Richard Widmark: A Princeton legend

Henri’s Bakery, Princeton, opened the first week in November 1925 with half page ads in the Bureau County Republican touting their baked goods, pastries and confectionery. They had special noon day lunches, fountain service, handmade chocolates, fudges and hard candies.

The bakery was located at 514 S. Main St. The building had been Harris Brothers Restaurant & Bakery since 1870. The new owners were Henry P. Nelson and Carl Henry Widmark. Henry Nelson was a baker, and Carl Widmark was a jack of all trades and salesman. Carl was known as Heinei to his friends. Carl Widmark had a family, and Henry Nelson was not married. Carl, his wife Ethel Mae, sons Richard, just a month or so from being 11, and Donald almost half way to 8, lived in the apartment above the bakery. Henry Nelson lived above the bakery too. Ethel Mae’s mother, Mary Barr, would join them in 1926 and would also work in the bakery. It might have been somewhat crowded above the bakery.

Geography has a lot to do with how we meet and make friends, especially during childhood. Our first friends, especially in small towns and cities are usually our neighbors. When we start our schooling, we make friends with those who have similar interests or we think are cool and can have fun with. The Widmark brothers, Dick and Don, were always the new kids in town as the family moved often. Carl Widmark had worked a lot as a traveling salesmen and it was not unusual for the family to move every year. The brothers were used to rough beginnings with every move and every new town. In Princeton things would change, and never before realized enduring friendships would be had.

The Frank Castner family lived just across the street from the bakery at 441 S. Main St. Frank’s wife was Jennie (Johnson) Castner, and they had two sons, Gail, 11, and Max 7. The Widmark brothers would be in the same school classes as the Castner brothers. They would have a history, part of it in later life, where truth is stranger than fiction. The Castner brothers were no strangers to truth being stranger than fiction anyway. Dick and Don Widmark knew the life of constantly being on the move, but nothing that Gail and Max Castner couldn’t top when tales were finally told. The Widmark brothers almost three-year odyssey would start in Sioux Falls, S.D., 1923 to Henry, Ill., to Chillicothe, Mo., and finally to Princeton, just about the fall of 1925. Carl Widmark had already come to Princeton during the summer with Henry Nelson to start getting the bakery ready. His family arrived in August. When young boys make new friends it is always a lot of I did this or I went here, and oh yeah, well that’s nothing, listen to this.

Rueben and Hazel (Strong) Johnson were the birth parents of Gail and Max. Gail was born in Pompano Beach, Fla., July 5, 1914,  and Max was born in Princeton, Jan. 6, 1918, after the Johnsons moved from Florida. Rueben and Hazel divorced when the boys were very young. Rueben had custody of the boys but gave them up to Frank and Jennie Castner to raise. Jennie was Rueben’s sister. Hazel had second thoughts on the boys being raised by the Castners. This was in 1921, when Gail was 7 and Max was 3. She had two brothers in Chicago. She called them and had them come to Princeton on the train. They located the Castner home, forced their way in, and took the children at gunpoint. It was evening, and Gail and Max were in their pajamas. The Strong brothers planned on taking the boys on the train from Bureau back to Chicago but were apprehended in Bureau, at the station, after the Castners called the  county sheriff.  Frank and Jennie Castner got the boys back and adopted them. Rueben Johnson drowned in a swimming accident in the Hennepin Canal later in 1921, even though he was an excellent swimmer. When the Widmark brothers met the Castner brothers in 1925, there were “I can top that” stories to tell forever and bonds to be made.

The Widmark brothers barely made the start of the school year in early September, having just moved to Princeton, and were again the new kids at school. It helped in breaking the ice their family had the bakery. Richard was in the sixth grade with Gail Castner at Lincoln School, and Donald was in second grade as was Max Castner.

Winter storms were moving in with a lot of rain in November followed by bitter cold and plenty of snow by the middle of the month. Construction on the new Princeton Township High School had started in July earlier in the year, but even the bad weather didn’t stop progress, and it would be finished in July of 1926. It was 16 years after the tragic Cherry mine disaster, and mining was again making headlines in the news. The small mines in Bureau, Putnam and LaSalle counties were closing as the industry moved south. The latest was the Berry Mine closing in Standard. The local area mines could not compete with the non-union mines of Kentucky and West Virginia. Though there was a strong general feeling of prosperity in the midst of the Roaring ‘20s, a closer look found an economy that was overly dependent on credit expansion. The American farmer, who, instead of enjoying the success from new agricultural technologies, fell deeply in debt as overproduction and falling prices for crops started to undermine the rest of the economy. These were the edges of the Great Depression that was just around the corner. We’ll never know for sure how the friendships of Richard Widmark and Gail Castner, or Donald Widmark and Max Castner, or even Richard Widmark and Tom Best or Lester Peterson, came to be exactly. We do know the facts of the time, the geography of all their families in Princeton, some of the stories of their youth, and what the young boys common interests were. Taking a small leap of faith, it might have been like this.

It was already mid-December with temperatures as low as fifteen below. Frank Castner was a carpenter and home builder who always had work no matter the weather. He was out of the house early but always home for supper, even if his was late and in the oven. His wife Jennie was a person who could get it done, very self reliant, a great baker and cook, and an avowed supporter of Prohibition. She was the president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement in Princeton. She did all her own baking so she had little need of the new bakery across the street. Her sons had reasons that just didn’t mesh with their mothers. You could get a donut and a hot chocolate for just 12 cents at Henri’s and more importantly their friends were already going there for winter warmth —  it was the place to be. Though the Widmark brothers were new in town, Dick had already made his own statement at the Apollo Theater. Dick and Donald went to see “The Gold Rush” with Charlie Chaplin on the 10th of December. It was a hilarious movie that was continuously punctuated with Richard Widmark’s own signature laugh. He was already a guy of interest now, and even new theater manager Miles Fox thought it added something to the audience’s enjoyment of a comedy to have him in the audience. The laugh was an infectious catalyst for more laughter than a movie had a right to a times. Dick kind of kept to himself in school at first, but he was definitely a guy that cut his own path. He knew who some of the guys were at school, even a couple of the girls, but didn’t really have a good friend yet.

Boys can make friends with a broad range of peers. Richard Widmark had that social fluidity that let him get along with just about anyone. He would become a social force among the students in the Princeton school system. Lasting friendships to come for Richard Widmark.