I spent seven years in Greenwich Village, beginning in September, 1950, when I started college at Washington Square College, the liberal arts department of New York University. I had just turned 17 and the thought of spending the next four years in Manhattan was thrilling, after a lifetime in rural Upstate New York. Looking back, I recall how disgusted my father was at the thought of both his daughters turned loose in the big city that he absolutely hated. My sister Lelia had entered NYU the year before, and I simply followed her lead. The day we took her down to register, my father was in a vicious mood, rushing my mother, my aunt Sue, and Lelia and me to hurry along and get it over with. He had hoped we would both attend college in Albany, but we hated Albany as much as he hated Manhattan. Albany was to us...and still is to me...dullsville.
When Lelia came home for the summer of her freshman year, she gave me glowing reports of life in the big city. I could hardly wait. We both lived in Judson Hall, the only girls' dormitory. There were no boys' dormitories, as most of the 50,000 NYU students were commuters, and out-of-town students were rare. At that time, boys outnumbered girls 3 ½ to l, and we used to joke that we hoped to capture our three-and-a-half boyfriends.
The Judson dormitory had once been the private property of a famous artist, John Sloane. It had seven floors, an elevator, and a huge lounge. The artist's gorgeous studio was the home of the two housemothers, Mrs. Fisher and Thelma I. DeForrest, two over-weight, strict, intimidating dowagers in their early or middle sixties. Fisher was a widow and DeForrest had never been married. It took us a long time to realize they were lesbians, but they acted very straight, even prudish in their attitudes and personae. Fisher had a mannish haircut and wore mannish suits. I even seem to recall seeing her wearing neckties. DeForrest looked simply like an aging spinster with no sense of humor. Fisher was friendlier and less intimidating. There was no cafeteria; we had to eat all our meals in restaurants. As we lived in the heart of Little Italy, we dined mostly on Italian food, which was no hardship. The food was inexpensive at that time, and terrific. There were also great Greek, Spanish, French and continental restaurants all around. It's amazing we didn't gain weight. But when you're young and in your college years, you are busy running around, pounding the asphalt pavements, and that kept the pounds off.
Judson had two elevator operators, middle-aged black men from Harlem who wore dark brown uniforms, similar to police uniforms, including the hats. They were Ben and Percy. Percy was a flamboyant Leo astrologically, full of zip and humor, and very competent. Ben was a somber Virgo who acted like a stern, watchful father over all the girls. He was very dark-skinned, but his thick straightened hair was a blazing red. Percy was lighter-skinned, somewhat stockier, and very animated. Once when cat burglars began invading Judson at night, leaping across a neighboring building's roof, coming into girls' rooms and stealing money, Percy lay in wait and caught them. It never happened again. He was our hero. Ben who rarely smiled and looked very grim, never put up with any nonsense from the girls. I was the exception. I would get in the elevator, order him to the back, and run the elevator up to my floor, the fifth. He would act annoyed, but I knew he was delighted No one else could get away with it, and no one tried.
In those days, the words "beatniks" and "hippies" had not yet entered the country's vocabulary. The weird and unconventional people who swarmed into the village from all over were called Bohemians. That sounded very romantic and sophisticated to a 17 year old ingenue like me. One of the most shocking sights at the time, for me, was bearded men. Most average American boys and men were clean-shaven and expected to be so, although mustaches were not considered sinful. But men who wore beards were suspect, especially to prudes like my father. In a short time, I met an older man named Lennie who wore a substantial, but neat, well-trimmed beard and mustache. He dressed well in suits and ties and looked very sedate and proper. I knew little about him. I had heard he had been in the war and was emotionally fragile, but he was very much a gentleman. He visited me a few times in the dorm, and once he took me to brunch on Sunday morning to a tiny restaurant in Sheridan Square. I can't remember the name of it, but I remember clearly that a tall, quiet black man was the proprietor. He cooked our omelets and coffee, but I paid little attention to him. Several months later, I went back and found the restaurant closed, with no signs on it. The next year I saw a pictures of the owner/chef in the newspaper. It was Harry Belafonte. They mentioned he had closed his restaurant after winning a record contract. I don't recall whatever happened to Lennie. He was simply a friend who must have left the Village.
My sister Lelia filled me in on some of the local lore, starting with the gay community that was known to be a part of the Village population. They were called "queers" and homosexuals at the time. The euphemism "gay" wasn't used to describe them. There were also lesbians, who were sometimes referred to as butches and femmes, but to their critics they were called "dykes" and "bull-dykes." They were seen around the Village, minding their own business. It wasn't a big deal at the time, especially as most of the male homosexuals didn't flaunt it or even admit it. They simply stayed in the proverbial closet.
On 9th Street and Sixth Avenue (later changed to The Avenue of the Americas), Lelia pointed out a huge, dark, dismal-looking corner building, several stories higher than most of the nearby shops and small apartment buildings. It was the Women's House of Detention, for female offenders waiting to go to court for their crimes, or awaiting sentencing. Passer-bys could often hear some of the women screaming from their barred windows, or shouting to anyone below who would listen. There were occasional rumors of suicides in the building. There were rumors also, of lesbian suicides occasionally, when the lovers broke up. That was understandable, considering how little social or family support they got when they were down-and-out or deeply depressed.
Lelia once pointed out "MoonDog, " a tall aesthetic-looking bearded creature of indeterminate age who was some sort of Village character. I think he may have composed music and sold sheets of his music for small sums, whatever he could get, to survive. He was almost a ghostly-looking figure, wearing long, dark robes, if I remember correctly, but he wasn't a nuisance, just a Village character.
