# 2. Death in Mexico | Lost Hills

An episode of [Examined: The Backfire Effect](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1549249596), 15 Jun 2023, 31 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/pdrl.fm/e27c90/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/31bb1c28-0fb5-4627-b8a7-ae32006cd7c1/047dff9b-4b3d-423b-ace9-b00c01422029/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=093755db-b947-43f4-a067-ae32006cd7cf

The most iconic surfer in Southern California was born in… Hungary. Emigrating to Los Angeles as a baby, he was raised partly by his father, a sophisticated European wine lover and restaurateur, and partly by his mother and her new husband, a hard-charging surfer named Gard Chapin. After Gard’s rumored murder, Miki is never the same. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey Lost Hills listeners, it's Dana. I wanted to
[0:22] Speaker 1: let you know that you can hear the entire new
[0:24] Speaker 1: season of Lost Hills ad-free along with other great binge
[0:27] Speaker 1: listens by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus
[0:32] Speaker 1: on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or
[0:35] Speaker 1: at pushkin.fm slash plus.
[0:45] Speaker 2: I first saw him in 56. I went out there,
[0:47] Speaker 2: and he was very dark, you know, a dark tan.
[0:50] Speaker 2: You know, he's this dark figure, swarthy kind of guy.
[0:55] Speaker 2: And I saw him out there on this board, and
[0:59] Speaker 2: he was all by himself. My brother told me, that's
[1:02] Speaker 2: Mickey Chapin, and that's what they called him back then.
[1:05] Speaker 2: It wasn't Mickey Dora, it was Mickey Chapin. Oh, that's Chapin.
[1:10] Speaker 1: This is Denny Auberg again. He's talking about the first
[1:13] Speaker 1: time he laid eyes on Mickey Dora. This was three
[1:16] Speaker 1: years before he had his run-in with Mickey in the water,
[1:19] Speaker 1: when Mickey refused to kick out of the wave, and
[1:22] Speaker 1: Denny nearly drowned. Denny used to hang out at the
[1:25] Speaker 1: beach with his older brother, Kemp, and Kemp was friends
[1:28] Speaker 1: with Mickey.
[1:29] Speaker 2: For the first few years, I only knew him as Chapin.
[1:34] Speaker 2: That's because his stepdad was Gard Chapin, who was a
[1:38] Speaker 2: very well-known early surfer from the 40s. For many years,
[1:43] Speaker 2: my brother, they'd always talk about Chapin. I mean, Chapin
[1:45] Speaker 2: did this, Chapin did that. And then all of a sudden,
[1:50] Speaker 2: I remember distinctly, oh, no, his name's Dora now. He's
[1:53] Speaker 2: calling himself Dora. Don't use Chapin, you know. And the
[1:56] Speaker 2: story is that Guard Chapin got murdered, you know, down
[2:00] Speaker 2: in Baja or something like that. And so Mickey got
[2:04] Speaker 2: kind of paranoid using that name. It was like, this
[2:07] Speaker 2: is the story.
[2:08] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[2:09] Speaker 2: So he said, I'm going to call myself Dora from
[2:11] Speaker 2: now on, and they can't find me. That's the way
[2:15] Speaker 2: he thought. So from then on, he was Mickey Dora.
[2:19] Speaker 1: This was something Mickey would do again and again, ease
[2:23] Speaker 1: out of one identity into another, like a snake shedding
[2:26] Speaker 1: its skin. He liked to keep everyone guessing, especially the cops.
[2:31] Speaker 1: They couldn't catch him if they couldn't figure out who
[2:34] Speaker 1: he was. When his stepfather, Gard, was alive, Mickey had
[2:38] Speaker 1: called himself Mickey Chapin, spelled M-I-C-K-E-Y, like the mouse. The
[2:45] Speaker 1: name was pure California surfer boy, almost wholesome. Then, overnight,
[2:52] Speaker 1: when Gard died, because Gard died, he became Mickey, M-I-K-I, Dora.
[3:00] Speaker 1: Mickey Dora was mysterious. Mickey Dora was secretive and paranoid
[3:06] Speaker 1: and shifty. Mickey Dora was Malibu's dark prince. I'm Dana Goodyear,
[3:15] Speaker 1: and this is Lost Hills. Episode 2, Death in Mexico.
[3:48] Speaker 4: The thing about Mickey and the facts of his life
[3:50] Speaker 4: is that no one knows the truth.
[3:53] Speaker 1: This is David Renson. He wrote the definitive oral history
[3:57] Speaker 1: of Mickey Dora. It's called All for a Few Perfect Waves.
[4:02] Speaker 4: And as I will tell you, I'm sure this will
[4:05] Speaker 4: be a great podcast, but you will never find out
[4:08] Speaker 4: the truth.
