History of CBS Records 30th Street Studio NYC (many pictures)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by DMortensen, Oct 21, 2014.

  1. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Not that I'm aware of, but this gives me a good reason to call her and ask.

    This is great research, thank you!!!!

    I think we have the location of the Sheik nailed down, and we'll get into a historical study of cameras at 30th St., too.

    As I've said before, Fred took more pictures of photographers than he did of engineers, and I've been trying to figure out how to ID the photographers, who usually had cameras in front of their faces or around their necks. If you're up for that I'll post them.

    But not this minute. Just got off the phone from a long conversation with Cady's great grandson which shed light on some things, but more on his side than mine at this point. We'll talk again.
     
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  2. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    I’m going to resemble Dan and Howard Scott soon enough.
     
  3. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Armenian, Lebanese, Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox - maybe some folks don’t really differentiate their restaurants or recording studios.
     
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  4. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I'm wondering now if the "Greek Orthodox" came from Archbishop Paul Tyler Turner's association. Going to look at Yale for evidence of his time; there is at least one letter between him and Goddard. Fingers crossed.

    Going to go through Thomas Z Shepard's photos (he said I should) and Goddard's and Fred's papers. How much I get through will be dependent on time.

    Anything else I should look for?
     
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  5. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Still on the Glenn Gould - On The Record track, here's the back cover of the album that was partially taken from those sessions:

    [​IMG]

    "Mr. Gould was recently the subject of a two-part motion picture, filmed by the National Film Board of Canada. Part I (Off the Record) is an informal portrait of the artist, in his country home, not far from Toronto. Part II (On the Record) documents a Gould recording session."

    Probably not a ton to see in that photo, but it would still be nice to have a better scan.
     
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  6. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    At least on the lousy TV I'm using for a monitor, the Discogs album cover at the link you gave looks a little better. The Discogs one says the front cover picture of Gould was taken by Don Hunstein, but doesn't give a credit for the back cover one. I don't recognize it as a Plaut picture, but that doesn't mean it isn't. There are pics in the collection of that day or days, but not that one AFAIK.

    The album you posted was printed in Israel, while the one at Discogs seems domestic. Difference in quality there?

    No credits for production or liner notes, or engineering, either.
     
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  7. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I just quickly searched for the largest scan/photo I could find. Unfortunately the largest display size for Discogs isn't that big, even if a large image is uploaded.

    And yes on the credits. Often times the only credit (where applicable) is for arrangement. Sometimes you can get a clue who produced something if they also wrote the liner notes, but the liner notes aren't always credited either.
     
  8. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Yesterday I had lunch with Tom Dwyer, who just celebrated his 50th year as a CBS employee.

    He's in the TV division now as a repair technician, but in his early days he did maintenance at the studios including 30th St.

    He knew Frank, and Fred, and many others.

    The thread-relevant part for now is that since there is no such thing as Columbia recording studios anymore, there is no such thing as any kind of Engineering office for audio and no archives of Audio Engineering/Studio Design to be looked for. So unless there is some forgotten file cabinet somewhere we have no hope of getting anything from that avenue.

    We talked at some length about the blueprints on the walls and he said they were very useful for coming into a studio and knowing how it was set up, but that those prints are long gone.

    So that was disappointing but not surprising.

    Still, it was great to meet him and hear his stories. He was interested in seeing both pictures (mostly from my AES presentation, since that group was finite and our time was limited) and the spreadsheet I've been compiling of CBS Records employees, which is up to 367 people.
     
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  9. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Summary of 2018 NYC AES Convention 30th St. Studio related events:

    Wednesday: Life and Death of the 30th St. Studio:


    Gary Louie and I were there quite early because there was no session beforehand so I had time to run through things to make sure they worked. It was supposed to start at 2:30pm, and people started showing up around 2:05, so I talked to them starting around 2:10 to hear what they were interested in and what their connection to audio was. That went on for about 10 minutes and it was fun to hear their various interests.

