The Coffee House Book

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2 Centennial Celebration

The Coffee House Centennial Celebration Book 2016 The Coffee House

Editor: Frances Vieta Designer: Robert N. Essman

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions made, both new and historic,members and friends, giving due credit to each in his or her place. And for invaluableeditorial assistance from Roger Angell, Michelle Arnot, Bill Ray, Ed Wilson.The illustrations on pages 19,21,23,37,45 and 68 were photographed and painstak-ingly prepared for reproduction in this book by Ellen Fisch.

The Coffee House TableWhen I sat down to make this sketch it was

early. The room was empty. Looking at this greatlong table I couldnt help seeing in my minds eyeall the interesting famous and not so famous people

I met and got to know sitting here over the years. And then adding tothat I thought of all those earlier years of The Coffee House history atthis same scarred wooden table.

Writers, editors, publishers, actors, directors, producers, on Broad-way and off, famous and not. All the arts, sciences, academia and on andon. The spirit is very much alive today. Im hoping my drawing caughtsome of that energy. Frank Modell Cover

Table of ContentsWere 100! cartoon,James Stevenson 1The Customs of The Place 4The Room with the Crowninshield Portrait, photo Bill Ray 5A Bit of Our History, Ben Hall 6A Place at the Table, Heywood Hale Broun 7Our Founders 7So Give a Toast to Our Centennial, Barbara Shook Hazen 8The Coffee House II, Christmas 2009, photo: Peter Kent 9Centennial Times Two, Sam Bryan 10

Centennial March, Thomas Tierney 12Life and Colliers Illustrations, Maxfield Parrish 15As I Walked in Tonight, Eustacia Purves Cutler 15Who the Hell Are You? Sam Bryan 16The Last Name in the Little Green Directory, Bill Crookston 16CartoonJohn Held, Jr 1920 17Cover for The New Yorker, drawing: Frank Modell 19A Seat at the Round Table, Stu Bryant 19Ode to Barbara, Bill Crookston 20What Propelled Me to Join,Joanna S. Rose 20

Algonquin Round Table, drawingJohn Held, Jr. 1925 21Quirky, Genial, Exploratory, Surprising, Nancy Eills 21Bravo Simon, Barbara Shook Hazen 22The Tradition of Civilized Discussion, Dan Rose 22



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Leonard Benchley, drawing: Lauren Stout 1922 23Youll Learn Something You Didnt Know Over the Soup,

Simon Jones 24

100 Years of Coffee House Memories,James Stevenson 25Just Another Lunch, Neilson Abeel 26Hiding My Humiliated Face, Mary Richie Smith 26He Was Happy To Be Here, Roger Angell 27There is Life in the Old Girl Yet! Bill Ray 28At a Recent Lunch, photo: Bob Essman 29A wall of members portraits, photo: Ellen Fisch 33The Original Old Girl, photos: Bill Ray 34The Story, Karl Kaplan 35Coffee House II Stairs, photo: Bill Ray 36

Remembering the Stairs, Lindley Kirksey Young 36The Coffee House Cellar, cartoon: Charles Addams 35To Be Continued. . . ,Adam Van Doren 38Something That Seemed Wonderfully Incongruous,

Mark Woodcock 39Then Came World War II, Ed Wilson 40Coffee HouseII, The Table, photo: Bill Ray 39Coffee HouseII, The Room, photo: Bill Ray 41A Robert Benchley Celebration, poster: Frank Modell 45Spellbound by the Magic, Steve Ross 45

That List of Worthies, Teri Noel Towe 46A Club for People Who Don't Join Clubs,Jeff Haddow 49An Auspicious Event, Ben Yarmolinsky 49The Drinking Song, Ben Yarmolinsky 50Cod Fish Balls and Bacon, Matt Clark 54I Dropped By For a Tuesday Lunch, Sidney Offit 54The Long Table Was Disconcerting,Josie Merck 56Matt and Me, Phyllis Malamud Clark 58Becoming His Own Person, Robert H. Werbel 58A Lively Entente One Wanted to Join, Roger Angell 59The Coffee House III The Table, photo: Bill Ray 60I Was Very Intimidated at First, Frances Vieta 66The Luckiest Mistake, Michael Barlerin 65Out With a Laugh! Mary Ellen von der Heyden 66Unsung Stewards,William Zinsser, 66Our Magical Brigadoon,John E. Donnelly 67I Was Made to Feel Most Welcome,John Milnes Baker 68A Dinner in Bohema, drawing by Fish 66The Silver Service 73The Rules of a Civilized Society 75Toasting a Century of Socializing Without Rules 76

Charles Passy 2015 The Wall Street Journalphotos Claudio Papapietro, Linda Kao, Terry Duszznski



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The

Customsof

The PlaceThe Constitution of The Coffee Houseis probably the most compact and

sensible code of Governanceever drafted by a social club.It consists of these half-dozen

Commandments only:

No officersNo charge accounts

No liveriesNo tips

No Set Speeches

NO RULES

The Coffee House remains a social club,one in which members are expected to talk about

their individual pursuits and interests butto refrain from spreading out business

papers and signing documents.



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The centerpiece of The Room is the oil portrait of founder Frank Crowninshield by Gordon Stevenson.Sculpture of a Foal on the mantle by John Held, Jr. Candlestick on table by Paul Manship.

Photo: Bill Ray



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A Bit of Our Historyby Ben Hall

Based on a speech given at the Fiftieth Anniversary Dinner, December 8,1965

Unrecorded in the annals of the Knickerbocker Club is an event which might be calledthe Great Coffee House Rebellion. One day in January, 1914, two members of the Knicker-bockerFrank Crowninshield and Rawlins L. Cottenetmet for lunch at a midtownhotel and agreed that they were fed up to the tops of the Arrow collars with the Knicker-bocker and its brass-buttoned flunkies, silver duck-presses, and gold-plated table conversation.According to Crowninshields recollections, they decided that it would be agreeable anddesirable to found a small dining club composed of such members of the KnickerbockerClub as had no sympathy with business or wealth or with such things that business and wealthproduced or implied.

Endorsing this high-minded conspiracy was Henry G. Gray, and during the next fewweeks the three defectors invited five other friends to join them: Cyril Hatch, BertramCruger, James Barney, Lydig Hoyt, andJames B. Eustis. They called themselves TheFoes of Finance Dinner Club and on February 5, 1914, held their first meeting, in the middledownstairs room of the old Brevoort House on lower Fifth Avenue.

The Foes of Finance continued to meet more or less regularly during 1914 at such spotsas the Caf Lafayette, Oscar and Billys Chop House on 36th Street, Luchows, and TheKnickerbocker Hotel. Their number was brought up to ten with the addition of FredericKernochan and Thomas Slidell.

Some time in the fall of 1915 it became apparent that no more allies were to be recruitedfrom the Knickerbocker Club, and if the group were to increase it would have to start findingmembers elsewhere. Accordingly, a luncheon was held to discuss plans for a new club withpermanent rooms of its own. Crowninshields vision, which he first articulated in a memo-

randum he had written in 1907, seems almost clairvoyant.On a side street in the theatre district. Two hundred members. Up one flight. Club to

be called the Beefsteak, or some similar name. One long dining table. Dues, $30 a year. Clubto consist of one big room, one music room, and grill room. These rooms to open at one inthe afternoon and close at midnight. No brokers or bankers and perhaps no drama critics.No card playing. The club to be for sculptors, artists, foreigners, illustrators, authors, editors,professors, sportsmen, lawyers, actors, singers, playwrights, musicians, inventors, composers,statesmen, judges, etc. Members to pay cash for everything. The club would be a revoltagainst the marble palace idea and would be very simple and cheap.

Thus was born The Coffee House, which for the next sixty-seven years was quarteredin the Hotel Seymour, at 54 West 45th Street. (The name Coffee House was decided onin the hope that the Club might take its character from the coffee houses which first appeared

in London during the reign of Charles II, and had grown to such popularity by Queen Annestime that they were patronized by all the wits and talent of the town.) In 1982, demolitionof the hotel began and the Club was required to move. Fortunately, another brownstonewas found, just a few doors to the west at No. 70 on the same street. After extensive reno-vations of those premises, The Coffee House reopened in August 1983, with its accustomedfurnishings refurbished and redeployed.



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A Place at the Tableby Heywood Hale Broun,

who delivered this address at the annual new members dinner, October 29, 1996

Embedded in the long table is a silver design commemorating The Coffee Housemembership ofJo Mielziner. He was a distinguished stage designer, and nearly half a cen-tury ago created the settings for a Henry Fonda play called Point of No Return. In the castof that play was an obscure actor in a part the very name of which best speaks its narrowscope: The Second Bank Clerk. That actor, nibbling at the outer edge of the theatricalpie, was me, and I was quite startled to receive a letter from Mielziner indicating that hewished to put me up for The Coffee House Club. I could not understand the eligibility ofthe failed son of a famous man, but quickly discovered that my sponsor saw me not as afailure or a success, but simply as one who might add a harmonious note to the conversa-tional music of the round table.

