Friday Feb 1

by


Evening at Loew’s Delancy
Saw Chaplin’s serious
movie production
A Woman of Paris

– Fine work. –

———–

Matt’s Notes

My special friend Netflix recently afforded me the opportunity to see A Woman of Paris, and while I was excited just to watch something that Papa saw, I think it’s a fine movie on its own merits. It’s also an unusual work for Chaplin because, as Papa points out, it’s a “serious movie production” and, as its opening title card cautions, Chaplin doesn’t appear in it.

I don’t see a lot of silent films, so when I do I’m often surprised by their technical sophistication. Early talkies could be stagy and static because primitive microphones forced actors and cameras to stay in place, but it’s easy to mistake those limitations as endemic to 20’s films in general. In fact, silent directors were not so restricted, and Chaplin displays a masterly command of pacing, editing, composition and camera movement. Chaplin directed the films he starred in, too, but as Vincent Canby noted when A Woman of Paris was revived in 1978, Chaplin’s directorial talent is “so closely bound to the performer’s personality we can’t easily tell where one starts and the other leaves off.” If you’re a movie fan, A Woman of Paris is worth checking out just to evaluate Chaplin’s behind-the-camera talent without distraction.

The story concerns a young provincial woman named Marie St. Claire (Edna Purviance, a Chaplin regular) who heads off to Paris when her plans to elope with Jean, her earnest young beau (Carl Miller) go awry. Within a year she’s living in high style, kept by the unapologetically lascivious playboy Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou, who really stands out). Jean resurfaces in Paris, and a moral crisis ensues for Marie.

I have to remind myself, when I see better silent films, that their broad performances and dramatic scores do not mean the films inherently lack nuance, and A Woman of Paris is a great example. Though he’s a cad, Pierre is not unsympathetic, and he’s far more honest with Marie than Jean, who claims to want her back but is unable to really pursue her for fear of offending his mother. Marie may be a kept woman, but Chaplin does not judge her too harshly, and resists the urge to force her into a climactic rejection of her comfortable life (as I’ve been conditioned to expect from major Hollywood releases). Jean is just too wishy-washy to merit such a change. While everything ends in a rush with Jean’s sudden death and Marie leaving Paris to work in a provincial orphanage, the resolution is not as corny as it sounds. As Canby notes, the film is “a highly moral tale that teaches that the wages of naivete is death, while the wages of sin may well be a better understanding of the true values of living.”

The film was apparently critical darling (the New York Times called Chaplin a “director par excellence…a bold, resourceful, imaginative, ingenious, careful, studious and daring artist”) but disappointed the public, who didn’t want to see a Chaplin movie without Chaplin. My wife, Stephanie, finds it consistent that Papa liked an ambiguous, commercially unpopular movie because I generally prefer difficult, ambiguous, or depressing movies over popular ones, as do my mother and my sister. It’s not quite clear what Papa, who prided himself on being a gentleman, would have liked about a story in which gentle behavior is a dubious virtue, but maybe he just liked interesting art for its own sake. Or, perhaps, the film’s final title card cemented his approval:

It was right in line with what he believed (and after the previous day’s romantic roller-coaster, something he probably needed to tell himself). Perhaps he nodded quietly to himself as he read it.

—————

Additional Notes:

According to Cinematreasures.org, The Loews Delancey Theatre was located at 140-146 Delancey street, next to Ratner’s (the legendary dairy restaurant that tragically closed a few years ago). It’s amazing to think that there were once at least two independent movie houses on the Lower East Side within a few blocks of each other (the Clinton and the Delancey) when so few independent theaters survive in New York today. Anyway, there’s a great thread about the Delancey at Cinematreasures, so head over there if you want to learn more.

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References:

Saturday Feb 2

by


Enjoyed Installation Banquet
of Maccabean Camp at
Greenberg’s Roumanian
Casino, and in company
of Miss Weisman.

Sent home today $5.00

—————–

Matt’s Notes

This must have been quite a night for Papa. Not only was he installed as an officer of a B’nai Zion chapter he helped found, he did it in front of Miss Weisman, a woman who seemed to be an object of long-smoldering affection.

I wonder if the “longing to see Miss Weisman” after a “two-year lapse” he spoke of two days earlier (when she was a supporting player in the most dramatic and bittersweet episode of Papa’s year) was in part triggered by the approaching installation banquet. Perhaps the prospect of attending such an event without a companion attenuated his sense of loneliness and made him need to see someone important to him, or perhaps, in inviting “Miss Weisman” to see him celebrated and honored, he sought some kind of denouement to their romantic relationship.

