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Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2001 23:10:56 -0400
From: "glen~lbany.net"
Subject: New York Times Obit of Larry Adler

Here's the New York Times' obituary of Larry Adler, from today's edition:

- -Glenn Weiser

August 8, 2001

Larry Adler, Political Exile Who Brought
the Harmonica to Concert Stage, Dies at 87

By RICHARD SEVERO

Larry Adler, a harmonica player of enormous sensitivity
whose
advocacy and artistry helped elevate the instrument to concert
status,
died yesterday at a London hospital. He was 87 and had lived
in Britain
since the early 1950's, when he was blacklisted for his
political views and his
career in America effectively ended.

In performances that spanned seven decades, Mr. Adler brought
dignity to
the harmonica, which was previously regarded as either a toy
or an
instrument for amateurs. He not only introduced the "mouth
organ," as he
called it, into the concert hall, but also persuaded important
composers,
among them Darius Milhaud, Ralph Vaughan Williams, William
Walton,
Malcolm Arnold and Joaqun Rodrigo, to create works
specifically for him.
On three occasions, he proved that the unadorned harmonica
could provide
an eloquent score for an entire motion picture.

Mr. Adler and his performing partner, the tap dancer Paul
Draper, were
denounced as Communist sympathizers in 1948. They sued for
libel but were
unable to win full vindication. Mr. Adler, a celebrated star
who had been
earning up to $200,000 a year, suddenly could not find
employment. He
departed for Britain, where he remained a star of the first
rank. He earned
household-name status there as much for his lively and
humorous public
personality as for his musicianship.

Although a self-described "left- minded kid," Mr. Adler
steadfastly denied he
had ever supported the Communist cause but refused to take a
loyalty oath
or mute his criticism of the House Un-American Activities
Committee.

"I can't understand Marx," he said in 1971. "Communist
literature, brochures
and stuff didn't mean anything to me." But he continued to
insist that imagined
or even real Communists should not be deprived of their
ability to earn a
living, since being a Communist was not against the law.

Lawrence Cecil Adler was born on Feb. 10, 1914, in Baltimore,
the eldest
of two sons born to Louis Adler, a peripatetic plumber
("Adler's Plumbing
Shop on Wheels" was the name of his business) and the former
Sadie Hack.
His parents were both born in Russia and were brought to the
United States
as infants.

He was fascinated by music from an early age, and sang in the
neighborhood
synagogue. His parents had an old piano and arranged for him
to take
lessons. He loved it. So much so, in fact, that he walked into
a music store in
downtown Baltimore and talked the proprietor into sending a
new $2,500
piano to his home. The modest piano on which he had started
was no longer
good enough.

When his father recoiled at the cost, the proprietor of the
music store, a man
named Levin, replied, "Could you afford 50 cents a week?" And
they
worked out a time-payment plan.

As a youngster, Larry Adler sold newspapers and magazines on
the streets
of Baltimore to earn enough money to purchase phonograph
records and
tickets to classical concerts. He enrolled in the Peabody
School of Music in
Baltimore for piano training, but stayed only a short time.
Instead of playing a
Grieg waltz, as the school had expected, he made a face and
pounded out,
"Yes, We Have No Bananas." He was expelled from Peabody, he
said, for
being "incorrigible, untalented and entirely lacking in ear."
(In 1985 he
returned to Peabody and received an honorary degree.)

The store owner who sold the Adlers the new piano also had
given the
young man a harmonica as a sort of commission. He taught
himself to play it.
Some of his friends did the same thing, practicing on
time-tested favorites
like "Home on the Range" and "St. Louis Blues." The young
Adler also
taught himself to play classical selections by ear.

One day he learned that The Baltimore Sun was sponsoring a
harmonica-playing contest and he immediately entered it. All
the other
contestants played tunes like "Turkey in the Straw"; Larry
Adler surprised
the judges with a patrician reading of Beethoven's "Minuet in
G" and won the
prize.

The harmonica, he said, "was just a means of getting the hell
away from
Baltimore." In 1928, at age 14, he said, he left home with $7
in his pocket
and headed for New York. He lived in cheap rooms and played
his
harmonica in the streets around Times Square, hoping a talent
agent would
discover him. He auditioned for Borrah Minevitch and His
Harmonica
Rascals, which was the biggest harmonica act in show business,
but was
rejected. Minevitch listened carefully, looked at young Adler,
and said, "Kid,
you stink."

Undeterred, Mr. Adler persuaded the bandleader Rudy Vallee to
listen to
him play. Vallee heard something that Minevitch hadn't heard
and invited him
to appear with him at a Manhattan club. That led to other
jobs; at one point,
Florenz Ziegfeld hired him for "Smiles," a musical revue.