One day as I was crossing Sixth Avenue from West 4th Street, from the Judson dorm, I stood waiting for the light to turn green. Next to me stood another Village legend, a short, stocky old woman wearing flamboyant clothes, a long, multi-colored dress and turban. I recognized her as Romany Marie, a legendary Gypsy woman who took care of hundreds of starving artists over the years, helping them whenever she could. I turned to her and said, "Hello, Romany Marie." Her old withered face lit up and she said, "You are very beautiful, my child." I thanked her, noticing she had a deep, almost mannish voice. Then we crossed the street together and went our separate ways. I never saw her again, but I never forgot her.
The famous poet, e.e.cummings, lived on Patchen Place in the Village with his wife. Once he gave a poetry reading at NYU, and I went to hear him. He read his poems beautifully. He was often seen with his wife sitting in Washington Square Park, or strolling through the Village.
In my sophomore years, my sister Lelia and I and another girl from the Judson dorm decided to have a small party in a photographer's studio on tiny little Minetta Lane. Lelia was going with her soon-to-be-husband, Mark, I had a boyfriend named Bernie, and Gwen, who was just starting to date Bill, the photographer, who co-owned the studio with another photographer named Jerry, planned the small gathering. It was on a Saturday evening, and we were having a quiet good time with coffee and pastry...none of us drank the hard stuff...when suddenly we were startled by a loud thump against the door. Bill opened the door, and in tumbled a handsome young man with black, curly hair and bright blue eyes, obviously inebriated. From my barroom background at home, I knew there were mean drunks and there were gentle, friendly drunks. Gregory, as Bill introduced him, was definitely a charming, gentle fellow, even
when drunk. Bill knew him well and liked him, and so did we. I can't recall what he talked about, but I know we were all charmed by him.
>From then on, I used to run into him occasionally. He name was Gregory Corso, and he told me he was a poet, down on his luck with very little money, and spent a lot of time gambling, mostly by playing cards. When he won big, which he said he often did, he was able to survive in his cold water flat and buy food so he could keep writing poetry. When he lost, he turned to friends for hope. Occasionally when I had dinner in the San Remo Restaurant on MacDougal Street, I would see Gregory sitting at the bar, drinking. Apparently he was flush. One time he asked me to join him, and I did, drinking a club soda while he drank beer or liquor, or both...I can't remember what he was drinking, but he was sober at the time. He told me that he often saw me walking in the Village or on the NYU campus, and he liked to watch the way I walked. I was flattered, but I didn't get the impression he was coming on to me, just being nice, and I liked the compliment. I suspect that all his creative energies went into his poetry, and that romance wasn't on the top of his agenda.
Several months later, as I was walking west on 8th Street, I ran into Gregory standing on the street. He stopped me and asked for a dollar, telling me was broke and needed some money. This annoyed me. I refused, and said, "No, why don't you go out and get a job?" He replied, "I never knew you were so parsimonious, Sylvia," and I shot back, "And I never knew you were so humble," and I walked away, certain I had hurt him, but not sorry. My family upbringing had kicked in. It was romantic to be a starving poet, but a no-no to try to extort money from a girl, especially a friend.
At that time, I had left the Judson dormitory for a semester and was living in a huge apartment on Perry Street with two other girls, one from Judson, and the other from Albany, whose family was friendly with my family. We were renting for the summer to avoid the dorm restrictions. A couple of weeks after my unfriendly encounter with Gregory Corso, I came home and my two roommates, Suzanne and Miriam, told me I had had a visitor. A curly-haired man named Gregory had left me a book of poems and his regards. I knew it was Gregory's way of mending fences, and I felt no ill-will toward him, pleased he was man enough to say he was wrong and sorry in this way.
The last time I saw him, he was grieving over the tragic death of his idol, the great Scottish poet, Dylan Thomas. Thomas was beloved by the poetry world, and at the age of 39, sinking deeper and deeper into a drunken state. He was already separated from his heartbroken wife, Caitlin, and his children, and was a regular at the White Horse in the Village. All his loving admirers would congregate at the White Horse to pay him homage, day after day, nigh t after night, and Gregory Corso was one of the most devoted of the faithful. Suddenly Dylan Thomas was felled by a stroke and lay dying in St. Vincent's Hospital in the Village. Gregory Corso and others kept a vigil and a death watch for him in the hospital waiting room until he finally passed away. Gregory was grief-stricken.
Years after I left the Village and came back home to teach junior high school English and live with my aging parents, I would read about the famous beat poet, Gregory Corso, and his close friends, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and the rest of their infamous, hard-drinking, high-living beatnik crowd. I saw his pictures and poems in magazines. I read about his marriage to a wealthy woman years later, and his subsequent death when he was old. I have a copy of his complete poetry works, a gift from my niece. I'm happy to know that his dream of being a published poet was fulfilled.
The Judson dormitory on West 4th Street and Washington Square Park was smack in the middle of Little Italy. Around the corner from the dormitory was a small coffee shop-type restaurant called The Sugar Bowl. It was owned and operated by an old Italian woman named Lena. I don't remember if we ever knew her last name, but she had dyed black hair, a thin, bony face with an aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes. She kept a motherly eye on the girls from Judson. We used to stop by for coffee, or run out before curfew to pick up snack foods or coffee, and bring it back to the dorm. We weren't supposed to eat in our rooms, but as long as we just ate fast foods, no one bothered to enforce the rules.
