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Tuesday Jan 1

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Jan. 1
Last night’s New Years adventures
will be found on last pages.
I spent the day quietly at home

[from a memoranda page at the end of the diary]

Jan 1, 1924

New Years Eve. in N.Y. is certainly
an event, last night I deserted my
friends for a while at 11:30 I was
in the jam of the merry and noise
making crowds, Poor, rich, soldiers
sailors, old and young, some masqu-
eraded with countless noisemaking
devices, looking into their faces, every-
body seems to be happy, Slowly I fought
my way to the Capitol Thea. to make
the special midnight performance,
after leaving the theatre at 1:45 the
Street was still crowded with the gay
throngs.

Am I the only one whom this
carnival fails to make happy? But I
think I did notice sadness in some
eyes, are their souls hungry? Longing?
My New Years Eve, was at an end at an
East Side joint where prohibition drinks
were freely served, I reached home 4am.

————–

Matt’s Notes

This entry really starts to give us a feeling for the New York City my grandfather lived in. His description of the crowds is almost cinematic, a whirl of costumed extras (soldiers and sailors? Really?) with smiling faces blowing into noisemakers and clogging the streets. It’s not hard to picture at all.

His offhand mention of the Capitol Theatre, though, really places him a different, long-ago New York. The Capitol, which once stood at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway in New York City, was one of the grand movie palaces that used to be common in America. They disappeared way before my time, but as I understand it they were enormous, spectacular spaces, gilded to the nines and outfitted to invoke the European palaces that their largely immigrant audiences would never have gotten near back home.

By ©1920 by American Studio N. Y.

In palaces like the Capitol, movies screenings were almost beside the point. Nightly programming included orchestral music (remember that films were silent in 1924, so theaters were outfitted for live orchestras as a matter of course) as well as ballet and opera performances from the theaters’ resident companies.

According to the New York Times archive, the New Years performance my grandfather saw was an exemplary mashup, including “Chaminade’s ‘Air de Ballet’ by the Capitol singers and dancers”, the “Volga Boat Song” (a Russian folk song — you know the tune) and the “Skaters Waltz”. The draw for my grandfather, though, would have been the Capitol Grand Orchestra’s scheduled performance of the “1812 Overture” (no doubt with the cannons going off at midnight) since he was a huge fan of Tchaikovsky. (Oddly enough, as I write this on New Year’s Day in 2007 the “1812 Overture” started playing on the radio station I’m listening to on the Web. Maybe it’s a New Year’s tradition that I wasn’t aware of.)

His reference to the bar he winds up in is the oddest detail for me. I always gathered that he had something like a Buddhist’s monks beatific vibe and moral virtue, and preferred to spend his free time raising funds for Zionist organizations and going to synagogues. It’s hard to imagine that he ever took a sip of alcohol other than at his own bris, let alone wander into a “joint” to drink illegally, but I suppose it was the order of the day on New Year’s eve.

I also find it interesting that he refers to illegal alcohol as “prohibition liquor”, which I always thought was a label created for historical reference. It’s a very official-sounding term; maybe he uses it rather than something more slangy because he’s not exposed to drinking all that much.

Though Papa gives the New Year’s spectacle its due, he’s clearly unable to shake the low mood he mentions in his previous entry. The way he wanders away from his friends to search strangers’ faces for some sign of kinship, some confirmation that other people feel as lonely and dissatisfied as he does, is terribly wistful yet oddly comforting to me. Of course there are others in the crowd who feel at odds with the spectacle, who reflect on their own concerns while pretending to celebrate — if I’d been there there, I might have been of of them, someone in whose eyes he noticed sadness. Haven’t I been known to back away from a crowd, watch a party from the sidelines, withdraw into my own head when I feel at odds with the people around me?

Maybe I share Papa’s very brand of self-reflectiveness, passed to me through his genes or through his influence on my mother. And if that’s the case, it’s not so bad. Papa was admired and beloved, an exemplar for his family of a life well lived, a source of vivid, affectionate memories for a grandson and a granddaughter who barely knew him. It occurs to me that whatever I have in common with him is worth embracing if it means I can be more like him.

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Additional references for this post:

– Gabler, Neal. “For 25 Cents, Every Moviegoer Was Royalty“, The New York Times, 10/24/89 (subscription required).

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Update

I’ve been thinking a little more about “The Volga Boat Song” I mentioned above (give it a listen if you haven’t already). I’ve always thought of this tune as the default accompaniment to images of drudgery or dread in early 20th-Century movies — I feel like I’ve heard it in Bugs Bunny episodes, Max Fleischer cartoons and maybe even Universal horror movies — but I guess I figured it was just always there and never considered its origins. It must have been a real touchstone for immigrants if the Capitol Theater played it on New Year’s Eve for an audience that was no doubt packed with Eastern European Jews like my grandfather. And since Jewish immigrants were no strangers to radio and film work, it’s no wonder that imports like “The Volga Boat Song” found their way into the popular culture of the day.

