For readers who have stayed with me through the first eight parts of the New York series, I hope I haven’t worn you out. New York is a very big town and most observers would say that I am very fond of it. I know when a snowstorm hits the city or when a train falls off the track, there can be considerable inconvenience. But when viewed from the standpoint of the long haul, it seems to me that the big city offers more excitement than any other place in the world.
I approached New York with the thought that I was going to enjoy it. The fact that all kinds of different ethnic groups are found in New York was encouraging to me. My parents were largely consumed by fundamentalist religious church services three times a week. My mother led the two in educational achievement having finished the “third reader”, which I suppose corresponds somewhat to the third grade in 1890 terms. In spite of their backgrounds, they never expressed a hateful word against another ethnic group. Rich people are not an ethnic group. And neither is the German Army. In his unschooled fashion, my father, the original Ezra, often said that, “Ever body needs a chance.” That is no misprint. I know the proper word is “every” body, but in his country way of speaking, he was saying the Negroes, Italians, Catholics, Jews, and as he called them, “Polacks,” and poor people also needed to have a fair chance. The fact that often my parents did not have a fair chance in the urban life of St. Louis made no difference. Ezra Senior said, “Ever body needs a chance.” That seemed like a decent philosophy to me.
And so I grew up not hating or disliking anyone due to his ethnic background. The thought that fundamentalist preachers said that Jews caused the death of Jesus Christ struck me as laughable. When someone comes along who has a different ethnicity from myself, I am always curious about that person and his background. That lack of hatred or dislike together with my curiosity about other races made life in New York a lot easier. It never occurred to me to avoid people wearing a turban as the Sikhs do – or someone with a yarmulke as observant Jews do. Admittedly, I never saw many people wearing kaffiyehs in New York, but if they wore one, my interest would be aroused. Rather than being put off or displeased by someone wearing a native form of dress or an expression of their religion, I would be encouraged to ask a few questions, if given the chance.
It seems to me that diversity is what New York is all about. We have diversity in other cities and other communities in this country, but here in New York, diversity is the accepted norm. There are some cities or some communities where one religious group dominates all the other people. Or where a political party has a strangle hold on the electorate. New York is a different breed of cat. Diversity is an accepted way of life in New York.
Perhaps I can illustrate the diversity using the owners of a nightclub and a pretty good place to eat dinner. The place I have in mind is on Second Avenue on the East side of the street near 48th Street. It is called “La Chansonette,” which means “The Little Song.” One used to go to La Chansonette to have a good dinner and to hear singer Rita Dimitri and one of her later husbands, Stanley Brilliant, who accompanied his wife on the piano or guitar and who would occasionally sing.
Rita had a French mother and a Greek father and grew up in France. At an early age, she became a popular musical comedy star in Europe, singing in several languages. In 1955, the producers of Cole Porter’s Can Can asked her to take the lead in the Broadway production of that musical. Now here is what the jacket cover of her album has to say about Can Can and later developments:

“Cast as the proprietress of a boite in Monmartre, Rita enjoyed her role so much she decided to try it in real life, off the stage. All she needed was a sponsor – and she found one in her unsuspecting husband, Stanley Brilliant. Stanley was a successful New York businessman who spent a substantial amount of time on his hobbies, the piano and singing folk songs with his guitar.”

Rita was of European ancestry with her French and Greek parents. Stanley was a Jewish real estate developer from Brooklyn. And they welcomed lesbian and gay couples to their cabaret. How’s that for diversity?!!
Rita often needled Stanley by referring to him as her seventh or ninth husband. Old Stanley insisted that he was only her fifth husband. The difference between the fifth husband and the seventh or ninth husband didn’t seem of any great moment. Rita was beautiful enough to have enticed seven or nine men into marrying her, but Stanley didn’t get to be a well-to-do New York businessman by making mistakes about the multiplicity of husbands.
In any event, they decided to build the type of restaurant that they felt was missing in New York. It was to be a small elegant club, with good food, music, entertainment and dancing. They decorated it in shades of elegant blue, lavishing original oil paintings on the walls, and placing silver candelabras on each table. The grand piano had antique finishing and was always decorated with red roses.
