Cigars light up 80 80-year-old's Id's routine By Jay Sharbutt AP ARTS WRITER NEW YORK This may sound strange, but Chaz Chase likes to eat cigars. Lighted ones. And lighted cigarettes. A And matchbook flambee. Dessert is a yellow flower and a shirtfront.
He so dines without a burp or a word eight times a week in Broadway's "Sugar. Babies." He's in the first act, a tiny, sad-faced man in baggy clothes and a battered slouch bat. Now 80, he estimates that since 1919 he's downed four million lighted cheroots, one owned by Winston Churchill. He first got the idea of dining El Ropo from Joe Frisco, the stuttering comic. "That's what stunted my growth, I think," he mused, puffing on a stunted stogie at lunch.
Chaz, 5 feet in an updraft, also occasionally nibbles at a tiny harmonica but never swallows it. "I tried it once but it didn't go down right." Since the vaudeville era, the Chaz Chase Diet has survived the Depression, three wars and radio. It's been seen in 18 Broadway shows, in major cities around the world and on TV. It even was part of a 1963 cultural exchange tour dispatched by the late President John F. Kennedy to enlighten the natives of Afghanistan, India, Laos, South Vietnam and Hong Kong.
His cigar munch-in wowed the multitudes, he reports, so did Buddy Rich's drumming, but not comic Joey Adams, particularly in Afghanistan: "He insisted on doing Eddie Cantor, and I don't think they knew Cantor so well." His big break was in 1924, in the Ziegfeld Follies, working with Will Rogers, "a beautiful person," and W.C. Fields, "a great comedian, but as a person he was null and void." After World War II, he and his cigars lighted up Paris, which he still consid- Sammy Cahn still grinds out lyrics and 'Bojangles' is By Jay Sharbutt NEW YORK (AP) A Saturday night. Sammy Cahn is in his hotel room here, loafing in his pajamas. His sister drops by. "Don't you feel well?" she asks.
"Why aren't you going out tonight?" "I feel great," he tells her. "But only civilians go out on Saturday night. As a matter of fact, if you're in show business, Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week." Which is how the short, peppery, famous and rich lyricist comes up with both the hook and title of an enduring Frank Sinatra hit "Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week." "My whole life's an anecdote," Cahn observes in telling this one and a few others when phoned at his manse in Beverly Hills, Calif. He's been busy of late on lyrics for a new Broadway musical. The show is "Bojangles," about Bill Robinson, the famous black singer-dancer of yesteryear.
The music's by Charles Strouse, the Tonywinning tunesmith for the Broadway hit "Annie." "The score he's written is just great I say that in all immodesty," declares Cahn, who's collaborated with some pretty fair tune- ON TONIGHT next on his list ers headquarters and where he counts among his friends the great mime Marcel Marceau, and Jacques Tati, the film funnyman. He worked at the noted tourist haven, the Lido, for six years "I was the first distraction" and then seven more at the Crazy Horse, also known for lavish displays of women. "A gentleman named Bernandine ran it," he said. "A genius. He invented a system of lights that dress and undress the girls." Then, as now, he lived surrounded by chorus girls, whoopee and loud music at night, then by his family and quiet during the day, returning after sundown to his trade of eating lighted cigars.
"Well," he says of this split-ticket existence, "one is work, and the other isn't. You gotta differentiate between the two, otherwise you're not going to have any kind of life." smiths in his time mainly Jule Styne and' James Van Heusen. "But I like to write with anybody who goes to the piano and writes a melody. You'd be surprised at how many people use the name 'composer' and don't compose." Cahn, 68, a four-time Oscar-winner, was born on New York's Lower East Side. His formal education consists of several years at and no degree from Seward Park High School.
He can get by on piano but does all his composing on a typewriter. He learned the lyricist's craft almost accidentally, he says, back in the late 1920s when he played violin with a band. He. used to ad-lib dirty lyrics to a song, "One More Time," to break up the guys in the band. "This dubious method created the rhyming instinct," he says, adding with a mock sigh: "So here I am 50 years later, still making dirty lyrics." Not exactly.
