the old stevens: memoirs of bob quain

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The Old Stevens: Memoirs of Bob Quain

An informal look back at hotel life in the 1940s and ’50s through the eyes of a career hotel man. Although the situations described here are past history, many of the problems and their solutions are quite contemporary

by Robert F. Quain and Michael M. Lefever

IN MAY OF 1927 the Stevens- then the world’s largest hotel-first opened its doors to the public. Not only did the planners have the foresight to create a hotel with 3,000 rooms, they also had the vision to provide convention space and facilities that were far ahead of the times. The Stevens survived both the Great Depression and World War II, although there were

0 1993, Cornell University.

many times when it might have Stevens became an army barracks, seemed unlikely that it would. sometimes sleeping as many as

During the depression years 4,000 air cadets. The grand ball- there were frequent occasions room-stripped of its elegance- when the employees outnumbered became a mess hall, while Park the guests and large sections of the Row served as the post exchange. hotel were closed. In 1942 the Toward the end of 1943, the hotel

From 1945 to 1965, Robert F. Quain was assistant to the general manager, operations manager, and GM of the Stevens Hotel, now the Chicago Hilton and Towers. This article was submitted by Michael M. Lefever, Ph.D., head of the department of Hotel, Restaurant & Travel Administration at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and is a compilation of excerpts from Quain’s manuscript “Inside View of Hilton Hotels," from the Conrad N. Hilton Archive and Library at the University of Houston (courtesy of Cathleen Baird Huck, director and archivist).

44 THE CORNELL H.R.A. QUARTERLY

was once again open to the public. However, as it was a time of shortages of both labor and materi- als, efforts to rehabilitate the hotel were limited.

In 1945, Conrad N. Hilton purchased the hotel. Under the leadership of Robert P. Williford, executive vice president of Hilton Hotels Corporation, and Robert F. Quain, operations manager, assistant to the general manager, and later GM himself, a carefully planned and executed program of rehabilitation was begun. This is the story of those early years at the Stevens through the eyes of Bob Quain.

Apologies and Rosary Beads I detrained in Chicago on a wintry, bleak afternoon, November 15, 1945, and went directly to the Stevens Hotel. I was greeted with a human barricade, literally hundreds of people standing in line waiting for rooms. I walked over to the assistant manager and said: "I think you have a reservation for me. My name is Robert Quain." He replied: '%Vell, Mr. Quain, all these people are supposed to have reservations. Get in line!"

I got in line and stood there waiting for the line to move, but nothing happened. I decided I'd had enough of this nonsense and went around the desk and asked to see the front-office manager. I told him my name was Robert Quain and asked him to call Mr. Williford and tell him I had arrived.

Suddenly all hell broke loose. The front-office manager recognized my name and did a double take. The chief room clerk and another assistant manager who had overheard my conversation came over to shake hands and greet me. They asked where I had been and said they had been looking for me all day. They had expected me to arrive on the Century in the morning.

Photograph courtesy of the Conrad N. Hilton Archive and Library, University of Houston

Robert F. Quain

I explained that I had taken a late- night train after one of our farewell dinners.

My accommodations were waiting for me, and the front office had indeed been alerted to my arrival, they assured me, but apparently one of the assistant managers had goofed or hadn't been given the alert. Everyone was embarrassed and apologetic, and I was escorted to my suite in style, as though I were royalty. They couldn't do enough for me.

The next morning when I went down to the lobby, the assistant manager who had ordered me to get in line was waiting for me with rosary beads dangling shakily in his hands. He apologized over and over again, telling me how sorry he was. I told him to forget it. He escorted me into the dining room and assigned a hostess and two waitresses to take care of me. They kept hovering over me until I finally told them to leave me alone so I could enjoy my breakfast in peace. They said they understood how I felt but that the assistant manager had been most insistent that they stay with me and take good care of me.