Either way (if I’m right) I don’t think he knew why the urge to see her struck two days before the banquet; it just welled up and, as a romanticist, he saw any resulting satisfaction or poignancy as part of life’s natural theatrical sweep.

———————–

Additional Notes

I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of rituals, speeches and food the Maccabean installation banquet would have featured, but I don’t have much information yet. Since it took place in Greenberg’s Roumanian Casino, about which I have no information, my mind turns naturally to Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse as a point of reference. Thus, I think the banquet must have been a crowded, noisy affair, with schmaltz on the plates and schmaltz in the air, as it were. Then again, B’nai Zion’s mission was serious and important to its members, so maybe the night had both sober and boisterous moments.

I did find one Jewish banquet menu from the 1920’s at the New York Historical Society, but it’s for the Temple Beth El Golden Jubilee Banquet and Ball, which, as a major celebration for a well-endowed Reform (i.e. liberal) synagogue, would have been very unlike Papa’s event. The menu certainly doesn’t reflect what Papa would have eaten at his own grassroots organization’s banquet (for one, it appears to contain both dairy and meat dishes, which would not have been kosher, both literally and figuratively, for Papa).

Anyway, since I have the information I’ll stick it up here for your enjoyment:

Temple Beth El Golden Jubilee Banquet and Ball at Hotel Biltmore

February 16, 1924

Fruit Cocktail

Cream of fresh Mushrooms a L’infanta

Celery – Salted Almonds – Olives

Cassolette of Sea Food Thermidor

Barised Sweetbread Montglas

String Beans au gratin – Potatoes Louisette

Royal Squab on Toast

Salad Palm Beach

Bombe Praline Fraisette – Cakes

Demi Tasse

Note that Temple Beth El that later consolidated with Temple Emanu-El, which occupies a much-admired building on East 65th Street.

Sunday Feb 3

by


One man in whom I
so much believed the
proponent of the League of
Nations is dead.
Woodrow Wilson

I have certainly so much
to write in my diary but
I am prevented from doing
so because of inconvenience,
This week I am removing to
my own lone humble little
home where I will have the
opportunity to make my
entries regularly.

———————-

Wilson was in office when Papa first arrived in New York, and I’m sure the headlines about his administration made Papa feel good about his adopted country — Wilson was a trust-buster, a friend of labor, a proponent of suffrage, and believed in aggressively promoting democracy around the world. If I were a psychologist, I might even say that Papa, displaced, longing for home and politically liberal himself, would have found a sort of father figure in Wilson and grown especially attached to him. (Wilson’s support of the Balfour declaration and of Zionism in general was real, but muted; I’m sure Papa would rathe have described him as “an enthusiastic Zionist” than a “proponent of The League of Nations.”) In any event, having lived through the less progressive Harding and early Coolidge years, Papa probably took Wilson’s death especially hard.

Monday Feb 4

by


A verse by Heinrich Heine

Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen,
Die hat einen andern erwahlt;
Der andre leibt eine andre
Und hat sich mit dieser vermählt.

Das Mädchen heiratet aus Ärger
Den ersten besten Mann,
Der ihr in den Web gelaufen;
Der Jüngling ist übel dran.

Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu;
Und wem sie just passieret,
Dem bricth das Herz entzwei.

———————-

Matt’s Notes:

This is Heinrich Heine’s poem “Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (A Young Man Loves a Maiden).” Here’s one translation I found:

A young man loves a maiden
But another she prefers,
The other one loves another,
And ties the knot with her.

From spite, the maiden marries
The first who comes along,
And happens `cross her path;
The youth must rue it long.

It is an old, old story,
Yet still forever new;
And every time it happens,
It breaks the heart in two.

Though he’s been busy the last couple of days, Papa is still clearly affected by the events of January 31, when, after a wistful visit to an old flame, another woman he hadn’t seen for eight years approached him on the trolley and confessed her undying love for him even though she was engaged to be married. Is the poem Papa quotes here — a woman marries a man she doesn’t love because the one she loves doesn’t love her — a reference to his breakup with the old girlfriend, the encounter with the woman on the trolley, or a little of both?

Heinrich Heine lived in exile for many years and wrote passionately about heartache and loneliness, so I see why Papa, displaced and heartsick himself, might have reached for his Heine poems at this time. Did Papa, frustrated by the lack of privacy he wrote about the day before, pore over his poetry books in secret after everyone else in his apartment had gone to bed, hoping to find the words to express what he didn’t have time to write himself? Or maybe, since Heine was a Giant of German letters, Papa might have known Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen by heart (especially since it was put to music in one of Schumann’s more famous song cycles, Dichterliebe) and he was going through it in his head before he sat down to write.

