Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [86]
Where do you begin a night-life tour?
With entertainment, like everything else, it is each to his own taste and pocketbook. Nobody could pretend to formulate an all-purpose list. But based on more than a thousand and one nights on the beat, my list may well suggest a preliminary guide. Let me call your attention to some of my favorites.
For anyone who is passing through Chicago for the first time – or for the fifth or the one hundredth – one stop is mandatory: the famous Pump Room of the Ambassador East Hotel.
It is a matter of opinion, of course, but to me this is the most satisfying, the most exquisite room in Chicago, and one of the great rooms of the world. Its crystal chandeliers, deep-blue walls, table-top lights, and white leather booths provide a rich backdrop for the dinners served either spectacularly on a flaming sword or intimately from an individual serving cart by elegant waiters dressed in English Regency costumes. The constant stream of celebrities makes it the most exciting center of night life you will find anywhere.
The atmosphere and that indefinable flair which belongs to the Pump Room alone was nurtured and developed by its founder, the late Ernest Byfield. Ernie, co-owner of the Sherman and Ambassador Hotels with Frank Bering, was one of the most astute, inventive hotelmen who ever lived. Personable and witty, he was also one of the most popular.
As his many friends remember, Byfield had a prankish streak in his nature. He might send you a luncheon invitation by carrier pigeon. Once he staged a breakfast-in-bed party for a celebrity. Because of his wit, he was sought as a guest columnist by newspapermen in various cities. One time, when Robert Benchley and playwright S. N. Behrman were guests at one of his hotels, he not only refused to let them pay for their meals, he gave orders that no bill was to be presented when they checked out, and each received a prime beefsteak and a bottle of whisky as farewell presents.
“You don’t suppose that cheap sonuvabitch will forget to pay our cab fare to the station, do you?” asked Benchley with a wink as they left.
Byfield didn’t forget. Nor did he let them depart by taxi. He sent them off in style – in the Ambassador East station wagon. He was that type of meticulous, convivial host.
And he was well aware of the drawing power of his celebrity diners, as well as the showmanship of serving his exotic cuisine on flaming swords.
“The customers love it,” he would say. “And it doesn’t hurt the food much!”
Nothing in the Pump Room is left to chance, down to such points as conversation-amplifying acoustics, which my wife, Essee, and others say makes every night seem like New Year’s Eve. The grin of orchestra leader David LeWinter, who is kind enough to send over a cigar on a tray every time I visit, and the warm welcome invariably extended by Wally Babych, successor to long-time manager Phil Boddy, add to the atmosphere of cordiality. LeWinter, incidentally, originally was hired for six months. He is now in his sixteenth year as the Pump Room maestro.
All this made the Pump Room a Chicago institution during the Byfield-Bering reign, which was followed with continued success by Pat Ploy, a protégé of Byfield’s, and James A. (“Jimmy”) Hart, one of the nation’s best-known hotelmen. But with the death of Hart and departure of Hoy, the once-elegant Ambassadors went into a decline. The new ownership was so confused that the quip around town was, “Who owns the hotels today?” Lack of authority stemming from absentee ownership took its toll, as did a policy of cutting expenses and personnel to the bone, hardly the way to operate a luxurious hostelry.
The present owner of the Ambassadors, Louis H. Silver, currently is in the process of restoring the previous stature. He is a connoisseur of quality and a veteran hotelman. Silver is an outstanding rare-book collector and has one of the five finest private book collections