Word: patrons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Williams attacks his subject from the flank, through the invented journals and letters of Augustus' family, friends and enemies. He breathes life into Old Friend Maecenas, generous patron of the poet Horace but a terrible versifier himself, and the fluttery Ovid, burlesqued by Williams in a splendidly overblown poem. The most vivid character is Augustus' daughter Julia, a Becky Sharp of the Roman salon...
...instance, a current that threatens to sweep him away as he swims) and a strange longing to surrender to the danger and let himself die. When there seems to be no further chance of survival, his fear disappears and he welcomes death. That strange emotion was experienced by Literary Patron Caresse Crosby. Recalling her rescue from drowning as a child, she wrote: "I saw the efforts to bring me back to life and I tried not to come back. I was only seven, a carefree child, yet that moment in all my life has never been equaled for pure happiness...
Getting all that food to the patron's table is another story. The restaurant has been understaffed, and a large number of the originally hired waiters have already quit. Bureaucratic measures aimed at increasing morale have backfired. One waiter related that after being told he was a member of the big, happy Mama Leone family, he was warned that his eating at other than designated times would result in his dismissal...
...just got to that fifth round, and I couldn't stop. I got to singing the Notro Dame fight song and right in the middle of maitre Jacques I got up and started that famous Notre Dame marching step on top of the tables. I marched from patron to patron, took a right onto the sit-down bar, leaped over to the bandstand and did a rendition of "Yes Sir, That's say (Hoosier) Baby. Everybody really dug it." The performance, which won him an invitation to Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour and an honorary membership to the Adams...
...Music Hall's problem is, of course, economic. The stage show is perhaps the best entertainment bargain in town; for as little as $2, a patron has been able to see low-kitsch ballet, precision numbers by the Rockettes, a magic show, an occasional elephant, horses and giant fountain displays. While Rockefeller Center, which owns the theater, is now giving it a $1,000,000 annual subsidy, the money does not make up for a marked drop in attendance over the last two decades. In its peak years in the '40s, the Music Hall attracted 12 million visitors...