Vincent Sardi, Jr.

Michael Kantor: As far as the Broadway community goes, Sardi is an institution. How has Sardi’s been more than a restaurant?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, you call a Broadway an institution, I call it a family. And Sardi just became one of the family to the point where now we have third and fourth generation, people who, you know, like the Hammerstein family, the Richard Rogers family, they commit. It continues. And they were very closely knit. Still are, but it’s spread out so much now. You know, with California and television and… It’s not the same as it was when it first opened. The theater people in those days lived here. They hung out in this area. They actually lived here in the hotels and all that. So it was a very closely knit family. And I still have that feeling. Plus the fact that dad lived in England before he came here all through his teenage, in 20s, early 20s. Rather British, not Italian. And the atmosphere of the restaurant, right, from the beginning when they moved to this place was very, you might say, British. And there were a lot of English actors. So they felt very much at home here because of that. And he had certain things on the menu that the British people liked, certain wines they liked. And it was like a club.

Michael Kantor: What about you know sure what about the way that the restaurant functioned in the book it says club post office lounge saloon what would go on here besides just

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: When they came out with the Tony Awards, Dad was given one of the first ones, and it was for providing a restroom for the theater world, theater people. And so that covers quite a gamut. During World War II, there were any number of actors and writers who would send their money that they had to Dad, and he would open bank accounts for them. Uh… The uh… He would whole mail for them. He would keep an eye on their home if they were overseas or anything. Again, it was a family affair. But an awful lot of these people didn’t have family here. So he became like a father image and mother, of course. Mother was very much a mother image. John Golden, the producer, used to have lunch here two or three times a week. Always sat in the table right in front of the cash register, which used to be in the back of the restroom. Mother would do all the buying in the morning for the kitchen and all that. Then she’d come out for lunch. She’d get behind the counter, take cash. He would sit in front her at this table, which is right before you go into the kitchen. You know, you think people say, oh, I don’t want to sit by it. Well, he put me way back there. That was his table. We have a photograph of him with Elizabeth Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Lasker. They used to lunch together. Planning charities and stuff like that. And again, it was a family gathering.

Michael Kantor: In the old days, who would come? Obviously, there were actors, but give me the gamut of who showed up at Sardinia.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, you see, in the old days, as I said before, people lived here. They didn’t live in Connecticut and New Jersey and all that. They all lived in this area. And I’m going way back. You had no television at all. Radio was just beginning. I remember I had a crystal set. And motion pictures were just beginning. They were going into sound pictures from silent pictures. And so that the people who were in the theater or any of the entertainment world, nightclubs, vaudeville, whatever, lived here. Not only the actors, but the stagehands, the company managers, the authors. And it was a real community. Then it started to spread out. And that’s why when you came in here. Well, for example, when I first took over, they started using charge accounts. We didn’t have that, it was in the old days. Dad would open an account for us, an actor who couldn’t pay. But practically every one of them paid him eventually. But he would let the way. But that was unknown in those days. No credit cards. You had to be nobility to have a charge account. British nobility. And so he… These people would come in and there would be all the different branches of the entertainment world rather than theater, entertainment world. They all knew one another, they saw one another. That doesn’t happen much anymore.

Michael Kantor: You said your dad was conservative. Was Sardis a place where a gold digger could come to make a connection with?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Not with our knowledge. If it was very obvious that someone was trying to sit next to someone for a reason, we would make sure they couldn’t sit next. We wouldn’t allow people to send drinks from one table to another. We would not allow people join unless they were invited. We ran a very conservative, it still is actually. One reason why we always had lot of Actresses come in and they didn’t want to be annoyed. We wouldn’t let people annoy them on the other hand quite a few Actresses I met Turned out to be that they were not only gold because they were called girls and I didn’t know it a little too naive I know one time when these two European motion picture producers came in and They wanted to know the name of this young lady who came in quite often by herself, and my head waiter told him, and they went over to talk to him. And about a week later, I told the head waiter, by the way, best weekend I ever had with him. And he wouldn’t give them a table again, never let them sit down again. So it was conservative, yeah.

Michael Kantor: Just if you would repeat for me, you know, Sardi’s was a conservative restaurant, so I have that sort of…

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Over there. The Saudis was and is a conservative restaurant. I think it started with Dad’s attitude, and we’ve continued it.

Michael Kantor: In terms of my reading of Vincent Sardi is responsible for great stage performances. Do you think an actor’s performance is linked to what they do?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: I think that what an actor eats is indicative of his personality. Now everything is one gender, right? For example, Catherine Cornell would eat, we have it on the menu occasionally, Cornell salad, which is raw cabbage with tons of garlic. And she’d eat it before going on stage. I don’t know what that tells about her personality, but I do know that the actor appearing opposite her had an agreement with Dad that anytime she came in and had the corned ale salad, he’d let him know. So he’d go out and eat garlic and neutralize the thing. But, and different types of people, for example, the British actor, now I’m talking back in the late 20s, early 30s, when Sardis was in the little restaurant and when we first moved Sardies over here. The English, or I’ve learned that you shouldn’t say English, the British actor, they would drink before the show. They’d come in during intermission. And I mean, a couple of martini, never bothered them. I mean it was, it didn’t affect their speech. It didn’t effect anything. I was always amazed at that. I don’t really know any, in quotes, American actors who would do that and get away with it.

Michael Kantor: In 1921, your parents opened Sardi’s Sidewalk Cafe or The Little Restaurant. Tell me about its humble origin.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, the original Sardis was right down the street. We’re on the east side of the now called the Helen Hayes Theater. And those days it was called the Little Theater. And the Little Restaurant, the Original Restaurant, was on the west side. So we just deep-frogged it when we came in here. Mother’s best friend, her name was Maria Cremona, she and her husband Mario had a little restaurant on 44th Street. It was successful and they moved uptown. Mother and dad took over their lease and that’s how Sardi started. It was a brownstone, you go down a few steps, you walked in, there was a little dining room, the kitchen right behind it. In the summertime, they had a tent in the back and they would have outdoor dining because there was no air conditioning, of course, and you had to walk through the kitchen. There are restaurants exactly like that, still in New York. Especially on restaurant row.

Michael Kantor: Where did you live?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: We’re upstairs. We have furnished rooms. Booms. The family, we lived upstairs over the restaurant and we had furnished rooms. But before we, before mother and dad opened Sardis, we lived on 55th Street in one of those railroad flats and we have the borders there. One was an acrobat who used to take me out when he did vaudeville acts, throw me around the stage, named Franklin Damore, and then a Carlos Peterson who was a dancer. When we moved over to the Brownstone, I remember we had a treasurer, a box office man, as furnished rooms, you know.

Michael Kantor: On Broadway, Showcase

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: all connected with Broadway, yeah.

Michael Kantor: What was the neighborhood like in the 20s? You mentioned trotting. Give me a sense of. Oh, it was.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Strangely enough, if you could eliminate certain visions and you look up 8th Avenue, it was exactly like that. Same buildings there. And you walk through the side streets, excepting where they tore down some. I went to look at where we used to live in the railroad flat I mentioned. There’s a hotel there now. But on 8th avenue, you had, they were building the subway. They’re just starting it. And it was all logs. And they’re digging the subway. On Broadway, we had the trolley cars. On Ninth Avenue, you had the elevator. And underneath the elevator, you have all the push cards. And if it was food, they were Italian. If it was clothing, they Jewish. It was a very simple life. The neighborhood was basically Italian and Irish. And, but, you know, you got into squabbles with the different nationalities, but nobody pulled a knife out, Nobody shot you or anything like that. Mostly the Chay Choo.

Michael Kantor: And this would give me, when was this?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Oh, I would say that was anywhere from 1921 to 1930. The theaters were, the same theaters were here, the Broadhurst, the Schubert, there was a beautiful theater next door where the Times is now called the 44th Street Theater. They had three theaters within one structure. That’s where they had a roof garden, a roof theater. They had a wunderbar which became the, during World War II the canteen, stage door canteen. Thank you. And then this big theater where they had musicals usually, Siegfield Follies, stuff like that. The St. James, of course, didn’t exist. Neither did the Majestic. Majestic was a row of townhouses, mostly occupied by doctors and lawyers, strangely enough. The corner was the same as now.

