Cheers and Godspeed to the World’s Oldest Barber, Anthony Mancinelli

Read the story of our first visit with Anthony, in 2012.

Just weeks after finally calling it a career after 96 years of cutting hair, Anythony Mancinelli passed away in his Newburgh, New York, home on September 19, 2019. We will miss him.

It’s been said that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

If that’s so, Anthony Mancinelli, recognized as the world’s oldest barber by the Guinness Book of World Records, has been not-working for the past 95 years.

That’s right, Mancinelli, who turned 107 on March 2, 2018, has been barbering since 1923, when he was just 12 years old. Calvin Coolidge was president, and barbers still offered such services as bloodletting (with leeches), wart removal and cupping. There’s no longer a demand for those services, but Mancinelli still has the tools he used back in the day and he is happy to show them to the curious.

“I used to have a bottle of leeches on my counter, and I would put them on people’s skin to drain blood,” Mancinelli told The New York Times in 2010. “In those days, while giving a haircut, I would put a leech over a black eye to bring down the swelling, or on the arm of someone who had high blood pressure because the thinking was their pressure might drop.”

Mancinelli was born in 1911 near Naples, Italy, and eight years later sailed to the United States with his family, arriving in New York on September 11, 1919. Because an aunt lived there, the Mancinellis settled in Newburgh, New York, just eight miles from New Windsor, where Anthony currently resides.

“This country gave me an opportunity to do everything in life,” said Mancinelli. “It’s up to the [individual] to take up something, to do something to make things better for themselves as well as the country. This country gave me all the opportunities in the world to do it.”
So how did he get into barbering at such a young age?

With his father, a felt worker, supporting a wife, seven sons and a daughter on just $25 a week, young Mancinelli announced that he was going to go out and get a job.

“My father said, ‘What kind of a job are you going to get?’,” said Mancinelli. “‘Well, I’m going to deliver morning papers, then I’ll deliver afternoon papers, then after that, I’ll see if I can get a job to learn the barber business.’

“I went to the one of the barbershops here, and I asked ‘[the owner] if he would teach me the barber business. He said yes, so I stood with him and I learned the barber business… His name was Joseph Turi.

“I don’t know why I chose the barber business, but I thought it was a good profession, so I said, ‘I’ll try it out and see how I like it.'”

In those days, Mancinelli arose at 4 a.m. to deliver the morning paper and then came home for breakfast before heading off to school. After school, he delivered the afternoon paper, after which he would spend a few hours at the barber shop. Finally, at 8 p.m., he would head home, where his mother had an evening meal waiting for him, after which, he said, “I would go right to bed!”

That’s a pretty grueling schedule for anyone, but considering Mancinelli was 12 years old at the time, it’s especially impressive.

Having served an apprenticeship and learned his trade, Mancinelli opened his own shop in 1930; he was just 19 years old.
Read More »

Happy 130th Birthday, Al Jolson!

Al Jolson was born Asa Yoelson in what is now Seredzius, Lithuania, 130 years ago today. Here are 10 Jolson trivia tidbits:

  • Al Jolson began his career paired with his brother in a vaudeville act. He moved on to partner with other performers as well, but it was as a solo act that he finally found success.
  • As with his character in The Jazz Singer (1927), Jolson’s father was a cantor, at the Talmud Torah Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
  • Though his early work in blackface is considered offensive today, the view of many African-Americans at the time was that Al Jolson was helping to introduce African-American music—jazz, blues, and ragtime—to a white audience. He also was a strong advocate in the 1910s and ’20s in the fight discrimination on Broadway against black performers.
  • At 35, Jolson was the youngest man in American history to have a theatre—Jolson’s 59th Street Theatre, across from Central Park—named after him.
  • Al Jolson wrote the campaign song for the Warren G. HardingCalvin Coolidge ticket in the 1920 presidential campaign: Harding, You’re the Man for Us!
  • Jolson was the first musical artist to sell more than 10 million records.
  • Al Jolson owned the rights to the play Penny Arcade by Marie Baumer and insisted that the two actors who played the leads in the Broadway production be brought west to appear in Sinners’ Holiday (1930), the movie adaption of the play. Those actors? James Cagney and Joan Blondell.
  • NYC’s 51st Street, as it passes by the Winter Garden Theatre, home to many Jolson’s greatest successes, was, on August 11, 2006, renamed Al Jolson Way.
  • Many stars of the rock ‘n’ roll era—Elvis Presley, Jackie Wilson and David Lee Roth, among them—cited Al Jolson as one of their greatest influences.
  • As a lark, Jolson once entered a sound-alike contest, singing as a sound-alike of himself. He placed third.