As the years passed and my career wound its chancy way, I realized that my place atthe table meant more than my place on the ladderthat none of us was a success or a fail-ureall of us were simply Coffee House members, people devoted to agreeable, civilizedconversation.

You will, I am sure, remember those old fantasies about the weary traveler who, at twi-light, takes a side road to a strangely antique inn and a lot of merriment among men in three-cornered hats and women in mobcaps. The traveler has the time of his life but, later, cannever find the road or the inn again.

The good thing about our magic inn is that West 45th Street is easy to find and, thoughthe hats are ordinary, the timeless ease and good cheer match any fourth dimension refuge.

G.K. Chesterton thought of heaven as The Inn At the End of the World. In mylong years at the Coffee House, a lot of men and, more lately, women, have departed our

table, leaving only merriment behind. Sydney Smith, the 19th century clergyman who as-pired to eat pat de foie to the sound of trumpets, which he considered a suitable entranceto the hereafter, thought of heaven as a march up a winding staircase to a place where afootman threw open a door to an eternal luncheon party.

I hope there is somewhere out ahead of me an eternal Coffee House where I will meetHoby Weekes, Nat Benchley, Paul Bonner,Jo Mielziner, and all the others who tookme into a luncheon party sadly not eternal, but one where care never climbed the stairs.

To you, new members, I extend the hope that your stay here will be as long and ashappy as mine, and that everything will stay the same except the subject of conversation.

OurFoundingMembersJames Barney

Rawlins L. CottenetBertram CrugerJames B. Eustis

Frank CrowninshieldHenry G. Gray

Cyril HatchLydig Hoyt

Frederic KernochanThomas Slidel

Frank Crowninshield(1872-1947) in a portrait c.1915when his friend Cond Nast hiredhim to edit the new Vanity Fairmagazine and when he led thefounding of The Coffee House.

Photo courtesy of the GeorgeGrantham Bain Collectionat the Library of Congress



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Hurrah for our centennial yeara century of being here.We celebrate still going strongwhile missing former members gone,

whose images adorn our walls,whose footsteps echo in our halls.whose lives live on in memoryas part of our shared history.

Among this special years delightswere Chats and Monday movie nights.More events filled our dinner plate.Some highlights I will now relate.

In January as toes frozewe had Beaux Arts and Daniel Rose,plus lively talk of Gotham clubs,no more, each once a vibrant hub.

Soon February, even colderbrought Love in the Land of Barefoot

Soldiers,a straw vote for the Oscars too,and the Art of Mahjongwho knew!

March, a bluster whose winds baffle,brought winners in our yearly raffle,Unsolved murder, much suspecting,also a night of China collecting.

April in a mood more briobrought Velasquez and

the Anderson trio,plus moot discourse of higher ed.Will it soon be a Dodo dead?

Hooray the month of May unfurleda Podell trip around the world,our NY arts, the Frick collectionand T. Williams on close inspection.

June busted out in warmer style.We dipped our fingers in the Nile,and heard how Adams did enablethe American round table.

July brought bonne temps trs FranaisDon Morrison re Bastille Day,Artwatch, B. Rathbone and a lookat Marion Lindbergs searching book.

Hot August found us in the knowon Henry Fonda and Ferragosto,how the new Whitney came to beand Brian Ricklins charity.

September more treasures unfurledByrds flight to the top of our world,A special night of Gershwin song,Nat Benchley and Madeline Kahn.

October brought us cooler days,Ed Wilsons book, a Wodehouse play,and our auction whose bidding warsmake spirits rise and coffers soar.

November knocked on winters doorwith Brit piano and Men of War,as well as a most special visionof Caribbean impression.

Now its December, time to cheerthe grand finale of our year.We greet and share fun anecdoteswhile slipping oysters down our throats.

We bask in the enormous skillof Nancy and our musicalteamJohn, Joyce, Tom Tierney,Mark, Steve and fiddling Gregory.

So Give a Toast to Our Centennial



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Its also time to shout hoorayto all who plan each CH day,

and pay our bills and give their mostas helper, auctioneer and host.

Kudos Irena, Alberto, toofor winning meals, each bite a coup.Anthony, Jenny and Jasminewere grateful that you grace our scene.

So raise a glass to well begunthe Coffee House, a hundred and oneWe start a brand-new century

still vibrant and the place to be.

So give a toast to our centennial.May CH pleasures be perennial.

December, finale of our year,brings being all together being herein spirits bubbly as those in our glassswallowing oysters raising a glass

as we to celebrate now and joyous nowand a glorious past will bring our waySpanish dancers a holidayCoffee House, a century old,is still the place to be.

Barbara Shook Hazen

The 1998 Christmas Dinner at The Coffee house II. Photo Peter Kent



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Centennial Times Two

Wonderful encounters with David Biberman dont always have to be at orabout The Coffee House. His other loves include his family, the Democratic Party,and, before too much Steinbrenner, The New York Yankees. A small group of usused to make at least one annual pilgrimage to the Bronx, for a while on a boatfrom the East River in the East 90s. He and I have even done the new Yankee Sta-dium. But once, earlier on, when we were each able to climb over seats to getrefills of hot dogs and beer, we took with us, Robin, a teenage die-hard Yankee fan.Robin knew every statistic about the Yankees from back to Reggie Jackson. To tryto impress him, I told him about my early days there with Berra, Rizzuto and evenDiMaggio. David sat for a few minutes and then said calmly, And I was here for

Ruth and Gehrig. Sam BryanPhoto: Terry Duszznski



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Centennial March

Welcome to The Coffee HouseMusic & Lyrics by Thomas Tierney



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As I Walked in Tonight

When I first walked into The Coffee House my eye fell on the Maxfield Par-rish Bulletin Board and I thought how pleased my father, John Purves, would bethat Id been invited to become a member.

Maxfield Parrish and my grandfather Austin Purves were close friends and myfamily had many Parrish pictures. As a child I loved sleeping under The WassailBowl. It was steeped in Parrish Blue with a flash of red from the Wassail bearerssockjust enough to tell me it was a Christmas picture.

Quiller Couch, Kenneth Grahame, Maxfield Parrish, and my grandfather usedto summer in Fowey in Cornwall. Family lore has it that these men are the animalsin The Wind in the Willows. I cant vouch for who was who, but I believe ArthurQuiller Couch was Ratty who loved to row on the Fowey River.

As I walked in tonight I thought of The Wassail Bowl which now hangs in mysons house, and hope that one day he, too, will be invited to become a member of

the Coffee House. How pleased his grandfather would be.Eustacia Purves Cutler

Maxfield Parrishs original artfor the May 11, 1922 cover

of Life, The Humor Magazine(right) now graces The Coffee

House entry serving as ourBulletin Board.

The Wassail Bowl, Parrishspainting for a cover ofColliers is now in the privatecollection of Richard Grandin(below).



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Who the Hell Are You?

I first walked up the creaky stairs to Coffee House I (54 W 45th St) in the

mid 1950s (ouch, thats 60 years ago!) My father had joined in 1953 and was justlyproud of his new club and wanted to show it off. It soon became family custom tomeet there before a special theatre evening, eat roast beef or a steak sandwich andget to an 8:30 or 8:40 curtain. I loved it and probably had a couple of illegal drinks(drinking age was 18 then in NY, but I was under that).

During college, my father would bring me to the all male crowd for lunch. Iwas told to listen and not say muchespecially to people from THAT magazine.I did and loved it.

In the early 1970s my father pleased me by asking if Id like to be put up formembership. (Maybe he was tired of buying my lunch.) I jumped at the possibility.In September 1971, I sent in a check for $49.50 covering an initiation fee, anddues for the rest of the year.

At one of the first annual dinners I attended I repaid my father by treatinghim: total for two dinners $25.00! At that dinner or a later one, the usual andusually reliable MC,Woody Broun, was delayed. The soft spoken acting secretary,Page Cross, whispered introductions about the several speakers. Just as the lastspeaker finished, Woody bounded up the stairs, tossed off his cape and derby andproceeded to give his witty introductions to all of the speakers who had all finishedtheir talks.

Finally, before one lunch on my own, during my first year or so, I drank theusual glass of wine, sat silently and listened as two senior, white-haired memberschatted with each other. It was near the holidays and I was finally feeling like a realmember, when one turned to the other and said, Well since no one else is here,lets go into lunch.

(In CH I you went in to lunch, like today; in CH II you went down tolunch.) I was suddenly feeling a bit left out, when the other noticed me and asked,Who the hell are you? Sam Bryan, Dashed off on 5 June 2015

The Last Name in theLittle Green Directory

I read William Zinssers masterpiece, On Writing Well, in 1985 and itchanged the way I write. While remembering the tenets, I forgot about the bookuntil the thirtieth anniversary edition hit the stores in 2006. Two enticing chapterswere: Write as Well as You Can and The Sound of Your Voice. I read these inthe store even before buying the book.

