High Times in the Threadbare 1930's

High Old Times in the Threadbare 1930’s

By Herbert Eyre Moulton

(1927 - 2005)


“Herbert Eyre Moulton’s journey to become the Renaissance Man he became started in the 1930’s in a time when food and drink and supplies were in high demand and in short supply. But as he tells us in this following chapter, the Moulton family had ways to make even the most dismal occurrences seem triumphant. In these original days of his childhood, Herbie really learned to love art, music and theatre, which he tells us here with great enthusiasm.”


-         Charles E.J. Moulton


Considering the perilous state of everyone’s finances during the 1930’s --- at least everyone we knew --- and recalling our own feast-and-famine cycles, the wonder is that we managed to take in as much grand entertainment as we did. But then, I was only a child (born 1927) and no problem to be taken anywhere my parents went. Obviously, I was smart enough to grow as fast as I could so that these excursions of ours could grow even more festive, and before anyone realized it they consisted of at least one carefully chosen opera each season, plus operetta: musicals, stage plays, and, two summers running (1933 and 1934), the marvels of the Chicago World’s Fair, a Century of Progress.

We were determined to miss as little as possible. Damn the Depression, anyway! Naturally, there were the usual sour comments from the local Babbitts: Who did we think we were, anyway? Going to plays and operas, with so many people on relief! “Oh, don’t mind those old horses’ neckties!” my mother Nell advised. “They’re only jealous. Such Slobs ICH KABIBEL!” (She’d once had a Yiddisch speaking suitor.) “Now, let’s see what’s playing next week, what we can afford, that.”

Something affordable would always turn up --- there was so much to choose from. And if the tickets cost too much, there was always some way to blarney our way past the Manager. “Honey-Boy, remember, I’m not Irish for nothing!” On such occasions, my Dad, Big Herb, would either look the other way or simply pretend he wasn’t with us.

Those were the days of Vaudeville, so we were able to bask in the glow of dying embers. One of my first Show-Biz memories was of Sophie Tucker, all in white, being driven onstage in a white-and-gold open limousine, attended by flunkies in matching livery. They escorted her down to the footlights. “Some of these days/ You’re gonna miss me, Honey”.

I was absolutely transfixed.

There were, as well, lots of live radio broadcasts originating in Chicago, like W-G-N’s popular Soap “Bachelor’s Children” --- we wrote in and got free tickets several times. Got the cast’s autographs, too, and a write-up in our local newspaper, The Glen Ellyn News. So much for the Babbitts.

There were also hour-long radio dramas like the version of “A Farewell to Arms” with no one less than Helen Hayes as Catherine, script in hand, loving, emoting, and finally dying beautifully, all into the microphone. Just think: The First Lady of the American Theater, not ten yards away from us and all the better because it hadn’t cost us a red cent!

The same went for the nightly free summer concerts in Grant Park. We took in them all, or some of them, anyway. And Nell got more articles printed in the paper. Living Well is the Best Revenge!

On athletics and sporting events we didn’t waste much time --- wrongly perhaps, and I the figure to prove it. (Sorry, Jocks!) I did like to go swimming, with my pals at the Wheaton pool in the next town, riding our bikes and devouring candy bars the whole way. There was also skating on Lake Ellyn, the best part of which was the hot cocoa with marshmallows in it at the boat house. That, and chatting up the junior high school girls. And the Hell with the Hans Brinkers outside falling on their bottoms!

We did make an annual pilgrimage to Wrigley Field each summer, mostly to humor Big Herb, an inveterate Cubs fan. They very seldom won a game, but my Dad was convinced they would, and the Pennant, too, if only we’d keep thinking Positive Thoughts. So we did ... meanwhile, the Hot Dogs there - they were just about the best in town.

Well, in 1938, Big Herb’s beloved Cubs finally won their Pennant, and, bless him, he hurried home as fast as he could just to tell us the News in person. It wasn’t just “Gabby” Hartnett’s last minute Grand Slam Homer that had turned the tide --- our own good wishes and positive thoughts had also played their part. Right, perhaps they had ... Nothing like keeping everyone on the Home Front happy and content.

Like most families, we had our share of seasonal traditions and these we kept religiously. Christmas vacation always meant one thing in certainty: a trip to the Chicago Stadium for Sonja Henie’s spectacular Ice Revue --- breathtaking costumes and orchestrations, Olympic skaters, and hair-raising comics-on-ice like Frick and Frack, and, the peak of the program and always dazzlingly beautiful: Sonja Henie herself, solo, a cherubic blond dream in a short glitzy skirt and spinning and wafting her way through Liszt’s “Liebestraum” --- Man alive! Now that was magic! That, ladies and gents, was a star to conjure with!

The Stadium of W. Madison St. was likewise the setting for another family tradition, this one in summertime: Ringling Bros., Barnum and Bailey’s Circus! Three rings continuously alive with clowns and their exploding flivvers, acrobats and tumblers, magicians and live animal acts, and a bevy of pretty ballet girls, fluttering vast butterfly wings a hundred feet up, hanging from the ceiling by their teeth! (Ow!) And at the Grand Finale, having to stop your ears when somebody got shot out of a mammoth cannon. (I never quite grasped the charm of this.)

