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By Seth H. Bramson<\/strong><\/p>\n As we noted in my last column, I met the truly great love of my life in 1973, while I was managing Lloyd\u2019s of the Maison Grande, unquestionably and absolutely the most magnificent restaurant this town, even with all the nouveau dreck and Americanized continental phony Italian places opening, has ever seen. From there the late, great Lloyd Apple and I took over Bernard\u2019s in the Carriage House and then I went to Decorator\u2019s Row to become manager of the so-beloved Piccadilly Hearth. From there I went to New York to become GM of the famous New York Gaslight Club. All of that time, of course, the collecting continued unabated as did the chasing of a stunningly beautiful woman.<\/p>\n I know that our readers have seen (or at least heard of) gorgeous blondes walking into restaurants or clubs with every male eye in the place turning and staring at them. It wasn\u2019t that way with Myrna. Not exactly. We would walk into a dining spot but no one would turn to look\u2026.until we were seated. And then, slowly but surely, as if drawn by a magnet, every male eye in the place would turn to stare.<\/p>\n No flash, no blonde hair overwhelming the rest of the picture. Indeed, that wasn\u2019t it. What \u201cit\u201d was was that this stunningly elegant beauty, was so gloriously beautiful and so incredibly vivacious that I would sit there and smile as every male in the place from eight to 80 could not seem to take their eyes off of her and here I was, thinking to myself how fortunate I was to be with Myrna. She had been married twice before and on several occasions during our three years together pre-marriage I brought up the idea of permanency, but she would say to me, \u201cno, everything is fine\u2026let\u2019s leave it as it is.\u201d Having no choice, I did!<\/p>\n In March of \u201976, with my Mom about to enter Mt. Sinai Hospital for her last days fighting the lung cancer which would kill her on March 20th, I had to leave to take the New York job. And what did Myrna do? She went down to Mt. Sinai twice a day until Mom passed. What an exquisite woman.<\/p>\n We had direct dial at that time but no cell phones so we had to pay for every call, hence only spoke every other day or so. Myrna and I wanted to be together so when she finished school in early June she and my then-stepdaughter-to-be now daughter, Saralyn, came up to spend the summer. Of course, they stayed with me in my efficiency at 101 West 57th Street and Myrna took Sara all over the city. I went to work every day except Sundays and holidays, walking the four and a half blocks to the Gaslight Club, which was at 124 E. 56th Street. And it was on those walks that I became cordial (to greet) Woody Allen and Joe DiMaggio on a daily basis.<\/p>\n For those of you who are not aware (as usual, another story for another time) the idea and concept of the Playboy Club came from the Gaslight Club (there were Gaslight Clubs in New York, Chicago, Chicago O\u2019hare Airport in the Airport Hilton and Washington, D. C.) and besides the marvelous atmosphere and the wonderful \u201cSpeakeasy,\u201d the main attraction was the Gaslight Girls, all beautiful and talented women, many of whom, including Gwen Verdon, would go on to the movies and Broadway. When I was interviewed for the job, two signs made me realize and recognize that that club was the place for me and that the GM\u2019s job was the perfect job for me at the time.<\/p>\n The sign over the bar in the Theodora Room read \u201cWork is the Curse of the Drinking Classes\u201d while the sign in the men\u2019s room on that floor was possibly the greatest that I have ever seen. The urinal in that bathroom was actually an old (and quite large) cast iron bathtub which was kept filled with ice. The sign over the bathtub\/urinal (yes, it did drain into a pipe!) read \u201cThese Ice Cubes are Hardly Ever Used in Our Drinks!\u201d Oh lordy, the first time I saw that sign I was convulsed with laughter and I knew then and there that I had to have that job!<\/p>\n Myrna and Sara were with me all summer and when Myrna would come to the Club to join me for lunch or dinner, the Gaslight Girls would not only make a fuss over her but would tell her that she was so beautiful that she should become a Gaslight Girl. (It was several years later, when we were married and I was running Playboy Club Miami, that the Bunnies would do the same thing, asking Myrna why she wasn\u2019t a Bunny!) At any rate, at the end of the summer of \u201976, Myrna and Sara headed back to Miami with Myrna going over to Tampa to accept a fellowship sponsored by Sears at the University of South Florida titled \u201cThere is no such thing as a free Lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n By that time mid-September had rolled around and although I didn\u2019t yet know it, my life was going to change abruptly very shortly. As noted, we spoke every other day or so and on that fateful September day, Myrna called me and I will share the conversation with you, knowing how excited you are becoming and how anxious you are to hear \u201cthe rest of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n I answered the phone with my usual \u201cFine, and you?\u201d and what I heard from the other end of the phone was Myrna\u2019s voice not saying \u201chello\u201d or asking me how I was that day, but, instead, stating matter of factly \u201cI\u2019ve decided.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve decided what?\u201d I queried her. \u201cI\u2019ve decided we\u2019re getting married.\u201d Well, folks, you can imagine! I was 32 years old at the time and suddenly the unthinkable was staring me in the face. I began to realize that the jig might be up, so I started back pedaling, trying to buy time. (After all, here I was, a bachelor in the Big Apple, going to antique and memorabilia shows almost every weekend, going to the Sixth Avenue [at 26th Street] antique show every Sunday, visiting my friend, the late Herbie, regularly at the Carnegie, and, really having the time of my life). \u201cLook,\u201d I said, \u201cwhenever I\u2019ve brought it up in the past you\u2019ve told me that we should just let things be, so let\u2019s do this (remember, this was September of \u201976): let\u2019s think about it carefully and we\u2019ll talk about it again in February.\u201d The answer was short and succinct: \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to marry me, then don\u2019t call me the next time you\u2019re in Miami Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n Now folks, do you think any woman is going to talk to ME that way? Are you kidding me?!! Do you know what I said to her? I said, \u201cWhat day do you want to get married on?\u201d and that, dear readers, was how I found out that I was getting married!<\/p>\n Next column, a great friendship with Henny Youngman and Alan King develops and Myrna and Seth tie the knot on November 27th, 1976, almost three years to the day after we met for the first time and I think it is important, given the situation regarding a certain lowlife in Washington, D. C., to add this: Married for almost 42 years, it hasn\u2019t always been easy, but I will tell you one thing: Unlike that philandering putz in the White House, we have never taken away each other\u2019s dignity. And we never will.<\/p>\n Be\u2014and stay\u2014well, all, and to our readers of the Jewish faith, have a very happy and safe New Year, l\u2019shanah tovah.<\/p>\n [si-contact-form form=’2′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [AdSense-A] By Seth H. Bramson As we noted in my last column, I met the truly great love of my life in 1973, while I was managing Lloyd\u2019s of the Maison Grande, unquestionably and absolutely the most magnificent restaurant this town, even with all the nouveau dreck and Americanized continental phony Italian places opening, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18876],"class_list":["post-75124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-i-chased-her-for-three-years-until-she-caught-me-and-speedway-to-sunshine-was-published-in-1984"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75124"}],"version-history":[{"count":-2,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}