Fifty years later, the story of the Valley’s ‘Mutt and Jeff Bandits’ is a perfect pitch for Hollywood [Daily News, Los Angeles]
By Tom Hoffarth, Daily News, Los Angeles | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Jennings, the taller of the two at 6 feet 3 inches,sports a military crew cut and is dressed in an
He points the .38 caliber revolver at the teller.
Rosenbluth, the shorter, stockier one at 5 feet 7 inches, leaps over the counter and cleans out the money drawer with a white canvas sack.
No shots are fired. No one gets hurt. They walk back out before many in the building even know what's going on. Their getaway car is parked right in front.
And they head straight to the nearby
A quick change into his baseball coaching gear, Jennings lights up his signature cigar and assumes his volunteer role as manager of his son's 13- and 14-year-old All Star team from
As a police car circles the neighborhood looking for a couple of crooks, the two stay under the radar.
In real life, these so-called "Mutt and Jeff Bandits" were caught, prosecuted and jailed. Named after the longtime comic strip that featured the odd couple of one tall man and his shorter friend, Jennings and Rosenbluth methodically knocked over 13 banks in less than 11 months and collected what was first reported to be about
They were sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Both have long since passed away.
Fifty years have passed, too.
If Hollywood ever figures out a way to tell this "based on a true story" -- be a dark comedy, light-hearted drama or somewhere in between -- a few kids from that baseball team are still around to pitch in.
"It's a story that has stayed fresh in my mind and has never gone away," says the 65-year-old who continues to compete in senior men's league games while working in real estate management.
"When I get a group together, I'll say, 'Wanna hear a baseball story that's never been publicized?' Every time I sit them down, tell them how it happened, they'll start laughing. They can't believe it. They someone will say, 'Why hasn't there been a movie made about this?'
"We've done the script. It's just waiting to go."
The last job
On
Some recall that news as more difficult to comprehend than when, less than three weeks later,
"There's
All that summer, while coaching this Pony League All-Star team that went to the national championship game in
Rosenbluth had no connection to the baseball side of things.
In the meantime, there were a series of bank robberies taking place not far from their office -- Sylmar, Northridge, Encino, Reseda and
Was it also a coincidence that other robberies occurred in some of the same cities where the team happened to be playing tournament games around
Then came the headlines.
"Businessmen Jailed in 13 Bank Holdups," screamed in all capital letters from the
"There was money everywhere -- on the tables, in the wastebasket, on the window sill," police told the newspaper.
Their wives were oblivious as to what was going on.
"Business was very bad," Jennings told police at the time of his arrest. "I had to lie to my wife several times. She began to wonder where all the money was coming from. I told her I had sold some stocks."
Jennings' own son, Steve, who was the star catcher, had no idea. Neither did his teammates.
"It's just freakin' amazing how all that happened under our nose, and no one thought about it," said Cohen.
Especially embarrassing considering that
Did he sense something was strange when the parents got together some nights for some harmless card games?
"On some of our trips out of town, they would get together with our parents and play poker," said Dempsey. "But there was
Cohen recalls a time when his father, Howard, was asked by Jennings to help him secure a loan.
"Every bank by that time had police artist's sketches of the bank robbers from the witnesses reports, so their faces were all over the place," Cohen said. "And this is absolutely true -- we're in the bank, and the manager asks my dad and
"But we don't put anything together. Of course, after the fact, we could see that all
"I was 21 at the time and I worked at the Ralphs grocery store for 35 years right next to the last bank they robbed," said
"John turned to us -- I'll never forget it -- and he said, 'Boys, I want you to know something. There's treasure buried in this desert, and someday you're going to know about it.'
"I thought he was telling us some history. The treasure he was talking about was his own. Sure enough, when we saw him on television, he was right there showing the authorities where he'd stashed the money."
Jet-setting Pony Leaguers
That summer, the 11- and 12-year-olds from
The Pony Leaguers won four tournaments and claimed the
Maybe some of the families couldn't afford such an expense. But there was Jennings, generous enough to help pay for the plane flights and hotels with his new-found fortunes.
They lost the title game, 3-1, to
But the team return to a hero's welcome at
But the "Mutt and Jeff Bandits" weren't finished.
Two more robberies, in
What went wrong? Someone noticed Rosenbluth leap over a fence two blocks from the Panorama City bank crime scene as the two were changing cars. The license plate was noted and given to police.
Jennings and Rosenbluth were all over the news that night. The kids and their parents felt betrayed.
"I was blown away," said Cohen. "He wanted us to grow up as little men and do everything right. And right behind our backs, he was robbing banks.
"News reporters are asking us questions. My parents are telling me to stay clear of the family, trying to protect us and separate us from that situation.
"We loved
It was discovered Jennings had applied for admission to the
"He really just kind of wanted to be a big shot," said Dempsey. "But we had a lot of respect for him. He had a soft spot for players who didn't have enough money to make road trips, and he was always paying motel bills. I can't believe he lived less than a mile from our house."
Davis, who tried to make contact with Jennings after his release but never connected, told the Sun he believed the ex-Marine "was a failure in everything he had done. This was the only thing he'd done to be successful. There were two things he loved: baseball and being a success. So he decided to take this kids team to the Pennsylvania World Series, and bank robbing was kind of a whim."
Police, able to only recover the last
Ironically, the Mutt and Jeff cartoon characters were also frequent visitors to the race track. Mutt has been described in cartoon history encyclopedias as a "a fanatic horse-race gambler who is motivated by greed with get-rich-quick schemes," while Jeff was the sometimes unwilling partner.
Lt.
Jennings and Rosenbluth had a preliminary hearing on
Jennings served his time at
Pitching to Hollywood
Six of the 15 players on that
Cohen, Davis and Hankins all graduated from
Dempsey, the youngest and last one voted onto the team as a shortstop, pitcher and first baseman, was drafted out of
Dempsey, who currently does broadcast work for the
The team has scattered, but some not too far. Starting right fielder
"As the years went by, it was kind of funny to revisit that whole story," said Dempsey. "Maybe it wasn't funny to some, but I still laugh about it. It just seemed like another crazy thing that happened around me."
Cohen, Dempsey and Davis became teammates again in trying to get a "Mutt and Jeff Bandits" movie treatment out in the Hollywood community for more than 10 years.
Cohen once reconnected with
At one point in the process, Cohen gave up all the things he had collected to a screenwriter, including information obtained through a hired private investigator. Cohen then had to join the
"When it comes to Hollywood, they can make the stupidest movies imaginable, but when there's a real story to be told by the right people, it somehow becomes tough," said Cohen.
In 2009, Columbia Pictures and
"Our pitch was it's 'Catch Me if
Prior to that,
A treatment remains filed with the
These days, as the story is retold, and scripts rewritten, it's interesting what is remembered as fact and what may not be.
Dempsey, for instance, recalls the last robbery taking place in
"From what I was told, they came out of the bank, and kind of knocked a little old lady over," said Dempsey. "In a small town like that, people know everyone, and she didn't recognize them. So when she was looking in the Gazette sports pages at all the photos of the teams playing in the tournament, she spotted
Cohen, who does have copies of the local paper with all the team photos in it as part of his files, kind of laughed when told Dempsey's story.
"I do remember hearing that one," said Cohen. "But I think that's maybe just another Hollywood spin on all this."
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