Tell-Tale Hart
Ellen Hart Sturm, Manhattan Multi-tasker:
Underground Model, National Anthem Exemplar, Health Nut, Marathoner,The Maria Trapp of Singing Waiters, And Anti-smoking Activist.
By Hal Drucker
I stood up for the 5-foot 3-inch Ellen Hart in her office above Ellen’s Stardust Diner at 51st and Broadway, and why not? She never failed to bring me and 18,000 other Knick and Ranger fans to our feet, when singing the national anthem at Madison Square Garden.
As I settled into a cushy settee, I dabbed at my eyes, unable to compose myself, given the existential emotion that welled up in me when I passed a familiar looking piece of rectangular signage that hung from a wall of the restaurant.
Rewind to Summer, 1959. I am riding the air conditioned-less Independent subway at the height of rush hour, the shvitz pouring from my forehead onto my Herald-Tribune. I am sandwiched between a fleshy matron in a white shmata, the kind of maedchen in uniform who used to poke a flashlight in my face at the kid’s section of the local bijou, and a guy carrying a lindberger cheese sandwich in a brown paper bag. There is no relief in sight between the 71st Continental Ave. Station to Rockefeller Plaza, save for that of a pert young woman whose biographical CV is encapsulated in five lines, and signed John Robert Powers. The headline reads “Meet Miss Subways, Ellen Hart.” For a glorious moment I forget about the sauna on steel wheels, and nurture a smile.
And dear reader, if you do not know who or what Miss Subways was, then you are missing a slice of New York as intrinsic to our metropolis as the Roxy Theater and Lindy’s cheesecake. The first Miss Subways was Mona Freeman in 1941, who went on to a modest career in the movies, followed by scores of other delectable dishes who lifted the morale of countless straphangers during the war years and beyond. Miss Subways was glorified as “Miss Turnstiles,” (played respectively on stage and in the movies by Sono Osato and Vera-Ellen) in the Comden & Green/Leonard Bernstein musical On the Town “where the people ride in a hole in the ground.” Did it foreshadow a shining career for Ellen Lebenhardt? Well, like chicken soup in a pot, it didn’t hurt.
“My husband Irving Sturm’s father had an appetizing store on Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn.” I interrupted her to tell her that when I was a kid, my parents regularly took my sister and me to a Jewish restaurant on Pitkin Avenue called incongruously The Little Oriental.
“When his father passed away, Irving continued with the appetizing store. Then the whole area became Spanish, so he opened a Hispanic-American supermarket, but then it burned down and he was out of work for 10 months. He began scouting around, looking for an opportunity when in 1971 he found a tiny coffee shop opposite City Hall, the Broadway Coffee Shop which had been around since 1927. When I came into the business in 1980, my sons were 13 and 17. We expanded the shop and called it Ellen’s Café, and I began connecting with some of the politicians and some of the business going on at City Hall. Every year we had a birthday celebration for Mayor Dinkins, followed by Mayor Koch. We would bake their favorite pies, as many as their age and give them to their favorite charities. We got lots of press and pictures in the tabloids. Then I became a National Anthem singer at the Garden, and sang at the Livingstone St. firehouse in Brooklyn with Mayor Koch at the podium. I had sung soprano in the Jamaica High School choir, show tunes like The King and I. Today, I take voice lessons from Ann Hampton and Liz Calloway’s mother Shirley. She’s very strict, but I need the discipline. ‘You’re off,’ she’ll say, ‘you’re singing flat, you’re singing sharp. Re-do this. Go home and write these words down.’ Now I’m doing homework for the first time in my life.”
Typical Hubbub of hubbub of activity at lunchtime at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, with its retro ‘50s décor.
“We opened our first Ellen’s Stardust Diner at 56th St. and Sixth Avenue. The landlord became greedy when our lease was up so we moved downtown to 51st and 1650 Broadway [212 - 956-5151]. Because I love to sing, we decided to introduce a singing wait staff.
“We opened the Iridium Jazz Club opposite Lincoln Center. We had a landlord problem and had to shut down for a few years; then we moved that over in 2000 to our 1650 Broadway location [212- 582-2121].
One of its greatest assets in this observer’s view is the nonagenarian guitarist Les Paul, who appears Monday’s at the Iridium and whom I’ve followed over the years when he played at the now closed Fat Tuesdays and at the Iridium beginning in 1995.
On June 9, Paul celebrated his 93rd birthday.
“When we won our case,” Sturm continued, “P. J. Clarke’s joined us and moved in to our previous Iridium quarters at Lincoln Square , 44 West 63rd St, [Tel 957-9700]. We’re 50% owners with
PJC. “
[Disclosure: This particular P.J. Clarke’s has become a pre-concert, pre-ballet ritual for my wife and me. Along with J. G. Melon on Third Avenue, it has the highest grade hamburger in town.]
“Where were we? Oh yes, I ran the NYC Marathon, I try to eat healthy. I’m a fish person … salmon with the Omega-3’s. I’m a Pritikin believer.”
“I’ve got a wonderful restaurant for you on Pritikin Avenue.”
I said shamelessly.
“Aside from your husband, two sons and four grandchildren, what is your proudest accomplishment?”
“I’m proud to say ours was the first restaurant downtown to establish the no-smoking rule. “
It became front-page news: “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the New York City Indoor Smoke-Free Air Act of 2002. The Mayor was joined in City Hall Park by Ellen Hart Sturm and other enlightened restaurateurs and health advocates, Tim Zagat of Zagat restaurant guides; the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. “
In what may have been Hart Sturm’s finest moment and legacy to her beloved city, she was quoted in the press:
“Ms. Hart Sturm, the proprietor of the smoke-free Ellen’s Stardust Diner and Iridium Jazz Club noted that eight in ten adult New Yorkers don't smoke. She prophesied: ‘More people will want to go out for a drink and entertainment in establishments like mine if they know they won't be subject to the irritating and unhealthy effects of second-hand smoke.’ Six years later her assumption was realized empirically by every restaurant and tavern in New York.
Hal Drucker (hdrucker@aol.com) is a voting member of the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle, and co-author of From the Desk Of: Work styles of the rich and famous.