Tag: Earl Carroll

Times Square Tintypes: Kelcey Allen

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In this chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky profiles drama critic Kelcey Allen.
 

BROADWAY’S WET NURSE

KELCEY ALLEN. He’s the dramatic critic of Women’s Wear, a he-man’s newspaper.
He was on Broadway when Jed Harris was a spindle-legged kid taking violin lessons in Newark. When Shanley’s was situated at the crossroads of the world and didn’t know it. When George White ran away from home to become a jockey. When the mob gathered at the Metropole bar. When Earl Carroll, a big boy for his age, walked the streets of Pittsburgh in a white sailor suit and “Throw ’em Down McCloskey” was the popular tune of the day. Today he’s grandfather to New York’s dramatic critics.
Caricature of Kelcey AllenHe talks with authority on any subject.
His first name is Eugene. But he doesn’t use it because he is a believer in numerology.
Started his theatrical career by carrying copy for the critics. In those yesteryears the critics wrote their reviews in the theater. He called for their copy, delivering it to their respective papers. He received twenty-five cents from each critic. He looked mighty cute riding about town on a bicycle.
Is happily married to a most charming lady.
He types with two fingers. And generally stubs them.
He is the best broadcasting station side of the Rocky Mountains.
He lives at the Hotel Chelsea but gets his mail at the Hermitage Hotel.
Writes his reviews on the second floor of the Fitzgerald Building. It takes him an hour and half to do so. Then takes the review home, places it under his pillow and sleeps on it. A messenger calls for his copy every morning at nine.
He suffers from new diseases only.
Has attended more than 5,000 first nights.
Knows more about Broadway than any man in the Garment Center than any man on Broadway.
His father was a school teacher. Had a degree in philology. Spoke nine languages.
He knows every restaurant in town that serves an eighty-cent table d’hôte dinner. Also knows their daily specials without looking at the menu.
Has a repertoire of stories. Tells them again and again. Employing the same gestures.
He’s the best audience he’s ever had.
Visited Europe last summer and was received by the Pope. His trip was ruined, however, on hearing that a producer had withdrawn his advertisement from Women’s Wear.
He notices legs but can’t carry a tune.
Carries a folding wallet which when spread out would cover the dance floor of a night club. It contains passes for everything in town, from the Aquarium to the Metropolitan Opera House. Also carries various patent medicines with him. No matter what ails you he’s got something that will cure you.
Tells things in detail. Then says: “Now what I mean to say is this—” And he starts all over again.
Smokes cigars and only offers them to people who don’t smoke.
Actually placed himself on every opening-night list. He published a sheet listing all the critics. Mailed it to the press agents for their convenience. He placed his name on the list. Before long he was complaining about the location of his seats.
He perspires freely about the neck. When attending a banquet (his favorite indoor and outdoor sport) he always career an extra collar with him.
Calls people by their wrong names. When corrected says: “I know it’s his wrong name, but I call him that.”
In Sardi’s he once made a flip crack about an Italian who had a mustache which extended fully six inches on both sides. The playboys of the Rialto got busy. They told Kelcey the man had overheard him and threatened him. For two days he stayed away—frightened. On his return he immediately sought out the man with the mustache and said: “That remark overheard wasn’t about you. I’m sorry if you think so and I want to apologize.” The Italian rose, stared at Kelcey and said: “Me no spik English.”
His hobby is collecting newspapers with typographical errors.

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Times Square Tintypes: Earl Carroll

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In this chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky profiles Earl Carroll, theatrical producer, director, songwriter and composer.
 

THE LIFE OF THE PARTY

 
Earl CARROLL. He has a throne, a palace and a title. His throne is an antique Chinese chair. His palace is the theater bearing his name. His title is “The Earl of Seventh Avenue.”