In 2015, at his funeral at St. Barts it was said that the author always insistedon keeping his number listed in the public telephone directoryI found it thereafter reading the book. Sure, come down tomorrow, Bill said on the phone, but

not before 3:30 because I go to lunch and need time to walk back. (Can we doubthis lunch was at The Coffee House?)



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Pages from a List of Members c:1920, cartoons by John Held, Jr.



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I met Bill Zinsser on December 8, 2006, in his office on Fifty-Fifth Street.He wrote the date in my copy of On Writing Wellduring a two-hour conversationthat ended only when the office closed.

He thought people spend too much time e-mailing and cell-phoning but heloved the word processor. With a new computer replacing a 1986 model he couldnow send an e-mail, if anyone showed me how to do it. He told me he neverwatched news programs on television. One year he went to spring training with thePittsburgh Pirates (my hometown team) and said his wife was from East Liverpool,a place near Pittsburgh on the Ohio River. We talked about his book.

Four years later I joined The Coffee House. Imagine my surprise and delightin learning that Bill Zinsser was a member toothe last name in the little greenmembers directory.

In another marathon conversation (at the CH) he showed an unexpected in-

terest in my early career as an engineer. His college crowd thought engineers werea bunch of nerds and, no one knew any of them. He asked if my classes were, atthe far end of the campus where no one ever went. I confirmed his characterizationof the young me.

Bill said his new interest in engineering came from watching Modern Mar-vels, The History Channel, and other TV programs where he saw great projectslike the Hoover Dam and the Thames River Barrier. Now he thought engineerswere, the real doers and builders of the world, not the ciphers he rememberedfrom college. He even said maybe he should have been a builder in life instead ofbeing what he had been. This surprised me.

Having dropped out of Princeton to join the army during WW II, Bill was inthe tower of the Cathedral of Sienna on VE Day. Bells were ringing. He was one offour American army sergeants celebrating there and, we all had German names.(He recited the names66 years later.)

In an article for the Yale Alumni Magazineabout starting his writing coursein New Haven in 1971 Bill said:

Clarity would be the main prize, along with simplicity and brevity: shortwords and short sentences. My favorite stylists would be invoked: theKing James Bible, Abraham Lincoln, Henry David Thoreau, E.B.

White, and Red Smith.

The engaging title of the alumni article was, First, Use Plain English.For The Coffee House Centennial I offer these brief notes about Bill Zinsser,

remembering him in a first-person account favoring the active voice and shortwords. We were privileged to have him as a member of The Coffee House. Hisideas belong to the world. Bill Crookston



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A Seat at the Round Table

My first effort towards membership with The Coffee House was fairly rocky,or so it seemed at the time. My good friend Henry Hope Reed had suggested thathe put me up for membership, but I quickly had something else in mind. I was bynow several years at W. W. Nortons. I knew that George P. Brockway, the com-

panys President, was a member of the Coffee House. I would ask George to secondme as a candidate for Club membership. Thus, I reasoned. I would not only havea path into the Club but also presumably gather brownie points with George.

On the basis of this reasoning, I popped into his office one morning and askedif he would second me for Coffee House membership. He said politely somethinglike: Stu, I recently put up our treasurer-an able and most likeable officer butclearly not in the Wasp category and clearly a man of Eastern European descent.The club blackballed him. As a result of all this I have resigned from The CoffeeHouse. We both smiled and the interview ended there.

How times have changed!

Within a day or so I had rung up Henry Reed and I was soon enjoying a seatat the round table. Stu Bryant

Original art for the November 27, 1965 cover by Frank Modell



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What Propelled Me to Join

My husband had been a long-time member, but what propelled me to joinThe Coffee House was to learn that it was a favorite haunt ofJoseph Choate, oneof my heroes because of an anecdote I heard about him several decades ago:

At a dinner party, people were asked what person, real, imaginary, fictionalor historical, they would like to return as (if reincarnated). Choate repliedunlike those who said Napoleon, Socrates, Queen Elizabeth, etc., Iwould like to come back as Mrs. Choates second husband.

I have admired him ever sinceand he admired The Coffee Houseso I do,too. Joanna S. Rose

Barbara Schmitter,Shes no quitter,She went to the U-of-N.

If they ask ya,In Nebraska,She was Barbara Stahl back then.

Willa Cather,From Nebrasker,Came to New York City too.

Her work complete,Down on Bank Street,She moved to Park Avenue.

And for Barbara,Columbia,

A post graduate degree.

Stanford U though,Palo Alto,Was for her PhD.

With this knowledge,Dean of College,Became her job on Broadway.

Proscribing odd,Around the quad,Not like Barnard of today.

Alma mater,Of her daughter,Conferred at Pitt her degree.

Academic,Non-polemic,

Its Barbara Schmitter for me.Bill Crookston

Ode to Barbara



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Quirky, Genial, Exploratory, Surprising

When I joined, you found it on 45th Street next door to a pizza shop. Thesign on the door betrayed nothing of what went on at The Coffee House.

Push open the door. Hope the light switches on, and go straight up the steepstairs, covered with really ugly carpeting; past the 2nd floor dining room, all set forlunch; and head up another steep, narrow flight to the Before Lunch room. Lookbeyond the familiar photos, sketches, paintings and nondescript sofas and chairs.At the end, in front of curtains gray with age and dust, is the hexagonal table.

The atmosphere sparkled. Around the table sat an array of individualists prob-ably drinking wine or Scotch and taking their time. We didnt ask or necessarilyknow the names of lunch companions, but they were welcoming and articulate.

I liked it when the members became impassioned, triggering exchanges ofwitwhether it was the academic view, the Southern view, the Brit view, the viewof the insider or the outsider. I liked it when one stalwart, surrounded by convivialopposition, held on to his conservative tenets to the bitter end. Specifics, alas, es-cape me, but I do remember pronouncing Dustin Hoffman a very inferior actor.

And at lunch one day a member stopped by for lunch on the way to delivera commission. He arrived at the long table with a four-foot stained steel arm in tow.It added a certain lan.

I liked meeting John, my late husband, for The Coffee Houses Wednesdayevening events. He always found good conversation and even someone with whomto speak Japanese. Also, he liked it because I got to pay.

When we moved into our present quarters, I remarked, Oh, this looks likea real club!

Yet it is still The Coffee Housequirky, genial, exploratory, surprising. I

still like it. It is The Coffee House, and the spirit continues. Nancy Eills



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Bravo SimonThe big pleasure of belonging to the same special club my first esteemed

and beloved boss belonged to and, for whom I made weekly lunch reservationsthe going system in l953-1958. He was Hugh McNair Kahler, fiction editor ofthe Ladies Home Journal. I, who weekly talked to Pearl and Ernest to seewhat they might have coming up and who, himself, wrote 99 consecutive novelsfor the Saturday Evening Postand had a bookcase full of them in his office. Hewas 75 at the time and such a gentleman that he got me coffee from theJournalkitchens. (And p.s. I have a bookcase with over 80 childrens and adult books;Mr. Kahlernever Hughwas an example to follow in a gaggle of good ways.)

After Naked Came the Stranger, a racy horoscope-based paperback came out,

written by 12, I wrote You and Your Lucky Stars for Pocket Books. So I sug-gested to friend and multi-faceted wordsmithWillard (Wede) Espy, Why dontwe get together a fun saga of a totally nave girl who comes to NYC and getsScrewMagazine thinking it is the best place to find lodgings and employmentand goes on to have serial astrological lovers. End result, Wede and I met a fewtimes, imbibed a little and made notes, but never got beyond the foreplay of ouroeuvre.

Jean Le Corbellier turned out to be one of my favorite fellow members, butat first I thought him stiffly intellectual, because, probably, I didnt know howto approach him conversationally. Then one time, post divorce personal trauma,

it was raining hard and I, crying all-the-way home in the rain, thinking no one Iknew was aroundwhen I smacked into Jean at a street corner. His unexpectedwarm empathy and our conversation after, jump-started my close friendship withJean and his wife.

When I first met Simon Jones, I thought he was David Hare. Not sure why.For sure, I have enjoyed his being in plays in the Apple, Hartford andWilliamstown. Bravo Simon. Barbara Hazen

The Tradition of Civilized Discussion

My first visit to the Coffee House was as a luncheon guest of my friends JoMielziner, the great scenic designer, and Brendan Gill, the literary critic.

The conversation was lively and stimulating, and I enjoyed it so much thatboth of my hosts suggested I join the Club. AndThe Coffee House has been asource of delight ever sinceto me, to my wife,Joanna, and to our son, David.

And my granddaughter, Lauren Rose, who is also a member.Of the guests I myself have brought to the club over the years, the one who

most enjoyed the intellectual give-and-take was Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.The noted historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr also enjoyed his visit.