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Update 3/19 –

Listen here to the Volga Boat Song:

Image Credit: Library of Congress LC-USZ62-113144. Inquiring into ownership.

Friday Jan 4

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After working hours
Spent entire eve. at home enjoying
the radio The part played by the
N.Y. Symphony Orch, Beethovens 5th Sy.
was most impressive. –

It touched my heart to read the
story of a Jewish girl of Romania arriving
in this country, was sentenced to be sent
back because the quota for that country was full.
She being a violinist took a chance
to try as an artiste, as such are
exempted from the draft quota, and in
the presence of the immigration
authorities she played Shuberts
Serenade while tears were streaming
from her eyes, this won her the
freedom of these shores.

What a dramatic climax for
a Jewish girl after years of suffering
finally winning the freedom of a
new Land with renewed hopes
for a better future.

———–

Geez.

As melodramatic as this story is, I get choked up when I view it through my grandfather’s eyes. His own emigration was only eleven years prior, and the sensations of the experience — from leaving his family and home of 18 years to the sea voyage itself to the stresses of his arrival at Ellis Island — must have remained as fresh in his mind as when he first felt them.

And so, aided by Papa’s capacity for empathy (so pronounced that I picked up on it when I was four and he was 75) his deep belief in the promise of his own American life, and his attachment to classical music, this tear-jerker about a Jewish girl winning her freedom with a sentimental classical tune earns immortality in his diary.

Updates

The more I think about it, the more I feel like I’ve seen something about a girl earning entry to America with a tearful violin solo in an old movie. Am I just mixing it up with the image of the violinist on the deck of the Titanic?

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Update 3/19

Here’s another way to listen to Schubert’s Serenade:

Sunday Apr 6

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All day long real April showers,
Spent a great deal of my time
at home, pasting in some
new pictures in my album,
which contains episodes of my
broken romances, looking them
over a thought comes to my mind
of a happiness that would have
been, but most of my tragic
episodes will probably never
be recorded in pictures.

Spent the remainder at
some Zionist districts in
a most monotonous mood.

Always blues, blues, even the radio
is sending me blues through
the air.

Henriette did not yet answer my letter
She is slowly drifting out of my mind
like many others who dissappointed
me.

—————-

Matt’s Notes

Internet access is spotty for me today, so I’ll post this entry without comments for the moment (though the image of Papa sitting at home, pasting photos in an album and listening to the blues while torrential rain falls outside may speak for itself).

Update 4/7:

Jim, who runs the music department here at Papa’s Diary Project, says that if Papa heard blues on the radio in 1924, there’s a good chance it was something by Bessie Smith. Here’s a sample of one of her big 1923 hits called “Down Hearted Blues” from Last.fm:

And here’s a 1923 recording of “Who’s Sorry Now” from Archive.org:

Monday Apr 7

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Another unimportant day
home and radio.

The Gypsy String Orchestra
entertained me from the air.

Every night going to bed
reading, newspapers usually
the “News” until I get sleepy,
and so it goes night after night.

Here within the confines of my
little nest, I spend my dreary
hours dreaming,

Here many [of my] youthful dreams
were vanished.

————–

Matt’s Notes

After a brief respite two days ago, Papa’s malaise has returned in full force. Yesterday he admitted to himself that Henriette, a.k.a. the 20th Century Girl, was not going to respond to the letter of affection he wrote her a week earlier. He had idealized and become infatuated with her quite quickly, so this sudden acceptance of her disinterest, or at least his realization that she was human, unreliable, and not inclined to behave exactly as he needed her to, would have left him a bit bereft. (I expect most idealists and daydreamers would recognize this cycle of excitement and disappointment.)

I wonder, too, if the recent birth of Papa’s nephew had, in some way, attenuated his longing for a family of his own, or for that matter his own family (including his ailing father) back in Eastern Europe. I suppose the music of the “Gypsy String Orchestra” wouldn’t have helped his homesickness any, especially if it sounded as wistful as this:

Speculation aside, we know it was not unusual for Papa to suffer bouts of melancholy or for the ghosts of his “vanished” dreams to haunt him when he was home alone. If only a ghost from the future could have visited and said

Papa, this is you:

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Additional notes:

When Papa mentions the news of the day in this entry, he capitalizes the word “News” and writes it in quotation marks (note the older-style placement of the opening quote to the lower left of the quoted term):

Why did he do this? Was “News” considered a vernacular term back then when used to refer to the contents of a newspaper? Or did he quote the term because it was new to him and he wasn’t quite sure if he was using it right?

