She Keeps Spirits Up With Irish Wit, Whiskey

With a trunk full of liquor samples and a head stuffed with Irish wisdom--”The reason the good Lord made whiskey was to keep the Irish from ruling the world”--Ellen Murphy keeps the night life lively in Ventura Boulevard’s trendy bars and restaurants.

When the music is loud and the liquor is flowing, you might lift your glass to Murphy, for she keeps it full. A saleswoman for Young’s Market Co., one of the nation’s oldest distributors of wine and spirits, Murphy peddles Jack Daniels and Wild Turkey by the case to noisy hangouts such as Jerry’s Deli and quiet retreats such as the St. Moritz restaurant in Studio City.

Willy Loman got by on a smile and a shoeshine. Add flyaway red hair, eyes as richly green as a parrot’s wing and an incendiary enthusiasm for life and you have the woman known simply as “Irish” to her customers.

She doesn’t just light up the room when she comes hurrying in with her sales book in hand and greets one and all in a booming Irish brogue. The effect is more nearly like someone lobbing in a concussion grenade.

“Hallo Steve, hallo Joe,” she burbled, helping herself to a cup of coffee one afternoon in the kitchen at Vitello’s, just off the boulevard. “These guys are immigrants like I am,” she added affectionately.

“When you’re dealing with Irish,” replied Joe Restivo, one of the owners, “it’s not just dealing with a company. It’s like dealing with a friend. If we’re out of liquor, she’ll deliver it herself. Course, she’ll drink a couple of bottles along the way.”

Murphy laughed as heartily as the rest at the jibe because she knows there’s no truth to it. She has no problem with alcohol. But as a woman in what once was a man’s job, she has learned the value of irreverence and the virtues of a thick skin.

“You have to be tough in this business,” said her boss, Rick Tolliver, division sales manager in Los Angeles. “For a woman, it’s even harder. You have to walk into some pretty nasty places filled with lounge lizards who make comments.”

While the toughness is there, she doesn’t wear it like armor. Her personality is too upbeat to be defensive. She is so upbeat, in fact, that she is excited rather than intimidated at the prospect of getting a new customer in a dangerous neighborhood downtown where the popping noises are bullets rather than wine corks.

“It’s like something you see in the movies but you don’t believe is out there,” she said.

Is this naive? If so, it’s too late to change.

“The Irish are basically happy people,” she said. “Even when they’re depressed, they’re happy about it.”

Murphy, who says she is thirtysomething, is treading a well-worn immigrant’s trail. Like generations before her, she is pursuing the American dream of wealth and material success. And despite America’s own self-doubts, she is finding that this country still keeps its promise. Work hard and you will succeed.

She has and she does. She supports herself in a $1,000-a-month Burbank apartment that nestles up against the mountains. She has furnished it with an expensive white sofa that she refuses to let anyone sit on. She owns a car and has saved enough money to fly back to Ireland for a visit.

Yes, Americans are “gung-ho on money. But that’s what we all came for,” she said. She admits she will do almost anything to make a deal, including playing for sympathy.

“I tell them, ‘Take pity on the poor immigrant.’ ”

Murphy came by her interest in wine and spirits naturally. One of Mick Murphy’s five children, she grew up in the southern Irish town of Cork, where her family operated 22 bars.

When her father died before she turned 19, she took over Mick Murphy’s Bar, a quaint place with a fireplace and dart board. She not only ran the bar but was treasurer of the dart team.

But restless by nature in comparison to her siblings, all of whom are settled with spouses and children, she had had enough after five years of running the bar. Deciding “there was nothing going on in Ireland,” she left for West Germany, where she met and married an American Army captain.

He brought her back to the United States, where she eventually purchased a bar she called Murph’s in the White Mountains of Arizona. The marriage broke up--too many geographical changes--and the authorities began harassing her.

“I was operating without a liquor license, and I didn’t even know it,” she said.

She said goodby to Arizona (too hot), spent a year in Seattle (too wet and cold), and moved a year ago to Los Angeles, which she found just right.

“I love L.A.,” she said. “It’s exciting.” She even thinks she may stay here, though she makes no promises.

With her flashing green eyes and red hair, she is almost too stereotypically Irish in a time when we have learned to distrust stereotypes. Murphy turns that to her advantage, subtly encouraging people to trade on it.

“Well, it’s Ellen Murphy,” sang out St. Moritz co-owner Steve Applegate when Murphy walked in on a recent afternoon. His imitation Irish accent was as bad as her grandmother’s corned beef and cabbage--she thinks Americans do it much better than the Irish--but Murphy didn’t mind.

“I ended up here on St. Patrick’s Day,” she said with a laugh, recalling how she led customers in a wild Irish jig. After the night ended, “they had to drive me home.”

The St. Moritz was only one of her stops that day.

“How did the week go, Steve?” she asked Steve Restivo when she stopped in at Vitello’s.

“Could be a lot better, Irish, a lot better,” said Restivo.

This is a common thread up and down the boulevard in an industry punished by the recession. Some well-known restaurants have gone out of business, and gossip over who might be next is hotter than a stolen credit card.

Murphy served up the latest rumor.

“No, really?” said Restivo, who gained some fame by training Al Pacino for his role as a chef in “Frankie and Johnny.”

Knowing that the bartender at the troubled restaurant intends to leave in the near future, Murphy asked if Vitello’s needs an experienced hand.

“If anybody is looking for a bartender, I’ve got a guy,” she said. Joe Restivo urged her to send him in.

This is not just good human relations, but good business. Bartenders can help persuade their bosses to buy her products. So it pays to make sure that her favorite bartenders are employed.

“The idea is to just move your bartenders around,” she said.

Next, she stopped in for a sandwich at Zach’s Italian Cafe, an airy restaurant catering to a young clientele.

“Minestrone esta aqui ,” she said to the waiter, a young man who did not speak much English. “I’m taking Spanish at night,” she said.

Her first attempt to make a sale at Zach’s was rebuffed, but she wasn’t fazed. Rejection is part of the job, and if you can’t handle it you’d better get out. She went out to her car and retrieved samples of some new Jack Daniels products. Called Tennessee Tea and Lynchburg Lemonade, they are like wine coolers with a shot of hard liquor.

“These have serious potential,” said a duly impressed Scott Mahler, the restaurant general manager. “We could have a Jack Daniels night.”

Ellen Murphy’s eyes lit up.

Driving to yet another stop, Murphy paused for a few moments to wonder whether she or her sisters made the right choices. They have the family, she has the career in an exotic foreign land. Her choice is great for now, but what about when she gets older?

“Hopefully, I won’t live to be 90,” she said, then brightened. “Of course if I do, I can see myself driving a jet-propelled wheelchair.”