    It had the added benefit of getting me used to talking to them, so when I started a little early (because the one run through I did clocked in at 84 minutes out of the 90 I had) I was super relaxed, and that maintained throughout.

    The audience was really attentive and paid good attention, and they said nice things at the end. I think it went 82 minutes. We had to get out of the room right after, so we went into the hallway/lobby and chatted for about 20 minutes.

    The coolest thing was this woman from Russia who said she'd been studying Frederick Plaut and Frank Laico and the 30th St. Studio and how she'd never been able to talk to anybody there and here she was at the AES Convention and there was a whole room of people interested in the subject and somebody telling and showing things she'd never seen or heard of. She had done her doctoral dissertation in part about Frank and Fred and 30th St. and showed it to me, with pictures of them and lots of Russian words with "LP" and "EQ" and other relevant English phrases scattered throughout. It was like 100 pages or something, hardbound.

    The close second coolest thing was another woman who was from England and said how much she enjoyed the talk and how much her father would enjoy it but he couldn't be there today but could come on Friday night to the "Company" showing. Perhaps I'd heard of him? Graham Blythe, co-founder and former co-owner of Soundcraft mixer company? Having gotten a 1S as my first real mixer, and subsequently owning a 200, two 200B's, 200Delta, K3, Series Five, MH4, MH3, and Spirit Monitor at various times, I said yes, I'd heard of him and would be honored to meet him.

    There were several third coolest things, but they are not jumping out as I type this. People said many nice things. It felt good. Somewhere around 35 in attendance.

    Friday: "Company" documentary showing with live commentary:

    Thomas Z. Shepard was the producer of the Original Cast Recording and is still active, and agreed last June to appear at the Convention and do the commentary with me. He picked the date among the two available (Dolby chose first for their presentation since they were donating the theater for three nights) in early July. The Sunday before the Friday that I left to come to NYC, he called and left a message which said he had inadvertently double booked himself and would not be able to appear.

    To say I was devastated would be an understatement, but fortunately he left a message and I took some time before calling back. It occurred to me that if he and I got together we could watch it on my laptop and I could record us talking and play that back at the showing. It would be the same commentary, only time-offset.

    I proposed that and he generously agreed, so we met up about 5 days before the convention started for me (day before actual start), and spent the next three days editing and timing it to fit the DVD so our comments would be at the right moment ("Hey, that's Frank!" needed to happen within a small window after seeing him and not before or too long after, for example.)

    We were in a restaurant he had been going to for many years which caters to show biz people, and were there for over three hours between looking at Plaut pictures and doing the commentary. When I set up our headset mics (better signal -us- to noise -restaurant chatter/music/silverware- ratio that way), his sounded fine through the recorder but mine had some kind of electrical interference clearly audible. I used the official connector adaptor with his but brought one that worked in case he wanted to use a lav mic but which didn't work so well with the headset (that's the short version). I ignored it because he was the important part and I'd fix mine later or just not use it.

    Because I wasn't going to rip the DVD, it had to play and the commentary had to separately but in sequence play on my little TASCAM DR40, no pausing or anything, both had to play from beginning to end. 11 versions of the edit later, with each needing to play real-time start to first edit point before doing the next edit point, it was done. That took a long time, but I wasn't doing anything more important that weekend. His voice sounded great. My track sounded terrible, but with some really drastic EQ and putting my voice lower in level than his (probably too low, but I had no way of gauging what it would sound like overall in the theater with the movie soundtrack playing), it sounded OK overall and the information came through.

    There was a ticketing snafu for the Dolby Theater events that I won't go into here, such that the attendance diminished as the week wore on. By the third and last event, we had lots of tickets left over but there were still about 20 people there.

    I'd prepared a visually repeating synopsis of the plot from the Masterworks site, which was very different than what I'd assumed it was about from only watching the movie, and I took pictures of the opening sequences of Fred working and somebody walking into the grand space of the studio so that they could see those sequences longer than the moments that they are visible onscreen. There was some other introduction, and then the two button push to start the movie. The whole introduction was probably a little over 15 minutes.

