Career Man

CALIFORNIA

As a glib, dreamy-eyed kid in Los Angeles' teeming Central Avenue neighborhood, Charlie Edwards felt himself a cut above the other Negro youngsters. He had bold ideas of becoming a great writer or famous legal light. But school bored him. When unappreciative teachers filled his report card with F's, Charlie brightly forged them all into A's.

It took Charlie a while to find himself. He drifted restlessly from job to job. Once he tried writing a column for a Negro weekly. After he had described an imaginary interview with Hitler, the editor demoted him to chauffeur. The outlook was gloomy when Charlie was caught signing a friend's name to a check.

Imagination and his handy penmanship, however, altered Charlie's destiny. He faked a civil service rating and got a job as deputy in the county jail. Deftly he removed his criminal record from the sheriff's files. He awarded a Master of Arts degree to himself and carried around a photostatic copy. With the credentials of a dead attorney he secured admission to the California bar. To reinforce the illusion, he attended a few law classes at Loyola University in Los Angeles.

In the role of a rising young attorney, light-complexioned Charlie cut a social swath. He wangled invitations to Hollywood benefits, and ran up a $2,000 bill for rented evening clothes. When the photographers exploded their flash bulbs, Charlie would sidle alongside the celebrities. His picture appeared in the papers with Singer Lina Romay, Van Johnson and Victor Mature (see cut).

The Veteran. Charlie became a familiar figure at political rallies, usually edged his way to the speakers' platform. To widen his connections, he wrote himself membership cards in the Knights of Columbus, Ku Klux Klan, B'nai B'rith, the Communist Party and Gerald L. K. Smith's America First. He slipped into the studio of radio station KFWB during a memorial broadcast for F.D.R., and was on the air before anyone could stop him.

When the U.S. went to war, Charlie told the draft board he had a wife and two children. Then he sent the board a postcard announcing his death. Later he was seen on Central Avenue in a captain's uniform, smartly returning the salutes of passing enlisted men. At war's end he donned a veteran's button, began campaigning on G.I. political programs, and set his hopes on a City Council seat.

Last week the bold career of 28-year-old Charlie Edwards suddenly collapsed. Los Angeles police, tipped off by investigators from the state bar association, jailed Charlie on a half-dozen local and federal counts. His counsel indicated that Charlie would plead insanity because of a brain tumor. Said Charlie: "Sometimes I do seem to get dizzy spells."

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