As you entered La Chansonette, the long bar was on the right. At the end of the bar, steep stairs led downstairs to the restrooms. A few feet beyond the bar, the tables were set up for dining and to hear the entertainment. Curtains were pulled in the dining area when Rita was performing so the place had an intimate feel to it. Stanley and Rita did not have a long commute to work as they lived in the apartments over La Chansonette.
At 10PM and again at midnight, the dance floor would be cleared, a spotlight would be turned on and Rita would take her place on the top of Stanley’s grand piano. It was pretty dramatic stuff, but then it must be remembered that Rita, a genteel buxom personality, would appear in dresses that would make the women in the audience gasp. For awhile, Rita also appeared in evening dresses with the back cut down to a little bit below the waist line. I never tried to figure out what held the dress on because I thought it would be unsportsmanlike for me to do so. Stanley thought all the speculation about his wife’s dresses was pretty funny.
At the time La Chansonette was going great, it was unusual to see gay and lesbian people patronizing straight nightclubs. They often had places that catered to their tastes and I am certain that they avoided most straight places in an effort to avoid calling attention to themselves. But Stanley claimed that they wanted to hear good music and enjoy good food as much as anyone else might want to do. So a few very good-looking men and women would often be found in the audience of
La Chansonette. There were never any untoward scenes. The fact is that Stanley and Rita made it known that gay and lesbian couples would not only be tolerated, but welcomed.
On one occasion, Stanley spoke to me after hours about a table in the corner occupied by two men and two women. Stanley said there was going to be no romance between any of the men and any of the women, because the two women were lesbians and the two men were gay. The two men had agreed to escort the two women to La Chansonette, but when the evening was over, according to Stanley, the women went home together and the two men did likewise. So a cabaret run by two people of Greek, French and Jewish backgrounds welcomed the diversity of four well behaved individuals who did not conform to the norms of the Christian Science Monitor or of Alabama or Mississippi.
Early in my visiting of La Chansonette, Stanley asked me what I did for a living. Of course, I told him I was with AT&T in the long distance and overseas telephone business. Old Stanley’s eyes lit up. It seems that Rita had been trying to call her mother who was visiting Greece. Unfortunately, her mother was not in Athens but in an out-of-the-way town. Stanley said Rita was feeling pretty discouraged after having failed to reach her mother in spite of several trans-Atlantic telephone calls. And Stanley said her sadness carried over into her singing.
So I said let me try to cheer my friend Rita up. It was no problem to reach the AT&T Evening Chief Operator for calls to Greece. We knew each other. She said she would work the call now. In two or three minutes, Rita’s mother was on the phone from Greece but she was talking to old Stanley. So we got the AT&T Evening Chief Operator to come in on the call and direct it to Rita and Stanley’s living quarters above La Chansonette. Stanley said after the call was completed that I had saved his life. I don’t know about that, but if it pacified Rita so that she wouldn’t be looking for a tenth husband, then my duty had been done.
As the years went on, I had many conversations with Stanley and Rita. They were good people who were doing what they liked best. As such, they were happy people and fun to be around. Unfortunately, time runs out on everybody at one time or another. Rita died in the past year or so. I suspect that she was pretty close to 80 years. When she appears before the pearly gates, that will be an appropriate occasion to wear her dress with the front side open to near the navel and the back side cut to below the waist line. St. Peter is entitled to a thrill once in a while, even if he was a Catholic saint.
I got into this discussion about Stanley and Rita because their marriage and business practices represented the essence of diversity – New York style. I am a little old to be going to cabarets with dancing and with women in evening gowns that would make this old soldier blush. But I’ll tell you this. Going to a diverse club like La Chansonette surely beats the evening prayer services at some of Missouri’s most upscale churches as well as a rip snorting Billy Graham revival meeting complete with sawdust on the floor. Maybe if Billy Graham saw Rita in her work clothes, he might take a more liberal or modern point of view.
If someone says that I am partial to New York City, I will save the cost of a trial and plead resoundingly guilty. It may not be that New York is absolutely wonderful; it just might be that some other places leave a lot to be desired. For example, try the cities in Islamic countries. Of all those cities, only Cairo has anything to offer. Even there, I stuck pretty close to the hotel with traffic congestion and threats against Westerners being what they were. And none of the Islamic countries offer any singing or dancing or any diversity. As a matter of fact, they are headed in the other way. And the food in those countries is rather regrettable.
