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 [00:36:18] I didn’t ask, do you mind if I took the picture? I ask after we take them you notice. Sorry.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:36:28] Well, these are just. I mean, virtually every week you’d have article or ads running like this in the Cleveland paper. I mean, we must have hundreds of them tucked away. But it’s a way of cataloging who played at a given time. And of course, they all played. New Year’s was a big time at the Alpine. Was always sold out way in advance. I don’t think they ever had an un-sold out New Year’s, you know, which means they put between the clubs, I don’t know, 400 some people or more. It’s my first entree in the show business. That’s me.
William Barrow [00:37:05] Oh, that’s you.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:37:07] I’m looking at a baby picture. Because New Year’s I was the baby symbol. Oh. Something she hasn’t seen.
William Barrow [00:37:18] He’s been holding out.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:37:21] “This Week in Cleveland” was showing up at all the hotels and dad graced the cover umpteen million times. This one from 1938. And some of these others are people that would be playing at the Alpine if Dad wasn’t on it. People that were playing. And sometimes he would do big shows or something he did at the Music Hall and the Public Auditorium in 1951. There’s a dad in the tuxedo era. Not quite sure who that’s with him.
William Barrow [00:38:15] This is the post-lederhosen era.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:38:17] Yeah. We have pictures which we can get to at a later time that hang in his apartment that you saw, some of the Broadway stars that came in and the great writers. You still have, we noticed a place called Windsor’s on Euclid Avenue. Windsor French was theatre reviewer and later went national.
William Barrow [00:38:45] Windsors is still there.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:38:47] What’s the name of that hotel? It’s the Wyndham Hotel.
William Barrow [00:38:52] Oh, okay.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:38:56] This is again, pretty early 1029. That’s at least early 50s or 40s. And here you have. Looks like some of the Boltons, which were a prominent family here. This is promotional material. This might be a good one. Pictures of some of the acts that came in.
William Barrow [00:39:49] You got a pretty good little trove of material here.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:39:52] Yeah, there’s a time when this guy was with his NBC Orchestra.
William Barrow [00:39:59] Frankie the Lip.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:40:00] Yeah, Strasik. And he was in name act and known. And that’s when they were doing the network radio out of the club. See, this was risqué for the showgirls that came out to do dance at the time. Here’s one with Artie Shaw, who just died and kept a little bit in touch with dad. He sent greetings to dad’s 97th birthday.
William Barrow [00:40:27] Oh, really?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:40:28] Maybe the greatest clarinetist of all time for jazz. I mean, people in symphony orchestras listen to him recording at his peak. And it just, you know, just consensus is nobody played it better ever.
William Barrow [00:40:42] Yeah.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:40:45] This would be like the Rolling Stones in his day.
Emily Miller [00:40:48] What was the heyday of the Alpine Village?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:40:52] Late 30s, 40s, early 50s?
Emily Miller [00:40:59] If someone were to walk in, you know, what would they see?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:41:04] Well, you would come in the door and the first thing would be the coat rack. Because even in the summer, gentlemen wore hats often. And it would be somebody, a very well dressed woman that would take your coats and check you in. And in the heyday, there was a line. So first you had to be in the line unless you were regular and could get to the front. But there were lines in the heydays, you know, a couple blocks just to get in. And if you didn’t have reservations, you were in bad shape. But you would come in and you would meet one of a couple maitre d’s that would help to seat you. Some people came in because the food was good and would come in and just eat dinner before the show. And that was important also because there’s a very heavy entertainment tax. So if you ate before, you didn’t pay. There was a controversy actually, at one time. But then you would have. Maybe the band would play a little bit and couples would get up and dance. And then at one moment, the head of the band would say, “Showtime, it’s showtime.” And the lights would dim and you’d see the stage rising up. And my father would come bounding up on the stage and begin with his monologue and would gradually introduce the acts that would come in and out. And you shouldn’t say they were simply singers because we had great magicians, like the female magician, Dell O’Dell, being around. [00:42:44] I understood how a lot of the magic was done. But she created the illusion of palming a goldfish, which I never figured out. She’d have this strapless dress and she’d be going around and all of a sudden, there’s this goldfish. And she put it in the goldfish bowl and it would swim.
