COURTLY HOST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 3, 4 January 1941, Page 5

COURTLY HOST.

AND WEATHER RISKS.

i TALK AND CIGAR SMOKE. NEW YORK. Frank Case, the author and hotel proprietor, its a graceful man, not mannered, but full of manners and with an air of American nobility, and the elegant time *e had with him went like this: Half an hour after noon Mr. Case, who travels at a lope, hurried to the sidewalk to see whether it was raining. His interest in the subject was professional. Rain in the neighbourhood of 12.30 costs him about 100 dollare. (People eat lunch at their desks instead of at the Algonquin). On this day the sky was thickly overeast and very close to raining—in fact, only about one dollar 35 cents away from it. Mr. Case returned at a lope, •showing only a slight amount of pain around the eyes, and settled to lunch at a table adjoining the entrance to his main diningroom. Here he could sense the appetites of incoming guests. A thick plush rope, brass-tipped, stretched ■aoross the entrance ending at a point near Mr. Case's right ear. The beet use this rope was «*er put to "was though* up by Robert Benchley. Mr. Benchley was standing by th< Tope waiting for someone when a nice prim old lady, wanting to leave ant finding the. attendant missing unhookec it herself. She was too prim, or, per haps, too nice simply to throw the rop< on the floor. She puzzled timidly for i moment over what to do with tie rope saw Mr. Benchley, and held it out in i tentative way, thinking' if he were th< attendant he would take it. Mr. Bench ley took it. As a matter of fact b folded the rope, pressed it against hi and cried: "Ah!" and added: "Jus what I've wanted all my life!" The prim old lady xrae so startled sh ran 30 feet before throwing a. frightene look ov«r her shoulder. - - - ,

Every fifteen or twenty seconds during lunch, Mr. Case rose to "hi* feet to say, "Hello" or "Good-bye" to a friend; or, if the friend seemed so disposed, to'chat or settle a coat collar around a neck, orj brush face powder off a coat lapel or point out lipstick on a cheek. (Actresses lunch at the Algonquin and they kius instead of shaking hands). [ Well, the man who put. this habit of Mr. Case's to best use was Marc Connelly, the producer and playwright. Mr. Case was picking stray threads of lint off Mr. Connelly's blue serge suit when Mr. Connelly said, "I'm going to get a suit of lint to sec if it will pick up serge," leaving Mr. Case slightly paralysed to this day. Lost Amateur Standing. Finally the guests had folded their napkins and withdrawn and only the jhost, his cigars and his courtlinesrs remained. We said bluntly that he wa<s a man who had collected and repeated and treasured and invented bon mots for more than thirty years, and was there any of the old Mazuma in one of them or was he still an amateur? So he confessed he had lost hie amateur standing or, at least, pinked it. Seems a well-known Hollywood author ran up a 900 dollar bill, mostly longdistance telephone calls, said to send the bill on to him in Hollywood, and- then refused to pay it. Letters failed. Collectors failed. Finally, lawyers failed., |lt would have been too costly to bringj suit. ! Then one of the well-known dead- [ beat's friends turned up—the late John ' V. A. Weaver, in fact—and said, what's this about So-and-So running out on a 900 dollar bill? Mr. Case said it was, ' true, alas, and thece wasn't a single ; thing he could do about it except "charge I it to profit and louse." Profit and louse! Mr. Weaver roared " with delight. He promptly took the pun 3 over to "21," a rival chowder club for 1 Hollywoods, and all "21" roared with '■' delight. The pun went out on the even--1 ing plane for Hollywood. By afternoon B on the next day, all Hollywood was " roaring with delight, and by morning of e the day after the 900 dollars had been 6 wired to Mr. Case with a piteous plea to * call the joke off. Although Mr. Case is a celebrity hime self now, he makes a good part of his d living off celebrities. They come to his hotel, and non-celebrities come to look

at them. The celebrity is quite a buisi-|/ ness, proposition, all tokl, ai.rf, in putting " him to his uses, the modern world has improved on the packers and their pigs. I The packers claimed to use everything labout the pig except his squeal. Well, even the celebrity's squeal is used. Mr. Ca#e was a close friend of the late Douglas Fairbanks. He tells of a man who was hired by Mr. Fairbanks— simply to travel around with him and break up conversations that threatened! to become too serious or too involved, i or too dull, or too whatever. Mr. Fairbanks found this necessary because wherever he went the conversations were -■ numerous. « Lillian Day, another author, told ue ; more along the same lines. She has made a serious study of the nation's autograph hunters, and wrote a noveli about them —"The Youngest Profession."! Judy Garland is to make a movie of it for Metro-Gokhvyn-Mayer. ] Miss Day found only one autograph ; hunter who made a real profit out of i his hobby—a lad named Isadore Friedman. * Young Mr. Friedman had battled his way to* the side of Joan Crawford at a time when the Press was surrounding her, wanting to know whether ehe would really marry Franchot To.ne. (Y'es, we know they were divorce' , , years ago, • Ibut this happened then.) Miss Crawford was embarrassed and did not know what to answer. "Tell

them," young , Mr. Friedman, a messenger boy at the time, '"Tell them, "time will tell.'" "Time ~"wiil tell," said Miss Crawford jubilantly, and sent Mr. Friedman a wrist watch—you know, on account of jtime —and then, got him a job with iI.G.M. He still has it. Mis* Day tells us the autograph hunters have a code: "1.T.L." means fellows like Charlie Chaplin and Charles Boyer, who are impossible to land; "D.T.L." means Katharine Hepburn and Garbo who are difficult to land, and "P. 0." is for push-overs, like Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford.—KA.N.A.