Yet another amicable tradition: celebrating my parents’ Wedding Anniversary every February 27th, getting launched with a three-way “Kram” (Swedish for “embrace” – we called it simply a Hug-and-a-Boo.) Then a slap-up-dinner at a fine downtown restaurant --- Henrici’s or, better, still, the Berghoff, where the Wiener Schnitzel and Tafelspitz, AND the home-made Lemon Meringe Pie are to die for. This would be followed by a stage show, whatever happened to be playing that appealed to us all. One year, it was “The Hot Mikado”, another: “Porgy and Bess”, and the last such occasion in the ‘30’s (“Good riddance!” was Nell’s send-off-comment): the wonderful comedy “Life with Father” with Percy Warum as fulminating Father Day, and Lillian Gish (Yes!) as the gentle, slightly pixilated mother, heading a company said to be far superior to the popular Broadway original.

Another season brought Noel Coward’s witty Spook-Comedy “Blithe Spirit”, featuring the deliciously dotty Estelle Winwood of the lace-curtained hair-do, wide-set eyes, and pixie movements, along with Dennis King, old-time operetta idol, and the chic but incomprehensible Annabella. We hoped her husband Tyrone Power could understand her better than we did.

A farce my parents loved was “Leaning on Letty”, with the loose-limbed Charlotte Greenwood, whose post-performance display of rubber-legged acrobatics brought down the house. An incredible display, much loved.

Then there was the dark and melancholy Sylvia Sidney in a stage version of  Nell’s beloved namesake “Jane Eyre” (her father had been born an Eyre of Eyrecourt in County Galway, where Charlotte Bronte, the author, once settled, taking that family’s name for her own heroine). One reason for Miss Sidney’s melancholy might have been having the show stolen from under her by that delicious character actress Cora Witherspoon in the cameo role of Mr. Rochester’s complaining cook.

Another star turn, and one deemed by some of Nell’s bitchier lady friends as quite unsuitable for young Herbert’s innocent ears, was Clifton Webb’s waspish “The Man Who Came to Dinner” --- not for school-boys, and, consequently, relished all the more by this one. We also revelled in “Pins and Needles”, a political revue put on by members of the international Garment Workers Union in New York --- their spoof of an old-fashioned mellerdrammer was achingly funny and remains so in memory today.

“Achingly funny” wouldn’t half describe Olsen and Johnson’s zany “Helzapoppin’”, which gave a new meaning to madness, but it sure took a lot of tolerance to reconcile this kind of thing with the dignified Auditorium. What counted was the great old theater was being used as such. It surely was for the next production, which came at the very close “Dirty ‘30’s” --- “Romeo and Juliet” starring the most glamorous and famous pair of lovers of the time, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. We all thought it was the most sumptuous and thrilling Romeo possible, but it’s now reckoned the biggest flop of the Oliviers’ otherwise distinguished career. It played in the theater I shall always love more than any other --- Louis Sullivan’s masterpiece, and I write about it with a reverance reserved for very holy places.

I was and indeed still am deeply devoted to this historic old theater which dates from 1889 and which played such a seminal role in my life. And when it was threatened with demolition in the early ‘40’s, my personal sorrow was so profound that I wrote critic Claudia Cassidy a lament for its apparently inexorable fate. She published it almost in full in her Sunday column in the Chicago Sun --- Fame! And at the tendenage of 15, too. But thank God and a lot of marvellous people, the Auditorium managed to survive after all and is now enjoying a new lease on life as part of Roosevelt University --- restored to its pristine splendor as a protected Historical Monument.

It was there that I had my first real theatrical experience, a musical extravaganza in every sense of the word, “The Great Waltz”, music by Johann Strauss the Younger, book by Moss Hart, and featuring the soprano Marion Claire. It was she, as wife of the Music Director of W-G-N, who, in Spring 1953, auditioned and hired me for my first nationwide broadcast, commenting to the others in the control room: “We must find something that shows off his beautiful diction.”

As for “The Great Waltz” itself, very little I have seen since --- this was 1936, remember --- has ever approached it for sheer theatrical magic, now, during the introduction to the Grand Finale, the bandstand with orchestra, moved swiftly and silently upstage as far as it would go, crystal chandaliers descended from above and pillars slid out from the wings on both sides. Thus, in a matter of seconds, what was just another set downstage for a bit of dialogue, was transformed into the grandest of ballrooms, crowded with handsomely dressed couples waltzing to the beautiful Blue Danube. This was Glamour. This was Theater. This was an Epiphany, and I never quite got over it. 

Let’s get down now to the operas my parents took me to in the 1930’s, after a quick glance back to the dark days of October 1929, when, by supreme stroke of irony, the stockmarket crash that triggered the Great Depression, neatly coincided with the opening of Samuel Insull’s brand new, twenty-million dollar, Art-Deco Civic Opera House. This soon came to be known as Insull’s Folly, and for it, his Civic Opera Company had abandoned the historic and still viable Auditorium, home of Chicago opera for four decades. Luckily, Chicago opera is now flourishing again.

In the ‘30’s, the only opera being performed at the Auditorium (probably the best acoustics in Christendom) was that of Fortune Gallo’s San Carlo Company, an excellent troupe of first-class artists from home and abroad, performing standard repertory at “popular” prices a few weeks at a time before moving on to the next city. My first opera was their “Faust”, with a nice chubby Marguerite named Belle Verte, and, as Mephisto, the company’s resident bass, Harold Kravitt (these names have been flashed solely from memory). There was even a “white” ballet between the acts. It was all totally new to me and it left me hooked for life.

