This week in history…On March 11th, 1927 the Roxy Theater opened near Times Square.   A few weeks after arriving in New York City from Florida in May 1927, my father strode confidently over to the Roxy Theater to see S.L. Rothafel, whose big new theater and lavish productions were the talk of the town. Mr. Rothafel, “Roxy,” was the titan of show business at the time. A mild, laconic man, he was immensely astute. His elaborate stage shows presaged Radio City Music Hall's extravaganzas. The Roxy’s architecture was a mix of Renaissance, Moorish and Gothic styles, housing three pipe organs, using a hundred and ten-piece orchestra for its stage shows, and having 6,200 seats. It was a glamorized movie house, the first of its kind. The cover of The Roxy program touted “The Cathedral of the Motion Picture.” The building also boasted a cavernous rotunda, a radio broadcasting  studio, dozens of dressing and rehearsal rooms, a laundry, a hair salon, a  dispensary, a cafeteria, a gym, a nap room, a library, and a menagerie for show animals. The Roxy employed 300 people. The Roxy closed in 1960. It was demolished so the hotel next door could build a parking garage.   A cartoon published shortly after the Roxy's opening shows an awestruck child standing in the lobby with her mother. The child asks,  'Does God live here?'   Their showing of new movies (silent, of course, for talkies were several years away) was tastefully laced with a stage show, featuring a soloist, and dance routines by the uniformly shapely, skilled “Roxyettes,” (who became the Rockettes in 1934 when the new Radio City Music Hall was built.) The Roxy was the weekly destination of tourist and native New Yorker alike. This mecca for the masses was, my father decided, where he belonged. Furthermore, Roxy put on a weekly radio show, offering him an even wider audience.    This is how my mother related  James Melton’s assault on the the airwaves:   The young hopeful made his way through the church-like arched corridors to Roxy's office. “I want to see Mr. Rothafel, please,” he politely petitioned the secretary in the outer reception room.  “Have you an appointment?” She scrutinized a long, crimson fingernail, and tossed her bottled blonde curls.   Jim turned on his Southern charm full blast. “Not yet, but I hope you'll give me one.”  “Ummm.  Just be seated.” She turned to the intercom on her desk and murmured something incomprehensible.  Jim waited.  And waited. An hour later, he strode to the desk with his most winning smile lighting the way.   “Please ma’am, when is my appointment?”  “Listen, Mr. Rothafel’s busy just now. He'll send word when he's free to see you.”  People came and went. Some vanished behind the big oak door, never to reappear.  Another hour. Jim went to the desk again, this time without the smile.  “I’ve been here two hours. I don’t think you've been very nice to me.”  “Listen, country boy, Roxy’s a big man. A big, busy man. What makes you think he’d want to see you?”  “Because he needs me. That singer he’s got on stage has got a voice that’s only good for cooling soup. When Roxy hears me sing, he’ll hire me.  You’ll see.”  “Who told you so, your mama?”  “Yeah.  And some day you’ll tell me so, too. You’ll see”  “Well, look, you’d better come back another time.  ‘Maybe he won't be so busy tomorrow.  ‘Maybe he can see you then.”  “I  don’t care about being seen —I want to be heard!”  The next day Roxy was just as busy. And the next day, and the next. On the fifth day, Jim told the overwhelmed receptionist, “Now look!  I’m going to sing for Roxy.  I told you that a week ago.  I know he’s right behind that door, and I’m just going to start singing.  Here.  Now.  And I won’t stop until he comes out.”  The receptionist looked up at angry eyes and a set jaw. “So sing—you wouldn't dare,” she challenged.  Jim threw back his shoulders, set his feet apart, and let loose, in full voice.  No one in the office was prepared for a sudden, unrequested burst of music. The receptionist went rigid with shock, all office noises stopped.  Jim continued to sing.  Almost immediately the great wooden door was opened by a slender man, who said to Jim, “Come on, my boy, let’s find a piano and let you warm up a bit.”  Maximillian Pilzer, Roxy’s assistant director of programs, led Jim to a small room across the hall.  “What are you going to sing for The Boss?”  “ ‘I Hear You Calling Me.’ Key of E, please”  The man played a few bars softly, and then said, “All right. Ready? Let it go.”  Jim let it go.  When he’d finished, Pilzer rose with a smile. “Come with me.”  Past the receptionist, through the oak door, and suddenly Jim was before a great desk, facing a short, quiet man whose eyes appraised him blandly.  “Are you Mr. Rothafel?” asked Jim.  “I am.  I understand you’re going to sing for me.”  “Yes. I’ve been trying to for a week, and I’m going to sing now.”  “All right,” said Roxy amiably. He turned to the man standing at his side. “This is Leo Russato, our musical director. Will you play for the young man, Leo?”  The pianist seated himself at a grand piano in the corner.  He nodded to Jim, who turned his voice on full force in “I Hear You Calling Me.”  “Good,” said Roxy.  “I understand you think you’re what I need here.”  “Yes, sir,” said Jim.  “What salary have you in mind?”  “Two hundred fifty a week,” Jim shot back.  “ Sit down, fella.  Now I don’t need to tell you that you have a great voice, because you know it already.  I’ll pay you one thousand dollars a month.  You’ll sing every other week because we’re not going to push your voice. Don’t want to grind off the fine edge.  That will give you time to study, too. All right?”  “Yes, sir!”  “You’ll start next week. We’re running the first showing of ‘What Price Glory,’ a great new picture, starring Victor McLaglen and Dolores DelRio. The theme song is ‘Charmaine.’ Beautiful song. You’ll introduce it in the stage production.  Leo, take him now and teach him the song.”  “Thank you. Thank you, sir,” said Jim.  Roxy looked at him, a smile of amusement playing across his mouth. “Listen kid, you’ve got a million dollar voice—and two million dollars worth of nerve. You’ll get along.”  A week later, following the first showing of “What Price Glory,” the curtains opened to show one tall young man and a piano in a spotlight against a dark drop.  Jim blinked at the lights, gazed at the thousands of white round spots of peoples’ faces like rows of cupcakes.  He began to back up, his hand behind him reaching for the solid comfort of the piano.  “Biggest stage I ever saw,” he recalled later.  “I backed all over the darn thing, trying to find the piano to lean against, my knees were kinda’ weak.”  Volume one, page one of the seventeen scrapbooks bulging with clippings of my father’s career, has a picture of his teacher and mentor Gaetano deLuca.  Page two has the canceled check for his first week at the Roxy. “For services, week ending July 15, 1927....$250.00.”