William Barrow [00:43:03] Where did it come from?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:43:04] Yeah. And you had others, people that would do impression work with dummies like Señor Wences. I don’t know if you remember that. He had this box where the dummy would pop out. He was famous for saying “S’ariiight! S’ariiight!” And great musicians. Carmen Cavallaro, the poet of piano, I can think of Nelson Eddy. And of course, all the comedians there were there.
William Barrow [00:43:39] Now, how many of them came to Cleveland to do this? Or how many were coming for something else and doing this act?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:43:44] No, there were. There was a circuit. So you would play the Latin Quarter in New York, which was run by Lou Walters, by the way, Barbara Walters father. And you might do the Empire Room at the Waldorf Astoria. And then your next stop would be Cleveland. Then some people would go up to the Elmwood Casino, was not a casino, but it was named a casino, which is in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river in Detroit. Then you would go to Chicago, which would be the Palmer House, sometimes Mr. Kelly’s. And then there was nothing. You went out to Los Angeles and to the Coconut Grove or something like that.
William Barrow [00:44:24] Wasn’t anything in St. Louis?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:44:27] Not that I remember, I mean, you know, I was still pretty young then, so I may be missing some things, but. So it was a circuit.
William Barrow [00:44:38] Well, I got the impression from George Condon that there was also a certain amount of people coming by after other shows.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:44:47] Oh, well, that happened at El Dorado, if they played one of the major theaters, if it was a major act. In the 30s, Caruso, for instance, showed up at the Alpine after shows, or if Sinatra was in town or Dean Martin was a regular at the Howland House. And he was nightly. During all the years he was in Cleveland, at El Dorado, he was keeping office hours there. I mean, literally, he was there every night. So it was quite a grouping of people. Ernest Hemingway came when he was through town. Closer to home, the great writer of “The Rains Came,” who wrote from Paris and then in Hollywood, Louis Bromfield. It’s his place in Mansfield. Everybody forgets it’s where Bacall and Bogart got married at his place. [00:45:44] So, you know, he would come up and it was just a place to hang out. If you were in the arts, if you were writing or artists, visual artists came, but the performing artists and the newspaper people.
Emily Miller [00:46:01] So one not to jump too far ahead, but one. And why did the Alpine close?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:46:07] Well, it went out of vogue and the business simply wasn’t there. And finally went belly up, you know. And two things happened that my father credits for these clubs closing. It wasn’t just Alpine. They don’t exist anywhere. We were one of the last to continue. Most of them went in other cities, went belly up earlier. But when you began to see all these major acts on Ed Sullivan, then it took some of the glitter out of it because you could watch them on TV and, you know, TV in the 50s, it was a big thing, so you stayed home. And then it became the suburbs put people further and further away. They didn’t want to drive town. And. And coming downtown or leaving downtown became a little dangerous. Going through certain neighborhoods that maybe weren’t as safe as they could be. And those are the two things he credited with killing it. Yeah, the time just passed.
William Barrow [00:47:04] Yeah.
Emily Miller [00:47:05] And when was that?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:47:07] I think the last show in the Alpine would have been in the mid-60s, probably. It shut once and then reopened and didn’t last too much longer.
William Barrow [00:47:18] Of course, by then. Your dad’s in his 60s, isn’t he?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:47:22] Dad is, yeah, he’s in his 60s.
William Barrow [00:47:26] Sliding across the stage with 26 beer steins.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:47:28] Well, that he wasn’t doing anymore. But, you know, he was, you know, even early 80s. He was on a cruise down Latin America where the boat stopped and people that wanted to could kind of come down the lower deck and go into the warm waters. Well, he drove off the third deck. So what do we have? These are. Oh, this is a better view of the Hofbräuhaus.
