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May 04, 2006
'Toots': The Consummate New Yorker Still Packs Them In
The Reeler had the extraordinary good fortune of getting into yesterday's standing-room-only screening of Toots, Kristi Jacobson's excellent new documentary about her grandfather, the legendary New York saloon owner Toots Shor. This is one I have been trying to catch since last Thursday night, when the wait-list ticket line outside Pace University virtually wrapped around the block. And while I would want a peek either way on the basis of its NYC-centricity, the unanimously positive word-of-mouth made finding a seat in the bursting theater a matter of necessity.
Jacobson's portrait follows Shor from his humble childhood in Philadelphia to his move north to New York in 1930. While gangsters cornered the Prohibition-era market on nightlife, Shor became a bouncer and got to know boldface names from all over the legitimacy spectrum. But he was more than "just a guy standing around outside with a 46-inch neck," as interviewee Nicholas Pileggi tells Jacobson; Shor was a gregarious networker, raconteur, drinker and general social touchstone. Without a dime in his pocket (literally--and there is even a great story for that), he eventually his own eponymous club and restaurant on West 51st Street. He counted Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and some of the city's most beloved sports stars among his closest friends.
And the odds are that any who lived into 2005 are featured in Toots; former Giants running back/wide receiver Frank Gifford features prominently (as does Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford), with culture gurus Pileggi, Pete Hamill and Mike Wallace joining Shor's daughter to piece together an oral history of sorts. Almost 20 years after his death (and 30 years after Shor's), Gleason's stories still outsize almost every alcohol-soaked anecdote surrounding them, but the surplus of myth carried over to Wednesday's screening in a way you just had to know would occur sooner or later.
"One short story," said Charles Reilly, another friend of Shor's whom Jacobson features in her documentary. "The night that I was born in Philadelphia, Toots and my uncle were very cllsoe buddies--21, 22 year old kids. And my grandfather was a guy name Bart McHugh, who started the Mummer's Day Parade in Phaladelphia. So he was pretty well known in Philadelphia. Now Toots and my uncle were in St. Agnes's hopsital. My mother was slow in deliviernin the baby--ME--so those two got skyrocketed, and the nuns were all upset because my grandfather Mr. McHugh is a big guy in the town with the cardinal and all this kind of stuff. So they put Toots and my Uncle Bart in a private room in the maternity ward.
"But I'll tell you one thing: He never forgot Philadelphia. He loved New York, but he never forgot Philadelphia. My mother would come to New York; she was four-foot-ten, and Toots would pick her up and kiss her square on the mouth. 'Catherine, it's so great to see you!' And she'd say, 'Toots, don't kiss me on the mouth.' But he was a great guy. He was bigger than that screen."
Tonight is your last chance to check out Toots at the Tribeca Film Festival; the film screens at 8:15 at the AMC Lincoln Square at Broadway and 68th. Bring a book, a snack and camp out early; it will fill up fast.
(Photo of Kristi Jacobson: STV)
Posted by stvanairsdale at May 4, 2006 09:33 AM
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