Anton LaVey child Karla LaVey
Early life
LaVey was born Howard Stanton Levey on April 11, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Michael Joseph Levey (1903–1992), from Chicago, married LaVey's mother, Gertrude Augusta née Coultron, born to a Georgian father and Ukrainian mother, both of whom immigrated to Ohio in 1893 and became naturalized American citizens in 1900. His parents supported his musical interests, as he tried a number of instruments; his favorites were keyboards such as the piano and accordion. Anton played piano in a Baptist church as a boy, and played oboe in high school. He attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California, until the age of 16. LaVey claimed he left high school at age 16 to join the Clyde Beatty Circus and later carnivals, first as a roustabout and cage boy in an act with the big cats, then as a musician playing the calliope. He played tunes such as "Harlem Nocturne" by Earle Hagen. LaVey later claimed to have seen that many of the same men attended both the bawdy Saturday night shows and the tent revival meetings on Sunday mornings, which reinforced his increasingly cynical view of religion. In the foreword to the German language edition of The Satanic Bible, he cites this as the impetus to defy Christian religion as he knew it. He explains why church-goers employ moral double standards. However, journalist Lawrence Wright investigated LaVey's background and found no evidence LaVey ever worked in a circus either as a musician or a cage boy.In the winter of 1948, LaVey began to work as an organist in bars, lounges, and nightclubs. His "genius" on keyboards helped him attain gigs. While playing organ in Los Angeles burlesque houses, he allegedly had a brief affair with then-unknown Marilyn Monroe, when she was a dancer at the Mayan Theater. This is challenged by those who then knew Monroe, as well as the manager of the Mayan, Paul Valentine, who said she had never been one of his dancers, nor had the theater ever been used as a burlesque house.According to his biography, LaVey moved back to San Francisco. In 1950, LaVey met Carole Lansing. They married the following year, when Lansing was fifteen years old. Lansing gave birth to LaVey's first daughter, Karla LaVey, born in 1952. In order to avoid the Korean War draft, he studied criminology at City College of San Francisco. LaVey then attained a job as a photographer for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), where he worked for three years. He dabbled as a psychic investigator, looking into "800 calls" referred to him by SFPD. Later biographers questioned whether LaVey ever worked with the SFPD, as there are no records substantiating the claim.During this period, LaVey was friends with a number of writers associated with Weird Tales magazine; a picture of him with George Haas, Robert Barbour Johnson, and Clark Ashton Smith appears in Blanche Barton's biography The Secret Life of a Satanist.
LaVey and Carole divorced in 1960, after LaVey became involved with Diane Hegarty. Hegarty and LaVey never married, however she was his companion for 24 years and mothered his second daughter, Zeena Galatea Schreck (nee LaVey) (born in 1963). At the end of their relationship, Hegarty sued for palimony.
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