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THE THEATRICAL PROMOTER

Michael DeVinko was born in Garfield, New Jersey, on September 24, 1934. Growing up twelve miles west of New York City, perhaps young DeVinko never had a chance. The bright lights, glitz and glamor beckoned. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was using the name Mickey Deans and had a career as a piano player and singer in the New York City nightclub scene. He also took his show on the road to Los Angeles, Reno, Miami and the Virgin Islands.

Mickey met entertainer Judy Garland on March 10, 1967, when he delivered some pills to her at the St. Regis Hotel at 5:30 a.m., and a relationship developed, as she would show up regularly at Arthur, the trendy nightclub where Deans was the manager. In December 1968, they flew to London, where Judy performed at the Talk of the Town cabaret. They were wed at the Chelsea Registry Office on February 11, 1969. It would be DeVinko’s first and only marriage and Garland’s fifth and final one.

By this time, they were living in a small six-room mews house at 4 Cadogan Lane, in the Belgravia district of Chelsea in London. It was there, on Sunday, June 22, 1969, sometime between 2:30 a.m. and 4:40 a.m., that Judy Garland died in the upstairs bathroom. Her husband would not discover her body until almost 11:00 a.m. “An accidental death by an incautious overdose of barbiturates,” the pathologist stated.

DeVinko was listed on the death certificate as “an Artiste’s manager.” Some of Judy’s family and friends wished that he had done a better job in managing to keep her alive. He did manage a wonderful send-off. Over twenty-two thousand people filed past her open casket during a twenty-four-hour wake. Following the funeral, the remains of the forty-seven-year-old actress were placed in a crypt at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, where they remained for forty-seven years. On Friday, January 27, 2017, she was reburied at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in California. A family spokesperson stated, “When Judy Garland died, her affairs were controlled by her husband, Mickey Deans. Her children had no say in the matter of her burial, so this is at last their opportunity to do what they feel their mother would have wanted in the first place: to be united with her family in Hollywood.”

In 1972, Mickey Deans, with the help of a ghostwriter, wrote a tell-all biography of Judy Garland titled Weep No More, My Lady. It was believed to be self-serving and highly suspect in some of its revelations.

Back in New York, DeVinko went to work for Roy Radin, owner of Roy Radin Enterprises, which booked multiple vaudeville revivals and police union benefits across the country. It was later revealed that in some cases, only a small portion of the profits went to the charities they were to benefit.

The vaudeville shows featured older comedians like Milton Berle, George Jessel and George Gobel, who once said, “Roy Radin knows as much about show business as a pig knows about church on Sunday.”

On June 10, 1983, Roy Radin’s bullet-riddled body was found sixty-five miles north of Los Angeles, after he was missing for almost a month. Finally, in 1988, four people were arrested for the crime and were convicted in 1991. It was called “The Cotton Club Murder” because it supposedly involved a dispute over potential profits from the movie The Cotton Club. The film, which was Radin’s attempt to get into the movie business, was a critical and financial flop.

In the wake of Radin’s death, his protégé Michael DeVinko came to Cleveland to manage the company’s Ohio interests. Since he would need a residence that would reflect and enhance his persona, he bought the Franklin Castle from Richard and Virginia Perez on November 22, 1985, for $93,000.

After moving in, DeVinko added a series of dummy walls that didn’t quite reach the ceilings. He covered the beautiful hardwood floors with linoleum tile and the stairs with carpeting. A florescent-pink hot tub was installed on the third floor. The beautiful brick driveway was covered up with gravel. A doorbell, with a recorded message that said the house was no longer open to uninvited human guests, was installed to amuse visitors and curiosity seekers alike.

Judy Garland and Mickey Deans at their wedding reception in 1969. Photo by Allan Warren. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Still, Michael DeVinko went along with the stories of the haunting and often told of his own unusual experiences. Others, like DeVinko’s friends Robert Kokai and Allen Christopher, had their own experiences. Robert and Allen were late-night horror movie hosts of The Frank and Drac Show. In 1987, they aired an episode about the Franklin Castle that included an extensive interview with Dolores Romano.

Robert Kokai recalled that they were both pretty much mainstays at the house from July 1987 until DeVinko sold it. He said that the house was extremely haunted and the first time they visited, it was so active that it made the house in the film The Haunting seem tame. Many people reported seeing a woman in black. Robert, however, saw a woman in white that followed him around for about six months. Others were said to have witnessed her presence in three different locations in the house.

Michael DeVinko claimed to have located many items once owned by the Tiedemanns, including an original house key, some furniture and the original blueprints for the castle. The blueprints, which he claimed to have tracked down from a firm in Nova Scotia, turned out to be the plans from when a group in New York City had tried to buy the house from Mrs. Romano and move it to the East Coast. Jimmy Romano distinctly remembered that his mother gave those blueprints to DeVinko. The Romanos also returned the stone lions.

Jimmy Romano further recalled that DeVinko would often go on, in his thick New Jersey accent, about how he had been married to Judy Garland, drove Lincoln Continentals and how he did whatever he wanted, usually lacing these comments with coarse language.

The blueprints, furniture and other items that DeVinko claimed to have acquired will always be a mystery, since they were supposedly stored next door in the carriage house behind the old Wiebenson home. In the late 1980s, the carriage house and its contents were destroyed by a fire.

One of DeVinko’s more extravagant claims was that he’d spent $1 million in renovating Franklin Castle. Many of those who knew him believed this to be an exaggeration.

In 1987, Michael DeVinko formed a company called Olympian Productions Inc. Its stated goal was to raise money for the Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association, as well as the National Black Policeman’s Association. While DeVinko would hold an occasional fundraiser at the Franklin Castle, the main solicitation was done by telemarketing. This business was listed at the castle into 1999.

Assisting Michael with Olympian Productions was a dear friend and companion named Richard Driscoll, whom he often referred to as his son. Described as a fairly quiet man, Driscoll lived at the Franklin Castle in 1987 and again from 1991 until 1995, when he moved into the old Wiebenson house, which was also owned by DeVinko. At one point, that house was extensively outfitted with phone banks, computers, cables and wires to serve the telemarketing business.

Another houseguest at the castle during the late 1980s was Jeff Romano. James and Dolores Romano’s youngest son always felt a close connection to the house because it held many fond memories of his late twin brother John. Jeff and his friend Chris Manacapelli stayed there for a brief time, but they soon became uncomfortable and left. Their discomfort had nothing to do with the paranormal. It had to do with DeVinko and his wild lifestyle.

Over the years, DeVinko’s extravagant parties were of legendary dimension. People from all walks of life attended, especially around Halloween. A couple of the more notable visitors to the house were Phil Specter and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Finally, in 1992, Michael DeVinko put Franklin Castle on the market for $795,000. There were no takers, so the sale price slowly moved to an amount someone would pay. In 1999, DeVinko, in declining health, put the Franklin Castle in his rear-view mirror and moved to Northfield, Ohio.

Sixty-eight-year-old Michael DeVinko died of congestive heart failure at the medical center in Sagamore Hills, Ohio, on Friday, July 11, 2003, and his ashes were shipped to a friend in Florida.