Long live the Coffee House and the tradition of civilized discussion it rep-

resents! Dan Rose



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Caricature of Leonard Benchley by Lauren Stout 1922.



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Youll Learn Something YouDidnt Know Over the Soup.

I was first introduced to the Club byJack Ralli in the early 1980s. He wasthe favorite cousin of my friend and landlady in London. (It was his widow Miri-anne who had the red leather wing chairs redone in his memory.) The group thatregularly assembled then were to my eyes as intriguing a cast of characters as everpopulated the Algonquin, around the corner. I can see many of them still, on thewall of the current dining-room, each afforded the privilege of a portrait by BillRay. Regulars included St. John Terrellwho founded the annual ceremony of

Crossing the Delaware and played George Washington in the freezing cold untilhe was quite elderly and his friends begged him to stop. There was Bob Cazenove,who wore pince-nez, and who represented the accused in the notorious leathermask murder, and regaled us with the grisly details.Joe Culligan, whose eye patchmade him seem even more of a pirate than he was, regaled us with stories of perhapsdubious authenticity. David Brown brought us more than a whiff of real Holly-wood producing glamor; Priscilla Ridgwaygave us insights into the criminal mindfrom her involvement with the Mystery Writers of America. Paul Cranefield,

Willard Espy, Woody Broun, Gardner Botsford, they have all left us, but thetradition goes on and the true delight of The Coffee House is that you literally

never know who is going to bring something to the table.Often there were fascinating guests. I clearly recall Dick Tuckwho wasnt in

the least remorseful about his legendary political dirty tricks, and happily detailedhow he derailed Senator Edmund Muskies presidential campaign. On one occasionI came upon former Mayor John Lindsaylooking through the members books,at the top of the stairs. He graciously joined me for lunch, and by coffee, he wassuddenly gone, without warning. Im fairly sure it wasnt anything I said.

In 1998, the Clubroom became a studio for the BBC when an old friend, theradio producer, Jonathan James-Moore, successfully proposed to his superiors anidea for a weekly broadcast called Talk of New Yorkto be hosted by Steve Ross and

me. We did a series of eight hour-long shows, but the program was regrettably notrenewed because a new Controller of Radio 4 arrived on the scene in London, andJonathan retired. But in the meantime, the Club buzzed on Wednesdays as neverbefore. All the members were welcome as guests in the audience, and there was sel-dom an inch of space to spare. It was just as well, because the mass of people servedto soften the deadly acoustics of the room. We certainly had a wide array of guests:Malcolm Gladwell, Michael M. Thomas, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Anne Kaufman, DavidFeiger, John Miller (twice: we couldnt have enough of his stories of covering theMob for NBC News), Tyne Daly, Andy Richter, and Lucianne Goldberg, who ad-

vised Linda Tripp in the Monica Lewinsky Affair. Steve introduced a sparkling array

of cabaret artists including Julie Wilson, Fascinating Aida, KT Sullivan, Daryl Sher-man, and indeed himself. We had a string of top-notch comedian commentators:



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Lewis Black, Susie Essman, Karen Bergreen, Jim Gaffigan, and Stan Freberg. Ourbest get was a weekly reading written and performed by David Sedaris. I like tothink we first introduced him to what have become his enthusiastic British fans.

But in the end, the real irony is that we didnt simply recruit our guests fromthe membership: David Bibermans first-hand account of the Normandy landingsand the Battle of the Bulge has left a profound impression on all who were luckyenough to hear it, and a couple of bon mots from Roger Angellwould have beenworth whole interviews with some of my radio guests. If you really want to hearthe Talk of New York, just come to The Coffee House at lunchtime. I guarantee

that by dessert, youll learn something you didnt know over the soup.Simon Jones



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Just Another Lunch

It was Thursday October 25, 1984 and I was sitting, facing away from thestairs, at the nearly full drinks-table.

There had been lively conversation among the regulars Wede, Woody,Paul, David, Gardner, Roger and others, when there was a quick silence.

Michael Powell, the film director, rose from his seat to greet a large greysuit which eased into the chair next to me. I turned to my left and looked into

the face of Alec Guinness. Conversation picked upthe Brits were in town for afilm festival.

I finally screwed up my courage and turned to Guinness: My favorite movieof all time is The Horses Mouth.

He put his hand on my left arm: My dear boy, you and I are in a minority.Shortly, the group descended to the dining room for just another lunch at

The Coffee House. Neilson Abeel

Hiding My Humiliated FaceI had just moved to New York after living for eight years in Tokyo. A scholar

friend, a man of the world whom I wanted to think of as my beau, invited me todinner at the Club when it was still on West 45th Street, near Fifth Avenue. I wasboth proud and curioushow very special to be asked to dine at a men's club (asit then was). I took my seat in the well-appointed reception room, where somemembers were sipping their drinks and conversing. I waited and waited and waited.Finally, someone brought me the telephone. It was my purported host, apologizingfor breaking our date. Because, you see, he had to escort the novelist, Muriel Spark

to the airport. But of course, I should order dinner anyway, to be put on his account.I crept away, hiding my humiliated face.Now, years later, I am proud to come at, and for, my pleasure.

Mary Richie Smith



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He Was Happy To Be HereJack Dierdorffand I had lunch here two or three times a week for thirty

years, but until tonight I didnt know a whole lot about him. I think this was ex-actly the way he wanted us to be friends. Ive always gabbled on at table, heldforth at times, disagreed too sharply, and told the same stories over and over, butJack didnt mind. He was a fabulous listenerhis chin slightly lifted, his headturned and his gaze cheerfully upon youand he responded mildly, for the mostpart, holding his own, but then waiting for you or someone else to go on. Bits ofhim came out in time-concerts hed been to, difficult trails hed hiked, something

about trains or maybe Mexico. Alonso now and then. The first time he ever men-tioned goats and Okinawa in the same breath, I stopped him in his trackswait!what!and made him tell us some more, but he only went on about that for an-other minute or so, then stopped. He wasnt shy or withdrawn: he possessed theboyish charm and the reticent ease of an ego-free life. He loved the daily flow andlaughter and good company. He was happy to be here.

I kept telling myself to try to be more like Jack and to make him talk moreabout himself, but neither of those things happened, and perhaps it didnt matter.Something else about him was becoming clear. His main event, his chef doeuvre,his lifes work, was this place. As the Acting Secretary and starting even before that,

he became The Coffee House, in person, and The Coffee House to some degreebecame him. He knew every one of us and had an idea where we each fitted inhere, and also, of course, where we didnt quite fit in. He remembered whod beenhere when he first arrived, in 1979, and what the talk and the tone was like backthen, but miraculously never tried to preserve that. He let us change, and seemedcalm about whatever it was that we were becoming.

More janitor than curator, he took on the urgent daily stuff, with the help ofthe Informal Committeethe thickness of the Mongole soup and the thinness ofour Chase drawing account; the clanking ice machine and the rising age level; theominous next lease and the lagging dues; the reckless topers and the tightwad non-

donors; the deafening dining-room noise level on Tuesdays and the tomblike si-lences on Mondays and Wednesdays. We were changing; everything was changing!Wed never surviveonly we did and we have, and I think it was all because ofJack. His hard work may have saved us, but I think it was more his sweetness. Hewas our avatar and our Dad. All we had to do was try to be a little more like him,and to come back again for lunch tomorrow.

Thank you, Jack. Roger AngellFrom the memorial service on October 2, 2013



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There is Life in the Old Girl Yet!1970 was a terrible year to move back to New York. The city was broke and

broken. Murder, mayhem, rape and robbery had more than doubled in just fiveyears and would continue to climb. Cops would not investigate a break-in unless amurder was committed. Subways were filthy, covered in graffiti and dangerous. Ihad been working in the comfort of Beverly Hills and Paris for over seven years andwould need to make some adjustments.

My old friend D.A. Pennebaker had his film studio on 45th street. We hadworked on eight films together, and when I called Penny, he invited me to lunch.The Coffee House was almost next door, at 54 West 45th St.

The Club was on the parlor floors of two old brownstones that were adjacentto the west side of the Hotel Seymour. At the top of the stairs you could turn leftfor the dining room or right for the club room. The club room had two workingfireplaces along its west wall, a Steinway grand in the rear and the octagonal drinkingtable, always called round, near the windows on 45th that was up on a platformabout six inches high. Stepping up or down could be a problem depending on thelight and how much you had to drink. Directly above the table was a ceiling fan,which could have been from the set of Casablanca, which was a good thing, be-cause everybody smoked. Pipes, cigarettes and cigars blazed away.

Some people paused at the top of the stairs to glance left and right. You couldsee from there who you would like to see and who you didnt, and position yourselfaccordingly. Most of the members had a couple of drinks before lunch, which madethe crowded table a jolly bunch.

