll be fine."
She says,
"He loves me. We're leaving."
(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Well, I'm crying.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
Gets toward late at night,
and my dad comes home.
He's mad.
He gets me out of bed,
and he says, "Where is she?"
He said, "Is she running around
with that guy?"
I said, "I don't know."
I said, "I haven't seen her
since school."
And I'm trying to lie
as best I can.
Bottom line, she left, and I
I just could not believe it.
It was-- I was torn up.
And my dad was abusive,
he was bad.
Jerry offered Vivian a way out.
I mean, uh
man, she gets to leave
and start her own real life,
you know, and she did.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
They complemented each other.
There was something
in their psyche
that both of them clicked,
and they did.
They knew what the others
were thinking.
A year later, my sister, Vivian,
said she was pregnant.
She said,
"I don't know what to do."
And Mom said, "Well,
there's a house next door.
Why don't you come over
and see if I can get that house
and you can be here
for the baby being born."
So they moved in there.
Jerry had a very endearing,
charismatic personality.
When Jerry made a friend,
they were friends for life.
BARRETT: I just followed him
like a puppy dog
(CHUCKLING)
'cause he was so cool.
We did a lot of
I guess you'd call them
illegal things.
At the time,
it was just an adventure.
I learned things from Jerry.
I learned how to create
any kind of identities.
It used to not be difficult
to change your identification.
BARRETT:
You take certain emblems
off of different things.
You can laminate it if you want.
Back then,
we didn't have fancy equipment.
But you know what? It worked.
You are now a graduate
of Yale University.
You have a pilot's license.
You're a full-time pilot.
He'd gotten
that new check writer.
You can put in any amount
and just hit it,
and it embosses it,
makes it look real.
And then just a signature,
and then you've got the ID
that you're an employee
at that company.
He'd always got money,
and it was easy money,
and, um, like
And I thought, "Man.
Doesn't get
any better than this.
-Sixteen years old"
-(ENGINE REVS)
got me a Lincoln,
and living good.
(LAUGHS)
(BOTTLES CLINK)
He would always tell me,
"It's so much easier
to get 75,000 out of somebody
than it is to get
a twenty-dollar bill.
The people that think about
twenty-dollar bills earned it.
And some of these
other people didn't."
And he said,
"They wanna give it away
and I'm here to take it away."
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
We got in trouble for it.
(SMASHING)
We had gotten arrested,
and we were in the courtroom.
And he leans over to me
and he says,
"Did this make the papers?"
And I said, "Yeah. It did."
He says, uh, "Front page?"
And I said, "No, no.
A little blurb down here
on the back page or whatever."
He says,
"Get me a copy of that."
I said, "Okay."
It seemed to please him.
I said, "Are you worried about
going to jail for a long time?"
And he says,
"Don't worry about it.
Everything's fine."
And I was afraid that I was
gonna go in jail with him.
They tried to identify
who all the other people were.
ATTORNEY: Did anyone else
help you commit these crimes?
BARRETT:
And he would not open his mouth.
He always protected me.
He will protect you
to the bitter end.
And he'll take the heat
because he says,
"I can handle the heat."
It was that little cat smile,
and I knew
that he was in charge.
That judge was not in charge.
That prosecutor over there
was not in charge.
Jerry was.
That was his courtroom.
This was not a challenge to him
because these people
were not on his intellect level.
He was having fun.
And when he'd wink at me,
I knew it.
I said,
"Son of a gun, he's got it.
He's confident."
Matter of fact,
I think he got out of it.
So he--
He's just Jerry, you know.
What can I say? He was cool.
(HAMMERING)
Before I was born,
Jerry actually owned
a newspaper,
a very small newspaper.
My father told me
that it was his partner's idea
to start making fake money.
Jerry said that
the money never looked right,
and it was Vivian's idea
to stain the paper
using coffee and tea,
and it made it look
very realistic.
(TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING)
FBI NARRATOR:
From February 9th, 1961,
to May 15th, 1961,
Jerry Dean Michael
photographed and printed
a series
of bogus Federal Reserve Notes
in five, ten,
and twenty-dollar denominations.
The subject used
the fictitious business
of Los Angeles
Distributing Company
as a front for
his counterfeiting activities
located above David Eisner's
Monarch Frozen Food Company.
(BUZZER)
Once Jerry Dean Michael
printed the bogus notes,
he turned them over to Eisner,
who, in turn,
passed them
in the West Los Angeles area
with the assistance
of Ralph Wheeler,
an employee of Eisner's.
