Minnie Makes Sense

In upper Manhattan last week, 16,000 music lovers crowded into Lewisohn Stadium on opening night of the 32nd season of summer concerts. The weather, for once, was ideal, with stars atwinkle and cool breezes circulating. But, as usual, the fond fans had a few things to grumble about.

For one thing, the new $500,000 stage was not finished. Guest Conductor Fritz Reiner had had to rehearse while workmen hammered unsympathetically, and his program of Wagner, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff had its rough spots. The new amplification system had eliminated the echoes that concertgoers had loved to grumble about in the past--but it had replaced them with some equally awesome squeaks and yowls. When the program ended, the crowd gave the musicians (mostly New York Philharmonic-Symphony men) a big hand, listened politely and impatiently while Concert Co-Chairmen Mayor William O'Dwyer and Sam Lewisohn said a few words. Then they set up their usual shout for the person they really wanted to hear talk.

"We Want Minnie." Plump, greying little Minnie (Mrs. Charles) Guggenheimer, 67, had not planned to make a speech this year; in 32 years as boss of the stadium concerts, she had made the same decision only once or twice before. But when the chant, "We want Minnie, we want Minnie," showed no signs of a diminuendo, Minnie gave in.

This time, wearing, as usual, an outrageous little hat, she made it brief-just a few apologies (for a gate that was not open, for the amplifiers and the unfinished stage), and a few promises, most of which by week's end had been kept. To some, Minnie's speech was the biggest letdown of the evening. Complained the astonished Daily News: "She made sense."

In 32 years, stadium concertgoers were more used to hearing Minnie make such announcements as ". . . and tomorrow night we will present one of the greatest names in music--Ezio Pinza Bass." On that occasion she made the show complete by putting on her spectacles, reading her notes and screaming: "Oh, no, that can't be right, that's the name of a fish. I guess it's Ezio Pinza, bass." The crowd also guffawed the night she told the echo of her own voice to shut up. Says Minnie: "When I hear them laugh, I know they expect me to be funny, so I'm funny."

We Want Gershwin. Since the day in World War I when Minnie talked wealthy (copper mining) Adolph Lewisohn (Sam's father) into giving concerts free for the troops in his newly built City College stadium, she has also given her audiences great music year after year for ticket prices as low as 25-c-. She has given some new composers (George Gershwin) and little-known soloists (Marian Anderson) their first big concert breaks. The stadium's annual Gershwin nights are still its most frequent sellouts.

A brisk, tireless little woman, with a kind of Helen Hokinson figure, Minnie Guggenheimer, with a lot of help from her wealthy lawyer-husband, also finds time to keep up three or four charities, a ten-room Park Avenue apartment and a New Jersey summer estate.

Under Minnie's somewhat frenzied exterior, however, a calm business mind functions. She engages all of the stadium's stars herself, carries on a private little war with the weather, and sometimes the weatherman, trying to determine whether to call a concert off or take a chance. She cheerfully admits: "It's too much of a job for an old crow like me." And then cheerfully adds that she has not the faintest notion of giving it up.

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