King of Swing Shift

One of California's busiest business men is 25 years old and makes $55 a week as a toolmaker. As a sideline, he grosses an estimated $250,000 a year as a dance-hall impresario. Last week short, dapper Harrison Augustus (Harry) Schooler acquired a new ballroom (his fourth).

In August 1941, Harry Schooler was working on Vega Aircraft's "swing shift" (4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.). He worked while most people played, and found amusement places closed when he came out to play. One night he rented the Burbank Elks' hall, gave an after-midnight dance (25-c- for men, women free). He played records for his fellow swing shifters and netted $40.

Last spring Harry Schooler took a ten-year lease on Ocean Park's vast Aragon Ballroom (1,500 electric bulbs dimly light its 14,000 square feet of dance floor).

The Schooler enterprises now: 1) dances seven nights a week at the Aragon; 2) swing shift dances on Friday and Saturday at Casino Gardens (12:30 to 5 a.m.); 3) Shrine Auditorium dances for Negroes about once a month, whenever a big-name Negro band is available; 4) barn-dancing in the Plantation Ballroom, Culver City.

Toolmaker Schooler (now on the graveyard shift, 12:30 to 7:30 a.m., at Douglas Aircraft) inspects his interests until about 11:30 each evening, then drives to his $55-a-week job in a green Buick convertible, cream-trimmed. Most of his factory pay goes into war bonds. Most of his dance-hall profit, says he, goes back into the business (decorating and furnishing Aragon took about $50,000). After splitting his holdings with his wife on a cornmumty property arrangement, Factory Worker Schooler had a 1942 income tax of $8,500. Said he, musing: "Ever since I was a little kid, I've always tried to do something extra."

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