Lelia and I were often joined by some handsome young Italian neighborhood boys, particularly Ralph and Sal, and they often walked us back to the dorm at night, even though it was just around the corner. We knew that there were Italian mafia in the neighborhood, but we didn't know them and they never bothered anyone, merely going about their killing and extorting business, I assume. One day Lelia and I saw an older Italian man having coffee at the Sugar Bowl. I say older, but I mean older than us. He looked about 25 or 30, while we were still in our late teens, 18 and 19. He looked different from Ralph and Sal and the other young boys who came to the Sugar Bowl. He always wore conservative suits and ties, and was perfectly groomed, very well-built and almost Hollywood handsome. He used to return our glances and smiles and looked at us as we talked. We used to tell each other how handsome he was, and as we talked, he kept smiling, but never approached or spoke to us. One day we mentioned it to one of the boys we knew. He told us that this man had violated the Mafia code of silence, talked when he shouldn't have talked. As a punishment, his tongue had been cut out. He never spoke to us because he couldn't speak. We realized why he kept smiling at us. He was probably reading our lips and watched as we whispered how handsome he was. I don't know that he was deaf, but because he couldn't speak, he probably learned to read lips to improve his impaired communication skills. That was really embarrassing.
I had dinner in the San Remo restaurant on MacDougal Street a couple times a week. The owner was a frail old Italian widower whose two sons, from two different wives, ran the place. Together they managed both the bar and the kitchen. Both sons were married, in their 40's and very personable and friendly. The old man used to come to our table and tell me I reminded him of his dead wife. One day as we were eating there, we spotted celebrities at a nearby table, Anthony Quinn, Burgess Meredith, Melvyn Douglas and Douglas's wife, Helen Gahagan Douglas, a state senator. As I had never before seen movie stars up close, I asked the old man if he would introduce me. He was happy to do it. Looking back now, I blush when I think how insensitive it was to interrupt their dinner to say hello to some smiling young woman who was obviously star-struck. Quinn had a good sense of humor. He told me he was really Caesar Romero. Actually, they did look alike.
On several occasions when I was having dinner in the San Remo, I would see a snow white Imperial drive up and park in front of the restaurant. I knew the car's owner was a notorious Italian family boss, who went under the pseudonym of Tony Bender. His Imperial had Jersey plates, but he ruled the Village, along with another Family Boss, who was known by the pseudonym of Tommy Ryan. I never could figure out why these Italian mob bosses used Irish names, although their real names were well-known to many people, including the cops, the FBI, and the neighborhood. Another mob boss who was called Jerry Moore befriended me in the San Remo where he hung out, often going in and out of the kitchen, as Tony Bender did as well. Moore was in his late 50's or early 60's, wore expensive dark suits and a fedora hat. Occasionally he would walk me back to the dorm and often told me that if anyone ever bothered me, to let him know. He acted fatherly toward me. I pretended not to know he was Mafia. Once when I was sitting in the San Remo restaurant with the owner, Joe, who had taken over completely after his father died, while his half-brother Johnny had taken over another family restaurant on Long Island, I told Joe that I believed my mother's cousin was married to an Italian Mafia figure. Joe asked me who it was, and I told him it was Bart Salvo, whom Walter Winchell had once written up in his newspaper column as "Black Bart Salvo, the neighborhood boss from Scarsdale." Joe told me conclusively, "He's nobody." I got the feeling that he knew who Bart was, and his response meant that a neighborhood boss like Bart was not a major figure in the mob.
Tony Bender, the mobster boss from jersey who drove the big snow white Imperial, was the most frightening looking of all the known mobsters in the Village. He was tall and very skinny with a bony face and dead-looking eyes. I never saw any expression on his face. Years later I heard he had disappeared, and sometime after that, I heard the remains of his body had been found in the trunk of a car that had been flattened at a junkyard. A scary end to a scary man.
One day someone in the Village I knew saw me having dinner at the San Remo; he came to me the next day and said, "You should stay away from Joe Santini. He's an Italian gangster." The next time I ate at the San Remo, Joe and some of his friends sat with me. I told Joe that someone had told me he was in the mob. Joe calmly said, "Sylvia, gangsters don't wait on tables." Although he was the owner, he occasionally brought dishes to the tables when they were very busy. A few weeks later, I was sitting with Joe and his friends again, when Joe began to hum a tune. I had never heard him sing before. I said, "I didn't know gangsters could sing." There was a moment of startled silence, and then these five or six big Itallian men started to laugh and roar and practically fell off their chairs. Soon they were wiping tears from their eyes. I never mentioned it again. I left New York in 1958, went home for good, and began teaching English in a local high school. One day I went back to New York for a brief visit to my aunt Sue, and I stopped in the San Remo and asked for Joe. The bartender, whom I knew, looked up at the ceiling and started crossing himself. I repeated my question. He told me Joe had dropped dead of a sudden heart attack a few years before. He was only in his late 40's. I felt really bad. I never went back to the San Remo.
There were plenty of movie people and celebrities living in the Village during my seven years there. Once the actor Ben Gazzarra tried to approach me as I walked with my girlfriend Jackie on 6th Avenue near West 4th Street. I smiled and walked away. Jackie said, "Sylvia, Ben Gazarra tried to pick you up." I hadn't recognized him, but later I read that he had married the actress Janice Rule. Recently I saw him on television. I felt bad because he had lost most of his hair and was now shriveled up and old-looking, and seemed to have shrunk in size. I think he and Janice Rule were divorced long ago, ala Hollywood.
Another time when I was trying on dresses in a small shop on East 8th Street, I had to share a dressing room with actress Eva Marie Saint. I knew she was from Albany and a Cancer native like me, and I had loved her in On the Waterfront, but I just smiled at her and never mentioned our common astrological signs and hometowns. I saw her several times with her producer husband, Jeffrey Hayden, as they often strolled around the Village. He wore a coonskin cap and Eva Marie was dressed in blazing colors, once in hot pink, another time in flaming red, and a third time in bright purple. Those colors set off her long blond hair and pale white skin. Recently I saw her interviewed on television. She's now 80 and looks great for her age. I was happy to hear that she and Jeffrey Hayden have been married for 53 years and have several children and grandchildren, unusual for Hollywood marriages, to say the least.