For me, The Coffee House was love at first bite.After my third lunch with Penny, a group of somber men gathered around

me and started to ask questions. Page Cross, the acting secretary, had a mannerthat would have made Ronald Colman or James Mason seem shabby and their ac-cents middle class. He drilled in on what was my greatest ambition? Where wouldI be in ten or twenty years? I made up something. It was unnerving. On the wayout I asked Penny what the Hell was that all about? He said people had to be askedto become members of the club, and that meant coming three times and then beinggrilled by that committee.

A letter came a few weeks later from The Coffee House. It was written on

Tiffany Blue 100 lb. bond. It invited me to join the Club, and outlined the hoursfor lunch. Drinks were served in the afternoon and one could have dinner by callingahead. The menu had three possibilities: chicken, steak, or lamb chops, all preparedby Margaret, the Club Chef, who had been elevated to Sainthood long before Ijoined, and served by Madeline, another Club Saint. Dinner was served fireside inthe Club Room. Ladies were welcome in the evening and for lunch on some Sat-urdays. The Club was closed the last three weeks in August.

One of the many nonrules was no introductions! The conceit was that weall knew who the other person was. The reality was that the Club had some famousstorytellers; real pros, like Marc Connelly, a playwright and raconteur who had a

TV show, and others just as good, likeWoody Brounwho was a brilliant monolo-gist. Some of the stories had been rehearsed or told many times before, so they



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were perfected, and the worst thing that could happen is some jerk stepping on thepunch line with an I want you to meet my hick cousin from. . . This is a rulewe should bring back even if the good storytellers are all dead.

Name dropping at The Coffee House was an art form, and world class com-petitors vied for the title. If you heard Winny or Frank or Babe, you knewwho they were. But none could touch George Oppenheimer, who might openwith I was showing Fred and Ginger a new step, when the damndest thing hap-pened. . . .

The Club was proud of its No Rules but in spite of its No Dress Codeeveryone seemed to wear a jacket and tie; a few, likeWede Espy, a fresh boutonnierein the lapel. One exception was Burgess Meredith, who never wore a tie and sel-dom a jacket or socks. Thats Hollywood. Richard Widmarkdidnt come oftenand dressed like a businessman. Wish he had worn the black shirt and white tie hewore in The Kiss of Death1947, when he pushed the old lady in a wheelchair downa flight of stairs. I loved that movie almost as much as Joey Gallo who saw it 30times and wore the same getup for the rest of his life, which ended abruptly at Um-bertos Clam House.

From the street level on 45th you would never have known a club was there.

The door was painted black with a gold border. In a discreet script about an inchhigh: The Coffee House, a private club. Just to the right of the door was a bar



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called de Blue de Pinto de Blue but it screamed out MOB! Customers were veryscarce. I went inside once to use their pay phone, which was near the Jukebox,and the bartender just stared at me with pure menace.

Back up on the clubroom floor toward the very back there was a disguised

passageway that connected to the Hotel Seymour. It was here the Club maintaineda truly posh ladies room, second only to Radio City Music Hall, for the femaleguests in the evening. It was said that Tallulah Bankhead was a frequent guest ofFrank Crowninshield, and at least two members, I knew, were Stage Door John-nys who married chorus beauties.

One of these lookers, Mary Orr, who married Reggie Denham, wrote a shortstory that was made intoAll About Eve, the immortal Bette Davis movie. Therewere a few Saturdays that ladies were welcomed for lunch. It was from this curtain,hiding the mystery door, that the legendary The New Yorkereditor St. Clair McK-elwayfrequently emerged, taking a shortcut from his room in the Seymour. Hewould quietly tiptoe to the table, hand quivering. His favorite drink would arrivethe instant he sat down. I cant remember what he drank, but after two or three hebecame quite loquacious.

I am truly bad at remembering stories but if my native state Nebraska wasever mentioned, Reggie Denham, an English actor and director of some renownwould come alive. His work took him back and forth between Broadway and Hol-lywood. Late one night he was asleep in a berth zooming across the heartlandaboard the Burlington Zephyr when nature called. Reggie was in the steel WCwhen the Zephyr flew from the tracks and into a cornfield, somewhere in Ne-braska, cars jack knifing and rolling over inflicting many deaths and wounded.Reggie had hit his head on the steel wall and was out cold. He remembered wak-ing up in the back of a hearse along with a few bodies. He pounded on the glasspartition as the hearse sped toward the morgue. The driver, without slowing down,turned around with a look of sheer horror, that Reggie said he could never get anactor to repeat. The hearse lurched to the left across the road and into a deep ir-rigation ditch and rolled over. Reggie and the driver were later rescued and shareda ride to the hospital.

In spite of a few bohemians, the Club has always been overrun with goodbreeding. But our only claim to a true blue blood was Anthony Chandler the bar-tender. His mother was a Borganza and the Infanta of Portugal. The Chandlerswere Hudson Valley Knickerbockers and Nobs who lived like Downton Abbeyuntil

the money just ran out one day, and they telegraphed Tony, who was a Junior atStanford: Come home. Stop. Money gone. Stop.

In those days no one came out of the closet, but every club had life-longbachelors. So did the Boy Scouts and the Navy. (Frank Crowninshield never marriedand didnt seem to have any interest in either sex.) One of our members was a dis-tinguished theater critic who wandered over to Times Square in his tuxedo, afterthe annual dinner, looking for rough trade and found it. He was murdered in acheap hotel room. That caused a discreet buzz for a few days.

Our only Queen was Jonathon Katz, a manager-bartender, who swishedaround the club as a true pioneer trying out for Cage aux Folles. Most people

found this amusing. What they found annoying was his habit of correcting anyonewho used a phrase that was not strictly P.C. One had to be careful about race, sex



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or anything not politically correct. You would be corrected. If a person ordered asecond or third drink he would hiss, Reality check! He wasnt above flirtingwith male members. He thought his mother should be made a member. He wasone of a kind. He was becoming a serious problem about the time he was stricken

with AIDS.On the subject of diversity, the Club has had a few Negroes, Blacks or African-Americans. When I first joined, Bobby Short was a frequent guest and was giventhe old fraternity rush. I think the Coffee House was too dull for him, as he was,after all, a star at the Carlyle. He stopped coming. When we were at 70 West 45thSt., an editor at Ellemagazine, which was on 5th and 45th was a guest. She wasvery well dressed, beautiful, and what we have to call these days black but shewas really more caf au lait. I make it a point to invite any smart attractive womanthat comes in the door to join. She did, and was around for a few years beforemoving back to Paris.

The non-rule that has been evoked more than all the others combined wasthe NO PAPERS, NO PAPERS! Non-rule. It has been whispered, hissed andscreamed! One example I can remember was Monroe Wheeler, a founder ofMOMA and an eminence griseof the Club, was sitting off to the side at a smalltable with his secretary. Monroe was very old but his faint voice could still be heardfrom time to time. He was holding some notes and dictating things like the mostprofound thing I ever heard Picasso say. . . . and the strange thing about Matissewas. . . . Mary Ann, our hostess of many years was becoming very upset. Shecame over and asked me if she should go over and take the papers. I told her thatwas a bad idea.

The long table, where people sat down in the order they came and conversedfreely, was modeled on the Beefsteak Club in London, which was founded in the18th century. It was, and still is, an extremely exclusive group of men, where allthe waiters, by custom, are all called Charles.

The politics of the Beefsteak was Whig. The Coffee House would be liberalDemocrat. Members who voted otherwise would do well to keep quiet. I shuddertoday when I hear members say, The New York Timesis too liberal to read.

The original proposal, typed out on copy paper by Frank Crowninshield, usedThe Beefsteak as the working title for the new club. Be happy they changed it toThe Coffee House and we dont call all staff Charles.

If the long club table was an 18th century idea, the style and the manners of

The Coffee House were early 19th, in fact, Edwardian. Bertie had been dead onlyfive years and that world would live on until World War One. And it was a mansworld and a club world. A man about town would belong to many clubs.

Looking back, our Club was still Edwardian by todays standards when Ijoined. It was easy going but people behaved well and were not afraid to show goodbreeding or manners. Good conversation and humor were prized but not dirty sto-ries. I never heard any profanity until Ruth Gordon sat down at the table. Sheraised swearing to a high art form. She could stand a sailors hair on end, and hertiming would make Chris Rock marvel. She was loved by all. Her husband andcollaborator, Garson Kanin,was fascinating to listen to about Hollywood and

Broadway, but Ruth was more fun.But I got ahead of myself. How did a woman get into this mans world?



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Overnight, is the answer. Like lightning striking a church steeple, BOOM it wasgone and the girls were in. Clarkson Potter should get the credit for thefait ac-compli but too many blamed him for the cost overruns on the move from 54 W45th to 70 W 45th to give him credit for anything.

Our architect,John Baker, who gave his time and talent and did a good jobof recreating the old club into an awkward and smaller space was repaid in a similarfashion. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished should be the Club Motto.

