Pastrami on Rye

by Ted Merwin

  115. Gastwirt, Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness, 78–79.

  116. “Ending a Scandal,” Yiddishes Tageblatt/Jewish Daily News (4/5/1922), 8.

  117. “75 Years Ago in the Forward,” Jewish Daily Forward (3/9/2007).

  Chapter 2. From a Sandwich to a National Institution

  1. There are three published versions of this scene; the only one that contains the delicatessen references is the one that Groucho printed in his scrapbook, The Groucho Phile. But improvisation was an integral part of vaudeville, and since Groucho performed this scene for years, ad-libbing all the while, there is no way to know when the delicatessen references were introduced. Groucho Marx, The Groucho Phile: An Illustrated Life (New York: Galahad Books, 1979), 41.

  2. See Samuel Zanvel Pipe, “Napoleon in Jewish Folklore,” in YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, vol. 1 (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1946), 294; and Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 226.

  3. Deborah Dash Moore, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).

  4. George Jean Nathan, “Clinical Notes: The Sandwich,” American Mercury 8 (5–8/1926): 237–238.

  5. Despite the popularity of competitive eating, its dangers are coming to public attention, especially after a man choked to death while competing in a hot-dog-eating contest in South Dakota on July 4, 2014. “Man Dies at South Dakota Hot Dog Eating Contest,” New York Times (from the Associated Press) (7/8/2014).

  6. Roger Abrahams, “The Language of Festivals: Celebrating the Economy,” in Victor Turner, ed., Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), 161–177.

  7. Allan Sherman and Bud Burtson, The Golden Touch, unpublished ms., Du 27189 (registered on 4/2/51), Library of Congress, act 1, scene 1, p. 3. Thanks to Mark Cohen for sharing a copy of the manuscript with me. For a discussion of the musical, see Mark Cohen, Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013), 58–66.

  8. See Ted Merwin, “The American Dream, on Rye,” New York Jewish Week (12/11/2012).

  9. Jack Waldron, “Max’s Delicatessen,” undated ms., *T-Mss 2008–001, Smith and Dale Papers, Additions (1898–1987), Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library.

  10. Marx, Harpo Speaks, 166.

  11. Nathan, “Clinical Notes,” 237–238.

  12. Jim Heimann, Make I Take Your Order? American Menu Design, 1920–1960 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998), 16.

  13. Earl Wilson, “Famous Lindy’s Waiters,” Beaver County (PA) Times (9/19/1969).

  14. Jerome Charyn, Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway (New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2003), 9.

  15. Curled, tinted strips of paper—or cellophane—were emblematic of the delicatessen; the humorist George S. Kaufman, satirizing Life magazine’s “Calendar” for October 17, 1922, joked that it was that date when the “last New York delicatessen store [stopped] using colored paper sauerkraut for window decoration.” Quoted in Simon Louvish, Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers (New York: Macmillan, 2000), 166.

  16. Montague Glass, “Kosher Restaurants,” Saturday Evening Post (8/3/1929).

  17. Arnold Manoff, “Reuben and His Restaurant—The Lore of a Sandwich,” interview with Arnold Reuben, conducted on December 18, 1938, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1940, MSS55715: Box A722, Folklore Project, Life Histories, 1936–39, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

  18. Nowadays, by contrast, fewer than two dozen shows open on Broadway each year.

  19. For the Jewish involvement in Hollywood, see Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1989). For the Jewish involvement in Broadway, see Merwin, In Their Own Image.

  20. Rian James, Dining in New York (New York: John Day, 1930), 29.

  21. Michael Alexander, Jazz Age Jews (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 63.

  22. Manoff, “Reuben and His Restaurant.”

  23. Max Asnas, Corned Beef Confucius (Kimberly 11006, n.d.), LP.

  24. Gutterman reported on plans, which did not come to fruition, to make a biopic about Asnas, with Edward G. Robinson considered for the lead. Gutterman quoted the sportswriter Murray Robinson to the effect that Asnas “moves serenely through a maze of comical woes which would unhorse a lesser spirit. Max has troubles with customers, partners, comedians, mustard pots, waiters, chefs, panhandlers, countermen, horse players and grammar. He beats them all down without drawing a deep breath.” Leon Gutterman, “Our Film Folk,” Canadian Jewish Chronicle (7/23/1954), 8.