In any event, if you read through the Dicheterliebe verses and other Heine poems (I’ve listened to the Schumann songs, too, which strike me as oddly chipper considering their turgid lyrics) you can see why they appealed to Papa’s Romantic soul.

—————–

Additional notes:

One other thing I find interesting about this entry is the contrast between Papa’s English and German handwriting. Check out the difference at the top of his entry:

At first I thought his German penmanship, though quite nice, seemed less clear to me because I don’t speak German, but even my German-speaking friends have trouble with it. I think he probably wrote more deliberately in English because it wasn’t his native language, while his German writing flowed more quickly and therefore looks more slashing and spidery.

(Special thanks to the folks at Fleisher’s Grass Fed and Organic Meats in Kingston, N.Y. for helping me with the German in this post.)

———–

Update 4/9

See the April 9, 2007 post for another mention of “A Young Man Loves a Maiden”

——————-

Additional References:

Heinrich Heine’s biography at Wikipedia

Collected Heine poems at Henrich-Heine.net

Dichterliebe at Amazon.com

Tuesday Feb 5

by


Loves Secret

Poem by William Blake,

Never seek to tell they love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind dot move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart;
Trembling cold, in ghastly fears; —
Ah! She did depart.

Soon after she was gone from me
A traveler came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh

——————–

Matt’s Notes

For the second day in a row, Papa quotes famous poetry about women who remain out of reach or who turn away from declarations of love. The events of January 31 are still with him, affecting him with a quiet, helpless longing. I wonder if he seems distracted at work, when talking to friends and family, when walking down the street.

Wednesday Feb 6

by


Wilson laid to rest
May he rest in peace.

Attended meeting in evening
of S.N.Y. Zionist Central Comittee
Enjoyed speeches of Lipsky
& Dr. Thon

————–

The New York Times archive has an article from February 7th, 1924 about the unusual measures taken to broadcast Woodrow Wilson’s memorial services on the radio, which involved carrying the broadcast via land line from New York to Providence to ensure adequate East Coast coverage. In the cheerfully exploitative, gung-ho style peculiar to the period, it recounts “the heroic act” of an American Telephone and Telegraph Company lineman who stayed out in an ice storm to keep a tree from falling onto the line:

Williams was alone when he found the danger spot and he attached a rope to the tree, took several turns around a neighboring tree and swung on the rope with all his might. The damaged tree swayed wildly in the gale, despite the efforts of the lone lineman. Williams clung to the rope from 3:30 o’clock, when the company began broadcasting the services, until 5. When he knew that the broadcasting was over, Williams let go of the rope that held the tree. Robbed of its last support, the big tree fell across the line and snapped it. A rescue party then was sent out from Providence for the courageous lineman, who was benumbed by his long vigil.

I read this while trying to figure out how my grandfather stayed abreast of Wilson’s funeral (it was broadcast on WEAF, which I know Papa listened to, so he probably tuned in at some point) and it’s a good example of the odd little things I come across while working on this project. (By the way, did the rescue party really wait until after Williams let go of the tree to go out and find him? Why didn’t they join him earlier and help him hold the rope? Is the venerable Times playing loose with the facts for the sake of a good yarn?)

The “Lipsky” and “Dr. Thon” Papa mentions are Louis Lipsky and Dr. Jacob Thon, two major Zionist figures who Papa had seen speak three weeks earlier. That had been a bittersweet day for Papa; it was his Hebrew birthday and he felt particularly homesick because he’d received a wedding photo of his niece from the old country. I’ve speculated that Papa might have been especially attached to Wilson and upset by his death, so if this were a novel I would interpret Thon and Lipsky as some sort of ominous chorus who only show up when Papa feels saddened by events he can’t control. In reality, on a day when one of his heroes was laid to rest, it probably helped for him to see and hear two other men he admired, alive and well and in the flesh.

Thursday Feb 7

by


Another meeting of Maccabean
Camp. —

Slept in Sister Claras
new home.

————-

Clara and Papa roomed together for two years when she first came to America in 1920, and apparently they both recalled those days as some of the happiest of their lives. Papa supported Clara and she kept house until she got married in 1923, at which point I imagine Papa left his apartment and started “living in board.”

Papa was getting ready to give up his rented bed and move into his own place when he wrote today’s entry; perhaps he slept in Clara’s home that night because he had already given up his spot to another boarder. I wonder if he and Clara stayed up late chatting, or if, cheered in each other’s presence by the memory of their time together, they both slept a little better than usual.

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