Jay Sebring: Cutting to the Truth (Hardcover)
A GAP YEAR
Downtown Detroit in 1954 was humming with people, big department stores, fancy restaurants, lunch counters, and a vibe that came from one of America’s linchpins of industry.
Cars, car accessories, and cigars were featured on nearly every avail-able billboard that filled the sky. Down on the street, everyone was dressed their best. Going downtown was an event, and there was nothing casual about it. People dressed sharply. Men wore suits, ties, monogrammed hankies, and shined shoes. Women wore dresses, trendy hats, gloves, and heels. They lived in nice homes. Church attendance on weekends was more the norm than a rarity, and manners seemed to matter.
Detroit was one of America’s greatest cities and helped transform the country, leading the way in manufacturing, diversity, and culture. The downtown area was almost always bustling, filled with street cars, large automobiles, and pedestrian traffic. It was home to tall buildings, bridges, plazas, statues, ornate churches, department stores, mansions, an opera house, a progressive transit system, and an Italian Renaissance-style city hall that stood three stories tall and took a decade to build. Canada was just a fifteen-minute drive via bridge or underwater tunnel a mile long surrounded by 80,000 cubic yards of concrete and 750 tons of reinforced steel and requiring 1.5 million cubic feet of fresh air pumped into the tunnel every minute.
That was the Detroit that Thomas Kummer experienced growing up and into his early adulthood. A few decades before, the city was a shell of itself. Because Detroit had been so closely linked to the automobile industry, the economic pendulum swung between boom and bust. The Great Depression flipped this once bustling, glamor-ous metropolis filled with nightclubs, gambling, and backroom speakeasies into a blue-collar town with widespread unemployment, soup kitchens, vacant storefronts, and empty warehouses. Detroit historian, engineer, and author Paul R. Kavieff had this to offer:
The auto companies absolutely refused to accept unions, espe-cially before 1935. I think they had come to the realization they were either going to go out of business or were going to have to unionize. That brought labor unions, organized crime, and racketeering. A lot of the unions were mobbed up. The major auto companies—Chrysler, General Motors, Ford—managed to make it through. World War II pulled Detroit and the whole country out of the Great Depression.
Detroit not only had a major mafia presence, but also produced an-other underworld gang of bootleggers, armed robbers, hijackers, and extortionists known as The Purple Gang. This loose confederation of criminals were the American-born children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland who were tough and tainted delin-quents.
“The Purple Gang was a lot of hard guys, so tough they made Ca-pone’s playmates look like a Kindergarten class,” said Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, a jazz clari-netist and saxophone player from Chicago who played in a lot of clubs and roadhouses owned by Al Capone.
They were led by Abe Axler, the four Bernstein Brothers (Abe, Joe, Raymond, and Isadore “Izzie”), and Harry Millman, an erratic and brutal enforcer with a pathological hatred of Italian criminals. The Bernsteins moved in their youth from New York to Detroit’s Lower East Side in 1902. As they grew older, their movements weren’t restricted to Detroit, and their crimes escalated to gambling, loansharking, liquor sales, drug traffick-ing, kidnapping, arson, and murder. They had been labeled the bloodiest and most sinister gang(s) of that era, with estimates of rivals killed during the bootleg wars reaching more than 500 “The Purples” were tagged as Al Capone’s main supplier of Canadian liquor and used as spotters in the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago. Decades later (after he had become Jay Sebring), Tom called upon the “Junior Purples,” descendants of the orig-inal gang when he was embroiled in a barber’s union dispute in Los Angeles, Califor-nia.
Like many big cities in America throughout the 1950s, Detroit offered two different sets of rules: one for Whites and the other for minorities.
The Motor City experienced its first race riot in June 1943. Rumor spread quickly that a group of White sailors tossed a Black lady and her child off the Bell Isle Bridge, a concrete and steel structure that spans high above the Detroit River. The riot lasted several days and thirty-four people were killed—twenty-five of them Black. The Unit-ed States Army brought in 3,500 troops in jeeps, personnel armored and armed with auto-matic weapons—to restore the peace. More than 1,800 rioters were arrested, and the pro-test resulted in an estimated two million dollars in property damage.
