The Studs Terkel Reader_My American Century

by Studs Terkel

  I would come back after that and I’d just say: Gee, these are just two separate, separate worlds.

  TOM YODER, JANE’S SON

  He had entered the room during my conversation with his mother, Jane. His fiancée accompanied him.

  It seems just absolutely—it’s almost in a black humorous sense—funny to me. To realize that a hundred miles from Chicago, about forty years ago, my mother’s brothers, whom I know well now, were out with little rifles, hunting for food to live on. And if they didn’t find it, there were truly some empty stomachs. I mean, this is just too much. I don’t think my generation can really comprehend what all this means. I’ve never gone to bed hungry—I wish I had. I haven’t, and I probably never will.

  Whenever I’ve griped about my home life, Mother’s always said, “I hope you always have it so good.” And I’m the kind of person that will say, “Look, what do you mean you hope I always have it so good? I intend when I’m forty to be making $25,000.” But I understand what she means. I am grateful for what I have. But it’s only human nature that we all want to go on and find something better.

  JEROME ZERBE

  “They’re doing eight pages in color of this apartment in the fall issue of Architectural Digest. So anybody who cares can see it.”

  In the apartment on Sutton Place are all sorts of objets d’‘art: jades, prints, photographs, original portraits of friends and acquaintances, statues... “two Venetian ones I admired in Venice. Hedda Hopper gave them to me. She was my long-time and greatest friend. Everything was given to me. You see, being a poor boy...” [Laughs.]

  The thirties? My own poverty. My father allowed me an allowance of $300 a month. On that I went to Paris and started painting. Suddenly he wrote and said: no more money. And what does a painter do in the Depression without money? I came back to America and was offered a job in Cleveland. Doing the menial task—but at the time I was grateful—of art-directing a magazine called Parade. $35 a week. It was 1931.

  I thought, to goose up the magazine, I would take photographs of people at my own home. In those days, you didn’t have strobe lights and all that sort of thing. We had our little Kodak cameras, and would hold up a flash and would open up the flash...but I got photographs of Leslie Howard, Ethel Barrymore, these people. Billy Haines was a great star in those days.

  We published them in Parade. It was the first time that what we call candid social photography was founded. I had known I’d start something. Town and Country asked me to go over various estates and I went over and photographed people I knew. They were all horrified at the thought and couldn’t wait for the pictures. [Laughs.]

  After my father died, and no money, I sold my library books to the Cleveland Museum and the Cleveland Art Library. With that money, I came to New York and started out. Town and Country had guaranteed me $150, which seemed a lot. This is ’33.

  One day, a gal from Chicago called me up and asked if I would have lunch with John Roy and herself at the Rainbow Room. So we lunched, and he said: “Jerome, it’s extraordinary how many people you know in New York. Would you like to come to the Rainbow Room? I’ll pay you $75 a week, if you’ll come, take photographs, and send them to the papers, and you will have no expenses.” The Rainbow Room, here at the Rockefeller Center. This is 1935. The famous room at the top.

  So twice a week, I would give a party and photograph my guests, all of whom were delighted to be photographed. The first night of this, I was so pleased, because I had been so poor. I still had my beautifully tailored clothes from London. I still had the accoutrements of money, but I had no money. You know? It was cardboard for my shirt and my shoes when they got old.

  So I went to the El Morocco to celebrate this new job. John Perona said, “I’ll take you on the other three nights.” That made $150 a week. Then he said, “Jerry, cut out this Rainbow Room racket. They’re getting more publicity than I am. I will pay the same amount, if you leave your camera here. You won’t have taxi fares, you won’t have problems.”

  So I went to work for John Perona. From 1935 to 1939, I worked at the El Morocco. He’s a legend. He’s dead now. He was a fabulous guy, just fabulous. He and I fought all the time. And I was always quitting. I adored him.

  I invented this thing that became a pain in the neck to most people. I took photographs of the fashionable people, and sent them to the papers. Maury Paul of the Journal-American, at least four times a week, would use a large photograph on his society page of important people.

  The social set did not go to the Rainbow Room or the El Morocco, until I invented this funny, silly thing: taking photographs of people. The minute the photographs appeared, they came.

  They became celebrities at that moment...?

  That’s right. I would send the photographs not only to New York papers. I sent them to the London Bystander, to an Australian paper, to one in Rio... I sent them all over the world. So people would come in to the El Morocco and I would get a note saying: “The Duchess of Sutherland has arrived and would love to have her photograph taken.” [Laughs.] You know?

  They were the top, top social. These were the people whose houses, one knew, were filled with treasures. These were the women who dressed the best. These were the women who had the most beautiful of all jewels. These were the dream people that we all looked up to, and hoped that we or our friends could sometimes know and be like.

  Do you recall the Crash?

  No, because it didn’t hit the family. My father had coal mines, and it didn’t hit the coal mines until ’31. He still gave me $300 a month, and I went to Paris and lived it up.