Michael Kantor: How would you define the Broadway theater district?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: In that time, we’re talking about the 20s and early 30s, definitely 42nd Street was part of it. And then it came up through 43rd. As a matter of fact, there’s some theaters who have entrances there, but they don’t use them anymore. But it was 43rd, 44th, very heavy, then 45th and 46th. Then the theater started spreading up further up to the 50s, but that was later, not in the 20’s, but in the 30s. And they went up as far as the Columbus Circle. But that was, you’d say that whole area was Broadway. And nightclubs, see, we think of Broadway as being just theater. It had the big nightclbs in New York were all on Broadway. The West Side was the place to be. And we had the Latin Quarter. You know Barbara Walters? Her father had a nightclub here, a big one. But now I’m going back, Not in the 20s, but in the 40s.

Michael Kantor: What was Broadway theater like before air conditioning?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: The Broadway theater before it condition was quite unusual. Knickerbocker Ice had these huge trucks and they would deliver blocks of ice and be enough trucks to fill up the whole street. And they put it into a big room. And then before the play started, they would turn on the fans and blow this air through the theater and that would cool it. Unfortunately, they didn’t never had enough to last the whole performance. As you sat there, you gradually got warmer and warmer. And also it was very damp. But that was air conditioning or air cooling of those days. Not so long ago.

Michael Kantor: What was it like at the end of the show?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Rather sticky, but we live with that. Now, for example, here in the restaurant. We would, Saudis would put linen over the leather seats, over the chairs. We would pick up the rug, we have a concrete floor, paint the floor and so that you wouldn’t have the hot rug. And we had fans on the, as a matter of fact, the outlets and everything for the fans are still in the columns. And the menu changed completely. You would have things, you would never have the… These hot, cold weather things like, you wouldn’t have onion soup, you’d have a madrilein. They started with vichyssoise, the cold soups, lots of salads and cold fish, cold meat, and you served only spritzes and wine coolers and stuff like that. It was a complete switch, summer to winter.

Michael Kantor: Tell me about what was the purpose of roof guard?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, again, no air conditioning. And so that the motion picture theaters had roof gardens. Some of the hotels did like they asked. There would be dining rooms in some of them.

Michael Kantor: What was the audience like for Broadway in the 20s and 30s?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, I guess the audience in the theater on Broadway and those days, just to give you an idea, every seat had a hat rack under it. Does that tell you something? And the gentleman would take his hat off and have a rack under. They were better dressed. The opening night was black tie, definitely, and a lot of white tie. The normal evening audience was a lot of people in tuxedo, a lot. The In front of the theater, you would have a great many private cars, including electric cars for the people and a few cabs. Cabs were not that common. And then, of course, you had the subways weren’t that active then, but the trolley cars, trolley cards on 8th Avenue originally, Broadway, people would just get on those. In the summertime, the trolly cars were open. There were no sides on them, they were just rails. And in the wintertime, of course, everybody would be bundled up and walking, a lot of walking. But, and the audience was basically a New York audience. So what the theater would do in those days was they run a short season in New York. And when they finished their three months or so, they would pack up and go on the road, taking all their scenery with them and then the road was big in those days and so we went Through the the theater go up in the other cities. We’d go to them now They come here and that’s why you have plays like cats is what 13 years old Phantom is about nine or ten that never happened in those things You get through your local audience and move and in would come another place

Michael Kantor: Who were the Schubert’s and what did they own?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: They owned the theater. The Schubert’s, they were the theater people. They owned theaters in all the different cities where they had big road shows, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, all Schuvert. They were broken up on the antitrust law or something like that. But the Schuerts really, they missed the theater because there was Sam. And Lee and JJ. Sam died, I believe, in a train crash. And as a result, the two remaining Schubert’s would never travel at the same time. And Lee and J.J., well, when they built the building where the Sardis is now, it was supposed to be a three-story building with a roof guard. And then they decided it was gonna be five. I don’t know where J.J. Got the idea. He wanted to put a penthouse, but it had to be higher than Lee Schubert’s over the 44th Street Theater. So they went up to 11 floors. And then when he died, the penthouse was turned into a drama league. Drama league, yeah. Lee and JJ didn’t have that good a reputation. They were tough people. They were penny pinches. In a lot of the theaters, the backstage conditions were terrible. And finally, after Lee and J.J. Died and it was being run by other members of the family, They nearly had a strike down here at the Majestic Theater because of the conditions being so bad backstage, including rats, and it was just a mess. And they sent down a young lawyer who was just beginning, more or less, with the Schubertz. It was Jerry Schoenfeld. And he immediately made things change. And it’s been ever since he and Bernie Jacobs, who took over later, took over with him and died just recently. The whole attitude changed, even with my relationship here, because I’m a tenant of the Schumanns. And there’s no comparison between Bernie and Jerry and the J.J. And Lee. The Schubert’s own, in the theater world, they own New York. They had practically every theater. And it was broken up by the government. And that’s when the Nederlanders came in. And now the Jujensens. But before that, if you were in a theater, you were a Schuvert house. There were very, very few independents.

