On March 7, 1946, Joan Crawford won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her sensitive, nuanced performance in Mildred Pierce had revived her stalled career and lifted it to new heights. Once again, Hollywood was hers. Since shooting to stardom in silent films, she had survived the transition to talkies, the label “box-office poison,” three husbands, and an ouster from her home studio, MGM. After twenty years, she was the only silent star still packing them in.
Upon his return from the navy, Bautzer briefly dated Lana Turner again, but it didn’t last long, and soon he was looking for another star to date. His thoughts turned to Crawford. He had, of course, secretly been involved with her before the war while he was engaged to Turner. He had also provided legal services to Crawford, helping the single working woman adopt two children from out-of-state adoption agencies. Now, Bautzer was free of entanglements, and he liked the idea of dating an Oscar winner. Crawford was forty-one, at the height of her beauty, and divorcing her latest husband, actor Philip Terry. “The rest of the world may think that the life of a Hollywood bachelor girl is the best ever,” said Crawford, “but I get lonesome.” Bautzer was thirty-five and ready for a major conquest.
Crawford needed a rest after the flurry of Oscar publicity and she chose La Quinta, a desert resort north of Palm Springs. Bautzer had tried to reach her for weeks before she left town. He sent bouquets and gifts, but she ignored his calls, perhaps still resentful about the Turner episode. Upon learning Crawford was going on vacation, Bautzer bribed her secretary for her itinerary. He knew that driving to La Quinta to surprise the diva would make a big impression. He arrived shortly after Crawford checked in and called her room from the lobby. “Look, Joan,” he said, “I can’t break through that telephone guard of yours. You’re either busy, or not in, or not talking. But I’m here. You’re here. It’s a beautiful night. Let’s go dancing.” The grand gesture worked. A romance ensued again—this time as intense as it was sudden.*
Bautzer was the consummate bedroom strategist. He sensed that Crawford would grow bored if he was too accommodating. “She liked men who gave her a hard time,” said Adela Rogers St. Johns, the trail-blazing journalist who was also the daughter of famed attorney Earl Rogers. “If a guy was always available when she called, she dropped him.” Bautzer also knew that Crawford expected the deference usually reserved for monarchs. Greg “treated her like a star,” recalled actress Rosalind Russell. “When they entered a room, he remained a few steps behind her. He often carried her dog or her knitting bag—she was always knitting—and, at the dinner table, Bautzer did everything but feed her.” William Haines, the silent star turned Beverly Hills decorator, had been Crawford’s close friend for twenty years. “To be Joan Crawford’s boyfriend,” said Haines, “a man must be a combination bull and butler.” Bautzer played the role perfectly. “Crawford expected her escort to place her napkin in her lap, light her cigarettes, and open doors for her,” said Russell. “Not many men would put up with it. Bautzer did all these things without losing his masculinity. He made it seem the natural thing to do.” Bautzer sublimated his ego in the service of a great romance. “They were nuts about each other,” recalled Russell. Bautzer’s buddies heard a frank explanation. “A night with Joan is better than a year with ten others,” he would say, grinning.
On April 25, Crawford’s divorce became final. On May 15, Hedda Hopper wrote in her column, “It would surprise no one if Greg Bautzer became the next husband of Joan Crawford.” In October, they were still dating, but no plans had been announced. Hopper spotted them at a party given by skating star Sonja Henie. “Joan Crawford has reached the ‘I’ll-dance-only-with-Greg-Bautzer’ stage,” wrote Hopper. When asked by the press about marriage plans, Bautzer replied, “I wish I could be so lucky.” Hopper read this and saw through the smoke screen: “That son of a bitch can really come up with the one-liners.” To Henry Rogers, cofounder of the public relations firm Rogers and Cowan, Bautzer confessed the truth behind his answer to the frequent question about marriage: “I’ve been trying for a long time to think of something that would make Crawford come off like a queen and still make me look good,” he explained. “This makes people think that I want to marry her and she won’t have me, but my friends know the truth. They’ll laugh and say, ‘Bautzer scored again.’”