Working for the long distance arm of AT&T permitted me to see all the major cities in this country as well as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. In the Army, I got to know a bit about Naples and Rome. When I had the Overseas job, there were lots of great cities to visit. London, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Tokyo and Geneva. I was never comfortable in Berlin or Munich for reasons having to do with Army service. In a different way, I never fought to go to the countries that we used to consider as being behind the Iron Curtain. At the top of that list is Moscow itself, followed clearly by Beijing. On the other hand, I was completely at home in Sydney or Perth, Australia even though the Aussies thought my lack of interest in beer was basically treasonable.
So by virtue of being in the Army and by service with AT&T, I was most fortunate in being able to see big cities all over the world. It may be chauvinistic to say so, but New York is the most open and most diverse city that I have ever been involved with. I know Chicago and Kansas City are considered as broad shouldered towns, but New York has them beat when it comes to the diversity of its population and its outlook.
A small diversion having to do with the phrase “under God” in the pledge of allegiance that is in the news recently. That phrase was inserted into the pledge in 1954 when this country was in its Joe McCarthy period. Congress rolled over just as it has done recently when John Ashcroft pushed the American Patriot Act through the legislative body. For all the years I was in school in Missouri, we recited the pledge as it was originally written. The intrusion of “Under God” cheapens it and makes it a pledge of religious belief. And politicians from both parties are
breaking their backs to defeat the two Ninth Circuit justices, Alfred Goodwin and Stephen Reinhardt, who had ruled that that phrase violates the separation of church and state in this country. When I see this kind of disgraceful performance by our elected officials, I am angered and I also weep for the concept of church-state separation. My belief is that New Yorkers believe in the doctrine of church-state separation. Once again, I find myself with New Yorkers as distinguished from the self righteous members of Congress.
Well, having settled that diversion let me move back to New York. After I moved to the suburban New York scene, my parents never visited me. They were old and not in the greatest of health. But if they had seen one of the headlines last week wherein Donna Hanover accused Rudolph Guiliani of “open and notorious adultery,” I am sure that my mother, if she were alive today, would tell me to leave this sinful city. I would tell her, if she were around today, that debates like this are part of the fun in living in a dynamic city. I have no dog in this fight, but if Donna takes the mercurial Rudy to the cleaners, she will earn my applause and she may not have to appear in the sequel to the “Vagina Monologues.” (Note: She did take Rudy to the cleaners.)
Perhaps I have harangued you too much about New York. Lots of my AT&T colleagues could not wait to tell it goodbye and good riddance. Obviously, I don’t feel that way about the big city. And the reason has to do mostly with acceptance of diversity. I know that New York is not perfect. Far from it. But taking one thing with another, New York suits me quite well.
You may recall one of my essays where as a young soldier I walked guard duty on Christmas with a dock walloper from Brooklyn. His name was Jack Botcowsky and he was quick to tell you that he was a Jew. If I had told Jack that a gay person from Bangladesh was blocking our path and was turning hand springs and thumbing his nose at United States soldiers, old Jack would say, “So what”, followed by a handshake among the three of us. Somehow that liberal viewpoint seems to typify many of the citizens who call New York home. I like it and have for many years.
E. E. CARR
July 8, 2002
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I’m glad Pop’s father was as fair as he was. I think he successfully handed that mindset down the family line, for which I’m grateful. The treatment of gay and lesbian couples mentioned in the essay was surprising to me, even though it probably shouldn’t have been, just because I’ve grown up in a culture that largely treats sexual-orientation-based discrimination as harshly as race-based discrimination. So if even New Yorkers had to worry about that who they were seen going to clubs with, it’s hard for me to imagine the mindsets of the rest of the country. How many generations back do we have to step before we get to a time where interracial marriage was seen as deeply sinful? Thinking about it now, depending on where you look, I guess the answer could easily be zero. Hurray for the South.
Conversely, how many generations forward do we have to step until the rest of the globe catches up to cities like New York and San Francisco, in terms of tolerance? And even for us here in SF, what’s the next step?
In any event, this series is certainly still going strong. I’ll be the first to admit that motif of “here’s a great person, here’s a fun interaction we had, and here’s how this person died or we lost contact” darkens the writing a little, but as my little brother likes to say, “there is a price to be paid” when reminiscing at Pop’s age.
Update: Judy was able to find a picture of Rita!