  My father was president of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Coal Company. It was on the West Virginia border—Cadiz, Ohio. Where Clark Gable was born. I went down there, because at the time he offered me the presidency at $12,000 a year. It was an incredibly large amount of money. I’m talking about 1932 or 1933. I went down there and spent two weeks in the town. The mine was 897 feet, the shaft, underground, and the working surface was three and a half miles. I spent two weeks down there and came back and said: “Mother, forgive me, to hell with it.”

  The men loathed their slovenly wives, and every night they go and play pool or whatever it was. The houses were drab beyond belief. You’d think a woman would at least put up a plant—a flower or something. And suddenly I flew into town with two or three friends for several weekends. We disrupted the place like nobody’s business. [Laughs.] We’d go to the bars, and these guys would say: “Jesus, where did you get your shirts?” Where did you get this or that? and I’d say: “Why don’t you go to your houses and make them more attractive?” And they said: “Our wives are so goddam slovenly. We don’t even want to go to bed with them.” I’m talking about the miners. They came out at five o’clock at night absolutely filthy. I’ve got a photograph of myself, I can show you, as a miner. I can show you how filthy I was.

  And they all went through this common shower, got clean. Would they go home? Hah! For food, yes. And their squawling brats. And take right off to a bar. They loathed their life. The manager once said to me, “I never knew what it was to have fun with people until I heard your laughter...”

  We all had such fun, of course, and he joined in the fun. And this brings up another story.... At the time I photographed King Paul of Greece, he became a great friend. He said, “Mr. Zerbe, you and I have many friends in common. Do you realize in our position we are never allowed to laugh? Everybody treats us with such respect. And I hear you have outrageous stories.”

  When you went to this mining town—the year...

  1933. Of course, to me it was a horror. That stinking little hotel. The lousy food and the worst service. And I was spoiled. When I was a kid, Mother always said to me: “Jerome, I think it’s much easier for you to have your breakfast served in bed.” So I always had my breakfast in bed. And I always had the fire lit in my fireplace. I was a very spoiled brat, and I loved that.

  Did your friends ever talk much about Roosevelt?

  Listen, de
ar boy, Franklin Roosevelt in those days we didn’t even talk about. John Roosevelt and the young Franklin were great friends of mine. I photographed them in my apartment. We never did discuss the old man, ever. Well, I never liked politics. I think all politicians are shits. Franklin—I admired him very much. I thought the American public was so frightfully gullible to allow this man, he was a dying man, to be elected for that last term. Oh, that voice!

  “My dear friends....” You know, it became such an irritation. It was so patronizing. It was so the great man talking down to us common little herd.

  Was his name ever discussed at El Morocco?

  Well, no, actually. I have a great respect for the family. I’m sorry the boys haven’t done better. And they haven’t. What President’s sons have? What happened to the Hoover boys?

  Did his name ever come up with some of the people you photographed?

  Yes, but always with a rather hatred. They didn’t like him. Eleanor was a great woman, who was a real, real schlemiel. You know, making the most of everything she could out of a bad everything. But there was always admiration for her.

  Did the people you knew in the thirties ever talk about what happened outside? You know... those on relief... ?

  I don’t think we ever mentioned them. They did in private at the breakfast table or the tea table or at cocktail time. But never socially. Because I’ve always had a theory: when you’re out with friends, out socially, everything must be charming, and you don’t allow the ugly.

  We don’t even discuss the Negro question. Let’s forget they’re only one-tenth of this country, and what they’re putting on, this act—someday they’re going to be stepped on like vermin. There’s too much. I’m starting a thing: equal rights for whites. I think they’ve allowed themselves, with their necklaces and their long hair and nonsense, to go too far.

  Now I’ve had the same manservant, who’s Negro, for thirty-three years, which is quite a record. I suppose he’s my closest friend in the world. He’s a great guy, Joseph.

  But aren’t beads and necklaces worn by some of the beautiful people today, too?

  I was thinking tonight...I have to go out to dinner, but I don’t have my Malta Cross, which had blue enamel and diamonds, which is really very good. Because I loaned it to somebody. I’ll have to wear what I really love, which is my Zuni Indian. This is authentic and good, and people all accept that.

  Do you remember ever seeing apple sellers in the city?

  No, there were none of those. Not in New York. Never, never. There were a few beggars. You came to recognize them because they’d be on one block one day and one block the next. And finally one day, I saw this pathetic beggar, whom I’d always felt sorry for. This Cadillac drove up. I’d just given him a quarter. And it picked him up. There was a woman driving it. And I thought: well, if they can drive a Cadillac, they don’t need my quarter. His wife had a Cadillac.

  You don’t recall bread lines or stuff like that?

  I never saw one. Never in New York. If they were, they were in Harlem or down in the Village. They were never in this section of town. There was never any sign of poverty.

  What does the phrase “New Deal” mean to you?

  It meant absolutely nothing except higher taxation. And that he did. He obviously didn’t help the poverty situation in the country, although, I suppose...I don’t know—New Deal! God! Look at the crap he brought into our country, Jesus!

