Variety (Jan 1942)

January 7, 1942 nirty-tlxth P^^iEff Anniversary PICTURES 15 THE INSIDE' ON A PAST GENERATION Oscar Hammerstein 11 Reminisces on His Grandfather's Feud with Koster & Bial—Sidelights on Adolph Zukor, Bunny Granville, Otis Skinner, DeWolf Hopper, Et AL TOLD BY SONS AND DAUGHTERS Verbotens of 1929 (BT THE . KEITH OFFICE) [The /ollou>in0 intimate closeups of show biz protiiinents art told by a successive generation, now also established in the amusement industri/.] Compiled from 'Variety' Flics by Joe Laurie, Jr. Unnecessary suggestive position of man dut-ing song when girl sings, 'I'll kiss you.' Business ol girl raising skirt saying, 'I'm a Show GirL' 'I'm not going to show everything at these prices.' Red necktie bit. Hitting girl in rear with book, girl reaching back saying, •Oh, my nerves.' Mention of Commissioner Whalen. All references to Arabs. In poem 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'—who the hell wants to -know?----- — ^ -• — Looking skyward, then brushing oft top of hat. This dog does tricks all over the place. Story of a girl in picture show with man, girl saying, 'Someone is fooling with my knee.' Man sez, 'It's me, and I'm not fooling.' To'hell with him." Gag about a girl taking a tramp through the woods. 'Close those double-breasted lips.' All references to Mayor Walker and LaGuardia; although Innocently used, unfavorable' comment has been received by our patrons. . Remarks about Daddy Browning and Peaches. Taboo words; cockeyed, dirty, Wop, Polack. Thumbing nose. Business of tearing off woman's trunks. 'What's your name?' 'Murphy, and don't let the nost tool you.' 'Mother and father' are fighting.' 'Who is your fathsr?' That's what they are fighting about.' ■ 'If you're going to lay an egg lay It in my hat.' ' Eight babies Gloria Swanson promised the newspapermen, when she married the' Marquis. ' Bear Mountain gag. Hints to audience regarding applause. Lord Epsom, Secretary of the Interior. Girl lifting skirt to show vaccination. Kicking maid in the rear. 'Is that another chin or a goitre?' •What the hell are you hollering about?' Kindly cover girl's navels. ' There are no flies on me, but there are spots wher* tht files have been. She had two children by her first husband, two by her second husband and two by her third besides two of her own. Man kisses girl's fingers because she hurt them. Girl then takes pratt fall, stating she hyrt herself again. Girl whispers in mother's ear and moves aroimd stag*, mother stating, 'Go tell your lather.' 'I bet her folks had Siamese intentions.* "What do .you think I am, a pushover?' 'I slept with twins but might as well have gone horn* in the rain.' Giving 'the bird.' ^ Names of Pantages anci Almee McPliersoa 'She had dimples on he;' hips.' 'Going to the livery stable for doughnuts.' 'I'm a lady, dammit.' . 'Mother is home sick in bed with the doctor.' 'Please slop moving your knee, you're cutting m».' : Will now sing William To-Hell. Rubbish violin bow across rear of trousers. 'Didn't I meet you under the bed at the Astor Hotel?' 'I knew you when you didn't have a pot to cook In.' 'He's the father of a baby boy but his wife doesn't know ■it yet.' 'I'll never marry a' girl who snores.' 'You're going to have .a swell time finding it out." 'If I could go bn the stage I could be made.' . Substitute 'stomach' for 'belly.'. • Picking up spit for a dime. References' to Kip Rhlnelander. 'Summer is ending, winter draws on.' ]That thing is sticking out again—fiute player.' Traveling salesmen and farmer's daughter stories. ■ 'Hurry, you're a little behind, Fanny.' ■ 'I said relax, not Ex-Lax.' Advise to audience, 'Laugh right out loud and don't Inhale ' it' and other similar remarks. Audiences resent such state- ments which are unworthy of an artist of your calibre. Girl walking on with pair of oars saying, 'I just madt the crew.' •Your father is in Kansas City. He isn't dead. Your mother's husband Is dead, biit your father lives in Kansas City.' Kindly do not mention the name of the manager, supping woman on stomach and kicking her. She calls her 'dbg broker* because 'he does business tn the curb." 