Document text
Forms to be Filled out for Eacn Interview
FORM 1.
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF %WRYER Arnold Man off
ADDRESS 27 Hamilton lerrace New York
DATE December 18, 1938
SUBJECT REUBEN AND HIS RESTAURANTWTHE LORE OF A SANDWICH"
1. Date and time c' interview
December 13, 1938 afternoon
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
2. Place of interview Reuben's Restaurant and Squibb Building on Fifth Ave.
3. Name and address of informant Arnold Reuben
8 East 58 St.
4. Name and address of person, if any, WHO put you in Pearl Mlnig and
Maurice Zolotaw, Squibb Building,
toucn with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you Saul Levitt
27 Hamilton Terrace
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc. Interview with l6r. Reuben
took place in his office in the Squibb Building. Office large and expensively
furnished. Soft taupe broadloom carpeting, three piece leather office suite.
Large semi -modern deuk in center of room. Bay window facing on Fifth Ave. Venetian
blinded. A rubber plant behind the blinds is the only note of personal character.
The room is an exp nsive attempt at dignity, "high class" stuff, but it has no
more individual character than a show window in Lord and Taylors. Close observation
will spot two small framed pictures on the desk. Assume to be of Mr. Reuben's wife
and daughter. Outside offices typical busy, bright, and clattering publicity and
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FORM A CONTINUED
clerical set up.
The restaurant around the corner can be briefly described as an interior
near Fifth Ave., designed to resemble the lounge room of the Radio City Music Hall,
soft light, subdued lighting rich carpeting and Mr. Reuben's stuffed fish mounted
around the walls. A small bar near the checkroom and a delicatessan counter in the
back.
More detailed, this is the impression you get of Reuben's. You're
walking up 58th St. toward Eifth Ave. Suddenly the wall of brick to your left is
ended and the periphery of your eye catches a huge pane of glass curtained in
cream folds and shrubberied formally at the bottom. A red blazing neon sprawls
over the window REUBENS. Typical. This is REUBENSI Who is Reuben that his name
should stand alone without a word of explanation without even a first name, without
a Company or Inc. after it? ?ghat the hell4 You don't mind GENERAL MOTORS; Money!
Power; Industry. Well, all right, REUBEN. Twenty Five feet long, five feet high
on 58th St. Right next to the Savoy Plaza, the Sherry Netherland. Nearby Central Park,
the old Plaza, Fifth Ave. Nearby Park Ave. A ritzy restaurant, if you judge by
what you can't see from the outside. A doorman attends inside a heavy revolving door.
You light a cigarette; a tall dame slithers out from the revolving door. She's
fur coated, slightly stewed and she breezes into a waiting taxi. You figure what
the helll and go inside. The attendant looks you over. You look him over. He
see's somebody nondescript carrying a portfolio. You see a tall good-looking guy
dressed stiff shirt formal, waiter -black not to well -dressed but good enough, get it.
To the right the entrance to the restaurant proper. To the left a small circular bar
surrounding waist -high a red jacketed white soap -shiny young bartender with fixed,
tired, cynical smile on face. Liquor bottles gleam, shine, spit fragrant alcbholic
labels, stew juice, all kinds stew juice right in your eye. The bar is red and silver
and black, clean, spotless, roccoco so and chromium for 'tis the twentieth century.
You're talking to the attendant; you're explaining your mission to the artificial stud
in his white starched bosom. His face is professional mg enigma somewhere on top of
you. Your eye spots words pasted black over a circular lighting fixture above the bar.
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FORM A CONTINUED
What are the words? What do they say? They mast have cost more than three hundred
dollars to get themselves so resplendently stuck up there. That's some price for
words.
The pulp magazines pay a penny a word. The aemr Masses pays less. Esquire
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pays around five cents a word.
What kind of special, powerful, meaningful, profound
universal all -encompassing words must these words be? You
devastating literary thrillblow. A wise -crack terrific, a
glorious, Greek in form, American in spirit. What say the
Life's Most Wondrous Treasure" and "Gather Ye All Here Who
Three hundred dollars, kid.
You get to Reuben's secretary. She's taking dough behind the Delicatessan
counter right off the check room. She says wait. You wait in a corner. You haven't
been in the restaurant proper yet. Later, after you have interviewed Mr. Reuben in
his office around the corner, you come back
and you sit there a while with Mr. Reuben's
which are set in a square around the floor.
prepare yourself for a
bar -wisdom ancient and
words? "Friendship Is
Have Forsaken Gloom."
to the restaurant through the kitchen
son in one of the half enclosed booths
Mr. Reuben invited you to have a
piece of his famous cheese cake and a cup of coffee, but somehow the young Mr. Reuben
forgot to order it for you and so you just sat there watching him eat in the bit
room empty of customers and full of mounted fish and soft lights.
hictory_o__Iufui
STATE New York
NA'W, oF OUEP. Arnold Manoff
ADD1ESS 27 Rwmilton Terrace
DA1F December 18, 1938
Se6JECT REUBEN AND HIS RESTAURANT- "THE LORE OF A SANDWICH"
1. Ancestry
German Jewish
2. Place and date of birt;i Germany some 53 years ago
8. Family
4. Place: Ii Vev t dat
5. Etthcation, with dai,es
FOLKLORE
NE' YORK
07cupations end aecomplintF, wit1 da CF Restaurantkeeper, former delicatessen
store owner, and pe&dlar.
