"A VIGOROUS LIFE," Part Three

We conclude our exploration into the life of Fred French with a final series of photographs. 

Cordelia, Fred, and Leonard Thomas in Central Park, 1919. Thomas was a roommate of Fred's during his brief stay at Princeton. 

French and his secretary, Dorothy Driscoll, in a rowboat at Pawling, New York. Miss Driscoll was an excellent secretary who had become close with the family through such visits. 

In front of the Pawling estate (which Fred had built as his family's second home) stand Fred Jr., Miss Driscoll, Cordelia and John.

This photograph was made the day Knickerbocker Village broke ground, October 11, 1933. Along with the banner, another sign identified its builder, the Fred F. French Company. This would prove to be French's last completed project before he died.

"A VIGOROUS LIFE," Part Two

Again, a return to A Vigorous Life, the joint effort of Fred and John French at an autobiographical biography. Today's focus is on pictures of Fred French at work.

Young Fred French

First, however, a picture of a very young Fred French, his taste in apparel quite similar to that of one of his heros, Theodore Roosevelt. This photo was a souvenir of a celebrated trip to Alaska, following the same trail that Roosevelt did. His rifle and hunting clothes were identical with Teddy's.

The Horace Mann football team in 1901. French standing, third from left.

The earliest picture of French in the book is this shot of his high school football team, which would prove to be exactly how French liked to be seen, in the company of a group. The only difference was, as the years went by, his seating shifted to the place of honor.  

A portrait of the company sales team. French is seated, center.

This is one of many such pictures that were made to commemorate the team.

 A celebratory dinner honoring the company's sales team, held in French's home. He's seated at the head of the table.

There is no respite from business, not even at home. Our earlier post on A Vigorous Life here.

"A VIGOROUS LIFE," Part One

 

Today we present "A Vigorous Life: The Story of Fred F. French, Builder of Skyscrapers," by two authors: Fred French, who provides a firsthand account of his early life, from his birth in 1883 until he took his first business partner in 1910. In the second part, his son, John French, picks up the story and continues it through the early 1990s. (The book was published in 1993.)

This is a big subject, which will play out over several posts. In our initial effort, we take a look at French, the man.  Little is known about his personal life, but a few photographs survive.    

This picture of French was undoubtedly commissioned by the French Company to be used as an official portrait. Thus, everything is perfect from the necktie ‒ and necktie pin ‒ down to his thumbs, casually tucked in the vest pocket.     

In 1914 he is introduced to Cornelia Williams, a young lady of some means. After a spirited courtship, they are married seven months later. 

They take a summer house in Pawling, New York while Fred builds for them a city home, the penthouse at 1140 Fifth Avenue. 

They have four children: Theodore, Fred Jr., John, and Ellen. Photo made in 1927, the year that the French Building and Tudor City arrived.

Fred with his sons, Theodore and John. He does smile for the camera when around children.

RESIDENTS: James T. Farrell letter

Another post concerning James T. Farrell, author of the Studs Lonigan trilogy in the 1930s, and a resident of No. 5 in the 1960s.

Today's artifact is a letter written by Farrell to Marylew Kogan. What their relationship was exactly is unclear, but Farrell dutifully reports where he stands at the moment on various projects, then asks Kogan to forward some stories to him for inclusion in his archive.  

A familiar return address first caught our eye. Where exactly he lived in No. 5 remains a mystery, but insiders insist it was one of the penthouses. 

Dear Marylew,

    I'll write soon. This is in haste. I finished Invisible Swords yesterday. I regard it as the most powerful book I have ever written.

    Judith is out.

    Childhood Is Not Forever will be out in Sept, 1969. I have a shorter novel than Invisible Swords ‒ Tom Carroll is almost ready. [Tom Carroll never published]

Jim Farrell       

P. S. And please do get the stories back to me so that I can send them away to my archive. 

Farrell was a busy writer, and he produced 52 books in all. But in the end, the most revered were the Studs Lonigan trilogy, written at the start of his career. See more about him here.

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Please note that I'm taking a couple weeks vacation and will be back in October. See you then!

MORE of The Little Dogs of Tudor City

Yes, they are back. Apparently the sales of the first book ‒ The Little Dogs of Tudor City ‒ were sufficient enough to fund these new arrivals.

The first is entitled The Little Dogs of Tudor City Save the Dog Show. Expect the usual frivolity culminating at the annual dog show held at Madison Square Garden. But thumbs down on its cover, which fuzzes out the Tudor City Sign, then puts the title of the book over it!