A day or so later I met still another assistant manager and mentioned that the one with the rosary beads must be a very religious man and related the incident to him. He laughed and said: "He's not even a Catholic. He borrowed those beads from me." It developed that a friend of mine, Monsignor Joseph Toomey from Binghamton, New York, had been in the hotel the week before and had mentioned that his friend Bob Quain was coming to Chicago. Therefore the assistant manager, who wanted to rectify his mistake, figured that I was Catholic and borrowed the rosary beads to impress me.

Chicago's Gratuity System I didn't wait two or three weeks to familiarize myself with the various operations. After two days of reviewing the hotel, especially the disorganized front office, I suggested to Mr. Williford that I start correcting the situation immediately.

There was no control system on arrivals and departures, and hundreds of people with reservations were being turned away. He was aware of the situation but felt stymied about how to go about correcting it. He gave me the green light to go ahead.

There was a heavy demand for rooms in Chicago, since the war was just ending and few homes were being built. Our reservations staff was accepting hundreds of reservations, and the front-office clerks were selling rooms to many people without reservations--for bribes of $5 for singles, $10 for twins, and $25 to $50 for suites. I was appalled at the situation, though I soon learned it was common practice in Chicago hotels.

When I first met with the front- office manager, Roland Blackstone, and his assistant, Dorothy Baker, I found out that the person approv-

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Robert Ouain, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Chicago's Hilton hotel.

ing the reservat ions was a manager I knew from New York City. He claimed it was a si tuation caused by a lack of sufficient personnel, and they couldn't do anyth ing about it. I replied, "We are going to do something about it now!"

The tal ly-sheet system of controls I set up was similar to the one we had used at the Roosevelt in New York. With the cooperation of the front-office manager , his assistant, and a few honest employees, we were able to el iminate overbooking and many of the gra tu i ty problems.

Early Race Riots My first exposure to Chicago's racial problems came on Thanks- giving eve in 1945, two weeks or so after I had arrived at the Stevens.

I received a call from the executive assis tant manager , who was re luc tant to go up and face the problem, informing me tha t there was a fight going on between black and white employees in the employees' cafeteria. A security officer accompanied me to the scene of the

melee. By the t ime we got there, the hostilities were subsiding.

Many of those employees of both races were from the laundry and housekeeping depar tments . Our l aundry manager , John Varick, had taken the black employees over to one section of the room. The executive housekeeper, and a security officer had t aken the white employees to another side of the cafeteria. I inquired wha t had happened.

We had a jukebox in the cafeteria, and one of the elevator operators, a young white woman, was dancing in such a way as to suggest she was imitat ing a black woman dancing. A black waitress took offense and told her to stop, but the white elevator operator didn't.

I asked to speak to the elevator operator and the waitress in ano ther room, and they both came with me. Since I was new to them, I introduced mysel f and told them I thought this was an unfor tuna te thing to happen, especially on the day before Thanksg iv ing- - the day tha t was mean t for giving thanks for all the blessings we had.

I was well aware tha t the incident could have caused one of those race riots I'd read ab o u t - - and within our own hotel. I was great ly relieved tha t I could get the two individuals out of the cafeteria and speak to them about the serious si tuat ion tha t had developed. After a t ime they realized the gravi ty of the situation, and I asked them to come out a rm in a rm to indicate to the employees tha t they had made up, and there were no longer any hard feelings.

Prima Donnas There are always pr ima-donna depar tmen t heads in any hotel operation. Notable among those I had to deal with at the Stevens were the cater ing manager , the chef, and the chief engineer. We had resolved most of our problems with the cater ing manager and the chef. Our chief engineer, Harold Toombs, was something else. He wasn ' t exactly the type to contrib- ute to our image as "the world's friendliest hotel," though fortu- nately his aberrat ions were con- fined to in-house operations.