    Miraculously, all went well and there was big applause and discussion at the end. We talked for nearly an hour? People were super-moved by the movie and its depiction of the tense recording session that started swimmingly and went both way too long and South at the end.

    As discussed here upthread, Tom does not like watching it at all and does not like the person he is in the movie. He explained that this was the first time he'd ever met Sondheim, other than a brief introduction earlier, and practically idolized him, and for sure this was the first time he'd worked with him and was SUPER nervous about it and intent that things go on time and result in a good recording. Despite his discomfort, he stuck with it to the end and said some very frank and revealing things about what went on, why it went that way, perhaps what could have been done differently for it to better, things he could have done better, and so forth. At my instigation we also talked about the emotions that can be raw from the recording process and how the camera caught every bit of it. I said afterward that it reminded me of the Charles O'Connell book (mentioned WAY upthread) where the head of Masterworks wrote a tell all book about how artists behaved in many stupid ways during sessions, and did so in a very hurtful way that no one would ever choose to work with him again because they would not be able to trust him to keep confidences.

    This movie is kind of the same way in that shortcomings are minutely visible, and could explain why there were no more like this, but that that is what makes it so gripping to watch and gives the viewer this huge empathy for those going through it.

    People that night talked about what a hugely moving experience it was to watch it with the commentary, and that it was their favorite part of the whole convention.

    That was cool, and I have to say that I felt the same, since I was so worried at many stages that it wouldn't work at all and that it would be a colossal failure.

    Daughter + Graham showed up and had a lot of good things to say afterward as did everyone else, including Russian lady. There was someone whose name I didn't register who was an Oscar-winner for editing a really neat movie, who told me how to fix my deficient sounding commentary and told me he would contact a guy I know in Seattle who can fix such things to tell him to call me and do so.

    Left about 9:30, walking on air. I had another event to go to, but I celebrated with an egg cream around midnight.

    I sent Tom a report a few days later, and he was very glad to hear it and suggested that I do this again to get the full story out about that movie and why the recording went that way before it triumphs at the end. I just may do that. In addition to seeing how performers do their thing, it shows how a producer does that thing and Tom gave really good suggestions to aspiring producers of how to improve.

    He is really a good guy and I super enjoyed meeting him and hearing what he had to say. I hope you get to hear it sometime, too.

    (Apologies if these needs more editing. I need to get to bed to get up early tomorrow for Yale.)
     
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  10. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I haven't read the book, but my reaction is that the film is something different. As you say, it does generate empathy, and the more uncomfortable portions (ex: Shepard being short with Plaut, "sung", etc) are balanced with more upbeat moments (notably Shepard's happiness with Stritch's overdubs at the end). That is, it feels real, as opposed to just being an attack piece.

    As far as more episodes go, I'd be surprised if the above was a factor. The stated reason why there weren't any more is because the producers got hired away to go to Hollywood.

    Hoping to hear Shepard's commentary at some point.
     
  11. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    My apologies if that quickly written piece came off as me feeling the movie is entirely negative and equal to O'Connell's book, because that is not at all the case.

    The movie is a remarkable combination of being inside an important recording session and seeing the repeated triumphs of the performers and all crew and staff as they proceed through the session getting great takes of each song and moving on to the next. As the day and night drag on we see people approaching the limits of their endurance still do phenomenal takes of each song and leave happy when their part is concluded and they can go home. For a variety of reasons the final song goes sideways and despite several attempts and adjustments is still sideways. A judicious pause in the proceedings followed by a day or two or three of rest for the one person who now has to hit the mark results in a soaring triumph and the end of the movie.

    The raw aspects of that last part are simultaneously painful to watch and fully empathizable, which makes it more painful and horrible even to see someone who wears their emotions on the sleeve emote about how terrible she's performing and letting everyone down.

