Abstract
Herman Pirchner Jr., son of the owner of the Alpine Village dining and nightclub, discusses the origins of the Alpine Village, the famous acts and guests who performed at Alpine Village, and the legacy of his father Herman Pirchner Sr. Pirchner was a stuntman, restaurateur, promoter, and natural entertainer who had legacy in Cleveland and nationally with a syndicated radio show.
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Interviewee
Pirchner Jr., Herman (interviewee)
Interviewer
Barrow, William (interviewer)
Project
Project Team
Date
7-22-2008
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
58 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Herman Pirchner Jr. interview, 22 July 2008" (2008). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 999065.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1007
Transcript
William Barrow [00:00:00] Well, I guess we’re ready. So, we are here today to talk with Mr. Herman Pirchner Jr. about the Alpine Village. His father is celebrating his 100th birthday in a week.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:00:15] 101st on July 28th.
William Barrow [00:00:18] I was at his hundredth birthday party. That’s where we met. And I snuck in by being George Condon’s chauffeur.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:00:26] A great recommendation.
William Barrow [00:00:28] Right. So George got to sit at the head table and the only table I recall, and talk to the folks who I remember.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:00:38] Well, Bill Boehm was there of the Singing Angels.
William Barrow [00:00:41] Jane Scott.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:00:42] Jane Scott, noted writer of the Plain Dealer.
William Barrow [00:00:46] Yes.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:00:47] Music critic.
William Barrow [00:00:50] Fun. I have a few pictures of it someplace.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:00:52] Oh, great.
William Barrow [00:00:53] …my camera, actually. And so anyway, so when they came to us from the History Department here at Cleveland State asking about interviews around the Euclid Corridor Project in Alpine Village in particular, I remembered that you had taken me upstairs at your father’s place and shown me that you had a lot of stuff and indicated that you had some memories of it yourself, whatever your dad told you. So I don’t know that your father is up to having to being interviewed about anything, but it struck me you’d be the more likely candidate, though, on a given day.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:01:26] You know, his memory of 1940 or 1930 can be good, and he’ll recount some story, most of which I’ve heard. But every now and then he gets me with a new one.
William Barrow [00:01:35] I’m sure telling his favorite stories over and over kind of crystallized those to some extent.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:01:41] Yes.
William Barrow [00:01:41] Trying to get at new things might be a different question. Well, anyway, before we get started, I was just wondering, why don’t you give us a little background about your growing up in the Pirchner family in Alpine Village and kind of give us a step.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:01:57] Well, I grew up on farms in Geauga county, but the weekends were the time we would come into the Alpine to see the entertainment and to have dinner. And we often would have house guests that were entertainers. Emmett Kelly, the great clown, was my favorite house guest. He came sometimes for a week stay. He was the star of Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, when that was a much bigger attraction than it is now. So I have memories of entertainers both on the stage and in our home.
William Barrow [00:02:29] Of course, you remembering them also out of makeup and out of costume, I imagine, too.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:02:34] Yes, but the one thing about Emmett Kelly was, you know, when he went around with his Weary Willie the tramp [character] he was all dirty with the makeup, and he had a hair that curled up, and this was at an age when nobody wore long hair. But the curl up here in the back was his. He was bald, but he had.
William Barrow [00:02:54] Oh, a wig.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:02:56] No, it was his hair.
William Barrow [00:02:57] Oh, it’s his hair. Oh, just. He just grew the back of it.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:02:59] He grew the back of it out.
William Barrow [00:03:01] Yeah. And didn’t he always have a flop hat of some kind?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:03:06] Yeah, he had a beat up. And I remember he closed his act always by sweeping the spotlight into the dustpan. And when the light disappeared, then he walked off. That was his trademark.
William Barrow [00:03:18] I remember that. So then you got to go to both the Alpine Village shows and see the people more or less out of the.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:03:28] Yeah, and it wasn’t just the shows. We’d show up during the rehearsals or when people were bantering about, killing time. But Alpine was a place where people would say it was, you know, most of the run was before tv. So to see entertainers you’d heard about and couldn’t watch on TV was really something. So people would save up for a couple, three months to have the special night there. That was one group of people. And then you had people that were very establishment figures of Cleveland that would own this or own that. There was always a big press contingent who had often special rates. And then there were people that came in. Anybody that had money, including people that had fast money.
William Barrow [00:04:16] I imagine it was sort of like another. Short Vincent was probably another spot like that to some degree, wasn’t it?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:04:22] To some degree. Alpine, of course, being much larger.
William Barrow [00:04:26] Oh, okay.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:04:26] Yeah. Than the theatrical, but, you know, there was some bleeding back and forth of the clientele. Sure.
William Barrow [00:04:35] Well, tell us about your father. What’s his history? How did he come to be running the Alpine Village in Cleveland?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:04:41] My father was born in Austria in 1907, and after the First World War, there were 15 that lived to adulthood in his family. But there was famine in the Alps. There was simply not enough food. So when people reached, the older kids, reached their teens, they left so there’d be enough food for the younger ones. So he, as a teen, made his way first to Switzerland and then to Germany. And around the time the currency collapsed in Germany, which was ’23, he made his way to the US as a teenager. He didn’t speak a word of English. He knew he was coming to the Midwest, and his only experience with the the west and the US were cowboy films. So he spent what little money he had on a cowboy shirt so he would be properly dressed when he arrived in the “Middle West.” And he got here, and growing up in the Alps, he was a man without fear of heights. And so he became a stuntman, which is where he got his capital to go into business. He was involved in the air shows they were here, but in other parts of the country, he was a wing walker. He’d be on the wings of an airplane. He had a stunt he did at least sometimes, where a second plane would come, dangling a trapeze, he would grab it and be lifted off.
William Barrow [00:06:04] How many wing walkers and stuntmen do you think made it to 101?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:06:08] Damn few. You know, this was brought home to me one time, and my father was reminiscing about at the end of the air shows, how there were these enormous parties, some tossed by Howard Hughes, who was part of this crowd. And I said, you mean week after week you’d get. Everybody there would get drunk and why did you party so hard? He says, well, none of us were quite sure we’d be around the next week. It was risky. Sure.
William Barrow [00:06:38] So he was here as a stuntman.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:06:41] Yeah. He learned the language and gradually worked his way into the pub business and was successful. And they were bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more.
William Barrow [00:06:54] Where did he start, I’m curious about that transition from.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:06:57] Well, the. There were a lot of little places, you know, there was “near beer” was legal at the time, even during Prohibition. And though it would often go, I hear, into the ethnic clubs who found ways to make it not near beer. But the first big place was Alpine Shore Club, which was out in the area now Bratenahl. And he had a place there that he ran. But the really big opportunity came during the Great Lakes Exposition. He always had a great sense for promotion, and he read, having no formal education, he read voraciously and could keep up on a wide variety of subjects with people that were quite learned. But he approached Lincoln Dickey about the idea of doing a World’s Fair here, Great Lakes Exposition, and he helped him develop it. And Dickey, in return for this idea, granted him a wonderful place. Location is very important when you’re in the food and beverage business and people are coming just one time or two times. So he got this great location at the Great Lakes Exposition and made really very large money there for many years. Much of it lost on something he bought the last year, which was a showboat that floated on the Great Lakes.
William Barrow [00:08:25] So he actually played a role in bringing the Great Lakes Exposition to Cleveland.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:08:30] He played a role in providing Lincoln Dickey with the idea and helping to develop the idea. Lincoln Dickey, of course, organized it all and made it happen.
William Barrow [00:08:38] We have A couple of pictures here. One is a small picture of the Alpine Village Restaurant.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:08:45] At the Great Lakes Exposition. When you entered the exhibition ground, you went right by it.
William Barrow [00:09:06] And then what is this other one?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:09:08] Well, this is inside that exhibition. And you know, my dad probably still could tell you the exact number of seats there. I don’t know, but it was a large room. My memory is around 800, but I’m not 100% sure.
William Barrow [00:09:22] I am calling these number one and number two, in that order. Okay, so then you mentioned the showboat.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:09:33] The showboat.
William Barrow [00:09:36] What was that?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:09:38] This was a floating nightclub. It had. There it is. It had done badly under the original owners and my father took it over towards the end of the exhibition and had bad luck because it rained, I don’t know, something like 58 of 70 days. I’m making these numbers up, but it was approximate, and during the summer it caused it to be a very bad financial move.
William Barrow [00:10:05] Well, we have number three and number four showing the showboat here. So what year was that?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:10:09] Great Lakes Exhibition last year.
William Barrow [00:10:14] So he had both of these things going in at the same time?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:10:16] Oh, yeah.
William Barrow [00:10:17] Okay, fine. All right, so that’s the Great Lakes Expo.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:10:23] And afterwards he opened up a number of businesses. They had the Hofbräuhaus on Euclid Avenue.
William Barrow [00:10:36] Do we have a picture?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:10:38] There should be a picture with Melchior.
William Barrow [00:10:42] What would it be showing here?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:10:45] A big guy with a stein. Yeah. Here? No, that’s Alpine. Most of these are groups of people here.
William Barrow [00:10:54] All right, okay, so this is number five.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:10:57] Yeah, this is showing. It’s actually the same shot, isn’t it? It’s a typical scene at the Hofbräuhaus, which is done as a German beer pub. And you see Lawrence Melchior, who was the Pavarotti of his day, the great star of the Metropolitan Opera, and was a friend of my father. And whenever he was near Cleveland, they hung out. [00:11:24] And Melchior was an enormous man with a voracious appetite for food and drink and held forth not only during club hours, but a lot of after hours parties for entertainers and press people.
William Barrow [00:11:38] Any idea who those people are?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:11:40] That’s my mother. This is my mother. And I don’t know who these three are. Yeah.
William Barrow [00:11:47] Okay, so, all right, so that’s the Hofbräuhaus. And that was right after the Great Lakes Expo?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:11:53] Yeah, and he. I’m a little fuzzy on the time of that. But after the Expo, dad also opened up the Alpine Village, which he’s best known for and ran for over 30 years. Shortly before that I might add that Anheuser-Busch held a competition for who could carry the most steins of beer without a tray. And he went out to St. Louis and managed to carry 56 16 ounce steins of beer without a tray and won the competition. And that became a staple of his act. If someone would buy 56 steins of beer, he would carry it and did a smaller act with 26 steins. Where he would. Alpine Village had an elevated stage that was on hydraulics that came down to floor level for dancing. But when the show occurred, it would come up. And it came up exactly to the level of the tables. This picture has it not quite up because there’s a gap there. And he would come. They would move these tables aside and he would come running with these 26 steins of beer without a tray. [00:13:10] And with his lederhosen would slide across to the end of the stage, land on his feet and deliver the 26 steins to whoever bought it.
William Barrow [00:13:18] Did you say without a tray?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:13:20] Without a tray. He carried the 26 steins without a tray.
William Barrow [00:13:22] You get your hands around 26?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:13:25] The way he did it is they have handles. And he would grasp the handles to make clusters and he would push them together. But the trick was in how they were stacked. But it was done with pressure. You had to be very strong to do it.
William Barrow [00:13:39] Yeah, this is number six we were looking at about the hydraulic floor. You were telling me this is the main.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:13:45] This is the main room of the Alpine at 1614 Euclid. And you’re looking over the bandstand. Band leaders were different years. Otto Turn and Dave Ennis and Mickey Katz. Mickey Katz son Joel Gray went on to fame. And there’s a song and dance man probably best known for cabaret opposite Liza Minnelli. But he has many, many other credits too.
William Barrow [00:14:14] Where was the front entrance?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:14:16] The front entrance was. You came through this door. There was a small piano bar here. And above the place where the trooper spotlight shown on the stars was the famed El Dorado Club, which was a hangout for the literary people in Cleveland, entertainers, writers. And it was run as a private club. [Crosstalk]. Beyond this folding thing. Sometimes if there’s a major act, they would open it up and people would watch. But usually that was closed.
William Barrow [00:14:49] So Euclid Avenue would be just beyond.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:14:51] Just beyond that.
William Barrow [00:14:52] Okay, so we’re looking north and I guess up the dance floor towards the Euclid Avenue.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:14:58] Yes, towards the Euclid entrance.
William Barrow [00:15:00] And then there’s the balconies. What are they balconies?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:15:03] Two levels and the balconies tables were too deep. You’d have four or six tops here and then two along the wall. So it was a pretty good enough seats if you’re right on the balcony. If you’re sat back, it wasn’t as good a seat for the show. But sometimes famous people wanted quiet tables. Casey Stengel was famous for being manager of the New York Yankees, I remember. Always took a quiet table so he wouldn’t have to worry about people coming up. [Crosstalk]. Or the private room there. But. But other people, you know, came. I know Bob Hope came when he was in town, often with his brother. He was a friend of my father’s and was. Had a wholesale foods distributorship. And he would sit in the crowd and usually came up to do cameos. I have memories of that. But other named people played. Jimmy Durante played who we have a picture of.