[4:09] Speaker 1: Even after doing hundreds of interviews about Mickey, David says,
[4:13] Speaker 1: he still finds Mickey unknowable.
[4:15] Speaker 4: I didn't need to read the part in my book
[4:18] Speaker 4: where John Milius is saying, it's like Citizen Kane. You
[4:21] Speaker 4: know just as much about Kane at the beginning as
[4:24] Speaker 4: you do at the end, but it's a fabulous ride.
[4:26] Speaker 4: It's a fabulous ride.
[4:30] Speaker 1: Mickey's contradictions start right at the moment of his birth.
[4:34] Speaker 1: The ultimate Southern California beach god was born in Budapest,
[4:38] Speaker 1: Hungary in 1934. His mother, Ramona Stancliffe, was from California.
[4:45] Speaker 1: She had just graduated from Beverly Hills High and was
[4:48] Speaker 1: traveling around Europe with her mother and younger siblings. Seventeen
[4:52] Speaker 1: years old and strikingly attractive, she was on a riverboat
[4:56] Speaker 1: on the Danube when she met Miklos Stora, a law
[5:00] Speaker 1: student and second lieutenant in the Hungarian cavalry.
[5:04] Speaker 4: And he thought, I'll talk to this girl. Then they
[5:06] Speaker 4: started flirting, and she was enchanted. And Miklos has told me,
[5:11] Speaker 4: he said, you know, you can't get with a girl
[5:14] Speaker 4: in Hungary because they're too proper, but maybe I'll get lucky.
[5:18] Speaker 4: And anyway, they spent a few months there, and I
[5:21] Speaker 4: guess she did get pregnant, but hid it.
[5:24] Speaker 1: Ramona wrote a letter to her best friend back home,
[5:27] Speaker 1: boasting about her adventures without mentioning her pregnancy.
[5:31] Speaker 4: She says, you'll never guess. I'm married. I'm Mrs. Mikloschdor.
[5:35] Speaker 4: She's pregnant. He does the right thing. He marries her.
[5:39] Speaker 1: Ramona and Miklosch Sr. decided to bring young Mickey to
[5:42] Speaker 1: California a few months after he was born. Miklosch said
[5:46] Speaker 1: it was because Ramona was sick of Europe and missed
[5:48] Speaker 1: the malted milks at the drugstore counters in L.A. He
[5:52] Speaker 1: really did not understand his new bride, but he agreed
[5:55] Speaker 1: to emigrate. They arrived in L.A. in January 1935. Miklos Sr.
[6:04] Speaker 1: later credited the unplanned birth of his son Mickey with
[6:07] Speaker 1: saving his life. During World War II, the Nazis took
[6:11] Speaker 1: over Hungary, and Miklos' regiment was sent to the Russian front,
[6:15] Speaker 1: where most of them died. In L.A., Miklos reinvented himself
[6:21] Speaker 1: in the hospitality business. With some money from Ramona's family,
[6:25] Speaker 1: he started a Hungarian restaurant. called Little Hungary. Was that
[6:31] Speaker 1: kind of his first venture when he came to.
[6:33] Speaker 4: L.A.? Yeah, he'd sold some wines, I believe. He worked
[6:38] Speaker 4: at Victor Hugo's restaurant, but then, you know, started his
[6:43] Speaker 4: own little place.
[6:44] Speaker 1: And it was on Sunset?
[6:45] Speaker 4: West, on the same side of the street as the
[6:47] Speaker 4: Whiskey A Go-Go, up a few stores.
[6:51] Speaker 1: Little Hungary sat at the center of Golden Age Hollywood
[6:54] Speaker 1: and was in particular a gathering place for European émigrés.
[6:58] Speaker 1: People like the actress and singer Marlena Dietrich and the
[7:01] Speaker 1: director Billy Wilder hung out there. Ramona loved the glamour,
[7:06] Speaker 1: maybe more than she loved the daily grind of parenting.
[7:10] Speaker 4: I guess, you know, she adored Mickey, but really was,
[7:15] Speaker 4: what's the word, self-indulgent. You know, wanted to connect with
[7:20] Speaker 4: all the famous people that came into Little Hungary.
[7:25] Speaker 1: There's a picture I've seen of Mickey with Ramona. He's
[7:28] Speaker 1: about two years old and is wearing a little military-type suit.
[7:32] Speaker 1: She's ravishing, head tilted back, eyes closed, like a starlet
[7:37] Speaker 1: on a movie poster. He's kissing her cheek intently, holding
[7:41] Speaker 1: onto her chin as if for dear life. And she
[7:45] Speaker 1: looks like she's a million miles away.