My second night at the Opera, again the San Carlo, was Bizet’s “Carmen”, starring the Russian mezzo Ina Bourskaya. The trouble was that particular Saturday night an American Legion convention was in town, and Big Herb, a faithful, if not fanatical Legionaire, was all set to spend the evening with some of his buddies at Mme. Galli’s Italian Restaurant on the Near North Side --- a rollicking occasion reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy’s classic “Sons of the Desert” convention, which also took place in Chicago. All well and good, but what about my Carmen? I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. As curtain time approached, with the merriment showing no signs of abating, I began to twitch, and then to panic. Was I the only one who remembered our date at the opera? Nothing for it, but to burst into tears and create such a scene that the festivities ended then and there. We got to the theater just in time to miss Carmen’s Entrance and Habanera, but the important thing was we got there, period. And a terrific experience it turned out to be.

Besides my tearful brouhaha at Mme. Galli’s, what I remember most about that performance was Act IV and the hardy little band of 5 or 6 supers, got up as matadors and marching round and round in the pre-bullfight parade --- in one side and out the other, then a dash backstage and in again, at least four times, each appearance getting a bigger laugh and louder hand than before.

Then, for the final scene --- Brouskaya resplendent in gold lace, tier after tier down to the ground, with a matching mantilla held in place by a jeweled comb and blood-red rose. What impressed me most was the moment just prior to her death --- she made a frantic Sign of the Cross, then turned and rushed upstage to meet her lover’s naked knife blade --- this desperate, dramatic Sign of the Cross, then hurtling to her doom. Boy! That was Destiny with a capital D!!!

Our next opera treat, a springtime post-season AIDA, brought us a switch to the admittedly more luxurious Civic Opera House in all its salmon pink splendor. (Little did I realize that about a decade later, I’d be working there more or less regularly as happy, if obstreperous chorister.) What I recall most about that Aida was the Radames, not only for his name --- John Pane-Gasser --- which unfortunately matched his constipated warbling, but his cute little brick-red nightie, not quite reaching the knobbiest knees this side of the Spaghetti Western. It was all that Nell and I could do to stifle our mirth --- that nightie and that name, those alone would have made any matinée memorable: for months afterwards I dreamt I was singing the Messenger, who arrives in the middle of a big ensemble with tidings of war. I was not quite 10 at the time and without a clue about singin Italian, or anything else!

Signor Pane-Gasser decided it for us: from then on, only a really famous name in our chosen performances, preferably a goddess-diva, which is precisely what we got the next few times, beginning with Lily Pons (“Leetle Leely”), long one of our household deities --- a December 1937 LUCIA, and naturally she chirped and thrilled divinely, but what was truly unforgettable was her Edgardo, played by to the hilt any maybe a bit beyond by the magnificent Italian tenor, Galliano Masini, the sensation of that season, who later made critic Irving Kolodin realize how LUCIA had once been considered a “tenor’s opera”.

To this day I can see Masini, propped up on one elbow, pouring his heart out in the death scene. And at his curtain calls, waving his hands over his head at the ovation, like the true champion that he was. (A decade later, I enjoyed Masini’s generous company on that epic day-coach trainride from Chicago to New York, along with such vocal paragons as Cloe Elmo, Mafalda Favero, and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni. Now there was glory for you.

The Glamour Thing peaked with our post-Christmas LA BOHEME in January 1939 --- Grace Moore, fresh from Hollywood triumphs, in a performance so moving that my sniffling, which began with the ACT I Candle-Scene, grow to out-and-out blubbering at Mimi’s death, sobbing so loud that a hankie had to be stuffed in my mouth. I recovered in time to catch a glimpse of Grace emerging from the stage door --- all silver fox and flowers and fervid fans. So, what if I was a zombie at school next day? I had seen Grace Moore anything but plain and could die content.

Our next few operas caused no sobs, only open-mouthed wonderment at the artistry, in December 1939, of Martinelli and Rethberg in IL TROVATORE (and I didn’t even miss the Marx Bros.!), and then a year later, most prodigious of all, Flagstad and Melchior as the century’s greatest TRISTAN AND ISOLDE. There was only one instant that threatened to break us up --- when those two statuesque Vikings tried to fit onto the same bench for the ACT II duet. We nearly lost it for a moment and were all but deafened by the sheer magnitude of those voices.

All these treasures were interspersed with returns to the Auditorium, starting with my first really proper ballet, Col. DeBasil’s Original Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo: the brilliance of the legendary Leonide Massine, the dignity and grace of the Danseur Noble, Frederic Franklin, and, most exciting of all, the peerless Alexandra Danilova of the “Laughing Legs”. To this day, she is my idea of the celebrated “Baby Ballerinas”, all of them with names ending with either “skaya” or “ova” --- like Mme. Opanova, the ostrich premiere danseuse in Walt Disney’s FANTASIA, which we also enjoyed about then --- the first flight ever to wrap-around Stereophonic Sound, with Leopold Stokowski turning everybody on.

If memory serves, the ballet program held COPPELIA and Offenbach’s GAITÈ PARISIENNE. There may also have been LE BEAU DANUBE. I do hope so because oof our Viennese connection later, flourishing today. It was definitely the Offenbach. Because I can still see Massine as the humorous Peruvian, zooming round the stage, clutching the strap of his small black bag, to his own bustling little melody, instantly recognizable, and the mindboggling frou-frou of the Can-Can finale, all sharp shrieks and whistles, exhilaration and exuberance, Paris-style.