William Barrow [00:16:01] What’s the color scheme here? We’re looking at a black and white picture.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:16:04] Well, it’s the. It was at different times because they remodeled. The chairs are like from a German beer hall. It had a heavily German theme before World War II. And after World War II it was shifted away from a German theme. So these gnomes went. This might have been early 50s or 40s. I don’t know the time. Does it say? I don’t know the date of this picture?
William Barrow [00:16:41] This is still picture 6. Digressing slightly from the narrative, you mentioned the change in cultural emphasis, I guess, brought on by the war.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:16:53] Yes. It had went from lederhosen to a tux. Basically.
William Barrow [00:16:59] We have a picture of him in the tux. I think it’s been in the paper.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:17:02] Oh, yeah, he’s. He was debonair. But you can also see in lederhosen. Now this was in the early days. This would have been before World War II. So you had like a little Austrian chalet and you had an oom-pah-pah band.
William Barrow [00:17:18] Yeah, this is number seven.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:17:21] Yeah. This is probably [inaudible], I believe. These days. I said they did network radio from the Alpine, where they would. It was kind of like Lawrence Welk, but on radio as opposed to tv, the stars would appear.
William Barrow [00:17:37] But this was in the Alpine.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:17:38] This was Alpine, yeah. If you give me the older photograph, I’ll put it in context with other photographs. This is looking this way. And this became an open band stand in these days with stairs that came from the balcony. So when the chorus girls came, they would come down the stairs from either side to go to the stage. But before that you simply had this little chalet which provided a place for the German oom-pah-pah band or whatever band they had.
William Barrow [00:18:11] So then picture number seven is actually looking south at the opposite end?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:18:16] Yes, that’s correct.
William Barrow [00:18:21] Have to save some of that stuff.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:18:23] Did your father ever dress like this?
Emily Miller [00:18:25] He’s Scottish. He wore a kilt.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:18:29] Well, close enough.
William Barrow [00:18:32] Okay.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:18:35] And these are pictures from different shows at the Alpine. And one of the things they did is sometimes reviews, especially in the 50s, they would do musical comedies. They were cut down to a length of the show. They would do two shows a night during the week, and sometimes I think three on a weekend.
William Barrow [00:19:07] What were you telling me about this one? [Photo number 8].
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:19:09] This is the Eldorado Club. This is Hawaiian Troop that were probably working in the main room of the Alpine. Or maybe they were doing something in El Dorado. El Dorado was mostly for drinking. And it was a late night place. And on the walls were characters of noted Clevelanders and other people that would hang out and about. Anybody you can think of in entertainment during especially the first 20 years of El Dorado was there, if they were coming. It was a time where people would fly into Cleveland from New York or LA to have a good time.
William Barrow [00:19:48] Can’t find a good time in New York or LA?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:19:50] Well, Rudy Vallée would come in, Johnny Weissmuller, of course, he was Austrian and had good friendships with dad. But others would come in to hang out too, and this was the place they would go.
William Barrow [00:20:04] You were telling me a story about this.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:20:06] Well, Alpine was a place. Often newlyweds would come. And one of the things that dad would do would be to invite them to come to the stage. And he would talk to them about their experience or if they were getting ready to be married, their expectations. And it was good fun. And he had a way of making everybody laugh. [00:20:38] But all the women that came received a rolling pin. And there’s still a lot of rolling pins around Cleveland. They were lacquered and inscribed with all kinds of sayings. And the general. The general idea was that if the husband got out of line, he had the rolling pin.
William Barrow [00:20:59] Well, you never got out of line. So there was.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:21:01] Well, there was.
William Barrow [00:21:04] We have a couple shots here of facades that you mentioned. [Photo number 10].
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:21:09] This. The first facade certainly was 1940s or 30s. I don’t know the exact 1934. There’s a date on this picture.
William Barrow [00:21:24] Number 11.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:21:25] Yeah, this would have been as I remembered it in the 50s or 60s. The enamel art now is a gift of the family of the Cuyahoga Community College. And they’re on display there. It was done by [Harold Edward] Winter, who became a rather famous artist. So they’re valuable art. I might mention that Alpine, also in the 50s, regional TV was run out of there. A show my father did called the Village Fair. And that ran for several years. And it was done during the daytime. And women would come in much the way they do for Oprah or whatever, and they come in for lunch and the stars would show up to be part of the show.