[7:49] Speaker 4: So, you know, Miklos was working all the time, and
[7:51] Speaker 4: Ramona was sleeping until the afternoon. I don't know if
[7:54] Speaker 4: she was drinking. I mean... That's what happened to her
[7:58] Speaker 4: later in life. She drank and ended up just tithing
[8:03] Speaker 4: money to a TV evangelist. I think it was a
[8:08] Speaker 4: complex relationship for Mickey, you know, and carried on through
[8:12] Speaker 4: all of his relationships with women. They want to nest,
[8:16] Speaker 4: but he didn't want to nest.
[8:18] Speaker 1: Ramona definitely wasn't the nesting type. In 1939, she went
[8:23] Speaker 1: to Las Vegas and filed for divorce from Miklosch.
[8:28] Speaker 5: Mickey Dora was definitely, unquestionably robbed of having a secure,
[8:33] Speaker 5: comfortable childhood. There's zero question about that.
[8:38] Speaker 1: This is the surf historian Matt Warshaw.
[8:41] Speaker 5: Mickey was born to this gorgeous alcoholic mother who married
[8:45] Speaker 5: a Hungarian sort of gentleman. And the marriage, I think,
[8:50] Speaker 5: was unhappy almost from the jump.
[8:54] Speaker 1: Mickey's parents just basically had nothing in common. Ramona was
[8:58] Speaker 1: on a path to self-destruction. Miklos was an old-world asthete,
[9:03] Speaker 1: a wine connoisseur, an art lover, the epitome of the
[9:07] Speaker 1: European gentleman. After the divorce, Ramona moved on quickly, and
[9:12] Speaker 1: the person she found, Gard Chapin, was nothing like Miklos.
[9:17] Speaker 1: Gard was 6'1, buff, a carpenter. People who knew him
[9:23] Speaker 1: described him as a, quote, Aryan blonde.
[9:28] Speaker 5: And Ramona almost right away started dating the hottest, the
[9:32] Speaker 5: best surfer in California, possibly the world, which didn't mean
[9:37] Speaker 5: a whole lot in the 1940s because there weren't a
[9:39] Speaker 5: whole lot of us.
[9:41] Speaker 1: The problem with Gard Chapin was that he was a bully.
[9:45] Speaker 1: According to his contemporaries, he was aggressive and narrow-minded and
[9:49] Speaker 1: always going on about who was or was not a Jew.
[9:54] Speaker 1: Miklos Sr. thought he was a disaster. Miklos said Gard
[9:58] Speaker 1: thought laws were for his own protection, but didn't believe
[10:02] Speaker 1: he had to abide by them. As a grown man,
[10:05] Speaker 1: Gard would steal from the ice cream vendor at the
[10:07] Speaker 1: beach and think it was his.
[10:09] Speaker 6: Funny.
[10:10] Speaker 1: He was that guy. Gard took to fathering Mickey in
[10:14] Speaker 1: an erratic, eccentric way. Mickey revered him and feared him.
[10:33] Speaker 1: Mickey's stepdad, Gard Chapin, was a surf pioneer, part of
[10:37] Speaker 1: the first generation of Californians to try the ancient Polynesian
[10:41] Speaker 1: pastime of riding waves. In the 1930s, when Gard started surfing,
[10:47] Speaker 1: it was largely unknown on the California coast. Just a
[10:51] Speaker 1: few extreme guys doing a very offbeat thing. The early
[10:56] Speaker 1: California surfers rode heavy, homemade redwood planks. They could weigh
[11:00] Speaker 1: over 100 pounds. That's like riding a dining room table,
[11:05] Speaker 1: especially when compared to the fiberglass potato chips people ride today.
[11:10] Speaker 1: Here's Matt Warshaw, surf historian again.
[11:13] Speaker 5: Before the war, surfboards were mostly all wood. They were
[11:17] Speaker 5: either hollow or solid wood, and they were mostly finless.
[11:21] Speaker 5: And so there wasn't much control.
[11:24] Speaker 1: Most of the early surfers didn't move around on the wave.
[11:27] Speaker 1: They just went straight, locked into a rigid, statuesque stance.
[11:33] Speaker 5: A lot of it was just standing up and looking good,
[11:35] Speaker 5: just sort of holding your arms or your shoulders a
[11:38] Speaker 5: certain way and just trying to look like you were
[11:40] Speaker 5: in control.
[11:42] Speaker 1: Gard didn't do that. Gard was a charger. He'd do
[11:46] Speaker 1: this move where he would drop to one knee and
[11:48] Speaker 1: cut back toward the breaking part of the wave to
[11:51] Speaker 1: pick up speed and momentum, then turn back toward the
[11:54] Speaker 1: unbroken wave and fly.
