September 14, 2007
The Golden Age of Toots Shor: An Interview with Kristi Jacobson Posted by Allen Barra at 12:05 PM EST The 1977 obituary in The New York Times for Bernard “Toots” Shor noted that New York’s mot famous saloonkeeper was “a magnet, around which flowed any of the special streams of New York’s greatness.” Those streams included athletes, movie stars, writers, and politicians—virtually anyone who was well-known and successful in New York. In the 1957 noir cult movie favorite Sweet Smell of Success, Tony Curtis’s predatory publicist, Sidney Falco, makes his important connections with Burt Lancaster’s powerful gossip columnist, J. J. Hunsecker, at Shor’s place. Kristi Jacobson, Shor’s granddaughter, has crafted a fascinating documentary portrait of Toots, tracing his life from South Philadelphia to success in New York, using film clips, TV segments, still photographs, and interviews with such luminaries as Mike Wallace, Walter Cronkite, Whitey Ford, Frank Gifford, Gay Talese, and a score of others. Her film, Toots, is not just a biography of a man but a portrait of a city, a culture, and an era. The movie opens in New York City today, and Ms. Jacobson spoke with us about it and its subject from her office in the Soho neighborhood of New York. Toots Shor has to be the most famous saloon in American history. More celebrities mingled there and rubbed elbows with each other than at any other bar in America. Why was this? What was it about Toots and his bar-restaurant that attracted the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Joe DiMaggio, and Frank Sinatra? I have asked myself the same question for years. I’ve often wondered what Toots, an uneducated “bum,” had in common with men as accomplished and disparate as Eisenhower, Hemingway, Sinatra, DiMaggio, and Hoffa. Toots had a rough-hewn charm, a straight-talking no-nonsense honesty, and a sincere love of fun. But I think ultimately the saloon’s place in history was the result of a perfect confluence of person, place, and time. The period in New York between the 1940s and 1950s was a unique time, and Toots and his saloon embodied the era—the post-Prohibition, post–World War II period when people wanted to let off steam and really have a good time. And his attitude toward life, friendship, and drinking gave people—famous and common—a place to feel at home. New York at that time was just emerging as the capital of the world, and the kinds of people who made up the fabric of New York City were a lot like Toots—tough, children of immigrants, who came to New York with little more then some loose change in their pockets and dreams of a better life. Toots’s belief that “a saloonkeeper is the most important person in a community” also played a role, in that he took the job very seriously and built not just a saloon but a community unlike any other. He was the first one there in the morning and the last to leave at night. At Toots’s, “drinking hard” was required, and loyalty, friendship, or “palship,” as he called it, was paramount. As he said to Mike Wallace in a 1959 interview, friends meant so much to him that it was “nearly a photo finish” between friends and family in his life. Since Toots took his friendships so seriously, he protected those who were celebrities, and as Peter Duchin says, “If you tried to get an autograph from someone at Toots, some waiter would break your leg!” Celebrity culture had not gotten so out of control then. His saloon also cut across class lines, since for him “class” was judged by how loyal, decent, and honest a person was, and because of his own humble background he respected above all those who, like him, came from nothing. He revered athletes and sportswriters above all, and the feeling was mutual. Toots’s was the ultimate clubhouse during a very special time in our history. Watching your film, one gets the impression that a large part of the saloon’s appeal was that it embodied the New York sports culture of the 1950s. Baseball players like Mickey Mantle, boxers like Joe Louis, football players such as Frank Gifford, they all hung out at Toots’s and seemed to feel at ease there. Do you think your grandfather was a sports fan per se, or was he more interested in the men who played sports? Both. He was definitely a diehard sports fan. He loved nothing more than a good game, or a good fight, or a good race. He felt that sports were the backbone of American life, and that any good citizen should have a devoted interest in them. He even marked events in his own life by sports. When did he open his restaurant? “I signed the lease on September 15, 1939—the day Tony Galento beat Lou Nova in Philadelphia.” His first wedding anniversary? “One of the biggest upsets in football happened that day,” he said of November 2, 1935. “Notre Dame