He is extremely polite to everyone. Expects people to be that way to him. Nobody can really get close to him.
He suffers from insomnia.
Was born in Pittsburgh, September 16, 1892. Has two brothers, Norman and James, and one sister, Alice. The brothers don’t look like him or each other. The sister could pass for his twin. When a small boy he was dressed in a white sailor suit.
If he sees a pretty girl on the street he will stop her and ask her if she wants to go on the stage.
At the age of sixteen he stood in the center of Nanking Road, China, with only forty-five cents in his pocket.
His office is backstage of his theater. A rug, the color of pigeon blood, covers the floor. His desk is enclosed in a wall. The pressing of a button shoots it forward. He uses a sword for a paperweight. Has a statue of Buddha here. And a refrigerator with Chinese letters written on it. The letters spell—happiness. In the rear of the office there is a secret panel through which he can make a hasty exit.
He can’t wear a shirt with a collar attached. And all of his vests must be double-breasted.
Once wrote a song with Enrico Caruso. It was “Dreams of Long Ago.” Immediately after joining the army he wrote a song called: “When I’m Through with the Arms of the Army I’ll Come Back to the Arms of You.”
Always throws a party for himself on his birthday.
His favorite type of beauty for the stage is a tall blonde. His own personal taste, however, runs to slender brunettes.
During the war he was a lieutenant in the United States Air Service. He was the first man to land an airplane in Central Park.
While rehearsing a new show he wears a sand-colored smock. His shirt is minus collar and tie. He stands in the orchestra. Has a telephone operator’s apparatus on his head. Through this he gives instructions backstage, under the stage and in the electrician’s booth plastered on the back wall of the balcony. To his left is a small table. His secretary, Miss Ruth, sits here and takes memos. During all this he is continually drinking Poland mineral water and chewing gum.
Likes to use perfume. His two favorites are Caron’s Acaciosa and Gabilla’s Jasmin. He sprays his throat with perfume daily.
On April 10, he and his two brothers and sister always journey to Pittsburgh to visit their mother’s grave. On Mother’s Day he sends flowers.
Was the first man in New York to own a “Starlight Bungalow,” now known as a penthouse. His was located on the roof of 729 Seventh Avenue. He called it “Top o’ the World.” He likes to live high and now resides on the top floor of a tall apartment hotel.

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In Your Hat, pt. 13

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In the 13th and final chapter of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars Renee Carroll, she admits, after a dozen chapters spent glorifying the world of show business and the performers who populate it, that she finds the whole circus a bit depressing. It’s the has-beens, more than the wanna-bes, that sadden her, it seems, and she insists that she’s content to stick with the going concern that is her hat check concession. “I know that’s going to last,” Carroll writes.

She was wrong, of course. Hats have fallen mostly out of favor (though some of us still wear them), and many restaurants today don’t even offer a coat check service. But, for the most part, hats hung in there long enough for Ms. Carroll.

If you read to the end of this brief closing chapter, you’ll find some updates from throughout Ms. Carroll’s life, written in 1947 and 1951.

WELL, I’ve finished my fifth year at Sardi’s. The only thing that have increased are the measurements of my hips, the number of people I know, and the size of my tips! But I’ve never been happier in my life.
Broadway is a funny place. It means so many different things to so many different people. To those who had to fight their way up only to find, as the great Winchell puts it, “It’s easy enough to climb to the top of the ladder—the hard thing is to stay there”, Broadway is just a tragedy of shattered hopes. To those who are just starting out, with all their illusions still glittering brightly, Broadway is “the greatest community in the world.”
But to me, standing on the sidelines and watching the whole panorama unfold past my hat check cubby-hole, Broadway is just another street. It may have more mazdas, but it’s just as good a place to keep away from as the proverbial pool-room on the proverbial Main Street. It has its rewards, sure!—But so, too, have Broadway in Podunkville, and Metropolitan Avenue in Sqeedunk Hollow.
I wouldn’t swap my job for all the five-year contracts (with options) in Hollywood! I wouldn’t change places with all the girls Earl Carroll hopes he’s going to “discover” in the next five years! A few years of my face and figure might be enough for the theatre and movie-going public—but they’ll always want to have their hats checked. And as long as I don’t get their derbies mixed up, they’re going to need me. But show business—phooey! You fade quicker than a bleached blonde.

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Snapshot in Prose: Red Nichols

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This week’s Snapshot in Prose captures cornet and trumpet player Red Nichols at a relatively early point in his career, though he had already made hundreds of recordings under a variety of band names. But, to a certain degree, the more traditional jazz he favored, with its Dixieland flavor, was on the verge of being replaced by the new swing craze.