[11:56] Speaker 5: If you're riding the right kind of wave and you're
[11:59] Speaker 5: coming in at an angle and The wave's barely breaking,
[12:02] Speaker 5: and you do a big swooping turn kind of back
[12:04] Speaker 5: to where it's breaking a little bit more. It's a cutback.
[12:08] Speaker 1: According to Matt, Gard invented the cutback. That's like in skiing,
[12:14] Speaker 1: being the person who invented the pole plant.
[12:17] Speaker 5: And the surfers who were all around in the 40s,
[12:19] Speaker 5: they were the surfers that everyone sort of heard of,
[12:22] Speaker 5: much more famous than Gard. To a man, and it's
[12:26] Speaker 5: all men, say that Gard was the guy. He was
[12:29] Speaker 5: the high-performance guy.
[12:31] Speaker 1: Gard surfed just like he lived, on the edge of aggression,
[12:35] Speaker 1: spoiling for a fight.
[12:37] Speaker 5: Gard Chapin knew how to turn his board, ride high.
[12:40] Speaker 5: He could literally surf past surfers. And as he was
[12:44] Speaker 5: doing that, he'd be yelling abuse at everybody. He'd just,
[12:48] Speaker 5: get out of here, coming through. And that was Gard Chapin.
[12:51] Speaker 5: He was the best surfer. He was the most aggressive surfer.
[12:57] Speaker 1: Gard was a regular at San Onofre. a long stretch
[13:00] Speaker 1: of beach in Orange County where the waves are soft
[13:03] Speaker 1: and crumbly and roll in one after the next. It
[13:07] Speaker 1: was a community. The surfers made big bonfires and brought
[13:10] Speaker 1: their ukuleles and slept on the beach. After Gard got
[13:14] Speaker 1: together with Mickey's mom, Ramona, he started taking Mickey there.
[13:18] Speaker 1: And sometimes he just left him there to fend for himself.
[13:25] Speaker 1: Mickey's nickname at Sano was Meatball. He was a sandy,
[13:29] Speaker 1: sunburned version of a Victorian street urchin. He had a
[13:33] Speaker 1: reputation as a petty thief.
[13:36] Speaker 5: And Mickey was just this, I mean, middle school age
[13:39] Speaker 5: kid hanging around these older guys and going up the
[13:42] Speaker 5: point to go surf a place called Trestles and stealing
[13:45] Speaker 5: food to sort of, he was hungry and he was
[13:48] Speaker 5: just sort of semi-abandoned. Having a great time, I think
[13:52] Speaker 5: having a huge adventure, but then guard would show up
[13:56] Speaker 5: later on and say, where's Mickey? And somebody would find
[13:58] Speaker 5: him and off they'd go back up to L.A.
[14:04] Speaker 1: Over time, Miklos, Mickey's father, began to lose influence over
[14:08] Speaker 1: his son. Miklos was busy at his restaurant, Little Hungary,
[14:12] Speaker 1: a reality that Gard seemed to make a mockery of.
[14:16] Speaker 1: He would come into the restaurant hot off the beach,
[14:18] Speaker 1: Mickey in tow, shouting that his wife owned the place.
[14:23] Speaker 1: Gard and his sidekick, Mickey, would storm into the kitchen
[14:26] Speaker 1: and grab whatever food they wanted.
[14:28] Speaker 5: You know, for his part, Miklos, who I get the
[14:30] Speaker 5: feeling was just sort of in over his head because, again,
[14:33] Speaker 5: he's the one coming over from far away. And he
[14:36] Speaker 5: was very handsome, sophisticated. He also loved the beach. But
[14:41] Speaker 5: with Gard and with Ramona, Miklos still had the thick accent.
[14:45] Speaker 5: He could only be sort of so cool.
[14:48] Speaker 1: Gard seemed determined to turn Mickey into an American boy.
[14:53] Speaker 1: Over Miklosch's objections, he forced Mickey to get circumcised at
[14:57] Speaker 1: the age of 12. I wonder what kind of mockery Gard,
[15:04] Speaker 1: a quote-unquote Aryan and a xenophobe, subjected Mickey to, this
[15:09] Speaker 1: dark-complected child from Budapest whose father spoke heavily accented English.
[15:17] Speaker 1: Gard was a carpenter and worked with a legendary surfboard
[15:20] Speaker 1: shaper named Bob Simmons, Mickey hung around the shop and
[15:24] Speaker 1: learned a lot from them. But as an adult, he
[15:27] Speaker 1: really didn't talk that much about Gard and his influence. Occasionally,
[15:32] Speaker 1: he'd drop cryptic hints about Gard's odd disciplinary programs. Once,
[15:38] Speaker 1: toward the end of his life, Mickey made the offhand
[15:40] Speaker 1: remark that Gard was a dangerous psychopath. When Mickey did
[15:45] Speaker 1: open up about Gard, the stories were alcohol-soaked and violent.