Inside, they make amends with the dogs gathered at No. 25. 

More serious was another sequel entitled The Little Dogs of Tudor City Meet the Pandemic, which has to do with giving back. The dogs all wear service animal tags on its cover.

This book includes the TC dogs howling at the setting sun.  

Finally, the third, which is entitled The Little Dogs of Tudor City Meet the Pandemic Coloring Book. Kind of a mouthful, although it does spell out what to expect.

This version of the book subtracts all color ‒ and all text ‒ for a kind of Zen approach. We like it best of all.

The Little Dogs of TUDOR CITY

 

This is a story about a new children's book, The Little Dogs of TUDOR CITY that has come to our attention. Written by Jay Bua and Ralph Pope, it's frankly aimed at smaller fry, but entertaining nonetheless.

It's the story of some dogs in Tudor City whose adventures take them all over town.

We don't want to give away much more, but suffice it to say there are enough city blackouts and daring subway escapades to keep the plot hopping. Order it from Amazon or eBay.

Tudor City Lit: LOVE PREFERRED

This edition of Tudor City in Literature examines Love Preferred, a 193os romance novel. Its author, Edna Robb Webster, was a specialist in tales of 'modern youth,' and the author of seventeen novels, among them Dad's Girl, Five O'Clock Girl, Lipstick Girl, and Occasional Wife.

Love Preferred, subtitled "The Romance of a Business Girl," first ran as a newspaper serial, then was published in book form by Grosset & Dunlap in 1932. The novel tells the story of a man loved by two sisters: the "beautiful, self-sacrificing" business girl, Mary Vaughn, and her "selfish but dazzling" sibling, Bonnie.

Tudor City appears midway in the book, in a conversation between Mary and her boss, Ronald Foster; he's sweet on her, but she feels "no trembling delight in his presence." Mary has been staying with friends, and has just announced her intention to get her own Manhattan apartment.

[The idea of moving to the enclave never materializes, and Mr. Foster's romantic impulses are similarly squashed.]

We're rather surprised to learn that Tudor City apartments were financially out of reach for most workers, "even those with a good salary." But then again, the colony did enjoy a swank reputation in its early years.

Confidential: PULP FICTION Edition

Today, a look at the Murder of the Clergyman's Mistress, a 1931 detective novel wherein Tudor City makes a cameo appearance.

The book opens with the discovery of two dead bodies ‒ a clergyman and his mistress ‒ in a dinghy in the East River. [The novel is loosely based on the sensational Hall-Mills murders of 1922, whose principals were known in the tabloids as "the Minister and the Choir Singer."] Enter Thatcher Colt, who is the New York City Police Commissioner and, not incidentally, an excellent amateur sleuth. 

Tudor City is introduced early on when the bodies are found:

Later, Thatcher Colt sniffs around Tudor City for clues: 

The "real estate troubadours singing their most plaintive ballads" is a snarky reference to Tudor City's ubiquitous advertising campaigns at the time.

In the end, Thatcher Colt solves the mystery. The clergyman killed his mistress ‒ and then his other mistress killed the clergyman. 

RESIDENTS: Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner

Resident of the day is Erle Stanley Gardner, mega-selling author and Windsor Tower tenant. 

Born 1889, he begins his career as an attorney, but writes pulp fiction on the side, specializing in detective yarns. In 1933 he produces The Case of the Velvet Claws, which introduces Perry Mason, a criminal defense lawyer with a predilection for taking on hopeless cases. The character is a hit, and makes Gardner a very rich man. Countless novels follow, adapted into movies in the '30s, a radio show in the '40s, and most memorably as a TV series in the '50s and '60s.

Tudor City View reports that Gardner resides in No. 5 for a few months in 1942. What brings him to the enclave is lost to history ‒ he lives on a ranch in Temecula, California for most of his life ‒ but it seems likely that he rented a penthouse. 

Like all good mystery writers, he is nothing if not prolific. When he dies in 1970, he has written 151 books selling over 325,000,000 copies. Wikipedia ranks him the 27th best-selling fiction author of all time, behind Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dr. Seuss and Danielle Steele, but ahead of Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Ian Fleming and John Grisham.

Today, his name lives on as a frequent crossword puzzle answer. 'Erle' contains an unusual series of common letters beloved by puzzle designers. First name in courtroom fiction is a typical clue.

Gardner and secretaries in his office in Temecula, California.