Once when my girlfriend Miriam and I were walking through Washington Square Park, a big long navy blue Cadillac convertible pulled up to a red light at the entrance of Fifth Avenue, and there sat a tiny little driver, Eddie Fisher. At the time, he was America's sweetheart, engaged to American's other sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds. The top of his car was down; we rushed up to the car and said, "Hi, Eddie," and he smiled happily and said "Hi" back to us. What a thrill! Miriam was a striking blond, beautifully dressed, and I looked my best at the time. I bet he's real sorry now. Miriam married a multi-millionaire, I was the maid of honor at her lavish wedding, and she had a great, happy life until she died at 68 five years ago. Eddie had three really bad marriages to Debbie, Liz, and Connie. Too bad. C'est la vie!!
***************************************************************
In my junior year at NYU, a huge coffee shop run by 12 unknown artists opened up on MacDougal Street between the San Remo and the Minetta Tavern restaurants. I was there opening night when it was jammed with curious villagers. It was called Café Rienzi, and from then on it was my hangout.
Besides all kinds of great coffee, they served fabulous pastries, and probably other food, although I mostly remember drinking coffee and occasionally eating pastry. All sorts of interesting people came in, night after night, and even during the day when it was open. Soon many of the original 12 artists began buying their way out, and eventually it was down to two owners, Harry Justman and a man named David, both divorced several times and both had a string of girlfriends. Harry was a natty dresser and often wore a fancy fedora hat. He looked a lot like Dick Tracy when he wore his hat. When he took it off, he was completely bald, but he was a handsome man anyway. He had a really friendly personality, and we became good friends for years.
One evening when the Rienzi was jam-packed as usual, I noticed a funny looking little old man wearing dark clothes and carrying a big camera. He was taking pictures of a beautiful young girl who was sitting at a table with some friends. She had very long dark hair framing her classically beautiful face. This photographer had taken thick strands of her long dark hair and draped them across her face. Then he made her take long drags on a cigarette and blow the smoke through the strands of the draped hair across her face. He took dozens of photos of this very same pose. Harry Justman told me the photographer was Weegee, well-known and highly-regarded in the world of photography. Soon afterward, the girl with the long, smoke-drenched hair got a contract to go to Hollywood and make a movie. The movie, The Sweet Smell of Success, starred her and Tony Curtis, and other big names, including Burt Lancaster. But Weegee's model, Susan Harrison, had the female lead in the movie that was an instant box-office hit. Then this beautiful young actress disappeared from the scene and was never heard of again.
A few years ago, to my amazement, she surfaced once more. There was a popular reality television show, How to Marry a multi-millionaire; about several hand-picked girls who were to meet this handsome bachelor, get to know him, and then he would pick one of them for his bride, and marry her on television. The show was very popular. The bride he picked and married on television was Darva Conger. As the world watched, this television-reality marriage quickly unraveled and ended in a quick, but bitter divorce. But Darva Conger had her 15 minutes of fame, and in those 15 minutes, her family background was revealed and her mother was shown several times with her on the television interviews. The mother was none other than Susan Harrison, the once-beautiful model photographed by the famous Weegee, and the star of the movie with Tony Curtis. To my utter shock and dismay, this once beautiful actress was now a wrinkled, unattractive woman, showing no trace whatsoever of her former beauty. In fact, her face was wrinkled far more than in women older than she . She was divorced from Darva's father, who was never mentioned or shown. Nowadays, Darva Conger has been forgotten, along with her once famous mother. The last I heard, she returned to her nursing career.
Another evening when I was drinking coffee in the Rienzi, a world famous poet staggered in, drunk as usual, with his sad-looking wife, Ruth. It was the now-infamous Maxwell Bodenheim, whose poem "Death" was once reported to be required-reading in England. He spent his last tragic years a destitute, drunken panhandler in Greenwich Village, haunting the coffee shops and bars, selling and autographing his poems for a few bucks to anyone who wanted them so he could afford to keep drinking. On this particular night, for some reason, he and Ruth sat down at my table. His first, and only words to me, were, "You're a good-looking girl, but good-looking girls are a dime a dozen." Not very poetic, but I couldn't argue with that, and fortunately, he moved on to other tables....fortunately because he tended to spit when he spoke, and spittle even from a famous poet, wasn't my cup of tea. As it turned out, it was one of the last night of his life. A day or two later, Maxwell Bodenheim and his wife Ruth were found brutally murdered in the Village flat of a drifter who hung out with them; he was arrested, charged and found guilty. The drifter was a schizophrenic who had spent years in a mental hospital. Bodenheim's poem about death is in my Oscar Williams anthology; it's a beautiful poem.
****************************************************************
I left New York for good in 1958, returned home, and taught junior high school English in a local central school district for four years. Before I left Greenwich Village, it was already changing radically. The term "Bohemians" had gone out of fashion. For awhile I had heard the term "Bohunks," and then "Beatniks:" eventually the popular term was "Hippies." NYU had gotten even larger, built huge new buildings, and people were openly smoking marijuana. In the '50's when I was there, we occasionally heard that musicians smoked marijuana, but most of the people there frequented bars and coffee shops. Years later when I visited for one day while attending a conference, there were little head shops all around the villages and lots of young kids who appeared sinister. I suspected they were drug users, abusers, and dealers. The good old days seemed to be gone for good, at least for me. I think my sister and I and our friends at the time saw the last of the good days of Greenwich Village. But it left its mark on me. At least once a year I dream I'm back in the Village, walking west toward Sheridan Square from West 4th Street, where I used to look at all the interesting stores that sold handmade leather sandals, silver jewelry with semi-precious stones, and avant garde paintings and clothes. Later on in the dreams, I walk deeper into the Village where the streets become twisted and narrow and unfamiliar. It's always a relief when I wake up and find I'm back home in the peaceful foothills of the Berkshires.
