Hollywood Pipes
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Kevin Godbee - Jun 3, 2014
- 11 min read
Laurie Jacobson
Hollywood has always been about looking good. That’s why the pipe has been there since the first cameras rolled. It’s the ultimate accessory. You wear it both in your face and in your hand. You display it in your home. And with proper care, it will last a lifetime. Let’s face it, most marriages in Tinseltown are based on the same principles, and don’t fare as well. But a pipe is more than just a smoke — something you dispose of when you’re through — it’s an appendage. And just like Liz and Dick, Lucy and Desi, Groucho and his cigar, some Hollywood celebrities are forever linked…with their pipes.
Bing Crosby has done more for the pipe than any other entertainer. A pork pie hat Popeye and a pipe became his trademark, generating instant recognition for his multitude of fans. And since so many of Der Bingle’s fans wanted to emulate his casual, contented air, a company called Merchant Service created the Crosby-style pipe which, like Bing’s, has a very long, thin shank and stem. "It’s my personal favorite," says Charlie Kornguth, owner of Beverly Hills Pipe & Tobacco Company for more than twenty years and in the industry for forty-six. He takes a new pipe from the shelf and points to the imprint: "Bing’s Favorite." Did any other celebrity have a pipe named after him? Charlie recalls Edward G. Robinson pipe tobacco…"and Playboy had their own pipe. Hugh Hefner was one of the great pipe smokers. He had them made up with the bunny insignia on them to give to guests, friends and what have you. To my knowledge, they were never sold on the market." The winner, and still champ: Bing Crosby.
"Al would put silver bands on Bing’s pipes," says Tina Kramer, proprietor of Kramer’s Pipe and Tobacco, which she and her late husband Al opened in Beverly Hills, in 1948. "Bing would only smoke that one shape. He had them made up in England. He’d bring back a bunch and have my husband put on silver or gold bands for him."
A lot of Hollywood history has gone up in smoke at Kramer’s. "Years back, all the directors and producers smoked pipes, and they all came here," says Tina. Al made and repaired pipes at his lathe in the front window. George Sidney, director of Showboat, Pal Joey and Bye Bye Birdie, had a special stamp for Al to imprint Sidney’s name on all his pipes. "Stems break or men eventually bite through them. Al would make the new stem, tailor it to fit the inside and the outside, make them look like new, put a band around it. There are very few people who do that kind of work now."
Tina now refers to Al’s lathe as her sentimental comer and she guards it fiercely, as did Al. In all his years, he only allowed one other person to use it. "Yul Brynner. He liked to work with his hands," Tina fondly remembers. "He made his own furniture and he was great." Brynner sat in the front window of Kramer’s making pipes. What kind of a reaction did that draw? "1 had women lined up inside and out," Tina laughs, adding, "he had the most beautiful eyes of anyone I’d ever met. When he looked at you, they’d just burn. He was quite a guy."
Brynner was just one of many celebrities the Kramer’s welcomed. "Oh, the oldtimers were so nice, and friendly," Tina reminisces. "They’d come in and chat, sometimes tell us their problems, just like we were bartenders… Danny Kaye was wonderful. I still have a mixture of tobacco I made up just for him…Billy Wilder quit smoking, but he still comes in for mints…Jack Lemmon is such a nice man." But for Tina, there was one customer who outshines all the others, past, present or future. "Cary Grant," she sighs. "Cary Grant carne in about once a month, always smiling, always talking to the customers." A poster-sized photo of Grant hangs in the store. "Whenever you see Cary Grant with a pipe, it’s one of mine," she proudly declares.
Tina asserts, "Your pipe should be your friend for life." And, to ensure that her customers understand this, she gives pipe lessons. "There’s a way of filling it, of packing it, in a way to keep it going. A lot of pipe smokers burn more matches than anything else. We show them how to fill it, to light it, how to smoke it all the way to the bottom without having to light it every little bit of the way, and how to clean it."
Charlie, too, emphasizes the importance of pipe lessons. "I take the time to let them know how to take care of it. I tell them every thing about it. I go beyond that. After you’re home, if you’re frustrated that it keeps going out or whatever, come back in and let me help. You tell me what’s happening and let me help correct it. We go all the way with them." There is another large photo in Kramer’s, near the tobacco bar that is replete with brass foot rail. It’s of an Irish Catholic priest who played an important role in Kramer’s history as well as in the smoking history of some of Hollywood’s biggest names.
