As a very young man, demobilized after World War I (he faked a birth certificate to join up at 15), Francis Marion Grandstaff could not decide whether to follow his father's profession of medicine or his childhood inclination to music. He solved his dilemma by taking up crime.
Indiana-born, sturdily built Grandstaff boxed a little, tried selling pianos. But he found pilfering the easiest way. The only trouble was that he almost always got caught. Finally, in 1940, he was picked up in Memphis for breaking into a store, stealing a $25 radio. It...
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