[15:51] Speaker 5: Every now and then, Mickey would get in sort of
[15:52] Speaker 5: a confessional mode and say, yeah, you know, guard used
[15:56] Speaker 5: to come home drunk, wake me up, and beat the
[15:58] Speaker 5: shit out of me. There was just a lot of
[16:01] Speaker 5: famous surfers from that period in the 40s and 50s
[16:04] Speaker 5: who said, all seemed to say the same thing, which
[16:07] Speaker 5: was that they thought he was, you know, in their words,
[16:10] Speaker 5: the living end when it came to surfing. But he
[16:13] Speaker 5: was just someone that you wanted to keep distance from
[16:17] Speaker 5: at a party, you know, especially as it got later.
[16:19] Speaker 5: You just wanted to sort of stay away from him.
[16:21] Speaker 5: The story that I've been told a few times, and
[16:23] Speaker 5: I think Mickey tells the story, is that one night
[16:26] Speaker 5: guard came home drunk, woke up Mickey, said, come with me.
[16:32] Speaker 5: And they drove somewhere in LA. I don't know what
[16:35] Speaker 5: street it was, but it was the first street where
[16:38] Speaker 5: LA had just put in parking meters. And guard got
[16:42] Speaker 5: out of the car drunk. He grabbed a baseball bat
[16:45] Speaker 5: and just went down the block and just smashed the
[16:49] Speaker 5: head off every meter. and said something like, this is
[16:52] Speaker 5: what they're trying to do to us, Mickey. Look at
[16:53] Speaker 5: what they're trying to do. And then, you know, I
[16:56] Speaker 5: don't even know why he had to have Mickey there,
[16:58] Speaker 5: but he wanted Mickey to see him doing this, committing
[17:00] Speaker 5: this act of violence because, you know, the city of L.A.
[17:02] Speaker 5: or the county was, you know, screwing them, screwing everybody
[17:07] Speaker 5: over by putting in parking meters and put Mickey back
[17:09] Speaker 5: in the car and drove home and passed out. I
[17:14] Speaker 5: do think Mickey later realized that Gard was a monster.
[17:18] Speaker 1: Miklos Sr. grew concerned that Mickey might be in danger
[17:22] Speaker 1: and did the best thing he could think of at
[17:24] Speaker 1: the time.
[17:25] Speaker 5: At one point, when Gard and Ramona were both being,
[17:29] Speaker 5: you know, sort of particularly bad parents, Miklos sent Mickey
[17:35] Speaker 5: to a boarding school. And Mickey hated that.
[17:41] Speaker 1: Mickey was sent to St. John's Military Academy, which was
[17:44] Speaker 1: run by the Sisters of Mercy nuns.
[17:47] Speaker 5: I do think that Miklos did that not as punishment.
[17:49] Speaker 5: I think that he felt that Mickey living with Gard
[17:52] Speaker 5: and Ramona was in a situation that Mickey needed to
[17:54] Speaker 5: be removed from.
[17:56] Speaker 1: Mickey wasn't cut out for military boarding school. If a domineering,
[18:01] Speaker 1: unpredictable stepfather had given him an uneasy relationship to authority,
[18:06] Speaker 1: a bunch of drill sergeants and nuns only intensified it.
[18:11] Speaker 1: Mickey was not a good boy at school. There's even
[18:15] Speaker 1: a story of him putting fiberglass shavings from shaping a
[18:18] Speaker 1: surfboard in the head nun's kotex. Mickey was about 14
[18:24] Speaker 1: when Miklos sold Little Hungary. Miklos, who had remarried and
[18:29] Speaker 1: fathered a daughter, moved to South America to get into
[18:32] Speaker 1: shrimp farming. Mickey was set adrift. But on the beach,
[18:39] Speaker 1: he was someone. He was Mickey Chapin, guard's kid, He
[18:46] Speaker 1: wasn't abandoned, he decided. He was free. When Mickey Dora
[19:05] Speaker 1: became a famous surfer in the 1960s, an interviewer for
[19:09] Speaker 1: Surfer Magazine asked him why he had dropped the name Chapin.
[19:12] Speaker 1: Mickey's answer? Quote, Gard's untimely premeditated murder in Mexico can
[19:19] Speaker 1: only be linked with his individualistic personality. For my own
[19:23] Speaker 1: peace of mind, I felt it would be safer to
[19:26] Speaker 1: use my given name. The events that led up to
[19:30] Speaker 1: Gard's death in the late 50s were depressing. A noirish
[19:34] Speaker 1: downward spiral for the beautiful Ramona and her surfing stud.