But Nichols survived and even thrived, continuing to record and perform until his death in 1965. In this 1935 profile, Nichols looks back at his salad days in the world of jazz.

Who plays the red-hottest trumpet in captivity? Red Nichols! Who has the grandest, wavy red hair and come-hitherest laughing brown eyes? Red Nichols! Yet, this utterly charming and totally unaffected young maestro, who became famous from the hour “Red Nichols and His Five Pennies” lit on Broadway, is almost shy.
The day, recently, when this fascinating, slim young leader celebrated his thirtieth birthday, he was also congratulated upon having devoted a quarter of a century to the art of playing a trumpet!
The “veteran” is of medium height. He doesn’t tan tan but red, and his face retains its ruddiness from one season to the next. While Red is remarkably good-humored, he literally sees red when he has to do with chiselers and liars. For the big red haired boy is a square straight-shooter himself.
He was born thirty miles from Salt Lake City. He lists Brigham Young among the half-dozen greatest men in history. However, the Nichols family were not practical Mormons.
Red’s father, E. W. Nichols, was professor of music at Weber College, Ogden, Utah, and at the State University in Salt Lake City. When little E. Loring (Red, to us) was three years old he was running around with a silver-plated trumpet in his mouth. At five, he played “America” before Weber’s entire student body.
“I always loved the cornet best. My trumpet technique improved under the guidance of Captain O’Callaghan,” he told me.
The boy was a good student. He also excelled on the track, and at basketball. A military career loomed ahead. For strangely enough, Red’s parents strenuously objected to their son having a musical career, unless he would devote himself exclusively to the classics.

“I ran away from home, the summer I was sixteen, to join a dance band at Piquet, Ohio,” the affable leader said. “It was called the Syncopating Five. We got stranded in Indianapolis. There was no work. I wouldn’t go home. Washed dishes in a lunch room for three weeks for my food.”
“Then, with nothing at all, I got Ralph Dunkee, of the now famous Sisters of the Skillet and organized a cooperative dance band. In Lake James, Indiana, we found ourselves broke. Luckily, about that time along came the Syncopating Five, and asked me—” Red gave us one of those priceless, roguish looks, and went on, “or rather I asked them, if I could have a job again.

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In Your Hat, pt. 9

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In Chapter 9 of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars Renee Carroll, she offers recollections of more celebrities than we could possibly list here. Many of the names are still familiar; others all but forgotten. A few we couldn’t even track down via the internet, and heaven knows we tried.

     EVEN Fred Keating, the magician, once forgot where he put his hat check!
     But hat check girls, even red-haired ones, have memories, so sometimes when business at my window is slack, I sit and think of the million and one things that have happened between the celebrity-laden walls of Sardi’s. Incidents, names, personalities galore, and sometimes just a casual word will start my train of thought along almost forgotten tracks. Would you like to lift the lid of the Carroll cranium and see what’s going on inside?
     Here comes George Jean Nathan, world’s best critic by his own admission. I’ll never forget the day I bawled him out because he insisted on having his hat set apart from the others—and how embarrassed he was. I never suspected anyone could embarrass him . . . telling Warner Baxter that he was my favorite movie star, only to be overheard by Richard Dix to whom I had dished out the same line only two days before . . . the day Helen Menken, reddest of the red-heads, gave us a big surprise by changing to the color gentlemen are supposed to prefer . . . Incidentally, she never takes her gloves off when she eats!
     And here is Robert Garland, who pilots (or piles-it) the dramatic column in the World-Telly, and is a regular customer as a certain blind spot in the roaring Fifties (they’re roaring further uptown now). He’d been a regular patient at the drink infirmary for more than a year when one night he showed at the barred door and knocked the magic knock. A weary, unshaved faced appeared in the aperture.
     “Pliss?”
     “Hello, Tony, I wanna come in.”
     “Who are you?” the face inquired.
     Infuriated because he had spent his good shekels for so many nights and still remained a dim bulb in the big sign, he shouted back the first thing that came to his mind—a catchline from a New Yorker cartoon.
     “You must remember me,” yelled Garland, “I’m the guy who punched my wife in the nose here last night.”
     And he was ushered in with any more undue ceremony!
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