Whatever Happened to Frankie King

by Kevin Wolf

Content Advisory: suicidal concerns; in United States and Canada crisis phone line is 988, UK 999, other countries: website for phone numbers)

Becoming known to a wider audience when one would rather remain unknown—except among immediate family and friends—if it happens at all, usually occurs after death … the only true afterlife that I believe in. This resurrection can be beneficial when the rest of us are given the truth without distortion. Though I’m no expert on whether all the hyperbole around Frankie King’s basketball skill is deserving, I do know that those who die young are often praised for what could’ve been by optimistically projecting their early greatness onto an unknown future. Examples include mathematicians Évariste Galois (1811 – 1832) and Niels Henrik Abel (1802 – 1829) and singer/song-writers Jim Morrison (1943 – 1971) and Amy Winehouse (1983 – 2011), among countless others. Collective memory slowly dissipates as the distance widens between known events around a person and their disappearance; unless people—often family members—keep their pre-disappearance lives newsworthy.  For a while, Rumors spread about Frankie’s whereabouts and activities; including the possibility “…he’d gone bonkers … and was locked up in a state mental hospital [22].” But the truth about Frankie’s life after his disappearance is now relatively known, thanks to the research and interviews by the creators of Whatever Happened to Frankie King, which I highly recommend for showing Frank’s actual life’s struggles with smoking, alcoholism, gambling, and mental health and successes with his writing and family relationships.

I speculate Frank would be ok with this graphic novel presentation, except for its emphasis on his basketball prowess when young, which didn’t matter that much to Frank. But without the hook of basketball, Frank’s life probably wouldn’t have come to award-winning novelist, playwright, and mental health essay writer (among numerous writings) and ex-Professor at University of Massachusetts (Amherst), Jay Neugeboren’s attention. In June 2015, Jay Neugeboren reminisced with Ron Carner about high school basketball players they admired when they were both young, and Ron

… asked if I’d ever seen Frankie King play.

‘See him play?’ I said. ‘He was the most exciting ballplayer I ever saw back then.’ I added that I could still picture him clearly: a lefty, a shade under six feet tall. When he drove to the basket, nobody could stop him.

Ron said he was asking if I’d seen Frankie King play because King had passed away only a few weeks before—his family had placed an obituary [actually a death notice] in The New York Times. ‘For more than half a century,’ Ron said, ‘we’ve all been wondering what happened to him, because Frankie just seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth.’

From the article, “Whatever Happened to Frankie King” by Jay Neugeboren, The American Scholar, September 30, 2021.

In that same article, Neugeboren wrote about Frank’s brother Steve saying,

‘I came to the city whenever I could,’ Steve told me, ‘and what Frank loved most was for the two of us to take long walks together. He’d fill his pockets with coins and dollar bills and give money to every homeless person we passed. I once saw him give a man a $50 bill and not even wait to see the man’s reaction.’

Jay’s son, cartoonist Eli Neugeboren, joined his father to illustrate the tale of the recluse, young basketball star, and pseudonymous mystery writer in Whatever Happened to Frankie King. It’s very fitting that a father and son tell Frank’s story, which is really being told through interviews of Frank’s brothers, nephews, friends and Charlotte, Frank’s second spouse. It’s a story written by a family about a family. We watch those word-ballooned interviews intermixed with events in Frank’s life, including some metaphorical illustrations with one lengthy portrayal of a mythological story from a Lydia Adamson mystery.

The graphic novel opens on an empty basketball court with a lone ball on the ground below a netless basket with this narration,

From unpaginated preface.

The graphic novel intermixes Frank’s basketball playing—even playing with a bandaged broken hand at one point—with recollections of his friends and family. Frank had been heavily recruited by many colleges. At his chosen college, North Carolina, Steve said, “He came face-to-face with the Jim Crow south…” and refused to participate in by being “patient” or accepting bullies; “… any kind of anti-Semitism or racism made his blood boil … [57].” He left North Carolina.