Bautzer demonstrated his affection for Crawford in his customary way, with thoughtful, costly gifts. He gave her a cigarette case, encrusted with rubies, engraved FOREVER AND EVER. This was a quote from the song “Always and Always,” which she sang in her film Mannequin. The matching lighter said HERE’S MY TORCH AND MY LOVE. Not to be outdone, Crawford presented him with a pair of Cartier diamond cuff links. He visited the salon where she bought them and was told that she had paid $10,000. She also gave him a black Cadillac convertible. Crawford retained Bautzer as her attorney. She also brought him clients: John Garfield, Jane Wyman, Ginger Rogers, and even Crawford’s second husband, Franchot Tone.
Publicist Henry Rogers represented Crawford at the time and witnessed many an entrance made by her and Bautzer. “There was a decided hush when they walked into a room,” recalled Rogers. “It was as though a genie had cast a spell over the place. They knew the impression they were making, and they took full advantage. They stopped in the entrance. As people stared at them, they smiled indulgently. They paused. And then, on the fifth beat it seemed, they glided into the room. The King and Queen had arrived.”
What did the king and queen eat? A great deal, according to maître d’ Kurt Niklas of Romanoff’s restaurant. “First they ordered a bottle of 100-proof Smirnoff vodka packed in ice, with a four-pound tin of Beluga caviar,” said Niklas. “They put a pretty good dent into both. Then came a bottle of Dom Perignon which they drained very leisurely. Then with their double Chateaubriand they drank a bottle of Romanée-Conti Burgundy. I had never seen a man and woman dine so extravagantly.”
In July 1948, Bautzer and Crawford hosted a formal dinner for two hundred at Le Pavillon—the Hollywood Reporter named the party the event of the year. Guests included Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Gene Tierney, and Marlene Dietrich. Noel Coward, in town to see Tallulah Bankhead in his play Private Lives, was there as well. Designer Billy Haines transformed the restaurant into a small garden of Versailles with showers of pink gardenias, the flower to which Crawford had a legendary devotion. Tony Martin and Dinah Shore sang, Jack Benny played his violin, and Coward performed a number with Celeste Holm.
The always outrageous Bankhead titillated onlookers when she announced that Bautzer and Coward were “simply made for each other” and then suggested “Why don’t you two go someplace and fuck!”
“Sorry, Tallulah darling,” said Coward, “but the gentleman’s teeth are far too big for my liking!” To everyone’s surprise, Bautzer laughed. He and Coward became lifelong friends. In years to come, whenever they met, Coward would greet Bautzer with “Incidentally, my dear chap, I still think you have too many teeth!”
Bautzer and Crawford were at the apex of their romance, but behind the glossy facade were two very competitive individuals. Bautzer frequently played tennis with talent agent Dick Dorso. “Greg was the most ferocious player I ever encountered,” said Dorso. “There was nothing that meant so much to him as winning. At tennis or at anything, winning was all-important.” Crawford had likewise clawed her way to the top, and the ruthlessness with which she had achieved fame was applied to her relationships. “She was predatory and possessive,” said the British writer Barry Norman. Hedda Hopper chided Crawford for a dinner party at which there were six spare men. “Is it a sin for a girl to have fun?” asked Crawford. “You go find your own men, Hedda.”
Oscar Levant, who appeared with Crawford in Humoresque, brought his wife June Levant to Crawford’s home on Bristol Avenue in Brentwood. June found Crawford terrifying. “She was drunk with glamour,” said June. Lana Turner had also been there years earlier. “Those parties were all the same,” wrote Turner. “After dinner the guests would be herded into a screening room to watch movies. Joan knitted constantly. During the film, you could hear her needles clicking.” Bautzer made the mistake of falling asleep during one of Crawford’s screenings. She rose quietly and whispered to her guests not to wake him, explaining that he had had a difficult day at the office and that they should let him rest. They dutifully tiptoed out of the room. “Greg woke up at seven the next morning, alone, with the door locked,” wrote Hedda Hopper. “The theater had a kitchenette, so he cooked some breakfast, smashed a window, and went home. Crawford called him later in the day and screamed at him. ‘How dare you leave my home without washing the dishes!’”
“Crawford liked to be treated rough, and she made sure that Bautzer obliged her,” recalled Adela Rogers St. Johns. “One Saturday morning I ran into her at the Farmer’s Market and she pulled me aside. ‘Look, darling,’ she said. Lowering her sunglasses, she displayed a black eye. I sympathized, but she wasn’t having any of that. ‘He loves me,’ she said, showing off the shiner like it was a medal of honor.” Bautzer earned his own medals. Interviewed in 1981 by Richard Last of the English Daily Telegraph, Bautzer pointed to four facial scars. “She put them there,” he said. “She could throw a cocktail glass and hit you in the face—two times out of three.”