    If one casually watches it like we watch most movies, then I don't doubt that these feeling may not be universal. When I was watching it with the producer I was right there in that moment and the tough parts were tough and the soaring parts soared. I had the distinct impression that much or most of the audience at that Friday night showing saw it as I did. I could be wrong.
     
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  12. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    In other news I'm back from Yale with a lot to sort through. I did not find why they bought 30th St to be a TV studio and did a turnaround in a couple of months in 1948 and kept it as an audio recording studio and subsequently did the acoustic treatment to it, and tore out the acoustic treatment (I assume they tore it out) and turned those rooms into TV studios.

    Did find out some other cool stuff, including some about Archbishop Paul Tyler Turner. That will need to wait for the weekend, though, cause I'm pooped.
     
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  13. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    My second objective was to find out as much as possible about the acquisition of 30th St in 1947-ish, and who were involved in the acquisition and what their thoughts were about it. Struck out completely on this one; not one word about 30th St directly from Goddard that I could find, although I didn't go through even 50% of the correspondence. So maybe there's hope still.

    Third objective was to find out as much about Paul Tyler Turner as possible and HIS involvement, if any, in the finding and acquisition of The Church. There is partial success in this.

    Goddard had a total of three letters in PTT's file, all from PTT and none from Goddard.

    The first one was PTT's actual letter of resignation from Masterworks, addressed to Richard Gilbert and dated August 20, 1951. It says:

    "Dear Dick,

    This will confirm my decision, expressed to you this morning, that I am resigning my position effective either immediately or on September 1st, at your pleasure. Inasmuch as you feel that it will not be difficult to make substitute arrangements, I assume no inconvenience to you will result from this short notice.

    "If the precipitating cause for this decision seems petty, I should point out that it is emblematic to me of a larger and more basic condition. While I am willing to admit that I have made my quota of mistakes, I feel also that twelve years with Columbia cannot have passed with nothing but mistakes to my account. From the close attachment which this long association has formed, on expects a rudimentary acknowledgment of one's services, even if it does not include much credit."

    He later says,

    "You will remember that I have mentioned my difficult financial circumstances to you several times, although always with consideration for the problems with obtaining a raise might cause to you. Thus I am still earning less than my very modest living requirements, drawing on a small reserve saved from the past, and unable to plan on the most modest future for my wife and myself. Despite those facts, no improvement has been forthcoming or even promised. In comparison with the salaries and conditions which prevail elsewhere for postions of similar responsibility, both in and out of the company, I consider my earnings very meagre indeed."

    So from this excerpt we see:

    1) PTT was with Columbia from 1939 to August 20, 1951.
    2) PTT had ongoing financial problems.
    3) PTT had a wife but apparently no children in 1951 (he would have gotten more sympathy, presumably, if he also had kids on that meagre salary).
    4) Richard Gilbert was still head of Masterworks in August 1951.
    5) David Oppenheim was not head of Masterworks in 1951, although his Wikipedia says he was director of it from 1950-59 (which was referenced from his obit in the New York Times). I think this is likely due to Columbia calling the Masterworks producers "Directors", and also calling the head of Masterworks the "Director". The Times got confused.
    6) Goddard thought it worthwhile to keep this letter, as well as the two others, apparently without responding or at least keeping copies of any responses, of which there are hundreds in his archive but none for PTT. (There are notes on other conversations in the files where GL either tells PTT to do something or write to someone or something like that, as well as copies of PTT's letters or actions to resolve the issues in those conversations.)

    The other two letters are undated and at first cryptic but looking at them shows I need to do more research before commenting. I see now the contents indicate they are quite a bit earlier than his resignation letter.

    Doing a little further quick research, I see that Goddard joined Columbia in 1939, too. Hmmmmmm.

    Oh, and there's a fourth letter, also on August 20, to Goddard from "Paul" on official stationary saying he's sending this letter to Dick which "is self-explanatory" and that the decision, which is a result of a long series of situations "is far from pleasant".

