Ken Price: "Last of the great publicists"

   

Ken Price

     There is the Palmer House, and then there are all the other hotels in Chicago, and while I could rhapsodize the gorgeous lobby, the history, the location, the truth is, the most important factor was that the Palmer House had Ken Price representing it, while all the other hotels had ... well, I couldn't tell you anything about them. Ken Price alone approached me about stories at the Palmer House far more than all the other hotels in the city, combined. They don't make publicists like that anymore. I'll miss him. 

     Ken Price didn’t need a family; he had a hotel.
     “His work was his life. His work was his family,” said his niece Julie Stevens. “He loved what he did.”
     The 800-person staff at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel, where he was director of public relations for 38 years, reacted to news of his death from cancer Wednesday the way any family member would: with sadness and tears, shed by everyone from bellmen to telephone operators to Dean Lane, the hotel’s general manager.
     “We’re emotionally devastated,” Lane said. “Ken treated everybody with so much dignity and respect. From bartenders to room attendants, we’re all crying. He meant so much to many people. It’s been incredibly devastating.”
     “Whether someone was a doorman or a housekeeper or a senior vice president, he was interested in everybody and treated everybody the same,” Stevens said.
     Mr. Price, 82, was tall — about 6-feet-2 — and elegantly turned out: beautiful suits and neckties, shoes shined, pocket square folded. And large designer eyeglasses that somehow seemed part of his persona.
     “No one other than him could get away with wearing them,” Stevens said. “They stopped making this frame long ago. He had them specially made, found someone to do it,”
     “He would wear his ascots and he would wear his Hollywood glasses,” said Shelley MacArthur, an entertainer who sang at the Palmer House Empire Room, which staged nightclub shows until 1976 — comedian Phyllis Diller put on the final performance — and then started functioning as a regular, albeit splendid, hotel ballroom.
     “Mister Kelly’s, all those great clubs, the Empire Room was one of the last survivors of that,” MacArthur said. “When they changed the room, that was one of Ken’s very sad moments.”
     He did have his times of darkness. Mr. Price would deeply grieve, for months, after the death of one of his beloved dogs — Kugel, Fotchie, Sidney. The world was not going in a direction of which he approved.

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Wilmette Notes: The Entertaining Nature of People

     When I go to estate sales, I invariably come away empty-handed, with only melancholy thoughts on the futility of acquisition and the sorrow of life. North Shore Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey, unsurprisingly, finds a whole lot more, including a word I had never heard before. Her Saturday report:

By Caren Jeskey

Was Liebe sei
Dichter! was Liebe sei, mir nicht verhehle!
Liebe ist das Atemholen der Seele.
Dichter! was ein Kuß sei, du mir verkünde!
Je kürzer er ist, um so größer die Sünde!

What is Love?
Poet, what is love? Will you not tell me!
Love is when the soul takes a breath. 
Poet, what is a kiss? Do tell me, please!
The shorter it is, the greater the sin!
         — Charlotte von Hagn

     Franz Liszt is considered the world’s first rock star. He was 6’2” with long blonde locks and more than a hair of talent. Women flocked to the stage after his concerts, picked up spent cigar butts and inserted them into their cleavages. I was not expecting that. 

