The Hat Check Vampires: 1943

[scotrace]

In the June 26, 1943 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, I found an article that was in keeping with much of the text of Hatless Jack.* The gist of the long article was that men could no longer afford to wear hats, as the hat check concession industry was bleeding them dry.
It's also an excellent lesson in the history of the hat check business, which was a $250,000,000 (annual) concern at the time. It speaks of the tricks of the trade, such as a girl palming several quarters, so that if a man gave her a dime tip, she could hide the dime, and drop a quarter on the counter so that the next chap would assume that a quarter was the going rate.
Hat check girls rarely, by 1943, got to keep their tips, and had to turn them in to the house. They were paid a salary. Good ones (intimidating, tough, attractive girls) were well paid. Most were said to be honest, but quite a few were "knocking down," even though bosses were careful about trying to prevent it. Still, the biggest expense of the business, after paying the entry fee, was stealing.

Hat check concessions were at the top of the concession food chain. The owner of the hat check stand would also own the photograph, cigarette girl, and novelty/flowers concessions in a given club or hotel. A trainee started out with a basket of flowers, and went around to the tables browbeating gentlemen to buy their lady a corsage. The women, by all reports, hated this work. They worked their way up to the hat check stand.

A concessionaire would bid for the hat check and associated gigs when a new club or hotel opened, estimating the possible 'take' based on experience and what the club could offer. They would have to pony up anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000 (in depression-era money) to get the right to pinch customers for their nickels, dimes and quarters. It becomes apparent why the girls were so aggressive. And it's still amazing that they were able to make money - very good money - in a trade based on coin tips. Then again, 25c would buy you a movie, burger and malt in the thirties.

The article begins with the story of the man who owned the world's most expensive hat: A $3.75 fedora purchased in 1938. The owner, one Hy Gardner, was a newsman, and he kept careful count of all hat check tips for five months, during which time he had racked up an expenditure of $138.25. He concluded that he was "too poor to afford the luxury of wearing a hat," and gave it away (To Ripley's, who exhibited it as The World's Most Expensive Hat - which no doubt further impacted declining hat sales among those who saw it). You also have to remember that somewhere along the line, a hat would need a clean and reblock, another hat-owning expense.

Part of the reason men stopped wearing hats was, without doubt, because the hat check biz forced them to stop. The industry milked the Golden Calf dry - and put themselves in the buggy whip business in a few years.

The article's title is "How to Check a Hat," and the advice given, without overtly saying so, was to simply stop tipping altogether, as there was no law requiring it, and the pretty girl handing you your hat wasn't going to get your coin anyway!

*Has anyone here ever contacted the author about the Lounge? We sure shill his book enough!

 

[Viper Man]

Wow. What a cool article, Scotrace. Plus, I learned two new Scrabble words:
mickle and muckle! Those pesky K's can be difficult to use sometimes!

 

[Feraud]

Scotrace, is there any way to get a better scan of the article?
I would love to read the full piece.

 

[Rick Blaine]

Thanks for posting.

Absolutely fascinating.
As I recall in Hatless Jack the bottom line was that these concessions were pretty much controlled by the Rackets (i.e. Gangsters) by the end and that it was an ancillary to their larger businesses of narcotics, prostitution and gambling. From what I read a reasonable conversion rate from the 30s to modern value is somewhere on the order of 10:1 - 20:1, depending on the index used. So yeah, a $1400 hat check bill is getting up there. An under appreciated contributing factor to the death of hat wearing, another piece of the puzzle revealed. Good work!

 

[Tango Yankee]

Just a touch of irony

There have been threads bemoaning the absence of the hat check girl, along with the lack of safe places to put our hats and coats when out for the evening. Most places don't even have coat hooks anywhere--they expect you to wad up your coat or jacket and put them on the booth seat next to you (if there's room) or put them on the back of your chair.

So I find it a bit ironic that one aspect of the past we miss and many of us would like to see return, the hat check girl, turns out to be a contributing factor in the decline of hat wearing.

Regards,
Tom

 

[feltfan]

I think it's reasonable to assume that places
with hat checks were higher end places. When
I go to higher end restaurants today, there is a
coat check. When I retrieve my coat I invariably
pass over a dollar or more. This will not discourage
me or the general populace from wearing
a coat to such places and the dollar is a small
fraction of the overall bill for such a dining
experience.

One danger in reading historical documents is that
it is harder, from a distance, to figure out what axe
the author is grinding.

 

[Edward]

I think it's reasonable to assume that places
with hat checks were higher end places. When
I go to higher end restaurants today, there is a
coat check. When I retrieve my coat I invariably
pass over a dollar or more. This will not discourage
me or the general populace from wearing
a coat to such places and the dollar is a small
fraction of the overall bill for such a dining
experience.

Agreed..... though there probably are many who would eschew a coat - the number of women I see heading to/ coming out of nightclubs nowadays in next to nothing in the bitterest cold is shocking.... from anecdotal evidence, a lot of them don't want to be bothered with a cloakroom. Not so much the cost as the hassle of queuing, I hear....

Don't mind paying a quid myself to leave my coat somewhere safe and out of my way for the night, though it sticks in the craw a bit as a hat wearer that most places now charge on a per item basis, a hat qualifying as a second item.