beat Ohio State. What a game! Notre Dame scored two touchdowns in the last minute and a half of play.” But it was more than just sports fanaticism. He had tremendous respect for athletes, and I think he also strongly identified with them. As Peter Duchin says in the film, “though [Toots] loved Joe DiMaggio, who was the most famous ballplayer, as much as he possibly could, he still would love somebody else who was a great polo player. He revered the sportsmen.” I think part of that was that most athletes of that era were working-class, tough-as-nails kids who, with a good dose of talent and sheer will, scrapped their way out of their neighborhoods and into professional sports, and eventually into sports stardom. Likewise, these athletes saw a similar story in Toots, who was proud of his background and his upbringing as a street fighter in the streets of South Philadelphia. Toots made a point to talk to, and often console, both big-name athletes and younger ones who were struggling. Joe Garagiola tells a great story in the film about the time Toots came to sit with him on the stairs of his restaurant: “There was the big, famous, successful restaurateur sitting with a .220-hitting catcher, listening to my problems. There was no gain for him. He was taking care of, if I can say it now, a scared kid who didn’t know where to go.” I think it is difficult to separate the two—his love of sports and his interest in the men who played. Another story comes to mind that never made it into the film but is one of my favorites: After a game in 1945, Toots rushed back from the Polo Grounds after watching Mel Ott hit his 500th home run. He arrived at his saloon to find Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, at one of the tables. Toots introduced himself and chatted until Ott arrived, flush from his achievement. “Excuse me, Sir Fleming,” Toots said, “but I gotta leave you. Somebody important just came in.” On one remarkable occasion, Chief Justice Earl Warren was at one table and Frank Costello, perhaps the most notorious organized crime figure in America, was at another. If the account I heard is correct, they tipped their glasses and smiled at each other. What do you think it was about your grandfather’s saloon that made it a kind of neutral territory for two such people? I think the way Toots treated people in his joint had an effect on how people treated each other in the place too. It is, when I think about it, quite remarkable that among Toots’s closest friends were men who operated on such opposite sides of the law. But Toots didn’t think anything of a scene like this. To him, they were just his friends. It was another day, another coupla pals. It all made perfect sense to him, and others seemed to follow along. The tone was set by Toots that all were welcome (unless he didn’t like you, of course) and that was that. It was also a different time—some call it a magical time—when these guys, who all rose to power together from the Depression and Prohibition, respected each other in a way that’s difficult to imagine today. Everyone I interviewed for the film described Frank Costello as a dignified man who commanded an incredible amount of respect from others. I try to imagine a situation today that would be comparable, and I come up with nothing. I find it absolutely fascinating how accessible these people were then, and that a moment like this could even be possible. To celebrities like Mike Wallace, Whitey Ford, and Frank Gifford, the sale of your grandfather’s restaurant in 1961 marked the end of an era. And most of the customers never felt quite at home in the second incarnation of Toots’s saloon. What was it about the 1960s that he couldn’t quite adjust to? It seems to me that it was everything about the 1960s that Toots couldn’t, or wouldn’t, adjust to. The sixties were of course a time of great change, not just in the world and the United States, but especially in New York City. Toots had no tolerance for drugs or rock music or the excessive wealth and attitude that athletes were beginning to acquire. The downtown club scene, Studio 54, and the people who went there—these were not the crowd that Toots catered to or wanted in his saloon. People were moving to the suburbs, and TV had a huge affect on nightlife. Instead of adapting to the changes, Toots thought his attitude toward life would in the end prevail, that he could stick it out, and people would keep coming to his joint. As we know, that was not the way it worked out. Unlike the rest of us, though, this didn’t upset Toots. ”I started off broke, so I’m no worse off now,” he said with a laugh in 1975. The 1960s may have led to the demise of his restaurant, but Toots remained strong-willed until the very end.
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