    Here's the letterhead, which is the same on both this and the resignation letter:

    [​IMG]

    I hadn't put the two facts, that 799 and 49 E. were both on 52nd St.; the two are about a half mile or so apart, maybe more since the blocks are long E-W and there are 6th, Broadway, 5th, and maybe Madison in between.

    The part of 52nd St between 5th and 7th was known as Swing Street for all its jazz clubs that ran all day and night. It must have been convenient to have the record studio at one end of that stretch for so long.

    More later.
     
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  14. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    At one point in the commentary, TZS remarks, "I'd forgotten how beautiful Donna McKechnie was..."!

    I think he also mixed up a couple of actresses names, but he commented cold and it has been umpteen years.

    Maybe next year Dan can convince him to show up for something like a panel discussion on the old cast recording techniques.
     
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  15. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Today I talked with Art Kendy, former editor for CBS Records, and told him some of this, and his response was "He sounds like a real loser".

    That seems like a very good summing up of both his resignation, the situation before his resignation, and the other two letters which I didn't tell Art anything about nor you here. He does sound like a loser.

    This may be the best way to leave further discussion about those parts of Mr./Reverend/Archbishop Turner's life. There is still something to say about him, Goddard, and Alec Wilder in the early days, but that will have to wait some more. Going to Sony Archives in the morning.
     
  16. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Turner sounded like a loser? What am I missing?
     
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  17. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    More about the 2018 AES Convention Historical Track that Dan hasn’t mentioned (with at least a little 30th St content)

    Weds/Oct 17
    The first day of the convention was not only super busy for Dan, and I’d promised to help at many of his events, but I also had a slew of other responsibilities at AES meetings all day. After Dan gave his own presentation on 30th St, I had a meeting at 4:30 and told Dan I’d skip out early to get to the Dolby screening room across town by 5:30 to meet him for the inaugural Dolby theater historical event, a tribute to Ray Dolby. It turns out it’s about 1.8 miles walking through uptown Manhattan from the convention center to Dolby, and if you speedwalk and jaywalk, takes at least 40 minutes. And Dan wasn’t even there yet! He’d stopped for pizza, I think.

    In the lobby, early arrivers were noshing on Dolby’s catering, while in the theater were Ioan Allen (Dolby SVP and the evening’s speaker) and classic recordist Marc Aubort, chatting. I recognized Ioan, although he doesn’t know me from Adam, but I said, “Hi Ioan, I’m looking for Dan?” He replied that he didn’t know anyone named Dan, sorry. Hmmm. Dan eventually arrived, and we were bouncers/took tickets and checked names on Dolby’s VIP list. Among the guests were Wendy Carlos and friend, whom I always see at the NY AES conventions. Apparently she has history with recording her albums with Dolby NR, and this evening they even played some of her stuff demonstrating the history of Dolby.

    Thurs/Oct 18
    After more historical day events, the evening presentation at Dolby featured the showing of the film, “Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell at the Isle of Wight 1970,” with the producer Eliot Kissileff. There is a lot of restoration back story to this that I won’t go over, but Teo Macero, Stan Tonkel, and Don Puluse from CBS were there to record, along with the Pye organization and several bootleggers, it seems. There are active websites devoted to the famed Isle of Wight music festivals, and one I looked at had a bunch of photos from the family of Tonkel. After the film, the surprise guest of the evening was Don Puluse, who sat with Eliot and they talked about recording the festival. Don was alternating recording the acts with the other guys, so he did not do the Joni Mitchell set, but recorded the acts before and after, etc. Lots of great stories about this gig.

    Friday/Oct 19
    Dan and I had lots of AV setup to do for the Company showing and little time to do it, but it worked. I had not heard Thomas Z. Shepard’s new comments yet, so a few things stood out.

    He identified a woman as Merle Louise that I believe the Broadway Masterworks site identifies as Teri Ralston (in several musicals). Both are listed as original cast members of Company. I can’t find any 1970 photos of Merle Louise, so this may just be a case of 48 year fog.