Happy birthday, Mr. Jolson, wherever you may be!

Al Jolson

Times Square Tintypes: Eva Le Gallienne

In this chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky profiles stage actress Eva Le Gallienne.

IN GOD’S IMAGE

EVA LE GALLIENNE was born January 11, 1899, as the Bow bells of London were tolling seven. She is five feet four and weighs 128 pounds.
Caricature of Eva Le GallienneShe can do anything with her left hand that she does with her right.
Her father is Richard Le Gallienne, the poet. Her mother, Julie Norregaard, a journalist. After they separated she went to Paris with her mother. Lived there until the age of thirteen, when she returned to London and enrolled in Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree‘s Academy. It was here that Lyall Swete saw her and presently she made her London début in The Laughter of Fools.
At an affair she always requests the orchestra to play a tango.
She sews well. Love to iron her shirtwaists.
Left England for America to play in The Laughter of Fools for David Belasco. After two weeks of rehearsals the play was shelved.
Likes very sheer stockings and suéde shoes. Wears suéde gloves, always making it a point to buy them a size too large.
Her first appearance on the American stage was with Harrison Grey Fiske in Mrs. Boltay’s Daughter. Richard Le Gallienne, who hadn’t seen her since she was three, attended a performance. She had the rôle of a colored maid. Mr. Le Gallienne on seeing her exclaimed: “My God! Is that my daughter?”
She plays the piano, the guitar (gypsy and Spanish), the harp and the piccolo.
The members of her theatrical troupe call her “Saint Eva.” On the opening night of a play she sends every woman in the company a box of flowers. Every man receives a gardenia.
Her suits are short, while her evening dresses sweep the floor.
Whenever she goes to the theater she insists upon sitting in the first row.
Seldom touches hard liquor. Her taste is for wines. Prefers French cooking to any other style and eats almost a basketful of fruit a day. She adores ripe figs.
When eleven years old she made a copy of Mme. Bernhardt‘s memoirs in longhand. It required two volumes and a year’s labor. When Sarah Bernhardt heard of this she asked to see her and wrote a tribute on the flyleaf of the first volume. A copy of this now hangs in Miss Le Gallienne’s dressing room.
Former President Coolidge selected her as, next to Lindbergh, the outstanding person of 1928.
Her favorite cultivated flower is the camellia. She loves to pick wild flowers.
Has a wonderful collection of antique jewelry. Always wears earrings. One of her choice possessions is a cross made of emeralds. She wears this dangling from a silver chain which girdles her black velvet evening gown.
She owns a car and operates it herself. She gets a big kick out of driving in traffic.

Read More »

Happy birthday, Rose Marie

Rose MarieMost folks over the age of thirty surely know the actress Rose Marie, who turns 89 years old today.

After all, she starred as Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show, one of the most acclaimed sit-coms of all time. She was a regular on the original Hollywood Squares, sitting just atop Paul Lynde in the center top square. And she appeared such later shows as Murphy Brown and Wings.

But did you know she was a hugely popular child star? It’s true. In 1926, at the age of three, she began performing as Baby Rose Marie. She had a brassy singing voice one doesn’t often find in someone so young, and by the age of five she had her own radio show on NBC.

She also worked the vaudeville circuits and made a number of appearances in movies, including a Vitaphone short that was on the bill with the first talking feature, The Jazz Singer. She even appeared at the White House three times, performing for Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

By her teens, she dropped the “Baby” and began the transition to a career as a singer. She made a go of it, continuing to work in nightclubs and acting on radio, in theatre and in pictures, but it was in the 1960s that her career really took off again.