William Barrow [00:48:01] This is what?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:48:02] The Hofbräuhaus on 425 Euclid. And this is 1940s Alpine Village. Still done in largely German theme because of the chairs, the wormy walnut, but showing what side of the war effort everybody’s on by carrying the flag. Dad set all kinds of records for selling war bonds in those days.
William Barrow [00:48:33] This is the view from basically from the front door coming in, then from.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:48:36] The front door coming in. Here’s advertising. Those Hawaiians you saw when they were working them, I guess they were working the El Dorado.
William Barrow [00:48:56] So what’d your father do after the Alpine closed?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:49:00] Well, he.
William Barrow [00:49:01] 40 some years.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:49:03] He did a variety of things. He owned a retail shop in Severance when that was hot. He did tours abroad for people that wanted to travel internationally.
William Barrow [00:49:16] Okay. The guy who would lead the tours and commentary.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:49:22] Yeah, just people liked to travel with him because he was still the personality.
William Barrow [00:49:25] Yeah.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:49:30] Oh, this was a funny guy. You can guess he was a funny guy just to look at him.
William Barrow [00:49:36] Yeah.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:49:40] Jimmy Savo. Here’s New Year’s Eve ’58.
William Barrow [00:49:47] Leave Chaplin far behind.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:49:50] Well, you know, when you’re promoting, you’re permitted some exaggeration, but he was puffing the goods. The greatest juggler I ever saw there is Bobby May. And sometimes on public TV you can see footage of the routine he did. And I watched that in person a number of times. It’s the damnedest thing you ever saw in your life what he did.
William Barrow [00:50:19] I can imagine.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:50:19] It’s another photo cover from El Dorado. Here’s wine and liquor list, 1933. So we couldn’t figure out the time from the earlier one. So the drought beer 15 cents. Bottled beer, Waldorf and all other local bottled beer 20 cents.
William Barrow [00:50:45] Yeah, so that’s a little less. Did have a martini on there. He had martini at 65 cents on the other one.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:50:52] All right, well, I can tell you paid good attention to that. Let’s see. There has to be a martini. Of course.
William Barrow [00:50:59] I was just thinking how good a half dozen martinis would be. I could afford them.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:51:03] Yeah. Martini 35 cents.
William Barrow [00:51:09] Half the time price.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:51:10] Yeah, 35 cents in 1933. Oh, and here’s something they did for the bride. All the brides got one of these when they came in. Oh yeah. Dad sponsored the first post war, some of the first post war activities of the Trapp family, memorializing “The Sound of Music.” They came from the adjoining valley to the Pirchners in Austria.
William Barrow [00:52:00] Sounds like a natural fit.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:52:02] Yeah, some of our early relatives were involved with them in music.
William Barrow [00:52:11] I was just trying to recreate Euclid Avenue.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:52:16] Oh, well, in the 50s. I was a kid. I’m born in 1946, but.
William Barrow [00:52:25] Me too, January […].
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:52:26] I thought you were distinguished.
William Barrow [00:52:28] January […] for me.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:52:30] When were you? June […]. So I will have to defer to my elder’s judgment if we disagree. But it was crowded always on the streets, there were no empty stores. And walk from Playhouse Square to the Terminal Tower you really had to watch because it was crowded. All the stores were full and at nighttime people were on the streets. So walk down it now and it’s a little bit different. But you know, one thing my father said, you know, downtowns may stay dormant, but they don’t die. So at some time you may see some revitalization and it’s, you know, what does it take to revive a city? Sometimes it’s just one person. Look what happened with Rockefeller here or Bill Gates in Seattle. What if Bill Gates were a Clevelander?
William Barrow [00:53:26] Yeah.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:53:28] There’s a lot of wonderful infrastructure here.