[19:39] Speaker 1: Surf historian Matt Warshaw.
[19:42] Speaker 5: Guard was rear-ended while waiting at a traffic light and
[19:46] Speaker 5: broke his neck and couldn't work and he couldn't surf
[19:50] Speaker 5: for something like a year. He was in a lot
[19:53] Speaker 5: of pain for the rest of his life and that
[19:56] Speaker 5: didn't help with his drinking. So he became a worse
[20:00] Speaker 5: drunk and he would dry out and then go back
[20:03] Speaker 5: to drinking.
[20:05] Speaker 1: Ramona and Gard broke up and Ramona became a secretary downtown,
[20:09] Speaker 1: living in hotels with various boyfriends. According to Mickey's half-brother,
[20:14] Speaker 1: Gard and Ramona's son, Gard got addicted to codeine an
[20:18] Speaker 1: absinthe that he smuggled in from Mexico. He was already
[20:22] Speaker 1: a liability. Now he came fully unglued.
[20:25] Speaker 5: At some point he was down in Mexico, I think,
[20:29] Speaker 5: fishing and trying to not drink, and then he was
[20:33] Speaker 5: going to row a dinghy out to a friend's boat,
[20:36] Speaker 5: and the dinghy turned up the next day, and Gard's
[20:38] Speaker 5: body turned up five days later. And it looks like
[20:41] Speaker 5: he just had been drinking or something and fell off
[20:43] Speaker 5: the boat, or some kind of late-night one-man... Mickey talked
[20:50] Speaker 5: about it as if Gard, you know, knew too much
[20:53] Speaker 5: about too many people and he was killed. And, you know,
[20:55] Speaker 5: and again, you're just cutting through layers of weirdness. Mickey
[21:00] Speaker 5: tried to make it sound like Gard was murdered, which
[21:03] Speaker 5: I don't think is true.
[21:05] Speaker 1: But Mickey believed it or said he did. And he
[21:09] Speaker 1: hinted at dark conspiracies. Mickey told his friends that Gard
[21:14] Speaker 1: knew too much. About what? He said the state was
[21:20] Speaker 1: somehow after him. It was all very mysterious. What's clear
[21:26] Speaker 1: is that Mickey was not the same after Gard's death.
[21:30] Speaker 1: He became more enigmatic, more paranoid. But he also started
[21:35] Speaker 1: to seem much less like a California kid and more
[21:38] Speaker 1: like a European dandy. Mickey was back in touch with
[21:44] Speaker 1: his birth father, Miklosch, who had returned from South America
[21:48] Speaker 1: and was working in the wine business. Eventually, Miklosch would
[21:52] Speaker 1: work for the eminent winemaker Baron de Rothschild, representing his
[21:55] Speaker 1: wines in the United States and frequently traveling back to Europe.
[22:00] Speaker 1: He got Mickey a job working for a distributor, but
[22:03] Speaker 1: it didn't last. Mickey slept with the boss's wife. That
[22:07] Speaker 1: was okay. Mickey didn't want to work. He wanted to surf.
[22:13] Speaker 1: Rent wasn't an issue. Mickey crashed with Miklosch's mother, Nadina,
[22:18] Speaker 1: at her place in West Hollywood. Nadina, who was born
[22:21] Speaker 1: in Russia and spent most of her adult life in Vienna,
[22:24] Speaker 1: was a voice coach known to her students as Madame Desanctus. Now,
[22:29] Speaker 1: Mickey started talking with an accent and using quirky Eastern
[22:33] Speaker 1: European hand gestures. It was like he was becoming some
[22:37] Speaker 1: impressionistic air quotes version of Miklosch. When Gard died, Mickey
[22:43] Speaker 1: Chapin died with him. From then on, in most circumstances,
[22:48] Speaker 1: he would be known as Mickey Dora. The name and
[22:51] Speaker 1: the mannerisms would stick. Matt Warshaw again.
[22:56] Speaker 5: Mickey Dora did have this way of talking that apparently
[22:59] Speaker 5: everybody at Malibu and elsewhere would start emulating, where, you know,
[23:02] Speaker 5: a lot of sort of hand gestures and a lot of,
[23:05] Speaker 5: there was sort of a pause in the way. And
[23:07] Speaker 5: it wasn't, he didn't talk like other surfers at all.
[23:09] Speaker 5: There was none of that kind of California nasally thing.
[23:13] Speaker 5: that surfers do, you know, he talked in a sort
[23:15] Speaker 5: of a precise way. Or if you see people in conversation,
[23:18] Speaker 5: you'd see people doing these kind of gestures that Mickey did.