In addition to mutual laceration, the couple also engaged in a hostility-charged kind of foreplay. The ritual would begin with Crawford haranguing Bautzer for some peccadillo, then demanding an apology, then refusing to accept it, and then disrobing in front of him—finally driving him to the point where he was so frustrated, angry, and aroused that he would tear off her underwear and force himself upon her.
Publicist Henry Rogers received a description of their love-making style firsthand from the actress. Crawford recalled the details of a particularly memorable night: She was already in bed when she heard noises outside her window. “I quickly identified them as footsteps and thought immediately of pushing the alarm next to my bed,” she told Rogers. “But I decided it was just one of the security guards patrolling the grounds. Then the noises got louder. Like the cracking and breaking of bushes or trees. Someone was climbing the lattice outside my bedroom window. I heard scrambling, grunts, and cursing from whoever was out there. I was terrified. Paralyzed with fear. I knew I should scream and push the alarm, but at that very moment there was a horrendous crash. Someone had smashed my window and was climbing through. It was Greg! I was still terrified as I watched him take off his clothes and charge toward me. He threw off my covers, ripped off my nightgown—and then—the son of a bitch raped me!”
“He didn’t really rape you,” Rogers said as she related the story.
“Of course not. But it sounds better that way. I’ll never forget how he grabbed me with his bloody hands. In a moment, his blood was all over my body, all over the bed—and I want you to know, Henry—it was the most exciting sexual experience of my life!”
Jealousy over each others’ infidelities created an on-again off-again ritual that also fueled their passion. In late 1947, Bautzer dated stars Sonja Henie and Joan Caulfield, as well as MGM starlets Marilyn Maxwell and Ava Gardner. When Crawford learned of the Gardner affair, she froze him out, but when he apologetically came back, she celebrated by buying new matching his-and-hers Cadillacs. After an all-night card game, Bautzer drunkenly crashed his Cadillac into a lamppost and mailbox on Wilshire Boulevard. The front-page news revealed that he was with another woman. Crawford went ballistic and began dating Lana Turner’s ex-husband, restaurateur Steve Crane. In turn, Bautzer dated Merle Oberon. Crawford flew to New York for a four-month stay at the Hampshire House. Bautzer saw it as another opportunity for a grand gesture and chased her across country. They made up. He took her shopping at Saks and they returned to Los Angeles, only to break up again when Crawford heard that he was seeing Rita Hayworth on the side.
Crawford took up with British actor Peter Shaw, but the romance was short-lived and soon she was back on Bautzer’s arm. Then Crawford heard that Bautzer was seen holding hands at lunch with Lana Turner. She confronted him about it and he countered that he knew she was sleeping with writer-director Charles Martin. A battle royal ensued. As Bautzer stormed out of her house, he tore off the Cartier cuff links and handed them to her. Furious, she flushed them down the toilet, forgetting how much they cost. A plumber answered her late-night summons and was able to retrieve them from the bend in the pipe, charging $500 for the emergency visit. Bautzer did his own damage. He jumped into the second Cadillac that Crawford had given him and crashed it into a wall.
With all the publicity they were getting in the press, keeping score on the Bautzer-Crawford romance was becoming Hollywood’s favorite pastime. Crawford’s jealous vengeance was now public knowledge. Hedda Hopper wondered why Paulette Goddard was so often out with Bautzer. “You know,” said Goddard, “it’s strictly business.”
“Yes, but when you go out with Greg,” warned Hopper in her column, “never turn your back on a certain star. You might get a stiletto in it.”
