4 - A Two-Dollar Hamburger Under a Silvery Dome

THE WEYLIN and THE BERKSHIRE, New York City

Viennese postcard circa 1925

      My first real hotel memory springs from a trip to New York in 1954 with my Aunt Frances, her British friend Rose, and Grandmother Pleasants.

 I had just turned twelve, and we took the overnight Silver Star from Southern Pines the day after Christmas.   Frances and Grandmother Pleasants shared one of those enormous double bedrooms (there was usually only one per train), while Rose and I slept in berth beds which looked directly onto the sleeping car corridor like Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe in “Some like it Hot.”  

 

Rose, circa 1955, with Dickie and Mickie

 (Rose, no less an aunt to me and my brothers than Frances, is buried in Aberdeen with the rest of the family.  Her place in the family remains somewhat of an enigma.)

 

Weylin Hotel (Google)

We stayed at the Weylin at the corner of 54th and Madison.  Built in 1921, the 16-story luxury hotel (unbeknownst then to anyone in our party)  was just about at the end of its life.  It would be converted into an office building in January of 1956.  At any rate,  I remember little about the hotel itself.

   We must have had a two-bedroom suite, with my foldaway bed set up in the living room.  What most sticks in my mind is the room service which Frances ordered for me as soon as we arrived.    I vividly remember the bellboy in his bright green jacket, setting up a special table onto which he reverently placed my late-morning treat.   He then ceremoniously  whisked away the silvery dome, unveiling the most elegant hamburger I could have  ever imagined (and a subject of family conversation for years to follow).

Frances grandly signed the check for a whopping two dollars, representing about ten times the cost of a hamburger back in Aberdeen. 

Today, I frequently have difficulty remembering a film or book from last week.  Yet, I recall in detail what must have been an exhausting Saturday for Frances those many years ago:  morning at FAO Schwartz (the biggest toy store in the world!) and the Empire State Building; lunch at Longchamps with banana split for dessert; matinee at the original Cinerama; and a memorable evening at Radio City Music Hall.  

This Is Cinerama 1954

  

I had made a thorough wish list of which only Coney Island (closed for the winter)  and the Stork Club (!) went unfulfilled (See sidebar:  Dorothy Ann at the Stork Club).

 * * * * * * *

  I didn’t return to New York with Frances again  until 1968, when I was on my way to relocate in Europe.  It’s hard to imagine that only 14 years had elapsed between those two trips. 

Frances with unidentified gentleman, at a Colorado Dude Ranch

The days of innocence had long passed.  Dickie, my younger brother, joined us, and it was a time in our lives of excess and reckless carousing.   Dickie was just beginning, I had been going full throttle for quite awhile, and Frances was a veteran.

Angry young man (photo Walt Howerton)

We all chipped in financially, but Frances paid the lion’s share for another two-bedroom suite, this time at the Berkshire on 52^nd Street.  I remember thinking, naively, this must be exactly the sort of place where one might run into the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

I’ve never stayed there again, but a few years ago I took a stroll through the lobby of what is now the Omni Berkshire, and I could partially re-feel the thrill of the first time at quite such an elegant place. 

The good-time Windsors

SIDEBAR:  Miss VFW 1951 at the Stork Club

The Stork Club 1949

       My wish to go to the Stork Club was not as idiotic as it might appear.  I did read Walter Wintchell’s column, and he was supposed to go there every evening.  Ditto Earl Wilson. 

With Dorothy Ann 1970

 My real connection, however, was my beloved cousin, Dorothy Ann, who had won a national beauty contest in the summer of 1951 which had temporarily thrown her, and by ricochet the rest of the family, into the outer fringes of celebrityism.  This was long before Andy Warhol coined the 15-minutes-of-fame expression, but it was precisely what he was talking about before he said it.

If I tell you the contest was Miss U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars, you’ll undoubtedly think I am making a big to-do of nothing.  However, to get a sense of the event’s importance, you have to go back into the context of the recently-ended World War and the just-beginning one in Korea.  Not to mention the all pervasive, intoxicating national patriotism of the day.

Dorothy Ann was my favorite cousin, and I spent many weekends with her and her step-mom who was my great-aunt Ruth. 

When she was crowned, the VFW organization staged a full scale military parade down 5^th Avenue, led by Dorothy Ann, sitting on the rear of the back seat of an open-top Cadillac convertible.  Heady stuff, I’d say.

This was nothing compared to the announcement the following day that Dorothy Ann would appear on the CBS television program “Live from the Stork Club,” an early talk show in which the owner circulated among the tables of his illustrious nightclub and paused to chat with the more recognizable patrons. 

Google photo circa 1951

As almost no one in Aberdeen had yet acquired a television set, our family arranged to see the event elsewhere.  I recollect  the house and the street, but not the owners.  I just remember my mother and me and Ethel, our maid, along with various neighbors crowded on the floor of a little living room on Poplar Street watching the fifteen minute program.

Ethel with the twins

I was only eight years old that summer.  But.  I always remembered the Stork Club, and I never forgot the excitement of seeing Sherman Billingsley stopping by Dorothy Ann’s table, however briefly.

Dorothy Ann and her little cousin

Click here for a visit back to the Stork Club

Your input is welcomed:  hotel-musings@hotmail.fr

  Next Friday:  "Room Without Bath ..."