A life in New York, 1924
munger 
Received another
letter from home, father
still sick but not dangerous
Deep in my heart and
thoughts I am praying to
the Allmighty to spare my
dear parents and protect
them from any ills or worries
————–
Matt’s Notes:
I forgot to mention yesterday that Papa’s father’s name was Joseph Scheurman, though back in Sniatyn it was spelled “Szojerman.” Here are Papa’s parents once again:
Here’s a glimpse of where they lived, courtesy of the Sniatyn page at jewishgen.org:
When I went up with Philip
to the School to pay for him
$2.00 the owner called him
out of the class and told me
and him that we would have
to pay the balance of 50 dollars
at once and when I told him
that I cannot do it besides
we have last week made up
for $2.00 a week, he sent
Philip and myself home,
saying ‘you can go home
Good night, good night’
I think it is an outrage
the way that school man
acted, I intend to take
action I will consult Sat.
Counsellor Levine about it,
Spent rest of the Evening
at hom adjusting my correspondence
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Matt’s Notes
This is a continuation of a saga involving Phil, who was Papa’s brother-in-law, the Success School, where Phil took English lessons, and Papa, who was paying for Phil’s lessons on an installment plan he’d arranged with the school’s headmaster. As I noted earlier, I think the headmaster wanted to kick Phil out in favor of a student who could pay in full. I don’t know why he needed the $50 so badly, but since he gave Papa so much grief I’ll take license to say he was an opium addict who’d promised Phil’s seat to one of the many prostitutes he owed money to. Poor guy. It’s hard to think straight when your brain is scrambled by syphilis and you’ve sold all your children to cover your gambling debts.
“Counsellor Levine” was, I expect, on retainer with one of the immigrant-oriented mutual aid societies Papa belonged to, most likely the Order Sons of Zion or the Sniatyn landsmanshaft. This would be a perfect example of why the services provided by landsmanshaftn were so important to people like Papa. He never could have afforded representation on his own, but for a few dollars a year in club dues he knew he could talk to a lawyer when jerks like the Success School’s headmaster tried to shit on his family.
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Additional Notes
Sometimes little details in Papa’s entries really do a lot to illustrate the texture of his life in the 20’s. In this case, the headmaster’s bullying phrase “you can go home, good night, good night” (I can’t help but think of how Gene Wilder dismisses Charlie and Grandpa with a tight “I said good day sir…I said good day!” in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and Papa’s mention of “adjusting my correspondence” feel especially Edwardian to me. We shouldn’t forget, either, that Papa wrote this entry in a clothbound journal by gaslight, probably just before bed and just after using the communal toilet down the hall. The concerns of his life — political work, romantic adventures, sick parents, nasty school masters — were timeless, but his day-to-day experiences were, of course, strictly 1924.
Visited Sister Nettie
I am so worried over
Ruchalys illness, I love the
child so much oh lord
help this child to come back
to normal health and bring
a little more happiness to her
unfortunate parents,
Another letter form home
father is still confined to bed
May the next letter bring me
the news of his renewed health.
Attend meeting of Maccabean
Camp the rest of the
Evening.
Got a letter from brother
Isaac criticising me for
not helping him, It hurts
me that I cannot help every-
body that wants such a thing
from me.
—————
Matt’s Notes
Four paragraphs, three of them filled with dread and anxiety. I suppose an optimist might see the glass as one-quarter full instead of three-quarters empty, but by most standards I’d say Papa had a really bad day.
Ruchaly’s illness is not fatal in this case, though she did eventually die of meningitis at age 11. It’s hard not to think about this, or the permanent emotional collapse Nettie suffered as a result, when Papa brings her up. It’s like a spectre hangs over her every mention.
Still, the letter from Isaac stands out as the day’s unkindest cut. Isaac probably thought the streets of America were paved with gold — this would not have been uncommon back then — did he honestly believe Papa was holding out on him? The accusation must have really stung Papa because it was so insulting to his character (consider how he was trying to untangle a problem for his brother-in-law just the day before) and came at a time when Papa already felt awful about his inability to see or help his ailing father more.