We wish the happiest of birthdays to Ms. Marie, and we invite you to help us celebrate the occasion by watching this video from her days as a child star. This is a scene from 1933’s International House. Rose was 10 years old.

Pitch perfect: Vintage Political Slogans, pt. 2

Willkie campaign posterOur long march through the Williams Sunners’ 1949 tome, American Slogans, ends with this installment, which comprises vintage political slogans beginning with the letters S through Y from the chapter entitled “Political, Historical, Patriotic, Military.”

This chapter’s an odd one, as so many of the entries are personal statements and not slogans at all, and many, unlike those found in the book’s other chapters, date much farther back than the first half of the 20th century.

Still, the completist in us wouldn’t let us consider not sharing this chapter with you.

The Cladrite Reading Room continues next Monday, so check this space. We think you’ll like what we have in store for you.

Labor is king (Republican Presidential campaign), 1880.
Labor omnia vincit (State of Oklahoma).
Labor conquers all things (State of Oklahoma).
Lafayette, we are here (General John J. Pershing), June 13, 1917, France.
Land divided, the world united, The (Governor’s seal, Panama Canal Zone).
Let arms yield to the gown (State of Wyoming).
Let it be short, sharp, and decisive (Northern slogan), 1861.
Let liberty be national, and slavery sectional (Republican Pres. camp. 1860).
Let no guilty man escape (U. S. Grant), 1875.
L’etoile du nord (State of Minnesota).
Let the people rule (Andrew Jackson), 1832.
Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law (State of Missouri).
Let there be light (Carnegie libraries).
Let there be light and there was light (Order of Free and Accepted Masons).
Let us alone (big business), 1905.
Let us have peace (Republican Presidential campaign), 1868, for Grant.
Let us keep this honest man (1920).
Libertas et fidelitate (on reverse of State seal of Virginia).
Liberty and independence (State of Delaware).
Liberty and independence or death (American Revolution slogan).
Liberty and prosperity (State of New Jersey).
Liberty and Union (Abraham Lincoln), 1861-1865.
Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable (Daniel Webster).
Liberty dearer than union (John C. Calhoun).
Liberty or death (Virginia Revolutionary regiments).
Liberty, prosperity and no stamps (anti-Stamp Act slogan), 1765.
Life of the land is preserved by righteousness (Hawaii).
Long live the President (George Washington’s adherents, 1791).
Look up, not down; look forward, not back; look out, not in and lend a hand (Edward Everett Hale).
Love thine enemy (Democratic National Convention), 1940.

FDR campaign posterMake American the arsenal and the larder of Democracy (F. D. Roosevelt, 1941).
Make the world safe for Democracy (Woodrow Wilson), 1917.
Manly deeds, womanly words (State of Maryland).
Mayest thou endure forever (State Idaho).
McKinley and the full dinner pail (Republican Presidential campaign), 1900.
Meliorem lapsa locavit (State of South Carolina).
Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute (C. C. Pinckney).
Montani semper liberi (State of West Virginia).
Mountaineers are always free men (State of West Virginia).
My country, right or wrong (Stephen Decatur).

National Guard is for the Union, The (New York National Guard).
New Hampshire has no slogan or motto.
New order of ages, A (translation of slogan, obverse side of U. S. Great Seal).
Nil sine numine (State of Colorado).
No compromise, no more slavery (Republican Presidential campaign), 1846.
No fourth term, either (Republican presidential campaign), 1940.
No free trade (Republican Presidential campaign), 1880.
No more ’76 (Democratic Presidential campaign), 1876.
No quarter for Tories (Francis Marion).
No taxation without representation (American Colonies), 1765.
No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted (U. S. Grant).
No third term (Republican Presidential campaign), 1940.
No union with slaveholders (W. L. Garrison).
Not worth a Continental (Money from American Revolutionary period).
Nothing without the Divinity (State of Colorado).
Novus ordo seclorum (Great Seal of the United States).
Now or never (pro-Annexationists), 1846.
N U T S! (General McAuliffe), World War II.
Read More »