Eight of the 82 Perry Mason mysteries.

Residents: WILLIAM FAULKNER

We thought our previous resident of note, Twiggy, would be hard to top. Well, how about William Faulkner? Yes, that's right, the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize‒winning author resided in The Woodstock for a short time. Here is his life, in bullet points:

Faulkner in 1931. 

✶ Born 1897 in Mississippi, where he will reside for most of his life.

✶ Publishes first novel, Soldier's Pay, in 1925. Over the following decade, produces an impressive body of work in a style dubbed Southern Gothic: The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Although The Sound and the Fury is considered his greatest achievement, it is not initially successful. Rather, it is Sanctuary (1931) ‒ the story of a brutal rape ‒ that is his commercial and critical breakthrough. Faulkner later dismisses it as a "potboiler," written purely for profit.

✴ In the wake of Sanctuary's success, the 34-year-old author visits Manhattan to confer with his publisher and work on his next novel. We'll let the New Yorker pick up the story, via a Talk of the Town piece that ran in its November 28, 1931 issue:

Faulkner's Tudor City home is a 28th-floor apartment in The Woodstock, where he lives for about a month while working on Light in August.

Light in August, first edition

✴ Works as a script doctor in Hollywood during the '30s and '40s, co-authoring the screenplays for The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. Over time, ten of his books are adapted for the screen.

✴ Wins Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, officially cementing his Great Author status, even if his later novels never earn the rousing acclaim of his earlier work.

✴ Dies of a heart attack, aged 64, in Mississippi.

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Years later, Light in August is ranked No. 54 in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. (The Sound and the Fury is No. 6).

TUDOR CITY LIT: Kurt Vonnegut's JAILBIRD

In this installment of Tudor City Lit, please welcome Kurt Vonnegut, world-renowned bestselling author ‒ and Tudor City cynic, at least judging from one withering reference in his 1979 novel, Jailbird.

Vonnegut is best known for Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969. Ten years later, he releases Jailbird, a satiric look at capitalism and the American labor movement as seen through the eyes of one Walter F. Starbuck, bumbling public servant.

Tudor City appears as an incidental setting in the novel ‒ Starbuck's son lives in the complex ‒ and would be of minor interest, save for one incendiary sentence, below.

Paging Burton Rascoe!

"Who on Earth is Fred F. French?"

Following up on our last post about the French Company's Fifth Avenue headquarters, we fast-forward to 1997, when the building turns up in a celebrated novel, Underworld, by a celebrated author, Don DeLillo (White Noise, Libra). The book is of especial interest to this blog since it actually asks the question "Who on earth is Fred F. French?"

Set over the second half of the 20th century, Underworld is "an aria and a wolf-whistle" to that era, according to one observer. Its far-flung cast of characters includes historic figures such as Frank Sinatra, Lenny Bruce, Jackie Gleason, J. Edgar Hoover. . . and Fred F. French.

French makes three cameo appearances in the novel. The first occurs when two fictional characters, Rochelle and Klara, are sightseeing in Manhattan with Klara's mother.

. . . they stood outside a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue, it was probably 1934 and the Japanese were entrenched in Manchuria and they looked up the face of the building and walked through the polished lobby and it was the Fred F. French Building, which intrigued the girls because who on earth was Fred F. French, and Klara's mother, who knew things, who worked for a social service agency and studied child psychology, who followed world events and worried about China, who planned these outings systematically, did not have a clue to the identity of Fred F. French, and this intrigued the girls even more, intrigued and amused them, they were thirteen and fourteen and everything amused them.

Fred French becomes a running joke between them. They ride home after sightseeing on the Third Avenue El. . .

. . .looking out the train windows into tenement apartments on both sides, hundreds of film-flickering lives shooting past their eyes forty feet above the street, and Rochelle might see an undershirted man leaning tousled out his window and, Maybe that's Fred F. French, she'd say, he's had a streak of bad luck, ha ha. . .

Several years later, boy-crazy Rochelle is petting with Bob in the backseat of a car, with Klara similarly engaged in the front seat.

. . . And at the all-crucial moment Rochelle Abramowicz looked over the boy's shoulder into the eyes of Klara Sachs and said to her, thoughtfully, What do you think the F stands for?
   And Klara said, What F?
   And Rochelle said, The F in Fred F. French.
   This was a good thing to say, maybe it was the best thing anyone had ever said, then or now, under the circumstances, and it made them friends again.

