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Samuel Fuchs 1903 - 1969

Samuel Fuchs of Hollis, Queens County, NY was born on October 13, 1903 at Bowery in New York, New York County, and died at age 65 years old on April 5, 1969 at Jamaica Estates in Queens County.

Samuel Fuchs
Sammy
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Hollis, Queens County, NY 11423
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October 13, 1903
Bowery in New York, New York County, New York, United States
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April 5, 1969
Jamaica Estates in Queens County, New York, United States
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Biography ID: 192867555 What's this
Samuel Fuchs Samuel Fuchs (1903 - 1969)
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Samuel Fuchs' History: 1903 - 1969

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  • Introduction

    Sammy's Bowery Follies, the nationally known Gay Nineties saloon where drunks and swells, drifters and celebrities, the rich and the forgotten have mingled for 36 years in rowdy laughter and melancholy song, closed its doors for the last time at 3 A.M. yesterday. The establishment at 267 Bowery, between Houston and Stanton Streets, was sold to the city last week and closed to make way for a sprawling Cooper Square urban renewal project. Its once booming business —it catered to 100,000 pa trons a year during World War II and the postwar years —had fallen off sharply in the last few years under the pressures of inflation and television. Its failure was also hastened by the death last year of its founder, owner and star personality, Sammy Fuchs. Spirited Melting Pot Sandwiched among flop houses, missions, bars and liquor stores along New York's avenue of institutional alcoholism, the Follies had become over the years a sym bol of the city's melting pot, a place where the prosperous and the impoverished could drink elbow‐to‐elbow and sing along with aging, pas sionately prunefaced vaude ville entertainers. For many who had known the noisy, smoky, beautifully beerish saloon, with its creaky wooden floors and drearily muraled walls, the closing was the end of an era. The disappearance of the Follies, however, is viewed by the city as only the begin ning of the end of an era on the Bowery. Eventually, six large parcels of land along the east side of the Bowery between Stanton and East Fifth Streets will be com pletely revitalized, if the Cooper Square Development Plan is followed. Bleak storefronts, where derelicts sag and sleep in doorways, crumbling tene ments and ancient office buildings will eventually be supplanted by more than 1,000 apartments for low‐and middle‐income families. The project, whose ultimate cost has not been cal culated, is designed not only to provide housing, but to restore a measure of dignity to an area that over the decades has become the motif of alcoholic degradation and futility in the city. It was that motif that provided the “atmosphere” for Sammy's Bowery Follies, and many loved it. For the 25 employes of the Follies—waiters, cooks, bar tenders, musicians and singers, many of whom had worked there for 10 to 20 years — the closing meant looking for other jobs or, in a few cases, retirement. But the 700 patrons who arrived for a last fling at the Follies on Saturday night and early yesterday morning turned what might have been a wake into a rousing fare well party for the establish ment, its entertainers and its owner, Mrs. Bessie Fuchs, who has run the place since her husband's death on April 3, 1969. Songs and Sympathy There were tourists who arrived in buses, uptowners who came in Cadillacs, old timers off the street and old friends of the management. They sang old favorites, swapped sentimental stories, offered condolences and ex amined the fixtures, antique lamps, furnishings and framed memorabilia on the dark stained walls. Everything removable in the place will be sold at auc tion next Wednesday at noon, according to Mo Drucker, manager of the Follies for the last 25 years. Mrs. Bessie Fuchs, a short, dark haired woman in a white, sleeveless dress, wandered among the crowded tables early yesterday morning, look ing tired but exchanging warm greetings. “Sammy always did all the talking,” she said. “I was just his wife. He mingled with the biggest and the lowest, and they all loved him. The place just hasn't been the same without him.” Vaudeville Beats Jukebox The Follies was always a family business. Founded in 1934, the year after Prohibi tion ended, it was at first “just a saloon with a juke box,” Mrs. Fuchs said. Sammy Fuchs soon began hiring former vaudevillians, how ever, and the Gay Nineties atmosphere sent the fortunes of the Follies skyrocketing. “We used to pack them in from wall to wall,” Mrs. Fuchs said. The patrons in cluded scores of politicians and entertainment celebrities —all the Mayors of New York, President John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Durante, Lillian Roth, Carol Channing, Chris tine Jorgensen, Monique Van Vooren. Their pictures, taken with arms wrapped around Sammy, began lining the walls up to the 15‐foot ceiling. Also tacked up on the walls were a score of plaques honoring Sammy Fuchs, “the Mayor of the Bowery,” for a variety of deeds: He estab lished a free dental clinic for Lower East Side children; set up a “Bum of the Month” program in which he sobered up, reclothed and found em ployment for derelicts; and, in apparently hopeless cases, served as a financial go between for derelicts and their shamed (and often wealthy) families. Though Sammy did not encourage the drinking patron age of derelicts; he fed them regularly. His daughter, Mrs. Arlene Katz, told yesterday how, the day before one of his annual Thanksgiving din ners for derelicts, a truck carrying crates of live turkeys crashed into a lamppost out side, and the crates broke open. The derelicts, seeing their dinner running off, moved briskly and, in a rare display of concerted action, recap tured the birds. Lucille, Goldye and Julie As always, early yester day, the star attractions were the aging vaudeville singers —full‐bosomed, starkly made up grandmothers in floor length gowns and wide brimmed picture hats, glit tering with beads and span gles and impossibly golden hair. Their names might have been known years ago at the Palace Theatre and the Metropole, in the Earl Carroll Vanities or the Georgie White Scandals. But on the Follies’ stage, the announcement of their names—Lucille Donor, Goldye Shaw, Julie Christina —was lost in trie clamor of applause and raucous demand. It made no difference. They sang, louder and harder than Ethel Mennen, such old favorites as “Melancholy Baby,” “Rosie O'Grady,” “My Gal Sal,” “In the Good Old Summertime,” and “There's No Business Like, Show Busi ness.” Some in the crowd, not content with singing along and clapping, mounted the stage at various times to join the singers. Bartender and Bouncer In the audience was Henry Davis, the original Follies bartender, who claimed to have perfected the “art of bouncing” nasty customers. “No rough stuff, just talk—that's the key,” he said. There were others: Suzanne La Chic,” “Mack the Bum Off Broadway,” characters all. When it was over, Goldye Shaw said: “I don't know what I'm going to do now. I'm too sad to think, too sad to care.” But Jeanne Jordan, a bar tender at the Follies for 18 years, said she had arranged an interview this week for a job as a bartender at Mc Sorley's, the alehouse whose century‐old men‐only policy was recently overturned by a court order and, a city law. “It's the end of one era and the beginning of another,” she said.FUCHS, SAMUEL was born 13 October 1903, received Social Security number 096-12-2645 (indicating New York) and, Death Master File says, died April 5, 1969. Source: Death Master File (public domain). Check Archives.com for SAMUEL FUCHS. ($)
  • 10/13
    1903

