by Paul R. Spitzzeri
C. Fred Harlow’s long career as a Los Angeles restauranteur was largely built on the success of his namesake café located in the basement of the still-existing Washington Building at the corner of Spring and Third streets, though the establishment, opened in September 1913, had a short existence as this second and final part of our post based on a program for entertainment offered there during the week of 1 August 1915 discusses.
As the eatery celebrated its second anniversary, the Los Angeles Times of 16 September briefly summarized the commemoration by reporting that it “was an event in the cabaret life of Los Angeles . . . in a way that entertained hundreds of leading citizens.” Moreover, the paper observed, hundreds more were unable to gain admittance as reservations claimed all tables before the event.
Among those enjoying the festivities was Mayor Charles E. Sebastian, who soon would resign office amid scandal but as lustily cheered when he arrived, Police Chief Clarence E. Snively (whose reported inefficiency in enforcing liquor laws was highlighted in a 1916 expose in the Los Angeles Record, in which it was mentioned that he and his family were frequent Harlow patrons) and other officials.
The paper added that, “politicians of high and low degree [an interesting phrase, to be sure]” attended and enjoyed “a score of entertainers primed with a rattle fire of songs” during what the paper headlined as a “Bohemian’s Night.” The term “bohemian” was not defined as usual, in terms of those who were in the unconventional art world—instead, in this case, it meant those who patronized venues with good food, sparking entertainment and, of course, a continual flow of alcoholic libations.
A notable comment concerned the fact that Baron Long, another prominent, colorful and controversial character in the region’s world of restaurants and entertainment of various kinds, held a Gold Rush-themed event at his “country club” in Vernon, importantly outside the city limits of the Angel City, where momentum was building to end or significantly reduce the serving of alcohol in public establishments. The paper concluded that, “many parties that dined at Harlow’s afterward went to Vernon, while scores who had spent the earlier part of the evening there looked in [or came in!] to Harlow’s place later.”
How much of this was due to sincere philanthropy or to burnish an image often tarnished by controversy and the moral railing of temperance advocates eager to ban the public serving of alcohol, but Harlow went to great lengths to offer charitable events profiled in the press. For Christmas 1915, the café hosted some 175 underserved children, ages 4 to 14, selected by “City Mothers,” or social workers, while it was said that Harlow invited a dozen or so boys “whose condition had made a special appeal to his sympathies,” while a handful of mothers joined in the festivities, as well. The Times of the following day recorded that,
The cafe was brilliant in its oriental decorations, supplemented by the abundant use of Yuletide colors and hundreds of electric lights. The [place]settings were as elaborate for the little guests as those provided for the most favored patrons of the cafe.
Pretty tables were provided all along the side of the room, and on the center table stood a beautiful tree, gorgeous with its tinsel and gilt, its stars and candles. The guests were vociferous in their appreciation.
Among those who suggested attendees was Aletha Maxey Gilbert, whose family were among the early American settlers of El Monte and who has been profiled in this blog for her work as a “City Mother.” A police judge gave a speech exhorting the youngsters to “lead ‘square’ lives” and make their communities proud of them, while a young man played holiday songs on his cornet and a newsboy promoted the profession populated by poor boys in cities across the country for many years.
A Santa Claus was present and sang songs, while the cafe’s entertainers also performed and Harlow’s only child, Roy, who went on to a long career as a restaurant owner (including with members of the Los Angeles Rams football team), handed out balloons and party horns. As for the full Christmas dinner menu, it included turkey with chestnut dressing and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, peas, chicken gumbo soup, ice cream, cake and fruit. A photo showed a beaming Harlow along with his wife and son with some of the guests.
In 1916, the holiday party was specifically held for 150 newsboys, while the following day, Harlow’s hosted a welcome home banquet for the members of Battery Company A of the First California Field Artillery Division. While America was not to enter the side of the Allies in World War One for another few months, there was a military presence on the border with México during what was then called the “Pancho Villa Expedition,” concerning conflicts from March 1916 to February 1917 with the revolutionary.
While members of Company A “could not show some actual scars of battle,” stated the Times of 27 December, there was “a tedious period of watchful waiting along the Mexican border” prior to the mustering out of the unit. The release of the soldiers took place at the Armory (now the Wallis Annenberg annex of the California Science Center) in Exposition Park, but civic leaders wanted to honor the troops, so Harlow extended his invitation and company members rode from the Armory to the café on Moreland military trucks.