Michael Kantor: Tell me more about, weren’t they called Mr. Lee and, who were Lee and J.J. Schuer? Didn’t they fight with each other over?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Oh, well, there was a lot of family animosity there, and I don’t know whether you’d call it jealousy or not. I know that we never sat next to one another. Lee came in a great deal, JJ not as much. But it was not a healthy relationship, but it worked in business for their time. They couldn’t exist, I don’t think, in today’s labor market and today’s kind of competition they’d be getting.

Michael Kantor: What happened to the Schubert family dynasty? John and then all of a sudden lawyers were, what happened with that transition?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: You had Lawrence Schubert, Lawrence was a relationship to the, he was involved with the business for a while. They sort of squeezed him out. Then there was Johnny Schuvert, the son, who was a very nice guy but completely inefficient, and he died. Now, Lawrence, Schubert, Lawrence… He couldn’t handle it, and too much drinking and stuff like that. And the whole thing was getting into the wrong hands. And that’s when Jerry and Bernie took it over the foundation now, and a Schubert organization. And they have a very good trustees, which include university presidents and… Kluge, Jean Klugee, and people like that. So it’s run on a very high level now.

Michael Kantor: Who was Renee Carroll?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Rene Carroll was, when Dad opened here, when Sardis opened here in this building, he had a checkroom, we never had a checkroom before, and the old restaurant. And he was very common now and then. A concessionaire who put in a woman to run the checkroom and Rene worked for this concessionary. He accused her of stealing from the tips and things. Thank you. Wanted dad to fire her. Dad wouldn’t fire her, but he told the concessionaire to get out. And Renée was a loyal checkroom girl from then on. She was probably the best public relations person you’ve ever met. She knew every columnist, every newspaper man who came in. She would give them stories and ran a checkroom that was Fantastic. The when I got out of the service. I found myself, I wasn’t running the restaurant because she knew I was away for years. People come in, I didn’t even know who they were, but Leonard Lyons, a columnist, helped me a great deal. He’s a very, very good friend. And Rene. And then I realized, gee, who’s running this place? I think Rene is, and you know, if she didn’t like you, you didn’t get a table. And, you know, you had to always play up to it.

Michael Kantor: And didn’t she also manage shares and hits? How did that?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Oh, she got involved in everything. She did a book called In Your Hat with Ryan James. She was a businesswoman. And then she started getting involved with a ticket broker next door, Mackey’s, Lou Chauncey. And sure enough, they got married. And I thought, oh, thank you. She was big help. I can’t deny that. But I was so glad she left, because I didn’t have the courage at that time to fire her. Because it’s still my restaurant. I’m still running it. And she was running it, and said, here comes this young guy. I was young at that time. Comes in and fires her. So she quit. She retired. And that was a blessing.

Michael Kantor: What was your acting debut on Broadway?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, in the old restaurant, as I said, I lived over the We had rooms over there. And naturally, I knew all the customers who came in. We have fascinating people, by the way, like Helen Keller, the deaf, dumb, and blind lady we used to come in, Catherine Cornell, Mr. McClintock, Miriam Hopkins, people like that. And I used to hang out. There was nobody to play with on the street. I had one friend who came up from Texas. He lived in one of the apartments further down the street. And I was wondering about him. And he turned out, why he had so many nieces? I didn’t know. But evidently, his mother was a mistress. And evidently it was a house of prostitution that I didn’t even know about. But there was nobody to play with here. So I’d be backstage. And I knew all the people backstage. I knew the lines on a lot of the shows. And then they did a play called The Master of the Inn.