He made his own decisions without consulting anyone else and was thoroughly annoyed when I a t tended his meetings and made a few suggestions. No general manage r had ever before a t tended his meetings or challenged his operation. He finally decided it was necessary to remind me tha t he directed the engineer ing depart- merit of the hotel and he made the decisions in his d e p a r t m e n t - - i n essence, "Stay out of it, mister."

I am a quiet person in my surveillance of and response to quixotic situations. This was no exception. I said, "Mr. Toombs, you have been a tower of s t rength in s taying with the Stevens through- out the war effort, and you deserve a great deal of credit. However, there is going to be one manager of operations here, and that 's me."


I told him that if he wasn't agree- able to that, he'd better go home and sleep on it and see me the following morning.

The next day he came to my office and apologized, and he said he would be willing to cooperate. Subsequently we developed a good working relationship.

Going to Market The managers and chefs at the Stevens did a great deal of re- search in the area of food purchas- i n g - b y opening canned goods, for instance, and checking the con- tents. We found it was actually costlier to buy an inferior brand, even though it was cheaper, than to buy a superior-quality product.

After the war the Stevens was a volume user of beef, and one or more senior managers usually went with the food-purchasing agent and our young management executives to visit the meat companies in Chicago, such as Swift and Stockyard Packing Company, to select quality beef for the hotel. By going to the market, we were able to select all prime- quality beef instead of ordering from the meat companies and having them deliver what was meat marked "prime" but that often was not. When we selected our meat, we always marked it with a Hilton Hotel stamp, which could not be washed off. That assured us of top-prime beef that would be aged before being delivered to the hotel.

We also made trips at six o'clock in the morning to the fruit and vegetable markets for fresh, top- quality products. After a number of such visits to the markets and meat-packing companies, we made an impression on those vendors. They decided that our food- purchasing people knew their products, and thereafter they usually gave us special consider- ation and excellent service.

We made every effort to have quality food at the hotel. We even set up a taste-testing exhibit for our employees in one of our exhibit halls, with all cuts of meat as well as vegetables and fruits. We invited the floor clerks, bellmen, front-office staff--all guest-contact employees--to sample our food, to make them aware of the quality of food we were serving so they could make recommendations to the guests.

Their favorite was the rib roast, which they invariably recommended. That created a problem, because everyone was ordering roast beef, and the other items on the menu were not selling well. The food-and-beverage manager, then, had to prepare new menus with a different placement of items to entice guests to order something besides roast beef--and level off our food costs. (Of course, in any food-service operation a certain percentage of all food items must be sold to keep food costs in bal- ance.) That is one of the intricacies of the hotel business.

Mr . T u c k e r

One of the highlights of my experi- ences in the executive kitchen brigade was the arrival at the Stevens of a certain Mr. Tucker, an infamous guest whom I had known since my days at the Roosevelt in New York City. We had had quite a bit of trouble with him because of returned checks marked "Insuffi- cient Funds." Mr. Tucker arrived in Chicago promoting a fabulous and fantastic new car and invited a few thousand car dealers to come and review the new car at his "plant," which I assumed was nonexistent.

He had booked a dinner at the Stevens for 1,300 of his top dealers. Our catering manager was then called and advised that there would be an additional thousand people arriving by bus for cocktails and dinner. The additional guests

had to be served in our public dining rooms, and a thousand additional chairs had to be set up in the ballroom after the dinner.

I had already told our credit manager that Mr. Tucker's credit was questionable and that he would have to pay us in advance with a certified check for his big cocktail and dinner party. Although Mr. Tucker insisted that it be billed to his "company," I wasn't even sure he had a company and so I said, "No way!" When Mr. Tucker and I finally came face to face on this occasion, he recognized me immediately. He pleaded with me to send the bill to his company, but I insisted on a certified check. He then met with his executives, went to a bank, and personally delivered a sizable certified check to our credit manager.

