AS BOB HOPE MIGHT HAVE
SAID TO MARILYN MONROE:
"THANKS FOR THE MAMMARIES"
By Larry Eisenberg
Phil Spitalny would have had a few
tough moments handling the all-girl combo that faced me in September 1944--the
first time I ever walked into the Vanguard office. Females of all sizes, shapes
and fashions sat and milled around a long table, spouting wit, political rants
and dirty words in combinations I hadn’t heard
before.
Here and there, vaguely visible, was a young, quiet
boy—not unlike me: I was 17. All the MEN were off fighting World War II. So,
ensconced in the basement of Boylan Hall, we had
elegant editor-in-chief Thelma Rosenberg, who always seemed to be dressed as a
fashion runway commentator (She and I never exchanged one word because I didn’t
have a clue as to what to say to her), and managing editor Shirley Sirota. I first heard the latter’s name on my second day,
when an older staffer named Larry Jaeger poked his head into the room and
demanded, “Where’s Shirley Sirota? “ in the tone of
Balboa landing in California and shouting, “Where’s the friggin’
ocean?” Sirota turned out to be a good person--though
my first impression of her was an angry face and
rant at some staff member’s screwup. I may have
exchanged a few words with her after that, though only in fearful response to a
question.
Another memory: An English class assignment was to write a
story appropriate for a newspaper. After collecting our papers, the teacher
announced that a Vanguard editor, “Miss Vicki Werosub,”
would judge our work. The door opened and (MUSIC UP: “There she is….”)
Vicki, in suit, high heels and hat (with veil) strolled in, perched on the edge
of the teacher’s desk, crossed her legs, lit a cigarette, grabbed a pencil and
forcefully made a paragraph sign at the beginning of the first story. I think I
blacked out.
Yet, despite my initial fears, I survived—quietly, at first.
Being a cub was an honor. I mean, after four miserable years
in Brooklyn Tech, I was free, my name was on a masthead, I
was a contendah. And, as weeks went by, I absorbed many of the proclamations I
overheard--for instance, from the lips of Edie Becker: "They eat lotsa curries in India." (I tried that on
a blind date and she said, "So what?") Eventually, I
blended into this oddball family, almost matching the wiseassiness
of anyone in the room.
Though my memories of that first semester are hazy—give
me a break, it’s more than 61 years--what sticks is that much of the time Vanguardites were screaming. As I learned early, it was
because nearly everyone was talking at the same time, so it wasn’t easy to be
heard.
At the beginning of 1945, having finished one BC
semester, I registered for a second, but decided, a few days later, that I
might as well enlist in the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army. So I
took a leave. On April 11,
1945, the day before I was to head for boot camp, I paid a final
visit to the Vanguard office--the place, I didn't immediately realize, that I
would miss most. The only other person in the room was Ethel Spevack and, while we were talking, music drifted in from
the lounge across the hall. After listening for a few seconds, I said, "What a sad song."
Ethel stared incredulously at me and replied,
"That's Don't Fence Me In!"
************************************************************************
When I
returned, in September 1946, the Vanguard office was in room 2154, on the
second floor of Boylan Hall, with a dramatic change.
WW II was over and the warriors were back—and in charge--including such biggies
(in alphabetical order) as: George Auerbach, Harry
Baron, Norm Erdos, Sid Frigand,
Ralph Gasarch, Irv Goldaber, Irv Goodman, Josh Greenfeld, Bert Hochman, Marvin Karpatkin, Lenny Kolleeny, Jack Panes. Most were funny, all were opinionated, and a few
behaved as though they were on the Supreme Court.
The guys got most of the important jobs, though I don’t
remember any females acting like second-class
citizens. They just yelled louder. Among them, over the years--with occasional
nicknames: Gloria Barach, Rita Boskin,
Geri Cohen, Edie Garson, Joan Genell, Esther Gold,
Fanny Kaiser, Jewel Kurtz, Ann Lane, Norma Lieberman, Sandy Marks (“Is Good In
Parks”), Shelly Mehlman, Dolly Newfield, Trudy Novina, Irene Pachanik, June
(“Cherry”) Perry, Hilda Polak, Edith (“Pebble”) Seidlitz, Pearl Shaine, Goody
Solomon, Sheila Solomon, Bea Stahl (“Bestial”) and Martha Wechsler.
These were matched along the way by such stalwarts as
Charlie Binder, Gene Bluestein, Herb Dorfman, Norm
Gelb, Ray Goldberg, Stan Isaacs, Joel Isaacson, Mike Kandel,
Artie Lack, Jack Leavitt, Mike Levitas, Phil Rosler, Artieschatz (spoken as
one word, swiftly), Bill Taylor and Jack Zanger. Plus one Ordover of each sex.
(If I’ve left your name out: [a] we never met or [b] I don’t remember you.
So sue me, shoot bullets through me).
