O.O. McIntyre
Kentucky Post and Times-Star/October 24, 1926
A CHICAGO hotel clerk wrote the other day to inquire why I panned members of his guild. I didn’t know I had, although I have been the victim of their impertinence many times in New York and elsewhere.
No class of men meeting the public shows such little consideration as the average hotel clerk. He often has the manner of regarding every questioner a nuisance—and his job is to answer questions.
Of course it is not pleasant but no work, strictly speaking, is always pleasant. And people ask silly questions. That I admit, but it offers no excuse for impertinence.
No job offers such a stepping stone to bigger things as hotel clerking—if one goes at the job in a right way. I recall In my travels three extremely polite and considerate hotel clerks and here is what happened. One owns a big family hotel In New York, the other is a director and stockholder in a large middle west hotel, and the third is vice president and general manager of a large mercantile establishment. There are doubtless many others just as polite.
Hotel clerks meet prominent people and are, if capable, able to leave a lasting impression by their courtesy and tact. They can build a stairway to independence by being polite and thoughtful. No one need be ashamed of being a hotel clerk but many should be ashamed of valuing the job so lightly.
THERE is a lady down in the office where travelers get passports who is known far and wide as “Miss Baer of the Passport Office.” Hotel clerking is a paradise compared to that post. Miss Baer must answer thousands of silly questions daily, wrestle with the problems of immigrants who do not know the language, and at all times keep her temper. She does this in such a calm and unruffled way that every passport seeker leaves her as a friend. When women enter the diplomatic service Miss Baer should get the most important post.
I know a man who fibbed to his bride-to-be about his income. After marriage he faced the sweating despair of debts he could not pay. They mounted higher and higher and one night he went home and told her the truth. The next day they moved to a rented room and they began to pay off the indebtedness. Now they are out of debt but she is going to leave him. Perhaps she is justified.
THERE is a good cry in this ad in a New York paper: “Discouraged student wishes to sell E flat saxophone; best offer; cost $105; little used.”
IT was a restaurant scene in one vaudeville. A lady asked for a horse’s neck and her escort said he would take the same.
“Why not take a horse’s hoof?” said the waiter to the escort “and then we will not have to kill two horses.” I suppose the wheeze is 60 years old, for I was the only person in the audience who laughed out loud. After all, a joke is only old when you have heard it before.
NOTHING is so humiliating as being the one person in an audience to laugh out loud. You have the idea everyone is saying to themselves “The poor sap”— and they probably are.
AT the opening of a play an announcer announced motion pictures would be taken of the audience to be displayed in all leading theaters next week. A startled gentleman jumped up from his place beside a lady and raced for the exit “What’s the matter?” cried the announcer. “My God!” was the reply “My wife thinks I’m in Boston!”
FEW deaths in the theater world have caused such genuine regret as that of Julian Mitchel last summer. He was the finest and most considerate of stage directors. He was 75 and almost totally deaf and yet he trained choruses and ballets. How he did it while scarcely hearing a note no one exactly knew. He never shouted “Hey you” at some awkward chorus girl. To him they were “Ladies of the ensemble.” He was firm but never gruff and his patience was limitless. His wife was Bessie Clayton, a dancer to whom he was devoted.
There is one stage director whose Simon Legree methods made him generally hated. He was crude and vulgar. One night a stage brace fell from the flies and nearly ended his career. An accident, it was said. But others knew differently.
“No. 33 W. 48TH ST.” is one of those little cafes that for no special reason spring into sudden popularity. There are no garish fittings—just a cozy place serving plain but well cooked food. Yet at dinner there I saw five famous Broadway stars, a soupcon of sporting celebrities, several writers and the like. The proprietor is Eddie Witmer, long known in the Broadway restaurant world.
A SWEDE went into a 25-cent hair-cutting place for a hair cut. At the finish he was told the bill was $1. ‘‘What for?” he asked. “Your hair cut—25 cents a corner” was the reply.
JACK OSTERMAN, a comedian, complains that every time he bets on a horse race the jockey just goes out for a ride.
YOUNG OSTERMAN only a few years ago used to be sent off to bed while his father, J J Rosenthal and I played pinochle. Now he struts the stage with the nonchalance of the finished wise-cracker — puncturing this foible and that. It makes one feel dreadfully old to witness such transformations. Osterman’s mother is Kathryn Osterman, who was a favorite of touring companies in the late nineties — a lovely and charming lady who gladly sacrificed her career for the simpler joys of domesticity.
LEO MARSH has fallen heir to the managing editorship of the Morning Telegraph and also writes its first page column signed “Beau Broadway.’’ Marsh succeeded the late Rennald Wolf as dramatic critic on the Telegraph and filled his shoes ably. He is one of the most popular scribblers along the Bi Rue and is the husband of Helen Rockwell, also a talented writer.
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