HELEN CLARKE
by Terry Monaghan

Helen Clarke

Helen Clarke died just one day short of her 87th birthday as she struggled with a number of aliments including a virtual total loss of vision due to cataracts. It was a long way from her glory days as a Savoy Ballroom hostess from 1930 until 1941 when all the women were directed into war work. After the war she returned to the Savoy where she worked in the coat check room until it finally closed in 1958. She kept in close contact with the many members of staff and musicians who worked there and felt the loss keenly as each member passed away especially that September in 1997 when three other surviving hostesses, one of whom lived only a few doors away on Edgecombe Avenue, died.

Helen set a great deal of store by her address as she clung, to the memories of 'Sugar Hill', the higher ground on the west side of Harlem, where the well to do lived back in the 1930's and 40's. She didn't have much time for what she described as the 'raggedy' Lindy Hoppers. Her Savoy was personified by the etiquette and opulence of the wealthy black middle class who surrounded her in those days. In fact her father had been an editor of the Newark Journal, which had impressed the manager of the Savoy, Charles Buchanan. He saw to it that the hostesses at the Savoy stood for exemplary virtue, or at least as close to it as he could get them and tried to ensure this by selecting hostesses only from the "right families". Dating customers was effectively prohibited although the management lost out when it came to the hostesses consorting with musicians. Many did and went on to marry them, but not Helen, she remained unattached until she left the Savoy. Buchanan's insistence on upholding the Savoy hostesses standards was not an easy task. There were many ballrooms where the dividing line between "dime a dance" girls and prostitution was vague to put it midly. In same cases the local males never took their female partners to these kind of "dance halls", but just hung out with these types of "hostesses". A vigorous battle was waged from day one at the Savoy to orientate their hostesses to out of town or overseas visitors who either wanted to learn how to dance or who for legitimate reasons were without a partners. As a result the whole tone of the Savoy was raised, and the hostesses became a friendly, almost motherly fraternity who younger people coulld turn to in times of difficulty. Helen recalled a very young and very poor Ella Fitzgerald for example who had been just brought into the Savoy to sing with the Chick Webb band, being costumed out by the hostesses with some of their old gowns.

The hostesses combined the roles of providing female partners largely for downtown visitors, tutoring the latest steps to even being something of an agony aunt. Helen danced professionally elsewhere but always returned to the Savoy as it was unique. For a while she was the practice partner for, the famous, and infamous as far as the chorus line girls were concerned, "Snake Hips" Tucker who came to the Savoy each Sunday afternoon to rehearse. The Savoy was an absolute must in the 1930's for Broadway and Hollywood stars as well as the social elite of Europe. She used to recall ruefully how on one occasion she disbelieved one "funny little man" who claimed to be Hoagie Carmichael when he insisted on spending an evening talking with her and on another occasion she turned down a customer who described himself as the current Lord Clifford and who then proceeded to give extremely valuable presents to the hostess, who was prepared to dance with him for the next three nights. Helen resolved never to judge another book by its cover again. Helen cherished all those memories and sustained contacts with many overseas visitors as well as the jazz stars at home who remembered her. She talked regularly with Benny Carter on the telephone and never stopped campaigning, for a marker to be positioned on the site where the Savoy originally stood between 140th and 141st Streets on Lenox Avenue.

Despite her growing infimities Helen rarely, if ever, turned down an opportunity to talk about the Savoy. References to here can be found in various articles and PhD Thesis and elsewhere on this site she is featured in the NYSDS commemoration of the Savoy. Just one year before she died she was a guest speaker at a Lincoln Center panel discussion on Harlem as a cultural center in the 1930's where as ever she insisted not only that the Savoy must not be forgotten but what a "wonderful and enjoyable place it was."