Meet Lovely Lily Pons

 

by Albert H. Morehead

Redbook

 

To describe Lily Pons it is necessary to borrow a word or two from the French. Even when high heels bring her up almost to five-feet-two, and when her weight ranges a few pounds over a hundred, there is no other word for her but petite. When her eyes flash and she speaks with her customer vehemence, she is très animée, which is very vivacious indeed. And when she tours the fighting fronts or the home fronts to sing for American servicemen, she is what a G.I. in Paris might call beaucoup Américaine.

Of course, it is most appropriate to apply French terms to Lily Pons. She was born in France. She lived, studied and sang there until in 1930 she reached these shores, to make a startlingly successful a debut as the Metropolitan Opera Company has ever recorded. But in 1940 Miss Pons became an American citizen, and if you make one tiny reference to her Frenchness she will hasten to remind you of it. “But I am not a French,” she will say — most vehemently, of course. “I am an American.”

The vehemence is not caused by displeasure. It is a matter of habit. In fact, it is questionable if Lily Pons ever uttered an unvehement word in her life. She may not fit your preconceived notions of what an opera star should look like — she may resemble Walt Disney's glamorous Snow White far more closely than the Mme. Clara Cluck he created in caricature of operatic divas — but Lily Pons will run true to your ideas of what an opera star should act like. Her tastes are interesting and unusual, her sentiments and emotions are strong, she has a refreshingly original slant on most subjects, she expresses herself in colorful words, and she even has a private stock of superstitions.

Beside this personification of vehemence and vivacity, inseparably, you will find her similarly distinguished husband, André Kostelanetz is mild in manner, soft-spoken, temperate. His eyes often sparkled with humor, but do not flash lighting as his wife's do. Their individual comments on their life together are typical of the difference in temperament. Says Lily, most positively, “He is the boss" (and, as she says it, she keeps her eyes on “the conductor” in a manner befitting a good musician). Says Kosty (as she calls him), mildly, “We've never thought about which one is the boss.”

Which other of them is right, these two people, so different in demeanour, so similar in tastes, make up one of the most noted and most noteworthy romances of our times. Their marriage was the climax of the most air-minded courtship of all time. During the years 1936 and 1937, when Miss Pons was making pictures in Hollywood and Mr. Kostelanetz was conducting radio concerts in New York, he traveled more than a quarter of a million miles by air to see her. At the peak, he flew back and forth between New York and Los Angeles every weekend for thirteen consecutive weeks, proposing on each trip.

So finally she accepted him on the thirteenth proposal (in line with one of the Pons superstitions), and they were married in 1938.

Likewise noteworthy is their professional life together. With Kosty conducting and Lily singing, they have appeared together on the radio and in concert from coast to coast. Most of their performances, especially open-air ones in which they specialize, have proved to have unprecedented drawing power, breaking attendance records not only for “good" music but for any kind of music. Twice, in Chicago's Grant Park, more than 200,000 people have turned out to hear them, and on the second of these occasions the audience was closer to 300,000. Twice the P-K combination has donned USO uniforms and traveled all over the globe to entertain a million American servicemen.

And what time they have left from their work — and there hasn't been much spare time since the war began — the Kostelanetzes like to take it easy. They do not go in for the gay life of nightclubs and restaurants. If they do go to parties, they leave long before midnight; they like to retire by nine o'clock except when evening performances make it impossible. Miss Pons enjoys dancing, but finds it even more pleasant to stay home.

Fortunately for Miss Pons, she has a prodigious musical memory; she can prepare for an ordinary recital, or for an opera which is part of her repertoire, in twenty minutes' daily work. When she is learning a new part, she increases to two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. There are also rehearsals at the Met, the press interviews and posing for pictures that every performer must undergo, and the performances themselves. The day is likely to be a busy one from 9:30 rising-time to the end of the day.