Wheeler's girlfriend,
Elizabeth Harper Colton,
also assisted Wheeler
in passing some of the notes.
(LAUGHTER)
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
The first break in the case came
when certain
Federal Reserve Notes
were traced
to defendant David Eisner.
Jerry Dean Michael
was taken into custody
by Secret Service agents
on August 4th, 1961,
at his Granada Hills home.
Jerry Dean Michael,
described as
a highly intelligent
and cunning criminal,
refused to cooperate
with Secret Service agents.
The federal grand jury
on August 30th, 1961,
returned an indictment
charging Jerry Dean Michael
with conspiracy and possession
of counterfeit currency.
On September 18th, 1961,
the subject failed to appear
in US District Court
in Los Angeles
for arraignment
and plea to the indictment.
A bench warrant
for the subject's arrest
was issued the same day.
A search
of Jerry Dean Michael's home
disclosed a large number
of library books
dealing with various
phases of criminal law.
The subject was intent
upon following a criminal career
and would probably
not be easy to locate.
CANDI: My parents, they were
released on bail, and ran.
I believe Vivian was pregnant
at the time with me.
That's what started the run
for his life or for his freedom.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
The FBI was actively pursuing
Jerry and Vivian
for the counterfeiting.
And it was just part of life.
As a child,
we rarely lived in one place
for more than two months.
There was always the fear
that they were found.
I grew up all over
the United States,
from California to Florida,
as high up as Chicago, Illinois,
and, well,
down at the tip of Florida
was the farthest we went south.
But usually,
we stuck around the Sun Belt,
is what my father called it.
We all had last names
which were made up.
You look at old newspaper
clippings about deaths,
preferably deaths of children.
Then you write to
the Bureau of Vital Statistics.
You get that
dead child's birth certificate.
That is now
your identification.
We didn't attend school
so there'd be no paper trail.
Vivian taught our letters,
and our father, Jerry,
taught us how to write.
We might have had
a strange family,
but we were a tight-knit family.
My brother Brian
was very precocious.
Is that the nice way to say
"a horrible little brat"?
(LAUGHS)
Always, like my father,
running off for adventures.
My sister Wendy
was the quiet one,
never caused any trouble,
just pretty much tried
to stay invisible.
And then my sister Shawn
was the princess of the family.
I think it's 'cause
she came along
at a better time in life.
And then there's
my youngest brother, Michael.
Oh, he was a handful as a child.
MICHAEL MICHAEL:
I enjoyed being on the road.
We-- I got to see things
that I know, you know,
a lot of people never get to see
in their lifetime.
We stopped at
all kinds of places,
like, uh, trading posts
and truck stops,
and I've got those memories,
you know?
CANDI: There was this newspaper
called the Free Press.
They would put in coded ads.
And there'd be words.
"The red horse
is still available."
Or, "If you're still interested
in the Impala, call Ted."
This was how
they would find people.
For the longest time,
I never understood
how extended family members
would find us.
We were moving
every couple weeks,
or we didn't have an address.
Next thing you know,
there's a relative meeting you
in a state park.
It's because somebody
had placed an ad,
and that was the response.
BARRETT:
They floated in and out.
They'd be here,
and then they wouldn't.
The FBI or somebody
was always coming back
and wanting information on 'em.
-CANDI: One of the signs
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
if somebody
had tapped your phone,
which means listening in
on private conversations,
was you heard this unusual
clicking on the other end.
(STATIC AND CLICKING)
In my house,
when you heard that clicking,
it means they found you.
And come nightfall,
we were sneaking into the car
and gone off to another town.
To you, waking up and having
your mother make breakfast
and your father
going off to work
might be a normal thing.
To me, a normal thing
was just getting used to a house
and finally getting friends,
and then sneaking off
in the middle of the night,
the kids piling in the car
and winding up
sleeping in the car
on the side of the road,
10 hours later,
in another state.
That was normal life.
BARRETT: He had those kids
trained so well
that if there was a conflict,
something happened,
they were to immediately
drop what they had.
If they were riding
their bicycle,
just leave it in the street.
Leave everything.
The police could be knocking
on the next-door house
-(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
and we would be gone
before they ever got to ours.
Just gone.
One of the times
we were being chased,
we were in Indiana.
This is the middle of the night.