When Lelia came home for the summer of her freshman year, she gave me glowing reports of life in the big city. I could hardly wait. We both lived in Judson Hall, the only girls' dormitory. There were no boys' dormitories, as most of the 50,000 NYU students were commuters, and out-of-town students were rare. At that time, boys outnumbered girls 3 ½ to l, and we used to joke that we hoped to capture our three-and-a-half boyfriends.
The Judson dormitory had once been the private property of a famous artist, John Sloane. It had seven floors, an elevator, and a huge lounge. The artist's gorgeous studio was the home of the two housemothers, Mrs. Fisher and Thelma I. DeForrest, two over-weight, strict, intimidating dowagers in their early or middle sixties. Fisher was a widow and DeForrest had never been married. It took us a long time to realize they were lesbians, but they acted very straight, even prudish in their attitudes and personae. Fisher had a mannish haircut and wore mannish suits. I even seem to recall seeing her wearing neckties. DeForrest looked simply like an aging spinster with no sense of humor. Fisher was friendlier and less intimidating. There was no cafeteria; we had to eat all our meals in restaurants. As we lived in the heart of Little Italy, we dined mostly on Italian food, which was no hardship. The food was inexpensive at that time, and terrific. There were also great Greek, Spanish, French and continental restaurants all around. It's amazing we didn't gain weight. But when you're young and in your college years, you are busy running around, pounding the asphalt pavements, and that kept the pounds off.
Judson had two elevator operators, middle-aged black men from Harlem who wore dark brown uniforms, similar to police uniforms, including the hats. They were Ben and Percy. Percy was a flamboyant Leo astrologically, full of zip and humor, and very competent. Ben was a somber Virgo who acted like a stern, watchful father over all the girls. He was very dark-skinned, but his thick straightened hair was a blazing red. Percy was lighter-skinned, somewhat stockier, and very animated. Once when cat burglars began invading Judson at night, leaping across a neighboring building's roof, coming into girls' rooms and stealing money, Percy lay in wait and caught them. It never happened again. He was our hero. Ben who rarely smiled and looked very grim, never put up with any nonsense from the girls. I was the exception. I would get in the elevator, order him to the back, and run the elevator up to my floor, the fifth. He would act annoyed, but I knew he was delighted No one else could get away with it, and no one tried.
In those days, the words "beatniks" and "hippies" had not yet entered the country's vocabulary. The weird and unconventional people who swarmed into the village from all over were called Bohemians. That sounded very romantic and sophisticated to a 17 year old ingenue like me. One of the most shocking sights at the time, for me, was bearded men. Most average American boys and men were clean-shaven and expected to be so, although mustaches were not considered sinful. But men who wore beards were suspect, especially to prudes like my father. In a short time, I met an older man named Lennie who wore a substantial, but neat, well-trimmed beard and mustache. He dressed well in suits and ties and looked very sedate and proper. I knew little about him. I had heard he had been in the war and was emotionally fragile, but he was very much a gentleman. He visited me a few times in the dorm, and once he took me to brunch on Sunday morning to a tiny restaurant in Sheridan Square. I can't remember the name of it, but I remember clearly that a tall, quiet black man was the proprietor. He cooked our omelets and coffee, but I paid little attention to him. Several months later, I went back and found the restaurant closed, with no signs on it. The next year I saw a pictures of the owner/chef in the newspaper. It was Harry Belafonte. They mentioned he had closed his restaurant after winning a record contract. I don't recall whatever happened to Lennie. He was simply a friend who must have left the Village.
My sister Lelia filled me in on some of the local lore, starting with the gay community that was known to be a part of the Village population. They were called "queers" and homosexuals at the time. The euphemism "gay" wasn't used to describe them. There were also lesbians, who were sometimes referred to as butches and femmes, but to their critics they were called "dykes" and "bull-dykes." They were seen around the Village, minding their own business. It wasn't a big deal at the time, especially as most of the male homosexuals didn't flaunt it or even admit it. They simply stayed in the proverbial closet.
On 9th Street and Sixth Avenue (later changed to The Avenue of the Americas), Lelia pointed out a huge, dark, dismal-looking corner building, several stories higher than most of the nearby shops and small apartment buildings. It was the Women's House of Detention, for female offenders waiting to go to court for their crimes, or awaiting sentencing. Passer-bys could often hear some of the women screaming from their barred windows, or shouting to anyone below who would listen. There were occasional rumors of suicides in the building. There were rumors also, of lesbian suicides occasionally, when the lovers broke up. That was understandable, considering how little social or family support they got when they were down-and-out or deeply depressed.
Lelia once pointed out "MoonDog, " a tall aesthetic-looking bearded creature of indeterminate age who was some sort of Village character. I think he may have composed music and sold sheets of his music for small sums, whatever he could get, to survive. He was almost a ghostly-looking figure, wearing long, dark robes, if I remember correctly, but he wasn't a nuisance, just a Village character.
One day as I was crossing Sixth Avenue from West 4th Street, from the Judson dorm, I stood waiting for the light to turn green. Next to me stood another Village legend, a short, stocky old woman wearing flamboyant clothes, a long, multi-colored dress and turban. I recognized her as Romany Marie, a legendary Gypsy woman who took care of hundreds of starving artists over the years, helping them whenever she could. I turned to her and said, "Hello, Romany Marie." Her old withered face lit up and she said, "You are very beautiful, my child." I thanked her, noticing she had a deep, almost mannish voice. Then we crossed the street together and went our separate ways. I never saw her again, but I never forgot her.
