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THE MOVIE |
 TOOTS SHOR ...garrulous host |
Toots is gone, but now
he lives again on film
of TheColumnists.com
New York City night
life in the 1930s, after the war in the 1940s and throughout
the 1950s and 1960s was a dream to be lived. Kids from Pocatello
and Peoria filled the theaters, the clubs, the bars and the restaurants.
The sports guys filled a joint called Toots Shor’s.
It was run by a Mars-like man who had come north from Philadelphia
to work as a bouncer in the speakeasies of the 30s and stayed
on long enough to run his own celebrated hangouts for three decades.
Yogi Berra and Ernest Hemingway would be at one table and Walter
Cronkite and Frank Gifford at another. Jackie Gleason would be
drunk at the round center room bar and Joe DiMaggio would be
hiding from “civilians” at a back table. Whitey Ford
and Peter Duchin would be exchanging tunes in the back and sportswriters,
including this one of dozens of years ago, would be thrilled
to be in the same room as the huge owner would anoint us as “crumb
bums.” That simply meant you belonged.
Shor introduced Hemingway to Berra and described him as a writer
to which Berra asked, “Yeah, what paper are you with?”
Casey Stengel danced on the floor after a hundred drinks in 1965,
broke his hip in a fall in the rest room and retired from managing
after 55 years in the game. Things like that always happened
around Shor’s.
Shor’s granddaughter, the lovely, bright, ebullient Kristi
Jacobson, has captured all this in her brilliant film on the
grandfather she never knew in the Tribeca Film Festival production
of “Toots,” running now in Manhattan theaters and soon
to be seen on a television station near you.
“I was so lucky that so many people responded so warmly
to the idea,” Jacobson said.
She began the project eight years ago and finished it hours before
its Tribeca Film Festival Premier on April 27.
She said she picked up the phone, called Cronkite and he responded
by asking, “What can I do for you?”
Try getting Walter Cronkite or any of these pals of Toots on
the phone, Andy Rooney, Mike Wallace, Gifford (with or without
Kathie Lee), Yogi, producer David Brown, Duchin, Joe Garagiola,
artist LeRoy Neiman, writers Sid Zion and Gay Talese or reformed
mobster Gianni Russo, who described his life in the underworld
with Frank Costello at the Toots hangouts.
All of these celebrities hung out at Shor’s, enjoyed the
unique sporty ambiance, ate and drank (mostly drank) at the 51
West 51st restaurant and later at the newest one at 52nd street
which never really made it because it was too big and those good
old days were gone. They all told tales. Some were even true.
Jacobson’s film captures Shor incredibly well. It was not
the food, the drink, the celebrities leaning at the bar or even
the chance to see Joe D that drew the crowds. It was the owner
himself. As described in the film, the greatest stage show in
New York was at the Toots Shor restaurant with the owner being
the best gig in town.
There is a very touching moment in this spectacular film. It
takes place at Yankee Stadium when a gifted football player named
Frank Gifford is cut down in one of the game’s most brutal
tackles by Philadelphia’s Chuch Bednarik. Gifford suffered
a severe concussion.
He described the event at the premier party.
“I was out the rest of the year and decided to quit,”
said Gifford. “Then I started thinking of how much I would
miss the game early in 1961. I went to talk about it with Toots
and he reminded me of what I had already accomplished and how
much I owed it to myself to see that I really was finished. I
took his advice, came back and went on for several more years
including a couple of pro bowl seasons.”
Gifford, the sedate third of the original Monday night football
crew with garrulous Howard Cosell and Dandy Don Meredith, the
former QB for the Cowboys, stole the post-premier show with his
loving tales about Toots and the warm remembrances of Giants
glories of the past.
Toots provided an umbrella in his joint for all classes of people
from notorious gangsters to amazing entertainers and sports legends.
Justice Earl Warren once sat at a table next to killer Frank
Costello. Frank Sinatra was drawn to the place with Joe DiMaggio
and Jack Dempsey.
“I don’t care what they did outside of my joint,”
Shor said. “If they were friends of mine in my place they
were friends.”
What Jacobson has captured remarkably and what will make the
film a feature attraction in every city across America was the
excitement of New York from the post-prohibition days to the
dreariness of the Vietnam War.
The moving photography and the still pictures she has included
of the city life, the night adventures and the four star celebs
around Toots make this a wonderful way to spend an evening.
Toots Shor was an incredible New York character, known by all.
He attended the famous 1941 fight between Joe Louis and Billy
Conn and walked down to his seat at Yankee Stadium with Joe DiMaggio
and Ernest Hemingway. All the fans howled at Joe and many yelled
at Toots. They weren’t sure of the other guy. One asked
Toots who Hemingway was. “Oh, that guy,” said Shor,
as he pointed to America’s most famous celebrity writer,
“he’s Joe’s doctor.”
Toots is gone now. Long live granddaughter Kristi’s film
of Toots.
©2006 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted
May 10, 2006.
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