The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-04-20
In New York
By Paul Harrison

New York,-Society people like to collect orchestra leaders. or chestra leaders, however, like t1 collect other things.
 Frank Novak, for one, is get ting together an assortment of old and odd musical instruments. He has a lute from ancient Poia- pei and goofus from modem
 Brooklyn. A goofus Is cross be-
 tween saxophone and an .obo.-
 He has a gittern, samisen, bina, bombardon, ophicleide, euphoi!i- um and some 13O other .instru
 ments, including doodlesack.
 Yes, doodlesack. It's kind ot
 bagpipe.
 Emil Colman, never an espec- cially punctual fellow, collects watches. Very old watches.
 which had winding keys, struck the hours, and were a generous pocketful. Tiny modern watches, one made into ring, one set into the end of pencil. Quite valu- able. some of them, but the watch Coleman prefers to carry cost only $1.
 Harry Horlick collects violins, one of which is Strad. Henry
 King, over at the Waldorf, says
 he has set of every symphonic
 recording ever made. Kel Mur- ray goes in for rare old musical manuscripts. Joseph Zatour col- lects unpublished folk tunes, most
 of them gypsy numbers he has heard and written down in Eur ope. Borrah Minevitch, the har.
 monica band learer, Is Q picture
 crank and owns $25,000 worth Of
 caremas and special lenses.
 Better Hobby
 Johnny Green, my nomina-
 tion for top honors among the younger composers, cherishes three unrelated hbobies --amatuer movies, psycho-analysis and col- lecting the originals of carica- lures. Bob Grant. who plays at the Savoy Plaza, also plays the He and Jock Whitney often. make a twosome. Lennie Hayton is the
 best ping -pougist among misi- clans. Vincent Lopez is nut on
 numerology.
 Leon Navarro, at the St. Mor- itz. has a peculiar hobby--nof betting on horse races. Every day
 he buys racing forms, marks down his selections, but never
 makes Q wager. Then he keeps
 carefule account of the results, tabulating hypothetical gains and loses. At this writing he calcu-
 lates he is $7,S84 to the good by
 reason of not having played the bangtails.
 Waving Baton
 Jolly Coburn, batonist of the Rockefellers 65th-floor cabaret, a yacht named Ham and Eggs. It's less of a luxury than you'd think, because it enables Coburn
 to dodge song -pluggers. The latter are men whose business is persuad- ing prominent band leaders to play certain new tunes. Song-plug- gers are the reason why orchestra
 leaders go crazy. They swarm Tn
 night clubs, sit in ambush in res-
 taurant booths, hide under the furniture in hotel suites, and even pursue their prey along public tuOl AlAdA CS HI VI onu NssJ AA6 Ass They are not aquatic pests,
 though, nor winged ones. One
 can escape them by putting to sea
 or going up in an airplane. Even so, Coburn occasionally discovers
 a song -plugger disguised as a
 deck hand, or slowed away under a ufe-boat cover. Being of no
 value, even as shark bait, they are
 ruthlessly kicked overheard. Just
 before going down for the third time, they usually scream across the waves: "How about playing that 'Huntin' for My Honey num- Der at the supper show tonight?" Gold Digging
 A score of petty rackets are flourishing anew in Manhattan. and one of the commonest is a variation of the c. O. D. game. This. one involves collectors in
 uniform who ring doorbells and present forged invoices showing
 each sucker that a package from
 abroad is awaiting him at one of the shipping piers. The swindlers try to collect "customs fees" With the first warm days
 stolen perfume" vendors have
 supplanted the stolen furs" ped-
 dlers who accost gullible-looking people somp'n cheap for the. girl friend, buddy?" Is the approach
 Then the fellow furtively displays a two or three ounce bottle that looks like an expensive brand of
 imported perfume. Five bucks
 an ounce in this country!" con-
 fides the swindler. But you can
 have the whole bottle for two doiA
 lars" The labels are counterfeit;
 the contents tinted water. | Butter-an with a roy- ing eye are being victimized byl
 girls met along Broadway. A cou7
 pie goes to a show. After few
 minutes, the girl asks for. hen
 seat check and says she'll be righ q
 back. Instead, she goes to th$
 box office and in great indigna
 tion demands a refund. A strang4
 man sitting next to her has beer
 annoying her. she declares. Pock
 eting the money, she returns Il
 Broadway in search of enothe ! suck CT,