But they are simple, honest, direct. And usually romantic. You've heard them in a few songs. Like "I Fall in Love Too Easily." And "Day By Day," "I Should Care," "The Second Time Around," "I'll Walk Alone," "Three Coins in the Fountain," "It's Magic," "All the Way" and "Call Me Irresponsible." All hits. Continued on Page 6 Stage The Matchmaker, 8.
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(with I.D.) Mail To: Kenley Players Akron, Ohio 44309. Phone Cal Cevetand Tal Reservations: Free: 241-7576 (216) 375-0550 Add $1 for return postage and handling. Oddly. enough, Chase only lasted briefly in the old-time burlesque that "Sugar Babies" salutes: "I wasn't funny enough, got overpowered by guys like Bert Lahr, Phil Silvers." Audiences then and now? "They laugh more whole-heartedly now. Back then, you'd have a smattering of ap-' plause and a lot of, you know, 'Bring on the broads' and 'Take it off, "The owners got more and more vulgar.
That's what killed it." Despite his smoke-filled gypsy life, Chase has been married to the same woman 50 years, and has a daughter and three grandchildren. One of them is a nutritionist. Sure, he says, she urges him to quit eating lighted cigars, to take aboard a better, non-burning brand of vegetable. "They all do," he said. "Everyone does.
But cigars don't bother me; matches don't bother me. I get heartburn from food." DON'T YOU WISH YOU WERE ARTHUR? The most fun money arthur A Rollins- Joffe Morra-Brezner Production Dudley Liza John Moore Minnelli Gielgud "Arthur" 1 Music by 5 Executive Producer Produced by Burt Bacharach Charles H. Joffe Robert Greenhut Written and Directed by Steve Gordon SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE ON WARNER BROS. RECORDS TAPES. Technicolor An ORION PICTURES Release PG PARENTAL GUIDANCE SUGGESTED Thru WARNER BROS A Warner Communications Company SOME MATERIAL MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN 1981 Orion Pictures Company.
All Rights Reserved. MATINEES DAILY--CHECK DIRECTORY FOR THEATRES BROOKGATE NOW CINEMA BROOKGATE SHOPPING CENTER MAYLAND Cor. SMITH SNOW (W.150th) SHOWING MAYFIELD LANDER 676-6810 461-8250 CINEMA CINEMA CINEMA RANDALL PARK SHOREGATE WESTGATE RANDALL PAPA MALL 29430 Lake Shore Blvd. W. 210th Center Ridge 581-6400 944-5330 331-8822 7 NEW GREAT MUPPET APER DISTRIBUTED ASSOCIATED 1901, TY FILM HENSON UNIVERSAL DISTRIBUTION ASSOCIATES PICTURES CORP.
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MANNIX he ART STEVENS, TED BERMAN, RICHARD RICH I WOLFGANG REITHERMAN, ART STEVENS RON MIL.I.E.R be OS MON BROOKGATE DIRECTORY MATINEES FOR DAN Y-CHECK THEATRES RICHMOND LOWS CATE SHOPPING CENTER faMEt SHOW (W 150th NOW MAYFIELD at MO 676-6810 442-4121 NORTHFIELD PLAZA STRONGSVILLE Two MENTOR DA held Shopping Co 14769 PEARL ROAD on 20 CINEMA 467-8141 572-0134 255 2441 she is 15. he is 17. the love every parent fears. I PolyGram Pictures presents a keith barish-dyson lovell production a film by franco zeffirelli brooke shields martin hewitt endless love shirley knight don murray richard kiley penelope milford beatrice straight based on the book by scott spencer screenplay by judith rascoe executive producer keith barish produced by dyson lovell directed by franco zeffirelli PolyGram Pictures A mil Universal les Release RE MATINEES DAILY- CHECK DIRECTORY FOR THEATRES NOW SHOWING BROOKGATE CINEMA ON GATE SHOPPING CENTER MAYLAND Car. SMITH (W.1500) MAYFIELD LANDER 676-6810 $61-8250 CINEMA MENTOR MALL FAIRVIEW CINEMA 1357 Para Bid Bet M.
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