Frank was “Romanian and Jewish [p. 10].”  He enlisted in 1959 and according to an unnamed character, “… he wound up being incarcerated in the army’s maximum-security prison [for an unknown reason, 13 – 14].” He led a life of contradictions. He was a chain-smoking, alcoholic, gambling addict, according to his brother, Steve. He had anger issues; fought a player at University of Memphis which got him kicked out of his second college; though others called him “… the nicest, kindest person you ever could meet … [25]” based on their youthful interactions. He had eccentric ways; once in a pick-up basketball game he drove to the basket and knocked himself out from hitting the pole with his head. He was offered tryouts with professional teams. Mel Kessler, a high school peer, and “all-time single season scoring record [19]” player at Muhlenberg College said, “For almost 60 years [Frank] disappeared to everyone who knew him … and … Frankie was, hands down, the greatest ballplayer I ever saw, high school, college, or pro [19 – 20].”

Frank authored over 40 novels after he “disappeared.” On all of his novels, he hid his appearance by not showing an author photograph, even for the six written under his own name; and the rest were pseudonymous (using Lydia Adamson as his nom de plume). None of his novels involved basketball. One novel had a medical bent being “… set in a mental hospital for the criminally insane … [27].” There’s a two-page spread (26 – 27) of his “A Cat on …” mystery covers.

He married twice. The second marriage, after a long friendship, to Charlotte Carter, crime fiction writer, lasted sixteen years to the end of Frank’s life. In Jay Neugeboren’s article about Frankie, Charlotte said,

And Frank was consumed with self-loathing,’ Starting with his good looks—which he let go by becoming overweight, letting his teeth rot and fall out, and dressing like a bum—he was determined to spend his life ‘erasing’ himself. … ‘He destroyed everything he could about himself, including his awards and medals, and dozens of unpublished novels, plays, poems, and book and movie proposals.’ I asked Charlotte if she’d ever considered the possibility that Frank was on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. ‘Consider it?’ Charlotte laughed. ‘Of course he was.’

Autism has often been self-diagnosed (e.g., see Sensory: Life on the Spectrum An Autistic Comic Anthology edited by Rebecca “Bex” Ollerton).

Frank’s brother, Steve, was concerned that Frank was depressed, abusing drugs and alcohol, and might be suicidal, especially after his first spouse, dancer Rima Berg, died of metastatic breast cancer. Frank did a lot of off-track (horse) betting (OTB). According to Seth, Steve’s son, Frank would “… go to Central Park [in New York City] sometimes and do wind sprints to see if he could give himself a heart attack [36].” For Steve, again, Frank “… had lots of phobias—about airplanes, subways, doctors, dentists, heights, elevators—and he was also extremely claustrophobic. … [He] had a hard time taking care of himself … He was reclusive, depressed, and troubled at different stages of his life [51].” He once smashed his own forehead into a store window after excessive alcohol drinking, but never stopped drinking alcohol.

Frank researched historical events “for at least a dozen other novels [43],” but none were accepted for publication and all such proposals, manuscripts, and letters were thrown away or otherwise destroyed in various residential moves Frank did over his lifetime. Seth further said, “It was as if … Frank spent his entire life preparing to die [44].”

We hear from Frank’s brother, Jon, professor of molecular biology and polio victim at age 3; “I had special shoes and braces … I was always the last taken for teams when we chose sides. And being called names, and humiliated [85].” Jon speaks about Frank’s love of philosophical author’s, including Albert Camus and Primo Levi. And Jon said, “… [Frank] was obsessed with the Holocaust and was writing a book [though never published] about it [86].” Jon explained that Frank didn’t dwell on his basketball days, because that wasn’t “his authentic self [87].” Not understanding Frank’s concern for Jon, Frank’s mother kept Frank away from Jon after Jon came home in leg braces; fearing Frank would hurt his brother. At the time, Frank felt unloved and smashed his hand into a wall; and “tried to run away … a lot [89]” and was found hiding in alleys. Frank, six years older, protected Jon when Jon was bullied by older boys. Jon said, “[Frank] took care of me, he was the gentlest, most caring—and affectionate—person in the world [91].” Eventually, Frank graduated from CCNY (City College of New York). Jon: “He graduated, majoring in ancient languages and cultures, I think, and because he appreciated the scientific writing I was doing, we often talked about writing books together. [96]” But never did.

Frank gave very helpful, detailed advice to his nephew, Richard, son of Steve. Richard wrote a book, Meeting Tom Brady,” and dedicated it “’To Uncle Frank’ … and the best parts in it belong to [Frank, 101].” It was published three months after Frank died.

For its honesty in presenting the real Frank King, I highly recommend Whatever Happened to Frankie King. I also recommend Neugeboren’s article of the same name for its additional story about the life of Jay Neugeboren’s brother, Robert, who had many parallel’s to Frank.