Jay J. Armes - Real(ish) American Hero
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I first visited El Paso on a work trip almost ten years ago. I helped to open a new movie theater in the city and, as part of the initial planning, went on a tour to meet local influencers and entrepreneurs to learn more about the region and its potential movie-going audience. Everybody I met gave me a personal slice of local flavor through the topic of conversation that came up during our initial chat: “Ever seen CITIZEN KANE on the big screen? You should come back for the Plaza Classic Film Festival?” “Have you been to Crave? Their sweet potato fries and marshmallow dipping sauce are incredible.” “Did you know Cormac McCarthy drinks at a dive bar downtown? I’m not allowed to tell you which one - us locals keep that secret.” “You should talk to Jay J. Armes. They made a toy of him in the ‘70s.”
Cormac McCarthy may have never had an action figure, but I had read THE ROAD. Jay J. Armes, on the other hand, wasn’t even on my radar.
On the recommendation of my new El Paso friend, I ordered a used hardcover copy of JAY J. ARMES, INVESTIGATOR: THE WORLD’S MOST SUCCESSFUL PRIVATE EYE, a memoir with an unwieldy name written by Armes and Frederick Nolan. The book took its sweet time to arrive, and by the time it showed up in my mailbox, I was neck deep in the actual opening of the theater. And so it remained forgotten on a shelf until last September when I read that Armes had died at 92. Bummer, I thought, before resuming my then-current hobby: Being stressed about an upcoming wedding, the pending presidential election, and a new job I had just taken.
Cut to November, and I’m married, a few months into my new job, and am somewhat successfully compartmentalizing the election results. I’m not sure what, exactly, prompted me to pack Armes' memoir in my carry-on when looking for a book to take with me on my honeymoon but, while I spent most of November thinking about my wedding and work, Jay J. Armes has been firmly ranked third in the list of topics that have taken up real estate in my mind this past few months. To say that I’ve become preoccupied with Armes is an understatement. I’m full-blown obsessed.
Yes, Armes did have a toy made of him in the ‘70s.
Ideal Toy Company produced action figures and accessories featuring Jay J. Armes. Not many El Pasoians (or Texans, for that matter) can make this claim. An even rarer claim would involve the amount of success and fortune Armes accumulated through his lengthy career as a private invesitagor. The rarest claim, though? The fact that Armes found the success he achieved without the possession of any arms. As a child, Armes (born Julian Jay Armas) was playing with railway torpedos he stole from a Texas & Pacific Railway stationhouse when they exploded, leaving him in need of a double amputation. For many children, this would be the end of their story. For Armas, this was just the beginning. As detailed in his biography, Armas took the accident as a challenge - throwing himself into his mission to reinvent himself. Yes, he went full Batman—criminology school, a mentorship with shadowy underworld elements, and even acting lessons. Armas would move to L.A., change his name (Armes is pronounced Arms…), and star in what he claims are hundreds of films and television shows. IMDB only lists one - the role of the villainous Hookman in an episode of HAWAII 5-0.
Maybe this brush with Hollywood gave him the connections he needed for his future success. In any case, Armes would return to El Paso to set up his own private investigation company (spurred on by what he saw as a misrepresentation of the profession in Hollywood). One of his first major clients would be Marlon Brando, who hired Armes to rescue his son from Mexico where friends of his estranged wife had kidnaped him. Armes details an elaborate one-man rescue operation in his book that saw the PI half-starved, flying a glider over the country inch-by-inch in search of Brando’s son. The truth seems to be somewhere slightly south of that border - Brando’s lawyer apparently told Armes exactly where the kid was. All Armes had to do was hire local law enforcers to help extradite the actor’s son.
I have become so obsessed with this disconnect between fact and fiction in Armes’s life. Armes's book is filled with little nuggets that seem unbelievable. He has a perpetually loaded gun installed in one of his hooks that he can fire by flexing a muscle. He was a close friend of Howard Hughes, a relationship formed after Armes managed to track down the reclusive aviator on behalf of a magazine looking to do an interview. He was constantly being targeted for assassinations and had a wall displaying dozens of guns that had once been used to try and kill him. He owned a private zoo in his backyard full of tigers and lions.
To read Armes’s book is to read about a real-life James Bond - but even better because James Bond is playing on Easy Mode with his two hands. Armes talks about how having hook hands actually made him a better private eye. He could bend steel, slide down wires without friction burns, slice through car doors, and - thanks to his black belt in karate - deliver a punch with his hook that could kill a man. Forget the fact that you can kill a man with a hook without a single karate lesson. Armes spins a self-mythologizing tale as riveting as any dimestore crime novel. He’s a master sleuth, a man of style (he owned a different suit for every day of the year), and had a small fortune that allowed him to have over 600 investigators worldwide on his payroll while also having enough extra dough to install a computerized private gun range in his mansion. The guy was a badass.
But he was also a liar. Gary Cartwright wrote a legendary piece about Armes for the Texas Monthly in 1976, highlighting some of Armes’ exaggerations, from his fibs about his education to the much-hyped Hollywood deals that were actually DOA to the cases themselves. Some were self-aggrandizing bluffs. Others seemed to be downright fabrications. Did Yoko Ono really hire Jay J. Armes? Did a would-be murderous actually kill herself because Armes refused to sleep with her? Even Armes’s brags about all the people who tried to kill him seem to be hot air. Who brags about people wanting to murder him?
Badasses do, my friends. Badasses do.
I don’t care if Armes was full of shit. In fact, I think he almost absolutely was. The guy was a raconteur who spun yarns and cast himself as the hero of countless stories. He tried his damndest to turn himself into modern American mythology. And, for a brief shining second, it worked. Armes was the subject of television profiles and magazine cover stories. He wrote a book. He had a toy. The man (who claimed to be French-Italian but was born to Mexican-American parents from the poor part of El Paso) managed to will a metamorphosis into reality - transforming himself from a scared little boy unsure of what life had in store for him into a flesh-and-blood superhero.
Were all the details true? No. But who cares? Armes lived a life of his own creation, and the result is the legacy he’s left behind—artifacts of a self-manufactured reality in which women threw themselves at his feet, Hollywood begged him to be part of their business, and criminals ran in fear at the sound of his name.
Jay J. Armes was a modern-day Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan, a side-burned Hercules. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I will spend the rest of my life trying to continue the legend of Jay J. Armes. I will tell the stories he told, adding my own exaggerations and untruths. Maybe I’ll even make up some new ones. And maybe, if we’re lucky, some future civilization may look back at the second half of the 20th century in awe of the hook-handed gods that walked amongst mere mortals. We need these heroes - life is too damn dull without them. I want to live in a world where a man with two hooks for hands owned a private jet and few across the world to solve mysteries. I want that man to be a master of disguise and a expert safecracker and be able to do a hundred push-ups in the time it takes a normal man to tie his shoe. I want Jay J. Armes to be everything he said he was because that’s a more exciting world to live in than the truth.
Did you know Jay J. Armes once killed a werewolf with a custom silver set of hook hands. Oh, wait. Did I just give away the plot of WHERE WOLF 3? Hell yeah, I did.
See you in heaven, Jay J. Armes. I hope I make you proud.
