Modern Living: Today, It's Politics

At a table in the downstairs lounge, George Gershwin toiled for 16 hours a day over An American in Paris. Promptly at 10 a.m. every Sunday, Hemingway rumbled in to sip his customary tank of whisky sours. The Dolly Sisters made it a port of call, and so did Bill Tilden, Knute Rockne, Jimmy Walker, Lou Gehrig, Vincent Sheean, Jack Dempsey, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. To casual travelers, and more importantly to American expatriates in the '20s and early '30s, Harry's New York Bar in Paris was a singular institution—a home away from home, a living shrine to U.S. booze, and the only place in Paris where a homesick American could buy a genuine hot dog.

On Thanksgiving Day last week, Harry's celebrated the 50th anniversary of its opening, and the sentiment flowed as freely as the booze. It seemed that oldtimers had come from all over the world to 5 Rue Daunou ("Just tell the taxi driver 'Sank Roo Doe Noo' ") to pay homage to the good old days.

Mad Moment. Harry himself, who was no American but a Scotsman named Harry MacElhone is no longer there; he died three years ago. Apart from that, and the TV set that was bought in "a moment of madness" and has never been turned on, Harry's is pretty much the same. In charge now is Harry's son Andrew, 38, who presides over the ancient photographs ("Best luck from Ernest Hemingway") and the swinging doors imported from a Third Avenue saloon.

Though the bar is located in an old, dark building on a narrow side street off the Place Vendome, Americans still seek it out as if Harry's were another tourist spot like the Louvre, and on U.S. election nights the proprietor installs a Teletype machine so that people can watch the results.

Very French. Big names still show up, too: Thornton Wilder, Gene Kelly, William Shirer, James Jones. Playwright Brendan Behan even turns up sober. But, a good part of the present clientele is French. Jean-Paul Sartre and his constant companion, Simone de Beauvoir, make Harry's their regular hangout. Françoise Sagan uses Harry's for her tristes, and so do a growing number of young French playwrights, film directors and actors.

Andy MacElhone admits that the tone of the place has changed: "The present generation is quieter. Americans in Paris are no longer homesick, and young people today are much more serious, even solemn. Perhaps it's the world situation. Today most of the American customers want to talk politics. Twenty years ago, it was the last thing they mentioned."

As if to prove his own point, Andy's anniversary speech, at a midnight cake-cutting upstairs, was delivered in French—for nearly all of the 500 celebrators who gathered round him were Frenchmen. Downstairs, in the room where Gershwin wrote, 30-odd Americans sat around drinking and talking politics.