William Barrow [00:53:31] It always seems like the characters before, oh, I don’t know, before 1960, before 1950. The first half of the century seem to have had some really larger than life characters we don’t have today.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:53:46] Well, that’s the more plain vanilla. You don’t see the characters. That’s true. I think I had run of the Alpine as a kid growing up and, you know, with exception of a few people I was told not to talk to because anybody could come in and some of them were rough, you know, I could talk to everybody there. And yeah, there were characters. Even the heads of Fortune 500 corporations were of a much different cloth than you have now.
William Barrow [00:54:16] Yeah, yeah. They just doesn’t seem like there’s those kind of people around. I don’t know, maybe 50 years from now we’ll look back and think that Sam Miller or Mike White or somebody was a legendary character. But somehow I don’t think they’re going to be in the Tom L. Johnson, Van Sweringen mold.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:54:34] Yeah, well, there’s not as many of them either. You know, I’m sure the guys you mentioned would do fine, you know, if they were born 40 years ago or 30 years ago, because they’re personalities, but yeah, I think there were more of them.
William Barrow [00:54:47] Yeah. I don’t know. Are there any Herman Pirchners out there in modern Cleveland? I don’t even know who’s running restaurants these days, I guess.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:54:54] Well, I don’t know, but maybe one will arise. Maybe somebody or you build an Alpine Village in that parking lot with a different name.
William Barrow [00:55:04] There you go. You got your retirement all set up for you. Who better?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:55:10] Well, my father was never very political and my businesses is foreign affairs. I live in Washington. But, you know, he sometimes would joke, you know, “Are you sure you didn’t go into entertainment after all?”
William Barrow [00:55:25] Yeah. How’d you get into that?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:55:30] I mean, you know, people are drawn to different things and I was always drawn to. To history and international affairs.
William Barrow [00:55:40] I saw your father was talking here about a German-Austrian union. And I don’t know how political he was, but.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:55:52] My father has less interest in politics than about anybody. I mean, being a restaurateur, you have to talk about everything. But he prefers to talk about music. Always. Music, entertainment, poetry, maybe philosophy, but not too much interest in politics.
William Barrow [00:56:15] Do you have any.
Emily Miller [00:56:19] Well, you might want to say where. You mentioned the parking lot. Could you explain if someone’s walking down Euclid Avenue, where it was.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:56:28] Well, if you started at the Hanna building and started walking towards Cleveland State on the same side, it would be where the first parking lot on the right is.
William Barrow [00:56:42] Just past the Christian Science Reading room.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:56:45] Yeah.
William Barrow [00:56:45] Little building there that’s still there.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:56:47] Yeah. I think there might have been another building torn down. But in that large parking lot as well, where it’s at, the number was 1614.
William Barrow [00:56:54] And there’s something, I think, that’s still up that almost right on the corner. I have to go back and look.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:57:02] But, you know, if you’re thinking about Euclid Avenue in the heydays, you definitely should talk to Bill Boehm about it, because he was there and he was there nightly. Who was this Bill Boehm? The founder of the Singing Angels. And he’s quite lucid, and I’m sure will have a lot of memories and he can steer you to others that might be around from that time.
William Barrow [00:57:23] Yeah, well, George, of course, talks about it all the time.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:57:25] Well, he was, you know, he was in the audience often.
William Barrow [00:57:31] Entertainment editor.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:57:32] Yeah. He writes so well, too. He wrote well. I bump into his son occasionally in Washington.
William Barrow [00:57:42] Oh, do you?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:57:42] Yeah, we were at a funeral for a Plain Dealer reporter that died.
William Barrow [00:57:48] His name’s George, too, isn’t it?
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:57:49] Yeah.
William Barrow [00:57:50] That’s interesting. George Condon and Herman Pirchner get together in Washington.
Herman Pirchner Jr. [00:58:00] Good. All right.
William Barrow [00:58:01] Thank you.
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