Clark made it clear that including women was the right thing to do. The timesdemanded it. It was liberal and progressive and only right! What he didnt mentionwas that it was a damn good way to get more dues paying members to make up forthe moving expense and for the members we lost in the one-year hiatus.

It caused a stir! One member, Ricky Harrison, resigned, thinking otherswould follow him out the door. No one did, and a week later he came back. Rickyhad also fought the Lehman wing addition at the Met and was always working tohave the Central Park tennis courts ripped up. I loved the old goat anyway.

The first wave of women was so highly polished and accomplished that mostof us realized we had to pull our socks up. Mary D. Kierstead, Edith Oliver, TheNew Yorkertheater critic, and Eileen Simpson, a brilliant author, set a high bar.We could all relax, feel proud and take credit for being modern and progressive.

I wouldnt say our Sainted Chef, Margaret, had many great dishes, but shehad two signature items. FISH BALLS were her greatest creation! They wereserved on Fridays with giant strips of bacon. They were bigger than a tennis balland once caused Ruth Gordon to exclaim: some fish. They were light, whiteand looked like cotton and unless you drenched them with Heinz Chili Sauce, thatswhat they tasted like. The bottle of Heinz was always served in a silver holder. This

was a sacred dish with the members and praised to the skies.When Margaret retired the fish balls went with her and were missed nearly as

much. Most of the members went into a funk. Another of her sensations was Mul-ligatawny Soup. It was available every day and gave the club a hint of the exotic.How could anyone ever duplicate the divine recipe? Her recipe book was dis-covered high in the cupboard; Mulligatawny Soup: first add 6 cans of CampbellsCream of Mushroom Soup. . . .

Her replacements were many and frequent. One was a Frenchtrained chefwho insisted on cooking with expensive French wine. His food reminded me ofParis and was the high water mark at the time. Most members hated it. Not being

appreciated is a terrible thing for an artist, and he left. Several other great cooksfollowed. There was a woman who may have been the best ever but her husbandtook a job in California.

One chef who wouldnt quit was Gilbert. He was a fry cook by trade andtipped the scales at about 400 pounds. How he got up the two flights of stairs wasamazing. Getting down would have been hard as well, carrying bags of food andbooze from the club. He was always short of breath, red faced, and looked on thebrink of a heart attack. I used to wonder how the cops and fire department wouldget him out if he did fall over dead.

When it comes to Chefs, our own Irena Semerjak deserves her own chapter.

She goes back a long way, having worked as a waitress and promoted to Chef whileher countrywoman Mary Ann was still there. They were both fired after Mary



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The wall of member portraits. Photo: Ellen Fisch

Ann went off her rocker and the food hit the all time bottom. Many years laterwhen I was acting secretary, she walked in the door and begged for a job. I rehiredher because she is impossible to say no to.

Since then she has made a million meals, thousands of evenings and private

dinners and has probably done more that any other person to keep the Club going.She single-handedly found our present location by canvasing the neighborhood onfoot after we lost our lease at 70 W 45th St. She showed more energy and imagi-nation and leadership than the entire Informal Committee put together. She is afantastic ball of energy that we cant do without.

I miss the old clubs, the fireside dinners, the funny stories, the people engagedin publishing, writing, movie making, every day work in New York, and The Art ofConversation. The two moves were a disaster and selling the art work was a crime.Can you imagine selling a St. Gaudens?

But hey, Life goes on. It was a great 45 years, and most of the time, a Hell

of a lot of fun!There is life in the Old Girl yet! Bill Ray



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The Original Old GirlThe Coffee House I

John Milnes Baker related that a long time ago he was asked by Bill RayWhat can I do for the Club? Johns answer was simple: Take Pictures! Billspictures of The Coffee Houses I, II and III grace many pages of this book includingthese of the original premisis at 54 West 45th Street.



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The StoryOne might raise an eyebrow if I re-

ported that my most memorable CH mo-ment took place in the 6th Floor men'sroom. Here's the story: toward the endof one of our Wednesday dinner/lectures,nature called. I repaired to the loo and

found the door open, the lights out anda group of young people staring outacross 44th Street. I joined them and fol-lowed their gazes In full view through anoffice window, a dominatrix, in blackgarb, was pummeling her client withwhips and then paddles. We followedthat action, transfixed, for about 15 min-utes and then it was session over.

I may have missed our last course butI had the best dessert ever!!

Karl Kaplan



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Remembering the StairsRemember how on West 45th Street you had to climb two steep flights of

stairs before you got your drink?

One evening members were gathered around talking and drinking and our

houseman came up to me and said there was a woman at the bottom of the stairs

and would someone please speak to her. I peered down, and sure enough, there

was a tiny, bird-like woman dressed to the nines at the bottom of the stairs. When

I got to her, she politely said, Can you tell me if my son Anthony Marshall is

up there because I am not climbing these stairs if he isn't. It was Brooke Astor.

Lindley Kirksey Young

The Coffee House II, The Room and the Stairs. Photo: Bill Ray



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One of my favorite Coffee House memories was listening to Sydney Hughes

making train sounds. . . . Dick Wien

Original cartoon by Charles Addams



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To Be Continued. . .One day I sat across from Roger Angell and asked him if he had ever met

the poet Joseph Brodsky (who I had just started reading for the first time that pre-vious week) and Roger said that he had indeed met Brodsky on several occasions.And then, without missing a beat, asked me: Would you like to hear one of hispoems I've memorized? I said absolutely! and sure enough he recited perfectlythe poem A Song.

It was an unforgettable evening last year when new member Thomas Tierneycomposed a song for The Coffee House and performed it on the piano. It was an

excellent tribute. I wondered if anyone had recorded it and was told no. I later con-tacted the composer and he kindly sent me a CD.

When I first joined, I metWoody Broun on my first day at the Club. Hetalked up a storm, and I was a shy new member so I listened with great attention.He was very welcoming and within a half hour I felt like I had been a member foryears. I was always amazed that he rarely repeated the same story, which is quite re-markable given how many stories he had to tell.

One day I brought a copy of Gardner Botsford's new memoirA Life ofPrivilege, Mostlyto the Club and asked Gardner to sign it. He said he would be de-lighted. I handed him the book across the table and gave him a pen to inscribe it.

He was nearly blind by then, and leaned over the book almost with his nose to thepage, writing. He spent a fair while at it, and I was curious to see what he had writ-ten, but instead of opening the book then, I waited till I got back to my studio tolook. When I opened it, I discovered to my amazement that there was nothing writ-ten there! How could that be? Then I looked more closely and saw that there wereindentations/impressions of his handwriting but no ink that I could see.

Finally I pieced it together. The pen I handed him was mistakenly not clickedopen so Gardner was writing, but he couldnt see, due to his terrible eyesight, thathe was not making any visible marks. The problem was soon corrected the nextday when I brought the book in again and he signed it with a fresh pen!

As a kid, I loved reading The New Yorkerand I pored over the cartoons ofpeople likeJim Stevenson and Frank Modell. It was a great treat to meet theseheroes of mine many years later when I joined the CH. I have great memories ofFrank as the MC for the auctions. His deadpan humor was always a highlight atthose evenings.

To be continued. . . Adam Van Doren



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Something That SeemedWonderfully Incongruous

More than 40 years elapsed between my first encounter with The CoffeeHouse in the late 1960s and my ultimately becoming a member. I had arrivedin New York to seek my fortune in documentary filmmaking after a post-collegeyear at the University of Algiers. After several months of pounding the pavement,I landed a propitious job at Leacock-Pennebaker, Inc., on 45th Street, whoseprincipals D.A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacockwere pioneers in the cinma-

vrit documentary movement.Several years into my tenure there I realized that Penne and Ricky, as theywere called, took long lunches several days a week at a nearby Coffee House. Atfirst I assumed it was their favorite among the many coffee shops in the neighbor-hood, but soon realized it was some sort of private eating club. They never invitedme to join them. I was an entry-level worker, and too busy running the projector,transferring sound and syncing up dailies to permit a two-hour lunch break.

One day, however, an urgent call came in for one of them, and I wascharged with delivering a pink telephone slip to their mysterious lunch place. Iremember going a few doors down from No. 56, climbing some stairs, including

a last interior staircase, and knocking at the door. It opened to a haze of cigarettesmoke and mostly male mirth emerging from a dim interior. I handed over themessage and left.

Four decades later, in 2009, Sam Bryan asked me to help him compile avideo reminiscence of his father, the pioneer filmmaker and Coffee House member,Julien Bryan. I had met both briefly in my documentary days, trying to interestthem in a film I wanted to make on Algerian nomadsand had recently mentionedto Sam that I had learned the digital interface and was getting back into filmmakingas a videographer. We pulled together a 4-minute montage of still photographshis father had shot, set against an audio credo he had recorded for the This I Believeradio program of Edward R. Murrow(another Club member). I compiled thisand Julien Bryan's newsreel scoop of the Nazi siege of Warsaw into a DVD com-memorating the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II.