The Kostelanetzes' New York studio provides an interesting setting befitting interesting people. It is a duplex, two floors high, and a collector's delight. On its walls are fine paintings. In its shelves are rare books. It is furnished with fine pieces, of which some were brought from Miss Pons original home in France and others have been picked up in all parts of the world, for the Kostelanetzes are inveterate collectors as well as inveterate travelers. And a curio cabinet is displayed their snuffbox collection, including bejeweled ones that once belonged to Marie Antoinette, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton. Finally, in the dead centre of the room is a large compartmented bird cage with capacity for a dozen or more birds

Animals of all kinds are a hobby of the Kostelanetzes. They have four dogs, only one of which — a Skye terrier named Panouche — appears to have any eyes. The other three are breeds whose hair completely covers the face. There is a big sheep dog named Pouf, and two little Lhasa lion terriers, a rare breed which few Americans have ever seen. They're better known as “Tibetan ballplayers,",and their function in life is to catch a thrown ball on their noses, balance it there for a moment, toss it into the air with a shake of the head, catch it in the mouth coming down, and bring it back to you too for you to throw again.

Miss Pons ballplayers are named Wah-ping and Shun-lo. She never knew what their names meant until her trip this year to the CBI theatre, where she heard the Chinese General Ho make a speech. “I couldn't understand him," Miss Pons says, "but at the end of his speech he used the words 'wah-ping' and 'shun-lo.' I asked him what they meant and he said 'Peace' and 'Victory'.”

The Kostelanetzes buy dog food in hundred-pound bags, and Miss Pons takes care of the dogs herself, being careful not to disturb the hair over their eyes. “It's for protection against the sun,” she explains. “If I brush it away from their eyes, they take their paws and put it back again.” As behooves a good American, Miss Pons has lost much of the French accent that so delights her admirers, but she hasn't completely mastered the “th" sound

Her feathered friends are songbirds from South America. In the summer they are moved to the Kostelanetz home in Connecticut, where they join Minna, the Persian cat, and Gilda Rosina, a silver-laced Cochin hen which once won a prize in a poultry show, paired with a mate that belongs to Lawritz Melchior.

In their Connecticut home the Kostelanetzes do not do much entertaining, even of their intimate friends. The name of their place, which Miss Pons owned before they were married, is “La Gentilhommière.” In French this means a small countryseat, and despite its thirty acres the place is small. There is only one guest room, which in recent years has been occupied by Miss Pons' mother and her fifteen-year-old niece, Vivienne, whom she brought to America when the war broke out in Europe.

In the country house there is more fine furniture, more paintings, more rare books, and another collection — this one of old pewter. Not far from the house is a swimming-pool, and in another direction there is a small teahouse in which Lily and Andre were married in 1938, with Geraldine Farrar one of the attendants and Grace Moore among the handful of guests. Completing the appurtenances of La Gentilhommière are the garden and the garage containing three cars whose license tags, by grace of the State of Connecticut, are “P O N S,” “A K13" and “L  P13.”

The number 13 is Lily Pons' longest-standing superstition. She always asks for a hotel room on the thirteenth floor, and is happiest when 1313 is available. For years she always reserved seat thirteen in a Pullman car. “Thirteen” is her street address in Silvermine, Connecticut. She probably waited intentionally to accept Kosty's proposal until the thirteenth came along, and she insists she was born on Friday, the thirteenth. But, since she can hardly have any personal recollection of that day, it may be better to abide by the vital statistics.

According to these, Lily Pons was born near Cannes, France, on April 12th (not a Friday) in 1905. Her father, Auguste Pons, was a French automotive engineer whose ambition was to drive an automobile, then a newfangled contraption, from Paris to Peking; He almost made it, but not quite. Her mother was Italian, her maiden name being Maria Naso, so that Lily Pons may be descended from Ovid, the Roman poet of love, whose full name was Publius Ovidius Naso. As a little girl Lily was taken to Paris, where she lived until she came to the United States in 1930.