      I had no idea, when I asked about an image of German comedienne Charlotte von Hagn at an estate sale recently, that I was set to learn about great dramas of the 19th century. I was on my way out of the sale after helping coordinate donations to Humanity Relief. Other than the Japanese screen I’d already picked out and loaded into my car, I was not really drawn to anything else at the sale in Riverwoods, though the bright and sunny home with leopard print carpet was filled with gorgeous treasures. I noticed that a gentleman from Knee Deep Vintage was cleaning up, so there may be some cool finds on 18th Street.
     Ms. von Hagn caught my eye. She was framed in a simple, velvet lined gold painted 14x12 inch frame, set back an inch or two from the glass. Her right eye revealed exotropia, giving the impression that she was seeking something better elsewhere. Her calm countenance, small smile and bemused eyes were pleasurable to behold.
     What really got me was that her dark, ringlet-curled hair was adorned with real gemstones—well, more likely replicas but still—and her velvet and fur trimmed dress similarly bedecked. She sat on a sturdy wooden throne-like chair with brass screws and decorous bulbs indicating high class. That settled it. She was coming home with me.
     I put her in the car and was excited to have a new friend from history to hang on my wall. I’d given her name a quick Google search before I decided to bring her home (to be sure she wasn't the wife of a German oligarch), and learned that she was a witty actress who was born and died in Munich in the 1800s. She lived a good long life and died four weeks before her 82nd birthday in 1891. Her father was a businessman, and her brother an accomplished artist.
     Apparently, Liszt’s popularity gained him the disdain of the likes of Nietzsche, who gave the composer the nickname "Liszt, or the art of running after women." Ms. von Hagn (who was only married for three years of her life) was one of Lizst’s lovers. It’s said that she composed the poem "What Is Love" on the corner of a paper fan, and offered it to him after one of his shows.
     In my quest to learn more about this interesting woman, I found that in addition to the philosophizing he is well known for, Nietzsche tried his hand at composing music as well. He wrote a piece that Wagner’s wife played at a concert, and for some reason (maybe it was bad? Maybe Wagner had a case of jealousy?) Wagner apparently left the show and literally rolled on the floor laughing. After that “Nietzsche later parted ways with Wagner, even writing an entire essay–Nietzsche contra Wagner –about why he had decided to metaphorically stop returning his once-friend and idol’s calls."
     I like to sit around and wax poetic, myself. Here on my comfy velvet couch in a quiet and safe suburb, I have room to think, to write, to create, to grow. These days I find it unwise to more than dabble in the news. Yes, the world is crumbling in many ways. As spring approaches, my aim is to find fun things to talk about and I am sure that much of it will come in the form of art. I won't let myself ponder a day where Chicago is no longer safe and important landmarks like The Art Institute might be carelessly bombed like a children's library in Chernihiv. My nightmares belie this choice, for it's impossible (and unwise) to tune it all out. But that's a small price to pay.

Let’s fight for freedom right here

     Fight for freedom in Ukraine?
     Why not fight for freedom right here?
     Let’s review, shall we?
     It’s mid-March, 2022. Our nation is united in spirit against Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin because ... why, exactly? Because he invaded democratic Ukraine, and is not only killing civilians and destroying cities, but also committing these atrocities to take away their liberty.
     Is that it? There’s no freedom of speech in Russia. We saw independent media outlets closed down at the start of the war. Peaceful protesters in Moscow hustled away by nightmare phalanxes of black-clad police. The elections keeping Putin in power are a sham. Opponents standing up to him politically can find themselves in prison, or drinking tea laced with polonium.
     Americans don’t like that. Readers write, demanding a no-fly zone, basically a declaration of war by happenstance. We might as well just cut to the chase and go to war, which some readers also support.
     Leading to today’s question.
     Why are we eager to defend freedom in Ukraine but not at home? Why cheer on the Ukrainians as they die in the name of democracy, applaud their refusal to submit, their courage, while rolling like puppies — many of us, anyway — at the feet of Donald Trump, a weak-tea, wannabe version of Putin? Someone who has either repeatedly said or tried to do exactly what Putin does?
     Sure, it might be a tentative foray, like suggesting the Federal Communications Commission sanction “Saturday Night Live” for making fun of him, or encouraging his followers to shout down entirely true reports of his countless lies with chants of “Fake News.” But the theory is the same.
     At this point, certain readers send their thumbs flying to write in some version of: “Aiyee, you’re obsessed! What’s with the Trump fixation? Why are you talking about him? A distant memory of something that might have happened once in a country somewhere, perhaps our own. Move on!”

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Flashback 2012: Palmer House guests to act like dogs at tea party

Kitty at the Empire Room, 2012
(Photo for the Sun-Times)

     Over the weekend I was writing an actual letter to a dear friend—been a long time since I've done THAT—and mentioned the tea parties for dogs that the Palmer House held 10 years ago. It struck me that I've never posted the column I wrote about one, an oversight I leap to correct.

