lower on the scale, he appeared with many other well-known names at a contest judging goats in Central Park in 1934, as part of a Bock Beer festival. Van also had for a period of time a half-hour radio show on the CBS network. Van retired from the stage in 1927, one article implying it was due to health. He seems to have returned only once, in a Mae West show in 1949, Diamond Lil. Negative press In 1916 a The New York Times article reported that he had been taken to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan suffering from apoplexy, an old name for stroke. He was reported in serious condition. Police had been called to a hotel room on West 44th Street, where he had been staying related to his work on his Equity Motion Picture Co., and he lived at Van Harbor, New Hampshire. The police found an unregistered gun in his room and he was being held technically as a prisoner at Bellevue. The Times printed a clarification on July 10, 1916, that it was minstrel "Billy Van" who was taken to Bellevue, not Billy B. Van, who was performing at the Brighton Theatre on the night in question. A nastier article was that Van was being sued for breach of promise to marry by Miss Ray Myers, of Long Island City, an actress. The story in The New York Times in 1925 said that the suit, seeking $125,000 in damages, was coming to trial in a Queens, New York court. The suit claimed that instead of keeping his engagement to marry Ray, he had married Grace Walsh in 1923. The article states he had been married four times before. Myers' attorney stated that he had incriminating letters as evidence, and Van's defense was this was just "a little friendship". The Los Angeles Times later ran a picture of Myers, with the announcement that Van had paid $5000 to settle the claim. Agricultural career A major The New York Times article in 1917 is the source of a picture of what might be called the two Vans: Billy B. Van, the New York audience knew as a performer, and William Vandegrift—his birth name—as an expert in dairy farming and other agricultural affairs. In fact, he is called one of the seven best-qualified authorities on dairy management. Since this is a story told to the reporter by Van, there