Michael Kantor: Was there ever a criminal element on Broadway?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: I think so. On Broadway, there was a criminal element, as it was in all over America at that time. You remember it was prohibition. And that’s what brought in all the organized. The Broadway was affected in the nightclub area. And then of course, when you had people with speakeasies, you naturally had a connection with the organized crime. That’s why Dad never had a speakeasy. You say, well, I understand he had some whiskey in the house. He did. He had a friend who worked for the French steamships. In those days, there weren’t any aviation or planes. Everything was done by ship. And whenever his ship would come in, or the French liners would come, his friend would go there and he had connections there, and would bring back Maybe six bottles of that, seven bottles of that, and which he served to people he knew. So, but it was not a speakeasy and there was no connection between that and the regular. Then they started putting pressure on dad to the point where you, they say you’re going to buy liquor from us, we’ll protect you and everything. You can get rich like everybody else. And dad didn’t want that. He explained sometime later to me that he happened to be in a speakeasy one time, visiting a friend who owned it when they came up with a patrol wagon, and they took him away, this friend of his. And he said he never wanted his children to see him getting into a patrol wagon. And so then when they started really putting pressure on him, there were two people that protected him. One was a man who came in a great deal alone, very quiet. And then one day he called that, and we said, I know you’ve got a good name here, and you’re doing business, but you’re not making money here. And he said, you can come in. And it was Oney Madden, one of the biggest bootleggers. And he says, we’ll take care of everything. You have no problem. And that explained to him why he didn’t want to do anything like that. And then Texas Guindin was a nightclub entertainer, very flamboyant, but her brother was mixed up with the organized thing. And so when they started really putting pressure on, Dad mentioned it to Texas. And also to this chap, the only man. From the minute he’d mentioned it to them, they’d never bother him again. So that was the… But they were there, there’s no doubt. And there still are mayors trying to clean up a lot of the acts that still go on here.

Michael Kantor: Who was Maurice Evans and how did he improve Sardi’s business in 1938?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, Morris Evans was in the theater next door, in putting to the full-length version of Richard, of Hamlet, full- length version of Hamill. And they would break and have a, it was in two parts. And so he told dad, look, get a special menu and be ready to serve these people quickly, because they only have so many minutes to go out, have something to eat and come back. And he would tell the people, And when they took a break that we have a break And if you go next door at Sardi’s, they’ll take care of you and see that you get back in time. And he would fill every table. And when the play ended, Dad had an artist who did a great many theatrical pictures, Don Freeman. And he did a full length. Of Mr. Evans and gave it to him as a present, in the costume. He was wonderful for us, Mr.Evans.

Michael Kantor: Back when you started out, didn’t the theater crowd stay out late? How late would the restaurants stay open?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: During the

Michael Kantor: used to where it started.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: The Sardis, during the week, had to close at four o’clock in the morning. You had to stop serving liquor at four. On Saturday, because then they wanted everybody to go to church on Sunday, you would have to close it three. Now, after our places, I could tell you 20 at any time you wanted to. But we would invariably, very, very often, have to remind people at four o’ clock in the mornings that they could not be served any more drinks. And Saturday would be even more difficult, the three. Everybody stayed up late, but you didn’t have to go to the suburbs when you went home. You get in the trolley car or a cab, and in 10 minutes, you’re home. And in 10 minute, you’re back to work. So that you had more time. And the whole city was much later. I used to work, usually we didn’t normally stay open until four, but we’d stay open until 2, 2.30. And then I’d go over to Louis Bergens on 45th Street or PJ clocks. Which still exists on 55th and the place would be packed.

Michael Kantor: Who was Alex Gard and what was his deal for drawing characters?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Alex was our first caricaturist. He was a Russian immigrant and landed from Russia. He went to Paris and then he came to America. In Paris, he worked doing some caricatures for a restaurant and they would put the caricatures up on the side of the wall. Irving Hoffman, who was a press agent at that time for Motion Pictures, introduced that to Alex God. Alex did some caricatures of… Most newspaper men who always sat at the same table, they called it the cheese club because everybody thought they were a big cheese. And he did quick caricature of them and they stuck them up on the wall and behind, you know. And then after they finished lunch, Irving went up to dad and said, look, Alex would like to do the caricature of the customers who come in here. And he does them in color. He would do them in colors. And you can put them up on the wall. And I said, well, that’s fine. That’s a good idea. But I can’t afford to pay an artist. And Alex said, Mr. Sardi, I can afford to eat. So they made a deal. And I have the original contract where Alex agreed to two meals a day in the restaurant. And he would do the caricature. No specification of how many. He would do the caricatures and the caricature would be my father’s property and the only stipulation was that dad could not criticize his art and he could not criticize dad’s food. Now when prohibition was repealed he would not include the cost of the drinks he had. He said that was not the contract so if he had a cocktail When the war ended, and he went into our Navy, American Navy, during war, when he came back, I said to Alex, you know, things are going very well, and this contract doesn’t make sense anymore. Why don’t we decide what I’ll pay you for the caricatures? And he said, no way. He said, that’s my contract, and I won’t change it. And he died not too much later, very surprised heart attack, but he never would change that contract.