 

Steam Cars

Look what I found!  Poking around in the dusty recesses of Pleasant Street Books in Woodstock, Vermont this weekend, my eye was caught by this book cover.  My father, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in Daddy's Stanley Steamer.  The cover is his only appearance in the book.  The contents contain everything you might want to know about all makes of steam cars.

According the research done by Jim Merrick, Archivist at the Stanley Museum in Kingfield, Maine, a few years ago, the James Melton collection included about thirty steam cars, ranging from a 1893 Custom Steam Stage Coach to a couple of Locomobiles, as well as numerous Stanleys and Whites.

More about which in a later post...I promise.

James Melton Debut at the Metropolitan Opera

James Melton as Tamino in "The Magic Flute" at the Met

Like so many of my father's accomplishments, performing at the Met did not come without hard work and determination. But there was also a certain synchronicity involved. Opera in the United States began to suffer from the conflict in Europe in the autumn of 1939, with a number of European singers failing to show up. This provided the opportunity for local talent.  Also on the plus side, a number of European conductors, in America at the time, decided to stay. The great Bruno Walter was one of them.

New York newspapers were unanimous in praise of Melton's debut. The New York Times wrote:

 “James Melton’s name and voice have been known to the American public for a good many years as a result of his work in radio, concert, records and the movies. If that public needs any further endorsement of his attainments, Mr. Melton provided it last night by becoming a member of the Metropolitan Opera Association.  He made his debut in the role of Tamino in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and proved beyond question that he belongs in the company.  The only question was: Why had it taken the company so long to add this gifted American tenor to its roster? Mr. Melton acted and sang with the poise that a singer gains only from years of appearing in public...Mr. Melton's is a true lyric tenor voice. It is not like some other lyric tenors that are too frail for the vast spaces of the Opera House; it is sturdy enough to be heard...Mr. Melton sang it intelligently, and with sensitive regard for the Mozart style. He brought dignity and elegance to the part of Tamino. He should grace other roles.”