'Did you pay a green fee? No we were in the rough all day.' AH references to President Hoover and hard times. Loi^. , , .f.l'^^ve 14 children and I'm afraid my husband don't love you.' °' might have happened if he loved • mlkfi" '"^ automobile business. He gave me an auto- gj^'^^last night and. tonight he is going to give m* the How Oscar Hammerstein, Piqued, Almost Went Broke By OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II and wondering what he would do next. He looked down Broadway. There was a livery stable on the northwest corner of 42d street—what a place for a theatre—but how could he buy the land, tear down the stable and put up a theatre without money? He did. But that's another story. The theatrical district was 14th street, but with character- istic perversity my grandfather chose to build a music hall on 34th street. Surrounded by meadows of vacant lots, the building rose on the site' now occupied by Macy's. Even- tually known as Koster Sc Bial's. it became a highly suc- cessful enterprise. Koster, Blal ..and_jrvy grandfather were equal partners. He was responsible for putting on the shows and they took care of the restaurant and bar end of it—in those days,.variety. sho.ws_aete...w^.tc.heiJro!n;.y(blesi_ and the clink of glasses and dishes was part of the orches- tration. Tlie crowd kept coming and the money rolled in and was split three ways in tall stacks and everyone was happy. I 'Cherchez la Femme | Two new characters now enter the story—a wine agent ■nd a French girl. The wine agents were iniportant figures, especially to people who ran a restaurant. 'There was keen oompetitlon among the rival brands of champagne. The agents would go into a restaurant, buy quart after quart of their own brand and send the bottles,- with their 'compli- ments,' to whatever celebrities were present. The impor- tant thing was that their labels should be seen on as many tables as possible. One day Koster and Bial came to their partner, Oscar Hammerstein, and said that a certain wine agent was 'in- terested' in a certain little French chanteuse. They had promised to put her in the show and let her sing a couple of songs. Now, my grandfather had heard the lady sing, and he told them that a couple of songs were two too many. Ha didn't care who was interested in her, he knew the public would not be. He added some unprintable comments on restaurant men who tried to meddle with the theatre and expressed himself with equal force on wine agents and their proteges. Having thoroughly and eloquently dealt with this intended assault on the ears of bis public, grandfather pulled his famoiis top hat down tight on his bead and stamped out of the lobby and up Broadway. La Belle Lays an Omelette _l H* came late to the theatre that night, in fact, just in tbna to see a new face on the stage—La Belle Whatever- Heir-Name-Was, the wine agent's friend. There she was, on his stage, in a circle of limelight, warbling a popular song and making it more unpopular by the second. Koster and Bial ha^i defied him and put her on. With mounting rage— and grandfather's rage could mount with the speed of an anti-aircraft shell—he rushed down the side of the house and took a seat in the stage box. At the end of La Belle's first selection only three people applauded, Koster, Bial and the wine agent. .But against their applause was an ominous counter-melody. My grandfather was standing up in the stage box of his ow'h theatre, hissing.. A half minute later he was out on the street trading punches with the wine agent. It was a no-decision bout. The cops arrived and locked them both. up. When bail was asked, Koster and Bial put up the money to release their friend—the wine agent. But they refused to put up one cent for their partner. P. S.: He spent the night in jail. r Comedy Becomeg Tragedy Here is the precise point at which this comedy becomes a tragedy. During those hours in jail, waiting for some friends to come and bail him out, Oscar Hamn^erstein worked up a.thirst for revenge that could be satisfied by nothing less than the ruin of his partners. He vowed that he would smash them both within the year. And he did. First he persuaded them to buy out his interest for $300,000. This they were glad to do. Next, he bought a site 10 blocks north—44th street and Broadway. This was siiburban property as far as the amusement section was concerned. He then proceeded to erect a theatre which he called The Olympia. It was really three theatres in one -a music hall, a concert hall and a legitimate theatre. The 300 grand was a drop in the bucket and he had to borrow $900,000 more from a life insurance company. When he opened this amusement center, with the motive of crushing Koster .and Bial, he poured into it all the talent he could find, domestic and foreign, and it didn't matter to him how much it cost. Profits were not important. All that counted was drawing the crowds from 34th street up to 44th. He so completly succeeded in achieving this that within six months Koster & Bial's was out of business and their personal for- tunes had been consumed in an effort to save it. But this if not the e nd of the story. .