Pocket notebook sighting

[From Four in a Jeep (dir. Leopold Lindtberg and Elizabeth Montagu, 1951). Click for a larger view.]

Bad sound made the movie unwatchable. But at least I got a notebook out of it.

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : The Case of the Howling Dog : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Deep Valley : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : The Flight That Disappeared : The Fearmakers : A Foreign Affair : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : The Girl in Black Stockings : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : If I Had a Million : L’Innocent : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Lost Horizon : M : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : What Happened Was . . . : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once : Young and Innocent

More 14th Street

Robert Caro’s mantra is “Turn every page.” I think that for browsing the 1939–1941 tax photographs of New York City buildings, the mantra ought to be “Walk every block” — at least figuratively. Because who knows what you might find?

I posted this photograph last week for its retail density. Please notice, among other details, the sign for the Gypsy Den:

[106 East 14th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. All photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click any image for a much larger view.]

A sharp-eyed reader went further down the block. What do you notice here?

[108 East 14th Street.]

You are correct: at some point between these photographs, a sign either came down or went up for the N.Y. Freiheit Mandolin Orchestra. The orchestra was founded in 1924 and continues today as the New York Mandolin Orchestra. Here’s an article with some history. Thanks, Brian.

Other small differences make it fairly certain that these photographs were not taken on the same day: the FOR RENT sign between the top-story windows of 106 disappears; the open window below is now closed; the vertical pivot windows are open at different angles; the BASEBALL sign has been replaced by JANTZEN, and the clamp that holds the upper part of the tripod shaft in place is at a different height.

I went farther down the block and found a further surprise:

[112 East 14th Street.]

It’s Lüchow’s, a New York landmark for many years. I’ll let Harold H. Hart’s Hart’s Guide to New York City (1964) do the talking for me.

Nostalgia, noise, and food are all served up here in equally huge helpings. Lüchow’s, established in 1882, was once the favorite dining spot of such celebrities as Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady. Since the turn of the century this vast landmark has accumulated a hefty reputation.

The several enormous rooms are separated by lofty, carved archways. Festooning the dark, oak-paneled walls are beer seidels, stuffed moose heads, ship models, and huge, ornately framed oil paintings of formidable sentimentality. Add the black iron chandeliers, the many mirrors, and the blue-and-white checked tablecloths, and you’ve got something reminiscent of a gemütliche Munich beer-hall.

Lüchow’s always seems to be mobbed, and there’s a general air of frantic festivity. Evenings, from 7 to 10 o’clock, a small string orchestra valiantly pits its schmaltz against the din, and is rewarded after every selection with lusty, beaming applause.

If you seek subtlety in your victuals, don’t come here. The food, like the atmosphere, is robust and heavily Teutonic. Sauerbraten with potato dumplings, Boiled Beef, various kinds of Schnitzels are all on the menu, along with something called Drei Mignons à la Berliner, which consists of filets of beef, pork, and veal. There are goulashes, ragouts, and chickens-in-the-pot galore.

For lovers of tartar steak, Lüchow’s Schlemmerschnitte combines raw tenderloin with a side helping of Russian caviar. Sausage lovers have a good assortment of wursts to choose from, mit sauerkraut if desired. Hunters, real or vicarious, can gorge on venison or pheasant when these are in season.

And for dessert, there are Flaming Pancakes. This tour de force is a huge pancake flavored with lemon, cinnamon and sugar, then filled with lingonberries, and finally rolled up and doused with Kirschwasser, which is then set aflame.

A tall steinkrug of dark, imported beer is $1.10; and a glass of German Moselle or Rhine wine is 80¢ (with seltzer, 15¢ extra).

An average dinner will come to $5; lunch will run about $2 less.

Here is a 1951 menu.

Did the WPA photographers break for lunch at Lüchow’s? Were members of the N.Y. Freiheit Mandolin Orchestra eating there? Were Flaming Pancakes being brought to someone’s table? Some mysteries are meant to remain so.

Notice that there are different cars parked in front of Lüchow’s in the second and third photographs. Perhaps the three photographs were taken on three different days.

Winter Carnival (dir. Charles Reisner, 1939), a comedy-romance, starred Ann Sheridan (Ann “Oomph” Sheridan, the marquee calls her) and Richard Carlson. The cast of She Married a Cop (dir. Sidney Salkow, Cal Dalton, and Ben Hardaway) a comedy with music, has just two names I recognize: Jerome Cowan and Horace McMahon. Both films were released in July 1939.

Today 106, 108, and 110 house tall buildings, one of them an NYU dorm, University Hall, aka UHall.

I realized only yesterday that I have a 2022 post celebrating the retail density of East 14th Street.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Emporia, firing Eleven fired faculty members have brought a lawsuit.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Steve Mossberg, has the arch (29-A, ten letters “Psychomotor learning experts”), the indirect (52-A, five letters, “Drops off”), the surprising (8-D, nine letters, Moby-Dick’s ‘lively sketches of whales’”), and the tricky (54-A, five letters, “Be stingy”). Something for everyone, and a really delightful puzzle.

I started with tamer clues — 33-D, four letters, “Musical note’s vertical line” and 41-A, three letters, “Sub-Saharan staple” — and then meandered with a mazy motion, a word here, a word there, doubting I’d get everything. The clue whose answer made me think I would: 13-A, four letters, “Type of batter bread,” which made many things fall into place.

