Lucius Beebe is often credited with inventing the phrase "Cafe Society". The phrase refers to a sub-culture of the young, rich, and/or fabulous haunters of now-legendary New York City nightclubs during the 1930s and 1940s.
A-listers of the day like Robert Benchley, Monty Wooley, and Tallulah Bankhead and lit up nightclubs like El Morocco, the Stork Club, and 21. They romantically live on–paradoxically by being frozen in time–through Jaro Farby’s illustrations, Jerome Zerbes’s photographs, and Lucius Beebe’s writing.
The modern audience may be aware of the phrase more from the 2016 Woody Allen film of the same name which was inspired by the movement. But 77 years earlier, thanks to Lucius Beebe, Café Society got the Hollywood treatment at the pinnacle of the sub-culture in a 1939 film starring Fred MacMurray.
Whether Beebe invented the phrase or Maury Paul (alias Cholly Knickerbocker), another NYC gossip columnist, did, is a debate worthy of its own article. But one thing is undeniable: Lucius Beebe was most certainly the one to “coin” the phrase, as in, to capitalize on it.
Beebe sold the rights for “Cafe Society” to Paramount Pictures in 1938 to use the term, based on a two-part series of articles he wrote for Cosmopolitan magazine in March and April of 1937. Those in-depth profiles of the Cafe Society set were used as the basis for a script by Hollywood screenwriter Virginia Van Upp.
The film cast Fred MacMurray and Madeline Carroll as the stars and featured costumes by the legendary Edith Head, relatively early in her career.
It seems 1938 was a banner year for Beebe in Hollywood; not only did he sell the rights for “Cafe Society” along with a consulting gig for the flick, but he was also asked by Cecil B. DeMille’s camp to consult on the railroad epic “Union Pacific”, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea. Beebe stayed at the infamous Garden of Allah on Sunset Boulevard during these back-to-back consulting gigs.
Hot on the heels of playing railroad historian for DeMille’s “Union Pacific”, Beebe went straight to work telling these Hollywood-types just how things were done in NYC among the smart set after sunset for “Cafe Society” in late November 1938.
“A dozen Hollywood extras owed the loss of their cherished mustaches to Lucius Beebe, ultra-correct leader of New York’s smart set during the filming of ‘Cafe Society’,” according to an article in the Tacoma Times. “Present on the set while a nightclub scene was being shot, the sophisticated Beebe pointed out a glaring error…–no waiter in a first-class night club would ever be permitted to wear a mustache, [Beebe] protested.”
The article goes on to say the film’s director, Edward H. Griffith, replied, “Well, you’re the boss on things like that.” And all the actors portraying waiters’ soup-strainers were promptly shaved off.
Beebe was written into the script with a cameo as a press agent who mentions, well, Lucius Beebe. What a gag!
Paramount’s protocol at the time was to have a person sign several waivers if their name was to be mentioned by a character in one of their films. So before Beebe could film, he had to sign said waivers. The kicker? Beebe’s press agent character is the only one who mentions “Lucius Beebe” in the whole film!
(Right: Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Dec. 16, 1938, via Newspapers.com)
Lucius Beebe wrote the lines he delivered, according to an article in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper, “to display the caustic humor that has made him one of New York’s famous wits.”
The day came for Beebe’s big close-up (with E. H. Griffith, not C. B. DeMille, that is). “[Beebe] has been all ready since 1:30 P.M.––it is now 4:40––and is very bored,” fellow columnist and Garden of Allah inhabitant Sheilah Graham wrote on Nov. 29, 1938.
Graham continues the tale: “‘We can’t get to you today, Mr. Beebe,’ says the assistant director. ‘I am leaving for New York the day after tomorrow and nothing is going to stop me,’ says Lucius. ‘This is your first acting job, isn’t it?’ I ask my fellow scribbler. ‘I’m not at all sure,’ says Beebe.”
“I went next door to get a fleeting look at Lucius Beebe playing himself in ‘Cafe Soceity,’” Hedda Hopper wrote in her infamous column. “He was so nervous as himself that he said, ‘This is Lucius and Beebe,’ proving it takes a columnist to give yourself star billing.”
According to an unflattering account in LIFE magazine, Beebe “sweat so profusely, the makeup man had to keep mopping his brow.”
But for as much publicity as Beebe received during the production–flattering or otherwise–Beebe is only in a blink-and-you’ll miss it scene. “Lucius Beebe wound up on the cutting room floor,” theVariety review from 1939 reports, “save for one fleeting shot that’s virtually a blackout.”
That same review gave the picture a lukewarm rating.
Here's the short clip of what little of Beebe's cameo appearance did make it into the film:
(I just love hearing Beebe's deep baritone voice, don't you?)
For as famous and well-connected as Beebe was with Hollywood A-listers at the time, one wonders why Beebe didn’t do more work in the film industry. Whether it was Beebe’s personal distaste for Hollywood, unions, or a promising career cut short by the studio system under the stifling cloak of the Hayes Code era is another ripe subject ready for the picking in another article.
But for now, you can watch the few fruits of Beebe’s efforts in Hollywood that did come to fruition by way of seeking out DVD copies of “Union Pacific” and, of course, “Café Society”, on the secondary market.
As of publishing time, the full film has been uploaded onto YouTube in less than clear quality but at least in its entirety:
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