Word: adler
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Politics was not the only problem that ever bothered Larry Adler. For a long time there was the matter of talent. The son of a Baltimore plumber, he was tossed out of the Peabody School of Music in short order. Diagnosis: a tin ear. He was 13 when he read that the Baltimore Sun was sponsoring a harmonica contest. He spent three weeks teaching himself to play, won, and wasted little time heading for New York...
...harmonica troupe. One audition and he got the word: "You stink." A few weeks later he was signed on for a tour of the Paramount vaudeville circuit-then the boss of the show came to rehearsal. The voice rumbled across the theater: "This boy stinks." In retrospect, says Adler, "there seems to have been a certain unhappy unanimity of feeling about...
...read a Variety ad: Sid Grauman was casting in Hollywood. A wire went out to Grauman: THE WORLD'S GREATEST HARMONICA PLAYER IS AT THE CHICAGO THEATER. The Wire Was signed "Louie Lipstone," the name of the head man at the Chicago Theater. Next morning, mildly conscience-stricken, Adler went around to explain. He walked in on a telephone conversation. "But I didn't send you a wire!" Lipstone was shouting. Then he saw the harmonica player. He covered the mouthpiece and asked: "Did you, you little bastard?" Adler nodded. Lipstone turned to the phone. "Yeah, that...
Dempsey & Duchin. By 1933, Har-onicist Adler had begun to catch on, and next year he went to England. Despite a mixed reception from the critics, he was a box-office smash. He married Eileen Walser, a London model, and began to tour the world. He was away so long that when he decided to come home in 1939, no one remembered him. "I was offered a job," he recalls ruefully, "in Jack Dempsey's bar." Then an appearance with Eddy Duchin got him started again. When World War II started, he traveled the world once more, entertaining troops...
...when a Greenwich, Conn, housewife objected to his appearance in her town. Eventually Adler went back to England. Vaughan Williams wrote a piece for him; so did Darius Milhaud and Cyril Scott and Arthur Benjamin. In time, U.S. producers asked him to return. Now recording contracts are waiting along with nightclub engagements. "I'd like to alternate between the U.S. and the rest of the world," he says, but there is no doubt that recognition at home is what pleases him most. "I played part of Porgy recently," he recalls, "and a member of the cast told...