The same decade saw the start of the Great Migration, during which more than six million Blacks left their rural homes in the Deep South for jobs and a new start in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
Detroit offered plenty of work in the auto industry and “Black bombed” the city’s Lower East Side where everybody with dark skin was forced to live. Many Whites who had historically held those jobs felt their new neighbors were taking money out of their pockets and food off their tables. If that wasn’t enough to chap their hides, the new recruits were making just as much money as their veteran co-workers, causing a great deal of tension during and after World War II.
After Tom Kummer left Detroit in 1955, the city experienced approxi-mately 150 riots from 1965 to 1968 as the municipality was in an entire state of economic and social strife. It also hit close to home to the Kummers and their extended family. Tony DiMaria, Jay’s brother-in-law, remembers more than a few close calls:
I grew up in the east side of Detroit, which was a historically Ital-ian neighborhood but over time transitioned to a Black neighborhood. Our family was not racial or prejudiced at all. I grew up amongst Black children and Black families. They would come over to my house for a snack or dinner and I would go to theirs. I had a lot of Black friends that were good friends and good people. Once I started going to Mackenzie High School in 1960, race relations grew very tense. The second week of school there was a riot, and it got a full response—police, fire trucks, hoses, the whole business. It was a very di-vided and very racial time. A lot of angry people on both sides—White and Black.
Cars may have been the skeleton and muscles of the city, but music was the pulse. The 1950s was the final decade in which jazz flourished as a broad youth culture. It was just as popular as rock ‘n’ roll and doo-wop in its heyday but required a more sophisticated and informed ear. Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins were con-sidered America’s premier artists—but they were also the epitome of cool among audienc-es that vibed to rawer and uncharted notes. Tom, with his instinctive eye for anything chic or stylish, naturally gravitated toward that sound.
The city’s “Black Bottom” neighborhood, home to more than 100,000 African Americans, boasted approximately 300 Black-owned businesses and offered some of the best jazz, blues, and R & B clubs as well as backdoor speakeasies in the coun-try. Hastings Street, which ran north-south through the area, was a hub for musicians and home to such entertainment establishments as Jake’s, the Paradise Theater, the Graystone Ballroom, the Tropicana, Club Harlem, the Flame Show Bar, Sportee’s Lounge, and the Horseshoe Bar. These legendary places drew mixed-race audiences.
But Detroit’s real musical heart lay in Grinnell Brothers Music House, a downtown mega emporium on Woodard Avenue, which sold everything from pianos and organs to drumsticks, sheet music, and records. By the mid-1950s, Grinnell’s was the larg-est piano distributor in the country, and every Detroit musician, whether they played the saxophone or the organ, ended up there. Since childhood, authentic jazz had been a pas-sion of Tom’s. It was only natural that the young Detroiter would end up at the seminal mu-sic institution after his four-year enlistment in the navy. In the same letter announcing his vision to be a “beautician,” Tom mentioned to his parents a potential secondary career in music.
Lacking any specific plans, Tom came home and got a job that best suited his personality given the limited number of options an uneducated serviceman had at that time. The job at Grinnell’s was simply a waystation until Tom figured out how to get back to California and realize his dream. He needed time and money to figure out how to do both.
It was his gap year.
Free from the confines of a uniform, Tom showed up every day to work looking sharp, according to his sister Peggy. “He went to Grinnell’s like he was going out on the weekend. He came home, and his suits would look great. They looked better than the other guys’ suits. He always looked special.”
In a 1955 black and white photo, Tom is in the store, one arm draped on the counter near the cash register, and the other on his hip. The smiling record store clerk looks resplendent in a black suit and tie, folded handkerchief, and free flowing hair. He could easily pass for crooner Eddie Fisher at his peak, except Jay was even more hand-some.
Tom told his mother about his idea of moving to California and open-ing a shop. She listened intently. She wanted him to do it and encouraged him to pursue this dream. Bernard, on the other hand, had a different reaction. He didn’t know why Tom wanted to move to California. He was out of the navy. He had a steady job at Grinnell’s where he could go to work every day. He was getting promoted (probably because he knew the latest songs and was familiar with cutting edge artists, but his sister suspected it was because he was the best-looking guy in the place and sold a lot of products), and Bernard likely felt there was no need to rock the boat.