We're on a dirt track
that's no longer used as a road.
Jerry was driving.
All of a sudden, he said,
"Someone's following us."
My sister and I are turning,
we're looking out
the back window.
There was a car following us.
Jerry started driving
like a maniac
turning corners on two wheels,
going probably 80 miles an hour
on city streets.
We did get away, but that was
a terrifying experience.
Growing up, we were
either devastatingly trash poor
or we lived quite comfortably
in very nice houses.
I don't know how to describe it.
He would make a business
out of basically nothing.
He could.
(MONKEYS CHITTERING)
CANDI: When I was very young,
my father had a pet store.
My father specialized
in exotic pets.
My father would bring
some of the pets home
so they weren't left
in the store overnight.
Not only do you have a houseful
of rambunctious children,
you've got monkeys
climbing up the drapes.
It's no wonder my mother
was so stressed.
Jerry couldn't do anything
on a small basis.
Buying fish from South America
was too expensive,
so they decided
to breed their own fish.
He said if you had a little fish
that didn't cost anything,
and they reproduce so fast,
then you just needed
a thousand aquariums.
CANDI: My father
would go and pitch people
to flood their basements
and turn their basements into
hatcheries for tropical fish.
So he had a constant supply
of healthy tropical fish,
grown right here
in the United States of America.
And son of a gun, it made money.
(CHUCKLES)
CANDI: I remember
this home Jacuzzi thing,
where they designed this machine
that kind of looked like
a sewing machine.
It sat on the edge
of your bathtub
and would make the water
in your bathtub swirl around.
And I remember
being excited, thinking,
"Oh, we're going to be normal.
We're gonna stay in house,
everything's gonna be fine,
because they just came up
with this great idea,
and everything
is gonna be wonderful."
And two months later,
we're sneaking out the back door
and on the run again.
And then I remember
a year later,
seeing these machines
that my father designed
being advertised on television.
AD NARRATOR #1:
A perfect way to relax
-is with a Jacuzzi
whirlpool bath.
-(APPLAUSE)
It really upset me at the time,
and I was thinking,
"That could've been us
if my father wasn't a criminal."
(SLOW PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Jerry had a connection through
some of the old Detroit friends.
Jerry came to the house.
He brought a friend with him.
And he was a concert pianist.
And we had a piano there,
and he played that piano
like, my gosh,
I didn't know that old piano
could sound that good.
But he had a problem
with his hands.
After he played for 30 minutes
or so, his hands would freeze.
They would seize up
and, and, and all that.
And he made a comment,
something about that, uh
"They're not good for pianos,
but I could break somebody
in half.
They still work."
(KNUCKLES CRACK)
INTERVIEWER:
-Yeah.
-INTERVIEWER: Yeah?
Yeah.
I'm gonna tell you something.
To this day, I'm still cautious
about what I say
about these people.
They don't play games, okay?
I don't know how to say this.
(SIGHS)
Don't go there, 'cause
these guys will hurt you.
(PHONE RINGING)
BARRETT: Jerry called me.
He said,
"You're gonna hear some things.
Don't worry about it.
We're okay."
And that was
the end of conversation.
I didn't know what it was.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(CRASH)
-(TIRES SQUEAL)
(ELECTRICITY CRACKLES)
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(GUNSHOTS)
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC
CONTINUES) ♪
But he's still alive.
(CHUCKLES)
(TAPE REWINDING)
(CRASH)
And the only way he could do it
to get rid of them,
and hopefully get rid of the FBI
and everybody else
that was starting to come in
well, he shot up his car,
I guess.
(GUNSHOTS)
And away he went.
After that, he went underground
for a little while.
(PHONE RINGING)
He would call me later.
"I don't have any money.
I need some cash."
I said, "Jerry, someday
you gotta give me some money
to put in the bank for you
so that I don't have to take it
out of my savings account
'cause I take it away
from my family."
"I'd really appreciate it,
Richard,
if you would just forget that
and give me some money.
Vivian will be by."
What do you do? I owe him.
He kept me from going to jail.
He did me a--
He protected me. I owe him.
My wife did not like that.
(LAUGHS)
When Vivian (SIGHS)
Each time
that she came and left,
it didn't change anything.
She was my sister,
and I would do anything for her.
In all that time,
you would think
that they would get tired
of all this.
'Cause I would sit there,
and I'd be driving her
to Cincinnati that one time
in the middle of the night,
three o'clock in the morning,
and I gotta be at work in,
you know, like at five
or six in the morning,
so I gotta get back home.