Regardless, the “News” Papa read before retiring that day would have provided plenty of additional fuel for his blue mood. Some of the less encouraging headlines included:

Note that the stories about the Nazi party’s rising influence came on the heels of the recently-concluded Beer Hall Putsch trial (Hitler had just received an incredibly light sentence for trying to overthrow the German government, the surest sign yet of his rising influence and popularity). I must admit I didn’t have this in mind when it occurred to me to list potentially upsetting New York Times headlines from April 7, 1924, but I’m sure Papa was preoccupied with the implications.

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References:

Papa mentions “The Gypsy String Orchestra” in this entry, and while I was able to find some 1940-ish references to an ensemble by that name at the Museum of Television and Radio, I’m not sure if they existed as such in the 1920’s or if Papa just used a generic term to describe the type of music he heard. In any event, the clip I included above is called “Hungarian Folksong Melody” and is, according to archive.org, a 1914 recording by Berkes Bela.

Monday Apr 28

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Matt’s Notes

home radio

Hurrah the Gypsy Orchestra
The most fascinating on he
air is here. The first number,
Gypsy Chardash 2) Tosca,
3. Shuberts Waltz op 64#2
4. Serenade by Drigo
5 Indian Love Lyrics

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Matt’s Notes

If you’re at all interested in the evolution of American media, Papa’s accounts of his radio listening are truly precious artifacts. They allow us to witness a moment of enormous transition in our culture, when the broadcast industry was barely two years old and, like a two-year-old child, was growing furiously, dashing about like mad on its newfound legs, and shouting its head off even though it didn’t quite know what to say. It’s amazing to think that just three years before Papa wrote this entry, “wireless” communication was known only to military personnel and the few crazed enthusiasts willing to build their own radio transceivers and spread the broadcast gospel (not that there was always much of a distinction in the early days, since many engineers who served in World War I were recruited from the ranks of these ur-nerds)1.

It looks like Papa was a bit of a technical enthusiast himself. Though all-in-one radios with cabinet configurations or Victrola-style horn speakers were commercially available in 1924, the photo below shows him listening to a much earlier radio set:

The headphones he’s using, along with the overall messy look of the radio, indicate that it was most likely hand-built:

It also looks like Papa’s early radio enthusiasm reflected the broader Jewish community’s attitudes of the day; radio listings appeared in the Daily Forward (the influential left-leaning Yiddish language newspaper) as early as 1923. Papa undoubtedly checked out these listings every day, and maybe even let out a little “hurrah” when he saw a mention of his beloved Gypsy String Orchestra, “the most fascinating on the air.” (It’s interesting to note that the expression “on the air” was in circulation even at this early point in broadcasting history.)

The phrase “Gypsy String Orchestra” refers generally to a type of music ensemble, but in this case probably refers specifically to a group of New York-area musicians known for their appearances at such venues as Cafe Royal, The Rainbow Restaurant, and the Parkway Restaurant.2 Few recordings of 1920’s radio exist so it’s unlikely that we’ll ever know exactly what Papa listened to, but the wonderful Internets do afford us a chance to hear some early recordings of the songs he mentions above.

Here’s a 1921 Edison Diamond Disc recording of “Indian Love Lyrics” from the Library of Congress:

And here’s a 1920’s-ish “Chardash” (a.k.a. “tsardas,” “czardas,” “tzardash,” etc.) from Archive.org:

For good measure, here’s a “Gypsy Love Song” from 1923:

According to our friend Jill, who knows about such things, a Tzardash is technically more of a Hungarian folk form than truly Romani (i.e. more Gypsy-like than Gypsy) and points out that “in parts of austria and the old austro-hungarian empire– and still today in vienna– there are hungarian musicians who travel around and play hungarian folk music in the street. but i could see how one could take them to be gypsies or conflate it with gypsy music.” Papa probably did exactly that, though I expect less because he was Austro-Hungarian than because it was common practice in the 20’s to label Hungarian music as “gypsy” — or at least is was for the Gypsy String Orchestra and the group that recorded the above Tzardash, Bibor Olga Ciganyzenekara or (Olga Bibor’s Gypsy Ensemble).

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Update 4/29 — Well, that was fortuitous. I just stuck the “Gypsy Love Song” clip on this post because it happened to be on Archive.org, not because Papa mentioned it specifically. But, my mother just wrote to say “I can remember, as a little girl, Papa singing the Gypsy Serenade to me. What lovely memories this evoked.” How about that.

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References:

1 – I got this from Erik Barnouw’s A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States to 1933.

2 – Most of the information about the Jewish relationship to early radio and the cultural scene of the 20’s comes from Ari K., an academic advisor to this site. If you want to know more, you can purchase a copy of his dissertation at the University Microfilms (UMI) site. The site is stunningly shitty, but the dissertation number is 1392538.

I can’t find Web streams of the other pieces Papa mentions above, though most appear to be available in modern recordings (alas, I find no references to Schubert’s Op. 64 #2). I’m playing the above-mentioned “Serenade,” a selection from Richard Drigo’s ballet Les Millions d’Arlequin, right now. Anyway, here are some sources: