Popovers and Candlelight , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Marcia Biederman

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

158 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

What would you do with your last sixty dollars? If you were Patricia Murphy you'd turn it into a fortune by buying a rundown Brooklyn diner. On the cusp of the Great Depression, the diner became an overnight sensation, the first of nine popular Patricia Murphy's Candlelight Restaurants that opened over the course of four decades in New York and Florida. Popovers and Candlelight recounts how Murphy bucked Mad Men–era sexism in a male-dominated field and created remarkable dining experiences with solid American fare, a talented staff, and eye-popping décor. Dripping in diamonds, she transcended ethnic prejudices to become a socialite and built a brand that sold fragrance as well as food. Mutinous siblings, a desperate manager, and a typhoid outbreak brought it all to an operatic end, but Marcia Biederman restores Murphy and her contributions to their proper place in women's and culinary history. This book will delight readers with its rags-to-riches story and fascinating view of class, gender, ethnicity, and food culture during much of the twentieth century.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Truth or Dare

2. Patricia of Avalon

3. New Girl

4. On the Heights

5. Remodeling

6. War

7. Love

8. Schism in the Suburbs

9. The Crown Jewel

gallery of photos follows page

10. Revenge

11. Spinning to a Stop

12. Grieve. Drink. Expand.

13. Where the Yachts Are

14. Storm over the Marina

15. Manhattan Transfer

16. Desperate Measures

17. Ignominy

18. The Party’s Over

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Popular culture

Region

Regional

Gender studies

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	10 septembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781438471563
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1148€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Popovers and Candlelight
Popovers and Candlelight
Patricia Murphy and the Rise and Fall of a Restaurant Empire
M ARCIA B IEDERMAN
Cover image: Patricia Murphy at her popover oven with her husband, James E. “Rosie” Kiernan, 1954. Photo courtesy of the Photography Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Biederman, Marcia.
Title: Popovers and candlelight : Patricia Murphy and the Rise and Fall of a Restaurant Empire / Marcia Biederman.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2018. | Series: Excelsior editions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017058365 | ISBN 9781438471556 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438471549 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438471563 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Murphy, Patricia, 1905–1979. | Restaurateurs—United States—Biography. | Patricia Murphy’s Candlelight Corporation.
Classification: LCC TX910.5.M8 B54 2018 | DDC 647.95092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058365
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my sister, Phyllis, who sets a beautiful table
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Truth or Dare
2. Patricia of Avalon
3. New Girl
4. On the Heights
5. Remodeling
6. War
7. Love
8. Schism in the Suburbs
9. The Crown Jewel
gallery of photos
10. Revenge
11. Spinning to a Stop
12. Grieve. Drink. Expand.
13. Where the Yachts Are
14. Storm over the Marina
15. Manhattan Transfer
16. Desperate Measures
17. Ignominy
18. The Party’s Over
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help of many individuals and institutions. Paul Murphy never met his great-aunt, Patricia, but he was instrumental in the writing of this book. Paul was close with his grandfather, James F. Murphy, Patricia’s brother and a successful restaurateur. In Paul’s view, Patricia’s refusal to reconcile with the four siblings who left her business to start their own was “over the top, pure Patricia.” His sharing of family lore, articles, and menus, and his encouragement of my project, helped bring the pure Patricia into focus.
Patricia’s former manager, Greg D. Camillucci, provided crucial perspectives on the woman and her business. It was a thrill to talk to a man I had seen on screen in my repeated viewings of the film Tootsie —he plays a maître de at the Russian Tea Room, where in real life he was a manager and vice president.
Owen T. Smith, the son of Patricia’s sister, Lauraine, offered tremendous assistance as the oldest member of his generation of Murphys. Jim E. Rogers, a son of John E. Rogers, had thought of writing his own book, a fact-based novel based on his father’s eventual ownership of Patricia’s business and its unfortunate outcome. Tragically, his life was prematurely ended by illness soon after he spoke to me. I hope I have done his story justice.
The famed decorator Carleton Varney gave me a lively, quotable view of his former client. Patricia’s pilots—Alexander E. Cabana, R. John Bates, and Dr. Richard A. Strauss—offered impressions and anecdotes. I contacted them with the intention of debunking Patricia’s flight credentials. Their reminiscences convinced me that her fibbing, probably prompted by a publicist, was far less important than her warm relations with them. Peter and Andy Kern painted a vivid picture of Patricia’s continued connection with her first Candlelight restaurant in Brooklyn. Diane Carlson Phillips, daughter of Patricia’s head gardener in Westchester, offered insights and photographs; Nader James Sayegh, a son of a Candlelight chef, shared his father’s reflections. Kevin J. Gonzalez helped me visualize the last of the Candlelights in Deerfield Beach, Florida, which he once managed. Paul A. Gore, the attorney who handled the probate of Patricia’s estate, and Dr. Greg J. Harrison, her fellow orchid collector, shed important light on her final days.
Merrilyn Rathbun of the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society answered my lengthy questions by phone and in person. Tom O’Keefe waited an hour for me at the Placentia Area Historical Society when my travel plans went awry, and his colleague, Anita O’Keefe—my Canadian counterpart in the Patricia Murphy fan club—steered me to Anne Marie Murray and her memories of Patricia. In typical Newfoundland style, a manager named Wanda at Placentia’s Ocean View motel drove me hours out of her way when I couldn’t rent a car. I’m grateful also to the Culinary Historians of New York and the Biographers International Organization for egging me on.
Patricia left few letters and documents behind. I’m thankful that some were preserved in the Archives and Manuscripts division of the New York Public Library and the Archives and Special Collections of Barnard College. New York University preserved important letters written by John Rogers; Yale’s Beinecke Library collected the papers of Patricia’s lighting designer, Richard Kelly; and Harvard’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America holds the restaurant management lesson books she studied. Librarians at these institutions and at the Memorial University of Newfoundland were enormously helpful, as were employees of the New York City Department of Finance offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn and the records office of Broward County, Florida. Special thanks to Kevin Bailey, an archivist at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, for unearthing papers related to Patricia’s investment in the film John Paul Jones .
Warm embraces to my brother, Alan, who explained mortgages and deeds to me. No repayment is possible to my sister, Phyllis, and others who listened to my endless Patricia anecdotes, especially Jonah and Michael Quinn and Paul DuCett.
My deepest appreciation to my agent, Matthew DiGangi, for believing in Patricia and me, and to my editor, Amanda Lanne-Camilli. Without them, this book would not be possible.
Introduction
Joan Crawford, an Oscar winner for her portrayal of the fictitious Mildred Pierce, was fascinated by Patricia Murphy, said the decorator Carleton Varney, a friend of both. The star and the restaurant owner may never have met, but Crawford knew Patricia Murphy’s Candlelight Restaurants. In 1961, at the pinnacle of her success, Murphy published her partly concocted memoir, but a plunge lay ahead. Uncannily, she followed Mildred Pierce’s trajectory.
Murphy’s life, unlike the 1945 film noir Mildred Pierce , was not a murder mystery. It more closely resembled the plot of the movie’s source material, written four years earlier, a novel by James M. Cain. Like Cain’s Mildred, Patricia launched her chain of restaurants at an inauspicious time, the start of the Great Depression. Mildred was a suddenly single mother of two; Patricia was a daughter of a bankrupt Newfoundland merchant. Products of the middle class but desperate for cash, both initially spurned waitressing work. Mildred surrendered, donning the uniform but hiding it from her children. Patricia, fired from cashier and cafeteria jobs, would not hoist platters. Instead she enrolled in a storefront restaurant management school and learned how to be a boss.
Men helped both of them, and later helped to ruin them. A convenient bedmate bankrolled Mildred’s first chicken-and-waffles joint in Glendale, California; Patricia opened a Brooklyn tea room with a small wad of cash from her hard-pressed father. Mildred Pierce, Inc., blew up when its founder stopped minding the store; a gold-digging second husband had distracted her, in league and in bed with her monstrous daughter. Patricia Murphy eventually relinquished control of her business to a reckless male manager who destroyed both the chain and himself. And, at least in Patricia’s view, two brothers betrayed her by setting up a rival restaurant, copying her format and menu while recruiting two sisters to their side.
Both Mildred and Patricia luxuriated in their temporary wealth. In this case, the film version of Mildred more closely resembled Patricia. Clad in fur and dripping with jewels, Patricia reveled in visiting the New York and Florida restaurants where her name flashed in lights. In a flourish Hollywood failed to imagine, she loved arriving unannounced in her private plane. But just as Glendale-bred Mildred failed to win acceptance in Pasadena society, Irish-descended Patricia failed, by a hair, to breach the inner social circles of Palm Beach or Manhattan.
The life stories of Mildred Pierce and Patricia Murphy raise issues of economics, class, gender, and ethnicity in midcentury America. They are compelling stories about two remarkable women—one of them real.