[23:23] Speaker 5: And it was all kind of old world somehow. It
[23:25] Speaker 5: wasn't Southern California surfy stuff. That's all coming from Miklos,
[23:30] Speaker 5: the father.
[23:35] Speaker 6: He was this really uneasy split between two very different fathers.
[23:41] Speaker 1: Stevie DeVicentis, the film writer, was fascinated by Mickey's two
[23:45] Speaker 1: dads and how they shaped him.
[23:47] Speaker 6: You had Miklos as his birth father, who was this erudite, aristocratic,
[23:54] Speaker 6: accomplished businessman, lover of the arts, expert of fine wine,
[23:58] Speaker 6: and by all accounts, a real gentleman and a lovely man.
[24:01] Speaker 6: And then you had Gard, his stepfather, who is, you know,
[24:06] Speaker 6: widely recognized to be a very, very difficult and problematic person.
[24:10] Speaker 6: And he was paranoid. He fought a lot, loved guns.
[24:14] Speaker 6: He was a very angry man, by all accounts. And
[24:18] Speaker 6: you can see both of these things in Mickey. You
[24:21] Speaker 6: can see all of the appreciation of art and imagination
[24:27] Speaker 6: and curiosity about culture and seeing culture where others might not.
[24:32] Speaker 6: And then you also see the fierce, almost violent protectionism
[24:38] Speaker 6: about territory. And paranoia, thinking people want to know what
[24:43] Speaker 6: you're doing, thinking people want to break into your house.
[24:46] Speaker 6: I mean, Mickey had a bear trap inside of his
[24:48] Speaker 6: front door. There's nobody trying to break into Mickey's house.
[24:51] Speaker 6: Nobody cares for Mickey. You know what I mean? Like,
[24:53] Speaker 6: it's paranoid. And you see these very distinct fathers very
[24:57] Speaker 6: much alive in him.
[25:00] Speaker 1: As a child, Mickey had been more or less abandoned.
[25:04] Speaker 1: Ramona hadn't taken care of him. Miklos hadn't either. and
[25:09] Speaker 1: Gard seemed to mostly nurture Mickey's weaknesses. I get the
[25:14] Speaker 1: sense that Mickey grew up with this feeling of having
[25:17] Speaker 1: been denied his birthright, the elegance and sophistication and air
[25:21] Speaker 1: of wealth that clung to his father, and he was pissed.
[25:26] Speaker 1: He used to doodle the word retribution on his drawings.
[25:31] Speaker 1: Mickey wanted that Mr. Dora suave, but he'd grown up
[25:35] Speaker 1: with Gard, and Gard's questionable ethics.
[25:40] Speaker 6: I think when it came to the criminal stuff, it's
[25:42] Speaker 6: a synthesis of the two. It's the willingness to take
[25:47] Speaker 6: a sucker from Gard, and it's the sophisticated way of
[25:50] Speaker 6: doing it is from Miklas.
[25:56] Speaker 1: A few years before Gard's death, Mickey had stopped going
[25:59] Speaker 1: down to San Onofre. He'd found a new spot, Malibu.
[26:04] Speaker 1: A long, right-breaking wave that ran from the Malibu movie colony,
[26:08] Speaker 1: where the movie stars had their hideaways, to Malibu Pier.
[26:13] Speaker 1: A wave with no one on it. This is almost
[26:18] Speaker 1: incomprehensible today, when there can be 50 people in the water,
[26:21] Speaker 1: even on a mediocre day. Malibu is the most discovered
[26:25] Speaker 1: of the discovered waves.
[26:27] Speaker 2: It was a wild beach. It was like actually out
[26:30] Speaker 2: in the country. It was kind of like going to
[26:33] Speaker 2: the outskirts of out into the country. You go up
[26:37] Speaker 2: and there's empty lots where the beach houses are now.
[26:40] Speaker 2: And you wind up this road. It was just like
[26:42] Speaker 2: an adventure. You're going way out to Malibu.
[26:46] Speaker 1: This is Denny Auberg again. In the early 50s, he said,
[26:50] Speaker 1: almost no one knew what surfing even was. He was
[26:54] Speaker 1: just there to go fishing.
[26:55] Speaker 2: I would sit there with a drop line and look
[26:58] Speaker 2: across the cove and see these strange long things leaning
[27:02] Speaker 2: against this fence, you know, this old barbed wire fence.
[27:06] Speaker 2: I thought they were some kind of boats. I had
[27:07] Speaker 2: no idea what they were, but I wondered, what is that?
[27:11] Speaker 2: And later I found out they were surfboards. By 1956,
[27:15] Speaker 2: it was a relatively unknown sport that came from Hawaii,
[27:18] Speaker 2: and people did it, but it wasn't generally known, surfing.