And I go down there,
and I says, "You know,"
I said, "This is really bad."
I said, "What are you guys
gonna do one of these days?
Are you ever coming back
to a normal life and all that?"
And she said, "No."
She said, "This is normal.
This is a normal life."
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
CANDI:
On this one particular day,
my father, Jerry,
took me for a car ride
and we got stuck in traffic.
The traffic was backed up
because there was a Christmas
parade going on.
And I wanted
to go meet Santa Claus.
My father told me that there was
no such thing as Santa,
and I was devastated.
And I think to cheer me up,
he said,
"Would you like me
to be your mommy?"
And I was thrilled about it.
Vivian was not a happy mother.
I think there was just
too many bad things
that happened in her life
right at the time I was born
that somewhere in her mind
she might've blamed me for it.
So having my daddy as my mommy
was a wonderful thing to me.
I thought my daddy
was doing it for me.
I didn't realize that my daddy
was unhappy being a man.
When my father, Jerry,
told my mother, Vivian,
that he wanted to be a woman,
that led
to the first separation.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CARMICHAEL: Dear Vivian,
I don't know
when or how my problem started.
Some authorities believe
there's a chromosomal
imbalance in people,
and others say
environmental conditioning,
while others (SIGHS) feel
it's a glandular misinformation.
Whatever the cause,
there have been signposts
along the way
ever since I can remember
that indicated I was not
what I could have been
in the sex department.
And that wasn't
because I didn't try.
I guess I'm not sure
that I had some sort of
(CHUCKLING)
youth screw loose.
I'm not a man anymore,
at least
not in the sexual sense,
if I ever was.
As I got to know you,
I found you
to be truly worthy of deep love
and a lasting respect
and admiration.
Even with the irritants,
the arguments,
the recriminations,
and the hard words,
the love has continued on
stronger than ever.
As I grow older,
and hopefully wiser,
I have come to realize
that love is pretty important.
The passion is gone.
Like the ocean, the wind
and waves have died down
and left a placid surface,
but the underlying current
goes on strong and stable
and everlasting.
As funny as it sounds,
I'd walk through the fire
for you and the kids.
I'd give up my food and clothing
and my bed,
and yes, even my life.
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
BARRETT: My sister, Vivian,
called me and said that,
"We're coming by.
And I don't want you
to be surprised or shocked,
but there's a lot changing.
A lot."
She said, um
"Jerry's changing."
( SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
When they pulled up
and Jerry got out,
he looked like a man in drag,
and I thought,
"Okay, well, wow."
(LAUGHING)
"Quite a change. She was right."
So I went out
in the garage out there,
and I said,
"Jerry, I think I know
why you want
to become Elizabeth.
Because you can hide."
(CHUCKLES)
And he said, "No."
He said, "That's not it."
He said, "I've always had
this feeling that, um,
I didn't belong
in this body, and
I just thought that, uh,
I should be a woman."
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE)
I know it's right for me.
I used to go behind the bushes
with my two female cousins
and put their dresses on
with them.
(LAUGHTER)
When I was 18 in Germany, I used
to go to out-of-town taverns
and walk back
with my trousers off.
It felt good. The wind made me
feel like I was wearing a dress.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
BARRETT: And he says,
"Liz is a good name."
'Cause he--
he liked Elizabeth Taylor.
He thought Elizabeth Taylor
was the epitome of woman.
She had jewelry,
she had friends,
and she had power.
And he liked all those things.
And that's where that came from,
as far as I know.
STRYKER:
In previous decades, uh,
it was often harder
to transition as a young person.
So it was not uncommon at all
for people
who had transgender feelings
to not be able to figure out
how to do what they wanted to do
until they were older.
How did you actually
find somebody
who would, like,
give you hormones
or perform surgery?
That wasn't
a well-known process.
Like, how do you, like,
actually do this?
So it doesn't surprise me
at all that Liz Carmichael
didn't figure out
how to transition
until she was in her 40s.
There was no
"Daddy disappeared,
and all of a sudden,
Liz was there." It wasn't that.
It was a true transition that
all of us were familiar with,
and we were all part of.
My father would lock himself
in the bedroom,
-and you could hear him talking.
-I play tennis with my right
CANDI: He was talking
into his tape recorder,
practicing being a woman.