  25. Martin Kalmanoff (pseud. Marty Kenwood), Aaron Schroeder (pseud. Matt Kingsley), and Eddie White, “When Mighty Maxie Makes with the Delicatessen,” undated ms., Martin Kalmanoff Papers, 1928–2002, Box 100, Folder 47, Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library.

  26. Others claim that the iconic sandwich was invented by a cook in Reuben’s Delicatessen, who named it after his boss. But the sandwich is also attributed to Reuben Kulakofsky, a wholesale grocer in Omaha, Nebraska, who played a weekly poker game with a group of men who fixed their own sandwiches to eat while they played. The Reuben eventually appeared on the menu of The Blackstone, a local hotel that was owned by Kulakofsky’s poker buddy Charles Schimmel. The story about Annette Seelos is almost certainly fabricated, since Chaplin was making a film in Hollywood at the time, and in any event there is no record of an Annette (whom Reuben also referred to as “Anna”) Selos appearing in any of Chaplin’s films. Furthermore, just as there are a number of competing stories about how the Reuben came to be, there are many variations on the Reuben. The 1920s menu lists a number of “Reuben” sandwiches, including Club a la Reuben Special, Reuben’s Special, Reuben’s Paradise, Reuben’s Tongue Delite, and Reuben’s Turkey Sandwich with Russian Dressing.

  27. Program for Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, 17, Ziegfeld Follies File, Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library.

  28. Quoted in Jane Stern and Michael Stern, Roadfood Sandwiches: Recipes and Lore from Our Favorite Shops Coast to Coast (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), 227.

  29. Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyon (New York: Penguin, 1992), 93. Oddly, Runyon seems to have associated delis with fish more than with meat; instead of writing that a character “ate” in a deli, he coined the expression “tore a herring.” Woody Allen employs this expression in one of his novels. When Allen’s narrator serves his nanny—who is writing a vituperative tell-all book about her employers—poisoned tea, she exclaims, “Gee, this is something new. We never tore a herring at eleven-thirty in the A.M.” Woody Allen, Mere Anarchy (New York: Random House, 2008), 62.

  30. Irving Berlin, “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” copyrighted 8/21/1929; introduced by Harry Richman and Joan Bennett in the film Puttin’ on the Ritz, directed by Edward Sloman (United Artists Productions, 1930).

  31. See Ralph Keyes, I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech (New York: Macmillan, 2009), 246.

  32. See Merwin, In Their Own Image.

  33. Leon de Costa, typescript of Kosher Kitty Kelly, Library of Congress, act 2, p. 11. For a longer discussion of the play, see Merwin, In Their Own Image, 105–109.

  34. Private Izzy Murphy, directed by Lloyd Bacon (Warner Brothers, 1926).

  35. See Ted Merwin, “The Performance of Jewish Ethnicity in Anne Nichols’ Abie’s Irish Rose,” Journal of American Ethnic History 20.2 (2001): 3–37.

  36. The Delicatessen Kid, directed by Walter Fabian (Universal, 1929).

  37. See Ted Merwin, “Serving Up Food with Attitude,” New York Jewish Week (4/3/2009).

  38. The writer Sharon Rudnick has recalled that it was a “mixed ble
ssing to get her because she was so incredibly slow. But she was so entertaining it made up for the service.” Quoted in Sue Fishkoff, Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority (New York: Schocken, 2010), 91. When Kassner was encouraged to retire, she sued the deli for age discrimination; she won the suit, but only after she had already passed away at the age of eighty-three. Thomas Zambito, “Dead Waitress Wins Harass Suit,” New York Daily News (4/30/2009).

  39. Earl Wilson, “Famous Lindy’s Waiters,” Beaver County (PA) Times (9/19/1969).

  40. Alan Richman, “Oldest Living,” GQ (10/2000), http://www.gq.com/food-travel/alan-richman/200602/professonial-jewish-waiter. Spelling error in original.

  41. Robert Sylvester, “The Broadway Gang Eats Here,” Saturday Evening Post (7/15/1961), 51.

  42. Dorothy Sue Cobble, Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 34.

  43. “No Hashers: Waitresses Must Have Tact and Charm,” Literary Digest (5/1/1937), 26–27.