The fact that Miss Pons' formative years were spent in Paris during the first World War may account for the strong feeling against Germany that she never lost during the period between the two wars. She is a very social-minded person. Her patriotic feeling for both her native and her adopted countries is very strong. She has become famous for her rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and as appeared constantly in benefit performances for nearly all causes identified with the United States and its allies. When she and her husband had barely returned from one 40,000 mile USO tour, she cancelled her entire opera season and they embarked on another.

And in her first concert after she became an American citizen, her sentimental streak came to the fore; the song she sang was “Home, Sweet Home.”

Lily Pons did not start out to be a singer; first she studied the piano. “But I could not play,” she says. “My knees shook too much."

The nervousness with which Miss Pons approaches every engagement, whether radio, concert or opera, as well known. “Always I have vertigo,” says she. She cannot eat anything on the day of a performance; all day she doses herself with hot tea containing plenty of sugar, and she nibbles sugar lumps for energy. “And I cut a leetle piece off the drop,” she continues, it being one of the Pons superstitions that to snip off a bit of the stage curtain brings good luck. Finally the time comes to sing, “and with the very first note I am all right.” That ends the siege; after the performance she rushes home, gets into bed, and has a tray dinner of the food she couldn't bear to eat before.

Once she had started voice lessons, which she did in 1925, Lily Pons set speed records for progress. Two years after her first lesson, she sang on her first opera. She worked hard; observed Alberti di Gerostiaga, her teacher, “Mlle. Pons, she is the most hard-working pupil of my life.” It was only six years after that first lesson that Lily Pons made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera Company, in the title role of “Lucia di Lammermoor.”

She was an idol from her first performance on. At her debut she received sixteen encores and an ovation which has become customary when she sings. In Rio de Janeiro she needed police protection to avoid being crushed by the throngs that turned out to meet her. In Maryland they named a town after her — Lilypons, where the townsfolk raise water lilies as a principle business. She was deluged with fan mail, and a 1942 gave 20,000 letters to the wastepaper drive. “I am very much attached to my fahn letters,” she remarked, expressing the hope that the senders would approve her disposition of them.

Many of the fan letters concerned shoes. Miss Pons wears a size 1-1/2, and before rationing it was her custom to buy several pairs at a time. Not knowing anyone with a foot small enough to use the surplus, she had a considerable accumulation when the newspaper published a story about them. Then women with small feet began to write in, and she has had no trouble getting rid of shoes since.

Miss Pons' noteworthy contribution to the opera arises partly from her unusual range, which runs from middle C to high-G above high C. This has permitted the revival of several operas which had been dormant for want of anyone able to sing them — for example, “Linda di Chamonix,” “Le Coq d'Or,” and “The Daughter of the Regiment,” which was perhaps Miss Pons' most successful role, partly because of her rendition of “La Marseillaise” in the course of it.

Andre Kostelanetz, like his wife, started out as a pianist. He was Russian-born (in Leningrad in 1901) and made his debut as a professional pianist when he was eight. By the time he was twenty-one he was assistant conductor of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra. Later he came to the United States. As a pioneer radio conductor here he was responsible for many innovations, to which musicians are accustomed to refer as “the Kostelanetz touch.”

On the USO tours Mr. Kostellanetz takes no orchestra with him. He recruits an orchestra as he goes along, from the soldiers themselves, rehearses in such odd moments as they can spare from their military duties, and is ready to perform within one to five hours. He found good musicians in the Army, plus something that impresses him even more: “They produced good music,” he says, “and they like good music.” Most of the calls were for operatic numbers or classics, rather than for popular or semi-popular music.

With his humorous slant on most things, Kosty had many opportunities to chuckle in the course of his recent globe-trotting. One thing that amused him was when a young American officer remarked to him, “You're V. I. P., you know.”

“What's that?” asked Kosty.

“Very Important People,” translated the young officer.

But while Kosty was amused, that young officer was speaking for the soldiers, and he knew what he was talking about.