I want to tread lightly on Isaac’s memory, partly because I’m named for him (my middle name is Ian) but mostly because I know he died in terror, chased into the woods and shot by Nazi soldiers along with the other Jews of Sniatyn. I also think his angry letter to Papa is, to a great extent, just an expression of his own helplessness in the face of their father’s illness. Still, it couldn’t have been his finest moment.
As my mother notes, it’s difficult to think about how “Papa suffered for his family…He was so good and wasn’t getting much happiness in return.”
But later, Papa, this was you:
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Update March 1
My mother writes:
It occurs to me that Papa never held a grudge in his life. When he had to pick of any of his relatives to name you after, he chose Isaac, who apparently had given him such grief.
Do you know the people in the photo? Of course you know the back line [my grandmother, a.k.a. “Nana”; my great grandmother, a.k.a. “Nannycoo”; my mother; Papa – MU]. In front were sister Fula, who escaped to Israel [from Sniatyn before the Nazi occupation], her second husband, Mr. Abramowitz (I never heard him called anything else) and our cousin Moishe who was Papa’s nephew via sister Gittel. I always thought that he was a high government official in Poland, but [cousin] Jeanie says it was France.
[1924 was a leap year, so I’ve published February 29th and March 1 on this page]
| Little Ruchaly still seriously ill, which worries me greatly. After listening for some |
 |
| Ruchaly feels slightly better
after visiting some Zionist I sent to parents $5.00 |
 |
—————
Matt’s Notes
Once, around twenty years ago, my mother, grandmother, sister and I were driving around Brooklyn when my grandmother looked at a building and suddenly blurted out “Jack Zichlinsky lived there!” I laughed for about three hours because she really exploded and I had no idea who she was talking about.
Obviously, though, Jack was a good friend of Papa’s since at least the 1920’s, so they had really been through the ringer together if their lives were at all similar. My mother tells me that, when Papa died in 1971, Jack cried while saying kaddish for him. Jack’s tombstone apparently displays the insignia of the Order Sons of Zion (B’nai Zion) the fraternal order to which he and Papa belonged.
Speaking of B’nai Zion, the March 1 post mentions Louis Bluestone, which surprises me because I thought the “Bluestone” Papa has talked about was Dr. Joseph Bluestone, one of the early B’nai Zion leaders (Papa often says “Bluestone” in the same breath as “Blaustein”, who was also a B’nai Zion leader). Perhaps Louis was Joseph’s brother or son; I’ll have to look into it.
————-
Update March 1
My mother adds:
What was even more funny about the J.Z. story is that every time we passed Sheepshead Bay, Nana would point out his home. It became a dumb family joke.
Geller & Bluestone visited me
during the day in evening
met friends at the Z.Z.
———
I think “Z.Z” refers to Zeire Zion, a left-leaning Zionist organization that strongly favored Jewish settlement in Palestine. Papa has mentioned them before, and while I know he liked to socialize at their local chapter I don’t know if he did much else with them. I’ll keep looking for more information.
Lonesome!!!
to escape monotony I
went to the Capitol Theatre
————-
Matt’s Notes
With his faraway father’s injury and his nearby niece’s illness on his mind, Papa had more to escape from this day than just the monotony of his lonely apartment. Other men may well have sampled a bit of prohibition liquor under such circumstances, but the movie-loving gene runs strong in my line and luckily kept Papa from more dangerous vices.
While I inherited Papa’s taste for cinematic escapism, my New York does not, unfortunately, bear any active trace of the cinemas Papa escaped to. As mentioned before, the Capitol Theater was one of many grand movie palaces designed to give the proletariat a taste of old-world grandeur via nouveau gaudiness. These theaters typically programmed live music, ballet and opera performances along with feature films, too, giving its patrons access to high culture they might not otherwise have had.