Michael Kantor: How did you decide who merited a place on the wall? Who got on the?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, to be perfectly frank, at that time, it was either Rene or Alex, the two of them. As a result, Alex was fascinated with the ballet. So we had a lot of ballet people in it. There’s no doubt Rene had a great deal to say about it. Now, Max, who is now my associate, we decide between Max and myself. And we’ve broadened it a little bit. When Alex Skmar died, and Saudis had to have caricatures, at first I wasn’t going to do it, but there was so much pressure that I started looking around for who would do them. And of course, the first person who came to my mind was Al Hirschfeld, who was a friend of mine. And as you know, great caricatures. And I approached him and he said, Vince said, you know if I do your caricatures you will have to redo the whole restaurant. First of all, he said I will not let my caricatures be mixed with somebody else. So you’re going to have to take down all the Alex guards. Secondly, mine are black and white. And they won’t go with your, and he’s right. So that’s why we’re still friends. He doesn’t do it, but you know, I did. He was the first person I went to. And then we fished around a bit, and we ended up with Don Bevin, who did them until he moved to California. Don was also an author. He wrote Stalag 17 and some motion pictures.

Michael Kantor: Haven’t you always had two menus here?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Not only, not always. Sardis, we’ve always been aware of the fact that we have actors coming in when they’re beginning their career, not necessarily when they are already stars. And if you have a menu that outprices these people, you’re going to lose them. You’re not going to have the young people coming in who can’t afford normal prices. So we came out with an actor’s menu. But that was a at the beginning of this inflation that we’ve run into. When I look at the old prices, what we charge now, I can’t believe it. And yet, you must remember, we made money in the old days. It’s harder to make money now. But no, we’ve always had these two menus. But the thing is, you have to be a paid-up member of Actors’ Equity. And now we also include the Screen Actors Guild.

Michael Kantor: Describe an opening night on Broadway, the anticipation.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Opening night on Broadway, there are two versions. There’s the old version and the new version. The old version where we got all the tradition of opening night and bringing the papers and everything. That was true until they changed the whole format.

Michael Kantor: Okay, well let me stop you there. Give me a sense of what the old version.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: In the old days, the critics went opening night and then they would dash out as soon as they could, maybe even before the final curtain really came down and they’d go to write their review. Then people, they’d make the next edition and then in those days you had the Times, the Tribune, the News, the mirror, that you’re an American. Now the afternoon papers you didn’t worry about, but definitely in the morning it was the New York Times and the Tribunals particularly. So you’d wait for the review to come out. Nobody knew what the review was. And one day, one opening night, the circulation manager of the Times saw people coming in with the, I don’t know the technical word for it, but. Print out the article, and then you just see that, you know. And he said, well, look, and that Goldstein, his name was, he said the Times leaves as a paper, not as a clip. So he said I’ll make a deal with you. You’ll get the first, what do you want, 50 papers, 100 papers. As soon as they come off the press, we’ll deliver them to you, and you’ll get the first. So that’s what happened. Well, naturally, nobody had a chance to read it yet. And so everybody’s waiting for it. Now they review it the day or two days before the opening. They’ve got the review all written up and you can’t keep a secret. And by the time the opening night curtain comes down, everybody in the know what the review is. He spoils the whole thing. And then of course now we’re down to basically the New York Times. The news comes out much later. Plus the fact that in the old days, we didn’t have parties as such, but everybody who went to the opening would make reservations. And the crew, the cast and all that. And what started out with when Come Back Little Sheba, Shirley Booth, came in the restaurant after the opening. It just happened by chance that everybody the rest had been to the opening. And she walked in and everybody just stood up and cheered and applauded. And that’s what started the whole opening night thing of the cast coming here and being applauded, waiting for the reviews. Then, of course, a lot of the plays had one producer, like John Goldin. I don’t know if he took anybody else’s money in the play, but it was practically all his, if not all. Now, the plays are so expensive. That you may have a hundred people involved. So that the opening night party get bigger and bigger and big and bigger and we can’t handle it. Now we have handled some, but it has to be arranged properly where they take over the whole restaurant. Now you’ve got four floors. Now how do you divide the people with that? When it works well, it does well. We had one of the producers took one floor for his backers. Schubert’s took the first floor. He took the second floor. I forget who was on the third floor. On the fourth floor, they had the cast and their friends. You know, everybody went home except the cast. They stayed until two or three in the morning. Everybody else went home about noon, midnight. The opening night doesn’t not have the excitement it used to have, it just doesn’t. I mean, as far as I’m concerned.

