Tag: Joe Cook

Times Square Tintypes: Joe Cook

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In this chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky profiles popular vaudevillian Joe Cook.
 

THE FOUR HAWAIIANS

ONCE upon a time there were four Hawaiians. And this guy got famous because he wouldn’t imitate them. JOE COOK.
Caricature of Joe CookHis real name was Joseph Lopez. Was orphaned at the age of four. Then adopted by a family named Cook in Evansville, Ind. He spent his teens in a cold water flat on Amsterdam Avenue near 135th Street.
He is extremely superstitious. He knocks wood. Will not walk under a ladder for all the money in the world.
Talks exactly the same offstage as he does on. With a slow drawl.
When a youngster in Evansville he organized a kid show. The theater was the family barn. He charged five cents for admission and actually made money. At fifteen he was playing on the Keith circuit with his brother Leo.
He always wears a cap. Wears a hat on the street very seldom. On each occasion he felt as conspicuous as a kid in his first long pants. He wears suspenders, unshined shoes and $200 suits.
Can often be found in a shooting gallery pecking away at the clay pipes.
Dave Chasen can’t do the funny hand business used in Rain or Shine without him.
He lives at Lake Hopatcong. Drives home every night after his performance if he’s playing in town.
Made his début in show business as grip carrier for the Great Doctor Dunham. Before the doctor give his spiel on the magic medicine which cured corns, colds and ingrown nails, he did a juggling act. He finished the season stranded in a tank town. He was paid off in medicine bottles.
He has worn out forty-one pairs of roller skates. Seventeen bicycles. Two motor-cycles. Eight automobiles and four motor boats.
His first vaudeville salary was $50 a week. His latest was $2,750.
They’re still looking for four Hawaiians who can imitate him.
He is one of the most versatile performers in America. Here are merely a few of his feats: Plain and fancy hand juggling. Japanese foot juggling. Sharpshooting from a slack wire. Trapeze balancing. Propels a huge ball up a fifteen foot incline with his feet. Plays various musical instruments. Exhibits skills as a clog dancer. Ditto as an acrobatic dancer. Furnishes motive power for a foot propelled merry-go-round. Does various feats of magic. Catches (or misses) lighted matches with his mouth. Extracts music from an insane Ferris wheel contraption. Casually tosses a bouquet to himself with one foot.
His understudy is the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
His parents were in the show business. His father retired from the stage to become a successful portrait painter.
Has a passion for a good cook stove. Loves to cook spaghetti, chili-con-carne and mulligan stew. Has cooked for as many as three hundred people at one sitting.
He is very modest and blushes very easily.
Has a piano on which he makes every guest burn his signature. The piano has 948 names on it. Including such as Ring Lardner, Gilbert Seldes, Robert Benchley, Babe Ruth, Charles MacArthur and Hudson Maxim.
He has many week-end parties at his home. Generally has from five to a dozen males but never a woman.
Dave Chasen, one of the funny fellows in his act, is his right-hand man. Dave even carries his money for him.
His major delight is discovering an odd restaurant. Is seldom seen at any prominent eating place. Will walk miles to find a hole-in-the-wall beanery where a newfangled dish is offered.
One thing he can’t stand is the sissy type of man. Especially the fellow who says “Tummy” for stomach. “Hanky” for handkerchief. He thinks there should be a law.
His dressing room is plastered with signs saying: “No Smoking.” “Positively No Smoking.” “Absolutely No Smoking.” There is one large sign which has “No Smoking” written out in twenty-six languages, including the Scandinavian. He doesn’t mind if you smoke.
He is quite an artist at short-changing.
He never saw a real Hawaiian. Once saw a Hawaiian act in vaudeville. The Hula dancer was a dazzling blonde who wore a wig. One of the Hawaiians was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_De_Sylva, the song writer.
His favorite drink is a glass of real beer. After the third stein he sings the original version of “Frankie and Johnny.”
Has only one servant at his country home. This servant is the butler, the cook, the chauffeur, etc. The servant has a different name and uniform for each job.
He was the second white man to play the ukulele.

Times Square Tintypes: Sime Silverman

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In this chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky profiles Sime Silverman, the founder of Variety, the bible of show business.
 

VARIETY’S THE SPICE OF LIFE

HE’S the sole owner, publisher and editor of the bible of show business: SIME SILVERMAN.
Caricature of Sime SilvermanVariety, the man in type form, is one of the best, most respected and most influential trade journals in the world.
He was fired from the Morning Telegraph because his review of a vaudeville act displeased the managing editor. While on that sheet he signed his reviews: “The Man in the Third Row.”
He is not moody.
He is fifty-three years old. Was born in Cortland, N. Y. Has been married to the same wife for thirty years. The pride and joy of his life is his son, Syd, who wrote on Variety as a child critic at the age of seven, signing his articles with the pen name “Shigie.”
Decided to publish a paper for the profession which would print news items and show reviews as the staff writers wrote them. He discussed the possibilities with Mrs. Silverman. Together they named it Variety. Then, absentmindedly, she sketched on the table cover the funny capital “V.” It’s still the trademark of the paper.
His first office was a tiny room on the fifth floor of the Knickerbocker Theatre building.
His only pet is an Angora cat named Steve.
He summers at Alexandria Bay—when he summers.
In mid-December, the year 1905, the first copy of Variety, appeared on the newsstands. It contained sixteen pages. It sold for a nickel.
The wise guys gave the paper three months to live.
He likes to eat in road houses. His credit is good everywhere. He always pays cash.
In the beginning Variety‘s space was devoted solely to vaudeville. Today vaudeville receives but little attention, motion pictures being the big feature.
He still reviews the small-time vaudeville shows.
Is probably the hardest working editor in America. His day begins at eight-thirty A. M. Can generally be found at his desk at two A. M. still working.
He eats in the hunting room at the Astor. Is the greatest check grabber Broadway has ever known. Has never been known to allow anyone to pick up the “bad news.” Is a very liberal tipper.
He can go to bed at six in the morning and be waiting for breakfast at seven-thirty.
The thing he hates most in this world is a deadbeat.
At one time things were very bad. Most of his staff had disappeared. He walked into the office one day to find only two men there. One was Johnny O’Connor, one of his reporters. The other was a sheriff, placed there by a creditor. They were playing rummy. It looked as if it would be necessary to get the next issue out in mimeograph form.
Variety was originally published on a Saturday. Then it moved back to Friday. Then to Thursday. Now it appears on Wednesday. This is the only respect in which it has gone backward.
He smokes Turkish cigarettes and Havana cigars. Never takes more than a dozen puffs from either. Never smokes a gift cigar. Never refuses one. His desk is always littered with expensive weeds. As his staff arrives they disappear.
His first office was so small that when one asked a question it was necessary to go into the hall to answer it. Later his office was quartered on the site where Loew’s State Theatre now stands. Today he occupies an entire building in Forty-sixth Street, east of Broadway, that formerly housed Frances, the modiste. His desk is on a platform where models used to pose. It’s his throne.
He weighs about 180. Has never been known to walk fast or eat slowly.
He never wears a vest.

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In Your Hat, pt. 9

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

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