Looking for Mabel Normand

 

Mabel Normand’s Birthday Party

Marilyn Slater

Looking for Mabel

November 5, 2009

 

On November 10, I will eat my piece of chocolate cake and play a couple of Mabel Normand movies, which is my way of celebrating her birthday.  In 1923 Mabel gave a party for Mae Busch, it was just the lovely and sweet kind of reconciliation that Mabel was known for; she was such a generous soul.  

Awhile ago, I did an article on Mae Busch, if you haven’t read it rather than go over the history of ‘the girls’ please take a minute or two to read what I had found as it will make the Mildred Spain column of July 1, 1923 make a lot more sense and you will understand what a charming act this was.

 

http://www.freewebs.com/looking-for-mabel/maebusch.htm

To Mae Busch—“who is eternally ever popular!"

 

 

“PERHAPS IT’S MORE,

BUT THE CAKE SAID “Eighteen”

 

July 1, 1923, pg C1

Chicago Daily Tribune

By Mildred Spain.

 

Los Angeles, Cal – (special correspondence.) – Mae Busch’s birthday party at the Montmartre cafe led the social parade this week.  It really wasn’t Mae’s 18th birthday, but that is what the cake said that was planned and decorated by Mabel Normand.

 

Carmel Myers, Paul Bern, June Mathis, Mabel Normand, Corinne Griffith, Juliann Johnston, Joe Jackson, Walter Moronco, and Goodman Bradley helped to celebrate the event.  Miss Busch explained that if it weren’t for the thoughtfulness of Mabel Normand there would be a few more candles to tell the story.

 

Miss Busch wore an attractive sage green dinner gown with Egyptian jewelry.  Scarlet velvet decorated Carmel Myers, while June Mathis afforded a contrast in a straight white beaded evening gown.  Mabel Normand chose a summery Bouo Scours model with a wide black sash of moiré.  Lovely is the word to describe, Corinne Griffith in her Frances gown of black lace and odd black head-dress.”

 

 

 

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Montmartre Café

6753 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles

 

by Marilyn Slater

 

Adolph “Eddie” Brandstatter was born in France and was trained in Paris, London and New York, in all the niceties of restaurant management.  The originally name of the Montmartre Café was the Sixty Club as it was located in 6000 block of Hollywood Boulevard; the Italian Renaissance Palazzo designed by Meyer and Holler, still exists with very little modification.  Brandstatter a gifted restaurateur in a partnership with Hollywood real estate developer, C. E. Toberman built this landmark; it cost over $150,000, which translates into almost 2 million dollars in 2009 money.  Next to the Montmartre Cafe was another of Brandstatter club, the Embassy.  Later he went on to create with the help of architects A. C. Balch and R. W. Schindler, Sardi’s; it was located just down the boulevard at 6163, it was a magnificent example of the art deco style.   

 

The Montmartre Café was located on the second floor of the building; the ground floor held a bank, (now wasn’t that convenient, if you happen to be short on your restaurant bill, you could pop down stairs for a loan.)  The Montmartre opened January 22, 1923, the very year that Mabel Normand gave an 18th Birthday party for Mae Busch. The café catered to the temperament of its guests and the guests vied with each other to host the most elaborate dinner parties.  Brandstatter introduced the “Bachelor’s Table,” which provided handsome men as dancing partners for ladies, who might be lunching.  At the Bachelor’s Table at one sitting might be agent Charles Byer, actor Antonio Moreno, writer Edgar Wallace, director Harry Edwards. The place was noted for the roaring, wild parties, which helped give the era the reputation as the “Roaring Twenties”.  The Montmartre’s maitre d’ were reported to be “tanned and handsome and always in a white-linen suit.”

 

Eddie Brandstatter was said to be one of the original partners with Lyman and Baron Long in the Sunset Inn another great place where Mabel Normand and her friends danced in the early days. There is some information in the article about “Mabel’s Kidnapping of Eddie Cantor,” regarding the clubs and restaurants where Mabel partied.

 

“The mystery of the ukulele player”

http://looking-for-mabel.webs.com/eddiecantor.htm

 

During Prohibition, if you knew your waiter and he knew you, he would serve you a nice shot of bootleg gin in a teacup.  Amazing prices were paid for this service.  Even at the beginning of the Great Depression the Montmartre Café was one of the most popular places for star glazing and for the elite of the city to “sip tea” and dance, at what were euphemistically called tea-dances.  Aside from Mabel and her funny friends, Joan Crawford was at many Saturday afternoon “tea-dances” winning a number of Charleston contests.  There were also evenings of white-tie and violins. Many greats haunted the café; Hoot Gibson took Sally Rand there, Harry Cohn and Dorothy Revier and yes, Gloria Swanson; they were all regulars.  Louella Parson would table-hop asking: “Any news, dear?”  Bing Crosby crooned in 1930 at the Montmartre and wooed the lovely Dixie Lee.  The time came when guests stop paying the huge tabs and Brandstatter had a hard time asking them to pay up. Montmartre was bankrupt by 1932; the Depression took its toll.   

 

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Another comment found in the Chicago Daily Tribune, the article was a gift from film historian, William M. Drew. It is a delightful Will Rogers quip. 

 

“Miss Busch along with Theda Bara is a ‘reformed vamp.’  Will Rogers, however, whishes the vamps wouldn’t reform.

 

“I always go to the Theda Bara pictures,” he said at a party this week in his Beverly Hills home.  “She’s always fightn’ for her virtue.  And I know one day she’s going to loss that fight.”

 

 

Mabel Normand dreamed of becoming a Vamp

 

The whole reprint is at the bottom of this piece, it is pretty easy to read so I didn’t transcribe the whole thing, but I think you will find some fantastic stories in it. (thanks William)

Vogue editor Eleanor Philips recalls the Montmartre’s maitre d’ as “tanned and handsome and always in a white-linen suit”

Barefoot on barbed wire: is the autobiography of Jimmy Starr, he tells of his forty-year as a Hollywood screenwriter, publicist, press agent and gossip columnist. He wrote columns for the Los Angeles Herald-Express and the New York Daily Mirror and Sunday Daily Mirror.  He writes of Brandstatter ups and downs but nothing of Mabel Normand.

1923, July 1;  Mildred Spain, Chicago Daily Tribune, pg C1

http://www.themlhollywood.com/history.html

www.johnnymercer.com/sheets/195.jpg

http://looking-for-mabel.webs.com/eddiecantor.htm

http://www.freewebs.com/looking-for-mabel/maebusch.htm