 

In that memorable debut performance, on December 7, 1942, the other leading roles were taken by Ezio Pinza as Sarastro, Jarmila Novotna as Pamina, John Brownlee as Papageno, and Norman Cordon as the High Priest. Bruno Walter conducted.  Good company, to say the least.

More about that debut in a later post.

The Melton Museum in Norwalk, Connecticut

Although I have talked some in previous posts about the James Melton Autorama in Florida, I haven't said much about its precursor, the Melton Museum in Norwalk Connecticut (1948-53).  So here goes:

Back in the summer of 1941, the State of Connecticut had appropriated funds to build a museum for my father's cars.  But the onset of World War II put the project on hold.  After the war the agreement still did not come to fruition.  As he put it in a letter to fellow Veteran Motor Car Club members in 1947:

 

"As you may have seen by the papers, I have withdrawn my offer of a museum collection to the State of Connecticut.  The first appropriation was made in 1941, the enlarged appropriation in 1945, and the thing is still only on paper...The combination of dilly-dallying techniques, small brother groups crying over locations, appointment of an antique auto curator—repeat curator!—and the shifting sands of politics—of which I want no part—finally made me decide that it would be in the best interests of my collection and the antique automobile movement as a whole, to cut out of all that complicated and unpleasant situation...I shall create a museum of which we can all be proud—and where we won't wake up some morning to find some Politico's Aunt Tillie's 1928 Model A Ford where a Mercer Raceabout ought to be."

 

Rather than donating his collection to the State in return for the building, he continued to own the cars—and to add to their number until he had close to a hundred.   He formed a corporation, The Melton Museum, Inc., and acquired a 10,000 square foot building on an eight-acre site on Route 7 in Norwalk, Connecticut, half a mile from the Merritt Parkway.  To that he added another 10,000 square foot building, incorporating an existing well-known restaurant, called the Stirrup Cup.  On top of the building with the sign saying The Melton Museum, he put brightly painted cutouts of some of the cars represented in the collection; out front he placed a 1902 trolley car.  He sincerely believed that everyone was as interested in the history of the automobile as he was.  He felt that preserving the cars was only half the story, they should be shown to the public as examples of man's ingenuity and as the beautiful antiques they were.

 

On July 24, 1948, the 20,000 square foot Melton Museum of Antique Automobiles opened in Norwalk, Connecticut, with fifty-five cars, antique bicycles, auto accessories, toy trains and music boxes.  Opening day began with a parade of antique autos, driven by his confreres from the Veteran Motor Car Club, and was attended by celebrities such as Clare Booth Luce, Lawrence Tibbett and Connecticut Governor Grover Whelan. Twelve hundred paying customers came the first day, sixteen hundred the second.  Little did many of the visitors know what a huge, last-minute effort had gone into readying the exhibition for opening day.  Firestone, for instance, had agreed to equip all the cars with their new "non-skid" tires—the words formed the tread design. The tires had been flown in by air freight from Akron, Ohio the day before the museum opened, and Firestone men had worked until 2 A.M. to mount them all. For months my mother had been a willing helper in preparing the museum, haunting local antiques stores in search of the right accouterments to accompany the displays, and raiding friends' and relatives' attics for old-fashioned costumes for the mannequins to wear.  She also oversaw many museum-related details on the home front while her husband was on tour with the Metropolitan Opera that spring.

 

Their old friend, former Ziegfeld designer, John Harkrider, designed the exhibits.  The entrance hall was decorated with large photos of my father's various old car exploits with other celebrities:  the 1937 Easter Parade of antique autos down Fifth Avenue with fellow singers Lanny Ross and Jessica Dragonette as passengers; Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy riding in one of the cars my father took to Hollywood in 1944; and a meeting with Henry Ford Sr. in Dearborn, Michigan.  The cashier's office was in a 1912 Renault Hansom Cab, the car's radiator having been converted to a counter for selling tickets. (Admission to the museum was 60 cents.) One exhibit room had a parade of vehicles filled with cap-and-duster clad mannequins intended to look as if they were driving down a country road.  Another room had eight racing cars displayed in an octagonal pattern; one of the cars was a 1911 Mercedes which was accompanied by a huge photographic blowup of Ralph DePalma driving that very car in the 1911 Vanderbilt Cup Race.  In yet another room, the sign in front of the 1910 White Touring Car explained the origins of the collection, "The ambition of a small boy to own a car like this is what started the whole thing."