      What’s it like to be famous? Well, you walk out of an elevator at the Palmer House Hilton, into the splendid, Wedgewood-ceilinged lobby, and every face swivels in your direction. People light up, just light up, as you pass, big smiles breaking out, expectant nods, murmurs of appreciation. Feeling the attention upon you, you float on a cloud of benevolent interest, through the gilded lobby, down the stairs and out onto Wabash Avenue, where it doesn’t end. Attractive women pause to make conversation. The patrons inside Miller’s Pub see you and tap on the window, waving and smiling then, unable to stop themselves, they leave their drinks and rush out into the street to marvel that you are actually there. It’s very nice.
     Not that I’m famous, of course. People don’t know who I am and wouldn’t care if they did. But there’s something about walking a dog through a downtown hotel lobby — particularly when it’s a button-cute little dog like mine — that provokes a reaction that I imagine is very close to celebrity.
     Not every hotel is dog-friendly, but the Palmer House is. That’s why Kitty — that’s our dog’s name, it’s a long story — and I were there, to experience the hotel’s canine-coddling qualities, which include a big fluffy dog bed in a corner of your room, plus special Palmer House dog tags, custom baked biscuits and, best of all, the right to tromp through the lobby with your dog whenever you please. All they ask is that you not let your dog tear the place up, and kennel her if you leave her in the room so she doesn’t, you know, attack the chambermaid.
     Regular readers will remember that last year I attended the Palmer House’s Doggie Tea Party, without Kitty — I had to be somewhere that evening and couldn’t bring her downtown. It was a surreal scene — dogs in gold crowns gobbling down canine sushi set before them on a low, damask-covered table by white-gloved waiters, society ladies of indeterminate age and unimaginable wealth shrieking greetings at each other, planting air kisses, while immaculately dressed men who all seemed to be wedding planners or party consultants pressed one palm to their cheeks, grasped their elbows with the other, then sighed and commiserated about how difficult it is to find a really good dog chiropractor.

Kitty in the Empire Room
(Photo for the Sun-Times)

     Frankly, I wasn’t sure how well Kitty would fit in with that crowd — she isn’t a pure breed, after all, and buys her kibble at PetSmart as opposed to, I don’t know, having it shipped in from Fauchon in Paris. Or maybe she’d love it. She’s a dog. She tends to love everything. Maybe I’m the one who didn’t fit in. If walking a dog through the Palmer House lobby felt like being famous, trying to talk to my fellow dog tea partiers was one of the more anonymous things I’ve ever done — some guests seemed as if not only had they never read my newspaper but they had never read any newspaper. Conversations tended to be brief.
     Of course, last year’s tea party was an invitation-only affair, culled from the upper crust of the haut monde. This year’s, which takes place Thursday at 11:30 a.m. at the Palmer House’s Empire Room, 17 E. Monroe, is open to the public, for the first time. The event costs $30, all of which goes to benefit the Anti-Cruelty Society. Your dog not only gets a multi-course meal, but also you are plied with champagne, if you are so inclined, and a professional photographer will take your picture in the ornate setting, a keepsake to suggest to others that you lead a grander, more luxurious life than you actually do.
     I’ve been pondering whether to bite the bullet and take Kitty this year. She would have fun, but then she can have fun with a chewed-up tennis ball in my front yard. The Palmer House people of course would be happy, but my job isn’t to provide another supernumerary for their soirees. And me? I’d have to schlep her downtown. And while I do shudder recalling the sinking, What-Am-I-Doing-Here? feeling from last year’s party, that might be ameliorated by the admission of the general public, those non-botoxed, non-pickled in Chanel No. 5, salt-of-the-earth regular folks whose dogs do not have purses that match their own, yet still feel able to give $30 to a good cause in order to watch dogs with names like “Butch” and “Chief” caper under the crystal chandeliers in the Empire Room for 90 minutes.
     In fact, that might make all the difference — there were moments approaching near chaos last year, a woofing whir of dogs and waiters and matrons and gentlemen in $900 blazers. And that was before the public was admitted. Think of the effect on all those Margaret Dumont’s society parties once the doors fly open and the Marx Brothers burst in. Only this time they’ll have dogs in tow and be served champagne. Frankly, I think it will be something to experience. I should go. It’s a strange job, but somebody has to do it.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 3, 2012

