Cissy's Battle

Last summer, fed up with years of haggling over conductors, wages, and spokesmen, Seattle's symphony musicians rebelled. After forming their own orchestra (TIME, Aug. 23), they picked their own conductor, a bright, energetic young localite named Eugene Linden. While the old Seattle Symphony's socialite directors screamed "musical mobsters," the new orchestra made music merrily--and successfully--though most of Seattle's mink and 75-c--cigar set boycotted the concerts. One reason for the success (and the boycott) was a tall, bosomy woman named Cecilia Schultz, whom the musicians had picked to carry their flag and manage their money.

Bustling about in her monkey-fur jacket and top-heavy hats, her pince-nez perched precariously on her thin nose, Impresario "Cissy" Schultz has long been as much a part of Seattle's musical scene as the musicians. For the past 25 years, she has run nearly everything musical in town except the symphony. Last summer when even that finally fell her way, one board member raged: "She always has wanted to get her clutches on the orchestra." Cissy rasped, in a voice sometimes compared to the sound of tearing canvas: "These big-business tycoons are just little boys when it comes to music."

Lock Up the Safe. Actually, the musicians, not Cissy, had done the clutching. To help them out in their first year, she gave them, for a small percentage ("I still have to keep Cissy in ham & eggs"), use of both her Moore Theater and her talents as an impresario, which even her enemies admit are considerable.

A woman who wears her 50s with an air of long-faced gravity, Cissy learned her business the hard way: by getting trimmed the first time out. She paid $500 for a would-be Hildegarde of the pre-jazz era, only to discover, after the act had flopped, that the entertainer's usual price was $50. Now when Cissy sallies into Manhattan each year to forage for her annual purchases (up to $250,000 worth) of artistic merchandise (Rubinstein, Heifetz, et al.), New York managers jovially call to their secretaries to lock up the safe. Recently, when a drunk fell through a window almost onto her desk, she surveyed him calmly, then told him: "You're the only person to get into my theater free in 20 years." Says Cissy: "I'm no Lily Pons, but I bet I have just as good a time."

"Pretty Good About This." Last week, Cissy Schultz was having the time of her life. The old-guard Seattle Symphony Orchestra board had finally agreed to sponsor the orchestra for the rest of the season and happily ever after. Among their concessions: two musicians (for the rest of this season at least, a clarinet and a French horn) could sit on the board.

Said Board President Joseph E. Gandy: "A happy solution." Said Cissy, who may continue as manager: "All those board members have been pretty good about this. I guess a lot of them aren't crazy about me. But they want to give the musicians a good break, and that's what's important."

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