7. Special skills and interests Special skill at coneocting sandwiches.
Interested in fishing.
8. Cola -amity and religious activiti.z.:s
9. Description of inforvtant
Aggressive, brusque appearance. Speaks very rapidly with vigorous gestures of
the hands. Light-footed and energetic in movement. Big strong healthy face,
twiches as he talks. Healthy and alive in the Broadway nervous tempo manner.
10. atalaNUPWERPIMAXIMaliEDEM3EX words roll out of his mouth in a spitting,
swishing thick torrent; accent occasionally German, occasionally Broadway, once
in a while pseudo-drahmahtic; intonations mixed Yiddish, Broadway wise guys
clipped executive style, and big -man, really -boy -at -heart, petulant, lisping,
ain't -I -charming manner.
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NANE OF WORKER Arnold Manoff
ADDRESS 27 Hamilton Terrace New York
DATE December 18, 1938
SUBJECT REUBEN AND HIS RESTAURANT -"THELORE OF A SANDWICH"
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
Well, boys, sit dawn; what can I tell you? Here you see me busy
like all the time; what is it, a book? kinda success story you want? heh, hek,
well, you know, I've been written up. Well, boys, of course there's the story
of how I came to make my sandwiches and that, boys, is the story of my life, I
suppose. Well, somebody once put it, "From a sandwich to a national institution"
And that, boys, is the story of Arnold Reuben's life. You know, I used to be a
peddlar when I was a kid and I used to awn a little shtoonky delicatessan store
on Seventy Third Street and Broadway. Well, today, you got a look at the layout
downstairs didn't you? Well, what do you think of it? Nice, uh? Well, you know
we've got all the celebrities coming in and out almost any night and they eat my
sandwiches, so once I got the idea to name a sandwich after a celebrity, and that's
how it all started. Sort of somebody once said I was the father of the sandwich.
Have you ever eaten a Reuben Special? Yeh, boys, we get orders for a Reuben Special
Air -mail from California. We ship all over the world. From a Sandwich to a National
Institution. Look, boys, I sit up here and sometimes I laugh; you know, I laugh
up my sleeve. Other delicatessan men, they began where I did in a shtoonky little
store someplace, dirty, filthy, no machines then, everything by hand, well they never
had any ideas. During the war I made a nice little pile. You know wartime. Well
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then, every little delicatessan owner used to keep a few cans of anchovies and caviar
in stook. Just a few cans at a time. Well, I figure it out that when things really
get going nobody would be able to import the stuff. So what do you think I did?
I went around to each little shtoonky place buying up a few cans at a time, and when
things got hot and you couldn't get some good anchovies or caviar for love or money,
who do you think you had to come to? Yes boys, you see: Well, I'll tell you about
how I got the sandwich idea. I awned a delicatessan on Broadway and one day a dame
walks in, one of the theatrical dames, and she's down and out I suppose, and she
asks me for something to eat. Her name was Anna Solos. Well, I'm feeling sort of
good, so I figure I'll clown around for the dame. That's haw it all came about.
I'm clowning for the dame. Well, what do I do? I take a holy bread that I used
to keep and grab up the knife and, you know, clowning like, I cut it right through
on the bias. Then I take some roast beef, I don't remember exactly what. but,
anyway, I figure I'll put anything on. So I take some meat and cheese and I slap
it on, and I put on some spice and stuff and I make her up a sandwich; it was a foot
high. Well the dame just eats it, that's all. She must have been plenty hungry.
And when she gets through she says, "Mr. Reuben, that's the best sandwich lever
tasted in my life." Well, the idea comes to me in a flash. I'll call it the
Anna Solos sandwich, after the dame. Then, one night, she brings some friends
up, you know, stage people and a newspaper man, and this guy he goes right behind
the counter and makes himself up a sandwich, and then he tells me why I don't
call the sandwich after celebrities? Like what happened with Anna Solos. *Why
don't I call it the Anna Selos sandwich? Well, boys, in a flash, I get the idea.
Anna Selosl I'll call it a Reuben Special. And that's how it started. Then one
day Marjorie Rambeau omne in to the store and I made her a sandwich and I called
it the Marjorie Rambeau sandwich. How did I do it? Well, I just slap it together.
Whatever came into my mind. But I used good stuff. Once Nikita Baileff, you know,
of the Chauve Souris, came into the place downstairs and he knew that I made
sandwiches for famous people and named it for them. So he says to me, "Mr. Reuben,
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make me a sandwich." Just like that. Well, I don't say no. I say sure, and
in a flash I made him a sandwich. I went into the kitchen and I grabbed some
whole wheat bread, slapped some tongue on it, some bar-le-duc, sweep pickle
and cream cheese and called it Chauve Souris. No, boys, I don't know exactly
how I create sandwildhes. It just comes to me in a flash.
I'm not like the average delicatessan man, boys. Ideas, I always
had ideas about things. When I create a sandwich I try to make it fit the
character and temperament of the celebrity, Now you takj) Walter Winchell.
made him a sandwich of roast beef, swiss cheese and sliced dill pickle. Oh
there's so many of them, boys, it just goes on and on.