Some more clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, four letters, “Galaxy clusters.” Tricky, but it didn’t fool me.

10-D, five letters, “Poet pal of Tolkein.” Good to see the name in a puzzle.

13-D, ten letters, “Peruvian brandy cocktail.” Wha? I don’t know how I know this.

26-D, ten letters, “Similar color to Flame Orange.” Yow! But the clue should really read “Color similar to Flame Orange.”

34-A, fifteen letters, “One averse to innovation.” Worth an outright guess, Could it be? Yes.

36-A, ten letters, “Rustic jam.” But the spelling might be a challenge.

42-D, five letters, “Thoroughfare bordering Yale U.” A thoroughfare, really? Okay, I suppose it is.

45-A, five letters, “Deconstruct.” Sort of.

46-D, five letters, “Slip away, in a way.” Of course, ERODE. Uh, no.

My favorite in this puzzle: 14-D, seven letters, “Starting point.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“So thick with phantoms”

Steven Millhauser, “Phantoms,” in Voices in the Night (2015).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Zippy under the El

Today’s Zippy: “Street Smart,” with Dana Andrews, Victor Mature, Ida Lupino, and the Third Avenue El. So much art in these panels.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Jigs and gigs

Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC this afternoon: “The gig is up.”

Complicating matters: there’s a documentary film titled The Gig Is Up (2021). But that title, about the so-called gig economy, is a pun on jig. In 2021 Grammarphobia looked at the jig is up and the gig is up.

Google’s Ngram Viewer shows jig as overwhelming leading gig in print in all its varieties of English. I think it’s safe to say that Wallace meant jig. Oh, by the way, she was commenting on new news about Jack Smith’s investigation and a disgraced former president’s ever-increasing peril.

*

Coincidence: Yesterday Fran Drescher said “The jig is up” in her powerful SAG-AFTRA speech (1:56 in the shorter video, 5:47 in the longer one). Every union should have a leader like Fran Drescher.

“The deserts of the night”

Steven Millhauser, “We Others,” in We Others: New and Selected Stories (2008).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Lester Young speaks

The tenor saxophonist Lester Young was an inventive user of words. From Playback with Lewis Porter!, two television clips of Young speaking, featuring “Ivey-Divey” and “Little Tinky Boom? One stick, you dig?” Listen for the difference the sticks make.

From Whitney Balliett’s New York Notes: A Journal of Jazz in the Seventies (1976), a few more examples of Lester Young’s language, as recalled by the pianist Jimmy Rowles:

“Lester was the coolest man I ever met. He had his own language. He wasn’t Pres to us, but Bubba, after some nephews who called him Uncle Bubba. He’d turn to me on the bandstand and say, ‘Startled doe. Two o’clock,’ which meant if you looked into the audience at where two o’clock was you’d see this pretty chick with big eyes. ‘Bob Crosby’s in the house’ meant a cop had just come in, and ‘Bing and Bob’ meant the fuzz were all over the place. When I first knew him, he said, ‘There’s a gray boy at the bar who is looking for you.’ ‘What’s a gray boy?’ I said. ‘Man, you’re a gray boy,’ he said, smiling with those green teeth he had then, ‘and I’m an Oxford gray.’

“And everything that was good was ‘bulging.’ It was a telescoping of a phrase that had started out ‘I’ve got eyes for that,’ which meant ‘I like that,’ and became ‘I’ve got great big eyes for that,’ and then ‘I’ve got bulging eyes for that.’ But if he didn’t like something or somebody, all he did was puff out his cheeks — no words at all, just balloon cheeks.“

Another sampling, from Balliett’s American Musicians: Fifty-Six Portraits in Jazz (1986):

Much of Young’s language has vanished, but here is a sampling: “Bing and Bob” were the police. A “hat” was a woman, and a “homburg” and a “Mexican hat” were types of women. An attractive young girl was a “poundcake.” A “gray boy” was a white man, and Young himself, who was light-skinned, was an “oxford gray.” “I’ve got bulging eyes” for this or that meant he approved of something, and “Catalina eyes” and “Watts eyes” expressed high admiration. “Left people” were the fingers of a pianist’s left hand. “I feel a draft” meant he sensed a bigot nearby. “Have another helping,” said to a colleague on the bandstand, meant “Take another chorus,” and “one long” or “two long” meant one chorus or two choruses. People “whispering on” or “buzzing on” him were talking behind his back. Getting his “little claps” meant being applauded. A “zoomer” was a sponger, and a “needle dancer” was a heroin addict. “To be bruised” was to fail. A “tribe” was a band, and a “molly trolley” was a rehearsal. “Can Madam burn?” meant “Can your wife cook?” “Those people will be here in December” meant that his second child was due in December.

[Young had two children, Lester Young Jr. and Yvette Young. Lester Young Jr. is the Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents.]

Stephen Sondheim’s dictionary

Stephen Sondheim’s townhouse is on the market. If you look at the thirteenth photograph, you’ll see that Sondheim had a Merriam-Webster’s Second on his dictionary stand. The three thumb-notches at the front of the volume — clear signs of a W2.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts and Sondheim posts (Pinboard)