For Once, the Bash at New York Hot Spot Elaine’s Is for Elaine

What was the greatest moment ever at Elaine’s, the famed New York watering hole for writers, movie stars, Hollywood producers and other celebrities?

Some say it was the night Norman Mailer and songwriter Jerry Lieber got into an epic fight, crashing through the wall of one room and into another filled with diners.

Others say it was the time Jackie Kennedy made one of her first social outings after the death of President John F. Kennedy, quietly entering the restaurant at 2 a.m. with composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, author Susan Sontag, director Mike Nichols and other close friends.

“They’re all great stories, but maybe the greatest story of all is that Elaine’s continues to thrive after 40 years,” said author Gay Talese. “A lot of other hangouts have faded, but this remains the most definably New York place in the entire city.”

As Talese spoke, more than 300 friends of proprietor Elaine Kaufman were squeezing into her small Upper East Side bar and restaurant, and the line of people waiting outside snaked down the block. They were celebrating the publication last month of “Everyone Comes to Elaine’s,” a social history of the saloon’s first four decades written by A.E. Hotchner, a regular since 1965.

“There are lots of imitators, but only one Elaine’s,” boomed author Malachy McCourt, struggling to be heard above the din. “There may be newer hangouts these days for young writers in Brooklyn and other places, but this remains the original.”

At the center of the crowd was Kaufman, a large, intense woman with oversized glasses who, for once, was having a book party thrown in her honor. She seemed flustered by the attention, muttering to an aide: “I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

Usually she guards the place like a lioness, watching who comes in the door and minding guests until closing time. There are only 10 tables in the main room, along with several more in an adjacent room, and Kaufman earmarks the best seats for particular celebrities or regular customers. Everyone else is on their own, often waiting hours to be seated, and almost no one comes here for the cuisine. “You can’t go wrong with the veal chop” is a mantra of long standing.

Kaufman is one of New York’s last great saloonkeepers, and friends say she is a jumble of contradictions: big-hearted but also abrasive; warm with some yet distant with others. She can be a great listener and a terrific friend when the chips are down, but she doesn’t suffer fools lightly, and quickly turns on guests who bore or annoy her.

“I’ve got a lot of pizazz that other people don’t have,” Kaufman declared, pausing for a brief interview before the party officially began. “Some people may find me hard to take, but this place is my personal vision. My statement. It always has been.”

Once, there were scores of places like Elaine’s in New York -- smoky, eccentric joints that welcomed a regular crowd of customers and became a home away from home. Most were dominated and defined by their owners’ personalities.

At Toots Shor’s, bigger-than-life celebrities like Mickey Mantle, Frank Sinatra and others hung out with the cigar-chomping owner, who named the place after himself. Journalists brawled after hours at legendary bars like the Lion’s Head and Costello’s, while elegant patrons partied at Sardi’s and 21 under the eyes of gossip columnists.

One after another, these hangouts lost their cache, either because patrons died and no one replaced them, or because regulars left and tourists took their place.

But Elaine’s has survived -- and prospered.

Kaufman, a struggling waitress with big dreams, opened the place in 1963, hoping to bring the aura of a Greenwich Village saloon to the Upper East Side. She had scraped together several thousand dollars and rented an old restaurant in what was then a largely German neighborhood. What happened next, she admitted, was dumb luck.

Nelson Aldrich, a writer for the Paris Review, happened to walk by one day, and came in for a drink. He liked the ambience, talked up the place to his friends, and soon a group of writers adopted the restaurant -- including some who were on the verge of stardom, such as Talese, Mailer, Tom Wolfe, William Styron and David Halberstam.

Although she did not have a literary background, Kaufman said she liked authors because “they stay up late, and they keep coming back. Who could build a bar around stockbrokers? They go to bed early and get dressed each morning watching ‘The Today Show.’ ”

The writers, in turn, enjoyed Kaufman’s quick wit and the saloon’s grimy atmosphere. They also appreciated Elaine’s generous bar tabs.

As word spread, movie and TV celebrities like Woody Allen, Michael Caine, Clint Eastwood, John Belushi and others started coming to Elaine’s. Sports figures like George Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson also discovered the place, and by the late ‘70s, it had become a celebrity mecca. The saloon has retained that mystique.

“I don’t mess up the formula,” Kaufman said, trying to explain her bar’s appeal. “I’m very true to myself, and we have a handful of rules here that never change.”

Rule No. 1: Don’t irritate the hostess. In “Everyone Comes to Elaine’s,” the author recalled a night when a couple were drinking and talking a bit too loudly at the crowded bar, sharing a gin martini.

“You don’t do that here,” said Hotchner, who shuddered at the memory along with Kaufman. “So Elaine yells: ‘Hey, you gonna buy your girl a drink?’ Well, he gets in her face and calls her names. So she slugs him. Boom! She’s got a great right hand.”

Rule No. 2: Leave the celebrities alone. Once, Michael Caine was sitting at a table in the back, waiting for his wife, when a woman at another table sat down next to him and began talking. Kaufman, who prowls the room looking for any signs of bad behavior, firmly escorted the woman back to her seat, amid squeals of protest.

“The woman’s husband began shouting, ‘You can’t do that to my wife!’ ” Hotchner recalled. “Then Elaine’s fist shot out and smacked him in the nose. He sat down.”

Kaufman chuckled, but conceded time had changed some things at her venerable establishment.

“I’ve still got a good right hand,” she said. “But I only sign checks with it now.”