Throughout its checkered history, the nation’s capital has held special allure for the most sophisticated species of the American criminal class: the con artist. Nowhere else, save perhaps for Wall Street, has the confidence game been more comfortably practiced and its practitioners more handsomely rewarded. Disciples of Phineas Barnum, knights of the golden fleece, con artists have swindled their way through society soirées on Embassy Row and wheedled their way into
Forty years ago, Memorial Day moviegoers at the Ambassador Theater, 18th Street and Columbia Road, N.W., saw Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan in “King’s Row.” In probably his best motion-picture performance, Reagan’s leg is amputated, and he utters a classic line — “Where’s the rest of me?” — which later would become the title of his autobiography.
Shortly before midday on June 1, 1933, a crisp and pleasant Thursday in Washington, a crowd began to gather around the timeworn steps of a narrow, stone-faced building near the intersection of E Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Soon, an auctioneer’s bell began clanging, and hundreds of restless spectators bumped elbows as they jostled for better vantage points.