For all his increasing success, Mr. Adler played by ear and
from memory
after listening to phonograph records; he couldn't even read
music until he
was in his late 20's and well into his career. He once said
that he agreed to
learn only at the behest of Milhaud, who explained that unless
he learned to
understand what all those little notes meant, he'd never be
able to perform
the music that was being written for him, music that he'd
never be able to
hear on a phonograph record or the radio.

In 1934, Mr. Adler landed a small role in a movie called "Many
Happy
Returns." That same year, he was booked at the Paramount in
New York,
where he was seen by C. B. Cochran, a British producer, and
hired to
appear in a London production called "Streamline." Audiences
liked him in
London, so much so that the British built an entire revue
around him called
"Tune Inn." Soon there was a tremendous increase in harmonica
sales and
there were Larry Adler fan clubs throughout Britain.

By the late 1930's, he realized, he was better known in
England than he was
in his own country. He returned to the United States and got
some jobs
playing with the pianist Eddie Duchin. The columnist Leonard
Lyons helped
him find some spots in New York nightclubs. He got a few more
movie
roles, and his credits included "The Singing Marine" (1937);
"The Big
Broadcast of 1937," in which he appeared with Jack Benny; "St.
Martin's
Lane" (1938); "Sidewalks of London" (1940); "Music for
Millions" (1945);
and "The Birds and the Bees" (1947).

He began his association with the dancer Paul Draper before
World War II,
appearing with him at Carnegie Hall and at City Center in New
York, and on
a tour of United States Army camps during World War II. During
the war he
also entertained the troops with Jack Benny and with Ingrid
Bergman, with
whom he had an affair.
Mr. Adler and Mr. Draper began to hear criticism of their
political views in
the late 1940's, particularly for their support of 19
Hollywood writers,
including Alvah Bessie, Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo,
who had been
summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In 1948, a club in Birmingham, Ala., announced that it was
"exceedingly
embarrassed" because Mr. Adler and Mr. Draper had appeared at
the club
immediately before speaking at a rally for Henry Wallace, who
was running
for president as the Progressive Party candidate. Mr. Adler
and Mr. Draper
issued a joint reply: "We have done our best as artists and do
not intend to
let anything stop us from doing our best as citizens." The
contretemps made
headlines, and inspired some angry editorials.

In December 1948, a Connecticut woman, Hester T. McCullough,
sought to
prevent Mr. Adler and Mr. Draper from appearing before the
Greenwich
Concert Association. In a letter to the group, published in
Greenwich Time, a
daily newspaper, Mrs. McCullough said the two men were
"pro-Communist
in sympathy" and "exponents of a line of thinking directly
opposed to every
democratic principle upon which our great country has been
founded."

As a result of her protest, their performance was canceled.
Mr. Adler and
Mr. Draper sued for libel, each asking $100,000 in damages.
The suit
became a cause célèbre, prompting Westbrook Pegler, the
columnist, to call
for contributions to help pay for Mrs. McCullough's defense.

The suit came to trial in Federal District Court in Hartford,
and ended in a
hung jury on May 27, 1950. The case was dismissed on Sept. 30,
1951.
The performers said they lacked the funds for more litigation.

By 1952, Mr. Adler had left the United States to live in
London with his wife
and family and remained there for the rest of his life,
performing regularly and
making recordings of classical and popular music.

After his first return engagement in 1959, Mr. Adler's visits
to his native land
grew more frequent. In 1975 he and Mr. Draper reunited for a
concert at
Carnegie Hall. Mr. Draper died at 86 in 1996.

Mr. Adler's marriage to Eileen Walser, an English model, ended
in divorce
as did his second marriage, to Sally Cline.

He is survived by a son, Peter, and two daughters, Carole and
Wendy, from
his first marriage; a daughter, Katelyn, from his second; two
granddaughters;
and two great-grandchildren.

During his years in Britain, Mr. Adler wrote articles for
American
newspapers and restaurant reviews and articles about food for
several British
publications. In the mid- 1960's, he wrote a book called
"Jokes and How to
Tell Them."

Despite his efforts to bring the harmonica to the concert
stage, Mr. Adler
said he thought the instrument would always be grounded in
cowboy songs
and blues. "I can play it for the next hundred years and it
won't change that,"
he said in 1984.

He said he wasn't bitter about his political experiences and
suggested more
than once that if he had to do it over again, he would have
chosen the same
course. "Resist the pressure to conform," he would tell young
people. "Better
be a lonely individualist than a contented conformist."