The famous poet, e.e.cummings, lived on Patchen Place in the Village with his wife. Once he gave a poetry reading at NYU, and I went to hear him. He read his poems beautifully. He was often seen with his wife sitting in Washington Square Park, or strolling through the Village.
In my sophomore years, my sister Lelia and I and another girl from the Judson dorm decided to have a small party in a photographer's studio on tiny little Minetta Lane. Lelia was going with her soon-to-be-husband, Mark, I had a boyfriend named Bernie, and Gwen, who was just starting to date Bill, the photographer, who co-owned the studio with another photographer named Jerry, planned the small gathering. It was on a Saturday evening, and we were having a quiet good time with coffee and pastry...none of us drank the hard stuff...when suddenly we were startled by a loud thump against the door. Bill opened the door, and in tumbled a handsome young man with black, curly hair and bright blue eyes, obviously inebriated. From my barroom background at home, I knew there were mean drunks and there were gentle, friendly drunks. Gregory, as Bill introduced him, was definitely a charming, gentle fellow, even
when drunk. Bill knew him well and liked him, and so did we. I can't recall what he talked about, but I know we were all charmed by him.
>From then on, I used to run into him occasionally. He name was Gregory Corso, and he told me he was a poet, down on his luck with very little money, and spent a lot of time gambling, mostly by playing cards. When he won big, which he said he often did, he was able to survive in his cold water flat and buy food so he could keep writing poetry. When he lost, he turned to friends for hope. Occasionally when I had dinner in the San Remo Restaurant on MacDougal Street, I would see Gregory sitting at the bar, drinking. Apparently he was flush. One time he asked me to join him, and I did, drinking a club soda while he drank beer or liquor, or both...I can't remember what he was drinking, but he was sober at the time. He told me that he often saw me walking in the Village or on the NYU campus, and he liked to watch the way I walked. I was flattered, but I didn't get the impression he was coming on to me, just being nice, and I liked the compliment. I suspect that all his creative energies went into his poetry, and that romance wasn't on the top of his agenda.
Several months later, as I was walking west on 8th Street, I ran into Gregory standing on the street. He stopped me and asked for a dollar, telling me was broke and needed some money. This annoyed me. I refused, and said, "No, why don't you go out and get a job?" He replied, "I never knew you were so parsimonious, Sylvia," and I shot back, "And I never knew you were so humble," and I walked away, certain I had hurt him, but not sorry. My family upbringing had kicked in. It was romantic to be a starving poet, but a no-no to try to extort money from a girl, especially a friend.
At that time, I had left the Judson dormitory for a semester and was living in a huge apartment on Perry Street with two other girls, one from Judson, and the other from Albany, whose family was friendly with my family. We were renting for the summer to avoid the dorm restrictions. A couple of weeks after my unfriendly encounter with Gregory Corso, I came home and my two roommates, Suzanne and Miriam, told me I had had a visitor. A curly-haired man named Gregory had left me a book of poems and his regards. I knew it was Gregory's way of mending fences, and I felt no ill-will toward him, pleased he was man enough to say he was wrong and sorry in this way.
The last time I saw him, he was grieving over the tragic death of his idol, the great Scottish poet, Dylan Thomas. Thomas was beloved by the poetry world, and at the age of 39, sinking deeper and deeper into a drunken state. He was already separated from his heartbroken wife, Caitlin, and his children, and was a regular at the White Horse in the Village. All his loving admirers would congregate at the White Horse to pay him homage, day after day, nigh t after night, and Gregory Corso was one of the most devoted of the faithful. Suddenly Dylan Thomas was felled by a stroke and lay dying in St. Vincent's Hospital in the Village. Gregory Corso and others kept a vigil and a death watch for him in the hospital waiting room until he finally passed away. Gregory was grief-stricken.
Years after I left the Village and came back home to teach junior high school English and live with my aging parents, I would read about the famous beat poet, Gregory Corso, and his close friends, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and the rest of their infamous, hard-drinking, high-living beatnik crowd. I saw his pictures and poems in magazines. I read about his marriage to a wealthy woman years later, and his subsequent death when he was old. I have a copy of his complete poetry works, a gift from my niece. I'm happy to know that his dream of being a published poet was fulfilled.
The Judson dormitory on West 4th Street and Washington Square Park was smack in the middle of Little Italy. Around the corner from the dormitory was a small coffee shop-type restaurant called The Sugar Bowl. It was owned and operated by an old Italian woman named Lena. I don't remember if we ever knew her last name, but she had dyed black hair, a thin, bony face with an aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes. She kept a motherly eye on the girls from Judson. We used to stop by for coffee, or run out before curfew to pick up snack foods or coffee, and bring it back to the dorm. We weren't supposed to eat in our rooms, but as long as we just ate fast foods, no one bothered to enforce the rules.
Lelia and I were often joined by some handsome young Italian neighborhood boys, particularly Ralph and Sal, and they often walked us back to the dorm at night, even though it was just around the corner. We knew that there were Italian mafia in the neighborhood, but we didn't know them and they never bothered anyone, merely going about their killing and extorting business, I assume. One day Lelia and I saw an older Italian man having coffee at the Sugar Bowl. I say older, but I mean older than us. He looked about 25 or 30, while we were still in our late teens, 18 and 19. He looked different from Ralph and Sal and the other young boys who came to the Sugar Bowl. He always wore conservative suits and ties, and was perfectly groomed, very well-built and almost Hollywood handsome. He used to return our glances and smiles and looked at us as we talked. We used to tell each other how handsome he was, and as we talked, he kept smiling, but never approached or spoke to us. One day we mentioned it to one of the boys we knew. He told us that this man had violated the Mafia code of silence, talked when he shouldn't have talked. As a punishment, his tongue had been cut out. He never spoke to us because he couldn't speak. We realized why he kept smiling at us. He was probably reading our lips and watched as we whispered how handsome he was. I don't know that he was deaf, but because he couldn't speak, he probably learned to read lips to improve his impaired communication skills. That was really embarrassing.
