Chapter One
What Rick's place was to Casablanca,Elaine's is to New York, the same swirling intrigue,international celebrities, double-dealing,jealousies, threats and brutalities, sentimentality,romance, sex and redemption, the only difference being thatHumphrey Bogart played Rick on a Warner Bros. soundstage,whereas Elaine Kaufman plays her own improbable self at Eighty-eighth Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. Elaine, a Jewishlady from the Bronx, who, for the past forty years, has presided overher exotic establishment, a mecca for the famous, the near famous,and the infamous.
Elaine's is where Mia Farrow asked Michael Caine to introduceher to Woody Allen; where the entire Rangers hockey team cameat 3 A.M. after winning the Stanley Cup from which they drank animposing quantity of beer; where Norman Mailer and the rockcomposer Jerry Leiber got into a roiling wrestling match thatwound up tearing a hole in the side wall; where Reggie Jack
Chapter One
What Rick's place was to Casablanca,Elaine's is to New York, the same swirling intrigue,international celebrities, double-dealing,jealousies, threats and brutalities, sentimentality,romance, sex and redemption, the only difference being thatHumphrey Bogart played Rick on a Warner Bros. soundstage,whereas Elaine Kaufman plays her own improbable self at Eighty-eighth Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. Elaine, a Jewishlady from the Bronx, who, for the past forty years, has presided overher exotic establishment, a mecca for the famous, the near famous,and the infamous.
Elaine's is where Mia Farrow asked Michael Caine to introduceher to Woody Allen; where the entire Rangers hockey team cameat 3 A.M. after winning the Stanley Cup from which they drank animposing quantity of beer; where Norman Mailer and the rockcomposer Jerry Leiber got into a roiling wrestling match thatwound up tearing a hole in the side wall; where Reggie Jacksoncame the night he hit those historic home runs in the World Series;where Jackie Kennedy came the first night after her mourning periodended; where Frank Sinatra, on being introduced to MarioPuzo, author of The Godfather, refused to shake his hand.
Physically, the place is nothing much, but, as Nora Ephron says,"It has the greatest look of any New York saloon. The dark wood,the framed book jackets on the walls, the Bentwood chairs, thecheckered tablecloths -- it is just a physically perfect place." But beyondthat, it also has an aura about it, a mysticism of exclusiveness,that makes it rather forbidding. On any given night, you cannot anticipatethe mood within: serene (infrequently), blustery, combative,riotously festive, even, on occasion, rebellious. But whatever the prevailing atmosphere, you can be sure that Elaine, like Rick,will be seated at one of the tables, monitoring the activities, the arrivalsand departures, barmen and waiters occasionally whisperingin her ear, favored guests being greeted and seated, offending patronsbeing castigated and occasionally excommunicated, in anightly scene more suited to the stage of a Broadway theater thanthe rather seedy environs in which it is located.
Elaine's place has a distinguished ancestry. Beginning withflamboyant Texas Guinan in the Roaring Twenties, New York'snightlife has been steadily illuminated by a gaudy group of bigtimesaloon keepers, including Toots Shor, who began as aspeakeasy bouncer; Jack Kreindler, who originally operated "21"as a speakeasy; the consummate Irishman Tim Costello, whostarted a speakeasy upstairs at Lexington and Forty-fourth withhis brother, Joe; Dan Lavezzo of PJ Clarke's; Sherman Billingsley,a bootlegger from Oklahoma who started the Stork Club with twovicious gangsters, Dutch Schultz and Owney Madden, as his partners;Vincent Sardi; Joe Allen in his original place in the theaterdistrict. Each of these barons had a distinct fiefdom: Toots, a gargantuan,garrulous two-fisted drinker, catered to jocks, especiallythe New York Yankees; Kreindler's preserve embraced bluebloods, captains of industry, and politicians; Billingsley kowtowedto café society and Hollywood stars; Costello's was a watering holefor the prestigious writers and cartoonists of The New Yorker;Lavezzo, who was popular with musicians and singers, had a particularpassion for the New York Giants football team, which hefeted en masse; Sardi attracted Broadway headliners whereas JoeAllen was home to lesser Broadway performers who couldn't affordSardi's, mostly chorus kids.
But these big-time saloons have diminished or disappearedfrom the New York scene: the establishments of Shor, Costello,Billingsley, and Lavezzo have passed on with their proprietors;Sardi's, "21," and Joe Allen have lost their originality, but Elaine,now in her fortieth year, thrives as a late-night phenomenon withno alternate place in sight -- she may well be the last of the greatsaloon keepers.
At Elaine's, the food, décor, prices, service, and seating have allbeen subject to critical carping, yet on any given night, the clientele,ranging from Nobel Prize winners to rock stars, will outglitterthat of any other establishment in the city, in fact, the world. Still,there are a large number of people, well known, rich, prestigious,who find the prospect of presenting themselves at Elaine's intimidating,who feel they need some kind of special entrée, afraid toenter if not accompanied by an accepted regular. The public perceptionof Elaine's -- to an extent justified -- is that of a forbidding,cliquish preserve restricted to the favorites of the lady whose nameit bears, and outsiders wonder what qualifies those who dine at thefavored tables. The irony is that few of the illustrious who do frequentElaine's hallowed walls can explain why they are there.
It may well be that whereas her antecedents, from TexasGuinan's to Costello's to "21," were all speakeasies where the proprietorsidentified those they admitted after viewing them through apeephole, Elaine's is just as selective but with a figurative peephole.
How the favored occupants got there in the first place has to dowith the fact that the early settlers around Elaine's checkered tableclothswere writers. Writers are pilot fish -- they are fearless andadventure-prone and will go into any new, dark, uninviting place ifit looks cheap, different, and indulgent about how long a table canbe occupied. Writers like to sit at tables for a long time and notspend much money, or spend a great deal if they can put it on theirtab. Either way, they are not a bonanza for a new restaurant.
When Elaine Kaufman, who helped run a restaurant calledPortofino, at Thompson and Bleecker Streets in the Village, tookher life savings in April 1963 and bought a rather drab Austro-Hungarian bar at Eighty-eighth and Second, some pilot fish writers came poking around. The editor and writer Nelson Aldrich livedaround the corner, George Plimpton came in, the playwright JackRichardson, Mary Ann Madden (she even painted the ladies' roomfor opening night), and word flashed through the scriveners' undergroundthat Elaine's was choice waters. She not only let themlinger at their tables and run up tabs but was amusing and sympathetic,and she liked writers ...
Continues...
Excerpted from Everyone Comes to Elaine'sby A. E. Hotchner Copyright © 2004 by A. E. Hotchner. Excerpted by permission.
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