User:Mliu92/sandbox/Francis Van Wie

Francis Harrison Van Wie was a streetcar conductor for the Market Street Railway and its successor, the Municipal Railway in San Francisco, who was famed for romancing and marrying as many as twelve women without divorce by the time he was arrested in 1945 for bigamy. Local press coverage of his arrest and trial gave him colorful, alliterative nicknames, including the Ding Dong Daddy of the D-car Line, the Trolley Toreador, and the Car Barn Casanova.

Marriages and career
Van Wie stated his first marriage was in 1904 or 1905 to a woman in Wisconsin. In 1915, his second wife had him arrested in Chicago for non-support of a son; after discovering he had not divorced his first wife, they had him arrested for bigamy that July.

According to one of his wives, Van Wie said he had worked as a lion tamer and house painter. Reportedly, he had been discovered asleep and unharmed one morning in the cage of a lion named "Old Mary" during his 14-year career with the Ringling Brothers Circus. He came to California in 1932 with his fifth wife and worked shoveling coal. In 1939, he was arrested for abandoning his wife and began working for the Market Street Railway in 1941. He married Sadie (neé Levin) on February 28, 1941; in March 1942 she told him he was pregnant and when he showed up to meet her on May 8, he was wearing an army uniform, claimed to have been busy in Hawaii investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor, said he was sterile, and accused her of having an affair.

Aged 58 when he was arrested in 1945, Van Wie was too old to be drafted to fight in World War II and had been working the rear platform of San Francisco streetcars, where he could socialize with passengers away from the front platform, which had a prominent sign warning people not to talk to the motorman.

Bigamy trial
Van Wie was arrested for bigamy on January 25, 1945 in Los Angeles; at the time, he was charged with having nine wives, although records indicated he had been married as many as twelve times since 1913, having divorced one wife, annulled another marriage, and survived the death of one wife. Stanton Delaplane of the San Francisco Chronicle gave him his most enduring nickname, dubbing Van Wie the Ding Dong Daddy of the D-car Line, after the song "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas" popularized by Louis Armstrong. Although Delaplane credited him with serving the D Geary-Van Ness line, that had been chosen for its alliteration. Later research indicated that Van Wie worked the 22-Fillmore line. When he was arrested, Van Wie he had been seeking "a happy home and contentment" and contemporary coverage was bemused by his seeming romantic success, although several of his wives reported that he would become abusive and jealous, abandoning them after a few weeks of marriage; one wife stated flatly that "Frank's a card in the parlor, a gentleman on the street, and a beast in the home."

The prosecution was handled by then-San Francisco District Attorney (and future Governor of California) Pat Brown; Van Wie pleaded he was innocent at his initial hearing on January 29 before Judge Leo Cunningham, who reduced his bail to US$1000 from US$2500. After listening to the hearing, his eleventh and twelfth wives filed for annulment. On February 1 Van Wie said he would change his plea to guilty and ask for probation; Judge Cunningham instead held him over for trial on three counts of bigamy, increasing his bail to US$3000 cash or US$7500 bond, remarking that since it was unlikely he could afford that amount, "it would be wise, perhaps, if he spent some days in jail, for some serious thinking."

Van Wie made a double plea of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury found him guilty after 10 minutes of deliberation on March 22, 1945; after a separate trial, the same jury found him sane in April. He claimed to have suffered head trauma due to a mule kick, axe blow, and a fall from a smokestack. He was fined US$3 and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment by Judge Herbert Kaufman, who ordered the three ten-year sentences to be served consecutively. Van Wie served two years at San Quentin State Prison before he was paroled and released on April 12, 1947.

In September 1949, he was married again to Mrs. Mary Abba by Judge Kaufman, who previously had asked that Van Wie abstain from marriage for five years as a condition of his release. At the time, Van Wie said "this is the real thing and this is going to be the last one for me", but a month later, Abba complained to Judge Kaufman that he was simultaneously too amorous and stingy; by February 1950, she told the Judge that she planned to file for divorce: "Our love nest is over and I'm moving out."

After release
Van Wie's marriages continued to gather press coverage in later years, including in 1952, when he was arrested again for bigamy and the annulment of his fourteenth and sixteenth marriages in 1953. Authorities arrested Van Wie in April 1959 for violating his probation after discovering he had married his eighteenth wife in August 1958; at the time, he was being pursued for abandoning his seventeenth wife.

Van Wie died in 1973.

Legacy
In 1997, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies released their album Zoot Suit Riot with the song "Ding Dong Daddy of the D-car Line" inspired by Van Wie.