FRENCHTOWN — When Parker Brothers' special edition of Clue came out in 1988, the picture of Col. Mustard was a portrait of a real colonel whose family had been in the mustard business.



That's a level of authenticity that is hard to trust in a fictitious board-game personality, but if you need living proof you can find it in Frenchtown in the person of Col. Amos Chalif (retired).



Although his Mustard moment was a minor episode in his colorful 93-year life, his Col. Mustard portrait is printed on the back of his business card.

Chalif (pronounced sha-LEAF) grew up on West 57th Street in Manhattan in the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing, his father’s five-story building across from Carnegie Hall. The family lived on the fourth floor and the rest of the building was dedicated to training dance teachers in various modes, but particularly in Russian ballet.

Louis Chalif (1876-1948) was the first Russian ballet master to teach in America, and Dance magazine called him “the dean of New York dance teachers.” Chalif’s father lost the building in the Depression, but he and his children continued teaching elsewhere.

In September 1941 Amos “enlisted in the Army Air Corps to see if I could do something besides dance.” He saw the Air Corps as a logical choice. In dancing “there are a lot of jumps, a lot of leaps and turns. Well, I thought that might be something I could do in the Air Force. It was in the air.”

After Pearl Harbor Day, Chalif trained to be a bombardier. Then the Army's top brass realized special expertise was needed in the airfield towers, so Chalif was trained as an air-traffic controller and dispatched to bases in Canada's maritime provinces to choreograph the incoming and outgoing flights.



Starting in 1931, his older brother Edward was teaching dance in a converted barn in Bernardsville, in an arrangement set up by his father and Margaret Hull of Bernardsville. Through that connection, young Amos wooed and won Peggy, the daughter of Mrs. Hull.



Amos and Peggy were planning to marry in April of 1944. But in January he received orders to leave Goose Bay, Labrador, and report to India, so their planning went into high gear. With two days' notice, a wedding, "including bridesmaids, the gown, the whole thing," was put together in Manhattan, according to Peggy. "Like all marriages during the war, you just suddenly got married" because everyone was coming and going.

For the rest of World War II, Chalif helped move supplies over the Himalayas to China. He did a lot of air-traffic control and occasionally served as co-pilot.

After peace broke out, he went on to complete 14 years of active duty, and began 23 years of intermittent duty in the reserves. He divided his time between Air Force administrative work, some of it in the Pentagon, and teaching ballet and ballroom dancing in New Jersey.



He and Peggy settled in Chatham Township and later Brookside, and he taught Russian ballet and ballroom dancing in the Barn Studio. Peggy divided her time between raising their two daughters and teaching dance, too.

One of Chalif's students was the wife of noted illustrator Tim Hildebrandt. So when the artist was hired by Parker Brothers to paint portraits of the suspects in a special edition of Clue, he thought of Chalif.



"He knew that I was a colonel and that the family had made mustard commercially at one time and sold the recipe to International Foods. He also knew that I had served in India," says Chalif. He cites one other point mentioned in the small bio on the game card. "He's a crack shot and so was I," Chalif said, conceding that nowadays he couldn't hit the side of a barn.

Although Clue was devised in England and Col. Mustard was a British officer, the American colonel looked the part, with his wavy white hair and his neatly trimmed mustache. He even owned a conservatively cut jacket with a velvet collar. Hildebrandt had to imagine the monocle. Chalif still has the wavy white hair and the classy jacket.

The Master Detective special edition included the usual suspects like Professor Plum and Mr. Green, but had additional characters like Madame Rose, whose face belonged to Hildebrandt's wife. "All of his friends were the characters," says Chalif.



The colonel is amused by his pop-cultural moment, and finds it a good ice breaker. "Everybody asks me who did it, and the natural answer is: If I told you, I'd have to kill you.'" Of course, he says it in a jocose and non-creepy way.



The Chalifs moved to Frenchtown a couple of years ago, and they are thrilled by the friendliness of their new neighbors. "People came with flowers and fruit," says Peggy.



Also, Frenchtown has "things going on, and it's fun," she says. Amos likes to drop by the Frenchtown American Legion hall and also goes to Milford for VFW meetings. And although the Chalifs are in good health, their neighbors are very attentive and kind.

The Master Detective edition has gone out of print, but Col. Chalif still flourishes. In fact, he has outlived Col. Mustard. In 2008 when Hasbro Americanized the board game, someone took a wrench or candlestick to Col. Mustard. He was then reincarnated as Jack Mustard, a former football player.