Biography
William (Bill) Ghere was director of the Hollywood Group Theatre, presenting Clifford Odets plays Waiting for Lefty and Till the Day I Die. The Daily Worker of June 3, 1935, pages 3-4, reports that three men abducted and beat him after he left the theatre on Monday night, May 27. He was recovering by the June 2 dispatch. His abductors reportedly objected to a scene in which Hitler's picture was torn from the wall. The ACLU requested official investigations of the kidnapping and local private military groups; those requests are not a finding that any named organization perpetrated the attack. The page-4 report gives historical age thirty, without establishing a birth date. This was coercive political abduction, not a criminal conviction; exact length detained and endpoint remain unknown. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n132-NAT-jun-03-DW-Q.pdf
New Masses, June 11, 1935, printed pages 4 and 27 / PDF pages 6 and 30, prints the threatening note and calls the director Will Ghere. It reports four attackers forced him into a car and drove him to the Hollywood hills, where he was beaten half unconscious, later describing the attackers at Hollywood Receiving Hospital as members of Friends of New Germany objecting to the anti-Nazi play. This differs from the three attackers in the earlier Daily Worker report; the organization identification is attributed to his account. No exact abduction date or complete duration is added. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v15n11-jun-11-1935-NM.pdf#page=30
The captioned portrait identifies Will Ghere at Hollywood Receiving Hospital and identifies him as director of Clifford Odets’ Till the Day I Die at the Hollywood Playhouse. The profile portrait is extracted directly from that newspaper photograph; the adjacent threat note and caption remain preserved in the source evidence.
