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The title of my post way back on 7/21/08, five months after I launched this blog, was “‘New’ Bill Finger photo 1 of 9.”
 
But there were no subsequent posts unveiling photos 2-9.

Until now.

(Less three I published in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, plus one I have found since.)

In 25 years of writing Batman stories, including some of the most popular ever, Bill Finger was officially credited as a writer (or co-creator) precisely zero times. (By that I mean in a credit box within the story. In the 1960s, editor Julie Schwartz, bless him, did sneak Bill’s name into the backmatter at least a couple of times.)

One time only, Bill did get to see his name prominently displayed on a first-run story—but it was not in print. Bill was the only writer of Batman comics who (with Charles Sinclair) also wrote an episode of the 1966 TV show that made Batman’s popularity go mainstream. 

As I did with Michael Siegel, father of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, I sought out the death documents of Bill Finger. Neither was a breeze to come by but both turned out to provide invaluable insight in researching Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman.

Bill’s medical examiner report is four pages (the first of which is displayed in two pages because it is too big for a single scan). I was told that a medical examiner made an evaluation only when the cause of death was not immediately known.

On December 17, 2008, we shot the second interview.

This one was with the articulate Charles Sinclair, who was Bill Finger's longtime friend and writing partner. They met in the early 1950s and remained in touch till Bill's end (1974).

Charles sets the bar high for class. He has devoted a more-than-generous amount of time to tell me about his old friend, first in several long phone interviews when I "discovered" him in 2006 and now again on film—often graciously re-answering questions from the first round.

Memory is unreliable. I have seen proof of this repeatedly in researching Finger, among other subjects. Yet Charles's answers in late 2008 match up very well to what he said in the summer of 2006—both of which are recollections going back between 35 and 60 years. You try that at age 84.

Charles Sinclair, early 1970s; photo courtesy of Charles Sinclair

You've seen the first known photograph of the desk of uncredited Batman co-creator Bill Finger.

Let's zoom in a bit.

In the summer of 2006, I visited Charles Sinclair, Bill's longtime writing partner. After we chatted a bit, Charles got up, took a plastic baggie off a shelf, and handed it to me. It contained something gold-colored and heavy for its size.

Charles said it was a paperweight, it used to belong to Bill Finger, and it was for me.



He believed the Egyptian glyphs underneath had inspired at least one Bill Finger story. I believed—without a certificate of authenticity—that this metal scarab had, in fact, been Bill Finger's once.

I profusely thanked Charles for it but politely declined it at the same time. Charles insisted I keep it, saying he knew I would appreciate it much more than he would. Besides, he was keeping something else of Bill's—a sculpture Bill made in an adult art class of his then-wife Portia:

Do you see the resemblance? At the time, I couldn't, because I hadn't seen what Portia looked like.

But I have since:

This is the first-ever published or posted photo of Portia Finger. It's just one of a half-dozen or so photos of her I now have. I've got her as a child, I've got her from what was probably the last year of her life, and I've got her in various years in between. This was taken in Provincetown, Massachusetts, probably in the 1940s.

That man with Portia? I'm 99.98 % sure it is not Bill Finger. The hair is too poofy and dark, the build is too scrawny, and the face doesn't match the other photos I have from that period which I know show Bill. My guess is that Bill was taking the picture.

Later, when I told Bill's second wife about the paperweight, she remembered it instantly and wrote this:

"I gave it to Bill as a birthday or Christmas present. Or did he give it to me? I was studying ancient Egyptian history for a couple of years and I do think I gave it to Bill."

So now the paperweight that once sat on Bill Finger's desk and that may have inspired Bill Finger stories sits on my desk and inspires an ongoing Bill Finger story of a different kind.

If you're just joining me: Bill Finger was the uncredited co-creator of Batman and the subject of a book I am shopping around. In this series of posts, I am relaying how I tracked down various people related to Bill by blood or Batman.