Tom’s list of admirers included clients and co-workers. One of them was Judith Jumisko, a local fashionista and part-time jazz singer. Her son, Christopher Bar-son, a Washington DC-based interior designer and contractor, said his mother often talked about Tom Kummer’s great style.
My mother was really into fashion and dressing beautifully, and so was Tom. He was the first person my mom ever knew who did not have cuffs on the bot-tom of his pants, which was really cutting-edge at the time. My mom also told me that he would arrive at work with a coat hanging over his shoulders instead of wearing a topcoat. And when he got off the elevator to his department, all the women would swoon.
Jumisko was also into fashion and looking her best, doing most of her shopping on Livernois, affectionately referred to as the “Avenue of Fashion,” a regional destination for couture. It was home to one of the largest shopping districts in the country and was filled with trendy boutiques, dress shops, and restaurants.
“My mom would buy cashmere sweaters, dresses, and skirts on sale, so she always looked fabulous at work,” said Christopher Barson.
Tom and Jumisko developed a close friendship, and he bestowed on her a nickname that stuck for the rest of her life.
“She loved Chris Connor, who was an American jazz singer. So, Jay nicknamed my mother ‘Chris,’” Barson said. “And my mother went by that name until the day she died.”
Barson suspects his mother’s friendship with Tom had become inti-mate even though she was seeing his father, James Barson, a pitcher who was pegged to play for the Chicago White Sox. James Barson and Tom were classmates at the University of Detroit High School, with Barson a few years ahead of him. They definitely knew each other. Everyone, in their own way, was hard to miss. Barson ended up ditching a life in profes-sional baseball in favor of law school and later became a powerful attorney who was well-known throughout Detroit. He said their parents shared an interesting history with Tom.
My dad never spoke of Tom Kummer or Jay Sebring or even hinted that he knew him until one day in August 1969. My dad was painting the kitchen when we moved to Bloomfield Hills, a suburb of Detroit, after the 1968 riots. He was listening to a transistor radio while painting and the news broke that Jay Sebring, Sharon Tate, Abigail Fol-ger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent were all killed. My father almost fell off the lad-der because he knew Tom and the Kummer family, and later he was contacted by Bernard to settle some things for his son’s estate. So, my mom and father realized at that point they both knew Tom because they had never spoken about him.
Which leads Christopher Barson back to the idea that Tom and his mother were more than just work associates.
One night in the Seventies when she was drunk, she said some-thing about Tom/Jay that made me wonder if they had fooled around or something. He gave her a shirt with French cuffs and a beautiful set of 22-carat gold and enamel cuff links by Victoria Fleming, which I still have.… And he gave her a gun.
The gun evolved from an incident when Bernard hired a laborer to do some work on the family porch. Peggy was twelve years old at the time and remembered certain details about that day.
My dad walked off our porch to meet this worker to give him some instruction. For some reason, this guy was giving my dad a hard time. They went back and forth, and the guy knocked my father down. My dad’s head was bleeding. I was in the house and my brother heard the scuffle and came out. Tom had words with the guy and the guy backed off.
That may be because Tom was packing heat and most likely bran-dished the weapon. He brought home a gun from his time in the service and certainly knew how and when to use it. The police were called, Bernard went to the hospital, the worker was hauled off to jail, and Jay hid the gun. Most likely, it’s the same pistol that ended up in Barson’s possession.
Christopher Barson said his parents never explained why they had a gun or if they were holding it for someone. He said his father disposed of it sometime in the 1980s after they were divorced. But, before their parting, the Barsons were drawn back into Tom’s life in the aftermath of his murder.
* * *
Jim Gra-ham, who attended grade school with Tom at St. Benedict’s and, later, University of Detroit High, visited with his friend at Grinnell’s. He sensed Tom’s restlessness and longing for another place that could fulfill his dreams.
