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By Root 591 0

barely sampled. He isn't much of a drinker, but he never could resist a bargain. The dining room has Syrian furniture inlaid with motherofpearl and ivory, and on a terrace in front of the living room there is a fountain from the Knickerbocker lobby. Despite these and other attractions of his apartment, Mr. J.J., when he's at home in the winter, spends most of his time in the bathroom, reading in an armchair which he has installed there. This is because the bathroom is the only comfortably warm room in the place. The heat in the Sardi Building, above the first floor, is turned off at seven o'clock in the evening and all day on Sunday. Since it is impossible to warm the apartment on the top floor without heating the whole building, Mr. J.J. retires to the bathroom, which he has fitted up with an elaborate battery of electric heaters. He does all his playreading there. When he occasionally goes out, it is usually to Lindy's for a cup of coffee at about midnight. He also likes to sit through double features at fourthrun movie houses. Mr. J.J. prefers to lunch in his apartment, but when he has to talk business with someone at noon, he eats with the person at Sardi's, on the first floor of his residence. Vincent Sardi, the proprietor, used to be a captain of waiters at the Little Club, a night place that the Shuberts owned many years ago. He is a good tenant now, and the Shuberts always believe in patronizing people who do business with them.

Mr. Lee almost invariably lunches at Sardi's. Actors who want him to notice them eat there too. Lee often convinces people who work for him that they also should live in the Century Apartments, where he lives and in which the brothers have an interest. Hellz a Poppin had hardly become a hit when Mr. Lee induced Chic Johnson, one of its stars, to take an apartment in the Century. Both the Messrs. Shubert like to say that they “never learned to play—never had time,” but Mr. Lee at least gets about a good deal. He says he does so to maintain contacts. “Maybe I would like to play,” he says plaintively, “but there is no one around I care to play with.”

Mr. Lee's office in the Shubert Theatre Building is in a turret and therefore circular—not more than twelve feet in diameter. Into it is squeezed the desk he has used ever since he came to New York, a chair, a sofa, a gilt statue of a nymph and faun, and an autographed photograph of Colonel Lindbergh. A short passageway leads from Mr. Lee's office to that of his secretary, Jack Morris, which in turn opens into the waiting room, a bleak place with Frenchgray furniture grouped around a snake plant, and two unchanging, disregarded signs—“No Smoking” and “No Casting until August.” The gray chairs usually are occupied by a queue of petitioners waiting to see Mr. Lee. It is a point of pride with him that he never refuses to see anybody who is willing to wait a few hours. The passageway between Mr. Lee's office and his secretary's has an extra door leading directly into the waiting room, but only the experienced understand this door's significance. When Mr. Lee is ready to grant an audience, he pops out at the Morris end of the passageway and beckons to the man who has advanced to the head of the queue. This hopeful comes forward, thinking that Mr. Lee is going to conduct him into his private office. Mr. Lee takes him by the arm, leads him into the passageway, says, “I'm sorry, I can't do anything now,” and steers him out through the extra door and into the waiting room again. This maneuver is known in the trade as the Shubert brushoff.

Nothing confuses Mr. Lee more than to be caught without anything to do. “It just happens you catch me at a time when everything is very quiet,” he will apologize, scratching his head energetically with a paper cutter. When his embarrassment becomes extreme, he scratches himself under the armpits and behind the ears. “You should have seen it yesterday. I didn't have a minute to myself.” On summer afternoons when there are only a few persons waiting to see him, he has been known to sneak out of his office, go downstairs