Alvo’s Murder Hurt Us All

Something special went out of our world with the death of Alvo von Alvonschlaben, yet I wonder how many in the Vancouver area today remember his madcap ways, his charm, his glitter, his polish and his popsies. It’s all there in the old Vancouver Sun files, all except the details of his murder but that is what his death was, murder most foul, and I knew the man who did it.

Alvo occupied much news space in the 1950s and early 60s. He was one of the first of that unique collection men and women who are famous for being famous. They have little or no reason to be famous, fame just happened to them, much as a friendly puppy dog which bounced up in their laps while they weren’t looking. Fame attached itself to them and, like the friendly dog it was, followed them around and could not be scolded away or beaten off with a stick.

Tina Turner is famously famous. It doesn’t matter what she does, if anything, it is headline material. Yoko Uno is another and so are many other who do not achieve the obsurity they so richly deserve.

In the 1950s, back about the time when the continental ice sheet began to retreat and reveal Canada, we called such people jet-setters, jet planes themselves being new at that time. In the Vancouver Sun the toing and froing of the jet setters was collected each day into a column called Names in The News. A staffer who was himself rather pixielated, Tom Ardies, was charged with peering through all the news wires each day to find jet-setter activities to report. It was he who discovered Alvo von Alvonschlaben.

Alvo, a bright fellow, gay in the original non-sexual sense of that word and of mercurial of temperament, like Tom Ardies himself, had driven for the Ferrari team at Cannes, although not when Ferrari was winning. As the author of two books on tiger hunting and windsurfing, he had often been compared with Ernest Hemingway, although never favorably.

He was an engaging chap. One week we would learn that Alvo was in police custody in Deauville for having lifted the jewels as well as the skirt of the Duchess of Dwinbury. Within a fortnight, he and the duchess would be sharing a flat in Belgravia and attending together in the royal enclosure at Ascot.

This all arose from Tom Ardies neglecting to read enough news dispatches one night, owing to being drunk, again, and coming up one item short for Names in The News. He did what any sensible reporter would do, he created Alvo von Alvonschlaben on his sturdy old Underwood typewriter. A few clackety clacks and there emerged the jolly blond German whose Paul Newman eyes, curly hair and massive sexual equipment that delighted women on four continents.

Practically no readers knew of his synthenticity, but did it matter? Alvo did everything that a person famous for being famous does, namely nothing, and he did nothing in a classy way. He was every bit as remote from the life of the ordinary reader as the ones who lived and breathed.

Only a few of us in the office came to learn that he was a construct, but we liked him all the more for it. Alvo was something special for us in a way that Jackie Kennedy, Ava Gardener or Ali Khan could never be.

We of this inner circle of admirers were horrified, appalled and really quite cross when Tom one night murdered him. Alvo von Alvonschlaben went to a fiery death in the Brenner Pass area, driving an Aston-Martin too fast, the car stuffed full of roses which he was taking to his enamorata of the moment, the Crown Princess of Kleptomania. Tom said afterwards he didn’t know why he killed Alvo, except that it seemed like a good idea at the time and anyway he was drunk. Tom, that is, was drunk. Alvo couldn’t get drunk because he didn’t exist, remember? Is it necessary to explain that to you one more time?

Some of Alvo’s admirers felt some punishment should be visited upon a killer who nonchalantly went on editing Names in The News as if nothing had happened to nothing. We, theknowledagables, were embittered. No readers complained, but, then, why should they? There was never any solid proof that there were any readers outside the Sun building who read Names in The News. The paper made space available for Names in the News because all newspapers make space for columns like Names in the News.

Tom’s crime could have prompted the Sun, like many other papers, to appoint an ombudsman to whom readers could complain about the newspaper’s writing, editing or display. If this was not the occasion, it should have been. It’s too late now.

Tom is now dead, as well as Alvo. I miss them both. None of today’s celebrities are up to the standard they set.

02/03