Menasha Katz Was One of Charm City’s Great Characters of Yesteryear

March 2, 2020 Michael Olesker

Film star Mae West was among the celebrities protected by the late Maryland State Police Capt. Menasha Katz. (Wikipedia)

We talk about the great Bawlamercharacters who have slipped away through the years, but who remembers MenashaKatz, the legendary Maryland State Police captain?

If you do, then you connect him to Al Capone, EleanorRoosevelt, Mae West, Jackie Kennedy, the queen of England, U.S. presidents and abouthalf a dozen Maryland governors to whom Menasha was personal aide for severaldecades.

Such as Theodore McKeldin, who was governor when QueenElizabeth came to Maryland. She attended a football game with McKeldin inCollege Park.

Before the game, the governor introduced her to Katz.Menasha was never exactly the shy type.

“I kissed her hand,” he claimed, “and a British bobby saidto me, ‘She likes to be kissed on the face.’ Having a joke on me, yeah. But Ididn’t know. So then I kissed her face.

“I tell you, McKeldin, he’d like to drop dead. He said, ‘MyGod, now I’ve got to apologize to the British government.’”

Menasha laughed aloud at the story. He was the youngest of18 children who came to America from Romania. He had a booming voice and a twinklein the eye.

“Oh, I’ve been around a little bit,” said Menasha. Yearsago, we’d catch up at his house on Old Pimlico Road. Menasha would pull outsome of his old, yellowing newspaper clippings. There were lots of them.

As part of his security work, he looked after the formerFirst Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Jacqueline Kennedy when they came toMaryland, as well as Gen. Douglas MacArthur. He was pals with actor Edward G.Robinson, who played the old Ford’s Theatre here on Fayette Street.

Menasha was a captain in the Maryland State Police for 42years. When Al Capone came here in 1939, the state police superintendent andcity police commissioner gave the go-ahead for the Chicago gangster to stay atKatz’s house at Pimlico and Oswego.

Capone was worth about $20 million from his variouslaw-breaking endeavors. He was fresh out of Alcatraz. He came here fortreatment at Union Memorial Hospital.

“Stayed with me for four months with two of his bodyguards,”Katz said. “You know, guys like that, they’d come out of Alcatraz and they’dget killed. Me scared? No, not a guylike me. I had more guts than the whole State Police put together.”

As a state policeman, he had a knack for being where theaction was. Once, he was aboard an excursion boat that collided with a steamer.Menasha was credited with averting panic by leading group-singing until arescue boat arrived.

One winter, he led a group of 100 marooned men halfwayacross frozen Chesapeake Bay on foot when their boat became locked in the ice.

By the time I knew him, he’d been part of the U.S. team atthe 1953 Maccabiah Games in Israel. He was 53 and competed in pistolmarksmanship. Three decades later, he proudly displayed his uniform from thecompetition.

Menasha, who died in June of 1980 at age 79 was the kind ofcharacter we still talk about years after they’ve gone – the kind who inventtheir own rules and don’t particularly edit themselves before they speak, andtake the kind of chances that inhibit most of us.

One time, the sexy comic actress Mae West came here for acharity parade, and Menasha chauffeured her by day. By night, she stayed at theBelvedere Hotel.

“And I stayed with her,” Menasha said. “Only, you don’t haveto tell anybody I slept with her.”

He considered that for a moment, and added, “Tell ‘em sheslept with me.”

Oh, the stories he could tell.

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.