Michael Kantor: Isn’t Sardi’s location important? Give me the name Sardi for opening night, and it’s linked to the location to the New York Times.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Oh, Sardi’s location is very important for everything. First of all, we’re right in the heart of the theater district. Secondly, we are next door to the Times, and we see a lot of the people who work at the Times and we know them. The Times, there again, we have a family arrangement with them. When television first came out, I couldn’t get any reception here. Mrs. Salzberger, mother of Punch Salzberger. I used to come in a great deal. And so she said, what do you think of this telegram? I said, well, I can’t get a reception. So she said why? I said well, we’re not high enough. And she said I’m going to send over our engineer. And the engineer came in and said, you know, we have a new aerial upstairs, a new, and we have room for one more line. And you can have it, see. So it’s that kind of relationship. And it goes deeper than that at the times.

Michael Kantor: Let me ask you about, you know, give me a sense of the opening night party at Sardi. Places at Sardis and then what happens over the course of the evening?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, and the opening night party originally would be individual reservations. It wouldn’t be, no one paid for the room, individual tables paid. Now one person, like let’s say J.J., not J. J., but Ernie Jacobs or Jerry Schoenfeld, would have five tables or two tables or four, and then the cast. Now then it evolved that the producer would give the party.

Michael Kantor: I just mean in terms of the energy of waiting for the review to come, and what happens if it’s a good review, but again, tell me where it’s Sardi’s restaurant.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, at Sardis, when people had to wait for the review to find out what it was, there was a great tension. And television, reviewing and everything, had not become important yet. It was basically the newspapers. And it was like waiting for a draft call during the war. You just couldn’t wait to see it, and then you didn’t know whether you were happy when you saw it or not. And it very dramatic and very exciting. We’d go around, we’d give papers, one paper to every table or two if it was a large number of people. And we’d get out 100 papers, 150 papers with the opening night in it. There’s no doubt that that was the most exciting. It doesn’t quite work that way anymore. For one thing, as I said, people, they know what the review is. And you know, the giveaway is when the press agent comes in and says, no papers. And that’s the way it is, no papers.

Michael Kantor: What happens if it’s a good review or a bad review? Let’s start.

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, for one thing, if it’s a bad review, that’s the end of the party. People, they just go home. That ends it, except for a few die-hards. When it’s good, especially if you have an opening that is much better received than you expected, then you have a real party. And the champagne flows, and everybody’s happy, and that sort of stuff. You must remember that when you really get down to it, unless you get maybe two or three of the very important critics, both television and newspaper, you’re not going to make it. It’s that simple. It’s too bad.

Michael Kantor: Sardis had a lot of important people who all wanted the best table. How did you deal with that?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Saudis has handled the seating as long as I can remember the same way. Actually, one person came in one day and said, well, now that so-and-so is a big star, you’re going to have to seat him right there in front. I said, no, no. I sat him in front when he was out of work. Once you’re a big start, you don’t have to sit any place. And a lot of them realize that. Most of it is habit, where the business of the front of the restaurant being the place came back from the old days when there was no bar in the theater, and at the end of the matinee, the first crowd you got audience would come in, sit them down, and we had the whole front of the dining room with cocktail tables instead of dining room tables. You know plus uh… Plastic top and those no And then as they left, we’d set up for dinner. And by that time, the actors would come in. So everybody else, the actor would all take the front table because that’s what was available. That’s what started the whole thing. As far as people having prejudices about where they sit, David Merrick, you could sit him anywhere as long as you didn’t sit him next to someone connected with the theater. He didn’t care where it was. You could put him in the kitchen, but it should not be next to him. Then you have the… The different little feuds going on. You can’t sit this guy next to that one. But people do get the habit. They feel at home on a certain table. Well, you’ve got to yield to that as much as you can. And then now you even get to the point where someone will say, well, who’s sitting at my table? Well, that’s so-and-so. Oh, that right, he started using that table before I did. So, but it isn’t a question of snobbism. We’re always very careful of for example the actor Charles Nelson Reilly when he comes to Sardis. He’s home He wanders around talking to people you ask him for his autograph You know if you don’t he said don’t you want my order now? We won’t let people ask for autographs, but he’s he’s different and he liked to just sit and be around the people Other people don’t want to be buried in a bunch of strangers. They don’t feel comfortable, so you got to keep them There’s a lot of reasons why you run the seating the way we do.