Father Dempsey wandered in one day and started talking with Al. They became great friends and the father confessed that he got his tobacco elsewhere, but if Al could make a comparable blend, he’d buy it. "Al took a look at the blend and spotted four or five different kinds … and the two of them began to work on it. After the fourth try, Father Dempsey said, ‘You can stop right there. It’s better than theirs ever was.’"
The good father happened to be friends with legendary director Cecil B. DeMille, an avid pipe smoker himself. DeMille inquired the name of the father’s tobacco blend. "There is no name; it’s my own private mixture which Kramer’s makes for me. If you want some, just go and ask for Father Dempsey’s blend and they’ll give it to you." DeMille did just that. Then he brought actor Henry Wilcoxon in… and partners Jesse Lasky and Sam Goldwyn. "Pretty soon all of Paramount Studios were coming in asking for Father Dempsy’s blend," laughs Tina. "It’s a strong scent, like a campfire burning. To this day, it is still one of our best-selling blends." Tina points to two Rolodex spindles jam-packed with customer names and the formulas for their personal blends. Every formula is confidential and no additives are ever used. Here with an antique scale and a large bowl, Tina mixes her magic for hundreds of loyal customers: cherry, vanilla, rum…Cary Grant smoked their English blend.
Beverly Hills Pipe & Tobacco has its share of clients, too, but Charlie is tight-lipped about their regular accounts. Son Todd runs the place now, hut he’s been hanging out there since he was six. He reminisces about the old days, when Beverly Hills was a quaint neighborhood with a slower pace. "Lots of friendly types came in every day: Marty Allen, Jack Carter, Danny Thomas, Milton Berle, Hank Greenberg, Jonathan Winters, Sugar Ray Leonard. My dad is real nice and real smart, and big, big celebrities would use him as a soft ear. Thank God we don’t have stools in here!"
"What we’ve heard in here is unreal," laughs Charlie. "Why? The store is not intimidating; we’re informal, the door is open, even if it’s 100 degrees. There are certain times of the day you can find 12 people standing in here — producers, directors, politicians, athletes, writers, actors — you name it, we’ve had ’em all in here."
His confidentiality began when Jerry Lewis declared bankruptcy with his first divorce. "We were listed as one of his creditors. Back then, this stuff was available to the press and we received calls from all over wanting to know what he had purchased. ‘You’re the only creditor who won’t tell us,’ they said and I told them that’s how it would remain. That is an endorsement and that is their livelihood and I will never interfere with that." Now that’s a Hollywood tobacconist.
Both on screen and off, filmland citizenry used the pipe to add that "certain something" to their character or image. Often the line was blurred. "Some actors smoked pipes in their private lives and carried it with them on screen simply because it was comfortable for them. Others used it strictly as a prop for their screen roles," says Marc Wanamaker, renowned Hollywood historian and archivist. Certain screen characters just wouldn’t be complete without a pipe. Try to imagine Sherlock Holmes without one. How about "My Three Sons" dad, Fred MacMurray? Or Popeye? Corn cob pipes were standard fare for Walter Brennan and other hillbilly, farmer and "Grapes of Wrath" types while, Wanamaker adds, "the polished English gentleman always had a pipe to help lend an air of distinction." That goes for other cultivated types: professors, doctors, lawyers, writers. The pipe came to signify intelligent, thoughtful men, not necessarily wealthy, but always educated.
Charlie agrees with that. "How can I put this and be politically correct?" He thinks for a moment. "I don’t know how else to say it: you don’t see bums smoking pipes." From silents through talkies Hollywood has backed that up: refined men like Orson Welles Edward G. Robinson, Robert Taylor, Valentino; sportsmen like Bogie, Errol Flynn, John Barryrnore. Dracula star, Bela Lugosi was a cultured European from the old school, a macho man who could become a monster if his wife did not clean his pipes properly or jump to light them. (Not surprisingly he was married four times.) Character actor Regis Toomey was one of many celebrities who collected hundreds of pipes in all shapes and sizes from around the globe.