Possibly, had I, uh,
tried when I was younger
Because there wasn't
all this money
to go to specialty surgeons
and so forth
to start the transition,
my father
was self-transitioning,
giving himself
his own hormone injections.
(WATER BUBBLING)
In breeding fish, you learn
that if you put certain hormones
in the water,
it would
cause the fish to spawn.
So Jerry would get hormones
through veterinarians.
STRYKER: There were a lot
of barriers to accessing, uh,
transition-related medical
services before the 1990s.
If you had children, you know,
they might say,
"Oh, you know,
you're already a parent,
and we can't do that
to the children."
If you were married,
they might require you
to be divorced
before you could transition.
Vivian was a pretty
strong supporter.
Vivian taught Jerry
how to wear makeup,
taught Jerry
how to wear clothing.
When Jerry was first
trying to dress as a woman
and going out into public,
they'd go to a nightclub
as just friends
or sister-in-laws.
And you've got to admire Vivian
for doing that.
STRYKER: It can be difficult
for a trans person
to visually reproduce
what cisgender versions of
manhood and womanhood look like
after you're well
into adulthood.
You might be more visually
perceivable as trans,
which could then have
consequences
for how you're able
to support yourself
and how safe you are in public.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I remember going shopping
and being a little nervous,
and this was--
these were test runs--
and deliberately walking up
and saying "Mommy, Mommy,"
so that people around
wouldn't think it was--
something was fishy.
"Mommy, Brian's hitting me!
Make Brian stop! Mommy, Mommy!"
You know,
and doing it on purpose
and it-- it helped,
and it helped us, too,
calling her "Mommy."
BARRETT: I said, "Well, um,
how do the kids feel about it?"
And they said,
"We've got two moms now.
We have two mothers."
He says,
"And moms are the best."
And that's what he said.
Isn't that nice?
CANDI:
And we were all fine with it
because she was a great mom.
BARRETT:
She was ahead of her time
because she knew the pain
if somebody was at a restaurant
and they said something to her,
making a snide remark or a joke,
she would get up and go over,
and she'd say,
"You're very rude."
Wasn't mean.
"You're a very rude person."
And she was big enough,
probably, to intimidate 'em.
(LAUGHS)
But that's the way Liz was.
Liz came to my house to stay
with Vivian and the children.
There was a gentleman there
in the house
that was watching Liz.
And they carried on
a little flirty conversation,
and she immediately
responded to that
because it warmed her up.
I said, "Do you know what?
You're amazing."
And that's what I told her.
Truly amazing.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Once I accepted the fact
that she was a woman
it started to make sense.
Having a transgender person
in our family,
uh, it definitely did change
my viewpoint and so forth
because it became
acceptable to me,
because I understood them now.
I understood
from personal experience now
what happened here.
And here was
my six-foot macho man,
and now my six-foot
(LAUGHS) feminine woman.
Yeah. I understand it. I get it.
She's family.
STRYKER: If you're not
being the person
that you understand
yourself to be,
you don't often follow that
sort of normative life path.
If you feel resentful
that society is organized
in a way that is, like, really
not good for you as a person,
if you feel that interacting
with people and institutions
and the public
and the government,
um, is something that,
at every step, it invalidates
who you are as a person,
maybe you're resentful
about that,
and maybe you, you know,
engage in more so-called,
you know, "antisocial" behavior
out of those unresolved feelings
that are based on your,
your transness.
I have approached
many numerous firms,
asking them for any kind of work
that they had to offer
over a period of eight months.
The same response,
"We can't hire anybody
of your caliber.
We don't want any of your people
working for us."
So what else was I supposed
to do when you get damn hungry?
If you're living in any kind of
non-normative gender role,
you know, publicly,
the employment discrimination,
the housing discrimination,
the kinds of police violence
that gets directed at you,
the criminalization
of your life,
the psychiatrization
of your life,
uh, it puts you
in a very vulnerable
and marginal position,
where sometimes, like,
your only options then, uh,
are criminal ones because,
you know, you wanna eat,
you know, need a place to sleep,
and how are you
gonna get that money?
If that's what's
in front of you,
like, that's what you do.
(MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CANDI: Liz could not get a job
for anyone, and this was--
she was freshly a woman,
and not an attractive woman,
and she just
could not get a job.
Sam Schlisman,
my favorite person of all time.
Old man Sam. Liz loved Sam.
Sam gave her a job
in real estate.
