Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1991-08-15

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The Ohio Jewish Chronicle
Serving Columbus and Central Ohio
Jewish Community jor Over 60 Years
VOLUME 69
NUMBER 33
AUGUST 15,1991
5 ELUL 5751
DEVOTED   fo   AMERICAN -AND   JEWISH   IDEALS
Soviet emigration
dropped in July
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Time is now for
Syrian Jewry
page 3
IS.EW lectures
endowed
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Federation announces
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ABE DWORKIN
Memories of a masterful musician
By Phil Sheridan
Terror grippied young Abe
Dworkin's heart. Suddenly,
there he was perched atop
some strange precipice in
total darkness! Then; a blinding light stabbed from above.
"I was petrified," Abeitold
me as he, his wife, Mary, and
I visited in their east side
home recently. He was &
trumpet player in the Loew's
and United Artists Ohio Theatre Orchestra and had been
chosen to play a solo. A rear
portion of the stage had been
built up higher than the rest,
and AbcLwas-positioned there.
Hundreds of jpairs of eyes
could see him, but he couldn't
see a thing. A fall could have
killed him. What a way to eairn
a living. Anyway, he got
through it somehow, as he always did in those crazy days
of the'30s and'40s.
That was really the name of
the game — getting through it.
Like the time, in January,
1934, when he and other musicians in the 19-piece theater
orchestra were playing cards
in the basement band room. In
walked Ted Lewis, the week's
star, who looked right at Abe
and demanded: "What do you
play?" Abe said he played
trumpet. "Get up to wardrobe
right away and get measured
for a uniform," ordered
Lewis.
"I had no idea what he was
talking about," Abe' recalls,
"so I went upstairs to the
wardrobe mistress real fast,
and she measured me, and in
about half-an-hour I got a uniform. That's how fast things
were done!"
Ted Lewis was "a sensational performer — no doubt
about it," Abe declares, but he
wasn't always a sweetheart to
work for. The showman from
Circleville was a legendary
gambler. Between shows he
would often shoot craps. If he
was a heavy loser, it was bad
news for the band. Now came
showtime with Abe blowing
trumpet in the Ted Lewis Orchestra and unaware that
Lewis had dropped some
$1,500 that afternoon shooting
craps, Things were complicated enough already. For
openers, the band didn't use
music. "Don't panic," said
Music Director Muggsy Span-
ier, "Just follow me. When I
go this way, you go this way.
When I go that way, you go
that way. When I stand up,
you stand up. When I sit down,
you sit down."
Easier said than done. Abe
found himself sitting when he
should be standing, going this
•Way when he should have been
going that way, but he had begun to catch on and gain some
confidence, when Lewis
turned atyay from, the audience, grabbed his nose like he
smelled something bad and
said: "Brass section, you
slink!";
In those days of Publix presentation shows, the band's
tween shows. Her stepfather, i
an Italian count, always stood
guard nearby, Other stars he
remembers well include Stan
Laurel and Oliver Hardy,
Judy Garland, Dave Rubinoff,
Milton Berle and Jack Benny.
Hildegarde, he says, appeared
on the Ohio's stage as a child
in an act called Jerry and Her
' Baby Grands. It featured five
baby grand pianos and some
very elaborate lighting effects.
After Loew's Ohio discontinued stage shows in favor of
movies, Abe Went on to other
things. He played in the RKO
Palace pit band tinder his old
friend Henry Cincione. He remembers that comedienne
Joan Davis, when she played
Abe and Mary Dworkin
schedule was rigorous. They
played 30 shows a week, due
at the theater no later than 11
a.m. every day except Friday,
When they started three hours
earlier and didn't get through
until midnight. On Monday
night, they rehearsed the next
week's music, without cuts.
They'd do another run-
through on Friday with cuts.
The pay was pretty good.
Abe got $100 a week. Henry
Cincione got $700 weekly, really big money in those days.
Henry drove a big Packard.
Most of Abe's memories are
pleasant. He remembers that
Jean Harlow, when she played
a week at the Ohio in 1932,
played cards with the band be-
the Palace in April, 1939, was
so unpleasant that the band
deliberately messed up her
music, and she filed a grievance with the "musicians'
union.
When Ralph Slater, billed as
a hypnotist, played the Palace
in May, 1946, trumpeter Sam
Giammarco, who had played
alongside Abe at the Ohio,
complained that the act was a
fake. When Slater heard about
the charge, he interrupted a
band card game long enough
to demonstrate his "hypnotic"
feat, not on Giammarco, but
on Abe Dworkin! Applying
pressure to Abe's neck, he
seemed to put him in a trance,
then slapped his face to
awaken Mm. What Slater actually did was to cut off circulation of blood to the brain,
causing his subjects to "black
out" temporarily.
During the '40s, when the
big name dance bands played
the RKO Palace, the musicians' union complained that
local players were being put
out of work by visiting bands.
A contract was negotiated for
a split-week "stand-by" band
of local musicians to just sit in
the orchestra pit and not play
a note.
When Constance Bennett
played the Palace, Oqt. 20-26,
1939, her accompanist turned
out to be Jiile Styne, who had
been music director of the Art
Jarrett Orchestra wheh it
played the Blackhawk Restaurant and the College Inn at
the Hotel Sherman in Chicago.
It was a pleasant reunion for
Abe, who had played trumpet
in the Jarrett bandr Styne, of
course, went on to become one
of the nation's most prolific
songwriters.
Dworkin, who celebrated
his 80th birthday on July 10,
also remembers fondly his
days playing trumpet in the
WBNS radio band and having
his own dance band at Club
Gloria, where former Loew's
Ohio organist Roger Garrett
was his pianist.
Mention almost any name,
entertainment or otherwise, to
Dworkin, and he'll tell you a
story. He and Mary just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. They are wonderful people.
A life-long resident of Columbus, Phil Sheridan has
spent most of his career in and
around mass media ancf entertainment. For seven years,
1982-89, he was general manager of the Palace theatre in
downtown Columbus.
An alumnus of North High
School and The Ohio State
University, Sheridan is the author of two boohs on the history of Columbus theatres:
Those Wonderful Old Downtown Theatres and More
About Those Wonderful Old
Downtown Theatres."A third
volume will be published soon.
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