I had dinner in the San Remo restaurant on MacDougal Street a couple times a week. The owner was a frail old Italian widower whose two sons, from two different wives, ran the place. Together they managed both the bar and the kitchen. Both sons were married, in their 40's and very personable and friendly. The old man used to come to our table and tell me I reminded him of his dead wife. One day as we were eating there, we spotted celebrities at a nearby table, Anthony Quinn, Burgess Meredith, Melvyn Douglas and Douglas's wife, Helen Gahagan Douglas, a state senator. As I had never before seen movie stars up close, I asked the old man if he would introduce me. He was happy to do it. Looking back now, I blush when I think how insensitive it was to interrupt their dinner to say hello to some smiling young woman who was obviously star-struck. Quinn had a good sense of humor. He told me he was really Caesar Romero. Actually, they did look alike.
On several occasions when I was having dinner in the San Remo, I would see a snow white Imperial drive up and park in front of the restaurant. I knew the car's owner was a notorious Italian family boss, who went under the pseudonym of Tony Bender. His Imperial had Jersey plates, but he ruled the Village, along with another Family Boss, who was known by the pseudonym of Tommy Ryan. I never could figure out why these Italian mob bosses used Irish names, although their real names were well-known to many people, including the cops, the FBI, and the neighborhood. Another mob boss who was called Jerry Moore befriended me in the San Remo where he hung out, often going in and out of the kitchen, as Tony Bender did as well. Moore was in his late 50's or early 60's, wore expensive dark suits and a fedora hat. Occasionally he would walk me back to the dorm and often told me that if anyone ever bothered me, to let him know. He acted fatherly toward me. I pretended not to know he was Mafia. Once when I was sitting in the San Remo restaurant with the owner, Joe, who had taken over completely after his father died, while his half-brother Johnny had taken over another family restaurant on Long Island, I told Joe that I believed my mother's cousin was married to an Italian Mafia figure. Joe asked me who it was, and I told him it was Bart Salvo, whom Walter Winchell had once written up in his newspaper column as "Black Bart Salvo, the neighborhood boss from Scarsdale." Joe told me conclusively, "He's nobody." I got the feeling that he knew who Bart was, and his response meant that a neighborhood boss like Bart was not a major figure in the mob.
Tony Bender, the mobster boss from jersey who drove the big snow white Imperial, was the most frightening looking of all the known mobsters in the Village. He was tall and very skinny with a bony face and dead-looking eyes. I never saw any expression on his face. Years later I heard he had disappeared, and sometime after that, I heard the remains of his body had been found in the trunk of a car that had been flattened at a junkyard. A scary end to a scary man.
One day someone in the Village I knew saw me having dinner at the San Remo; he came to me the next day and said, "You should stay away from Joe Santini. He's an Italian gangster." The next time I ate at the San Remo, Joe and some of his friends sat with me. I told Joe that someone had told me he was in the mob. Joe calmly said, "Sylvia, gangsters don't wait on tables." Although he was the owner, he occasionally brought dishes to the tables when they were very busy. A few weeks later, I was sitting with Joe and his friends again, when Joe began to hum a tune. I had never heard him sing before. I said, "I didn't know gangsters could sing." There was a moment of startled silence, and then these five or six big Itallian men started to laugh and roar and practically fell off their chairs. Soon they were wiping tears from their eyes. I never mentioned it again. I left New York in 1958, went home for good, and began teaching English in a local high school. One day I went back to New York for a brief visit to my aunt Sue, and I stopped in the San Remo and asked for Joe. The bartender, whom I knew, looked up at the ceiling and started crossing himself. I repeated my question. He told me Joe had dropped dead of a sudden heart attack a few years before. He was only in his late 40's. I felt really bad. I never went back to the San Remo.
There were plenty of movie people and celebrities living in the Village during my seven years there. Once the actor Ben Gazzarra tried to approach me as I walked with my girlfriend Jackie on 6th Avenue near West 4th Street. I smiled and walked away. Jackie said, "Sylvia, Ben Gazarra tried to pick you up." I hadn't recognized him, but later I read that he had married the actress Janice Rule. Recently I saw him on television. I felt bad because he had lost most of his hair and was now shriveled up and old-looking, and seemed to have shrunk in size. I think he and Janice Rule were divorced long ago, ala Hollywood.
Another time when I was trying on dresses in a small shop on East 8th Street, I had to share a dressing room with actress Eva Marie Saint. I knew she was from Albany and a Cancer native like me, and I had loved her in On the Waterfront, but I just smiled at her and never mentioned our common astrological signs and hometowns. I saw her several times with her producer husband, Jeffrey Hayden, as they often strolled around the Village. He wore a coonskin cap and Eva Marie was dressed in blazing colors, once in hot pink, another time in flaming red, and a third time in bright purple. Those colors set off her long blond hair and pale white skin. Recently I saw her interviewed on television. She's now 80 and looks great for her age. I was happy to hear that she and Jeffrey Hayden have been married for 53 years and have several children and grandchildren, unusual for Hollywood marriages, to say the least.