Sam fixed her car
so she could take customers
out to see land
and put a phone and--
a phone in her car!
These things were outrageously
expensive back then.
That was Sam.
And then she got a job
at a marketing company.
LOU LINDSTROM:
Sam Schlisman and Liz Carmichael
worked at USMI.
(PHONES RINGING)
It was a cutting-edge company
involved in sales and marketing,
uh, goods and services.
Home inventors
would come in with ideas,
and this company was supposed
to tell them all the things
they needed to do,
how to get your patents
and how to go about marketing
and getting investors.
LINDSTROM: There were rumors
about Liz at that time
because her appearance,
she was six feet two,
two hundred and twenty pounds
or whatever, a muscular person,
well-groomed.
She wore a lot
of pancake makeup.
That was the number one thing
that I noticed.
This thick pancake makeup
all the time.
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE)
LINDSTROM:
People were pretty professional,
she was pretty professional,
and she was, like,
treated like one of the guys.
She was, uh,
a powerful salesperson.
A company like this might hire
a hundred people,
and maybe one person
would sell something
and the other ninety-nine
wouldn't.
She was always one of those
one out of a hundred people
that could sell anything.
Elizabeth Carmichael would never
have gotten to see the Dale
if she hadn't been
working at her position at USMI.
CANDI: One day, she came home,
talking about this car,
this three-wheeled car.
And she showed us
pictures of it.
I'm looking at it,
just thinking,
"It's a dune buggy.
No one's
gonna drive this thing."
But this was just
going to be the answer
to America's gas problem.
-(MACHINE GUN FIRE)
-(EXPLOSION)
NEWS ANCHOR #3: Good evening.
The Middle East War
produced developments
all over the world today.
The oil-producing countries
of the Arab world
decided to use their oil
as a political weapon.
They will reduce oil production
by five percent a month
until the Israelis withdraw
from occupied territories.
REPORTER #2: Prices
for Arab oils are going up,
a huge increase
voted in an overnight meeting
without even consulting
Western buyers.
NEWS ANCHOR #4: By next summer,
the shortage will be
far more serious
than it was
this past summer.
Why didn't they come out
and tell us there was no gas?
Gasoline shortages are spreading
across the country.
DRIVER: I've been here
since 4:30 this morning.
It's ridiculous,
waiting on line here.
REPORTER #3: What sort of things
do people say to you
when they come in
to buy a car nowadays?
Gas mileage,
that's the number one topic.
How many miles to a gallon
would this get?
CANDI: Well, in an era
where cars were getting
eight to twelve miles
to the gallon,
this car supposedly got
70 miles to the gallon.
Hello again. Here we are
with the most unique show
in the United States.
The name of it's
What's the Big Idea?
But our big ideas
are really inventions.
We have a very unusual
inventor with us,
a successful inventor.
Dale Clifft, I welcome you
to the Big Idea show.
RICHARD SMITH: Dale liked
to work on just about anything
that would stir his imagination.
His first love, I believe,
was the two-stroke motor,
and of course, that brought him
to the motorcycles.
He had a way of almost
doubling their horsepower.
He would ride his
back and forth to work
on quite a number of occasions,
and it dawned on him
that he couldn't ride it
during the wintertime
when it was raining.
He started thinking
about a way around that,
and that wound up
being the start
of the Dale automobile.
It was a vehicle
that was welded together
out of half-inch
electrical conduit.
He'd take the front wheel
off his motorcycle
and attach it to the back end
of this vehicle,
with two wheels on front,
and that way, very quickly,
he could use his motorcycle
to power this vehicle.
That really worked out
quite well.
My field is-- is energy
and energy-related inventions.
HOST: That's your background?
That's the reason I gotta have
one of your future
Dale automobiles,
is that 100 miles per gallon.
I don't think we can quite
do that on the Dale.
-(CHUCKLING)
-Seventy-five, maybe.
SMITH: The Dale automobile
became quite a hit
locally around town,
you know, because Dale drove it
every chance that he got.
So one evening, he and his wife
went to a restaurant,
and they were enjoying
themselves dinner
when a man approached them.
He knew somebody who could
actually produce the automobile.
This particular person
set up the meeting with Liz.
LINDSTROM:
If she had an appointment,
you could depend on her
being there.
If Liz is there,
the client walks in,
the client might not walk out
for five hours
because Liz had a way of
getting engaged with the clients
and getting excited
about their product.
