It was 1979, the last week in December. We were in the dismal interregnum between the Christmas letdown and the New Year’s meltdown. It happened in a steakhouse called The Sacred Cow on 72nd between Broadway and West End Ave.
The Sacred Cow was a throwback to a time when bars were dark, bartenders were pasty guys named George in white shirts and bowties, stools had red leather seats that stuck to your behind and nobody drank wine. In the ‘50’s it had been a hangout for the thousands of Upper West Siders who worked in the theater trades—actors, musicians, craftspeople. Now only a few hundred survived, just enough to keep it open. Mrs. J, the ancient owner, wore tinted glasses like a poker player who didn’t want to tip her hand. She guarded the door in a black dress with pearl necklace and a huge diamond ring that you knew she would never hock, even if she were starving. She bit hard on an ebony cigarette holder with a sour look like she never would have let you past the checkroom in the old days and walked you through the empty dining room to a table right across from the Men’s Room. The bar belonged to the “gypsies,” former chorus boys, who had made a living in national companies, regional theaters, bus and truck tours and summer stock until the years had caught up with them and they couldn’t hit the high notes or do the combinations—and the stage makeup actually made them look older. Now they prowled among their souvenirs in residential hotel rooms. Who had been a sailor in “South Pacific,” and could still do a chorus of “There is nothing like a dame?” Who had escorted “Julie” down the stairs in “…Lady,” or lifted “Channing” in “…Dolly?” Every dropped name came with an epithet. “Jerry” Robbins was “Insatiable.” Barbra Streisand…”Oh God, Miss Pastrami breath…” They drank Old Fashioneds and Perfect Manhattans, smoked Pall Malls and laughed a lot. But their lips were pursed like disapproving prelates and their bright-eyed stares could burn your skin off.
The mark of an elite showbiz hangout was defiantly bad food. You could get ptomaine in Elaine’s or Sardis, but at least you got snubbed by celebrities. The Sacred Cow had the ptomaine, but not the population. You got attitude from a guy who’d been the fourth bell ringer on the left in the Ashtabula Dinner Theatre production of “Sound of Music.” The martinis were warm. The steaks were cold and marbled with hard fat. You got a raised eyebrow and a “really?” if you ordered the “catch of the day.” The baked potatoes looked like they had been flown in from Hiroshima.
The East Side had piano bars. People played plenty to see Bobby Cole, Ellis Marsalis, Bobby Short. At The Sacred Cow the help did the entertaining. Mrs. J would grab a mike and introduce them: “Here, fresh off the national tour of “Mack and Mabel” is…” And a waiter with a shrieking tenor that sounded like the dentist had hit a nerve would come up and assault a standard. These people had a special vendetta against show tunes. If they couldn’t get a part in the show they sure as hell weren’t going to make the score sound good. The pianist was Skip. “He’s played in the pits for some of Broadway’s biggest,” Mrs. J would say. And Skip would add archly: “the pits is right…” Skip was a .500 hitter. Every second note was a clinker. He couldn’t get his pinkie to work. But the customers cheered and gathered around the piano like he was George Gershwin at a Hollywood party.
So why did we go? Because even they couldn’t kill the great songs.
It was a Sunday night. An icy drizzle fell on the empty streets. The bar was quiet. There was only one other party in the dining room—an old man getting grumpily drunk between two women.
I was about to bet Skip he couldn’t play “Chopsticks” when Mrs. J grabbed the mike. “We’ve been waiting for months for Freddie to come off the “Fantasticks” tour and we finally got her. Let’s welcome… Freddie LeBlanc.”
Our waitress slammed our plates on the table and ran to the piano. She was forty and fizzy. You could look at her and guess her story. She was the bright little girl whose mom had run the local storefront school of Voice, Ballet and Tap. She had starred in all the school plays, majored in Speech and Theatre and come to the big city to conquer Broadway. She had a history of disappointment, frustration, exploitation and abuse that would have killed most women. But except for a permanent headache wince around the eyes she was forever young. She grabbed the mike and waved to the boys at the bar.
“Here’s a great old standard Skip and I have been working on,” she said. “My Funny Valentine, which was introduced on Broadway in… Skip…?”
“Pal Joey,” Skip said.
There was a commotion in the dark corner. A grunt, some urgent whispers. Freddie waited for silence with a long-suffering smile.
Skip’s intro sounded like he was playing with his elbows. Then he stopped and in the dramatic silence, Freddie sent out a doomed search party to find the first note.
It was chalk-on-the-blackboard time. The better the song the harder it is to sing and Freddie didn’t have the chops for “Happy Birthday. By the time she got to the second verse: “Is your figure less than Greek/ Is your mouth a little weak/” she had lost the melody and was trying to stylize.
“Sing the goddamn song right!”
It came from the table in the corner. Freddie smiled bravely and continued.
“You stink, lady!”
There was the crash of falling cutlery as a table went down. A soup bowl rolled onto the floor followed by an angry old man.
“You know who sang this song?” he shouted. “Ella Fitzgerald …Sinatra, Nat Cole…You got some nerve…”
He had a distinguished look. Dark suit, white shirt, pocket-handkerchief; the way people had dressed to go out in the ‘50’s. He was chased by a thin elderly woman with a mink around her shoulders and a younger woman in jeans. They tried to restrain him, but he broke away and screamed in Freddie’s face.
“You think you’re a singer you tone-deaf bitch? “
Freddie was stoic. She had gotten this review before.
But it was too much for Skip. He rose to defend her. “Get him out of here. What do you know, old man?”
The old man turned on Skip. “I know the show was Babes in Arms, not Pal Joey, you idiot!”
They got him up the stairs where Mrs. J was waiting with his overcoat. There were some mutterings at the bar.
“You should be ashamed…”
“Shut up you’ pansies,” he shouted. “You always got everything wrong.”
Then, he turned with an anguished cry to the old woman.
“For God’s sake why did you bring me here? Why did you do this to me?”
The old guy was still screaming as they took him out. One of the “pansies” went to the window as they bundled him into a taxi. Then turned with a shocked look.
“Oh my God, that’s Richard Rodgers. He wrote the song…”
Skip rushed to reassure Freddie. “Composers can’t stand interpretation. That’s why Porter loved Merman. She sang it straight.”
And the ever-practical Mrs. J came up waving a bill. “Look Freddie, they left you a hundred…”
Freddie tried to smile, but she was inconsolable. The money didn’t mean anything to her. She just wanted to be good. At this point she would have settled for mediocre.
On New Year’s Eve, I picked up a paper and saw that the great composer Richard Rodgers had died the next night after a long struggle with cancer.
