Ilka Chase and Monty Woolley

Monty Woolley Born August 17, 1888 in New York City, New York, USA Died May 6, 1963 in Albany, New York, USA (kidney and heart ailment) Birth Name: Edgar Montillion Woolley Nickname The Beard Height 5' 10" (1.78 m) Large and hearty Monty Woolley was born to privilege on August 17, 1888, the son of a hotel proprietor who owned the Marie Antoinette Hotel on Broadway. A part of Manhattan's elite social circle at a young age, he studied at both Yale (Master's degree) and Harvard and returned to Yale as an English instructor and coach of graduate dramatics. Among his students were Thornton Wilder and Stephen Vincent Benet. Directly involved in the theater arts via his close association with intimate Yale friend and confidante Cole Porter, Monty directed several Broadway musicals and reviews, many in collaboration with Porter, including "Fifty Million Frenchmen" (1929) (an early success for Porter), "The New Yorkers" and "Jubilee" (1935). In 1936, at age 47, the witty, erudite gent had a career renaissance and gave up his Ivy League professorship once and for all in order to pursue the stage professionally. He took his first Broadway bow in the hit musical "On Your Toes" alongside Ray Bolger. Hollywood soon took notice and he began receiving supporting credit as assorted judges and doctors for such MGM fare as Live, Love and Learn (1937), Everybody Sing (1938), the Margaret Sullavan tearjerker Three Comrades (1938), Lord Jeff (1938), the Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy musical The Girl of the Golden West (1938) and Young Dr. Kildare (1938). Typically playing cunning character leads and support roles, he was affectionately nicknamed "The Beard" by friend Cole Porter for his distinguished, impeccably-trimmed white whiskers. It was Monty who introduced Porter into the famed New York theater circle. Known for his sartorial elegance, ribald sense of humor and snob appeal, he and Porter were highly prominent carousers in the New York gay social underground. Monty came into his own in 40s films, earning a best actor Oscar nomination for his role in the WWII drama The Pied Piper (1942), a supporting actor nod in another war classic, Since You Went Away (1944), and portrayed himself in the absurdly fictionalized (and sanitized) "biography" of Cole Porter entitled Night and Day (1946) starring a woefully miscast but admittedly flattering Cary Grant in the lead. A flashy delight in other movie roles, Monty received top billing in Irish Eyes Are Smiling (1944) with June Haver and Dick Haymes, playing a twinkle-eyed con man; appeared opposite Brit comedienne Grace Field in the English-humored Molly and Me (1945) and Holy Matrimony (1943); again with Cary Grant along with Loretta Young and David Niven as a professor in the perennial Christmas classic The Bishop's Wife (1947); plots against his own retirement in the mild comedy As Young as You Feel (1951) opposite another scene-stealing favorite, Thelma Ritter; and ended his film career with the role of Omar Khayyam in the glossy MGM operetta Kismet (1955). Above all, however, Monty will be forever and indelibly cherished as the irascible (and definitive) radio personality Sheridan Whiteside in the stage and film versions of Kaufman and Hart's screwball classic The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). Playing the razor-tongued, wheelchair-bound celebrity who wreaks havoc for everyone within knife-throwing distance, this would be the hallmark of his never-too-late-to-try career. He played another uppity and bombastic celebrity, this time a washed-up classical actor, in the more sentimental Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (1942), another role dripping with crusty sarcasm. Monty appeared sporadically on radio and TV before and after his last filming in 1955. He died of kidney/heart problems in 1963 at the age of 74.

