Al Levy

The artful host explored the mysteries of the oyster cocktail

Faithful always to the humble oyster, which, in the days when glamour was a word usually found only in the dictionary, he glamorized by inventing the oyster cocktail, he had become a connoisseur of the choicest of other provender as well; an epicure; a gourmet’s gourmet.

And, more than this, he was not only boniface but counselor and crony to the parade of the renowned, stars of the stage and opera and, later, of the screen; politicians and public officials; captains of industry, czars of oil; writers and artists and all of the others bound by a mutual appreciation of good living.

 So it is that the death of Al Levy marks the passing of another milestone in the dramatic history of Los Angeles.

Mr. Levy died at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Last Wednesday he underwent a major operation.

The surgery, in view of the advanced age of the patient, presented a desperate crisis. It was the only crisis Al Levy did not meet — and come up smiling.

With him when he died were his wife, Mrs. Ray Levy, with whom, five years ago, he celebrated a golden wedding anniversary; their son, Bob Levy, and their daughter, Mrs. William Zidell.

Funeral services for Mr. Levy will be held tomorrow at 11 a.m. in the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, with Malinow and Simon in charge.

 Born hard by the great docks of Liverpool in 1860, Levy went with his parents to Dublin, where, in the tradition of that city of culture and charm, he was educated solidly and wisely. 

In his youth he studied the history of the United States.

He determined to come to this land of opportunity. He chose Los Angeles because he seemed to sense the imminence of growth, of a quickened tempo of life.

The pioneers and the descendants of the dons knew him as a young man with an unfailing smile and a ready wit, wheeling his pushcart on gala nights to the old Grand Opera House at First and Main Streets, initiating the elect into the tasty mysteries of the oyster cocktail.

He opened an oyster house at Fifth and Spring streets, now the site of the Alexandria Hotel. Al Levy had the touch of the true minehost. His modest quarters quickly proved too cramped.

Soon his restaurant at Third and Main streets, destined to become a center of fashionable night life, was doing a thriving business.

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His restaurant guests were his friends, too

Later, he opened an even more commodious establishment in Spring street between Seventh and Eighth streets.

His patrons — and they were his friends, too — read like an anthology of the Blue Book, Who’s Who and the headlines.

[Stage star] Nat Goodwin sat in state there with his successive wives; [silent-movie actor] Frederick Warde and [stage actor] David Warfield and [actor] James O’Neil and [Scottish entertainer] Sir Harry Lauder; Louis Paulhan, the French airman who first shadowed the City of the Angels with man-made wings [in 1910, at an Examiner-sponsored air show].

 It was in a banquet room at Al Levy’s that Hiram Johnson’s memorable first campaign for the United States Senate was launched.

 There, too, William Jennings Bryan, the silver-tongued teetotaler, smiled blandly when a dinner given in his honor began with a full-bodied Manhattan cocktail.

Local political issues were thrashed out there.

[He hosted] Luminaries of the courtroom, like [attorney] Earl Rogers; picturesque sportsmen like [L.A. Angels president] Jim Morley and [promoter] Dick Ferris.

[Others were:] financial giants like Colonel Jim Lankershim [one of the largest landowners in California and developer of the San Fernando Building on Main Street], Jackson Graves [author of the book Seventy Years in California].

[Also] William May Garland [the man who brought the 1932 Olympic Games to Los Angeles], [L.A. Mayor] Henry Hazard, General Hancock Banning, Louis Vetter, Robert Rowan, all sat happily at table, exchanging badinage among themselves and with Al Levy. 

The gilded pioneers of pictures were his friends, too: Mary Pickford, Doug Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Francis X. Bushman, Thomas Ince, Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and their kind.

Many a Hollywood romance had its blooming in Al Levy’s to the accompaniment of pink lady cocktails, matchless filets or the inevitable oysters.

Eras passed, but Al Levy did not seem to grow older. When Hollywood supplanted Los

There he was host to the Joan Crawfords and Robert Taylors and Clark Gables of present fame, as he had been to the Bushmans and Arbuckles and Normands of other years.

Mr. Levy suffered his first serious illness a little over a year ago, when, stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage, he collapsed in the street in front of his tavern, where he was standing, as was his custom, greeting friends old and new.

He recovered from that illness. But four-score years take their toll even from a man who attributed his remarkable vitality and longevity to good food, good drink and good friends.

So Al Levy has gone to join the other Los Angeles immortals with whom he once was wont to sip and sup and who, as the years rolled by, have disappeared from a world that Al Levy never took too seriously.

And his memory will remake a bright and happy one.