 

[ScionPI2005]

Very cool read, thanks for sharing Scotrace! It's so odd to think that at one time, a man could expect to pay tips in checking his hat every time he went out somewhere. And I never knew the hat check business was so lucrative or even questionably racketeering. Heck, it would appear that some hat check girls probably got tipped more than most hair cutters and stylist are today.

 

[Woodfluter]

Great read - thanks! Not sure this killed hat wearing, but might have contributed a little.

Yes, it is annoying that most restaurants, even quite good ones, don't provide any decent place to hang a coat, much less a hat. I can do without the checking surcharge, thank you, but just hooks on the wall (as at Maggiano's here in Atlanta) would be very nice. Unfortunately, those hooks are too small to accomodate a hat. So you have the usual juggling act, finding a vacant seat and hoping the waiter doesn't spill something into the crown. Maybe if more wore hats, they'd respond?

- Bill

 

[Feraud]

Maybe if more wore hats, they'd respond?

They would probably respond with high priced hat checks.

 

[AlanC]

We went with my parents to eat at a local Olive Garden recently. I hadn't eaten at one in years, but Mom likes it so off we went. We were put at table in its own small side room and there were four (!) hat racks, one in each corner. I was shocked. My VS Tropic-Aire was safely away from any stray marinara.

 

[indycop]

We went with my parents to eat at a local Olive Garden recently. I hadn't eaten at one in years, but Mom likes it so off we went. We were put at table in its own small side room and there were four (!) hat racks, one in each corner. I was shocked. My VS Tropic-Aire was safely away from any stray marinara.

I would be staring at it the whole time waiting to see if someone tried to walk off with it!:eusa_doh:

 

[dhermann1]

You could also look at this way: Is the hat check a cost of hat ownership, or a cost of going out for dining and dancing? If you don't go to fancy clubs, you don't pay the hat check fee. Just a different way to look at it.

 

[Stan]

Hi,

I was in a place recently, with coat and hat, and the place has coat and hat hooks on *half* of their booths.

Why only half, I don't know.

Anyway, the hostess takes us to one of the hookless booths and I ask to be moved to one that has the posts and hooks. She did not understand why one of those booths was preferable to the one we were already at.

I explained that I'd like to make use of the coat and hat hooks at the other booth. She did not know what I was referring to!

She took us over anyway, which was good, and then looked on in wonder as I actually used both the coat and hat hooks.

She'd never noticed them before, and she said she'd been working there over a year.

I looked around and noticed myself that several other booths were occupied with folks that had worn coats, but I was the only one actually using a hook!

I was also the only one that had a hat, but that's not so unusual.

Odd. Very, very odd.

Later!

Stan

 

[AlanC]

I would be staring at it the whole time waiting to see if someone tried to walk off with it!:eusa_doh:

I made sure it stayed put.

 

[ScionPI2005]

We went with my parents to eat at a local Olive Garden recently. I hadn't eaten at one in years, but Mom likes it so off we went. We were put at table in its own small side room and there were four (!) hat racks, one in each corner. I was shocked. My VS Tropic-Aire was safely away from any stray marinara.

That's interesting. I ate at an Olive Garden within the past month with a large group. We ended up having every chair at our table filled, and with no place to leave my panama where I felt comfortable, it ended up staying on my head throughout the meal.

 

[jimmy the lid]

Thanks for posting this, Scot. Very interesting, indeed. I'm not sure I completely buy the premise that the hat check girl had a substantial role in the demise of the hat -- but it's an interesting take. In 1942, a Stetson Stratoliner cost $7.50. So, if you tipped a dime every time you checked the hat, you would pay for the cost of a new hat after 75 outings. I guess you'd need to know how often a typical gent went to a restaurant where he'd need to check his lid to know how much the hat check cost him on a yearly basis, and whether that figured heavily in his decision whether or not to wear a hat.

Shifting gears, even when I go to a restaurant that has coat checking, it would never occur to me in a million years to actually check my hat. I just don't trust that the coat check person knows how to handle a lid -- not to mention how it might be crammed onto a shelf or treated in a neglectful way. Of course, this may have a lot to do with the fact that we treat our hats as incredible and unique commodities (at least I do), rather than as everyday, run of the mill aspects of our attire. I will frequently simply leave my lid on the passenger seat of the car, rather than bring it into a restaurant where I have to worry about where I'm going to safely stow it. So much for the grand entrance...

Cheers,
JtL

 

[ScionPI2005]

Shifting gears, even when I go to a restaurant that has coat checking, it would never occur to me in a million years to actually check my hat. I just don't trust that the hat check person knows how to handle a lid -- not to mention how it might be crammed onto a shelf or treated in a neglectful way. Of course, this may have a lot to do with the fact that we treat our hats as incredible and unique commodities (at least I do), rather than as everyday, run of the mill aspects of our attire.

We treat our hats better than children! lol

 

[Beowulf67]

We need to get people wearing hats again and then get control of the hat check concessions.

I can see where it would have gotten expensive back when you checked your hat almost anywhere you went. And when a dime or quarter could buy a meal, that was an expensive tip.

 

[cookie]

We need to get people wearing hats again and then get control of the hat check concessions.

Yes indeed we should but for an important cause , of course , such as the Lounger Retirement on the Cote d'Azur Benevolent Fund or some other equally worthy foundation.....