Busloads of people arrived for cocktails and d inner- -an overflow crowd on short notice, which created a problem for us. On top of it all, it developed that the sensa- tional new car he was trying to market didn't have an engine in it. Although Mr. Tucker assured everyone that after dinner a car fully equipped with an engine would appear, that never happened as far as I know.*

The Beginning of Yield Management With our control system for advanced forecasting of room reservations, we discovered that we had a heavy number of arrivals from regular business, Monday through Thursday, and that the sales director was also booking 500 rooms for convention delegates with arrivals on Mondays and Tuesdays. That created room congestion during the early part of the week, and the w e e k e n d s -

*Editors' note: For more stories about c i rcumstances s u r r o u n d i n g the in famous Tucker automobile , see: "Tucker: The M a n a n d His Dream," a 1988 fea tu re - leng th film directed by Franc i s Ford Coppola and s t a r r i n g Je f f Bridges.

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Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays-- were not fully sold out.

I recommended to Mr. Williford that we contact the convention executives and give Friday, Satur- day, and Sunday as alternative dates for their members' arrivals as we had done at the Roosevelt in New York. He approved the plan. Our director of sales was reluctant, but we were supported by James Collins, assistant director of sales. I made the decision to give it a try, and we sent telegrams to all the heads of conventions that we had booked for the upcoming six months, giving them the weekend alternative.

We were swamped with phone calls and letters from the convention executives, many of them offering to come to Chicago personally to accept our proposal. It turned out to be profitable not only for the hotel but for the city of Chicago, which prospered from the tremendous increase in weekend business. Other Chicago hotels followed our lead in weekend convention business.

Distillers and the Vatican Shortly after I arrived at the Stevens Hotel, the cardinal's office made arrangements for a luncheon for a thousand people.

Monsignor Cletis O'Donnell, who was making all the arrangements for the election of a new bishop, advised me that Schenley Distillers would furnish all beverages and would assume the cost. By accident, I discovered that that practice was accepted by hotels in Chicago for special conventions and groups when they made dinner arrangements at hotels. Schenley would pay the hotel two dollars a bottle and the bartenders' labor costs.

I asked our catering manager who had made the arrangements, and he said it was Bill Lewis, convention manager for Schenley

Distillers, whom I knew well from New York City. I asked the catering manager to have Mr. Lewis see me.

The next day Mr. Lewis came to my office and congratulated me on my new position. We exchanged a few words of greeting, and then I said: "Bill, you have arranged for a luncheon to be held at the Stevens for a thousand people, and I understand that you are taking care of the alcoholic beverages and will assume all charges. If you assume all the charges, I wish to put on the record that it will be by the drink."

He replied: "Bob, you can't do that. You will get in trouble with the powers that be at the cathe- dral." Next I made a call to my friend John Brown, a public- relations executive at Schenley, and told him the story. I advised him that if Schenley was to assume the charges, they would be by the drink.

In the end, my position pre- vailed, and Schenley and other liquor companies were thereafter dissuaded from making special arrangements with organizations at a hotel's expense. That was an innovation in the hotel business, and helped hotels to earn a fair profit on banquet business.

The Chicago Mob After I became familiar with the Stevens's operations, I discovered that two of its most expensive deluxe suites were occupied by permanent guests at a monthly rate of $150. One should have sold for $125 a day, and the other for $175. Whenever I asked the manager about it, he brushed me off, saying that I should not pursue it, that there was no way of changing the rates. However, I did pursue it and learned that the suites were leased by members of the Chicago mobster syndicate.

I brought the matter to Mr. Williford's attention. Mr. Williford went into the matter further and

after some persistent investigation found out from Steve Healy, the former owner of the Stevens, that the syndicate had earned its special status because it had supplied liquor for the hotel's reopening after the war, when the Stevens couldn't get sufficient alcoholic beverages. So the syndicate had priority on those suites-- for a while.

After meetings with our attor- neys the practice came to an end. The Chicago syndicate relin- quished those suites, and some of the displaced guests were willing to take rooms instead, to have a voting address in Chicago's First Ward.