Our next Saturday matinee at the Auditorium brought us the San Carlo’s renowned production of MADAMA BUTTERFLY, with the exquisite Japanese soprano Hiza Koyke (and her astounding “western”-style spinto voice; --- a performance which held perfection --- all silken tenderness, miraculous lighting, flower petals drifting down, with Japanese lanterns and the steel of the ceremonial Samurai sword. To this day, I can see the Waiting Scene that links the last two Acts, with Butterfly, her maid and her little son, frozen still for what seemed an entire night, seen through the wax-paper screens shielding their lovely Japanese dweliing. I’ve seldom been so taken by a scene before or since. (For the record, and because I’m proud of my really weird memory, the Pinkerton was a good tenor with the Scots name of Tendy MacKenzie.)

So there we have all the Auditorium Theatre occasions --- THE GREAT WALTZ, the San Carlo FAUST, CARMEN, and BUTTERFLY, the Ballet Russe and the Oliviers’ handsome but unlucky Romeo, and, oh, lest we forget, the Olsen and Johnson mad, completely antic and surrealistic get, HELLZAPOPPIN, forerunners of Monty Python and all farceurs since!

Then, a lifetime later --- in autumn 1990 --- I had a gratifying reunion with my old Chicago haunts --- on a visit, my first since 1976, for the 45th anniversary of my high school graduation. One of the first things I did was hightail it to the restored Auditorium to try and wheedle a ticket to PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, selling out for the whole season. My heart rose up when I entered the theatre proper, with all the light bulbs twinkling from the golden arches above, and I was much more engrossed by the details of the restoration than by Webber’s spectacular barrage of kitsch on the stage. The restoration had been a miracle, and content in my soul of souls that life had somehow come full circle. I felt the spirits of my parents not too far away. If only my wife and son had been there, as well, and not at home over in the Strauss Family’s hometown of Vienna

Second only to the Auditorium in my loyalty and affection is another Chicago institution, likewise reprieved at the last minute from destruction, the Chicago Theatre on State Street, once the magnificent flagship of the Balahan and Katz flotilla of movie palaces once adorning the Loop’s Great White Way --- the Palace, the Oriental, the Garrick (another of Louis Sullivan’s gems, nevertheless levelled to the ground) and, across from the Chicago, the State-lake, with a bijou blook all own. The last time I was ever there was summer of 1955 when I took Carol Fox, one of the founders of the Lyric Opera to see the movie version of THE KING AND I, and we had to leave half way through due to her severe bout of hiccups, got at the prospect of having to deal with both the great prima donnas, opera stars Maria Callas and Renata Tibaldi, rivals, alternating in the upcoming season.

Further out on Chicago’s West Side had stood other such cinema landmarks as the Marbro and the Paradise, where once, back in the early 1930’s we had rocked to Cab Calloway and his orchestra, “Hi-dee-hi-dee-hi-dee-hoo! Hey, folks, did you hear the story of Minnie the Moocher? She was a low down hoochie-coocher!”, and the whole company all decked out in tails-suits of brilliant orange.

It was the original Chicago Theater that had given me so many of my boyhood’s happiest hours --- stage shows featuring, among other outstanding headliners, Mary Pickford in a short comedy entitled THE CHURCH MOUSE, with Pickford as a shy secretary, notebook and pencil at the ready. And when she made her shy entrance, she was greeted by a big burst of applause. At the Chicago, we also saw THE VAGABOND KING --- lots of sword fights and Rudolf Friml tunes, early musical-operetta that must have inspired later musical composers like Frederick Loewe and even Alan Menken to compose swashbuckling Broadway shows. But the main thing about a theatre like the Chicago was the stage shows always featuring at least one big star. Our stars began with Bob Hope and his company (including Jerry Colona, Brenda and Cobina, two wisecracking scarecrows as society cuties), Frances Langford and Skinny Ennis and his band --- not bad. Another bill headed by my all-time favorite comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, with many of their classic routines from their movies. Because this was the dawn of the Swing Era of Big Bands, we had Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra, who was to give Frank Sinatra one of his early breaks as a legendary superstar crooner. Artie Shaw and his band was also there, Woody Herman and his herd, the saxophonist Dick Stabile, and, showing them all how its done, the great Glenn Miller and his orchestra, with Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, Tex Beneka and the Moderneers. I could have died happy! Other shows brought, of all dear souls, Hattie MacDaniel, free at last from Tara, and giving us a glimpse of the rustling scarlet taffeta petticoat given to her by Cap’n Rhett Butler in GONE WITH THE WIND. Another personal appearance that I recall was that of none other than Leo the M-G-M-lion, right there on the Chicago Theater stage in a golden cage, snarling loftily, just like in the logo.

When we weren’t commuting to the loop for operas and concerts and stage shows, there was always plenty of excellent entertainment right in our western suburbs: local productions of THE MIKADO and PIRATES OF The PENZANCE or ROBIN HOOD --- and once a real-live minstrel show with the ensemble of white singers with their faces painted black.

Nowadays, this would anything but politically correct, but this was a different time when Al Jolson launched the talking picture doing exactly that in a kind of a transformation of sorts. The audience liked the cross-cultural change. African-American music was really taking off, Satchmo and Jelly-Roll Morton inventing jazz and igniting the white swing, the blues later giving birth to rock ‘n roll with Elvis as ambassador. Robert Plant of Led Zepellin was once asked what inspired him most musically. “The blues is my father and jazz my mother,” he answered. It all started back when slaves were not allowed to speak with each other while working on the fields. So they sang their music and started a cultural revolution. Even a White Russian named Isreal Baline arrived in New York in the beginning of 20th century as Irving Berlin and invented the Jazz-Musical. That says something about American music. It was created by immigrants. Way back when, the show was a bombshell success from the first smart command of “Gentlemen, be seated!” Big Herb, my father, was one of the End Men, with tambourine, snappy answers to corny jokes and a rag-doll to do the two-step with. His son Number One here, all of seven years old, was starry eyed.