Actress Arlene Dahl experienced Crawford’s venom as a seventeen-year-old ingénue at a black-tie party in honor of Cole Porter. It took place at 1018 Benedict Canyon Avenue, the home of Sir Charles and Lady Mendl. The latter, the former Elsie de Wolfe, was America’s premier interior decorator and Hollywood’s leading hostess. When Dahl arrived, she was awed by the number of stars in attendance: Joan Fontaine, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable and his wife Sylvia, Norma Shearer, and Janet Gaynor and her husband, couturier Gilbert Adrian. “I felt like Alice in Wonderland,” says Dahl. “And there at the end of the living room were Joan Crawford and Greg Bautzer.” Dahl nervously approached and then blurted out “Miss Crawford, it’s so nice to meet you! You’re my mother’s favorite actress.” She immediately sensed that she had said the wrong thing. “And mine, too,” she hastened to add, trying to cover her mistake. She was too late. Crawford hated being reminded of her vintage.
“She was livid,” said Dahl. “Greg, on the other hand, thought it was funny. He started to flirt with me. And that only made things worse. She ‘accidentally’ spilled a glass of red wine on my white dress.” Joan Fontaine saw it and loudly exposed Crawford to the entire party, exclaiming, “You did that on purpose, you bitch!”
The volatile relationship was pure gold for newspaper writers. “These two battle any time, anywhere,” wrote Dorothy Kilgallen. “They quarrel in Hollywood and make up in New York. They kiss in the Catskills and feud again at Malibu.” During one fracas, Crawford dashed onto her balcony, yelling for the police. When Bautzer went after her, she climbed onto the roof. Neighbors witnessed the episode.
Bautzer’s tennis chum Dick Dorso was taken aback when Crawford invaded the tennis court at the Wilkerson mansion. “Mr. Bautzer, is it going to be your tennis game or me?” she demanded. “Give me an answer.”
“I’m sorry, dear,” came the answer. “I can’t leave now. I’ll come by as soon as I’m finished.”
Dorso described the meeting of two immovable forces. “There would be a moment’s pause between the two of them, he returning her steely-eyed glare with a similar steely-eyed glare. She would then realize that this was a battle that she couldn’t win. Finally, she would mutter ‘You can go to hell,’ and walk off the court determinedly. Then we would hear a screaming of tires as she roared off.”
Radio personality Johnny Dugan also witnessed an uncomfortable scene when he tried to go on a double date with the volatile couple to an MGM charity luncheon. Bautzer chauffeured Dugan and his girlfriend over to Crawford’s home, but when they got there, Crawford was still dressing. Bautzer fixed drinks and they all got comfortable in the living room. Twenty minutes went by, which turned into forty, and Crawford still hadn’t come downstairs. Bautzer became agitated as the minutes ticked by. This wasn’t right, he told them. She shouldn’t treat her guests this way. He decided to hurry the prima donna along and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, leaving Johnny and his date alone on the couch.
It wasn’t long before Dugan heard Crawford’s voice bellowing, “Get out of here, you son of a bitch! I’ll be down when I’m good and ready. And if you don’t like it, you can go to hell!” This was followed by the sound of crashing furniture and objects hitting the walls. Dugan sprung off the couch, not knowing what to do. A moment later, Bautzer bounded down the stairs with a bleeding lip. Without a word to Dugan, he bolted out the front door and slammed it behind him. Within seconds, Dugan heard a window open in Crawford’s room and loud footsteps banging across the floor. He looked outside and saw articles of men’s clothing falling onto the driveway.
“And don’t you come back, you lousy prick!” Crawford shouted as Bautzer’s car peeled away. Dugan and his date realized the party was over and took a bus home.
While Bautzer handled Crawford by night, by day he was handling a bustling legal career. In late 1946, as Bautzer was helping his close friend Billy Wilkerson grapple with Bugsy Siegel, he also represented the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter in a libel suit. Wilkerson was being sued by actress Myrna Loy for $1 million. Loy was the star of the Thin Man series and had done exemplary work entertaining troops during the war. Earlier that year, the Reporter had printed an article that listed actors who were supposedly “part of the Communist fifth column in America … serving a possible treasonable purpose.” The list included Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, Burgess Meredith, James Cagney, Lionel Stander—and Myrna Loy. It was the beginning of an anti-Communist fever that would eventually grip the nation, accusing Hollywood filmmakers of trying to infuse motion pictures with Communist propaganda.
Loy knew the actors named. “One or two may have got involved with the Communist Party briefly,” she wrote in her autobiography, “just as I might have if my intellectual curiosity had run in that direction, but none was a committed Communist. And even if they were, isn’t political freedom an American right?” Wilkerson did not think so. Loy was determined to clear her name.
