Personality

After Enrico Caruso died, one of his fiddler accompanists decided to bow it alone. But Manhattan critics had few good words for his well-mannered Beethoven and Bach, and his Los Angeles concert fee was not enough to pay the room rent. Says hawk-nosed Xavier Cugat: "I knew that the American people was polite to an artist but crazy for a personality, so I decided to become a personality."

Personality (in his case, that of a malaprop with a Spanish accent) has paid Cugat well. Last year his records, radio, film and nightclub work grossed a million dollars, perhaps the highest income ever earned by a bandleader.

Cultural Commander. Cugat's first shrewd step in 1927, after a turn as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, was to join Vincent Lopez' orchestra. ("It was tough. I had never been in a dance hall in my life. I had lots to unlearn about music.") He soon unlearned enough to collect six Spanish musicians and book himself as a relief band in Los Angeles' gaudy Cocoanut Grove. Bashful couples were afraid of his Latin rhythms, so he hired a half-dozen tango experts to whirl unescorted ladies around the floor ("If women learned, their boy friends naturally had to do something about it").

The following season Cugat took his polite rhumbas to Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria, and later broke attendance records. Cugat credits much of his success to his female vocalists. He selects them "80% on looks and 20% on what goes into the ears. A man can't understand what my girl sings, but if he likes to look at her then I'm all right." Floorshow dancers are also handpicked. One of them, Cugat's niece, became Broadway Actress Margo; another became Hollywood's Rita Hayworth.

"Coogie," born in Barcelona, plays Cuban rhythms watered-down and violin-perfumed, but with enough gourd rattling to make them sound authentic. For this the Cuban Government regards him as an ambassador of culture--with the title of Commander in the Order of Honor and Merit of the Cuban Red Cross.

Symphonic Showman. Last week Cugat, who is now a paunchy 46, signed a contract to play an eight-week symphonic concert tour of 50 U.S. cities for $5,000 a night. Top attraction at each concert will be Cugat's own symphonic Latin Suite in three movements (Afro-Cuban, bolero, and conga). If the tour pans out, he plans to give up nightclubs altogether. For the trip, Cugat will add a dozen violins, two cellos, two violas and two basses to his regular nightclub assortment of 32 marimba, maracas, fiddles and horns.

The first concert next month will be in Hollywood Bowl. Says Cugat: "That's a laugh, isn't it? When I was here playing concert violin I was fully qualified to conduct in the Hollywood Bowl. . . . But I couldn't get in to see the secretary to the secretary. Now I will get $5,000 and the manager of the symphony comes to my house with the contract. . . . You've got to be a personality. Even Toscanini and Stokowski owe part of their success to showmanship. And take a man like Iturbi. He has the hands of a woodchopper and yet people think he is a great pianist. They really don't go to hear Iturbi the pianist. They go to see Iturbi the movie star."

Cugat, padding around his $75,000 Mediterranean-style Beverly Hills mansion in shorts and a beret, sighed contentdly: "I'd rather play Chiquita Banana tonight and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve."

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