That September, Sam invited me to The Coffee House premiere, whichbecame a memorable evening of good food, drink and conversation in an over-flow house. Afterwards, everyone sang show tunes around the piano, somethingthat seemed wonderfully incongruous in an otherwise empty landmarked build-ing at 11 o'clock on a weekday evening. Soon afterwards Sam invited me to join,and the stars finally aligned in the form of a waived initiation fee, recently ac-quired small pension and inheritance, and above all, the felt need of a warm mealand erudite companionship to brighten my bachelor days.Mark Woodcock



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Then Came World War II

When I speak of the middle years of The Coffee House I am referring to thethree decades from 1960 to 1990, give or take a few years on each end. I was in-

troduced to The Coffee House in the early 1970s by Gardner Botsfordwhom Igot to know at our summer homes in Quogue, New York. Gardner was extraordi-nary. His autobiographyA Life of Privilege, Mostly is an exemplar of the personalmemoir. Written in three parts, it covers first his wartime service in World War II,then moves back to deal with his life of exceptional privilege prior to the War, andfinally to his life at The New Yorker magazine after the War.

Gardners stepfather was Raoul Fleishman, heir to a food fortune and the manwho bankrolled The New Yorker. In the 1930s, his family occupied an upper EastSide town house with five in the family and five live-in servants. There were threemore servants from the outside, one being the full-time chaffeur. In the summer

the family, with a full array of steamer trunks, moved to their spacious estate on theNorth Shore of Long Island where the likes of Harpo Marx, George Abbott, Her-bert Bayard Swope and Alexander Woolcott played croquet on the lawn and enjoyedsoigne evenings in the main house which featured a living room 45 feet long.

Then came World War II and Gardner was in the service, on D-Day, in thefirst boat to land on Omaha Beacha picture of which, showing Gardner in thebow, was on the cover of LifeMagazine. Because he was fluent in French he servedas a liaison between the U.S. army and the French. Thanks to his mastery of Frenchand his proximity to the capital, Gardner was able to sneak into Paris three days be-fore the Allied forces arrived to visit old friends. He had a distinguished career in

the service, including suffering two wounds, and was awarded a Croix de Guerre.After the war everything changed. Gone were the town house in the East70s, the eight servants, as well as the spacious estate on Long Island. In time heended up at The New Yorkerwhere he had a lengthy career as one of the magazinestwo or three most distinguished editors during its impressive Post-War period.Throughout the last three quarters of the 20th century The Coffee House wasthe favorite luncheon retreat of many from The New Yorker: writers, editors, andcartoonists.

One reason was proximityThe Coffee House, even when it moved, was onlya block away from the offices of The New Yorker. There was a period of eight or ten

years from the mid-70s to the mid-80s when members from The New YorkerGard-ner Botsford,Jim Stevenson, Frank Modell, Roger Angell and the inimitableCharlie Addams, joined by two outsiders, Sidney Offit and myself, had lunch to-gether every Tuesday, not by any formal arrangement but merely happenstance.

It was not only New Yorkerfolk, however, who enlivened The Coffee House.During the thirty years from 1960 to 1990, any number of engaged, larger-than-life characters were on hand quite regularly: Herman Levin, Garson Kanin, Gor-don Manning, Woody Broun, Paul Greenberg, George Abbott, Fifi Oscard,Bill Zinsser. Herman Levin made his reputation as the producer of the Broadwaymusicals Gentleman Prefer Blondsand My Fair Ladyin the days when a show wasproduced not by 20 or 25 faceless investors but by one or two individuals who puttheir unique stamp on the musicals they produced.Woody Broun, always ebullient,



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spent his whole life trying to escape the shadow of his famous father HaywoodBroun, even going to the extent of wearing outrageous plaid sports jackets whenhe reported sports events on television. He became his own man in the eyes of oth-

ers, but never in his own.In television news, Paul Greenberg was the producer, the brains, behind themost celebrated news anchors on TV: Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, John Chan-cellor, Mike Wallace, Tom Brokaw. Gordon Manning, on the other hand, was thewild card of TV news, coming up with schemes, stratagems, plots and ploys. WhenPresident Nixon wanted to normalize relations with China, the one person every-one in TV wanted to interview was Huang Hua, the Chinese representative to theUN, but Huang refused all interviews. Somehow Gordon learned that Huang wasflying from Paris to New York and booked tickets on the same flight, bringing alongWalter Cronkite and a cameraman. Once the plane was aloft, Gordon induced the

hostesses in first class to ply Huang with champagne. Two thirds of the way throughthe flight, Gordon, chatting with Huang, suddenly produced Cronkite and landeda lengthy interview that had evaded everyone else.

And then there was George Abbott, known to all as Mr. Abbott. Throughoutthe 20th century he was the preeminent director and playwright of the Broadwaytheatreparticipating in 120 productions, according to his obituary in The NewYork Times, writing or directing any number of landmark, groundbreaking come-dies and musicals, and living to the age of 107. A tall, erect, taciturn figure, hewould escape from the hurly-burly of a rehearsal in the Broadway area and walkthe two blocks to The Coffee House for a quiet lunch, engaging in conversationonly if the subject interested him.

Gardner Botsfords favorite raconteur at The Coffee House was Munroe

The Coffee House II, The Table continues, lit by the lampscreated for the Club by James Monroe Hewlett. Photo: Bill Ray



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Wheelerwho seemed to be a great friend of everyone who mattered. One of thosefriends was Janet Flanner who for 50 years wrote the Letter from Paris for The NewYorker. For the last 25 of those years Gardner was her editor. When Flanner died aservice was held at Frank Campbells where Wheelers long-time companion, Glen-

way Westcott was supposed to speak. Westcott began to speak but his notes fell hel-ter-skelter off the podium and he was unable to finish. Gardner encounteredMunroe at The Coffee House a few days later. Here, from his memoir, is Gardnersaccount of that and other lunches with Munroe:

Monroe Wheeler was one of Flanner's oldest friends (they had met inthe early 1930s in Paris, both under the spell of Gertrude Stein), and aneven older friend of Glenway Westcott, whom he met in 1919, and withwhom he lived, on and off, for sixty-eight years. A slight, wiry man withblack hair, a dark complexion, and brilliant, darting black eyes, he camefrom an artistically inclined middle-class family in Chicago; Westcott was

from a farm family in Wisconsin. Wheeler got a job at the brand new Mu-seum of Modern Art in 1935, and rose high in its ranks; for years, he wasits director of publications. He and Westcott had previously lived abroadfor a dozen years, mingling with what was then called the smart set,ranging from Jean Cocteau to Georges Auric to Somerset Maugham.They knew everybody. Now, in New York, Wheeler met everybody else.There was nobody in the art world he did not come to know, and sinceart museums are kept going by the titans of the financial world, he becameentirely comfortable with the Stephen Clarks, the various Rockefellers, thevarious Whitneys and Vanderbilts, the Guggenheims. He moved in a sec-

tion of society where the culture, care, and maintenance of celebrity is al-most a profession. "Monroe has an excellent raconteur's mind, memory,vocabulary, tongue," Janet Flanner wrote of him somewhere. "He bringsin a story at just the right time, in the right manner, serves his anecdotesperfectly, either piping hot or ice-cold, as tragedies." The difference be-tween Wheeler and the hundreds of ordinary celebrity culturists was thathe was never the hero of his stories or reminiscences. He genuinely likedart. He liked the people who made it, he liked the people who paid for it,and they liked him. The names he dropped in prodigious numbers did notso much drop as float gracefully to the ground.

A few days after Flanner's memorial service, I ran into Wheeler at The CoffeeHouse, where he was having lunch with a discreet young acolyte. I asked after Glen-way Westcott.

Oh, he's all right," Monroe said. The trouble is, he'll be eighty beforelong, and he can't remember anything. (Wheeler was well over eighty him-self, and could remember everything.) So far, hes left three suitcases be-hind in taxisevery time he's been in a taxi with a suitcase, in fact.Cartier-Bresson was asking about him today"and off we went on an-other of Wheeler's whirlwind magic-lantern tours. As always, when it wasover, I went back to my office and wrote it all down.

Cartier-Bresson was on the phone from Paris, Wheeler said. Hewanted me to get him what he called a dingy hotel room in New York



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didn't want to spend a penny more than he had to. He's from Normandy,you know, and the Normans pinch every penny. My friend Philippe deRothschild wasn't a Norman, but he certainly pinched every penny, too.Jean Cocteau told me once that he and Philippe left a party together late

at night and shared a taxi, even though they were going in opposite direc-tions. As it happened, the taxi stopped first at the Rothschild house, andPhilippe simply said good night and walked away, leaving Cocteau to paythe fare when he finally got home. So the next day, Cocteau went aroundto see Philippe and complain that he really didnt think it was fair to makehim pay the Rothschild taxi fares. Philippe still didn't offer to pay his half.He simply told Jean that to the Rothschilds the pictures of famous menon the French banknotes were like family portraits-never to be let go of.