Union Thugs Whenever large numbers of guests arrived in the morning, there were not enough bellmen to take care of them. Arriving guests were taken to their rooms, and they often wouldn't accept the room. That was often due as much to the lack of equipment--lamps, linens, and so on--as to misplaced beds centered under the overhead light. The bellmen were then delayed while another room was assigned. It sometimes took three or four room changes before a guest was satis- fled with the accommodation.

I set up a procedure whereby room clerks and assistant managers advised guests, when they checked in, about the conditions we were faced with, explaining that their baggage would be checked until their room could be made up properly. By and large, the guests were understanding and coopera- tive, and the new procedure seemed to be working smoothly, until one day a hotel bellman informed me that there had been complaints from other bellmen to the union. Soon after, two agitated union representatives arrived in my office. They were both six-foot- plus and quite vociferous.


One plopped his feet up on my desk and began, like a head- chopper at an inquisition: "Quain, I understand you come from New York. Well, let me tell you, w e r u n

these unions in Chicago, and we want you to know that you have to cooperate with us."

By invoking an unprintable curse word I told the guy with his feet on my desk to remove them and to speak to me like a gentle- man- - then I would certainly be glad to cooperate with him and his associate. He was so surprised at what I said and the forcefulness with which I said it that in taking his feet off the desk he fell off the chair onto the floor. He was totally embarrassed, as even his associate began to laugh.

I told him that I had come up in the hotel business as an elevator man, a bellman, and a service manager, and I certainly wished to cooperate with the bell staff, as the bellmen could be our best salesmen for the Stevens, and I was looking out for their interests. Most important, I convinced the union guys that the bellmen could earn just as much, or more, revenue by taking care of more guests in the same amount of time, instead of staying with one guest and shifting that guest's luggage from room to room. It seemed so simple to me. I still don't know why the union people wanted to make a federal case out of it.

At any rate, they finally agreed to give the new baggage-checking system a one-week trial. They left my office with the notion that maybe that man Quain from New York had the bellmen's interest at heart, and I had no further problems with them.

That meeting with the union representatives left me with one important, deeply embedded idea. Thereafter, before I put into practice any new procedures that involved a union, I always con-

tacted representatives of that union and got their support.

Elevators and Pulsating Lights The most important improvement at the Stevens was in the elevator service, which at one time was unbelievably inept.

Guests would be getting in the elevators while others would be trying to get off at the same time. Often tempers would flare, and the elevator operators--young women, generally--were being abused. Women guests fared the worst and wrote many letters of complaint about their disappointment in the elevator service, and there were constant complaints from the executive vice presidents of national and international conventions.

Before I arrived at the Stevens, it had two elevator companies trying to devise a better system of control, and they were unable to come up with a solution. Mr. McNamara, assistant manager in charge of service, and I, together with the rehabilitation department, also tried to come up with a solution and were unable to do so.

Then Mrs. Quain and I attended a motion picture starring Dan Dailey, Jr., a friend of ours and the son of the manager of the Roosevelt. At the theater, we had to stand in line behind roped stanchions for almost three-quarters of an hour before gaining admittance to see the movie. Suddenly it dawned on me that that was the solution to con- trolling the elevator problem.

I met with Mr. McNamara the next morning and related my idea to him. We could place ropes and stanchions in the center of the elevator foyer to hold back the people who wanted to enter the elevators. The ropes could be handled by two starters, one for the right bank of elevators and one for the left bank. That would eliminate competition in front of the elevators. The elevators held 16 people, so

"He was so surprised at what I said and the forcefulness with which I said it that in taking his feet off the desk he fell off the chair onto the floor."

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when an elevator came to the ground floor and the people had gotten off, the appropriate starter would release 16 people from the roped-off area to get on the elevator.

