Former Cardinals ballplayer Phil Kennedy loved his favorite bar so much he stopped in daily, even taking his phone messages there. Before he died he asked that his ashes be placed at the bar, where they still reside.
An unusual level of devotion, maybe, but it was also an unusual bar. Specifically, it was P.J. Clarke’s, the venerable tavern that’s sat since 1884 at the corner of Third Avenue and 55th Street, and enjoyed a long heyday as one of the city’s most celebrated nightspots, a magnet for bold-facers from Humphrey Bogart and Rocky Graziano to Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy.
It’s a heady place to land for a bar that started as a humble workingman’s haunt in the shadow of the Third Avenue elevated train. And its saga (including the story of Kennedy’s ashes) is recounted in “Over P.J. Clarke’s Bar: Tales from New York City’s Famous Saloon,” a new book by Helen Marie Clarke.
For Clarke, 74, it’s in large part a family tale. She’s the grandniece of longtime owner Paddy Clarke, and the title refers to the flat above the bar where her father grew up with his five brothers, back when Third Avenue was lined with tenements and slaughterhouses.
Clarke’s own “love affair” with the bar dates back to age 5, when she was growing up in Queens, and her parents began to bring her for visits. She’d sip Cokes, listen to Irish music on the jukebox and explore the aged space, with its high, pressed-tin ceiling and dark mahogany.
That story begins when Paddy Clarke left County Leitrim and arrived in New York City in 1902. Then 23, he found work at a Third Avenue bar, and within a decade saved enough to buy the place and change its name to Clarke’s. In the decades that followed, Clarke’s served neighborhood workingmen, in particular Irish immigrants. A churchgoer and a no-nonsense type, Clarke ran a tight ship — no gambling, swearing or prostitutes.
Law-abiding tendencies aside, Paddy Clarke wasn’t above going underground during Prohibition. Helen Clarke’s father remembers finding Paddy making bathtub gin in the tenement’s common bathroom; another memory is looking out the upstairs window to see him slugging a cop who’d demanded extra payoff money.
When he died in 1948, at 69, Paddy Clarke left no will, and the tavern was sold. The new owner was Daniel Lavezzo, an Italian immigrant who owned the building. He expanded the restaurant space and added the “P.J.” to the name. Lavezzo also kept Paddy’s nephew Charlie on as manager; he’d stay for several more decades.
It was under Lavezzo’s son, Dan Lavezzo Jr., that P.J. Clarke’s began its life as a social hotspot. A natty dresser with a commanding presence, Lavezzo courted a celebrity clientele, beginning with sports figures, including boxers such as Jake LaMotta and Rocky Graziano, the Yankees and the Giants, who were poured free drinks after games. (They’d drink heavily win or lose, reported Uncle Charlie — but when they lost they’d end up in arguments over who was responsible.)
Given the changing neighborhood, P.J. Clarke’s began attracting advertising and media figures. And the bar’s profile got a huge bump when it became a setting in Billy Wilder’s celebrated 1945 film “The Lost Weekend.” (Due to the racket from the elevated train, Wilder had the interior replicated on a lot rather than shooting on site.)
Momentum built, and soon Clarke’s was a nightly parade of the well-known and well-connected. As restaurateur Joe Allen put it, “If someone were in the headlines during the day they would be at Clarke’s that night.”
To get a sense of both the star power and the mix, consider an evening when, Clarke writes, “waiters were faced with a unique triangle of celebrities” sitting at individual tables: Mafia boss Frank Costello, former veep Hubert Humphrey and Marilyn Monroe.”
Monroe was a regular, who’d typically arrive in dark glasses and a strapless gown, sometimes with pal Truman Capote or acting coach Lee Strasberg. She’d provoke “an audible gasp” from the assembled — and order champagne. (Actor Richard Harris had a different standing order: six double vodkas laid out on the bar.)
Then there was Frank Sinatra, who typically ended his evening with bourbon at Clarke’s. Other musical patrons included Louis Armstrong, who blew his trumpet in the barroom during early mornings, and Johnny Mercer, wrote the words to “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” on a napkin at the bar.
Inevitably clad in dark glasses, Jackie Kennedy was a longtime patron. She’d sit at a window booth with Ari Onassis; later, while working as a book editor, she’d take business lunches there, and bring John-John and Caroline for meals on weekends. (Her favorite order: a hamburger and spinach salad.)
Other Kennedys made the scene, including Teddy, who retreated to Clarke’s after conceding defeat to Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primary. Among pols, habitues included Gov. Hugh Carey and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who’d arrive “with a blonde on one arm and a redhead on the other,” writes Clarke.
Geographic distance and other changes — Uncle Charlie’s death, the bar’s eventual sale to an investor group — diminished Clarke’s connection to the bar over the years. She doesn’t pretend it still matches the vibe of Clarke’s in its prime, but over the years it’s remained a stop whenever she’s in town. And the memories remain strong of a place that, she says, held a certain “magic.”
“People were happy there,” she says. “That’s what I remember — happy people, enjoying themselves.”