Home Away From Home : A Hungarian House

When Dec. 31 rolls around, Andy and Eta Konya’s whereabouts will be no surprise. After all, the Hungarian immigrants have celebrated every New Year’s Eve since 1975 at the United Magyar House.

Almost every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the Hollywood retiree and his wife also visit the large, two-story house and auditorium at 1975 Washington Blvd.

It has helped Hungarians adapt to America since 1933.

“It feels like the atmosphere you are used to at home because everybody is speaking Hungarian as soon as you step through the threshold,” Andy Konya said. “People like to get information about their friends and a little gossip. We can keep up our heritage and culture and celebrate . . . the American holidays, too.”

There will be extensive chances for talk and gossip New Year’s Eve, which will include such Hungarian dishes as borju porkolt (veal goulash), toltott kaposzta (stuffed cabbage) and rantott karaj (breaded pork chops) cooked in the house kitchen. An after-dinner program of Gypsy singers, piano music and dancing will be followed by post-midnight snacks of soup or Wiener schnitzel.

“Then people start drinking again,” said Konya. “And when there is no more drinking, they are still talking. It will more than likely be 5 a.m. by the time they want to go home.”

Konya will probably be there until the end. He arrived in New York a year after the ill-fated Hungarian Revolution of 1956, then came to Los Angeles in the 1960s and managed an auto dealer’s service department for more than a decade before he felt he had time to join the Magyar House.

He became more and more active and now serves as treasurer of the self-supporting home, which survives on $25 annual family dues plus moderate prices for meals, beer, wine, dances and other entertainment.

The atmosphere, reminding visitors of the Magyars, Hungary’s predominant ethnic group, has lured such diverse members or guests as actors Bela Lugosi and Tony Curtis and nuclear physicist Edward Teller.

Although thousands of Hungarians have enjoyed the house over the years, its membership has shrunk in the last five years from 300 to 190.

“Right now it’s only old folks who come,” Konya said. “The young ones have their own way to celebrate. They like to have disco or whatever else is going on.”