Tanking tanks sign of Russian rot

     Tanks are not exactly fuel-efficient. The Russian T-72 manages about 0.8 miles per gallon, though of course being Europeans, at least in theory, the Russians measure it in kilometers per liter, which works out to 0.38 km/lt.
     Significant because, without fuel, a tank is just a cannon with aspirations. And even with fuel, they’re often merely big rolling funeral pyres.
     War offers a chaos of detail. As we sit and watch, we choose which story lines to absorb, which to ignore. Focusing on what feels good: the heroism of the Ukrainian resistance, the courage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the unexpected severity of sanctions imposed by governments and businesses. When McDonald’s steps into the fray, you know something unusual is happening.
     Or, we focus on what we feel obligated, as human beings, to consider: the suffering of the Ukrainian people. The hardships facing millions of refugees. The risk to ourselves in this delicate geopolitical moment, with Russia begging China for arms, and European leaders traveling to embattled Kyiv.
     Rather than symbols of strength, all those tanks are an argument for how weak and disorganized the Russians have been. They can barely invade Ukraine, never mind face NATO and the United States. Russia went into this folly without a plan and, apparently, without adequate supplies, not only of fuel, but food, water and ammunition. Some tanks didn’t have to be destroyed; they were merely abandoned.
     When the first images of burning Russian tanks started flitting around Twitter, as well as Ukrainian farmers towing tanks with their tractors, I wondered how the supporting infantry accompanying the tanks let the Ukrainians get close enough to destroy them.
     Now it turns out that the tanks often had no supportive infantry. Nor can they operate off-road because of the season Russian chose for the invasion: too much mud.

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Flashback 2001: Hot dogs with ketchup, mustard and wisdom

     Today is what would have been Harry Heftman's 113th birthday. Longtime readers will remember that he owned a hot dog stand at the corner of Randolph and Franklin that I liked to visit. Eventually, I started to write about the diminutive owner. Harry passed away in 2013, at the age of 103. But I still think about him sometimes, particularly when I walk by the little park where Harry's Hot Dogs used to be. I thought I would share this, at the risk of re-igniting the stupid ketchup controversy. Not that it ever goes away.