    Birthday

    October 13, 1903
    Birthdate
    Bowery in New York, New York County, New York United States
    Birthplace
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  • Ethnicity & Family History

    Jewish.

  • Religious Beliefs

    Jewish.

  • Professional Career

    Sammy's Bowery Follies, the nationally known Gay Nineties saloon where drunks and swells, drifters and celebrities, the rich and the forgotten have mingled for 36 years in rowdy laughter and melancholy song, closed its doors for the last time at 3 A.M. yesterday. The establishment at 267 Bowery, between Houston and Stanton Streets, was sold to the city last week and closed to make way for a sprawling Cooper Square urban renewal project. Its once booming business —it catered to 100,000 pa trons a year during World War II and the postwar years —had fallen off sharply in the last few years under the pressures of inflation and television. Its failure was also hastened by the death last year of its founder, owner and star personality, Sammy Fuchs. Spirited Melting Pot Sandwiched among flop houses, missions, bars and liquor stores along New York's avenue of institutional alcoholism, the Follies had become over the years a sym bol of the city's melting pot, a place where the prosperous and the impoverished could drink elbow‐to‐elbow and sing along with aging, pas sionately prunefaced vaude ville entertainers. For many who had known the noisy, smoky, beautifully beerish saloon, with its creaky wooden floors and drearily muraled walls, the closing was the end of an era. The disappearance of the Follies, however, is viewed by the city as only the begin ning of the end of an era on the Bowery. Eventually, six large parcels of land along the east side of the Bowery between Stanton and East Fifth Streets will be com pletely revitalized, if the Cooper Square Development Plan is followed. Bleak storefronts, where derelicts sag and sleep in doorways, crumbling tene ments and ancient office buildings will eventually be supplanted by more than 1,000 apartments for low‐and middle‐income families. The project, whose ulti mate cost has not been cal culated, is designed not only to provide housing, but to restore a measure of dignity to an area that over the decades has become the motif of alcoholic degradation and futility in the city. It was that motif that provided the “atmosphere” for Sammy's Bowery Follies, and many loved it. For the 25 employes of the Follies—waiters, cooks, bar tenders, musicians and singers, many of whom had worked there for 10 to 20 years — the closing meant looking for other jobs or, in a few cases, retirement. But the 700 patrons who arrived for a last fling at the Follies on Saturday night and early yesterday morning turned what might have been a wake into a rousing fare well party for the establish ment, its entertainers and its owner, Mrs. Bessie Fuchs, who has run the place since her husband's death on April 3, 1969. Songs and Sympathy There were tourists who arrived in buses, uptowners who came in Cadillacs, old timers off the street and old friends of the management. They sang old favorites, swapped sentimental stories, offered condolences and ex amined the fixtures, antique lamps, furnishings and framed memorabilia on the dark stained walls. Everything removable in the place will be sold at auc tion next Wednesday at noon, according to Mo Drucker, manager of the Follies for the last 25 years. Bessie Fuchs, a short, dark haired woman in a white, sleeveless dress, wandered among the crowded tables early yesterday morning, look ing tired but exchanging warm greetings. “Sammy always did all the talking,” she said. “I was just his wife. He mingled with the biggest and the lowest, and they all loved him. The place just hasn't been the same without him.” Vaudeville Beats Jukebox The Follies was always a family business. Founded in 1934, the year after Prohibi tion ended, it was at first “just a saloon with a juke box,” Mrs. Fuchs said. Sam my Fuchs soon began hiring former vaudevillians, how ever, and the Gay Nineties atmosphere sent the fortunes of the Follies skyrocketing. “We used to pack them in from wall to wall,” Mrs. Fuchs said. The patrons in cluded scores of politicians and entertainment celebrities —all the Mayors of New York, President