William Barrow [00:22:18] So what’s he doing up on a high wire?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:22:20] Well, dad never lost his sense of the theatrical or his love of applause. We’re looking here at a picture from February 21, 1950. This one’s of the Chicago Daily News, but it ran in the front page of almost every newspaper in the United States. And it shows my father on Karl Wallenda’s back riding the high wire. Now, the genesis of this was the [Al Sirat] Grotto Circus was having a difficult time. So some of the this year, for whatever reason, so some of the Masons went to my father, this is a charity event, and said, you’re a good promoter. What can you, what can you do? And he said Wallenda happened to be there, was a friend of his and he said, well, I could ride on Wallenda’s back. And it started as a joke and it became serious. So he decided to do it. And it was everybody, all adults almost in Cleveland, knew dad’s name then. And it was promoted. And it was a sellout crowd. And dad hadn’t been near any high wire stuff for years. I mean, 1950. Well, he was 43, so seemed very old to me at the time. And he went to the circus and he climbed up the rope ladder, which is not easy to climb. But, you know, having been around stunting before, he did it. And he got on Wallenda’s back and you know, they never practiced it, but dad knew simply he had to be dead weight. So he got on there and was dead weight and Wallenda walked across. And afterwards they thought about doing a second time. The crowd said no, and they thought better of it and came down. And when he got to the center ring as a three ring circus, he went to take a bow and fell flat on his face. I think became lightheaded. He got right back up. But Wallenda, of course, was the greatest high wire man in the history of the circus. And the Flying Wallendas did the pyramid. They were last to do the pyramid and the wire. Four people, two person, one person. And they did it without a net. And it’s so incredibly dangerous because if one starts to lose the balance, the effect is geometric and they all go. And the inevitable happened later in the 50s in Detroit, and they fell and some were killed. And I can remember being with Wallenda, who performed the next week in Cleveland after that, after losing part of his troupe. That’s a whole other story. This is dad on the Blue Network of NBC when he did his nationally syndicated show. This is him interviewing Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion.
William Barrow [00:25:27] That’s number 14.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:25:29] And then we have here dad with Jimmy Durante, the song and dance man and later movie star. And they always got along pretty well. And they’re obviously having a light moment in the picture.
William Barrow [00:25:45] That’s number 15. Any idea who these.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:25:49] Oh, yeah, this is Charles Lawton.
William Barrow [00:25:53] Charles Lawton, right.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:25:55] This is also at the El Dorado. This is usually where dad and stars came in. That’s where they went to hang out. And dad, at one time he also did nationwide tours. He had a show called “Don Juan in Hell” with Agnes Moorehead, Boyer, Lawton. And he toured the United States with it. In those days, you toured cities before you went to Broadway. And, you know, he had these very expensive act and he toured many cities and he just broken even with it. So it was a big risk to go to New York and he had a chance to sell it and he sold it and it went to New York and became an enormous hit. Had he hung onto it, he would have made really huge money.
William Barrow [00:26:44] So number 16 and 17 there.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:26:51] Bill Boehm could identify, I’m sure, the rest of these people, but I think it’s Agnes Moorehead, Lawton and Boyer.
William Barrow [00:27:00] I know you had a lot of non-photographic stuff. We’ve kind of been through. Well, wait a minute. There was a story about this.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:27:06] Oh, yeah, this is also the El Dorado. This was my father with. I believe this is Bellamy, who was an editor of the Plain Dealer and wrote the famous book “Looking Forward” or “Looking Backward.”
William Barrow [00:27:17] The what?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:27:18] It was a very famous book that.
William Barrow [00:27:20] Bellamy, the editor, “Cleveland Confused City on a Seesaw,” that one?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:27:23] No, it’s his book. It’s still the use of.
William Barrow [00:27:25] Oh, Bellamy “Looking Backward,” yeah, yeah, yeah.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:27:29] And I think that’s Bellamy and his son then Peter, was later the theatrical critic. My father and Schuschnigg, who was Austrian chancellor that was anti-Hitler in jail the first day Hitler went into Austria. And he later came to the United States and I think lived his years out here.
William Barrow [00:27:48] That’s number 18. I don’t know if I had. Oh, I meant to come back to this one, number 19.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:27:57] This was a lobby bar in the Alpine, later became a piano lounge.
William Barrow [00:28:03] So that was that little room you mentioned that was to the right as you came in off of Euclid?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:28:07] Yeah, I believe that’s. I think that’s this one.
William Barrow [00:28:12] I’ve seen that in postcards.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:28:14] Yeah, I believe that was.