"A man doesn’t have just one pipe," says Tina. "They must have pipes to change off to or it’s going to get awfully strong and smelly." "You need about three pipes," says Charlie. "People see different shapes they like and accumulate a collection, hut if you’re an every day pipe smoker, you only need about three. That gives them a chance to dry out." He mentions one client — a celebrity who had over 1,200 pieces. "That man probably smoked thirty of them and half a dozen with any regularity." All he’d say is it wasn’t Regis Toomey.
Charlie smoked a pipe for many years, and still has his collection which he speaks of in loving terms. He cites several reasons for pipe smoking being a gentleman’s repast: "It takes work to smoke a pipe. You have to take care of it. When you’re finished smoking a cigarette or cigar, you toss it and that’s the end of it. When you’re finished smoking a pipe, you have to clean it." He goes on, "They are more difficult to carry. You also have to carry your tobacco…pipe cleaners…a tamper…pipe lighter. And if you go out and forget your cigars or cigarettes, it’s not a big deal. But if you forget your pipe, you don’t want to just run into a store and lay down some good dollars for a pipe."
Pipe prices run between $20 and $100. Tina says you can get a really good one for $50 or $60. She also suggests buying a "second" from a good company. "It won’t make any difference and it costs a lot less." Even some of her celebrity clients do it. "Everyone likes a good bargain."
Charlie sells new and estate pipes, some of which were celebrity owned. "Years ago, most of our (new) pipes were from London. London produced some of the finest pipes I’ve ever seen. Now we also get pipes from Italy and France."
Tina has never noticed a drop or rise in the popularity of pipe smoking. "Pipes have always done well here." Charlie disagrees. "The late ’70s and ’80s were all about pipes — all shapes and sizes — they just smoked." Any women? "In the late ’60s-early ’70s, there was a line of women’s pipes. They had rhinestones on them, a little on the garish side; they did not succeed. Women smoked pipes in the ‘80s, but not as a big thing. 1 don’t know if pipes and women will ever catch on. It would be nice…"
Despite what he sees as a current dip in popularity, Charlie believes pipes will make a Hollywood comeback. "It’s beautiful smoking…and a great value. Cigars are getting so expensive. I think a lot of today’s cigar smokers are going to pick up a pipe as a switch-off smoke, and end up going more toward the pipe."
Elegance, culture, contentment and a friend for life. With qualities like that, the pipe will surely be discovered by Hollywood’s newest generation of stars.
PipeSMOKE Summer 1997
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Nice article. Sometimes I feel that I was born 20 years too late. What an era that was.
This is inspiring article, that’s why i love old pipes and my PAD is to old pipes…
Loved this. My Dad used to smoke a pipe, and it was when all these Hollywood people mentioned were in their prime. It was such a romantic era. Great piece. Thank you!
Having never been one that was into celebrity worship or for ever giving a rats behind about the daily lives of the Hollywood mega stars, I’ve always had certain amount of respect for the stars of old, many of those mentioned in the article. They lived there private lives which were often plagued with serious problems but rarely did they allow themselves to become the “stars” of their own personal dramas. That pipe shop would have been some place to be around in the 1950’s-60’s and after reading the bit on Bela Lugosi, I wonder if he ever penned a “how to” book on keeping ones wife in line? Kidding Dear, really.
This is a terrific way to handle archival material like this. It looks terrific. But I’m wondering if you actually need to go this far: I think it would be just as interesting to simply have scanned PDFs of the original magazine. (And it would certainly be less time consuming from a design standpoint.)
Bob
Fantastic article! I did smoke pipes in the 1980s, but I was in my 20s and there simply wasn’t the media availability through the internet etc. to get the interaction and to learn as much as you can now.
“I don’t know how else to say it: you don’t see bums smoking pipes.” Love it!
Andy
Bob, you are correct that it would be less work. However, it is worth the extra effort to have machine-readable text, and html code that can be optimized for search engines. That way the information can be found when searching, more people will find it, the site gets more traffic, – everybody’s happier. Interested readers find cool content. Advertisers get more impressions. The site makes the money required to produce the content. It’s the great circle of life. 🙂
Kevin, another great choice in articles to revisit! Very enjoyable reading, and I really like all the pix.
I enjoyed reading this article.
If I ever get out to CA I would like to go to kramers. Sounds like a great pipe shop. Having never been to a real one I’m very much looking forward to it