John F. Ken nedy, Jimmy Durante, Lillian Roth, Carol Channing, Chris tine Jorgensen, Monique Van Vooren. Their pictures, taken with arms wrapped around Sammy, began lining the walls up to the 15‐foot ceiling. Also tacked up on the walls were a score of plaques honoring Sammy Fuchs, “the Mayor of the Bowery,” for a variety of deeds: He estab lished a free dental clinic for Lower East Side children; set up a “Bum of the Month” program in which he sobered up, reclothed and found em ployment for derelicts; and, in apparently hopeless cases, served as a financial go between for derelicts and their shamed (and often wealthy) families. Though Sammy did not en courage the drinking patron age of derelicts; he fed them regularly. His daughter, Mrs. Arlene Katz, told yesterday how, the day before one of his annual Thanksgiving din ners for derelicts, a truck carrying crates of live turkeys crashed into a lamppost out side, and the crates broke open. The derelicts, seeing their dinner running off, moved briskly and, in a rare display of concerted action, recap tured the birds. Lucille, Goldye and Julie As always, early yester day, the star attractions were the aging vaudeville singers —full‐bosomed, starkly made up grandmothers in floor length gowns and wide brimmed picture hats, glit tering with beads and span gles and impossibly golden hair. Their names might have been known years ago at the Palace Theatre and the Metropole, in the Earl Carroll Vanities or the Georgie White Scandals. But on the Follies’ stage, the announcement of their names—Lucille Donor, Goldye Shaw, Julie Christina —was lost in trie clamor of applause and raucous demand. It made no difference. They sang, louder and harder than Ethel Mennen, such old favorites as “Melancholy Baby,” “Rosie O'Grady,” “My Gal Sal,” “In the Good Old Summertime,” and “There's No Business Like, Show Busi ness.” Some in the crowd, not content with singing along and clapping, mounted the stage at various times to join the singers. Bartender and Bouncer In the audience was Henry Davis, the original Follies bartender, who claimed to have perfected the “art of bouncing” nasty customers. “No rough stuff, just talk—that's the key,” he said. There were others: Suzanne La Chic,” “Mack the Bum Off Broadway,” characters all. When it was over, Goldye Shaw said: “I don't know what I'm going to do now. I'm too sad to think, too sad to care.” But Jeanne Jordan, a bar tender at the Follies for 18 years, said she had arranged an interview this week for a job as a bartender at Mc Sorley's, the alehouse whose century‐old men‐only policy was recently overturned by a court order and, a city law. “It's the end of one era and the beginning of another,” she said.

  • Personal Life & Family

    sammys-bowery-follies Today is the birthday of Sammy Fuchs . He was born in the New York City neighborhood known as the Bowery, Oct. 13, 1903 , although at least one source gives 1903 as his birth year. “He was a busboy, waiter, and a restaurant manager before he opened up his famous saloon at 267 Bowery in 1934” known as “Sammy’s Bowery Follies.” Open until 1970, eight years before I moved to New York City, it sounds like it was an amazing place. This account of Sammy Fuchs is from “The Bowery: A History of Grit, Graft and Grandeur,” by Eric Ferrara: In their December 4, 1944 issue, Life magazine featured the bar and wrote the following: “From 8 in the morning until 4 the next morning Sammy’s is an alcoholic haven for the derelicts whose presence has made the Bowery a universal symbol of poverty and futility. It is also a popular stopping point for prosperous people from uptown who like to see how the other half staggers” There were lots of photographers who visited the bar, and as a result lots of pictures exist from its heyday, and many are online. See, for example, Sammy’s Stork Club of the Bowery New York: ‘An Alcoholic Haven’ of Prospering Poverty, Sammy’s Bowery Follies c. 1945 from Mashable, or The Chiseler. This account is by photographer Arthur “Weegee” Fellig in his book “Naked City,” published in 2002, but describing the Bowery in the 1940s: Comments Charlie Katz says June 9, 2018 at 10:30 am Sammy Fuchs, my grandfather, was born Oct. 13, 1903 on the lower east side. Thank you for remembering him.
  • 04/5
    1969

