Tombola Night

The audience in San Francisco's huge, hangarlike Civic Auditorium was in fine fettle. Even Master of Ceremonies John Charles Thomas couldn't resist getting into the act. "I'm glad to see such a crowd," he roared. "Word must have got around that I won't sing tonight. Ho, ho, ho!"

In fact, word had got around that the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra was giving a tombola (lottery) party to honor beloved old (74 next week) Conductor Pierre Monteux--and incidentally to raise a little extra money for the orchestra's contingency fund. Seven thousand San Francisco music lovers filed in and expectantly awaited the guest of honor.

Old Circus Horse. Sharp at 8:45 p.m., his shoe-button eyes twinkling and his walrus mustache abristle, Monteux bounced in the front door. He dodged around a full-sized replica of a cable car, wheeled down the main aisle between two rows of beaming debutantes. The San Francisco Chronicle's Critic Alfred Frankenstein reported he "marched embar-rassedly." Said wife Doris Monteux, 54, who does most of Pierre's talking: "Embarrassedly, my eye . . . He's just like an old circus horse. He's awfully sophisticated, but awfully innocent."

Pierre Monteux clambered to the podium and picked up his baton; the orchestra swung into Strauss's Die Fledermaus. He romped them through an Enesco Rumanian Rhapsody and Ravel's Bolero, turned over his baton to a guest conductor. Then the fun & games began.

While the balcony guests ate ice-cream sandwiches, the downstairs crowd ate Surprise Monteux, a concoction of Danish spongecake, French vanilla bisque, raspberry melba sauce and chopped walnuts sprinkled with brandy. It was no surprise to Gourmet Monteux himself; he had had a sample in advance, and some had even been air-expressed to friends.* But he forked away with a will (see cut). Said "he: "Peach melba, pah! Nobody will talk about it again."

Then Baritone Thomas ran off a raffle (Banker L. M. Giannini's wife won a radio) that helped put $49,000 into the orchestra's treasury.

Old Bozo. When it was all over, Conductor Monteux admitted the tombola had been fun, "but not musique serieuse." He was already thinking about the Beethoven cycle he will conduct next month: "Now that is serieux, but not so serieux as to frighten. Beethoven is not a bore."

San Franciscans were already thinking about something else, too. The tombola was just a warmup for a bigger doing next year. Monteux calls it "a sort of celebration of my 15th year in San Francisco and my 75th year in the world."

Says wife Doris: "It amuses Pierre to see younger conductors eye him appraisingly, saying to themselves, 'When is that old bozo going to give up?' But, he says, 'I shall conduct till I'm 90. I shall die holding a baton.' " Says Pierre: "I didn't say 90. I said 109."

* Among the recipients: Arturo Toscanini, Serge Koussevitzky, Leopold Stokowski, Bruno Walter, George Szell, Eduard van Beinum in Amsterdam, Sir Thomas Beecham in London, Pierre's son Jean Monteux in Paris.

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