 

He hired a retired Norwalk policeman—Officer Phillip O'Grady—as the security guard.  Dressed like a turn of the century Keystone Kop, O'Grady was straight out of central casting, and played his part to the hilt.  Among the summer help my father hired was Joe Ryan, still only in high school, to polish brass and run errands.  Over fifty years later, among the highlights Ryan recalled was a trip to Canada to pick up a 1924 Rolls Royce that Lady Eaton had donated to the museum. "Between being held up at the border for two days because Customs didn't accept the paperwork I carried, (they had to verify it with both Lady Eaton and your father), and the fact the headlights were so dim I could only drive in daylight, it took me five days to get the car back to Norwalk." His job at the Melton Museum started Ryan's lifelong love of automobiles that evolved into his career as sales manager of a Mercedes Benz agency.

 

The oldest car in the Melton Museum was 1893 custom steam stage coach, which looked rather like a horse-drawn carriage with engines added front and rear. The most modern car in the museum was a 1934 custom-built Detroit Electric.  Other unusual pieces in the collection were aforementioned 1911 Mercedes of Vanderbilt Cup Race fame, a 1900 Rockwell Hansom Cab—the first New York City taxi— and a 12-passenger Stanley Steamer Mountain Wagon circa 1915, formerly used in Yellowstone National Park for sightseeing tours.

 

Dorothy Warenskjold

Dorothy Warenskjold 1921-2010 I learned just recently of the death of Dorothy Warenskjold on December 27th.  What a special person she was!  She was my father's singing companion on radio, television and concert, and a friend to my mother and me for the rest of her life. She ended her illustrious singing career teaching at UCLA (for fifteen years) and holding master classes. In 2005 she moved from her native California to Kansas to be near relatives.  In an article from a Kansas newspaper in 2008, she is quoted as saying "I like my life the way it is. I've done everything I wanted to do."  Lucky lady. She died at the age of eighty-nine, but to me she seemed ageless---and always elegant, so elegant. In researching my book, I discovered just what a mainstay Dorothy was for my father on his 1950s TV show  “Ford Festival.” In a kinescope I have of one of the shows, his co-star,  Dorothy seems relatively at ease in front of the camera, but you can plainly see Daddy’s unease. His eyes dart from side to side constantly, except with he’s focusing on singing a song. Is he looking frantically for cue cards, or checking to make sure that everything is all right for the next scene? Live television must have been extremely nerve wracking for all involved!  The responsibility on my father’s shoulders was tremendous—to produce the show as well as star on it. But he wanted it that way. He barely had time to rehearse, so he employed tenor Joe Gaudio to be his rehearsal stand-in for setting lights and marks. No wonder Daddy looked wooden and ill at ease on the show. Often he was hitting those marks for the first time, rather than having become accustomed to the feel of things during multiple rehearsals. Dorothy told me that more than once she’d link her arm through his, and lead him around on stage during broadcasts because she sensed the uncertainty about his own choreographed stage movement. Thank goodness for Dorothy! I saw a rather amusing, amazing gaffe while viewing one of the old kinescopes in which Daddy and Dorothy were singing a duet from Madama Butterfly. There comes a soprano solo section, and he steps away from her into the background. However, in this instance the camera does not move in for a close-up on her. Rather, he remains in the frame as she sings, while he takes a handkerchief out of the pocket of his Lt. Pinkerton naval uniform, blows his nose, and then returns to her side to complete the duet. Surely that can’t have been the staging he intended!  Live TV was so unforgiving! See my blog entry for August 10, 2010 for more information on Dorothy.

A word of explanation...

A word of explanation as to why I have been so silent and out of the blogosphere for over a month.  

