|
OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
 |
 ART D'LUGOFF ...at his Village Gate |
A Tribute to Art D’Lugoff--
Don’t Forget the Apostrophe
of TheColumnists.com
They held a memorial for Art D'Lugoff, the show business entrepreneur, last month. Dlugoff died on Nov. 4 at 85.
Some of the entertainers who performed at D’Lugoff’s famed night club, The Village Gate, showed up to extol a quixotic and delightful man who was a large presence on the Greenwich Village entertainment scene for more than 30 years.
Dick Gregory, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Geoffrey Holder, Peter (“Puff the Magic Dragon”) Yarrow and musician David Amram were among those who spoke about D’Lugoff. Gregory said, “The fact that he touched this planet made this planet a better place.”
My thoughts went back to the time when he was Art Dlugoff--without the apostrophe. We were both copy boys at the forgotten-by-most Daily Compass. This was the left-wing newspaper, the offshoot of PM and The New York Star that lasted only two years, having no chance to make it in the days of Joe McCarthyism.
Art was a demon clipper. He clipped newspapers,
magazines, the back of cereal boxes if he saw something that
would underscore the evils of the political establishment. If
he heard some of the reporters and editors talking about a possible
story, he would say,
“I’ve got a piece on that you ought to see.”
I recall more than a few occasions when Art would sidle over to I.F. Stone, the esteemed columnist, and try to pitch a column idea.
He had had served with the Army Air Force in World War II and earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and economics from New York U. In his time he had worked as an encyclopedia salesman, a waiter in the Catskills, a tree surgeon and a union organizer.
After the Compass folded, he worked for a time as a taxi driver in Los Angeles. He was celebrated by his friends for having picked up a blonde actress in his cab and discussed actors’ union problems with her. It was Marilyn Monroe.
Eventually, he and his brother Burt, another copy boy mate, edged into show business by putting on concerts. They sold out with Pete Seeger at The Circle in the Square. I best recall their dodge of promoting an Israeli cabaret singer. They would stand outside Carnegie Hall and shout to departing concert goers, “Come to Town Hall now and hear the sexy lyrics of the Israeli singer.” When he put on classical guitarist Carlos Montoya, we called him, “The poor man’s Sol Hurok.”
In a touch of genius Art gave himself show-business cache by adding an apostrophe to his name. He was now Art D(apostrophe)Lugoff-Art D’Lugoff. A beard and goatee went with the apostrophe.
Brother Burt, who became a medical doctor and was an anchor to his mercurial brother through the years, also assumed the apostrophe. (Burt financed his medical career off the profits of the song, “Cindy,” that he wrote, but that’s another story).
Eventually, they hit on opening the night club that became The Village Gate because of the large gate at the side entrance of the building that was a flop house hotel, the Greenwich, at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Street.
They invited my wife and me to the space in the basement that had been a laundry. We looked at the white tile walls and the many pillars and couldn’t conceive how this could be turned into a night club. We wondered if D’Lugoff the Intrepid had come up with a cockamamie idea beyond his normal grandiosity.
Pillars and all, they made it. The Gate
became a showplace for comedians, actors and musicians after
it opened in 1958. Woody Allen played there early in his career.
Dick Gregory, Stiller and Meara, Richard Pryor, Mort Sahl, Chevy
Chase and John Belushi. Dustin Hoffman was fired as a waiter
for being so rapt up in performances he neglected his customers.
Not that service was a strong point at the Gate. But they soon
enough got rid of the pillars that blocked the view of the stage.
The Gate became a jazz showplace. John Coltrane, Miles Davis,
Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and black-listed harmonica virtuoso
Larry Adler. B.B. King, Arethra Franklin, Odetta, Mongo Santa
Maria and Jimi Hendrix. Alan Arkin played with a folk group named
“The Tarriers,” and was a constant scold asking for
more money. .
D’Lugoff told The New York Times, “Once we had Nina Simone, Dick Gregory and Larry Adler all on the same bill and had so much trouble deciding who would open that I went across the street and hired a guitarist.”
The Gate became an Off-Broadway showplace. It presented the terrific black musical, “One Mo’ Time,” “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well in Paris,” and “MacBird,” the satire of Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War.
Kenneth Tynan’s nude musical “Let My People Come”, had a long run. We delighted in taking some of our suburban friends to the show which would end with the nude actors lining up to shake hands with the departing audience. “I just didn’t know where to look,” said a few of our female friends.
Financial difficulties of the landlord forced the Gate to close in 1994. It had a brief reprise on West. 52nd Street and the name was used by a restaurant near Columbia University. Art flitted about with other enterprises, and there is hope that his dream of a jazz/folk music museum in the Village will some day be realized.
D’Lugoff was born in Brooklyn Aug. 2, 1924. He and his wife, Avital Achai, had four children. His oldest child and only son, Raphael, a musician, captured the sense of his father-“more appetite than passion”--when he led off the memorial at the former Gate, now known as (le) poisson rouge. (The name, “Village Gate,” is still on one of the marquees.)
As Rafi D’Lugoff put it, “Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ John Lennon said, ‘Life is what happens when you are doing something else,’ Woody Allen said, ‘Ninety per cent of life is showing up.’
“And Art D’Lugoff said, ‘Eat the pickled herring. It’s out of this world.’ ”
©2009 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo is courtesy of The New York Daily News. This column first posted Dec. 21, 2009.
TO ACCESS STAN ISAACS' ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ISAACS
ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Stan Isaacs. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Stan's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|