     Harry serves me hot dogs but will not let me pay. He stands in front of the condiments, his head just visible above the counter. I hold out several bills, folded in my hand, and shake them vigorously, as if to catch his attention. But he ignores me.
     "Take the money Harry," I plead, then turn, imploringly, to Jeannie at the cash register. I try to give the cash to her; she ignores me too.
     Since 1956, Harry Heftman has run Harry's Hot Dogs, under mustard-yellow awnings in the tiny Showmen's League of America building at the corner of Randolph and Franklin. Harry is, maybe, 5 feet tall. He is, maybe, 90 pounds. Glasses. White hair. He is 92 years old.
     For a wild moment, I consider tossing the bunched up money at Harry, but I end up pocketing it with a sigh, as I always do.
     Harry puts mustard and ketchup on my hot dog--that's how I like it, and unlike many, he puts on no airs about the ketchup. He is a friendly man, and acceptance radiates off him like a glow.
     "That's what life is all about," he says. "Be friendly."
     I take my hot dog, resting on a sheet of waxy paper in its little red plastic basket, and my styrofoam cup of hot black coffee, and go sit in a booth.
     I have never done this before--usually I eat the dog standing up at the counter then rush away. But I want to look around the place, to look at Harry and calm my jangled nerves. The last time I saw him was Sept. 11—I was hurrying to work, he was standing out front. I paused to shake hands—we always shake hands. "Hell of a day," I said somberly and he agreed. I've missed him, missed his friendly pat on the back, and if not for my reluctance to cadge another frank, I'd have been back long ago.
     I dig in. A juicy, hot, Vienna wiener. Soft, steamed bun with poppy seeds. After a minute, Harry slides into the booth across from me. This is pleasant, sitting here, I tell Harry. I should do this more often.
     "A nice opportunity to relax," he says, his voice low and raspy. "Start the day right. It's important to start out with a good breakfast that gives you a lift--a bowl of cereal."
     And not a hot dog? I ask, surprised.
     "A hot dog too," he says. "What's important is to sit and relax."
     He hurries away. Customers. Harry is a man in motion. I can't help but think of all the other people, his age or younger, sitting in the day rooms of nursing homes, griping. Not Harry. He is hustling back and forth with a metal bowl of crisp fresh lettuce in his hands.
     I look around the shop. This is the sort of place that people have in mind when they curse fast food chains. The beauty of the green neon signs, "Drink Coca Cola," in both windows, contrasted with, in orange neon, "HOT CORNED BEEF" facing Randolph Street, and "FOUNTAIN SERVICE" facing Franklin. The faux wood paneling. The plastic flowers. Blue laminate booths, six four-tops and three two-tops. A pair of charming signs encourage culinary daring: "Try our fish sandwich!" suggests one. "Try our shrimp in a basket!" suggests another. Cook Chester Green, 72, in a poufy chef's hat, like a cook in a comic.
     Harry returns, and we continue talking about friendliness. I ask Harry if he ever met anyone he didn't like.
     "No," he says, with a shake of the head. "If I don't like a person, I start talking to him, and he walks out happy, smiling. That's what this business is right here. A lawyer came in the other day, and by the time he walks out, he was my best friend."
     A lot of people walk out of Harry's smiling.
     "He's the type of character that makes the city a wonderful place to be," said Circuit Court Judge James Henry, a regular. "He's priceless."
     Harry leans forward, his voice hushed, about to impart a secret.
     "The economy is not good," he reveals. "I really hope it changes. I'm lucky to have a good location."
     Harry points out the latest decoration—a pair of Boeing posters, one for a 747, one for the F/A 18 E/F Super Hornet.
     "My business is very improving because of airplanes," he says. "Boeing, they all come in here--very nice--gave me beautiful pictures."
     Harry lives in Skokie. He arrives at work five days a week at 6 a.m. He stays until the shop closes at 5 p.m. "My son drives me," he says. "He comes in especially for me."
     Harry tells me about a grandson at Harvard, then asks, "You have a nice family? Wait, I'll show you a picture." He runs to get a photo of himself and his wife of 60 years, Perle. And one of his parents, Rose and Herman. He is proud of his three children and five grandchildren.
     "I wish your children to follow my children. That's a very good wish. A good family gives you energy, to work for," he says, emphasizing his words with a light tap of the fist on the table.
     Then he is off again, hustling about his day, and so am I, refreshed and renewed, not so much by the hot dog--which in truth goes down a little uneasily first thing in the morning--as by the hot dog vendor. Be friendly.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 28, 2001

Doing time’s dirty work

     Time will send a henchman to your home someday to tear through your most cherished possessions and scatter them forever, and there was a certain irony that last month time’s designated agent would be me, a nostalgic man inclined to keep everything.
     Time will cure you of that tendency.
     I arrived at my parents’ townhome in Boulder, Colorado, then proceeded to my father’s studio and went to work.
     Pausing, yes, one last time to regard the tableau: delicate paintings, watercolors, on styrene foam core boards, framed on the walls and set out on a pair of handmade wooden easels, built by a neighbor, that reached almost to the ceiling.

     The two big drafting tables, with the Winsor & Newton watercolors — cobalt blue, burnt sienna, alizaran crimson — some still in their beige boxes, the jar jammed with well-worn brushes. I ran my thumb across the bristles of a wide sable brush. It tossed off a puff of dust.
     Time to move my parents to a nursing home — my mother’s term, though I gently correct her, with all the brightness I can muster. “A dynamic senior lifestyle community, Ma!” I say. In Buffalo Grove, 17 minutes from our house.    

     The Scandinavian design hutch that sat in our dining room when I was growing up in Berea, Ohio, and had been, for the past 34 years in a corner of my father’s studio. I started there with the books, kept behind glass doors where the china nobody wants once had been.
     I always thought we’d keep the dessert china: Royal Doulton with delicate flowers. But my wife made a face when I held up a cup to her, inquiringly. We have our own nice china our boys don’t want. No need for another set.
     I began pulling the books out —”Patterns in Nature” by Peter S. Stevens, “Fearful Symmetry” by Stewart and Golunitsky — piling them on the floor. My father had been a nuclear physicist at NASA for 30 years, then retired in 1987 to paint watercolors: ocean waves and canyon walls and that damn vase he loved so much.

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