Underworld is not only a bestseller, but also a National Book Award nominee and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

TUDOR CITY LIT: "The Plant in My Window"

In the 1930s and 40s, newspaper workers gravitate to Tudor City given its convenience to the Daily News, Daily Mirror and New York Times buildings.

Resident Ross Parmenter was one of them, a Times music critic, as well as the author of a dozen books. His first book, The Plant in My Window, is the story of a man and a potted philodendron.

The idea is hatched in 1947 when Parmenter moves into Woodstock apartment 1608, a modest studio with a northern exposure. The previous tenant has left behind a legacy ‒ a half-dead philodendron.

At first, Parmenter ignores it, but the idea of reviving the plant slowly seizes his imagination. He waters it. He makes drawings of its progress. He polishes its leaves. He names it Phyllis.

Nursing Phyllis back to health sets him to thinking about living in general, and he begins to write about it. The resulting essay ‒ one part botany, one part spiritualism ‒ is published in 1949. Subtitled "An Adventure of the Spirit," it's naturally dedicated "to whoever left me the plant."

The reviews are glowing. The NY Times says this study of "apartment-house botany" is "astonishingly fresh and unusual." Brooks Atkinson finds it "fascinating from start to finish." The LA Times: "extremely satisfying." The Chicago Tribune: "simple, quiet and absorbing."

The book, rejected by ten houses, is eventually published by Crowell. 
The cover photo is shot in Parmenter's Woodstock apartment.

Parmenter's first drawing of Phyllis.

RESIDENTS: James T. Farrell

Farrell, circa 1968

Continuing our series on notable community residents, here's the lowdown on resident James T. Farrell, a critically acclaimed author renowned for his best-selling Studs Lonigan trilogy.

Born in Chicago to a teamster family, Farrell has a rough-and-tumble adolescence that provides the inspiration for Studs Lonigan's world.

The books depict lower-class Irish-American life on Chicago's South Side during the Depression, and are written in a blunt, sexually explicit style that shocks readers, thrills critics and makes Farrell a star. No less than H.L. Mencken calls him "the best living American novelist."

The trilogy: Young Lonigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), Judgement Day (1935)

This overwhelming success comes to him at a young age; Farrell is just 28 when the first installment of the trilogy is published. He writes many books in the years that follow ‒ 52 in all.

1950s paperback editions of Farrell's work.

But none of them surpass Studs Lonigan in critical or commercial acclaim. He's not happy about it, later complaining to a reporter that "Studs has been a chain around my neck."

In the fall of 1966, Farrell becomes a resident of No. 5. (We assume he rents one of the penthouses, given that the 'chain around his neck' has sold over over a million copies). Tudor City View profiles the new neighbor and finds he's just an ordinary joe:

"He can be seen strolling along Tudor City Place, a beret on his head, engrossed in a book,or sitting in the Tudor Drug Store, discussing baseball with a stranger beside him at the counter. . ."

Farrell dies in 1979 at the age of 75. Years later, the Modern Library compiles a list of the 100 best novels of the 20th Century. The Studs Lonigan trilogy is rated number 29.

Tudor City Lit: ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS

First in a series of posts about Tudor City as a literary setting. We begin with the Adela Rogers St. Johns novel, The Root of All Evil.

St. Johns was a well-known journalist, at the peak of her renown in the '20s and '30s, when she was billed as 'the World's Greatest Girl Reporter.' Over her long career, she covered everything from the Lindbergh baby kidnapping to the Patty Hearst trial. She also found time to write six novels.

The Root of All Evil, her fifth novel, was published by E.P. Dutton in 1940. The author wastes no time introducing Tudor City ‒ first sentence, Chapter One.

The book recounts the vicissitudes of one Bibi Mattson, a former "girl about town" who is forced to change her lifestyle after marrying beneath her station. Its vividly named characters include Red Mattson, her husband, Vi Roarke, her best friend, and Shep Michaelis, her former beau, now a millionaire. Click on flap copy at right for a synopsis.

Sad to say, St. Johns uses Tudor City as a device to suggest how far down the social ladder Bibi has fallen. ("We haven't been to El Morocco for a year!" she complains to her husband). Tudor City represents "a way station" for the struggling couple, four rooms where "the hum of trucks on First Avenue came through the open window" and a "mist hid the ugly shore on the other side of the river."

Yet love ‒ and Tudor City ‒ triumph in the end, sealed with a kiss in the same apartment where the story began.