A WRECKING JOB.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 71, 25 March 1940, Page 5

A WRECKING JOB.

I ELEPHANT SMELLS. ! r HIPPODROME MEMORIES. TOO BIG FOR PEAHUT SHOWS. (By CHARLES ESTCOURT.) NEW YORK. The job of wrecking the Hippodrome is pretty well finished, and the old place has gone hack where it came from. It is now just a hole in the ground. As a local fellow who was around when it was around, I suppose I should start crying at this point. But I can't. All I can do is sit here and think of the hole in the ground on Sixth Avenue between Forty-third and Forty-fourth Streets and smell elephants. Everybody grew up with knowledge of the Hippodrome somewhere in his mind. It was for many years the biggest theatre in the country, and. up to its last show, there still was only one bigger. The Hipp was so big and had so many passageways and cellars and sub-cellars and descending tiers of dressing rooms that the wreckers went to work with a glint in their eyes. Not only was many a fortune sunk in the place, but there had been stories of beautiful chorus girls who got lost down there and were never heard from again. So, oh boy! However, the wreckers didn't find anything except some old playbills and buttons and Leads. The renin ins of a costume made of tarnished "gold' cloth I was found wedded under a |»cce ol 'flooriiv. The wreckers stood aroumi ifor a while looking at it pensively until jthe Im.-s wanted to know what they thought he wa> paying them lor That (was the only tra.e found of all the 'many fortunes sunk there. The wrecker who told me this is a middle-aged man. who said his name was Pete. He said he tore down the famous Wendel mansion on Fifth Avenue and that nobody found anything in titat either. This wu the

house that occupied half a block, and. at the end. was occupied by two old spinster sisters who used their milliondollar yard as a place to exercise their dog. "Wreckers is always the last to be in a place," said Pete. "And you may he sure that all those who have been before them have found whatever there is to find." Once, however, wreckers found a large assortment of pre revolutionary war rum in airtight jugs. When they broke the rum open and poured themselves a drink they almost went up in smoke, the stuff tasted so bad. Elephants Never Forgotten. Showmen around town will tell you ■ that the trouble with the Hipp was i that it smelted of elephants from the start. Nobody is sure whether it U , true that elephants never forget, bu'. showmen arc sure that the customer- ■* never forget elephants. There lias been many a brisk disrtj*- » sion these afternoons while the old red bricks were tumbling down as to I whether that smell was of e!c;>Jiant» or " wrestlers or prize-fighters or those Jaialai fellows, or maybe oj»era sinjrers. c Each school of thought had its loyal, s students, but they finally agreed it was, . elephants all right. ! 0 Then thev got to arguing as to whose e elephants "it was. When somebody d mentioned Jock Whitney's elephants j was looked at with scorn. Tbe other f students were oM-limers. and they could' t remember elephants of thirty and, t thirtv five years ago. Jock WhitneyV p elephants were only four years gone, j f Some showmen said elephants had, ,; nothing to do with what happened to, i the Hipp, and age had nothing to do; i with it. "It was juit t<»o big to be 11 tilled with peanut shows." they said. I , Thev •-tartcd talking about one of the theatres John D. Rockefeller owns, the 'one he can't fill. There was a showman \' prei-ent who -aid he knew all about that. , He said he had the job of filling it when ■ it was fir-t r»|>ened as a cathedral de cinema. '"They save me 8000 dollar* a week to advertise the place." he said. .•'and there was one week I think we j took in 480 dollars. It was the same I kind of thing that killed the Hipp— 1 ! |>eanut shows." Operatic Jack Johnson, i I remember some mighty fine show* - in the Hipp, snd the biggest and be«t s performing elephants, wrestlers and

Jopcra singers that I ever saw anywhere. 1 But the nicest thing that ever happened • to me in the place happened at a perr forma nee of **Aida" a few years ago. Jack Johnson, the former hearr- [• weight champion, was due a red* ■ in the production, and I \Bt around i backstage to ask him how he lelt about t his new career as an opera star. I fought iiny way up some stairs and past a mob c lof extras hollering to be paid, and there. r'among the nr>]H-s and sandbags and c'sagging, peeling scenery, saw Johnson »—ittjng on a trunk. ; - He was a magnificent spectacle, * huge, 'tawny, rippling-muscled man with big | white and gold teeth. He was wealing a I leopard skin and a beret and waiting for "jhis chance to holler to be paid. I asked *'-\vhat he thoug'hi of his chances a* an * opera star, and he said, sensibly enough, 'that he hadn't had mHrh time or inclination to think about it yet. 'Just *! worrying sl«'Ut pork chops," he said. 1 This didn't seem quite like a story i and 1 went out front to watch the opera. The j.l'-t railed for Johnson /(without a beret) to 1* led struggling Irf-fore the enij«eror by a flock of supers. Thcv led him <>n a]] right, but, when ! iJjc "big man surted struggling, they feU 'away from him like flies. Some of them" J got "so scared, they ran right off tha ..stage. It made rather a funny story and it makes a nice memory now.—XJLX-A.