For
the remainder of my stay at Brooklyn
College, I spent a lot of
time in the office, where wisecracks, political rampages and dirty words
mingled with clouds of cigarette smoke, card
playing and, on the nights we stayed late to put the paper to bed, a fair
amount of alcohol consumption. One night, after finishing a bottle of rye
or whatever, I walked down the hall to Gideonse’s
door and deposited the bottle outside, with a note: “Leave one quart, two
pints.”
I’ve heard that sexual activity also took place in the office, but
I neither saw nor participated. More’s the pity, yea
and forsooth, as Professor Grebanier might have said.
What
follows is a random collection of thoughts and events:
DISSING (Long before we knew the word) TEACHERS
AND SUBJECTS:
The aforementioned Bernard Grebanier’s middle
initials were “D.N.” Somebody decided that they stood for “Derriere
Negotiator.” Though he was a brilliant teacher of Shakespeare--and creative
writing--he regularly tended to drift away from the subject being studied
with long, personal observations. One day,
after smoking at least four cigarettes, he concluded a typical
philosophical rant with, “Well, I must confess that my sex is the weaker
one.” The immortal Sid Frigand called out, “Which one
is that?”
Harry Slochower was a constant,
and his book, “No Voice Is Wholly Lost” was retitled, ”No Horse Is Lowly Voiced”…. and a few others. We also
regularly mimicked his serious, symbolic, mystical references to events and
characters in “The Magic Mountain” –Did troubled Hans Castorp
really love Clavdia (Cough-cough) Chauchat?
Did Clavdia have feelings for Settembrini
(“Whose rod was “teeny”)? When we got to “Remembrance of
Things Past,” Geri Cohen and I, after reading (scanning?) “Swann’s
Way” and “Guermantes
Way,” decided: There’s such a thing as a swan--but
what kind of animal is a Guermante?
One semester, an attractive, sexily dressed philosophy
teacher named Thelma Lavine--who spoke like a young
Mae West--joined the faculty and those of us who rushed to take her class immediately
nicknamed her “Too-Too Lavine.”
Sudden memory:
On the first day of a fall semester, Hilda Polak
greeted Bea Stahl, with, “You should see Professor (Name Withheld).
He must have lost 50 pounds over the summer.”
Bea Stahl: “He should have lost 100 and died.”
Some teachers didn’t need to be caricatured: Robert
Fitzhugh (the last name says it all) taught a course in humorous literature,
during which he frequently asked “What makes ya laff?” (For an annual Vanguard party, Norma Lieberman,
Ralph Gasarch and I wrote a song: ”Fitzhugh
screw’s handy/ Fitzhugh screw’s dandy/ Oh, oh, oh what a screw/ If you need screwin’/ Says Frederick Ewen/
Fitzhugh’s the screw/ For you to do your screwin.’")
Then there was Julius Portnoy,
a cartoon character much before his
time.
And I can’t leave out El Presidente
Harry D. Giddyap (the kindest of many
nicknames).
POLITICAL WARFARE: Political
concerns—collegiate and international-- were an important part of our lives,
and most of us supported a variety of causes, though some staffers seemed
incapable of balancing their oratory with Vanguard’s characteristic wit and
humor. Urgency, (self-) importance and verbosity took over with such force as
to make the less voluble among us—me, for instance--want to crawl into a hole
and puke. One day, Shelly Mehlman, in the tone of a
governor explaining why my death sentence wasn’t being commuted, proclaimed,
“Well, you’re apolitical.”
The majority of staffers were liberal (during the 1948
Presidential campaign, somebody shouted, “I’d give my tallis
for Henry Wallace!”), but a few hovered around conservatism, causing a certain
amount of disagreement, AKA, fighting and cursing:At
one staff meeting, Hilda Polak, attacking
Editor-in-Chief Irv Goldaber
over a conservative stance he had taken, yelled so loudly that it seemed the
paint was peeling off the walls—and she continued her rant after he left the
room—assuming, I guess, that he’d still hear her out in the hall. But
this was nothing compared to each semester’s elections for the executive board,
with speeches and pressures and name-calling. Memory :
Marvin Karpatkin—acting as though the future of
the world depended on it—making me swear that I would vote for Rhoda Hendrick.
THE DIGNIFIED EXECUTIVES: The executive board
met once a week in an empty classroom—assigned by the administration---to
discuss the following week’s issue. One day in 1948, Norma Lieberman (Managing
Editor), Karpatkin (Associate Managing Editor), Ralph
Gasarch (News Editor) and I (Features Editor)
approached the room assigned to us. Norma and Marvin were arguing about
something and Marvin shouted, “Don’t give me that…SHIT!” as he flung open the classroom door. A teacher and a roomful
of students faced us. From their viewpoint, a wild-eyed maniac had opened the
door and screamed, “SHIT!” But by the time they could do anything about it, we
had scurried, like roaches, into hiding. When the coast was clear and we found
another classroom, Marvin opened the door slowly, made sure the room was empty,
then shouted, “SHIT!…Okay, it’s safe.”