First I covered Charles Sinclair, Bill's longtime (non-comics) writing partner.

This installment focuses on Bill's second wife...a person nearly every comics pro, comics historian, or Finger family member I talked to never knew existed.

In my first talk with Charles, he mentioned Bill's "final lady." She and Bill were together in the mid- and late 1960s, years after he and Portia had separated and not long before his death in 1974.

Shortly after, Charles clarified that she in fact had been Bill's second wife.

Charles referred to her as "ES" (full names will be withheld out of respect for privacy). He told me what town she and Bill had lived in together (not New York City but within New York State) and he told me she had a daughter "ES" (so let's call her "ES Jr.") who was in high school at that time.

In terms of research, the name "ES" was a mixed blessing. The "E" was not a particularly common name, but the "S" was. I first tried the usual search steps (Google, phone book, etc.), but the results were overwhelming. It would be more than a challenge to find her, or what had happened to her.

So I set out to find ES Jr. instead.

The first wrinkle when looking for a woman (no, not like that) is that you usually need to know her married name...unless she kept her maiden name or never married. In any case, assuming you know her high school, that's perhaps the best place to start.

As luck had it, there is only one high school in the town Bill and ES lived in. I called and asked if they would be so kind as to look for an ES Jr. in the yearbooks of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though schools will not give out contact details of alumni, whether or not a person went to the school is not confidential info. For what it was worth, I said that if I lived closer, I would gladly go to the public library and look through yearbooks myself. Hesitant at first, the person on the phone soon agreed to help me.

He verified that ES Jr. did in fact graduate in 1971. But I still did not know if she had subsequently changed her name or where she now lived. He admitted that they didn't know, either.

I found the alumni site for that school and that year. Though many such sites don't grant access tp non-alumni, that one did. I e-mailed everyone from 1971 and the three class years on either side of it, several dozen at least. Made a lot of "friends" but found no leads. One woman did say she'd seen ES Jr. on the street in NYC a decade ago but remembered nothing else.

A librarian at the public library in that town confirmed that a "William Finger" was indeed listed with an "ES" in the 1970-1971 phone book. I even tried the phone number, now not in service. I called the town hall and found out that their address was a rental unit, so I called the rental company, which was still in service. The man I spoke to there was willing to look for her in old files.

Meanwhile, though it was a longshot, I searched for "ES" in the Manhattan online phone directory. The variables plotting against me in this search:

- she no longer lived in Manhattan
- she lived there but under a married/different name
- she lived there but was unlisted

The directory had no listings that matched exactly, but there were a few with matching last names and first initial E. I cross-checked each with peoplefinder.com and found that one did match the full name I was searching for. That cost $7.95.

Totally worth it.

Though I usually don't leave messages while researching, preferring to keep trying until someone answers, I decided to leave a message that time.

A few hours later, she called me back.

And it was the right ES Jr.

Daughter of ES.

Class of '71.

Bill's onetime stepdaughter.

It was even more of a fluke that I found her that way because she told me she didn't live at the number at which I left a message; it was her apartment, but she was subletting it. The kind, kind subletter whose name I never got passed ES Jr. the message, and quickly, too.

After ES Jr. asked me the usual questions ("How did you find me?"; "What are you writing?"; "Where do you live?"), she told me two facts that floored me.

The first was that her brother, a man in his sixties, lived in my town. For all I know, I'd already stood in line next to him at Whole Foods. (Nearly a year later, he would be one of the people to turn up a "new" Bill Finger photo.)

The second was that ES, her mother, Bill's second wife, was still alive.

All along I suppose I was assuming that if I were able to find her, I would find out that she was gone.

ES Jr. said she would ask her mother if she would be willing to talk with me. I thanked her profusely and crossed my, well, Fingers.

That evening, ES called.

Age 84, as lucid and lively as person a quarter her age, living in California, and beyond thrilled that someone was finally doing something on her second husband, Bill Finger.

To be continued.