    TZS did claim that Fred Plaut was a great guy, very calm, but sometimes had trouble plugging things in right! He regrets being rude to him, and how he hates his 34 year-old self in the film. But he really wanted to get a great album.

    TZS also stated that the filmmaker (Pennebaker) did use their 8 track recordings (30IPS) in the film sound mix. He also reiterated that the filmed takes were basically only the first takes, but offered no explanation for the final Elaine Stritch take.

    Sadly, Dan didn’t get him to talk more about the mechanics of 30th St, nor the tacky restaurant (with the artwork taped to the wall) they were in.
     
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  18. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Yes I have some discomfort as well in having an Orthodox priest and also high official of the Western Rite church described that way merely for asking for some modest financial support. I'm guessing that after the War that CBS viewed Turner with some distance if not disfavor because of his official positions in a church and treated him differently than other employees. His letter suggests that.

    To @DMortensen 's point about Greek Orthodox the situation was rather complex as the Western Rite was affiliated and later absorbed by the Antiochian Orthodox Church. The loose connection to Greek Orthodox was based on the premise of the Western Rite to unite The Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic rites. The Antiochian Church entered the void for those followers of the Russian Orthodox subsequent to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church. See Wiki for the history.

    Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America - Wikipedia
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2018
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  19. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Yes, sorry about going from treating him as a Man of Mystery to Loser so abruptly.

    The change is due to several things:

    1) He had a list of unaddressed grievances built up over time. Rather than deal with them, he let them fester until one "petty" occurrence drove him over the edge to resignation;

    2) His boss told him to his face that he would not be difficult to replace. That could not have been spontaneous.

    3) He had felt for a long time that he was underpaid to the point it was difficult to survive without dipping into savings but did not talk to management in a way that made them feel a raise for him was necessary.

    4) There were four letters from him to Goddard but none from Goddard to him. This is shaky because what is in the file is a result of several factors (Goddard wasn't happy having his words saved for posterity, or Goddard's letters were removed by his wife or someone else, or...) that we can't know simply by looking at the file.

    5) Two of the letters were obviously very much earlier, as explained shortly, and are full of complaints and problems about his then-current situations. They are respectively addressed "Dear Goddard" and "Dear Goddard and Margaret". If you look anywhere else online you'll see that Goddard was only married to Brigitta Hartwig/Vera Zorina (who is a fascinating personage in her own right), but in the Yale Finding Aid Database to his papers you'll see that he "was married for a brief time in the late 1930s to Margaret Rosenberg, whom he met in Rochester during his time at Eastman. They separated shortly after his move to New York" in 1939.

    PTT indicates he was hired at Columbia in 1939. Coincidence? I doubt it.

    My guess is that he and Goddard knew each other somehow (maybe from Eastman School of Music? Haven't figured out yet that PTT went there) during/before Goddard's marriage to Margaret.

    We really need to do a timeline amongst them (Goddard, PTT, maybe Alec Wilder?) to determine who knew who when. I don't have enough info about Wilder, but do know that he wrote plays for summer camp/school/something which Goddard was in, at some point either early on or maybe later, I can't tell.

    Back to the letters: In the one addressed just to Goddard, PTT talks about living on Stuyvesant Square in NYC in the worst place he's ever been in, but that the Archbishop lives in the same place as well as Father Victor, who are both wonderful people.

    This seems to indicate that it was from before he became Archbishop himself in 1937 (from the part of the thread here ).
    In it he also laments one of his priests getting arrested on "a particularly nasty charge" and how much time he had to spend getting him out of jail, and how a/the church is being evicted.

    The other letter to both Goddard and Margaret talks about an apartment, perhaps Goddard's former one, that was given by the landlord to someone else ("a rather strange procedure, and I didn't know whether you had even been notified"), and he also talks about "Hester pays me clandestine visits every week" with a bit of innocuous elaboration. It would be interesting to find out his wife's name. I bet it's Hester.