Monroe moved along to the Times John Russellor, rather, to Rus-sells wife, Rosamund Bernier. Rosamund was born Rosamund Rosen-

baum, daughter of a big Philadelphia lawyer, he said. She went to SarahLawrence, where she took an art course under Rene dHarnoncourt.Rosamund went on a trip to Mexico, and there fell in love with a youngAmerican who was dealing in Acapulco real estate. He was the best-lookingof three orphan boys in the town, and Rosamund wanted to marry him.Daddy said no, you're too young, so she eloped with him anyway, and setup housekeeping in Mexico. There, as we all know, Orozco fell in love

with herher second contact with the art world. Possibly because ofOrozco or maybe because she and her husband both spoke SpanishI re-ally don't knowthe two of them were recruited by the Museum of Mod-

ern Art to shepherd an exhibit of modern art on a tour of South America.Anyway, it wasn't long after that that her husband grew tired of her, and

The Coffee House II, The Room hung with pictures of members. Photo Bill Ray



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when he met Dolores Del Rio, generally considered to be the most beau-tiful actress in Hollywood, he got a divorce and married Dolores. Oh, howhard Rosamund took it! She came back to New York and wept up anddown Fifth Avenue endlessly. But eventually she brushed her tears awayand went to France, where she met and married a Frenchman namedBernier. Together, they started Oeil, which became an enormous success.But then Bernier, too, got tired of her and went off to become an art dealeron his own. Rosamund returned to the United States and wept up anddown Fifth Avenue again. Pretty soon, she went back to France and tookto weeping up and down the Faubourg St. Honore, until John Russell raninto her there and fell in love with her.

Gardner devoted five full pages in his memoir to recounting Monroes con-versations at The Coffee House. He concluded his account with this final anecdotefrom Monroe:

Old age is a terrible nuisance. Everything gives way. The other day, some-one was telling me about Iphigene Sulzberger, Punch Sulzberger's mother.Doyenne of the Times. I've known her for years. She has a bad heart orcirculation problems or something and her doctor insists that she getproper exercise. So every day she takes a little walkalways the same. Shelives on Fifth Avenue, and she walks over to Madison, and along the avenuefor a few blocks, and then back to Fifth and home. Her difficulty is that ather age she always has tohow shall I say it?relieve herself during herwalk. At first she would stop in at the Carlyle, but the ladies' room thereis down a flight of stairs, and that was too hard for her. So then she asked

at the Frank Campbell funeral parlor, where the ladies' room is on theground floor, and they said of course. She changed her route to take inFrank Campbells every day, and things went along like that for quite awhile. One day as she was coming out of the ladies' room a very smoothyoung mana newcomer to the staff-asked her if she would sign theirguest book. So she did, and thought no more about it until she got a checkin the mail for five thousand dollars. What she had signed was the visitors'register at some rich woman's funeral the smooth young man thought shewas one of the mourners and the deceased in her will had left five thousanddollars to everybody who had come to her funeral and signed the book.

As Gardner pointed out, following a lunch with Monroe he would hastenback to The New Yorkerto write it all down. Monroe, Gardner, the colorful peopleI mentioned abovethese were the occupants of the long table in the decades be-tween the post-World War II period and the end of the century. Since that timemuch has changed. The 20th century has given way to the 21st; The New Yorkeroffices have moved half a world awayto the Southern tip of Manhattan; giants oftelevision news like Gordon Manning and Paul Greenberg have been replaced byapparatchiks; producers, writers and directors like Herman Levin, Garson Kanin,and George Abbott do not exist in the Broadway theatre anymore.

The Coffee House has survived, which is more than one can say of manyrevered institutions; we can only hope it will also thrive. Ed Wilson



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Spellbound by the Magic

After a recent evening of pre-prandial music and then the usual delicious supperand conversation, there was an afterglow in the meeting room. One of the mosttalented and glamorous singer/pianist Kathleen Landis sat down to play. A guest,the young MULTI-talented Liam Forde had lingered as well. At some point theymade the most marvelous music singing and playing (appropriately as it turns out)the Gershwins Isnt It A Pity. All ten or so of us in the room were spellboundby the magic they made together. It was a never-to-be-repeated and a never-to-be-

forgotten (at least by me) experience. Steve Ross



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That List of WorthiesClassical Performers and Composers of The Coffee House between 1915 and 1940

(Notes for the CD attached inside the cover)

When I joined The Coffee House, among the materials that I was sent was aroster of early members. As I read through that list of worthies, I realized that, fromthe beginning a century ago, The Coffee House has numbered among its membersa significant number of distinguished classical composers and performing artists.This compact disc highlights the artistry of several composers and performers who

were members during the first quarter century of The Coffee Houses existence.Although barely remembered today,Walter Damrosch (January 30, 1862

December 22, 1950) was one of the most respected and influential musicians inNew York and in the United States a century ago. Both of his parents were profes-sional musicians. His father, Leopold Damrosch, was a fine violinist who spent sev-eral years as the concert master of Liszts orchestra at the ducal court in Weimarbefore launching a career as a conductor; his mother was an opera singer, the altochosen by Wagner to create the role of Ortrud in Lohengrin. The Damrosch familyimmigrated to the United States in 1871, and, within a decade, Leopold had es-tablished himself as the most significant musician and impresario in New York City.

When Leopold died early in 1885 at the relatively young age of 52, Walter,then just 23, quickly assumed most of his responsibilities, and he assumed them

with authority, conviction, and imagination. In 1892, as conductor of the OratorioSociety, which his father had founded in 1873, he presented the first known per-formance since the 18th century of Handels Messiahusing the original orchestra-tion. During his long tenure as conductor of the New York Symphony Society(which merged with the Philharmonic Society of New York in 1928, to form theNew York Philharmonic-Symphony Society), he relentlessly championed repertoireunfamiliar to local audiences, including Brahmss 3rd and 4th Symphonies,Tchaikovskys 4th and 5th Symphonies, and Wagners Parsifal, all of which he pre-

mired in New York. Damrosch also commissioned numerous new works, including

Damrosch, Gershwin, Kreisler



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Jean Sibeliuss Tapiola, and fellow Coffee House member George GershwinsAnAmerican in Parisand Piano Concerto in F Major.

Sadly, Walter Damrosch made few recordings, and posterity laments the un-pleasant reality that he and Gershwin were not engaged to record either of the twocompositions that they premired together. Except for a magisterial account of theBrahms Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 77, he recorded no standard repertory.The Ballet Suitethat Franois Gevaert arranged from dance movements from twoof Christoph Willibald von Glucks Paris operas is a fine example of Damroschsartistry and his commitment to expanding his listeners horizons by confronting

them with unfamiliar repertory.Three of the worlds finest violinists were members of The Coffee House dur-

ing the first quarter of a century of its existence. The eldest was Fritz Kreisler (Feb-ruary 2, 1875January 29, 1962). Innately gifted as a violinist, as a pianist, and asa composer, Kreisler was a natural. After the age of 12, he had no formal trainingas a violinist, and, by the time he was in his late 20s, his reputation was international.As his younger colleague Boris Schwarz wrote, Kreisler was unique. Without ex-ertion (he practiced little) he achieved a seemingly effortless perfection. There wasnever any conscious technical display. The elegance of his bowing, the grace andcharm of his phrasing, the vitality and boldness of his rhythm, and above all his tone

of indescribable sweetness and expressiveness were marveled at. *All of those qualities are in evidence in the two examples of his playing contained

on the included CD. Kreisler is as magnificent playing a Beethoven Sonata with hisfriend Sergei Rachmaninoff as he isgemutlichplaying one of the delicious musicalschlagoberson which his present-day reputation largelyand unfairly is based.

Nowadays, if he is remembered at all, Efrem Zimbalist (April 21, 1889Feb-ruary 22, 1985) is remembered as the father of the actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., andthe grandfather of the actress Stephanie Zimbalist. A century ago, however, he hadestablished a reputation as one of the premier violinists of his generation by thetime he was in his early 20s. A native of Imperial Russia, he was a prize-winning

pupil of the legendary Leopold Auer at the Conservatory in Saint Petersburg, where

Gluck and Zimbalist, Heifitz, Porter



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he also studied composition with Alexander Glazounov. Zimbalist came to theUnited States on a concert tour in 1911 and found life, both professional and per-

sonal, to be so pleasant and productive that he stayed. In 1914, he married the im-mensely popular soprano, Alma Gluck, with whom he often concertized.

A charming and congenial man, Zimbalist made friends easily, and, as thingsarranged themselves, he was a founding member of The Coffee House. CoffeeHouse lore has it that his wife was immen

Documents

The Coffee House Book