To make sure that little old Glen Ellyn didn’t get cheated of its ration of World Culture, there usually was a Sunday Evening Lecture Series going great guns at the high school auditorium --- Osa Johnson with colored slides of her Adventures in Darkest Africa --- the sculptor Gustav Borglund on how he went about carving up Mt. Rushmore in the likenesses of four presidents. “Helluva shame,” mumbled a neighbor behind us. “Ruining a beautiful mountain like that!”

They even gave us a real time Princess. Kopatnik or some-such, an exile from Czarist Russia, later at Collier’s Magazine. And the question on everybody’s lip was simply, if she’s a Princess, where the hell’s her crown?

Best of all was the elegant author-actress Cornelia Otis-Skinner with her witty and observant monologues, one of them concerning a Mainline matron chastising her errant son in throaty Philadelphian: “Morvin, err those morbles you have in yorr mouth? Do you herr me, Morvin? Spit out those morbles!”

I loved those Sunday Evening Lectures, they always meant sharing a roll of lime-flavored Life-Savers with my Dad. Usually, the auditorium of the high school was for relaxation, fun with perhaps just a smidgin of learning mixed in. I did the leads in school plays and operettas there as a junior and senior. But there was one occasion back in the Dark Ages that was anything but fun. In fact, it was grim and horrid. The time all us third-graders were dragged out of school, herded together and driven through the streets of the town like cattle to the high-school, there to endure a weird and phoney sort of ballet-masque full of sound and fury, signifying absolute Zilch. The low-point was a never to be forgotten episode involving an actor that got up as a squirrel, and, towering above him, a cavernous contralto impersonating an oak-tree --- roots, trunk and branches waving from the lady’s outstretched hands, with the whimsical Mr. Squirrel pleading for even one acorn to appease his hunger. The Tree wasn’t having any, intoning in a tweedily posh upper-class voice these immortal words:

“Nay, nay, Squirrel --- my nuts are still too green!”

Can you imagine how THAT line went down with a rowdy crowd of spotty pre-teenagers?

It became a kind of mantra for the class --- weeks after that ghastly show, you’d still hear it being intoned on the playground at recess:

“Nay, nay, Squirrel --- my nuts are still too green!”

Nowhere as provocative and a lot more nourishing were our regular trips to the local flea-pit, or cinema, enticed, not only by the wonderful feature films of that era, but also by typical Depression perks like Bank Nite, Free Dishes, Double Features, and Prize Drawings.

We were raging when our neighbors, the Niels, won a brand new Ford V-8 on a 25 cent ticket: "Why, dear God, THEM, and not US?" Was there no justice in the universe? G-r-r-r!!!

We made it to the Glen at least once a week, bolting our supper and zooming to town to seek a parking place and get to the box-office before 6:30 when the adult ticket prices changed from 15 cents to a quarter. Kids' tickets stayed at a dime. Everybody read the evening papers in the dimnish light until the show started at seven.

At almost every Saturday matinee (when no particular star was singing on the Saturday Met broadcast, that is), there I'd be, out front in the thick of the action, surrounded by my smart-assed gang, the Carlton Avenue Clinkers, all set for the lights to go down as a signal to turn that peaceful oasis into a bloodied arena, the notorious scene of spitball-sniping and the popping of popcorn-bags, catcalls and hand-to-hand combat in the aisles, accompanied by their elder siblings, and Tootsie-Roll orgies on a scale never seen before or since.

This was the heyday of Little Miss Shirley Temple, but we'd have none of her stand-up hair-bows, her dimples, and her heavy-footed hoofing that made Miss Ruby Keeler look like Anna Pavlova, causing the great Mae West once to snarl, "That's no child --- it's a 50 year-old midget."

And speaking of Mae West, I'd take her any day in exchange for Shirley, her or any one of dozens of Queens of the Silver Screen --- Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow, Claudette Colbert, Margret Sullivan, Marlene Dietrich, Garbo the Great --- and preferably in a costume- or historical-romance that could be re-enacted later at home --- Marie Antoinette, Mary of Scotland, The Prince and the Pauper, The Thief of Baghdad, Queen Christina ("Prime Minister, remove ... my ... crown.")

I had only to summon my cousin Frank and one or two other accomplices --- "Come on over and we'll play King!" And the ensemble would descend, and what was lacking in costumes and props --- beyond the usual mouldering four-piece, tatty bathrobes, scarves, and broken costume jewelry --- could always be made up with resourcefulness and imagination. And the dear Lord knows we had more than our share of both.

***

No matter how garish the improvised pageantry, and no matter how bright the home fires burn, nothing can ever quite replace The Real Thing --- that is, operas, concerts, plays, trips to galleries and museums such as are found in major centers like Chicago. Here are some reminiscences of but one of them, unique and unmatched now, but especially back in the time we've been talking about --- the 1930's --- and I refer to nothing else but the Art Institute of Chicago .

Amazing how great a role the visual arts of painting and sculpture, design, architecture --- played in our whirligig cultural lives, without our thinking about it at all. And much of it centered in that same Art Institute, to which I was first taken at age of about 7.

There for only the most modest of sums you could see almost every epoch in art history beautifully represented, in particular the Collections of French Impressionist, which is second to none in the world. Acquired at the turn of the century, in the year 1900, by astute businessmen at ridiculously low prices and now quite literally priceless, it offered everyone close companionship with all the popular masters of that period and before and since, as well: Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Gaugain, and Manet, one of the strongest and greatest of them all.

