Carl Meltzer, 96, Showman, Scout, Traveler, Bon Vivant
Hyfler/Rosner
BY STEPHEN MILLER - Staff Reporter of the Sun
Cool photo:
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/m2.asp?Issue=NYS/2004/10/15&ID=Pc01205&Mode=HTML
Carl Meltzer, who died September 30 at Cambridge, Mass., at
age 96, was by turns a street singer, trapeze artist,
acrobat, and high-dive daredevil (failed), vaudevillian,
Broadway chorister, hair stylist, national Boy Scout leader,
summer camp director, and travel agent. A friend to the
famous and acquaintance of royalty and politicians, Meltzer
tripped lightly through life, amusing nearly everyone he
ever met.
Meltzer grew up on the Lower East Side, where he lived in
straitened circumstances with his Romanian-Jewish immigrant
parents. Young Carl busked on Manhattan street corners;
sometimes he would accompany his father, Louis, in playing
for pennies at local cafes. A natural-born showman, Meltzer
had from an early age the disconcerting ability to frown
with half his mouth while smiling with the other.
At age 9,Meltzer auditioned at a citywide talent show
sponsored by the New York Evening World, at which he was
chosen one of the "three most talented children in New York
City" and won a scholarship to study for show business.
Louis later abandoned the family, and Meltzer's show
business career be came the main source of income.
By age 15, Meltzer had signed on with "The Flying Nelsons,"
a family act that toured with the Ringling Bros. Barnum &
Bailey Circus. In recent years, Meltzer recalled to a family
friend how the fliers would signal each other during the
act: "One boy would shout in Italian, 'You have an ugly
face!' and I would shout back in German, 'You are a nut!'
and when we heard each other, we knew it was right."
His circus career came to a nearly catastrophic end at Eau
Clair, Wis., where Meltzer took up a dare to dive from an
80-foot tower into a tiny tank of water. "It was stupid. I
hit the metal side of the tank and was in the hospital for
eight months," he said.
After he recuperated, Meltzer joined the "Versatile
Steppers," a song and dance troupe that toured the nation
for several years in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He also
sang in the chorus of several Broadway shows, one of which
he recalled in a letter to the Times, written in 1992:
"At age 84, I recall George and Ira Gershwin attending
rehearsals of my only hit Broadway show: 'Tip-Toes,'
starring Queenie Smith and Alan Kearns. I was a chorus boy;
I still remember the lyrics. After that musical - my first
Gershwin show - came flop after flop for me. Is it any
wonder I left Broadway and joined the circus as an acrobat?"
Given his rather large number of professions, he could be
forgiven for forgetting he was an acrobat first, chorister
second.
Family lore has it that Meltzer picked his next job - that
of professional hairdresser - after meeting a dandified
fellow in a raccoon coat. On hearing that the man was a
hairdresser, Meltzer decided that there was money in
coiffure and opened his first salon in Middletown, N.Y.
Typically, he called it "Carl Your Hairdresser," and soon he
had a second shop in nearby Liberty.
Meltzer was familiar with the area, and the nearby
Catskills, because his mother had spent time at a
tuberculosis sanitarium there. Perhaps in part because of
his deprived urban childhood, he came to love the woods, and
soon became a Boy Scout leader. In time, he rose to a
national scout leader and took delegations of Eagle scouts
to jamborees all over the country, as well as in the
Caribbean and Europe.
In 1953, Meltzer purchased an old Catskills hotel by a small
lake in Youngsville and renamed it Camp Chic-a-lac. Although
the name was inspired by a Chiclets box, it was meant to
sound like an Indian word, and campers dressed up in Indian
garb that Meltzer had brought back from his Boy Scout trips
to the Southwest. He was said to be an irresistibly buoyant
activities director.
Meltzer became a dedicated world traveler and bon vivant. As
running the camp left him with his winters free, he began
spending them on the Mediterranean isle of Majorca, where he
befriended the writers Noel Coward and Robert Graves, as
well as Errol Flynn. At various times, he befriended a Saudi
prince, convinced Queen Elizabeth to give him a tour of
Buckingham Palace, and had his picture taken with President
Eisenhower. Rumor had it that he returned from Europe each
year engaged to a different woman; when he finally married,
in 1957, it was to Ruth Sand, a social worker and Greenwich
Village painter who was a friend of his sister-in-law. He
doted on her, took her on trips around the world, and the
two lived in homes in New York and Florida until her death,
in 1996.
Having moved to Greenwich Village, and determined to use his
experience, Meltzer opened All Nations Tours in an office at
the Flatiron Building.
After retirement, Meltzer continued to travel and was
gratified when, in 1988, a large group of his former Boy
Scouts convened to fete "Alka Seltzer Meltzer," as their
bubbly leader was called.
Although Meltzer experienced some cognitive decline in
recent years, he continued to amuse friends and relatives
with stories and still made the clownish half-smile
half-frown whenever somebody pointed a camera at him. Given
the vigorous happiness of his life, it was the frowning half
that must have been the joke.
He left behind no children. Several nephews and nieces, as
well as former scouts and campers, continue to view his life
with astonishment.