[27:22] Speaker 2: What is that? See people bobbing around out at sea?
[27:24] Speaker 2: Why are they doing that? Why are they just waiting
[27:26] Speaker 2: out there?
[27:30] Speaker 1: Here at Malibu, Mickey would perfect what came to be
[27:33] Speaker 1: known as the Malibu style, a laid-back stance with knees
[27:37] Speaker 1: slightly bent and shoulders loose. The graceful, and Mickey was
[27:42] Speaker 1: the most graceful, could catfoot to the front of the
[27:45] Speaker 1: board and ride the nose. It was the golden era
[27:48] Speaker 1: of Malibu, a period Mickey would call the vintage years,
[27:53] Speaker 1: or the Genesis period.
[27:54] Speaker 5: There was two guys that were sort of the kings
[27:58] Speaker 5: of Malibu in this one really golden sort of period
[28:01] Speaker 5: that Mickey thought of as sort of this golden period
[28:04] Speaker 5: in the 1950s.
[28:05] Speaker 1: Matt Warshaw again.
[28:08] Speaker 5: And Mickey was the guy that kind of ruled in
[28:10] Speaker 5: the water. And then Terry Tracy, who everyone knew as Tubestake,
[28:15] Speaker 5: ruled the beach. The two of them got along okay
[28:19] Speaker 5: because they each had their own little sort of fiefdom.
[28:22] Speaker 5: But Tubestake built this shack on the beach and he...
[28:26] Speaker 5: loved entertaining people. He was, um, himself could be kind
[28:31] Speaker 5: of cruel, but in general seemed to have a pretty
[28:33] Speaker 5: big heart. And he, he was funny and he liked
[28:38] Speaker 5: to sort of hold court and just sort of keep
[28:40] Speaker 5: everybody laughing. And Mickey would sort of say hi to
[28:43] Speaker 5: everybody on his way out to go surf. And then
[28:46] Speaker 5: usually Mickey would just, would just leave.
[28:49] Speaker 1: This was the scene. Mickey in the water, tube steak
[28:52] Speaker 1: in a shack on the beach. that a skinny, short
[28:55] Speaker 1: teenager named Kathy Konar discovered in the summer of 1956.
[28:58] Speaker 1: He was a great surfer.
[29:03] Speaker 3: He was a great surfer. I mean, you could pick him.
[29:05] Speaker 3: If you looked outside, you could pick him up in
[29:07] Speaker 3: a lineup. He was fantastic. He had hand gestures. I
[29:11] Speaker 3: don't know if anybody saw. He goes, ah, my name
[29:14] Speaker 3: is Mickey Dora. He'd go like that.
[29:17] Speaker 1: Kathy's arrival heralded the end of the Golden Era. In
[29:21] Speaker 1: Mickey's view, it ushered in a period of of dry rot.
[29:26] Speaker 1: You may have heard about Kathy. She became the world's
[29:28] Speaker 1: most famous surfer. To non-surfers, she's probably still the world's
[29:34] Speaker 1: most famous surfer. But you don't know her as Kathy.
[29:38] Speaker 1: You'd know her by the nickname the guys on the
[29:40] Speaker 1: beach gave her. It's a little offensive, but it was
[29:44] Speaker 1: the 50s.
[29:46] Speaker 5: Girl and midget and gidget.
[29:49] Speaker 1: Mickey's world, the surf world, would never be the same.
[29:57] Speaker 1: Next time on Lost Hills, the guys at Malibu are
[30:01] Speaker 1: in for a surprise.
[30:01] Speaker 3: The boo, Malibu, gets good once a summer, and it
[30:08] Speaker 3: got good It got bitchin'. Brother, was I ever jazzed.
[30:12] Speaker 3: I was riding four-footers and lining all the way across
[30:15] Speaker 3: into the bay. I really had a ball and looked better.
[30:19] Speaker 3: I still miss having a boyfriend, but everything happens for
[30:22] Speaker 3: the best. And I'll die being an old maid, but
[30:25] Speaker 3: it's a grand life.
[30:25] Speaker 1: And I think that's a really good, a.
[30:29] Speaker 3: Really good piece of writing.
[30:33] Speaker 5: From my diary.
[30:35] Speaker 1: That's next in Episode 3, Gidget Goes to Hollywood. Part 1.
[30:41] Speaker 1: Lost Hills is written and reported by me, Dana Goodyear.
[30:45] Speaker 1: It's created by me and Ben Adair and produced by
[30:48] Speaker 1: Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and
[30:53] Speaker 1: you can binge the entire season right now, ad-free. Find
[30:57] Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple
[30:59] Speaker 1: Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

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