On and on: the Post-Impressionists, too, such as George Seurat's large Pointillistic LA GRANDE JATTE --- "Sunday in the Park with George", one of my personal Joy's, as are, of course, the captivating series of Toulouse-Lautrec's, in which everybody, whether at the circus, cabaret or bordello, is having such a marvelous time, and even the pour souls drowning in their own Absinthe have a powerful fascination in a sad, macabre sort of way.

***

Back in the late 1930's, shortly before the Second World War broke out, an exhibition opened at the Art Institute that was like a broadsword cutting across our cosy Impressionistic garden --- Masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, sponsored by the Italian government (Il Duce & Co.?!). In its presence, wars and rumors of war, and all those clouds darkening the horizon, ceased to exist for a long time, forgotten in the wonders of Raphael's MADONNA SEDIA and Botticelli's BIRTH OF VENUS (LA PRIMAVERA) and dozens of works by Titian and Tintoretto, Bellini, Veronese, and Da Vinci, seen close-at-hand and in all their original charismatic glory.

***

Daily lief in the America of the 1930's cannot be adequately chronicled without some mention of the medium that was the one unfailing source of entertainment and information, forever at our fingertips and costing no more than a few cents on the monthly electric bill, and of course I mean radio. Please note that all the citations that follow are from memory and right off the top of my head.

It must be emphasized that what television has been for us since the late 1940's, radio was during the 1930's , a constant companion, a reporter and restorer of life and soul. Only think of the actual and current events which radio brought into the home and into our lives --- presidential campaigns, conventions, elections, and inaugurations - demagogues like Father Coughlin, Huey Long, Hitler, and Mussolini --- the Berlin Olympics 1936 and the Hindenburg disaster --- the abdication speech of King Edward VIII, (and then rising at 3:30 a.m. the following May to hear the Coronation Ceremony of their Majesties broadcast live on short-wave from Westminister Abbey) - President Roosevelt's Fireside Chats and Orsen Welles Invasion of the Martians that Sunday night in 1938 --- And Mme. Ernestine Schumann-Heink singing "Stille Nacht" each Christmas Eve --- the Joe Louis fights and the Rose Bowl Game and every year's World Series of Baseball.

The fathomless flood of great music --- not only the Met Saturday Matinee broadcasts, but also old Walter Damrosch and his Music Appreciation Hours sent to all of us grade school kids gathered in the gymnasium: "Good morning, dear children!" in that genial, gutteral German voice ...the Sunday afternoon concerts of the New York Philharmonic ... the Children's Prayer from HÄNSEL AND GRETEL as theme music for the Ford Sunday Evening Hour and how certain pieces of music even now, more than half a century later, still evoke certain programs: the William Tell Overture and Liszt's Les Preludes for The Lone Ranger, Debussy's Clair de Lune for The Story of Mary Marlin, Wieniqwski's Violin Concerto for Chi-Chi and Papa David and the soap Life Can Be Beautiful --- The Metropolitan Auditions of the Air brought to you by Sherman-Williams Paint: "We Cover the Earth", and the accompanying Overture to Wagner's "Tannhäuser", "Flight of the Bumblebee" for The Green Hornet, Prokofiev's March from The Love for Three Oranges and a virile voice proclaiming "The F.B.I. in Peace and War!" Noel Coward's "Somewhere I'll Find You" for "Mr. Keane, Tracer of Lost Persons.

The Manhattan Serenade played on an According, bringing three times a week the witty and original Easy Aces and Goodman Ace's "Oh, Isn't That Awful?" at the sallies of his spaced-out wife Jane: "Pleased to meet your acquaintance." --- "Take the bitter with the better." ---- "Oh, Merge, don't be so nave!"

Grace Moore's shining soprano and warm presence on the Vick Open House program --- the Sunday Evening "Manhattan Merry-Go-Round", and, at the other end of the taste-scale, Phil Spitalney's All-Girl Orchestra and The Hour of Charm, featuring Evelyn and her Magic Violin, and The Golden Voice of Maxine. (One of the more depressing items of the early war years would be their butch rendering of American Patrol with the pseudo-patriotic text "We must be vigilant, we must be vigilant!" over and over again.

Much more amiable were the network "personalities" who were like old friends: newscasters Gabriel Heater and Edward R. Murrow, Cecil B. DeMille hosting Monday's Lux Radio Theater, John Charles Thomas signing off each time with "Good night, mother..." --- Orson Welles' "Sincerely yours, Orson Welles" in that creamy voice that contrasted with Jimmy Durante's "Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are", said to be a Codes greetings to his departed wife.

And the matchless comedy shows --- Sunday evening's Jack Benny ("Jello again!") and his ongoing feud with the knowing Fred Allen, and his weekly show Town Hall Tonight ("Ipana for the smile of beauty,  Sal Hepatica for the smile of health!") and Portland Hoffa's shrill cry of "Mis--ter Allen!" And Allen's Alley, with the divine Pansy Nussbaum (played by Minerva Pious!), answering to Allen's knock with a long drawn-out "Nu...?", the Yiddish equivalent of Lady Bracknell's "A Handbag???"... Charley McCarthy exchanging insults with W.C. Fields and Mae West as a double-entendre Eve in the Garden of Eden ("Smut!" shrieked Mrs. Grundy) ...Tuesday nights and Fibber MacGee and Molly ("T'aint funny, McGee!"), followed by Bob Hope and Company (Jerry Colona, Skinny Ennis, Frances Langford, and Brenda and Cobina, two hysterical scarecrows masquerading as Café Society Debutantees ...Saturday night's YOUR HIT PARADE, and the lovable Joke-Telling CAN YOU TOP THIS? with veteran Vaudevillians Senator Ford and Lulu McConnell ("What's your first name, Honey?"), and, as doleful as the others were merry, Mr. Anthony and his mega-lacrymose advice for the troubled: "Please help me, Mr. Anthony. My husband beats me up once a week..." "Well, Madame..."