SMITH: After that meeting,
Dale signed some contracts
and that's where it all
got started.
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE) So I
bought that car from Dale Clifft
and kind of in honor of him, uh,
I named it after him.
But there's no connection.
He doesn't work for the company.
He walked
in the door one day.
And I said, "Hey, Dale,
what do we name this damn car?"
And then I said,
"Hell, we'll name it the Dale."
LINDSTROM: I think
that's where Liz's genius was.
She saw the importance
of the moment,
she jumped on it, and, uh,
started running with this idea.
That was the big deal, you know.
Seventy miles
to the gallon, really?
This could end the gas crisis.
CARMICHAEL: General Motors?
I'll kick the shit out of them.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CANDI: She started a company.
LINDSTROM: Twentieth Century
Motor Car Company.
They rented offices on
the first floor of our building.
CANDI: She brought Sam along,
and she would always
bounce ideas off of Sam.
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: (ON TAPE) And
the tests we wanted to make then
that we had never documented
were stability tests,
what the car would do
when making all the turns
at high speeds.
AD NARRATOR #2:
The Dale is taking these turns
at 55 miles per hour,
no sway, no tipping,
and no feeling
of loss of control.
CANDI: To this day,
I don't know how she did it.
I don't know how she came
from this vinyl-coated,
tubed metal dune buggy
into the gorgeous Dale.
It just seemed like last week,
this was just a thought,
and now all of a sudden,
it is a full-blown company
with an office
on Ventura Boulevard.
For those not familiar
with Ventura Boulevard,
this is the high-rent district.
I thought that
this would change our lives.
There'd be no more sleeping
in cars on the side of the road.
No more getting up
in the middle of the night
to move to another town,
no more high-speed car chases
on public roads.
I thought this was
the beginning of a real life
where we could be
a normal family,
because this was real.
But my secret self
was wondering
when it was going to end,
when they were
going to find out
that my mother
was really my father
who was in trouble with the law.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
COLIN DANGAARD:
This was an underdog.
LESLIE KENDALL: The Americans
were ready for her.
GERRY MCGUINNESS: People were
all putting in 50, 60 hours.
CARMICHAEL: My full
intention and expectation
is to become the biggest
automobile manufacturer
in the world.
DANGAARD: This was a woman
who had everything against her.
GREG LEAS: I don't know
if it's real or not.
One person ever looked
under the hood? We did.
DENNIS SMITH: There were
some bribes involved.
DICK CARLSON:
State of California
issued an order.
DENNIS:
There was something off
from the moment he met her.
NEWS ANCHOR #5: This woman
was going to revolutionize
the auto industry.
CARMICHAEL: We are
at war with the big three.
CARLSON: Nobody had ever
known this person.
So who the hell was she?
CARMICHAEL: Protecting
our industrial secret.
LEAS: They were afraid
of spies from the big three.
It was scary.
MCGUINNESS:
These were mobsters.
CARMICHAEL: It's a situation
of David fighting Goliath.
(GUN SHOT)
("TIP TOE TO THE GAS PUMPS"
BY TINY TIM PLAYING) ♪
Mr. Gasoline Man
Please give me some gas ♪
My tank is almost empty
So fill it fast ♪
If you will just fill her up
I promise you this ♪
I'll put a tulip in your hair
And blow you a kiss ♪
Let's tiptoe to the gas pump
Fill her up ♪
Give me all you've got
'Till I scream I've had enough ♪
Everybody clap your hands
And sing in harmony ♪
Come tiptoe to the gas pump
With me ♪
Put a tiger in my tank
Please don't delay ♪
I've been waiting in this line
Since early yesterday ♪
So Mr. Gasoline Man
Fill her to the brim ♪
So I'll have enough gas
To go through this line again ♪
Let's tiptoe to the gas pumps
With me ♪
ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL:
I'm going to fill one hell
of an important gap
in the car market.
SPEAKER:
It looked like a spaceship.
It sounded good.
SPEAKER: I couldn't believe
that it was real.
CARMICHAEL:
There are thousands of people
writing to cheer me on.
SPEAKER 2: People
were flocking to make deposits.
SPEAKER 3:
She had stacks of cash,
and next to it, a revolver.
(DINGS)
When you're in a pool of sharks,
you're gonna get bit.
SPEAKER 4: Three guys walk in
They're afraid of spies.
SPEAKER 4: Something is wrong.
SPEAKER 5: Who the hell was she?