Sardi's

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Sardi’s is a restaurant in New York City located in the theater district at 234 West 44th Street in Manhattan. Known for the hundreds of caricatures of show-business celebrities that adorn its walls, Sardi’s opened at its current location on March 5, 1927.


Contents

[edit] Creation and Early Years

Vincent Sardi, Sr. (December 23, 1885 - November 19, 1969) was born as Melchiore Pio Vincenzo Sardi. He and his wife Eugenia (Jenny) opened their first restaurant, called “The Little Restaurant”, at 146 West 44th Street in 1921. When that building was slated for demolition in 1926, they accepted an offer from the theater magnates, the Shubert brothers, to relocate to a new building the brothers were erecting down the block. The new restaurant named "Sardi's" opened on March 5, 1927.

When business slowed after the move to the new location, Vincent Sardi was looking for a gimmick to attract customers. Recalling the movie-star caricatures that decorated the walls of Joe Zelli’s, a Parisian restaurant and jazz club, Sardi decided to recreate that effect in his establishment. He hired a Russian refugee named Alex Gard (1900-1948) (born Alexis Kremkoff in Kazan, Russia) to do drawings of Broadway celebrities. Sardi and Gard drew up a contract which stated that Gard would make the caricatures in exchange for one meal per day at the restaurant. The first official caricature by Gard was of Ted Healy, the vaudevillian of Three Stooges fame. When Sardi’s son, Vincent Sardi, Jr. (1915-2007)[1], took over restaurant operations in 1947, he offered to change the terms of Gard's agreement. Gard refused, and continued to draw the caricatures in exchange for meals until his death.

[edit] Height of Popularity

Frequent mentions of the restaurant in newspaper columns by Walter Winchell and Ward Morehouse added to Sardi’s growing popularity. Winchell and Morehouse were members of a group of newspaper men, press agents, and drama critics that met for lunch regularly at Sardi’s and referred to themselves as the "Cheese Club". Mark Hellinger, Heywood Broun, George Jessel, Ring Lardner, and cartoonist and press agent Irving Hoffman were also Cheese Club members. In fact, it was Hoffman who first brought Alex Gard to Sardi's for lunch at the Cheese Club table. Gard drew caricatures of the Cheese Club members, and Vincent Sardi hung them above their table. It was then that Sardi recalled the drawings at Zelli's and made his deal with Gard.

The restaurant became known as a pre– and post–theater hang-out, as well as a location for opening night parties. Vincent Sardi, a theater lover, kept the restaurant open much later than others in the area to accommodate the schedules of Broadway performers.

Sardi's Restaurant. Note the rows of caricatures visible through the upstairs windows.
Sardi's Restaurant. Note the rows of caricatures visible through the upstairs windows.

Alex Gard, who created more than 700 caricatures for the restaurant, died in 1948. After Gard, John Mackey took over drawing for the restaurant, but was soon replaced by Don Bevan. Bevan did the drawings until 1974 when he retired, and was replaced by Richard Baratz, of Brooklyn. Baratz continues to the present day as the Sardi’s caricaturist. Currently, there are more than 1,300 celebrity caricatures on display.

According to actor Robert Cuccioli's spokesperson Judy Katz, in an interview with Playbill: "On the day Jimmy Cagney died, his caricature was stolen from the Sardi's wall. Since then, when drawings are done, the originals go into a vault, and two copies are made. One goes to the lucky subject of the caricature, the other up on the Sardi's wall. This way, potential thieves won't have their moment." [1]

In 1979, Vincent Sardi, Jr. donated a collection of 227 caricatures from the restaurant to the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

While the Sardi family was Italian, the cuisine of their restaurant is not; rather it tends toward "English food"[2] , a continental menu . In 1957, Vincent Sardi, Jr. collaborated with Helen Bryson to compile a cookbook of Sardi's recipes. "Curtain Up at Sardi's" contained nearly 300 recipes ranging from grilled cheese sandwich to champagne cocktail.

[edit] Sardi's today

Sardi's was actually the birthplace of the Tony Award. After the death of Antoinette Perry in 1946, two of her friends, the producer John Golden and Jacob Wilk of Warner Brothers, were eating lunch at Sardi's when they came up with the idea of a theater award to be given in Perry's honor. For many years Sardi’s was the location of the announcement of the Tony Award nominations. Vincent Sardi, Sr. received a special Tony Award in 1947, the first year of the awards, for "providing a transient home and comfort station for theatre folk at Sardi's for 20 years."[3] In 2004, Vincent Sardi, Jr. received a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre. Sardi's is the venue for the presentation of the Outer Critics Circle Awards, as well as many other Broadway events, press conferences, and celebrations.

The restaurant is today considered a Broadway institution, to the point that composer Stephen Sondheim pointed to it when lamenting the changing climate of New York theater in a 2000 interview. Asked about the Broadway community, Sondheim replied, "There's none whatsoever. The writers write one show every two or three years. Who congregates at Sardi's? What is there to congregate about? Shows just sit in theaters and last."[4]

[edit] Sardi's on film

Several movies have shot scenes in Sardi's:

[edit] Sardi's on the radio

On March 8, 1947, Vincent Sardi Jr. began a radio show broadcast live from the Sardi's dining room, called Luncheon at Sardi's. It was hosted originally by Bill Slater. Subsequent hosts were Tom Slater, Ray Heatherton, Arlene Francis and currently, on WOR Radio, Joan Hamburg.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Vincent Sardi, Jr. with Thomas Edward West. Off the Wall at Sardi's (Applause Books, 1991) ISBN 1-55783-051-7
  • Vincent Sardi, Jr. with Helen Bryson. Curtain Up at Sardi's (Random House, 1957)
  • Vincent Sardi, Sr. with Richard Gehman. Sardi's: The Story of a Famous Restaurant (Henry Holt and Co., 1953)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ New York Times; January 5, 2007; Owner of Sardi’s Restaurant Dies at 91
  2. ^ Vincent Sardi, Sr. with Richard Gehman. Sardi's: The Story of a Famous Restaurant (Henry Holt and Co., 1953)
  3. ^ The Story of the Tonys. The Official Website of the American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards. Retrieved on January 23, 2007.
  4. ^ Conversations With Sondheim. by Frank Rich, The New York Times. (2000-03-12). Retrieved on January 17, 2007.

[edit] External links

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