Charles and his mother in a publicity photo for Johnny at the Fair, Toronto Telegram, August 1947.
Charles remembers a scene in the film in which he is led by a police officer to the lost children’s compound, locked up behind a high chicken-wire fence, while his parents and the film crew watch in the background.
The script required Charles to cry, so without warning Sara went over and swooshed a hunk of mud across his face. He burst into tears as the cameras rolled. A few moments later, she rushed back and swept him up in her arms, to his delight. The resulting scene in the film, of a tired, cranky, lost child being reunited with his anxious parents, is a triumph of illusion. His two magical weeks ended when the Ex finished its run, and he was sent back to mundane real life.
The following spring, Charles was awakened one evening by his very excited mother, who dressed him in a bow tie, a sweater knit by his Aunt Ruth, and itchy wool britches. He remembers vomiting from nerves before being whisked out into the night. When they arrived at the giant Shea’s Theatre, where Toronto’s City Hall now stands, he was interviewed in front of radio microphones shaped like fans, while Klieg lights blinded his eyes. Charles stood before a darkened audience for the “praymeere” (as he heard it pronounced) of a “Canada Carries On” presentation of Johnny at the Fair.
Charles shakes hands with Prime Minister Mackenzie King at the CNE, August 1947.
As Johnny, he was told to sign his name, which he had just learned to print, in people’s autograph books, both at the theatre and later at B’nai Brith Lodge meetings. Lorne Greene, who narrated the film, suggested to him that he enrol in his acting school. Charles was five by then and had the illusory impression that “Canadian” meant glamorous. His parents were delighted to receive a cheque for $101.75 from the National Film Board for services rendered. This classic bit of Canadian kitsch played as a short in theatres all over North America for several years thereafter, and it is currently viewable on YouTube. This was Charles’s first and only starring role, and one that left an indelible impression on the little boy.
Charles may have had a unique connection to the big screen, but he and his family had a relationship with the TV in their house that was typical of a 1950s family. Every Sunday night, the family gathered in front of their black and white TV to watch their favourite program, Lassie. The Pachters got a dog, too, which Charles named Leslie — that was what his grandmother called Lassie.
In one episode, a mean old lady named “Sara Dibbles” kidnapped Lassie, after which Charles decided to call his mom Dibbles. Finding she liked it, Sara started signing her letters with that name, and from that moment on she became Dibbles to friends and family.
At age 12, Charles sketched his dog Leslie, 1954.
Dibbles was indefatigable: she raised four kids, worked full-time as a travel agent and tour leader, and in her spare time was wardrobe mistress for shows with the Holy Blossom Temple Players, ironing the costumes backstage while Harry performed various roles in the plays. She was a firecracker, a cut-up, and a self-absorbed beauty. As travel agent for Fisher-Fremont Travel, she led tours to Israel a record-setting 166 times, in addition to thirty trips to China, Thailand, and Japan, and ten to Russia, every trip being “the best trip I ever took.”
In her office she told an older woman who was struggling to negotiate a stairway, “If you can’t get up these stairs, you’re not coming to Israel.” In Japan, a lady on the tour was still in mourning for her recently deceased husband, and didn’t want to get off the bus to visit a shrine. “You shouldn’t be on this tour. You’re going back to Toronto,” Dibbles told her, and she was promptly put on the next flight back.
When he was nine, Charles told her, “Mom, your problem is that you’re … uh … domineering.”
“I’M DOMINEERING?” she shouted. “I’ll give you such a DOMINEERING!”
Despite everything, Charles and Dibbles were close. He inherited his mother’s energy, and her sense of fun and adventure.
Charles’s father, Harry, who he always referred to as “Har,” tried his hand at many different businesses while Charles was growing up. After starting with a toy store where Charles obtained his first scooter, he then became a travelling salesman for a dress manufacturer, and later worked as a “customer’s man” at numerous stock brokerage offices. He ended up in a little office on Eglinton Avenue selling Israel bonds.
Harry had many pals with whom he played poker and went to hockey and baseball games. As president of B’nai Brith Eastern Canadian Council, he attended many conventions in the Catskills in Upstate New York with Dibbles. Har had a wonderful gift for telling jokes and stories, and was in great demand as an after-dinner speaker. He was also a Mason. Charles can remember watching his father and a fellow Mason one day in an elevator. Spotting Mason pins on each other’s lapels, Harry and the stranger immediately launched into an elaborate series of variations on a secret handshake that thoroughly mystified Charles.
Harry, who was an avid 8mm movie camera buff, recorded many highlights of his children’s lives in jerky reels. During the 1950s and 1960s, scene after scene showed the family walking out the front door of their home, the women dressed for the High Holidays in outlandish outfits such as fur stoles with animal snouts, to go to the Holy Blossom Temple across the street. Later, the family gathered, sharing screaming fits of laughter while reviewing the footage. There were rounds of birthday parties, candle-blowing, gooey cake with nickels wrapped in waxed paper; panning shots of little faces under paper hats peering out around the table, munching crustless chopped-egg sandwiches on brown bread; close-ups of Halloween loot being spread out on the living room floor, Dibbles nursing and bathing younger brother and sister, aunts and uncles jitterbugging on the front lawn, and four-year-olds playing in sand boxes, wrestling or smacking each other. Like father, like son, Charlie records a lot of what he does. On his computer he kept a diary of everything he did and everyone he met between May 1, 1989, and December 31, 1999. He also keeps copies of materials he has received, much of which can be found in the archives of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.
The most dynamic personality among Charles’s relatives was his Auntie Annie, his mother’s petite, adventurous younger sister, who had gone down to Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1930s with a girlfriend, and had gotten married in a shotgun wedding to a sleazy character who was involved with drugs. Annie ended up being rescued by her grandmother and her older brother, who drove down to Alabama in an old Model T Ford, had the marriage annulled, and brought her home. Resembling Lana Turner, Annie was a classy dresser whose hair, whenever she visited the Pachters, always had a different colour. When she married boring Uncle Louie and gave him a daughter, the three of them moved to Las Vegas, where he became a croupier in a casino while she opened a Hudson automobile franchise.
She later divorced Louie, moved to New York, and managed the Park Royal Hotel on the Upper West Side near Central Park. As a teenager, Charles visited her several times and was taken to Broadway shows like The Pajama Game, Li’l Abner, Oklahoma, and Carousel. He later saw Ethel Merman in his favourite musical, Gypsy, at the O’Keefe Centre (now the Sony Centre) in Toronto in 1960. That show, based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, left Charles with an enduring fascination with Ethel Merman, the brassy performer who reminded him of Dibbles, and whom he often imitates. He also knows all the songs by heart, which you will quickly discover if you ever visit him.
Annie also introduced him to the art galleries of