The usual speeches were delivered by company officers as well as by Glenn MacWilliams, the secretary of Mayor Frederic T. Woodman, and oil industry executive Edward G. Judah, who was president of the powerful Los Angeles Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, thanking the soldiers for their service, with Judah intoning that “they would have done more if they had only had the chance.” The piece ended with the observation that “soldier-singers began to appear on the cabaret platform” including a quintet featured in an accompanying photo.
When the United States entered the war and restrictions were placed by the government for the massive mobilization of the American Expeditionary Force, it was made clear that New Year’s celebrations to usher in 1918 were to be such that, as the Times expressed it in its 30 December 1917 issue, “the soft pedal will be put down hard on the celebrations.” The Harlow’s manager, reacting to restrictions imposed by Snively’s successor, John L. Butler, regarding ending alcohol service by 1 a.m. and an enhanced police presence in establishments, told the paper,
We realize that these are war days and we want to be as patriotic as the next fellow, but at the same time we are anxious to serve the public and give it what it wants.
This year we have cut out all paper streamers, souvenirs, confetti, paper hats, and such like because we realize it will not be in keeping with the times.
Harlow, who appears to have tried his hand at boxing promotion in his early days in the Angel City, also fielded a baseball team, of which he was, naturally, the skipper, that played in highly competitive corporate leagues that proliferated in the metropolis, and also had a bowling team, with the owner said to be very skilled on the lanes. The promotion of sports teams from his establishment may well have been an effort to make Harlow’s Café look as respectable as any business in Los Angeles.
Always keen to publicity and innovation to keep him in the upper echelons in his field, in which there were such figures as Long, Al Levy and Café Bristol owners Jacob Fieber and William Schneider, among others, Harlow built, in early 1916, an ice skating rink with the Los Angeles Record of 22 February reporting that “a large portion of the main floor of the dining room will be devoted to the skating surface.” Eager to get the job finished quickly, the proprietor offered a banquet to the contractor if work was finished by a deadline and announced “a sextette of stellar skaters” for the opening of what was touted as “the first ice skating rink to be opened ni Los Angeles.”
Two days later, the Times briefly covered the project, observing that “indoor ice skating, which has been very popular in many of the large hotels in Chicago and New York this winter” was coming to a 55×17 rink at the café, with the cost pegged at $6,000. The paper added that, while professionals would entertain on the rink during the evenings, guests could use it during the day. Finally, it was disclosed that “the Alexandria [Hotel] and the Bristol Cafe also have rinks in preparation.”
As has been mentioned in this blog before, a groundswell of support from moral gatekeepers in the temperance movement targeted the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages for much of the 19th century and into the first two decades of the 20th. In Los Angeles, the Gandier Ordinance was passed by voters in November 1917 banning saloons and restricting sales of alcoholic drinks to before 9 a.m. in restaurants like Harlow’s. A few weeks later, Congress passed the legislation for an amendment to the Constitution, which then meant that three-quarters of the 48 states had to ratify the amendment, with California doing so early in 1919 and Prohibition taking effect on the 1st day of 1920.
When a proposed city ordinance came before the voters in a February 1917 special election, after having been defeated the prior November, and which would have mandated the closing of restaurants by 11:30, Harlow took out an advertisement against the legislation, arguing, in notable terms, that
Red-blooded Americans believe in giving everybody a square deal. Should a high-class cafe, representing an investment of thousands of dollars, be closed just because a high-salaried reform agitator wants to show that he can earn his salary be securing names to an initiative petition and forcing the people to an expense of a special election? . . . WHO ARE THESE REFORMERS? Most of them are men who have failed to make good. They find begging dollars for a so-called holy cause an easier way of making money than working for it.
It wasn’t just alcohol the reformers targeted. There was also a 1916 effort by a “Morals Efficiency Committee” to ban dancing in restaurants and private clubs and Harlow was among those who bent the ear of Mayor Sebastian in his opposition to the proposed ordinance, which failed to pass.
The New Year’s Day edition of the Times featured Harlow’s Café, likely as an advertisement disguised as an article and in which it was averred that “when superior service is offered in a pleasing way, at prices that are reasonable, the public will not be slow in taking advantage of the offering.” Continuing that “there have been no dull days” at the establishment, the piece added that the owner was “one of the representative cafe men and high class sportsmen of the country” with a quarter century of experience.
The testimonial was sure to note that “many notable people from all parts of the world” patronized the restaurant” enhancing “the prestige and reputation of the place,” while Harlow personally saw to the quality of the menu and “the cabaret de luxe has likewise become a feature which vies for popularity with any entertainment offered in the city.” Reiterating that the fine food, affordable prices, and atmosphere were key qualities, the piece concluded that “with the genial welcome of the proprietor always extended to all alike, each patron can well feel that a few golden hours spent at Harlow’s Cafe is time well spent.”
