Have you noticed how the mood changes abruptly after New Year’s Day? All the coziness of the Christmas Spirit feels swept away by the excitement and (sometimes alleged) glamor of New Year’s. And the Twelve Days of Christmas continue until Tuesday night!
The coronavirus pandemic is keeping Etiquetteer from observing a new tradition, a few days in New York to see friends and fine art, with the cozy, storied Algonquin Hotel as a base. So it makes sense today to look back at the gentleman who made this celebrated hotel an Institution, Frank Case.
In this century most people are vaguely aware of the “Algonk” as the headquarters of the Round Table, that collection of creatives associated with The New Yorker and the New York theatre. They are not aware of Mr. Case, the hotel genius whose personal interest in the theatre and literature made the Algonquin so especially welcoming to artists. In many ways he was a paragon of Perfect Propriety, and his daughter Margaret Case Harriman’s observant, adoring memoir Blessed Are the Debonair, illustrates how he exemplified, and insisted on, good behavior from offspring and friends.
“Father had a way of cocking his right eyebrow at you that could make you suddenly conscious that you were lacking in charm,” Margaret tells us early on. He applied that eyebrow to Margaret and her younger brother Carroll, to friends like Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and sometimes to hotel guests. We forget that once upon a time people weren’t so interested in owning furniture and kitchen utensils and actually lived in pre-furnished hotel rooms that didn’t express their personalities. They took their meals in restaurants or via room service, and often entertained their friends in the lobby. A hotel could be a neighborhood, and Frank Case was its mayor.
Another reason Etiquetteer likes this book so much is that it includes forgotten etiquette and outgrown, ridiculous prejudice. The ideas, for instance, of a bride being married from her home, and of actors not being respectable. The author’s first husband’s belief in the latter — “No actress is decent and all writers are bums” — caused their wedding to be held at the country house of friends instead of at the home of the bride’s family, the Algonquin. “‘It’s just that it’s a theatrical hotel,’ he explained. ‘It isn’t as though your father were manager of the Ritz!” Nowadays the idea of a bride being married from a place is entirely incomprehensible, and personalities of the theatre are not just respectable, they’re indispensable.
And the ideas of who is introduced to whom, and of correcting someone’s behavior in public. Margaret tells the story of lunching at the Algonquin with Rudolph Valentino (!) and his manager. When Mr. Case approached the table, Margaret said “Father, this is Mr. Valentino . . . my father, Frank Case.” She continued “Before I could introduce Valentino’s manager, Valentino’s manager sternly corrected me. ‘Mr. Valentino, may I present Mr. Frank Case.’” He was making the point that lesser people are presented to greater ones, and Valentino was unquestionably the Greatest wherever he happened to be. Valentino, besides being sincerely modest, knew enough to know that you don’t correct your host’s behavior at his or her own table. “The Sheik” shot his manager a look that, to Margaret, “conveyed a distinct kick in the shins.”
Mr. Case also knew how to put hotel guests in their place. When a matron commented that she could never really admire a divorced woman, Frank managed to control himself enough to say only “Well, my wife was a divorced woman when she married me, and my daughter is a divorced woman now, so you can scarcely expect me to agree with you.” Survey says . . . oops!
Valentino was perhaps one of the few celebrities who made an impression at the Algonk, because the place was full of ‘em, including at Christmas. “On Christmas Eve Father held open house in the lobby with free refreshments for all, the only requirement being that everybody help trim the huge tree that brushed the ceiling . . . Dennis King or Vinton Freedley, or one of the Marx Brothers* would teeter on the high ladder, placing the star at the top, while Gertrude Stein (!) and Ina Claire and Peggy Wood**, say, wrangled pleasantly about the disposal of ornaments below.” Gertrude Stein once thanked Frank Case for such a nice evening because that’s how she got to meet Gypsy Rose Lee! Just imagine if this was a homeowner’s association . . .
Happily the author includes an account of her father at Christmas which gives us an idea of how a gentleman dresses. He wasn’t easy to shop for. Mr. Case had a long, lean silhouette, so he never carried anything in his pockets that would disturb his line. “You could not give him anything that would clutter up his lean and graceful person.” Black evening socks — expensive silk ones from Charvet — were always a favorite, as well as top-quality hats, from Alpine hiking hats to Homburgs. For Etiquetteer, who believes in the importance of wearing the ribbons and bows from unwrapped gifts, it was a pleasure to learn that Mr. Case would put on his wearable gifts at once (thought without the ribbons). And also that Mrs. Harriman was ahead of her time as a gift wrapper, decorating her gift boxes with all sorts of things, including fresh flowers and old costume jewelry. “No Christmas present could be more appealing than when it is wrapped in violet-colored metallic paper bound with pink dime-store pearls, or enclosed in gold or silver paper, with a huge ten-cent rhinestone clip on top.” Etiquetteer has to agree!
Etiquetteer found one mean note about Frank, relating to life at the Algonquin after the staff had unionized. Hearing a loaded tray crash to the kitchen floor, Frank turned to his luncheon companions and said “There was a time when I would have gone out there and fired the man who did that. Now, I have to go out and say, ‘Did you hurt yourself?’” Somehow that doesn’t seem very Perfectly Proper.
Etiquetteer very much hopes that this time next year it will be safe for all of us to meet in the lobby of the Algonquin to toss back a Pink Whiskers in memory of Agnes Gooch. In the meantime, let us continue to give 2021 a good, Perfectly Proper start by rummaging through some favorite volumes, old and new.
2016: Etiquetteer’s first stay at the Algonquin.
*Chico Marx lived at the Algonquin for awhile.
**Now remembered solely for her role as the Mother Superior in The Sound of Music.