And a cult-favorite to this day with my high school classmates, Class of 1945: Paul Rhymer's gently humorous VIC AND SADE and The Small House Half Way Up in the Next Block (It always made me think of our Carlton Ave.)

Anyone who was a listener back then must have a list of personal choices. And talk about Dependency --- to this day and without my pocket computer, I can't do any arithmetic problems without conjuring up the scent of peeled oranges and peanut-butter sandwiches after school, and the sounds of Jack Armstrong "The All-American Boy" and Tom Mix and his Ralston Straight-Shooter --- all of whom helped get me through my homework every afternoon after school --- Couldn't have done it without 'em!

***

Getting back now to that "First and Last Love", I come by my "Opera-itis" naturally, with both my parents and their parents opera devotees. A family legend relates the journey that Nell's mother once took alone, all the way from Northern Wisconsin down to Chicago to hear Mme. Patti sing, and this was before her marriage there in 1882 to Henry Eyre, Esq. --- While my mother's involvement with opera was, as with everything else spontaneous and emotional, my Dad was much more restrained in his fervor. To Nell, restraint was a foreign concept. What she looked for in opera was tragedy, and the more tragic the better, which explains why her pet opera was TOSCA. Sure, don't all three protagonists die a violent death right there before your very eyes? (Set out the poison and the daggers, boys, and be ready with that firing squad. There'll be Grand Old Opry tonight, Nellie-Ann, as my was sometimes dubbed, had a super-abudance of sterling qualities, but concentration was not of them, not when she had something more interesting to think about, which happened most of the time.

Therefore, she never listened as carefully as one would have liked, with results that were sometimes as surrealistic as they were maddening. Once when we were planning on going to see the incomparable British ballerina Alicia Markova dance her signature role of GISELLE, we spent weeks indoctrinating Nell about Markova's famous ethereal qualities as dancer and actress, how she could leap in the air and seem to hover there for a while before floating down again... Nell seemed to be listening, but, of course, wasn't really, so that, during the actual performance, in the Hamlet-like graveyard scene, with Anton Dolin tossing his ghostly love in the air and letting her waft back to the earth like thistledown or a bit of white chiffon, my mother turned to me suddenly and demanded: "Who IS that girl? She's GOOD!"

Her favorite Met star was someone named Tucker-Warren. Only that she mixed up two different Singers, Leonard Warren and Richard Tucker. "Herbert's taking me to the opera next week --- it's AIDA with Zinka what's-her-name and Tucker-Warren!" Zinka What's-her-name was the Croatian Diva Zinka Milanov. She was the one who, when confronted by bad singers, said: "These comedians come and go. Zinka stays. Enough of this shit. Let's go back to New York." All of these were superstars of the opera scene of the 1930's and 1940's. And once, when the Soprano Feud of the Century was raging, my mother drew my best friend and school mate and later Broadway singer Chuck Rule, the brother of Hollywood star Janice Rule from "The Swimmer" with Burt Lancaster from 1968, aside and inquired in an exasperated tone: "Chuck darling, you're the only one who can tell me --- just who is this Tebaldo?" She was, of course, referring to the famous Italian mezzo soprano Renata Tebaldi, who was fighting with her rival the Greek diva Maria Callas on a regular basis. Maria answered by telling the press that there was no comparison between her and Tebaldi. She was champagne. Tebaldi was Coca-Cola. My experiences working at the Civic Opera had me holding the curtain for Maria Callas at curtain calls. I saw up close how exquisitely she planned them. Showing the audience one ringed finger. Then a hand. Then a foot. Then a leg. Then she would stand there. And slowly bow.

My Dad, on the other hand, was almost as well-acquainted with the opera scene, past and present, as he was with the city's baseball and football teams. This was thanks to the year --- 1916 --- when when he was attending Lewis Institute in downtown Chicago and had the chance to "super" for the whole season at the Auditorium. Years later he was still talking about it. That was the year that a totally unknown Italian coloratura with a double-name a pale, beaky face, made an unpublished debut at a Saturday matinee of RIGOLETTO that knocked the house over in an unprecedented triumph that still operatic history. Some tabloids remarked on her rather big nose with sarcasm: "A little nose job would hurt she, Amelita Galli-Curci." But her voice was brilliant.

From that day on and for many years, Amelita Galli-Curci was the most famous and sought-after singer in America. Big Herb wasn't present present at her debut, but a few nights later when she tore the house apart anew in Naples pride LUCIA DI LAMMERMOR by Bergamo's joy Gaetano Donnizetti, he had the privilege of holding the curtain for her after her mad scene (that inspired Elton John to write his own mad scene for Scar in THE LION KING), even as I did 38 years later after the same scene in the same opera (that's karma for you). But for the fantastic Maria Callas, then at her very greatest. I witnessed the greatest stars up close, brought Swedish tenor Set Svsnholm a pear after his tenor aria (he smiled and said "You're welcome!"), gave Swedish tenor Jussi Björling his beer after his own aria walking off stage. Galli-Curci even obliged with an encore, Patti's old stand-by, the English HOME SWEET HOME, the hit song that was used in two operas, in a voice which my my Dad described as a silver bell, and a manner simple and gracious. My Dad's soft spoken dignity came from his upbringing, but also from having served as a soldier at the end of the First World War in France in 1918. He was the contrast to my mother's wild Irish temper. No wonder he liked Galli-Curci's gracious voice. His dignity also came from heritage and the knowledge that he was the great-grandson of the original settlers from England who left for America in the Mayflower.

