Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

Sad nostalgia in Branson East, for a tourist trap called Sardi's:

The banquettes were always packed with celebrities: Zero Mostel, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Barbra Streisand, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, all made Sardi's their second home.

Celebrity caricatures, the restaurant's calling card, still adorn the walls. (Most, though, are copies; the valuable originals are kept in vaults.)

Leonard Lyons, the legendary Post columnist, table-hopped every night, collecting tidbits and anecdotes ("without taking notes," says Gelb). Robert Preston held court at the bar after performances of "The Music Man."

After a couple of glasses of white wine, recalls a Broadway old-timer, Maureen Stapleton sometimes wandered out into the middle of 44th Street and talked to God. "How could I let Max go?" she once asked the Lord after she'd split from her husband, Max Allentuck [sic]

Happily the joint made ONE MILLION BUCKS in December -- THE BEST IN ITS HISTORY!!!!! -- with "boisterous families on their way to "Mary Poppins" or "The Lion King"...fortifying themselves with plates of cannelloni"!!!!! That's the spirit!!!!! Who needs Zero, or MM, or Liz, or Robert Preston -- or the theater?