Tag: Nancy Carroll

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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In Your Hat, pt. 4

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Here’s Chapter 4 of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars, Renee Carroll, in which she dishes on such 1930s luminaries as Claudette Colbert, Miriam Hopkins, Ernst Lubitsch, Clara Bow, and Douglas Fairbanks.

By the way, the Lubitsch movie Carroll refers to in this chapter, the one co-starring Maurice Chevalier, Miriam Hopkins, and Claudette Colbert, is The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), which New Yorkers (and those willing to travel) can see on the big screen as part of Film Forum’s Hollywood on the Hudson series on Tuesday, August 3rd. It’s paired on a double-bill that night with Laughter (1930), which, as it happens, stars Nancy Carroll, about whom a story is told later in the chapter.

     A LOT of dirt gets swept by my little booth in conversational blobs that can’t stand light from the printed page, but at the same time I frequently pick up little stories that’ll bear repeating.
     I don’t say I chum around with Broadway’s best, but I know most of the crowd by their given names and I’m usually calling a spade a spade even if it’s Bill Robinson. What I crave most is respect because nowadays that’s all a girl gets that doesn’t draw interest.
     But now and then somebody whispers a yarn that’ll stand repeating, and chum or no chum, it has to be given up, which reminds of the time Herr Ernst Lubitsch (the little man with the big cigar) was directing a picture at the Paramount New York studio in Astoria.
     It happened that Claudette Colbert, she of the extraordinary limbs, and Miriam Hopkins, who is now a Paramount star, were in a picture together with Maurice Chevalier.
     In the story Chevalier is supposed to be married to Miriam, but because she is more or less of an ugly duckling, he is particularly fond of the more comely Claudette. The story develops to the point where Claudette is caught by Miriam in her own house. It develops into a verbal bout and then rapidly into a slapping match in which both girls are supposed to slap each other, cry a bit, and then make up. The slaps, like most of the blows in pictures, were supposed to have been pulled punches. But were they? Oh boy, no! And behind that is something of a story.
     It happened that in the making of the picture Herr Lubitsch became more or less attached to the luminous blonde Miriam. He believed in her as a noble actress, a conviction that has been justified since, and Ernst was interested in her sparkling personality. While the picture was being made, the two of them were seen around town together. Lubitsch would take her down to his favorite Second Avenue restaurant for some calves’ brains and wine, and Miriam was having a swell time, particularly when she worked, because Lubitsch was developing her part more and more every day.
     Pretty soon Claudette began to sense the fact that in spite of her billing as a leading player opposite Chevalier and despite her rôle as the heroine of the piece, little Miriam was stealing the picture out from under her very nose.
     Naturally she resented the intrusions and sensed the possibility that she might be a minus quantity in the finished film. Slight differences arose every day,—everyone felt that a blowup was due any second.
     Well, the opportunity finally presented itself on the day that the slapping scene was to be shot. I suppose both girls felt that for once, at least, the microphone would get an authentic record of what slaps can be like.
     Both girded themselves for the fray. If there was to be any serious slapping they were both out to do it. The studio sensed the situation and everybody turned to do honor to the winner. The scene was the bedroom of the princess, and the slapping took place while the two women were seated on the edge of the bed. After the blows were delivered they were supposed to break into tears and then fall into each other’s arms in forgiveness. Everything went fine and the two ladies were eyeing each other as fighting cocks do before being released.
     Lubitsch knew that something was going to happen, but he purposely encouraged it because it lent authenticity to a scene that might not appear real on the screen. Famous fights of screen history started when those two fellows mised it in the first screen version of “The Spoilers,” but never before the cameras—that is, a battle with physical effectiveness. Hair-pulling was a sissy’s game now.
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In Your Hat, pt. 2

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Here’s Chapter 2 of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars, Renee Carroll:

     I DON’T claim that Ziegfeld missed a bet when I decided to become a hat check girl, but I fill a spoke in the wheel, and most of the boys want to go around with me.
     Honestly, though, I can’t say I hate it when for no good reason at all Buddy Rogers kisses my hand as publicly as if we had been on the Roxy stage. Two girls who were squashing their noses against Sardi’s window well-nigh swooned when that happened, and I’d be fibbing if I said I was far from pulling a faint myself. Only a few weeks before I had been standing at the stage door of the Paramount Theater waiting to catch a glimpse of America’s Boy Friend, reveling in the usual girl’s thoughts about swinging in a hammock with Buddy Rogers at my side, or is it paddlin’ a canoe or listenin’ to the moon? I’d heard lots of people call the tall dark boy Bloody Rogers in jest, but it isn’t fair.
     Well, anyway, he came into Sardi’s, handed me his hat, and then, inquiring after my health in a most solicitous manner, touched his lips to my hand. Maybe it’s true that a couple of the Broadway wise boys who were sitting in the restaurant did make noises that sounded suspiciously like Bronx nose blowing, but it was a dream of a moment. For a second I forgot that I was supposed to be sophisticated.
     And Bob Montgomery, before he became what he is, and you know what that is, was just another of the nice Broadway gang. He was one of my “promissory nuts”, as I called the boys of that class, who were always promising things for the dim future.
     In Bobby’s case, it was always the generous tip he was forecasting because he didn’t have even a dime in his jeans to leave for checking. Not that I minded at all, but business must be on the level. And whenever he’d pick up his hat, after unsuccessful attempts to land some work by being seen at Sardi’s during lunch, he’d say: “Put it on the cuff, Renee.” Unfortunately, I wear no cuffs except mental ones, and I keep remembering little things like that.
     Especially I’ll never forget the little fellow who was so near-sighted that he once tipped me a penny, certain that it was a dime. And ever afterward, recalling his mistake, he would come into Sardi’s every day and say: “You remember me, don’t you, young lady? I’m the man who gave you a cent by mistake!” As if I’d ever forget a penny tip!
     Tipping is a great art if you know how, and getting the tip—particularly from a celebrity—is even a greater one. Getting a man to tip without his being conscious of the amount is the most delicate and subtle operation in the world. Some day I’m going to write a book on “The Technique of Tipping.”
     I’ve been talking a lot on this subject to professional waiters. I don’t mean the boys who are helping Mother along by taking up the table as a sideline, but those whose front handles are usually Oscar or Fritz, and in whose families waiting has been a profession for centuries. One of our waiters was so proud of his serving lineage he claimed that one of his ancestors served spaghetti on the Santa Maria!
     People naturally hate to tip, especially when they have a Gallic strain in them. Generosity is not usually governed by economic conditions. Even when a man who tips a good amount ordinarily is almost broke, he will not let this be a factor in keeping him from tipping his usual amount. It’s the habitual tightwad who’ll skimp on service and then go out and let his girl friend rook him for some matched sables.
     One day Walter Donaldson, the songwriter, drove up to the restaurant with Maurice Chevalier. It was summer, and as Chevalier came out of the auto, he took off his hat and threw it on the back seat. Donaldson kept his on.
     I believe in the equal distribution of wealth, and when the two approached my booth, I stopped the inimitable Maurice.
     “Mr. Chevalier,” I began. “I paid a dollar to see your newest picture last night.”
     “Oh yes? And how did you like it?”
     “I thought it was fine,” I told him.
     “Thank you very much.”
     “But, Mr. Chevalier, after I paid a dollar to see your picture, do you think it’s fair for you to leave your hat in the car to save a dime?”
     I knew it wasn’t the nicest thing to do, but it worked like a charm. The Frenchman ran out into the street, retrieved his hat and deposited it with me.
     “It will never happen again!” he assured me as his famous underslung lip curled forward in its traditional smile
     “Merci, mille fois.” I told him in my best French. He tweaked my cheek and marched on. Walter Donaldson thought it was a riot and didn’t stop laughing for two days.
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Fiction’s Fleeting Fame

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We recently watched The Woman Accused (1933), a mystery starring a very young Cary Grant and a very lovely Nancy Carroll. The screenplay, written by Bayard Veiller, was adapted from a serialized novella in Liberty magazine in which each segment was written by one of ten popular authors: Rupert Hughes, Vicki Baum, Viña Delmar, Irvin S. Cobb, Gertrude Atherton, J.P. McEvoy, Zane Grey, Ursula Parrott, Polan Banks, and Sophie Kerr.

The question that arose for us as these authors were seen during the opening credits in a series of brief, silent cameos was, why don’t we know more of these names? The movie’s credits describe them “ten of the world’s greatest authors,” for Pete’s sake. How can we not have an inkling who most of them are?

Perhaps it reveals us as shallow and poorly read, but the only name we recognized was western novelist Grey; the rest were unknown to us (though as we researched their careers a bit, we found there were several names we should have recognized).

So, before you read on, stop and think: How many can of these ten authors of yesteryear are you familiar with? We’ve admittedly set the bar pretty low, to our shame, so surely you’ll recognize more of the names than we did. Once you’ve come up with a total, then click on the images below to learn more about each writer.