William Barrow [00:28:19] Number 19. So, anyway, you had some menus and things like that. Was there anything special there?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:28:25] Go through some of this. That’s another picture with the wives, so you probably only need one of those. Dad also did a lot of testimonials. Here’s one he hosted as head of the Cleveland Restaurateur Association with Max Gruber and Charles Rohr and Vernon Stouffer and many others who were quite prominent at the time. And it was to honor Frank Monaco, Pop Weinberger and Luciani, whose son, I think, later became the very prominent architect here in town. Usually these things were done for charity.
William Barrow [00:29:27] What was the faire, what was typical?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:29:31] Here’s a menu from the Alpine. I don’t know the date on this, but you can guess. Let’s see, you could have a martini for 65 cents, you could have a Black Label beer for 30 cents. And remember, this was the most expensive place in town. Let’s see, what else did we have here? Boston sirloin steak, $3, lamb chops, $2 and milk, 10 cents. So you have the idea. Anyway, the cover shows dad overlooking the village where he grew up in Austria. And his trademark poem is, “Hail, guests, we ask not what thou art / your friend. We greet thee hand and heart / A stranger such no longer be, if full our love will conquer thee” And my mother saw that when she came as a job for a job singing opera. He had rooms that did opera. And she saw that poem and she wanted to meet the guy that would put that on a menu. And that’s how they got to know each other. So here’s. Oh, yes, my mother’s mother brought 15 children to adulthood into the world and ran a little restaurant and hotel in Austria until she was well into her 80s. And she came after the war at age 79 to visit. And she hadn’t seen my father really in 19 years, because the whole war period. Interesting story, at a different time, my father’s father came. He was only once in the US and he got a car and he drove around for a month. And at the end he came back, spent a few days with my father, and he hadn’t said a word about his trip. Well, finally, my father asked him as he’s getting ready to go, he said, well, what did you think of the US and he said, well, how could they build it all in just 200 years? You know, coming from the old country where construction wasn’t so common. One of the traditions in those days, when you went out to the Alpine or the El Dorado, you got a picture that you saved for posterity with your party at the time. And we brought a couple things of how that they were given. You bought the picture and then it came to your table here. This is somebody at the El Dorado.
William Barrow [00:32:46] Kind like the tradition of the guys on the street that would take you picture.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:32:50] Yeah, this is one that would be from the Alpine. Sometimes dad also did bigger stars. Here’s something he did at the Armory for the American Legion. He would produce shows for the major organizations in town as a way of helping them celebrate or to raise money for the favorite charity. He quietly, in the early days, helped raise a lot of money for the Cleveland Clinic with Crile. He would bring artists down that were entertaining and help entertain. Here’s an advertisement for the Alpine Village when Mickey Katz was a house band. That’s Joel Gray’s father. And I see also they had playing Duci de Kerekjarto, who was the greatest gypsy violinist in the world and that played, of course, the Hungarian community here.
William Barrow [00:33:59] I see he got punched by somebody once.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:34:02] Yes, he did. And never he was coming back from a fight and an organized prize fight. And he was set upon by some thugs and was really severely beaten up. And it was never solved. Never knew who did it.
William Barrow [00:34:17] Yeah. Reading the article there, he said something about he was just behind them and the crowd was pushing and they thought he was pushing.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:34:28] Well, hard to tell.
William Barrow [00:34:30] I see there was a little controversy at times about the show being too risqué.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:34:38] Well, you know, by today’s standard, it wouldn’t even get a yawn. But, you know, some shows pushed the envelope and. And there were controversies over that. But 30 years entertaining. I think they had these problems two or three times, but it’s. [Crosstalk; inaudible question from interview facilitator]. Well, I think this is before my time. With Faith Bacon. Though I’ve heard the stories. These women would come out. There was a fan dancer, Sally Rand and you know, naked or not, you couldn’t ever see too much because of the lighting and the way she moved the fans. And this one is somebody, Faith Bacon. And I’ll read the press account of it here. That was just given to me. This was at the showboat during the Cleveland Exposition. “Faith Bacon was dickering late today to lead a nudist review on the Showboat. She was exuberant, as demonstrated to reporters how she does her new spotlight strut, a dance in which she forgets to dress, but dances in the moonlight while the spotlight plays over various parts of her body.” And the controversy is, was she really naked or was she wearing a skin outfit and really not naked? And that was because of the lighting, you couldn’t tell.
William Barrow [00:3
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