I had read her book, I Love Miss Tilli Bean, and it was one of my favorite books. At the time I was about 30 years old and sitting alone in Sardi's when Ilka and her male companion were seated across from each other but she was about 3 feet away to my right. She barely sat down when she announced, "I discovered the most amazing thing today. I once had an Italian character." And I added, "Giovanni Rechetti in "I Love Miss Tilli Bean!" She was dumbfounded and her jaw dropped and she said, "Good Lord! How would you know that?" And without looking at her and speaking to her date, I said, "When Ilka Chase creates a character . . ." and spent the next five minutes laying out the meeting of this character, the General store at dusk in a Pennsylvania town, the Quaker widow, and her 8 year old daughter, this pasta salesman who wants to cook dinner with his pasta and his sauces. And ended this with, "So it doesn't matter that I read this book when I was eight years old when Miss Chase creates a character like Giovanni Rechetti, it will live in your heart forever!" With that, she said, "I think I'm in love with you! Will you have lunch with us?" And that is how I met my idol and had lunch with her too. Amanda S. Stevenson, writer. Biography Born in New York City and educated at convent and boarding schools in the United States, England, and France, Chase was the only child of Francis Dane Chase (1873-1949), a merchant mariner who became a dry goods salesman and then the general manager of New York's Hotel Colonial, and the former Edna Woolman Allaway, aka Edna Woolman Chase, an editor. Her mother, who became the editor-in-chief of Vogue, described Chase's father, whom she married in 1902, as "a lovable, good-looking, irresponsible young man from Boston. His father had been a banker and, depending on when you met them, the family had money." After her parents' divorce, her father married artist Theodora Larsh (1887-1955). Her mother's second husband was engineer Richard Newton. After graduating from France's Château de Groslay boarding school, Chase made her society debut in December 1923, at a large dinner and dance held in her honor, and hosted by her mother, at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York City. The 250 guests included her mother's employer, Condé Nast, Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Frank Crowninshield, artist Abram Poole and his wife, Mercedes de Acosta, interior decorators Ruby Ross Goodnow and Nancy McClelland, artist Albert Sterner, future Harper's Bazaar editor in chief Carmel Snow, a British nobleman and pilot Viscount Holmesdale, architect Harrie T. Lindeberg, and fashion designer Adrian. Stage Ilka Chase (left) in the Broadway stage production Small Miracle (1934) Chase's Broadway debut occurred in 1924 in The Red Falcon. Her stage appearances included roles in Days Without End, Forsaking All Others, While Parents Sleep, Small Miracle, On to Fortune, Tampico, Co-Respondent Unknown, Keep Off the Grass and In Bed We Cry, an adaptation of her novel of the same name. She was in the original Broadway cast of Clare Boothe Luce's play, The Women (1938), and many years later appeared in Neil Simon's Broadway hit, Barefoot in the Park. Films Her films included Fast and Loose, 1930, Animal Kingdom, 1932, Now, Voyager, 1942, No Time For Love, 1943, Once a Sinner, 1950 and The Big Knife, 1955. Her last motion picture appearance was in Ocean's 11, 1960 as Mrs. Restes. Radio In the early 1940s, Chase was the hostess for Penthouse Party on CBS and Luncheon Date With Ilka Chase, on NBC Red.[7] For several years, she hosted the radio program, Luncheon at the Waldorf. Television Chase was a regular on The Masquerade Party and in Trials of O'Brien on CBS in the mid-1960s. In 1957, she performed the role of the Stepmother in the television production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, which starred Julie Andrews. Chase made a rare television sitcom appearance as "Aunt Pauline" on The Patty Duke Show. Personal life Chase was married to: Louis Calhern (1895-1956), a stage and movie actor. He and Chase met while performing in summer stock with the George Cukor Company in Rochester, New York, married in June 1926, and divorced six months later, in February 1927. William Buckley Murray (1889-1949), was a former music critic of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and one-time executive of the National Broadcasting Company; he also had been a concert manager for the Baldwin Piano Company and became the head of radio and television at the William Morris Agency. In 1932 Chase and Murray adapted We Are No Longer Children, a play by French playwright Leopold Marchand. They married on July 13, 1935, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and divorced in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 4, 1946. By this marriage, she had one stepson, William Buckley Murray Jr., a crime novelist, and writer for The New Yorker, who was Murray's only child by his previous wife, Natalia Danesi, an opera singer, and lover of Janet Flanner. Murray's third wife was interior decorator Florence Smolen. Norton Sager Brown (1904-1995), a physician. He and Chase divorced their respective spouses so they could be married on December 7, 1946, in Las Vegas, Nevada. They remained married until she died in 1978. By this marriage, Chase had a stepson, James Brown. Autobiography Her autobiography Past Imperfect (Volume I), which said "Those who never fail are those who never try," was published in 1942, with Volume II, Free Admission, being published in 1948. She also wrote over a dozen other books including "The Care and Feeding of Friends," A guide to lighthearted entertaining with over 80 recipes and 20 menus, copyright 1973, Doubleday & Company, Inc. Death Chase died in Mexico City, Mexico, aged 72. She is interred at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Her epitaph reads: "I've finally gotten to the bottom of things." Reference materials Chase's personal papers, as well as those of her mother, are in The Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library. Partial filmography Paris Bound (1929) (based on the 1927 play Paris Bound, in which Chase was a member of the cast) Rich People (1929) South Sea Rose (1929) Born Reckless (1930) Free Love (1930) On Your Back (1930) The Gay Diplomat (1931) The Animal Kingdom (1932) Stronger Than Desire (1939) Now, Voyager (1942) Ocean's 11 (1960) - Mrs. Restes