Mr. McNamara arranged to have rehearsals of the procedure, explaining to the elevator operators how the exiting guests would go to the right or to the left, depending on which elevator they were in, and the starters would control the people waiting behind the roped stanchions to board the elevators. After three days of practice, Mr. Williford and I watched a rehearsal and were pleased with it.

Another problem was the number of guests waiting for an elevator on the upper floors before anyone could do anything about it. Because most of the entertainment suites were on high-number floors, there could be large numbers of people waiting there for elevators, and the control board in the lobby did not indicate how many were waiting on any particular floor, or for how long they had been waiting.

We spoke to the elevator company about the possibility of installing pulsating lights on each floor that could signal the elevator operators to take their cars to the entertainment floors and then provide express service to the ground floor. Such a system would preclude empty cars from having to return first to the ground floor to receive instructions to head up to the entertainment floors. That was a new request for the elevator executives, as they were not aware that such a problem existed. As the price they quoted was exorbitant, our elevator-maintenance man and the chief engineer decided to study the problem themselves. They found that for about $75 they could

Pictured left to right: Robert Quain, Barron Hilton, and Conrad N. Hilton (1971). The photograph is courtesy of the Conrad N. Hilton Archive and Library at the University of Houston.

buy the necessary equipment to install the pulsating lights. It was accomplished, and the elevator- maintenance man was awarded a bonus for his ingenuity.

Those improvements were so enthusiastically embraced by the convention executives that we received a great deal of free public- ity. The result was that many of the national conventions made their headquarters at the Stevens, and we increased our convention business.

The Ice Capades Mr. Hilton's hunch was right. The Palmer House and the Stevens, only a few blocks apart, were able to maintain their distinctive personalities without competing with each other. We were able to control the constant-rate structure and develop a relationship between the two hotels that gave us an edge on the booking of national and international conventions that met in Chicago.

We soon learned, however, that the operation of two major Hilton hotels in the same city posed a problem in the entertainment department. The Palmer House had

its own great showroom, the Empire Room, and the Stevens had its terraced, spacious Boulevard Room. Both were vying for show- business headliners to attract customers for dinner shows.

To avoid competition between the two Hilton hotels, Mr. Williford decided to change the format at the Stevens and put on a spectacular ice show in the Boulevard Room instead of the usual night-club entertainment. We had the space and the facilities--a sub- basement foundation on which to build an ice rink, elevators to move the rink

up and down, and equipment to convert the rink to a dance floor when the ice show was finished.

We closed the Boulevard Room in December 1947 to prepare for our new ice-show format. The next month the new Boulevard Room had the spectacular opening of its first ice show, which was a big hit.

We often headlined individual stars of the famed Ice Capades, as well as skaters who had made high marks in national competitions for the Olympics. We engaged Frankie Masters, Ted Weems, Oren Tucker, and other well-known orchestra leaders to provide backup music for the ice shows, as well as dance music after the shows.

Our Boulevard Room ice show also received a boost from television's Tonight Show, then in its infancy and having a difficult time gaining popularity. At the time, leading columnists from New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago were trying to give the Tonight Show a boost. When it was booked in Chicago, Irving Kupcinet, who wrote the widely read "Kup's Column" in the Chicago Sun-Times, hosted it, which meant great national coverage for the hotel.

50 THE CORNELL H.R.A. Q U A R T E R L Y

The televised ice show was a success, and was one of the first Tonight Shows ever broadcast.

The ice shows actually improved the image of the Stevens, and for many years both the Stevens and the Palmer House had a reputation for offering top-quality entertainment in Chicago.

A Cat Burglar About three nights a week, rooms on the 23rd floor of the Stevens were being robbed, and it was causing us much difficulty. In speaking with the people who had been victimized, I found that many were under the impression that someone had a monkey and was dropping it down from the roof to go into their rooms. Other people thought it was a young person dangling down a rope who Was being dropped into the rooms. (The 23rd floor was four floors below the roof.)