  44. Levine, “Pastrami Land,” 67.

  45. “Pesach Burstein, Vol. 1,” Pesach Burstein, Judaica Sound Archives, Florida Atlantic University, http://www.faujsa.fau.edu/burstein. Special thanks to Mike Burstyn (son of Pesach Burstein) and to Mark Altman for help in translating the song. Burstein’s five albums of recordings for Columbia can be accessed through the Judaica Sound Archives on the website of the Florida Atlantic University. See also Eric Byron, “English Acquisition by Immigrants (1880–1940): The Confrontation as Reflected in Early Sound Recordings,” Columbia Journal of American Studies, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cjas/byron1.html (accessed 2/2/2009).

  46. Ethel Somers, “Glorifying the Home Dinner,” Liberty (1/29/1927), 67.

  47. Untitled article, Life (11/1/1929), 16.

  48. Daniel Fuchs, Homage to Blenholt (London: Constable, 1936), 242.

  49. “With the Procession,” Everybody’s Magazine 10.1 (1904): 709.

  50. L. H. Robins, “Rest for the Delicatessen Man?,” New York Times (8/15/1937), 117.

  51. Bertram Beinitz, “Our Town and Its Folk: A Delicatessen and Some Others,” New York Times (3/29/1925), XX2.

  52. “Says ‘Delicatessen Wife’ Is Grounds for a Divorce,” New York Times (5/2/1925), 17.

  53. “Poor Meals Break Homes,” New York Times (9/16/1920), 8.

  54. Florence Guy Seabury, “The Delicatessen Husband,” in The Delicatessen Husband: And Other Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926), 31.

  55. Seabury, “The Delicatessen Husband,” 29.

  56. Seabury, “The Delicatessen Husband,” 42.

  57. Silas Bent, Machine Made Man (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1930), 33.

  58. Arthur Kober, “Nobody Can Beat Friedkin’s Meats,” in Harold U. Ribalow, ed., A Treasury of American Jewish Stories (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1958), 223.

  59. Jo Sinclair, Wasteland (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1946), 105.

  60. “News Plan,” Printer’s Ink 114 (3/24/1921), 79.

  61. Montague Glass, “Welcome to New York: Fishbein and Blintz Discuss New York versus the Rest of the U.S.,” Life 80 (8/31/1922), 20.

  62. “Standard Meals? Enter the Delicatessen,” Baltimore Sun (11/7/1926), E23.

  63. “Standard Meals?,” E23.

  64. Robins, “Rest for the Delicatessen Man?”

  65. Louise Gertner, “What New York Eats in the Hot Summer Days,” Yiddish Daily Forward (7/27/1937), 4.

  66. S. J. Wilson, Hurray for Me (New York: Crown, 1964), 98. In a review of the novel in the Chicago Tribune, the critic Digby Whitman wrote, “[It] glows with the unique warmth of what I can only call the tribal life of the underprivileged Jew.” Digby B. Whitman, “Luminous Novel Re-creates Small Child’s World,” Chicago Tribune (2/23/1964), L1.

  67. Thomas F. Dwyer to Benjamin Koenigsberg (6/16/1931), Benjamin Koenigsberg Collection, Box 11, Folder 1, Yeshiva University Archives. Reported numbers of kosher delicatessens fluctuated widely. Two years earlier, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, there were approximately two thousand nominally kosher delicatessens in New York City, along with ten thousand kosher butchers, although half of all these were found to be in noncompliance with strict kosher regulations. “Seek Greater Enforcement of Kashruth Laws in New York,” Jewish Criterion (Pittsburgh, PA) (6/7/1929), 4.

  68. Samuel Popkin, “The Delicatessen Industry,” Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine (5/1932), 12–13, Dorot Jewish Division, New York Public Library.

  69. Popkin, “The Delicatessen Industry,” 13.

  70. David Ward and Oliver Zunz, The Landscape of Modernity: New York City, 1900–1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 266.

