Remembering Joseph J. O’Donahue IV
Remembering Joseph J. O’Donahue IV
There once was a man named Joseph J. O’Donohue, IV. He was our friend. Alfredo and I spent many an evening or afternoon with him at his small but history-packed flat above San Francisco’s Castro District, sharing tales of his life, an occasional cigarette, a drink or two and dinners he prepared in his tiny kitchen with recipes from his halcyon days in New York and Germany. He charmed everyone he met, including Alfredo’s brother, Carlos, when he visited from Spain.
Kirk Frederick introduced us in the ‘80s, and from there sprung a friendship, and the inspiration for a play yet to be written. His memoirs (unpublished) he dictated to me years ago. However, it was “boring, Josie” as his friend Gore Vidal opined as Joe left out all the wicked parts of his queer, gay days as one of Manhattan’s handsomest and wealthiest swells in the Roaring ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. His friends included Greta Garbo, Clifton Webb, Josephine Baker, Kaiser Wilhelm, and a smattering of Vanderbilts, Astors, princes, paupers and friendly soldiers and sailors. He was a true San Francisco character.
When Alfredo and I visited his preferred hotel in his preferred city – the Hotel Adlon in Berlin – we raised a glass in his memory: a man who met and later denounced Hitler, attended the 1936 Olympics and kept in touch with Leni Riefenstahl. He liked bull shots for brunch, Dubonnet before dinner and eschewed garlic at all times. Dachshunds were his favorite dog, SS Bremen his favorite ship and Jicky from Guerlain his favorite scent “of which I reeked in balmier days, alas long since gone” as he once wrote.
By the time we met him, he had lost his great wealth, but never his wit. We miss him. On May 31, 2000 – 25 years ago today – he died suddenly of a heart attack. Today, we will light a candle, scented with Jicky, in his honor and maybe dig up his recipe for carrots Lily Elsie.
Once, hearing of an old friend who had pased with barely a paragraph in The Times, he said: “don’t let that happen to me.” To whit: Ray Delgado’s aide memoire from a quarter century back.