One morning at about two o'clock, after six months of frustra- tion, the night assistant manager received a phone call from a guest on the 23rd floor who said there was a man sliding along the ledge outside the building.

The assistant manager thanked the caller and got the security officers and bellmen, who immediately went up to the floor. They guarded the stairways between the 22nd and 24th floors. One of the security officers opened a door leading to the fire escape and saw the thief sliding along, approaching the fire escape.

City detectives learned later that he was a circus performer and also an ironworker. What a relief for management, employees, and guests when the thief was finally caught!

Hail to the Chief Soon after I became general manager of the Stevens, my own plans were fouled up a bit by no less a personage than President Harry

Truman. The Stevens was to be the headquarters for the 1948 National Shrine Convention, and the Shrine's executive committee decided to invite President Truman as their guest of honor. Although they did not expect him to accept, he did.

Because I had not taken a vacation in a couple of years and we had just bought our property in Valparaiso, Indiana, I was planning to take some time off. I told Joe Harper, our manager, that I was going down to our new home, and that I didn't give a damn if the president of the United States was or wasn't coming to the Stevens-- I wasn't going to re turn until the end of my vacation.

I had to eat my words. Two days later Joe Harper called me in Valparaiso and said: "President Truman is coming, and I'm sorry to have to tell you that you have to be back here tomorrow. The Secret Service called and they want the general manager to be here to go through the hotel with them and personally supervise all the arrangements for the president."

President Truman did come for the Shrine convention, and of course, I did re turn to the Stevens.

On the evening of the Shrine banquet in the Grand Ballroom-- an important event- - the Shriners indulged themselves a little too much at the reception preceding the dinner, with the result that chaos reigned in the VIP room, where they were assembled to organize the Shrine officers and guests who were to be seated at the dais. It seemed impossible for them to get lined up.

Up in his suite the president was getting exercised about being kept waiting. It was now the time when he was supposed to come down to the Grand Ballroom, and he was a stickler for punctuality. I called the head of the White House division of the Secret Service, Mr. James Raleigh, who was with the president, and told him we were having a

difficult time getting the head table lined up, which was causing a delay.

I asked him to advise the president of that, which he did, and I could hear President Truman's reply: "Tell them if they don't get lined up, I'm coming down and going to the dais myself. I'm not going to wait any longer." I told Mr. Raleigh that he'd better come down and help out with the situation. In the meantime Harold Lloyd, the movie star and also a Shriner, took over.

He jumped up on a chair and told them they were embarrassing both the Shrine and themselves. He finally got them lined up and ready to march into the ballroom, but in the confusion they forgot about an escort for the president of the United States to the dais. Mr. Raleigh therefore asked me to escort the president, which of course was an honor and a pleasure.

As we walked in, President Truman said to me, "Oh, I hope they don't play that damn 'Missouri Waltz.' Everybody thinks that's my favorite song." Instead the orchestra played "Hail to the Chief' as we walked to the dais, and President Truman's face broke into that famous grin.

Tom McNamara, our executive assistant manager, and I were delegated to escort President Truman out of the hotel to his limousine the next morning. On the way down to the elevator, I asked if he had slept well and apologized for the music that had played so loud and long into the night.

"I loved the music," he said. "That music put me to sleep. But I wish some guy had thrown a pail of water on that son of a bitch looking for Chloe. He drove me out of my mind." One of the Shrine divisions had hired a man with a raspy voice to go around all night calling, "Chloe! Chloe!" It was their idea of fun. "It kept waking me up. I kept wishing I had a pail of water to

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throw on that son of a bitch," President Truman said. He was at times an earthy man.

MacArthur's Miniburgers When General MacArthur returned from Japan in September of 1951, he first stopped in San Francisco and his second stop was Chicago, where he spoke to 100,000 people at Soldiers' Field.