  71. See A. H. Raskin’s review of Max Danish’s The World of David Dubinsky, in which Raskin criticizes the book for failing to provide “an adequate sense of personal piquancy of a union leader as full of spice as the pastrami and pickled tomatoes he loves to munch at Lindy’s or the Stage Delicatessen.” A. H. Raskin, “The Man behind the Union,” New York Times (11/10/1957), 306.

  72. Daniel Rogov, “You Expected Maybe Pâté de Foie Gras?,” in Daniel Rogov, David Gershon, and David Louison, The Rogue’s Guide to the Jewish Kitchen (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post Press, 1984), 23.

  73. Laurie Ochoa, “Just What Is a Delicatessen Supposed to Look Like, Anyway?,” Los Angeles Times (3/11/1990), 99.

  74. Ruth Glazer, “West Bronx: Food, Shelter, Clothing,” Commentary (6/1949), 582.

  75. According to the report, 98 percent of cattle and also 98 percent of calves that were slaughtered in New York were killed according to the kosher laws; however, only about half of the meat consumed by the city’s inhabitants was slaughtered locally. “Half of All Meat Used in New York Is Kosher,” Jewish Daily News (5/29/1921), 16.

  76. Jacob Cohn, The Royal Table: An Outline of the Dietary Laws of Israel (New York: Bloch, 1936).

  77. “Dietary Laws of ‘The Royal Table,’” Literary Digest 123 (1/2/1937), 28.

  78. “Feeding the City,” Works Progress Administration Study (8/15/1940), New York City Municipal Archives.

  79. Interview with the author, 6/9/2005.

  80. Jenna Weissman Joselit, The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880–1950 (New York: Picador, 2002), 177.

  81. See Mordechai Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American-Jewish Life (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1994). Rabbi Ezra Finkelstein, son of Louis Finkelstein, one of the most prominent rabbis of his day, recalls his father lunching during the mid-1920s at a kosher delicatessen with Cyrus Adler, then president of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Adler ordered a sandwich, while Finkelstein requested a cup of tea. An Orthodox Jewish passerby wearing a black hat and a long beard came into the restaurant and asked them, in Yiddish, if the restaurant hewed to strict standards of kashrut. Finkelstein, not wanting to get into a discussion of why he was having only a cup of tea (which could indeed indicate a lack of trust in the restaurant’s standards with regard to food), shrugged his shoulders. The man took a look at Adler, who was clean shaven, and said to Finkelstein, in Yiddish, “So this other fellow is a non-Jew?” Ezra Finkelstein, e-mail to the author, 11/3/2010.

  82. Moore, At Home in America, 75.

  83. Moore, At Home in America, 76.

  84. Willensky, When Brooklyn Was the World, 190.

  85. Isidore P. Salupsky, “An Open Letter to the Storekeepers,” Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine (1/1932), 11.

  86. Isidore P. Salupsky, “What a Delicatessen Man Should Remember,” Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine (6/1932), 11.

  87. “Delicatessen—A Necessary Luxury,” Voice of the Delicatessen Industry (1940), Center for Jewish History, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

  88. Interview with the author, 1/7/2002.

  89. Ruth Glazer, “From the American Scene: One Touch of Delicatessen,” Commentary (3/1946), 62.

  90. Interview wit
h the author, 9/4/2007.

  91. Interview with the author, 8/13/2003

  92. Interview with the author, 2/12/2005.

  93. Interview with the author, 2/10/2005.

  94. Kazin, Walker in the City, 34.

  95. Midrash Tanhuma, Genesis 1. The Torah refers to itself as eish da’at, “fiery law.” Deuteronomy 33:2.

  96. Naomi Seidman, “Alfred Kazin and the Great Beyond,” JBooks.com, n.d., http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/IP_Seidman_Kazin.htm.

  97. Kazin, Walker in the City, 40.

  98. The irony of children watching shoot-’em-up films at the local movie theater was not lost on Goldfried, who knew that the headquarters of Murder Inc., the Italian-Jewish organized crime syndicate, was located in a nearby candy store called Midnight Rose’s. But Goldfried was fearless. When Louis Capone (whom many mistakenly assumed to be related to Al Capone) and a group of his associates came in after Prohibition to persuade the deli owner to buy King’s Beer, a brand that they controlled, he bravely told them to get lost.