A SPARK OF CELEBRITY AT THE FUNERAL HOME
I once asked my father if anyone famous lived in our town.
When I think back to this I am amazed that he answered seriously.
“No, no one famous lives here.”
“Not even the Egg Man?”
“No, not even.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we live in a small town and most famous people live
in large cities.”
Poor old us. The sum of celebrity sightings in the town
where I grew up was:
Celebrity – 0
Regular people – a little less than 9,000
Apparently we were once a hotbed for any travelling performer
who passed through. In 1903 an architect from Chicago swooped down to Kentucky
and built an opera house in our town.
There was nothing even faintly operatic about the kind of
shows that somehow reached our little enclave. The religious element was so
fierce that to call it what it really was, a theatre, was not allowed. The opera house debuted one night stands with performers who
made themselves at home for a few hours in the dressing rooms. Vaudeville and
minstrel shows played to audiences who sat eagerly in the boxes and balcony.
Lectures were popular, as were home talent shows in which I can only imagine
parents and spouses elongated their posture and puffed their chests out proudly
while neighbours cringed inwardly.
The opera house closed during the war and like a product on
an assembly line, it was passed from owner to owner.
At long last the drought grew to an end when the biggest
celebrity our town had seen in a living breathing person stopped by our funeral
home out of necessity. He was also the smallest celebrity to ever walk among
us.
My father called him a live wire. His personality contained
a tall dose of high-octane charisma, though he stood less than four feet tall
at his adult height. His real name was Johnny Roventini, but by a stroke of
luck in 1933 he became the most famous product spokesperson for Philip Morris
Tobacco Company, so much so, that he became known only as Johnny Philip
Morris.
In 1929 the construction of the Hotel New Yorker was
complete.
Along with its 43 stories and 2,500 rooms, it boasted that
‘the hotel's bell boys were 'as snappy-looking as West Pointers’. Their uniform: red-trimmed black cap
with a chin strap, a bright red tunic with gold buttons, red-striped black
trousers, and white gloves.
In 1933 Mr. Biow of the Biow Agency landed the lucrative
Philip Morris Tobacco account. In a stroke of Mad Men genius, he focused on the
fact that the cigarettes had a man’s name and thought it might be unique for a
bellboy to page the non-existent Philip Morris. Biow was advised to sit in the
lobby of the Hotel New Yorker to observe a 22-year-old bellhop. Johnny
Roventini had suffered a pituitary gland disorder that not only halted his
growth, but also the development of his voice, which he now used to call out a
perfect B-flat tone naturally and clearly for every ‘page’.
Mr. Biow approached Johnny with a dollar in hand and asked
him to page Philip Morris. The bellboy was unaware that Mr. Morris didn’t exist
and repeatedly called out, “Call for Philip Morris” in his distinctive voice.
Johnny was upset that his page went unanswered, not knowing he was essentially
auditioning. Later he was quoted in Variety,
"I went around the
lobby yelling my head off, but Philip Morris didn't answer my call. I had no
idea that Philip Morris was a cigarette.”
Johnny became a living trademark. For the next forty years
he was never seen out of his bellboy uniform and was heard around the world,
first in radio advertising, and then in broadcast media, notably helping the I
Love Lucy show kick-start its success.
The demand for thousands of pubic appearances in store
openings, parades and other public events summoned the need for dozens of
“Johnny Juniors” who made it possible for him to be in two places at once. But
there were no impostors in our town; we met the genuine Johnny. We lived in
tobacco country and every year the Tobacco Festival took an all-consuming and
prideful place in the autumn line-up of events. One would think we were organizing Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was the perfect venue for Philip
Morris, and Johnny was a parade-appearing aficionado by that time.
For twelve years he sat on the back of a white convertible
in our parade and called his page for Philip Morris without amplification. And
the crowd went wild…
Our funeral home, which was on the residential end of Main
Street, provided the perfect position in which to view the parade. I ran back
and forth from a window upstairs to other vantage points, both downstairs and
on our stoop where our front door was open to the community. Before and after
the parade, Johnny came running into the funeral home badly in need of a cold
drink and to answer the call of nature. He took the time to shake everyone’s
hand and thanked us for our hospitality. I absolutely dogged my father to
search for me if I wasn’t around for Johnny’s arrival. For a couple of those
twelve years my younger sister was near his height and could not understand why
he spoke to her as if he were an adult. Even though he was well into middle age
when we met him, she couldn’t grasp his miniature stature and basically wanted
him to be her playmate. She was especially confused when he patted her on the
head. I’ll never forget his kindness and his full acceptance of how people
reacted to him.
By 1970 Congress had banned the advertising of cigarettes on
television and radio. Johnny retired in 1974. He never married and died at the
age of 88.