Michael Kantor: What was luncheon at Sardin’s, when did it start?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, Luncheon at Sardis was, I was spoiled by Luncheon at Sartis. Marlo Lewis, who was in an advertising agency, came down and said, why don’t we do a radio show out of here, have an interview and all that sort of thing. And we agreed to do it, and we approached WOR. And it ended up that Marlo Lewis owned a third of it. I owned a 3rd of it, two fellows, Gary Stevens and Sid White. They would do the legwork. And believe it or not, everything was paid for. So they paid the engineer, they paid Bill Slater was out first. Interviewer. And Bill was wonderful because he was also, not only knew the theater, but he knew the sports world. So the kind of people we got on the program.

Michael Kantor: I’m thinking with Broadway who like who of the Broadway community?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Oh, everybody. I mean, it’s hard to say who didn’t at that time. It was very much in demand. And whenever a new play opened, we’d have the cast in, individually, the producer in. It was a great thing. And the worst part is that eventually the radio went downhill, and they couldn’t afford to pay everybody. Then they wanted me to pay for everything. And then we dropped it. Now they’re coming back.

Michael Kantor: When you think of the legitimate theater and Broadway, when you hear the word Broadway, what does it symbolize?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: At Sardis, we think of Broadway as being the musical theater and the smaller theaters, the legitimate theater. That’s really what makes Broadway. The change has been that the straight plays, ordinary comedies and dramas, I don’t find the audience they used to have. And I think part of that’s due to television. People can get that at home. But When I think of Broadway, and I think of it only the theater world of it, at Sardi’s we are very much aware of what we call the legitimate theater. However, on the periphery, you now have the off-Broadway coming up here. It used to be downtown. Now it’s up here on 42nd Street and scattered around. And that is very live, and that is very good theater. So… If you want to include the whole thing as a unit, Broadway’s booming.

Michael Kantor: How has Broadway theater changed?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, I think it’s changed in that, for one thing, we have a large tourist element now. And if you come from Norway, or Japan, or Italy, and you don’t speak English, you’re not going to go and see Zoe Caldwell in Masterclass, or you’re not going go and see Once Upon a Mattress. But you will go and see the Phantom of the Opera. You will go see Cats. You will see Miss Sagan. Because it’s a musical, you can understand it better. And so they carry the weight. Phantom is still one of the hardest tickets in town. Miss Sangan is still doing very, very well. So that it has changed. And I would prefer more change, more.

Michael Kantor: What do you think the future has in store for Broadway?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Well, if you want to, like at Sardis, as I said, we include all the theater as Broadway. Looking at it like that way, and the way it used to be, we’re 42nd Street. You’ve got a lot of theaters coming in at 42nd street. They will be building new theaters. And so there’ll be a bigger boom. And I think that people really want to see live actors. I think that sooner or later… They want to get away from the television screen. They want… It’s a different feeling when you’re right there in front of an actor and watching them work like opera.

Michael Kantor: So would you say, what kind of future would it be?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Very, very good. I think that as a result, you’re going to get more people interested in writing for the theater, composing for the theater. They have to have an outlet. They haven’t had an outlet lately.

Michael Kantor: Who was Antoinette?

Vincent Sardi, Jr.: Antoinette Perry was a wonderful lady, sort of a Dowager type. She always sat on table 62 for lunch. And she loved the theater. She loved the theater people. And it was on account of her that we started, they started the Tony Awards. Antoinete Perry was the beginning of the Tony awards. Her family, she had daughters. Were in the theater business. Burgess Meredith married one of her daughters. It was all theater, all Broadway people connected with the internet period.