On this night, Papa saw a screening of Wild Oranges, directed by the legendary King Vidor and adapted from a novel by Joseph Hergesheimer. (A prologue called “Popular Fantasy,” presumably a live performance of some sort, preceded the film.) The story of a violent man-child who terrorizes a young woman, “Wild Oranges” struck an anonymous New York Times reviewer as “entertaining and thrilling” even if “its subtitles are mostly of the long-winded variety.” (The Times’ blow-by-blow review practically obviates the need to see the film at all, which is helpful in this case since it’s not available on video.)
The Times archive also mentions Wild Oranges in a couple of other interesting articles. One, called “The Birth of a Picture,” tries to disabuse readers of their glamorous impressions of the movie business by outlining the tortuous path a movie takes from concept to completion; it’s a great read. An overview of movie goings-on called “Grinding out Amusement for the Millions” mentions the Wild Oranges opening, but is also has this paragraph:
Joseph H. Hazelton, who is said to have seen President Lincoln assassinated, and Calvert Carter, another aged actor who was an associate of Hazelton’s in the days of the Ford stock companies, the other day worked in the same film studio. Hazelton is playing in “San Francisco,” and Carter with R. William Neill’s production, “Rose of the Ghetto.” Hazelton was a program boy at the Fort Theater in Washington when Booth shot the great Emancipator.
I like to come across these little reminders of what a different era Papa lived in when he wrote his diary. 1924 was a lot closer to 1865 than it was to 2007.
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Additional references for this post:
Capitol Theatre Image Credit: Library of Congress LC-USZ62-113144. Inquiring into ownership.
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Updates:
Time Magazine‘s archive also has a write-up on Wild Oranges. According to the anonymous reviewer,
The tale is told with extraordinary vividness and pungency by King Vidor, a director who can evoke a heart-quaking spirit of mystery without a single trapdoor. Frank Mayo, Virginia Valli, Ford Sterling, Nigel de Brulier are splendid instruments in one of the exceptional pictures of the year. And a most extraordinary characterization is done by Charles A. Post as a modern Caliban, a hulking beast with a child’s mind that wanted to be good.
I really hope this gets released on DVD soon.
Got up late so I went
to work in the afternoon. —
Evening visited sister Clara
and spent the reminder
of the evening at the
academy of Music.
————–
Matt’s Notes
The Academy of Music Papa refers to here was probably the New York Academy of Music at 14th Street and Irving Place, where the Con Edison building now stands. Built in 1854 and reconstructed after a fire in 1866, the Academy was a major opera house and the site of numerous grand balls, social events and diplomatic receptions for much of the late 19th century; it was even where Samuel Morse sent his final ceremonial telegraph transmission as part of an elaborate celebration New York threw for him in 1871.
According to musicals101.com, the Academy lost much of its cache as society moved uptown and the Metropolitan Opera took over as the city’s primary opera house (the Metropolitan Opera’s Web site describes how a group of wealthy New Yorkers built the Metropolitan Opera House in part because box seats were scarce at the Academy of Music).
The progression of images in the Library of Congress archive attests to the Academy’s decline:
In 1860, we’ve got a reception for the Prince of Wales:
In 1871, the Samuel Morse celebration:
But by 1898, fifteen years after the Metropolitan Opera’s inception, the academy had removed all of its now-unfashionable box seats and was host to such popular entertainments as pro wrestling:
In 1910, a New York Times article reported that the Academy had been leased by the New England Theatre Company, “and hereafter is to be the home of musical plays at which a maximum admission of 75 cents will be charged.” While the new occupants denied any intention to present other types of entertainment at the Academy, six years later the Times would, in an article about the general decline of Union Square, characterize it as “given over to melodrama and the movies.” The Academy’s last hurrah came in 1926, when the Consolidated Gas Company arranged a star-studded, sentimental farewell evening for former performers and patrons before knocking the place down to make way for its new headquarters.
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Additional references for this post:
Library of Congress images are LC-USZ62-132410, LC-USZ62-116332, and LC-USZ62-21438 respectively. All images are labeled “No known restrictions on publication.”