•. . Grandpop Couldn't Top Himgelf l_ My grandfather's effort to destroy his partners resulted in his own destruction. The public jammed his new house as long as he gave them super-attractions he started with. But he couldn't keep this up. There weren't enough super- attractions in the world. When the shows simmered down to normal entertainment the sellout business simmered down to only fair business; And fair business nveant big weekly losses. It was more than one man's pocket could stand. It was even more than a big insurance company could stand. They foreclosed on him. He was but. He sat in his office thinking of the futility of revenge DeWolf Hopper's Casey Almost Never Got to Bat By DE WOLF HOPPER^ JR. My first Impression of my father was that of a man with murder in his heart' toward all umpires and a sob in his . voice for a ball player named Casey. How many times Pop was instrumental in fanning Casey- I don't know, but the' -number—waSr^lhfinltely-tbb-great-for-hi in t o " concentrate on- every recitation. Instead Pop, with his all-out love of base- ball, was dwelling on the fate of the Giants and letting 9asey's fate take care of itself. 'If.the Giants don't beat Dem Bums' (of another year). Pop would be thinking between stanzas; or 'I wonder if the baseball scores are out yet.' Until his recitation became so long, the audience wondered if Casey would-even get up to bat'let alone strike out My mother, to whom Casey was as much a part of the house- hold as Pop or I, noticed this and timed it. She informed Pop that Casey's striking out took a minute and a half more than it should. Pop was firm in his mind that this was not so and she had to show him irrefutable evidence of same on the stopwatch. 'This so upset him that he went absolutely cold on it and Casey's fate hung in the balance while Pop hurried around and hunted up another copy and laboriously learned it all over agaiii. I Hi» Brnshoff on Junior | My father -viewed, from the third row, my debut on the stage in Edward Childs Carpenter's play, 'Order, Please.' Backstage later, in a loud voice, he declaimed to the world in general how good I was. . Later, over a quiet beer, I said, 'O. K., Fop, let's have it What did you really think?' 'I thought you were fine, son. . I enjoyed you very much;' but I would have enjoyed you more if>I could have heard you.' When Trooper Otis Skinner San; for the Great Caroso By CORNELIA OTIS SKINNER My favorite play of all the Otis Skinner repertoire-was Booth Tarkington's 'Mister Antonio,' a tender comedy in which he played a gay and lovable Italian hurdy-gurdy man. One night I was watching from the wings, entranced because Caruso was sitting in a - box.- There was a scene in which father used to hum a bit as he mixed a'typically 'wop' salad dressing. This night I was horrified to hear him burst forth ,ln a loud and quite incorrect rendition of 'Santa Lucia.' To my further youthful shame he sang it through twice. When he came off I asked him what on earth- had made him do such a thing. To which he replied that it wasn't every actor who had a chance to sing for Caruso, and he for one wasn't going to miss the opportunity. . I elaborated on this episode in a 'memoir' piece I wrote for Harper's Bazaar, but I like liest My Pop's appraisal of my own histrionics. Even an actor is not exempt from having-to sit through school theatricals. My distinguished progenitor first beheld me as Puckr not in Shakespeare's immortal drama, but in a little whimsy written by God knows who, wherein that wayward elf breaks into a toy-shop, wakes all the dolls with a coy kiss and for about half an hour they all frolic about in a manner that's pretty hard on everybody. Father endured my debut unflinchingly, but at the final curtain was heard to remark to mother in liiat voice that has thrilled thousands, 'Well, she certainly hasn't a ray of talent, thank God!' Adolph ZakorToM His Son, Ideas Live Forever* By EUGENE J. ZUKOR (Lieut Commander, U.SJf.R.) ('Sweet are the uses of Adoersltv, which, like the toad, ugly nnd venomous, wears vet a preciotu jewel in his head.') That's not mine; It's Will Shakespeare's. Tve always felt a special kind of gratitude toward the Bard for having penned . it; better than anything else, it beams my father's credo. 'What's the point in quibbling? My father is a great man. So Is yours. But can you remember the exact moment In which you first knew his greatness? I can. It is a moment In which two important things are revealed, laid bare,..* good man's attitude toward life and the answer to that riddle of the ages, success through Imponderable difficulties. The scene is a dinner table in the roof- garden atop, the old Knickerbocker Hotel...the year, 1915...the orchestra (Continued on page- 59)