Other highlights which my Dad lovingly reported: a rip-roaring no-holds-barred medieval Battle Scene which utterly ruined the otherwise beautiful FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, because it was all so obviously faked, with dozens of bumbling soldiers, arrows that got stuck that got stuck up in the scenery, and cannonball bouncing across the stage like volleyballs.

Then there was ANDREA CHENIER, when he and three or four others all got costumed as 1789 French soldiers, tricornes, swords and muskets, only to have to stand around and wait until Act IV, just to march past a door upstage. Ah, the joys of the life of opera choristers and extras. Much more rewarding, intoxicating, in fact, was Wagner's PARSIFAL with the radiance of The Good Friday Spell and the sexiness of the Flower Girls doing their damnedest to seduce poor dumb Parsifal in the enchanted garden.

Sensational as Galli-Curci was, she wasn't the only notable with whom he rubbed operatic elbows, so to speak. In addition, there were renowned artists: Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, and Margret Matzenhauer, and the "immortal Olive" Fremstad, along with the elegant tenor idol Lucian Muratore and the Italian bassoon Arimondi, who my Dad by his habit of stalking about backstage sonorously vocalizing "Mee-Mee-Mee-BLOOEY-BLOOEY!"

Another family link-up, and one that delighted Nell especially --- both Big Herb and I seem to have made a speciality of Mario-bashing. Mario Cavaradossi is the male protagonist in Puccini's TOSCA condemned to get shot. That is, in TOSCA, as the cruel henchmen of the villain, Baron Scarpia --- exultant cries of "VITTORIA! VITTORIA!". Then, with the soprano screaming bloody murder, hustling the poor goof offstage, pounding him viciously the while. Big Herb did the honors in 1916 with the star tenor Giulio Crimi, just as, starting as a high school super in 1942 working my way up to full-blown chorister four years later, his son and heir here got to lay it on such tenor heroes as Caruso's successor Giovanni Martinelli, Armenian-born Bulgarian Armand Tokatyan and Italian star tenor Ferruccio Tagliavini. It's all in the genes, after all.

Through it all, Nell's maternal pride kept perking away, sometimes with unexpected results. Camille Saint-Saens romantic opera SAMSON AND DELILAH from 1892 being one of our showier items, why not take my sainted Grandfather Charles Lewis Moulton along? He was the man who ten years later was sent to an old people's home and left because, as he said, "Why should I stay? There are only old people there." Age 86 and still active as President of the New Church in Chicago: "And Herbert is playing one of the Philippines, so be sure to bring your binoculars along."

All well and good, that is, until the last Scene Bacchanale, which found the Philippines --- sorry, Phillistines, letting it all, but ALL, hang out to that pounding, frenzied music. And there, in an exact copy of one of DeMille's steamier cinematic orgies, was the honorable Grandson, crawling like a monstrous bejeweled worm among a throbbing morass of his fellow choristers, and indulging in obscene foreplay with his partner, a blondined soprano by the name of Mabel Johnson.

Grandfather nearly fell out of the balcony.

***

The very last concert I took to was one freezing Saturday night early in January 1957 --- the Chicago Symphony at Masonic Temple (the Orchestra Hall being closed for renovation). The soloist was the golden-voiced roly-poly dramatic soprano Eileen Farrell, just then entering her period of vocal grandeur, and I don't think I ever saw Nell enjoying anything more. All of a sudden, Farrell bounced on stage in a rather dowdy black gown and started belting out the first of 8 or 9 of the toughest arias in the whole soprano repertory --- from, among others, ERNANI, a story of Spanish bandits and kings, AIDA, a story about Egyptian tombs, LA FORZA DEL DESTINO, a story of prisoners and priests, CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA, a story about Sicily, LA GIOCONDA, a story about inquisitions and rosaries, and THE CONSUL, a story about freedom fighters running away from the police. The opera LOUISE is about a love affair in Montmartre in the year 1900, including the most heavenly "Depuis de Jour" (Since the day) imaginable. She had it all and she gave it out generously. I doubt if she ever sang more gloriously. And afterwards, Nell's hands were red and swollen from clapping, and I tended to them after we got home, just as she had with me after one of our Grace Moore or Lily Pons outings. But her spirits were higher than they'd been since Big Herb's sudden death the previous July.

A week or so later, Nell herself was bumped into eternity by the same train she usually took to Glen Ellyn to daycare a rich old harriden, Mrs. Venus Evangeline Webb, if you please, she'd been keeping alive with her good-natured nursing. It was an accident, really, and nobody's fault. It was her time to go, though she could have lived much longer. But with Big Herb gone, and myself sealed away in the seminary, there was a hole in her life that no amount of concerts or operas or parties could ever hope to fill.

I still feel my parents around me, when listening to opera or sitting in a darkened theater just as the music is welling up and I feel the unmistakable touch of a familiar hand in mine. Or I suddenly get a hankering for one of Big Herb's lime flavored Life-Savers, and I know that they both are no further away than a thought or a laugh or a good old-fashioned three-way hug-and-a-boo.

- Herbert Eyre Moulton
Vienna, Austria
2000