    Death

    April 5, 1969
    Death date
    Unknown
    Cause of death
    Jamaica Estates in Queens County, New York United States
    Death location
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  • Obituary

    1903-1969. Sammy Fuchs, my grandfather, was born Oct. 13, 1903 on the lower east side. Thank You, Charliue Katz.
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8 Memories, Stories & Photos about Samuel

Everybody's favorite dive bar,
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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07/18/2022
Everybody's favorite dive bar,
Packed with celebrities. A great place to go slumming and not be embarrassed. Presidents and Stars dropped in.
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Singing Waiters
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Singing Waiters
Singing Customers.
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Sammy Fuchs of Sammy's Bowery Follies
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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Sammy Fuchs of Sammy's Bowery Follies
A Legend on the Bowery.
Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.
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A Sammy's Bowery Follies Sing Along.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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A Sammy's Bowery Follies Sing Along.
Everybody loves a sing-along in New York.
Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.
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Sammy Fuchs of Sammy's Bowery Follies.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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Sammy Fuchs of Sammy's Bowery Follies.
Sammy Fuchs who fed the Bowery Bums turkeys on Thanksgiving.

It wasn't just another bar. It was a great experience.
Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.
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Sammy's Bowery Follies.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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Sammy's Bowery Follies.
I love a fun bar with lots of singing. Ironically, I have been a life-long teetotaler. Never had anything stronger than a beer or a glass of wine or a virgin Marguerita.
Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.
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Bessie and Sammy Fuchs behind the bar.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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Bessie and Sammy Fuchs behind the bar.
They did a thousand favors but I am the only one who gave them this tribute.
One night from my tiny hall bedroom window I saw a guy across the street dancing below the street light.
You couldn't miss this Englishman because he wear a straw hat from the 1890's. I stopped him on the street one day and he told me he was a singer at Sammy;s Bowery Follies. I said I would like to see him there.
mentioned the Sammmy's Bowery Follies and my mother brought the whole family there. The Englishman was thrilled and sang for us and got a standing ovation from us and other patrons. From that night on he loved me!

They had bouncers too - with words.
Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.
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Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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07/18/2022
Singing under a street light.
I saw a man singing under a street light across the street from my hall bedroom in 1958. He wore a 1980's white straw hat "Boater" with a red ribbon and was in a vested suit costume. I knew I had to meet him. One afternoon I asked him where he was performing and the old Englishman said he was a singer at Sammy's Bowery Follies in New York. I told him I would be seeing him there. My mother was really excited and took the whole family. Of course my new friend was delighted and he sang for us and we gave him a standing ovation and other patrons did too.. We made him gloriously happy.
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Samuel Fuchs' Family Tree & Friends

Samuel Fuchs' Family Tree

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Samuel Fuchs Oct 13, 1903 - Apr 5, 1969
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Other Biographies

Other Fuchs Family Biographies

Fuchs, Betty (Mar 26, 1935 - Sep 2, 1995) Fuchs, Edith (Jul 27, 1937 - Dec 27, 1980) Fuchs, Job (Jan 16, 1917 - Mar 30, 2006) Fuchs, Anna (May 26, 1926 - Oct 17, 2009) Fuchs, Anthony (Jun 12, 1888 - Dec 1974) Fuchs, Jacob (Oct 7, 1894 - Aug 1976) Fuchs, Edna (Dec 14, 1906 - Dec 31, 2002) Fuchs, Carl (Jan 14, 1930 - Oct 23, 2004) Fuchs, Adolf (May 18, 1929 - Mar 10, 2009) Fuchs, Laura (Apr 14, 1897 - Feb 1987)
Fuchs, Rene (Jul 19, 1906 - Jun 1989) Fuchs, Inez (Apr 29, 1903 - Mar 1986) Fuchs, Carol (Oct 7, 1944 - Jun 1, 2006) Fuchs, Samuel (May 23, 1903 - Mar 15, 1996) Fuchs, William (May 24, 1921 - Jun 1979) Fuchs, Theresa (Jun 17, 1906 - Mar 22, 1992) Fuchs, Renee (Jun 7, 1899 - Feb 25, 1992) Fuchs, Martina (Mar 21, 1915 - Mar 1, 1997) Fuchs, Francis (Mar 19, 1896 - Apr 1970) Fuchs, Herman (Jul 11, 1909 - Feb 1980)
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