Stardust, Memories Spill From Secondhand Suitcase

It was a time when famous singers and songwriters would not only read a star-struck girl’s letters, but would reply on handsome studio letterhead and sign with a flourish.

And it was a time when a music lover might hope to write lyrics as stirring as those written by Johnny Mercer and crooned by Bing Crosby.

It was pre-World War II New York, and Marie Manovill had the highest of hopes.

She was just 14 when she struck up pen-pal friendships with Mercer, Crosby and other glamorous stars. Although she never wrote a hit, she lived out a fantasy through correspondence.

For decades Marie continued writing to her idols. They kept writing back, their letters increasingly personal and cordially affectionate.

Marie stashed the letters in a brown suitcase and never told anyone. So when she died in 1979, the letters seemed lost. Until recently, when they unceremoniously tumbled onto a New York City sidewalk.

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Gloria Burleson, of Dallas, took her sister to New York last May to see Broadway shows and shop at flea markets she’d noticed when visiting the city months earlier with her husband.

The two women were browsing through used-clothing stalls in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood when Gloria decided to buy a bag for her purchases. For $5 she picked up a secondhand suitcase decorated with travel stickers.

But the brown case was hard to budge. The flea-market vendor looked inside, saw papers that looked like rubbish and told Gloria and her sister, Gail Nelson of Arlington, Texas, that they were stuck with it all.

Halfway to a trash can, the suitcase burst. As Gloria scrambled after pieces, she realized what she had.

“I said, ‘Gail, look! Bing Crosby! Then I opened up another one and I go, ‘Johnny Mercer! Oh my gosh, it’s Johnny Mercer!’ ”

They rushed back to their hotel in a cab and sat in the lobby absorbed in their find: Charles Boyer. Damon Runyon. Oscar Hammerstein II. Jeanette MacDonald. Walter Huston. All had written to Marie Manovill, who had squirreled away more than 100 of their missives with the care of love letters. Which, in a sense, they are.

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Marie Meredith Manovill, born in New York City in 1921 to a mother whose favorite composer was John Philip Sousa, decided early to make music her life’s work.

The privileged daughter of a Gimbel Bros. retailing executive, Marie apparently wrote first to Crosby. His earliest reply is four typed paragraphs, dated July 1936 and signed.

“Thanks for your letter and interest. I appreciate knowing how my efforts are received and welcome any suggestions. ‘Rhythm on the Range’ which is completed, will be released this fall, and ‘Pennies From Heaven’ is my next. . . .”

There were no copies of Marie’s letters. The responses, however, seem to be replies to a conversation she started.

In December 1936, Crosby encouraged her writing efforts. “I am not a poet, and am not an expert on poetry, but your poems look very possible,” he wrote before signing “Bing.”

In 1939, after relatively impersonal notes, Crosby answered, but not optimistically: “While you certainly have ability as a writer, you have selected the most difficult field.”

In time, Marie got a job at Irving Berlin’s music publishing company and later worked for other music publishers. Then she moved to Cleveland to work on a TV show and returned to New York to write advertising jingles.

She eventually made it onto the Crosby family’s Christmas card list, with greetings into the early 1960s.

All the while, she worked on her own songs: “John Is Love,” “Remembering Summer,” “Been Out of Love Too Long.”

None went far, except to one of the greatest songwriters in the history of American pop music.

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“It is really pretty tough getting publishers to listen to them; especially if you are a girl,” Johnny Mercer wrote in March 1942. “My advice is still the same, however, and that is to keep trying.”

Three months later, he offered a tempered compliment: “I think the lyric you sent is quite nice but not distinguished, mainly because you just have a desire to write and really not an idea to say much with.”

In October 1945, Mercer suggested changes to “I Never Had a Love Before.”

“I have marked in pencil the lines that I am not particularly crazy about,” he wrote. “The only other criticism is that I feel you should personalize the song right away instead of waiting until the last line. Outside of this I think it is quite good.”

Sheet music for two songs, not those he critiqued, was tucked among the letters. Judging by his responses, her work improved.

“I think the lyric you sent in your last letter . . . is one of the very best you have ever done,” Mercer wrote in July 1947. “I surely think it should be written up and published. I have no suggestions.”

Over the years, Mercer’s letters shed their formality. One of the loveliest arrived in 1960.

“Marie, sweetie: . . . Nothin’ new with me except talk,” he wrote. “Talk about this show and maybe that show, etc. but I’ve got no definite project as yet.

“A song I wrote with Hank Mancini looks like a hit and a possible Oscar winner come sweepstake time. It’s called “Moon River,” in case you should hear it or see the picture. See it if you can --it’s funny--called “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Mercer was right, of course. “Moon River” won him a 1961 Academy Award, one of his four, with Henry Mancini.

In another 1960 letter, Mercer kindly responded to Marie’s news of breast cancer, a disease that would kill her at age 57.

“What a letter to get just as the new year starts!” he wrote. “To me, cancer is like saying you can’t see--it’s just one of those things I don’t believe. . . . How brave you sound, and how like you!”

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All the way back to Dallas, Gloria Burleson wondered about the original owner of the brown suitcase and the story behind the letters.

As luck would have it, Marie’s sister, Carolyn, was still living in New York City, the only Manovill in the Manhattan telephone directory.

The pair talked for hours about Marie’s life and her dreams of songwriting. Carolyn, now 78, said she and Marie both wrote to celebrities.

“She never showed me any of the letters,” Carolyn said. “We’re both Scorpios, and they’re supposed to be very secretive.”

Carolyn, two years older than Marie, described her sister as shy but with enough pluck to ask Crosby for help when she wanted the job with Irving Berlin.

Carolyn recalled that Marie wrote to Larry Crosby, his brother’s manager, and asked permission to say she had worked for the singer. A telegram reply said: “Bing says all right. Good luck.”

And Carolyn now provided the words that Marie didn’t: Her sister loved to travel and was especially fond of Italy. An engagement ended when Marie’s fiance died in a car wreck. The sisters lived together, with their mother, until Marie married late in life.

Carolyn guessed that the suitcase got separated from Marie’s estate either right after her death, when her belongings were stored during a court fight over ownership, or recently, when Carolyn got behind in rent and the storage company sold off the contents.

Either way, she is thrilled to know the mementos were found by someone who cares. Gloria plans to deliver in person some of Marie’s diplomas and checkbook registers.

Might these items have more than sentimental value? Gloria has asked two New York City auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, to appraise the papers. The autographs, she said, may be worth hundreds of dollars each, maybe more to a collector who might want to keep the items together.

Bill Miller, who runs Autograph Collector, one of the industry’s leading publications, estimated that a typed letter signed by Bing Crosby might be worth $100 to $150. Mercer’s letter would bring less because he’s not so well known.

But Gloria isn’t really eager to sell. “I’ve grown more and more in love with it,” she said. “The story behind it is why I might not be able to let go.”