Once when my girlfriend Miriam and I were walking through Washington Square Park, a big long navy blue Cadillac convertible pulled up to a red light at the entrance of Fifth Avenue, and there sat a tiny little driver, Eddie Fisher. At the time, he was America's sweetheart, engaged to American's other sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds. The top of his car was down; we rushed up to the car and said, "Hi, Eddie," and he smiled happily and said "Hi" back to us. What a thrill! Miriam was a striking blond, beautifully dressed, and I looked my best at the time. I bet he's real sorry now. Miriam married a multi-millionaire, I was the maid of honor at her lavish wedding, and she had a great, happy life until she died at 68 five years ago. Eddie had three really bad marriages to Debbie, Liz, and Connie. Too bad. C'est la vie!!
***************************************************************
In my junior year at NYU, a huge coffee shop run by 12 unknown artists opened up on MacDougal Street between the San Remo and the Minetta Tavern restaurants. I was there opening night when it was jammed with curious villagers. It was called Café Rienzi, and from then on it was my hangout.
Besides all kinds of great coffee, they served fabulous pastries, and probably other food, although I mostly remember drinking coffee and occasionally eating pastry. All sorts of interesting people came in, night after night, and even during the day when it was open. Soon many of the original 12 artists began buying their way out, and eventually it was down to two owners, Harry Justman and a man named David, both divorced several times and both had a string of girlfriends. Harry was a natty dresser and often wore a fancy fedora hat. He looked a lot like Dick Tracy when he wore his hat. When he took it off, he was completely bald, but he was a handsome man anyway. He had a really friendly personality, and we became good friends for years.
One evening when the Rienzi was jam-packed as usual, I noticed a funny looking little old man wearing dark clothes and carrying a big camera. He was taking pictures of a beautiful young girl who was sitting at a table with some friends. She had very long dark hair framing her classically beautiful face. This photographer had taken thick strands of her long dark hair and draped them across her face. Then he made her take long drags on a cigarette and blow the smoke through the strands of the draped hair across her face. He took dozens of photos of this very same pose. Harry Justman told me the photographer was Weegee, well-known and highly-regarded in the world of photography. Soon afterward, the girl with the long, smoke-drenched hair got a contract to go to Hollywood and make a movie. The movie, The Sweet Smell of Success, starred her and Tony Curtis, and other big names, including Burt Lancaster. But Weegee's model, Susan Harrison, had the female lead in the movie that was an instant box-office hit. Then this beautiful young actress disappeared from the scene and was never heard of again.
A few years ago, to my amazement, she surfaced once more. There was a popular reality television show, How to Marry a multi-millionaire; about several hand-picked girls who were to meet this handsome bachelor, get to know him, and then he would pick one of them for his bride, and marry her on television. The show was very popular. The bride he picked and married on television was Darva Conger. As the world watched, this television-reality marriage quickly unraveled and ended in a quick, but bitter divorce. But Darva Conger had her 15 minutes of fame, and in those 15 minutes, her family background was revealed and her mother was shown several times with her on the television interviews. The mother was none other than Susan Harrison, the once-beautiful model photographed by the famous Weegee, and the star of the movie with Tony Curtis. To my utter shock and dismay, this once beautiful actress was now a wrinkled, unattractive woman, showing no trace whatsoever of her former beauty. In fact, her face was wrinkled far more than in women older than she . She was divorced from Darva's father, who was never mentioned or shown. Nowadays, Darva Conger has been forgotten, along with her once famous mother. The last I heard, she returned to her nursing career.
Another evening when I was drinking coffee in the Rienzi, a world famous poet staggered in, drunk as usual, with his sad-looking wife, Ruth. It was the now-infamous Maxwell Bodenheim, whose poem "Death" was once reported to be required-reading in England. He spent his last tragic years a destitute, drunken panhandler in Greenwich Village, haunting the coffee shops and bars, selling and autographing his poems for a few bucks to anyone who wanted them so he could afford to keep drinking. On this particular night, for some reason, he and Ruth sat down at my table. His first, and only words to me, were, "You're a good-looking girl, but good-looking girls are a dime a dozen." Not very poetic, but I couldn't argue with that, and fortunately, he moved on to other tables....fortunately because he tended to spit when he spoke, and spittle even from a famous poet, wasn't my cup of tea. As it turned out, it was one of the last night of his life. A day or two later, Maxwell Bodenheim and his wife Ruth were found brutally murdered in the Village flat of a drifter who hung out with them; he was arrested, charged and found guilty. The drifter was a schizophrenic who had spent years in a mental hospital. Bodenheim's poem about death is in my Oscar Williams anthology; it's a beautiful poem.
****************************************************************
I left New York for good in 1958, returned home, and taught junior high school English in a local central school district for four years. Before I left Greenwich Village, it was already changing radically. The term "Bohemians" had gone out of fashion. For awhile I had heard the term "Bohunks," and then "Beatniks:" eventually the popular term was "Hippies." NYU had gotten even larger, built huge new buildings, and people were openly smoking marijuana. In the '50's when I was there, we occasionally heard that musicians smoked marijuana, but most of the people there frequented bars and coffee shops. Years later when I visited for one day while attending a conference, there were little head shops all around the villages and lots of young kids who appeared sinister. I suspected they were drug users, abusers, and dealers. The good old days seemed to be gone for good, at least for me. I think my sister and I and our friends at the time saw the last of the good days of Greenwich Village. But it left its mark on me. At least once a year I dream I'm back in the Village, walking west toward Sheridan Square from West 4th Street, where I used to look at all the interesting stores that sold handmade leather sandals, silver jewelry with semi-precious stones, and avant garde paintings and clothes. Later on in the dreams, I walk deeper into the Village where the streets become twisted and narrow and unfamiliar. It's always a relief when I wake up and find I'm back home in the peaceful foothills of the Berkshires.
1 comment:
Very interesting and well written.
Post a Comment