Title: Every Other Weekend: Coming of Age with Two Different Dads
Author: Anthony J. Mohr
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Koehler Books
Book Blurb:
In Every Other Weekend: Coming of Age with Two Different Dads, Anthony Mohr describes living in the shadow of two larger-than-life men in an age where divorce and blended families weren’t the norm. Anthony’s father, Gerald Mohr, was a popular radio actor and onscreen villain in classic westerns who struggled to replicate his success onscreen during the advent of television. Good-looking, fun-loving, and passionate, Gerald Mohr was a man who lived large and loved large; regaled young Anthony with stories of Hollywood parties and beautiful women; and ultimately, left Anthony and his mother for another woman. And in a time not unlike the present, where political affiliations ran deep, Gerald was an enthusiastic Democrat. He worked for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign and was in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel when RFK was shot.
Gerald Mohr stands in stark contrast to Anthony’s stepdad, Stanley Dashew – an innovative entrepreneur whose contributions to the credit card industry earned him a mention in You Only Have to Get Rich Once and, when he died, a Milestone in Time Magazine. A staunch Republican, Stanley was part of a group of businessmen who recruited Gerald Ford to run for Congress and was offered a position in Richard Nixon’s administration (he declined).
As Stanley’s star rises, Gerald’s falters. Anthony describes spending weekends on his stepfather’s catamaran only to visit his father’s home and have his stepmother announce that they are poor. With stunning compassion and empathy, Every Other Weekend offers a portrait of two very different men and the pivotal role they played in shaping Anthony into the man and the Superior Court Judge he later became.
Excerpt:
My father died of a gunshot wound when I was five. I saw him scream and clutch his chest and crumple to the ground. I couldn’t help him, couldn’t even kiss him good-bye. I just had to watch his six-foot, two-inch body bite the dust.
Everyone else cheered. Their applause soared and banged and didn’t subside until all my father’s friends had been led away in handcuffs and the pretty girl asked Audie Murphy for his real name, because “I can’t go through life being Mrs. Silver Kid.”
Then the lights came on in the giant La Reina Theater on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, with its slightly musty smell. A thick red curtain slid down in front of the screen, and everyone looked happy. But I couldn’t stop crying, even after Mom picked me up and told me Daddy was still alive and waiting for us back home.
My father died some fifty times before dying for real. He started his acting career as a minor gangster in a play called The Petrified Forest. He was a villain in his first starring film role in Hollywood, in the campy Jungle Girl (1941). But Duel at Silver Creek (1952) was the first time I saw him die.
My father played the leader of a gang of claim jumpers who forced victims to sign over their mining rights before killing them. He was so wicked that he shot a woman at point-blank range, killing her without a trace of emotion on his rugged face.
Marshal Lightning Tyrone chased my father on horseback, but Dad made his horse run faster. (Dad loved horses; no stunt man needed to do his chase scenes.) He galloped down a road to a hiding place among rocks that looked vaguely familiar.
The law won. Even though Lightning’s trigger finger didn’t work right, and he was oozing blood from a wound, he tricked my father into the open and shot him.
Mom insisted that those cheering girls and boys idolized my father, but I didn’t believe it. Really, she said, they love him because he’s such a good bad guy. That’s why they yelled and clapped when the sheriff got him.
I couldn’t understand, so my mother tried again. “You know Jerry Lewis; he and Daddy are making a movie together.” (They were—the slapstick Money from Home—Dad played a villain in that one too.) She said that Jerry Lewis had a son who became upset because everyone laughed at his father. His parents had to explain that the audience was laughing with Jerry Lewis, not at him.
Buy Links:
● Anthony Mohr’s website: https://anthonyjmohr.com/
Author Biography:
Anthony J. Mohr served for 26 years as a judge on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. He also sat as a judge pro tem on the California Court of Appeal. In January 2021, he became a fellow at the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University and is now a senior editor of the Harvard ALI Social Impact Review. His stories and essays have received six Pushcart Prize nominations. He has worked on the staffs of Evening Street Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Hippocampus Magazine, and Under the Sun.
Social Media Links
● Website: https://anthonyjmohr.com/
● Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anthony.mohr.961
● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonymohr8790