For the past couple of years my husband of thirty-two years has been in and out of chemotherapy for lung cancer. In November he basically ran out of treatment options, and his health declined precipitously.  He died on December 19th.

Needless to say, my focus has been elsewhere for the last couple of months.  But now things are getting back to normal, the "new normal," and so I'm getting back to my blog.

More to come very soon, I promise.

1957 Glidden Tour, Plus Queen Elizabeth II

The other day I had an e-mail from Tim Martin (a friend I’ve never met!) who forwarded me recollections of the 1957 Glidden Tour written by Tom Marshall.  Tim gets a weekly e-mail from Friends of Auburn Heights, the foundation now managing Tom’s family’s property in Yorklyn, Delaware, which houses a large collection of Stanley Steamers, Packards and electric cars.  (See http://www.auburnheights.org/)

 I did not go on that 1957 tour myself, but my mother and I joined Daddy in Jamestown for the Queen’s visit celebrating the 350^th anniversary of the first English settlement. I remember having to write a composition about the event for my sixth grade class.  And, of course, I have some photos of Her Majesty.  Were any of you on that 1957 Tour?

 Here is what Tom Marshall wrote:

 The tour began in Roanoke, Virginia, and Bob Way (my third cousin and the owner of a 1919 Model 735) and I drove from home in the Model 76 to Luray, Virginia, over 200 miles the first day and on to Roanoke on the second. On the first official day of the tour, we were headed for Charlottesville, via Natural Bridge and Waynesboro, our luncheon stop. As we approached Waynesboro, I looked in the rearview mirror, and just behind was Locomobile #16, with its owner, Peter Helck, and a friend at the controls. For those who don't know, this is perhaps the most famous antique racing car in the world, in which Barney Oldfield won many races. Helck was a well-known artist who depicted in great detail many of these early auto races. That afternoon, we visited Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, with the Glidden Tour cars climbing the mountain by the old driveway used in Jefferson's time. Arriving at the historic site, I needed water for the Stanley and asked a groundskeeper if there was a spigot nearby. He told me to pull onto the front lawn of Monticello, where numerous connections for attaching a garden hose existed. This worked out well, but seeing the Stanley on the front lawn, everyone on the tour wanted to be photographed there, and the yard was soon full of Glidden Tour cars. Today, it's not possible to drive within ½ mile of Monticello itself.The next day we went to Williamsburg, via Richmond, where I dropped off Bob Way, as he had to return home by train. On the last stretch, it was a very hot afternoon, and as I stopped for water, an exhausted man and his wife pulled in with their 1906 Jenis boiling over. This was an impressive car with a lot of brass, and it happened that its owners were in the room next to me at the Williamsburg Motor Lodge for the next two days. I invited them to ride to an outdoor picnic in the Model 76, and the husband was somewhat impressed. It turned out this was Carl S. Amsley (1921-1998), who, within a couple of years, was in the business of restoring and building Stanleys in a big way. While we were in Williamsburg, Queen Elizabeth II was in town to help celebrate the 350th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown. She spoke in front of the Wren Building at the College of William and Mary, and most on the tour went to see and hear her. I did not. However, I recall riding with Curtis L. Blake (co-founder of Friendly's Ice Cream) in his newly restored 1920 Pierce Arrow.

At Mount Vernon, I took on water at the rear entrance to the grounds, and the next day in the rain on the final leg to Hershey, Pennsylvania, I came up behind a most unusual vehicle traveling about 30 m.p.h. It was a huge machine and had a rear platform like an old-fashioned railroad observation car. Sitting on this platform and bouncing up and down on the overhang was its owner, James Melton, well-known tenor of the Metropolitan Opera, Hollywood, and the radio, probably the most famous collector of old cars in the mid-twentieth century. The "car" was an oversized Winton of about 1918, built especially for Sam Pennypacker when he was running for Governor of Pennsylvania. We ended the tour at Hershey and had to clean up our cars that night for displaying them at the annual Fall Meet of AACA the next day. A fun tour!

Actually, the 1917 Winton Housecar was built for E.J. Fithian when he ran for Governor of Pennsylvania.  I’ve written about this vehicle in an earlier blog post (November 5, 2009).

Note:  My posts may become irregular for a time.  My husband is going through a very serious health issue at the moment.