Mr. Hilton was there to meet the general, and Mr. Williford and I were to meet Mrs. MacArthur and their son. There were thousands and thousands of people gathered outside the hotel. Some committee, without notification or approval from management or the police department, had arranged to throw leis from Hawaii out of the mezza- nine windows, just above the entrance to the hotel. The drivers in the MacArthur motorcade didn't pull up to the curb, leaving the vehicles farther out in the street, and as they were getting out of the cars, the leis started to come down.

When the crowd below saw the leis coming down, the people ran to try to catch them. We were caught right in the middle of the stampede, along with the police. The police had to resort to using a football- style blocking wedge to get the MacArthurs, Mr. Hilton, and me safely into the hotel. It was a frightening experience.

With the aid of the policemen, we escorted the MacArthurs to our 23rd-floor Royal Skyway Suite. There we had arranged for a buffet table, and as an added gesture, had provided little hamburgers and rolls. The only food the MacArthurs wanted were those hamburgers and rolls. The general asked if I would arrange to get him more of them instead of dinner. We fulfilled his request and got him a couple of dozen of those small hamburgers and coffee, as well as the ketchup he requested. Evidently they don't have hamburgers in Japan.

Russian Protocol The famous Furniture Mart in Chicago, held during January, has traditionally been the largest gathering of furniture executives in the United States, and hotel accommodations are always snapped up well in advance. Just before one of the furniture markets in the late 1950s, I received an urgent call from the executive vice president of the Department of Commerce and Industry, asking if I could arrange accommodations for Mr. Anastas Mikoyan, the economic adviser to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Mr. Mikoyan was to be the guest speaker at a noon luncheon at one of our city clubs, and before leaving for his speaking engagement, he invited me, along with the commerce and industry vice president and a representative of the State Department, up to his suite for a drink.

I had instructed our hotel staff to have bottles of vodka, scotch, and bourbon available in his suite, but when I got there, I was informed through his interpreter that Mr. Mikoyan specifically did not want vodka; he preferred scotch with ginger ale.

It was served by one of our captains, but the Soviet economic adviser decided that we were being too economical with our scotch, so he picked up the bottle and began pouring more of it into all our drinks. He made it obvious that the rest of us were supposed to drink with him. Then he decided he wanted to drink bourbon and water. Again, he felt the waiter wasn't giving us enough bourbon, and he picked up the bottle and poured more for us and himself. At half past eleven the commerce and industry vice president said: "I can't drink anymore. I have to be the chairman of this luncheon."

Mr. Mikoyan insisted that we continue drinking with him, and

the State Department man advised us to do so. However, during Mr. Mikoyan's conversations with his interpreter, we kept adding water to our glasses. The luncheon group was quite pickled when they left, and I don't know how they got through their speeches, but they obviously did, because they returned to the hotel in time for an afternoon press conference in the Boulevard Room. There were many Slavic groups congregating and marching around the hotel, waiting for his return.

I suggested to police officers and to our own security guards that we bring Mr. Mikoyan in through a side entrance and walk upstairs to the Boulevard Room to avoid the crowds. That we did, but in doing so, we moved so fast that we lost Mr. Mikoyan's own bodyguards and his interpreter. It took them some time to make their way through the crowd and find the Boulevard Room. By the time they arrived, we had Mr. Mikoyan seated and waiting by the microphones, calm and composed, and I think some- what sobered. He had to be wonder- ing what had happened to his caretakers!

I was never filled in on what kind of economic advice he gave to Mr. Khrushchev, but, whatever it was, I'm sure it was colored by his consumption of scotch and bourbon. One thing about the hotel busi- n e s s - y o u meet such interesting people, co

EPILOGUE In 1971, after 47 years in the hotel industry, Robert F. Quain retired as senior vice president and director of the Washington division of the Hilton Hotels Corporation. Upon retirement and before his death several years ago, he and his wife, Florence, divided their time between Valparaiso, Indiana, and Lauderhill, Florida.--M.M.L.


the old stevens: memoirs of bob quain

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