“You want to sue?” Martin Gang, her attorney, asked her.
“Probably,” she answered, “but first let’s try for a retraction.”
Wilkerson refused to recant. Instead, he reprinted the list. On October 4, Gang filed suit against the Reporter and Wilkerson, stating twelve causes of action for libel. Bautzer took Loy’s deposition, grilling her about alleged Communist publications. “No, I’m sorry,” she answered repeatedly. “I don’t know anything about that.” Bautzer believed her. He had investigated her background prior to the deposition and told Wilkerson he could find no evidence of Communist affiliations. In the end, Bautzer convinced Wilkerson to admit his mistake. Sometimes the best advice a lawyer can give his client is that he or she is in the wrong.
In early November 1946, he represented rubber-faced actress Martha Raye in her divorce from dancer Nick Condos on the grounds of cruelty. Raye wanted custody of their two-year-old daughter, Melodye, but not alimony or child support. This was Raye’s fourth marriage. After less than a week she decided to reconcile, and the marriage lasted for eight more years.
At the same time as he represented Raye, he also represented actress Laraine Day in her divorce from airport executive James R. Hendricks, just six weeks after they had adopted a thirteen-year-old son. She also had two children from a prior marriage. Day was best known for her recurring role as Nurse Mary Lamont in the Dr. Kildare films. Rumor had it that an in-flight flirtation with Leo Durocher, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was the reason for her divorce. This was confirmed when Day wed Durocher—one day after she divorced Hendricks.
In March 1949, Bautzer’s client and occasional date Paulette Goddard wanted to divorce producer-director-actor Burgess Meredith. Bautzer told the Los Angeles Times that Goddard had not decided whether to file suit in Mexico, seeking a Mexican decree, or in California Superior Court. In 1942, Bautzer had taken a different stance. While representing Sally Wright Bernheimer against her husband Earle Bernheimer, he questioned the validity of a Mexican divorce decree, dismissing it as “mail order divorce.” But in the late 1940s the Mexican divorce was becoming a common practice.
Goddard told the press about her divorce action before she told her husband, who was three thousand miles away. “I have not yet talked with Burgess,” she claimed, “nor received any communication from him. I have requested from him a consent decree. I intend to fly to New York to talk things over with Burgess, and then go to Mexico where I have been asked to preside at the Easter festival in Acapulco.” The press speculated that she was romantically involved with author John Steinbeck, but she denied it. Bautzer supported her story, saying he was negotiating for her to star in a film titled Cup of Gold and Steinbeck was writing it. Backing for the project was contingent upon the involvement of actor James Mason. The up-and-coming English actor was overbooked, so it was never produced. Bautzer also packaged a film for Goddard entitled Enamorada, but it never got off the ground.
Goddard’s star had faded. Her divorce took time, during which she dated both Bautzer and Clark Gable. Gossip columns also hinted that Bautzer was seeing Ann Sheridan, the “Oomph Girl,” at this time. As he often did, Bautzer explained that their dates were merely business meetings. He claimed to be negotiating a contract for her for a picture titled Torch Song. As with Goddard, Sheridan’s career was on the way down, and no such project materialized. Saying dates were “strictly business” was becoming a cliché.
As the decade came to a close, the Bautzer-Crawford romance was reaching its limits. In October 1949, Bautzer and Crawford attended a party given by Louis B. Mayer. During the evening, Bautzer committed the faux pas of paying too much attention to another female guest. Crawford didn’t say anything at the party, but she was not pleased. When the party was over, Crawford offered to drive.
Bautzer described what happened after they left the party in an interview for a 1978 BBC documentary profiling Crawford: “I lived at the Bel-Air Hotel, and she lived in Brentwood, and my car was parked at her home. We were driving back along Sunset Boulevard to go to her home in Brentwood. That was before they built the freeway, and there was very little there, very few homes, very little traffic. About equal distance between the Bel-Air Hotel and her house, which is a pretty good ten to twelve miles, she slowed the car and said, ‘Darling, I think there’s something wrong with the right rear tire. Would you be a dear and go out and look at it?’ I said ‘Of course, darling.’ I get out and go around and boom! The car takes off. That was my discipline; that was to serve as my penance for having paid some attention to this very lovely actress whom I had known for quite some time. And so I proceeded to walk home to the Bel-Air Hotel.”