    Back to "loser": I think we are all situationally "losers". That word sums up what it might have been like to be around him during his Masterworks days. He clearly was a sensitive soul and tried to hold a lot together without much resources. Given the terms of the later merger with the other church where he had to give up the Archbishop title and the quote in the other part of the thread that quoted an article that "its financial strength was severely diminished" during the 50's, after he left Masterworks.

    So he lost out in many dimensions during those years.

    He's still an interesting character.

    Here's another interesting part: the letter to Goddard and Margaret was sent on this letterhead:

    [​IMG]

    That address now has an apartment building that was built in 1959. Coincidentally, the ground floor has Madhur Jaffray's high-end Indian restaurant "Dawat". We went there sometime in the '80's after it opened and it was pretty remarkable food, with an equally remarkable check. We went again a couple years later and had a bad batch of food for the same remarkable check and haven't been back. It's still there, apparently.

    Can you make anything out of the affiliations in the letterhead?
     
  20. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I can't say I'm getting any of that from the letter. I'm reading it that he had grievances over the years, including regarding his salary, that were ignored, and he had reached his breaking point. It seems his boss did not like him, but it's not clear whose fault that is.

    Now, it's possible that he was treated that way by Columbia simply because he wasn't a good employee. But I don't think that's clear from the letters. It seems just as possible - to me, anyway - that he was treated unfairly.

    Or, perhaps most likely, it was a little from Column A, a little from Column B.
     
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  21. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    There is nothing in the letterhead that seems unusual given what we know of the St Basil order. A minor point is that Orthodox Bishops are titled Right Reverend but Very Reverend could be an Americanization.

    We are going to have to agree to disagree on this point. I have distress at calling a priest a loser except for criminal misconduct. Money problems are endemic to the clergy. He was a member of the Western Rite which was an idealistic Reform movement devoted to reconciliation between West and East. By this standard many saints could be called losers.
     
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  22. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    That's reasonable. We don't have to have a hive mind with agreement on every point, especially since this is so peripheral to our main pursuit.

    To the extent that anyone can be summed up in one word, and to the extent that this one word describes him at the time of his resignation, I think we can agree to differ. Also, because that information was what he shared with Goddard I am uncomfortable with further backing up (or trying to) the word here.

    I am happy to agree that he did his best to help people throughout his several lives, and that I admire his Masterworks legacy. I don't know enough about his other legacies to have an opinion but would gladly hear more about them that doesn't involve me trying to provide information about the one I've alluded to so far, since there are no specifics and we can agree to disagree about inferences that can be made (or not) about what is available. There is certainly nothing about any criminal misconduct by him or anyone else in the files. That was also a little disappointing since there were some scandals some years later that rocked CBS and the industry. The record business was a Wild West for some years at several times; Walter Yetnikoff's autobiography touches on some of that as do others. None of that is relevant to PTT.
     
  23. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Louise in Company, where she played "Susan":

    [​IMG]

    In the center:

    [​IMG]

    I think her only key part was in "Poor Baby", which wasn't in the film. I believe I see her at 3:00, in a yellow dress, next to Donna McKechnie, during "Company". She's also at 31:04 in the middle right after Dean Jones finishes "Being Alive". Also on the floor at 32:40 right after "Side By Side". Probably brief spots elsewhere too.

    Teri Ralston played "Jenny", and is notably in the film as "Choirgirl" during Getting Married Today.

    [​IMG]
     
    Dan C, DMortensen and GLouie like this.
  24. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    I am not sure if TZS, in his New Dan Commentary, has made a mistake identifying Merle Louise twice in the video, or if he was focused to another face during what looks to me like Teri Ralston prominent in the frame. Oh well, not too important.
     
    lukpac likes this.
  25. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Carbuncle? Where's Simon? :winkgrin:
     
    SixtiesGuy and DMortensen like this.

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