“I remember him telling me that he didn’t feel the Detroit area was, you know, something that was good for him,” Graham recalled. “He said he was thinking of putting everything in his older car and driving to California.”
Whenever Tom brought up dreams he wanted to accomplish, Peg pa-tiently and with intent listened to him describe what he wanted to do. Bernard grilled him.
What are you going to do about this?
How are you going to take care of that?
Where will you live?
What if something happens? What will you do then?
Peggy said Tom often dreamed about his future, and Detroit wasn’t a part of the equation.
“My dad tried to talk Tom into staying. He felt he was doing good,” she recalled. “I believe he received a few promotions because they really liked him at Grinnell’s. But it wasn’t his dream.”
Bernard often played devil’s advocate, and a good one at that. Where his younger brother Fred and sister Gerry were compliant, Tom was prepared with answers, and if necessary, willing to go toe-to-toe. And he was prepared to take further steps, which he finally did in late 1955 when he felt he had enough money saved up to sustain himself for a few months while he got on his feet.
The night before he left, he visited with Judith Jumisko and gave her the shirt, cufflinks, and gun. Two months later, he called her from Southern California, ac-cording to Christopher Barson.
Tom/Jay said that he had gotten himself involved in the Holly-wood scene and that she should come out if she really wanted to be a jazz singer. My mom told me [about the call] in a conversation around 1976… around the time the TV movie Helter Skelter first aired… [she told Tom] that she was pregnant with my older brother and was going to marry Jim Barson. And then he burst out laughing. My mom always thought that was strange—that he laughed about that. So, they hung up and my mom mar-ried my father. She kinda regretted not going out there to California.
Barson often wondered about what went on between Tom and his mother, but it has never been fully explored. He said, “It was a sensitive subject for my mom, and I rarely brought it up.”
Tom left behind the safety of his Midwestern home and his friends to seek his fortune in Southern California. And he did it in a beater car that had to be push started by a couple of buddies to get out of the driveway. Martin Halloran, Tom’s Saint Ben-edict’s classmate, remembered his humble exit from Michigan.
He was going to California. He called me up and the old Cadillac wouldn’t start. So, he says, “Can you give me a push?” Those were the days when all cars had clutches, all you had to do was put it in gear and let the clutch out going about twenty miles an hour. So, I push him on to Six Mile. He gives me the wave like, “Let me go.” And the car starts spitting and spattering and conks out. So anyway, this happened three or four times. We get down to the freeway and it’s still spitting and sputtering. He makes a turn to Service Drive, I give him a big push, down he went on the ramp to the large freeway. He’s waving to me, and the car is going. And that’s the last time I saw him.
It was an inauspicious start for someone who would end up trans-forming men’s style, infiltrating the Hollywood industry, and leaving an indelible mark on popular culture. With Tom laser focused on his quest in the West Coast, his parents would languish in concern for their first born. The Kummers, including Tom, would be anxious for what lay ahead. For them, it was the great unknown.
The main question on all their minds was, “Would it be worth it?”
In the glitz and glamour of 1960s Hollywood, Jay Sebring stood as an icon of innovation and style. A visionary who invented men's hair care and design concepts, Sebring wasn’t just a hairstylist—he was the architect of a $100-billion-a-year industry. His revolutionary techniques and signature charm drew legends like Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman to his chair, making him a trusted confidant to Hollywood’s elite. From inauspicious roots in Michigan to Hollywood's "star among the stars," Jay Sebring embodied the American Dream.
Yet, in a cruel twist of fate, his extraordinary legacy was overshadowed by the horrifying Manson Family murders. Instead of being remembered for his groundbreaking work and larger-than-life personality, the media painted Sebring as a symbol of Hollywood’s so-called decadence—a distortion that served salacious narratives and tarnished his name.
Jay Sebring….Cutting to the Truth, now illuminated through exclusive insights from Sebring’s family, collaborators, legal and forensic authorities, and criminal perpetrators, reveals the man behind the myth. Discover how Jay Sebring’s influence lives on, shaping our culture in ways we often take for granted. It’s time to reclaim his legacy from the shadows of his tragic end and celebrate the dazzling contributions that made him a Hollywood pioneer and historical figure.