Bautzer told the BBC interviewer that in situations like this, when Crawford would cause a scene, he usually called the next day to apologize “just to get things back to status quo.” But this time, he said, he didn’t call to apologize and claimed that he never called her again. Other sources contradict his statement. Crawford biographies maintain that he did call her the following day to ask for forgiveness. According to these reports, he arrived at her home at five o’clock with his arms full of long-stemmed roses.
“Is this to apologize?” Crawford asked.
“Yes.”
“Then kneel as you make your apology.”
“Bullshit!” said Bautzer. And with that, he flung the flowers across the room and stalked out. He had finally had enough.
A little later, Bautzer ran into Crawford’s ex-husband Franchot Tone at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Bautzer told Tone the story and asked if anything like this had ever happened to him while he was married to Crawford. “Yes, it did,” said Tone.
“What did you do?” asked Bautzer.
“I knelt.”
Months later, Crawford reportedly came unannounced to Bautzer’s office. He had instructed his secretary to say that he was out. Crawford glared at her for a moment, pushed past her, and strode into Bautzer’s office. He was nowhere in sight. Crawford realized her error and left in a huff. The secretary was baffled. Where had he gone? As she was standing in the doorway, she saw something move outside the window. It was her boss, creeping along the window ledge. He had hid outside his office window, two floors above Hollywood Boulevard.
In the years to come, Crawford would mend fences with Bautzer and continued to seek his legal counsel. Reflecting on his long affair with Crawford in the interview he gave for the BBC documentary, he admitted that he was “stuck” on her, but he also revealed that the role he played embarrassed him. “A hostess would always be pretty assured that the guests for a dinner party would be on time if word got out that Joan and I were coming to dinner. Because the ritual was that [when we arrived] I would be two to three steps behind Joan carrying a knitting bag in one arm and a small white poodle in the other. And the guests used to all get there so they could look at me with a kind of smile that said, and sometimes they did say, ‘geek.’”
In 1978, Crawford’s daughter Christina would publish a book called Mommie Dearest, which contrived to tell how her mother abused her. She referred to Bautzer simply as “Uncle Greg” in the memoir and said she liked him a lot, although she also recalled their arguments. In 1981, Mommie Dearest was made into a movie starring Faye Dunaway. Her performance pushed Crawford’s persona into the realm of camp grotesquerie. Bautzer’s portrayal by Steve Forrest as “Greg Savitt” was more flattering.
Crawford fans have questioned the accuracy of Christina’s version of her mother as an abusive parent, asserting that Christina had motives for misrepresenting her childhood. But an incident reported by Bautzer tends to confirm Christina’s point of view. Christina’s brother Christopher was left-handed. Crawford was training him to use his right. One evening at dinner with Bautzer, Christopher forgot and used his left hand. “Joan leaned across the table, knocked the food out of his hand, and hit him across the face,” recalled Bautzer. “He started to cry. So I immediately went over and put my arms around the boy. As I was holding him—we were having a roast leg of lamb—I got it right in my face.” By “it” he meant the lamb.
Regardless of the way the film showed Crawford as a mother, it ably captured the essence of the Bautzer-Crawford relationship without the gory details. Bautzer is shown making passionate love to her in the shower, dealing with her obsessive whims, and finally walking out on her when the hurt-me-if-you-love-me act gets to be too much. After viewing the film, he was interviewed by the Washington Post. “If anyone was abused, it was me,” said Bautzer. “I guess I was big enough to take it.”
So was his career. In 1950, it would grow far beyond even his expectations.
*An alternative story exists about Bautzer and Crawford reuniting. In that version, it is Crawford who invites Bautzer into her life again upon hearing that he had defended her honor in a barroom brawl with cowboy actor Don “Red” Barry. Crawford had briefly dated Barry after her marriage to Franchot Tone. Bautzer supposedly overheard Barry describe Crawford sexually as “fresh meat,” inspiring Bautzer to challenge Barry to a fight in which Barry punched out some of Bautzer’s teeth. Joan was so impressed with Bautzer’s chivalry that she paid for his dental work and welcomed him back. While Bautzer may have fought Barry, the rest of the story is dubious, since Bautzer had already lost all of his front teeth years earlier. If Barry knocked out any teeth, they were most likely dentures.