  Do you sense a different feeling toward people on welfare today than there was in the thirties ?

  Oh listen, we had no little bastards dressed as they are today, putting on acts these days. The children were slapped down by their parents. I think they’re encouraged by their parents today. I think our country is in a very dangerous and precarious position, and I would predict, if I dared, that within twenty or thirty years, we’re gonna have a complete revolution here in America. Probably a dictatorship.

  I feel the signs. The portents are going that way. Look what happened at Columbia. Why, they should have turned the fire hoses on those little bastards and get them out right away. Instead of tolerating them.

  Any final thoughts... ?

  The thirties was a glamorous, glittering moment.

  PEGGY TERRY AND HER MOTHER, MARY OWSLEY

  It is a crowded apartment in Uptown. 29 Young people from the neighborhood wander in and out, casually. The flow of visitors is constant; occasionally, a small, raggedy-clothed boy shuffles in, stares, vanishes. Peggy Terry is known in these parts as a spokesman for the poor southern whites.... “Hillbillies are up here for a few years and they get their guts kicked out and they realize their white skin doesn’t mean what they always thought it meant.”

  Mrs. Owsley is the first to tell her story.

  Kentucky-born she married an Oklahoma boy “when he came back from World War I. He was so restless and disturbed from the war, we just drifted back and forth.” It was a constant shifting from Oklahoma to Kentucky and back again; three, four times the route. “He saw the tragedies of war so vividly that he was discontented everywhere.” From 1929 to 1936, they lived in Oklahoma.

  There was thousands of people out of work in Oklahoma City. They set up a soup line, and the food was clean and it was delicious. Many, many people, colored and white, I didn’t see any difference,’cause there was just as many white people out of work than were colored. Lost everything they had accumulated from their young days. And these are facts. I remember several families had to leave in covered wagons. To Californy, I guess.

  See, the oil boom come in ‘29. People come from every direction in there. A couple years later, they was livin’ in everything from pup tents, houses built out of cardboard boxes and old pieces of metal that they’d pick up—anything that they could find to put somethin’ together to put a wall around ’em to protect ’em from the public.

  I knew one family there in Oklahoma City, a man and a woman and seven children lived in a hole in the ground. You’d be surprised how nice it was, how nice they kept it. They had chairs and tables and beds back in that hole. And they had the dirt all braced up there, just like a cave.

  Oh, the dust storms, they were terrible. You could wash and hang clothes on a line, and if you happened to be away from the house and couldn’t get those clothes in before that storm got there, you’d never wash that out. Oil was in that sand. It’d color them the most awful color you ever saw. It just ruined them. They was just never fit to use, actually. I had to use ’em, understand, but they wasn’t very presentable. Before my husband was laid off, we lived in a good home. It wasn’t a brick house, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. These storms, when they would hit, you had to clean house from the attic to ground. Everything was covered in sand. Red sand, just full of oil.

  The majority of people were hit and hit hard. They were mentally disturbed you’re bound to know, ‘cause they didn’t know when the end of all this was comin’. There was a lot of suicides that I know of. From nothin’ else but just they couldn’t see any hope for a better tomorrow. I absolutely know some who did. Part of ’em were farmers and part of ’em were businessmen, even. They went flat broke and they committed suicide on the strength of it, nothing else.

  A lot of times one family would have some food. They would divide. And everyone would share. Even the people that were quite well to do, they was ashamed. ‘Cause they was eatin’, and other people wasn’t.

  My husband was very bitter. That’s just puttin’ it mild. He was an intelligent man. He couldn’t see why as wealthy a country as this is, that there was any sense in so many people starving to death, when so much of it, wheat and everything else, was being poured into the ocean. There’s many excuses, but he looked for a reason. And he found one.

  My husband went to Washington. To march with that group that went to Washington...the bonus boys.

  He was a machine gunner in the war. He’d say them damn Germans gassed him in Germany. And he come home and his own Government stooges gassed him and run him off the co
untry up there with the water hose, half drownded him. Oh, yes sir, yes sir, he was a hell-raiser [laughs—a sudden sigh]. I think I’ve run my race.

  PEGGY TERRY’S STORY:

  I first noticed the difference when we’d come home from school in the evening. My mother’d send us to the soup line. And we were never allowed to cuss. If you happened to be one of the first ones in line, you didn’t get anything but water that was on top. So we’d ask the guy that was ladling out the soup into the buckets—everybody had to bring their own bucket to get the soup—he’d dip the greasy, watery stuff off the top. So we’d ask him to please dip down to get some meat and potatoes from the bottom of the kettle. But he wouldn’t do it. So we learned to cuss. We’d say: “Dip down, God damn it.”

  Then we’d go across the street. One place had bread, large loaves of bread. Down the road just a little piece was a big shed, and they gave milk. My sister and me would take two buckets each. And that’s what we lived off for the longest time.