A MAN’S A MAN FOR ALL THAT-Using Robert Burns as
a starting point, the aforementioned Karpatkin wrote a very liberal editorial, which got him
into piles of trouble with the administration. Editor-in-chief Norm Erdos had to face a tribunal of HDG’s
puppets, Dean Maroney and somebody named Glicksberg, who was probably Vanguard’s faculty advisor.
This inspired a set of lyrics (written by Ralph Gasarch?) to be sung to the tune of “Let My People Go”:
When Erdos was in Glicksberg’s hands
Let Karpatkin Go.
Because he wrote “A Man’s a Man”
Maroney called him “shmo.”
MOTHERS &FATHERS: Every new cub was assigned
a “mother” or “father” to make the early days easier. My mother was Lucille Valenti, who did some part-time work for Grebanier (Somebody nicknamed her “B.O. Plenty” Valenti). My daughters, over the years, included
Helen Goldberg and Sandy Sadownick.
VANGUARD GROUPIE: A girl named Sadonya Antebi turned up one day,
introducing herself to staffers and displaying her socks, on which she had
embroidered, “G.E.M.” (“Gene’s Estranged Mistress”; she had dated Gene Levitt). Although she was never a Vanguardite,
for years afterward, she hung out in the office and attended our parties,
creating fun and mayhem. At some point she left for West
Africa, though I don’t remember why. But she was never
forgotten: Soon after Sandy Sadownick joined the
staff, Geri Cohen and I decided that it would be really neat if Sandy had a brother who
married Sadonya. Then she’d become Sadonya Sadownick (Another
pairing: If Joan Genell had a brother who married
Geri, she’d be Giselle Genell).
SEE WHAT THE
BOYS IN THE BACK ROOM WANT-Uta Gorki, a glamorous émigré from some European country,
joined the staff (in 1948?), overwhelming some of us with her continental wit
and a soupcon of superiority about (puff-puff) our American naivete. Occasionally she sang a song, morphing into
Vanguard’s Marlene Dietrich.
DANGLING PART-A-SOMETHING -A story written by
Jewel Kurtz about the B.C. library being christened LaGuardia Hall,
stated, “Now all the buildings in Brooklyn
College are named after
men prominent when they were erected.”
BUYING AD SPACE: A young, newly appointed
teacher dropped into the office one evening, saying he wanted to buy an ad in
the following week’s issue. Somebody asked him what he had in mind and he said,
“I’ve got an inch.” Can you imagine the avalanche of comments in Wiseasstown?
MY SHOCKING REVELATION: In the May 7, 1948 issue
I wrote a story headlined: BOY REPORTER FLUSHES ON ENTRY TO MEN INSTRUCTORS’
SANCTUARY, in which, after months of wondering what was in a room mysteriously
labeled, “Men Instructors,” I sneaked in, discovering that the place was “a plain,
stinkin’ old washroom,” adding that it might start a
BC trend for unlimited specific washrooms (“Ph.D’s”…”Tutors”…”Instructors
In 19th Century Prose...”). Ultimately, I wrote, the college might have
no more classrooms, only washrooms. The story caused a small furor, with one
staff member proclaiming importantly that it was “in bad taste.” Frigand insisted that it wasn’t. Another person commented
that if Shakespeare had read it he would have named his play: “Toilet and
Cressida.”
THE LITTLE DUTCH GIRLS: One summer, Norma
Lieberman and Sheila Solomon went to Europe together and sent a postcard from Amsterdam, featuring them
in Dutch girl outfits. I still have the picture somewhere.
ACH
DU….WHAT? Tall, red-haired Honey Silverman announced one day,
with a touch of triumph, that the father of her new boyfriend, Gerhard, had
been a German storm trooper. Liebe uber alles, I
guess.
THE WORLD WAS
ONLY A PHONE CALL AWAY: The office had a public telephone and, at the
beginning of one summer, the front of the phone’s coin box disappeared, meaning
that whatever coins were inserted would fall out, so those who hung around
during July and August called other states, countries and planets.
MY
POST-GRADUATE VISIT: One day, in September 1949 (I had graduated in June),
I told a Vanguard pal that I would drop by the office that evening. When I
opened the door, facing me was a roomful of “dead” bodies, slumped on tables,
chairs, lying on the floor, and, the piece du crazistance—Jerry Lovesky—tongue
out, eyes closed, hanging from a hook on the wall. I don’t know how this game
started, but it continued until the end of Vanguard.
THE END OF VANGUARD? COME ON, VANGUARD
NEVER ENDS.
TO BE REALISTIC: Like any large, long-term organization, Vanguard had
its share of self-important/ stupid/ arrogant/ pseudo-intellectual/ bullshitters (As my beloved Norma once said about another
staffer: “Not only is she fantastically ugly, but she’s a horrible
person”). Naming names is pointless, because many have gone to the Big
Vanguard Down Below and survivors won’t recognize
themselves, anyway.
Yet, as Sidney Skolsky used
to say: “But don’t get me wrong…..”
I treasure memories of the majority of my brilliant, funny, endearing associates,
some of whom I happily see pretty often.
P.S. Check out my Web site at http://www.lawrenceeisenberg.com