Art dancing and stunt dancers were among those featured in articles during this period, along with such singers as Lottie Vermont, also featured on the front page of one of the programs in the Museum’s collection and who toured Japan in 1913 with a troupe that included the actor couple Minta Durfee and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; the Cooper and Burns sister duos; Elizabeth Ward; and the male trio of McWilliams, Baldwin and Stendal. Harlow also promoted a January 1916 movie shoot at the restaurant for a Universal picture directed by Henry MacRae and starring Marie Walcamp.
Harlow also tried expansion, doing so, however, in areas outside Los Angeles city limits and, consequently, further removed from the reformers. The latter were, however, successful in batting down a 1916 attempt of his to secure a liquor license for a venue along Washington Boulevard near what became Culver City.
Following the example of Baron Long, but much further afield, Harlow, in late 1917, announced the imminent opening of Harlow’s Country Club in Watts, still an independent city and not annexed to Los Angeles for almost another decade, where Al Levy had his tavern and the Cadillac Club also operated.
Yet, trouble soon came to a head with Harlow in spring 1918, though how much of this was his investment in the ice skating rink and the Watts establishment, not to mention the failed Culver City-area one, the effects of the increased restrictions on alcohol service, or other causes is not clear. Harlow’s was incorporated in May 1914, though C. Fred owned all but two shares of stock, these allotted to his wife and another man, but dissolution took place two years later.
The Los Angeles Express of 19 April 1918 reported that
Merchandise and fixtures in C. Fred Harlow’s cafe at Third and Spring streets, together with his personal property [in storage] . . . and . . . in this county was attached by the Washington Building and Improvement Company today, through a suit filed . . . for $2788.03. Harlow’s attorney, Lou Guernsey, stated that the suit was the result of a controversy over back rent. Harlow has a five-year lease on the basement occupied his cafe.
Two months later, on 28 June, the paper noted that, amid a steep decline in liquor licenses in the City of the Angels following passage of the Gandier Ordinance, a half-dozen licenses were surrendered, including those of the Bristol cafe, a Chinese one run by Lung Yep, the United States Hotel which Harlow once operated, and his shuttered establishment.
When Harlow registered for the draft on 12 September 1918, the final of two conducted during the First World War, the nearly 46-year-old did not list an occupation. He soon, however, reentered the café business, however, with a notable establishment, run with partner Bill Jones, called “Harlow’s Dome Cafe,” named for the shape of the structure.
What was interesting, though, was that the dining room was in the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica, which was a “dry” town, while the much larger dancing area was in the “wet” burg of Venice. The Dome boasted the largest dance floor in the country and cabaret as well as the Black and Tan Jazz Band were hired to entertain.
With the onset of Prohibition, Harlow converted his place into a dance hall and he later ran other establishments in the southwest section of Los Angeles including where the Chester Washington Golf Course is now near Athens and Hawthorne and places in Culver City and Hermosa Beach.
He retired in 1944 and died fifteen years later on his 89th birthday at his residence in Woodland in the San Fernando Valley and was remembered as “Los Angeles’ oldest restaurateur,” as well as a hunter with “Buffalo Bill” Cody, a New York City waiter and who bought the Rathskeller, which he ran before his namesake café, with gambling winnings on the famous Independence Day 1910 heavyweight boxing match between the Black champion Jack Johnson and James J. Jeffries.
We’ll close this post now, but may return to Harlow’s story in a later “Food for Thought/Striking a Chord” post.
While reading this post, the structure of the historic Pacific Dining Car (PDC), a famed restaurant in Los Angeles, was damaged by a fire early on the morning of August 3rd. PDC was one of the few high-end, 24-hour steakhouses, opening in 1921, eight years after Harlow’s restaurant, by another Fred – Fred Cook. Unlike Fred Harlow, who fought throughout his tenure to sell alcohol, PDC opened during Prohibition, initially unable to offer alcoholic beverages. However, after Prohibition, PDC became renowned not only for its pricey steaks but also for its extensive collection of imported wine, following Harlow’s Cafe to exemplify the culinary golden rule: to generate profit from beverages.
PDC closed during the pandemic after 99 years in business. Last year, it was officially recognized by the Los Angeles government as a historic monument, with plans for restoration and reopening. Unfortunately, the family members are divided over whether to demolish or continue operating the establishment. Yesterday’s unexpected fire has come too soon, arousing suspicions.