When it comes to memorable St Patrick’s Day celebrations, there is one party that beats all others, hands down. And it didn’t even happen in Ireland. I first learned about it when I saw a photograph of actor Don Berry drinking champagne from the shoe of Texas oil heiress Ann Justice.
In the photo, he has a firm grip of her hand, presumably in case she is thinking about bolting with her other high heel. She is stoically watching him, maybe contemplating the logistics of putting the soggy shoe back on and slipping and sliding around in it for the remainder of the night.
The unorthodox champagne quaffing occurred at the opening of the Shamrock Hotel in Houston on St Patrick’s Day, 1949. The party began after the St Patrick’s Day parade and as the champagne flowed into glasses and other receptacles, matters rapidly descended into wild debauchery. Someone broke an arm, the mayor’s chair was stolen, and a live NBC radio broadcast had to be cut when someone cursed with gusto.
The Shamrock Hotel was the brainchild of Texas oilman Glenn McCarthy, who spent some $21 million on the 18-storey, 1,100-room building. Given the hotel’s name, and the oilman’s surname, you might think there is an Irish connection and indeed you would be correct. He was clearly a man who was very proud of his Irish ancestry and if it had been possible to make green water flow from the bathroom taps, he undoubtedly would have done it.
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Johnny Cash thought he had covered all eventualities when he sang about 40 shades of green but Glenn McCarthy managed to find 63 shades of green and he used them all in the decor. The hotel’s roof was covered in green tiles. The bellhops wore emerald green uniforms, and when you signed the guest register, the ink was, of course, green.
It goes without saying that the piano tinkling in the background was green, and if you wandered around the vast corridors, you would have stumbled upon function rooms such as the Emerald Room and the Shamrock Room. Putting the rock into shamrock, the nightclub was called the Cork Club.
It’s only 23 years since the Irish State got its first 50-metre pool, but 76 years ago the Shamrock Hotel boasted a 50 by 43 metre pool, complete with Kelly-green water. Billed as the world’s largest outdoor pool, it was so big it could host exhibition water-skiing events. It had a three-storey high diving platform and the hotel had its own synchronised swimming team – the Corkettes.
But back to the party, for which Glenn McCarthy had 2,500 shamrock plants flown in from Ireland. Some 2,000 people had tickets for the very grand opening but 3,000 turned up, while thousands more gathered outside to watch the celebrities arriving. The oil tycoon chartered planes and trains to bring stars such as Ginger Rogers, Errol Flynn, Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas to the opening.
According to Bryan Burrough, who wrote about Texas oil men in his book The Big Rich, it was the most star-studded party Houston had ever seen. The mayor, aggrieved at being left chair-less, described the party as “the worst mob scene I ever witnessed”.
Burrough quoted a Time magazine reporter who said the party “combined the most exciting features of a subway rush, Halloween in a madhouse and a circus fire.”
Much like a typical Irish hen party, so.
The exuberant party certainly got business off to a flying start. In the early days, a who’s who of celebrities and dignitaries paraded through its 5,000 square-foot lobby. The hotel hosted six US presidents, as well as Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Frank Sinatra performed there and ABC broadcast its radio programme Saturday at the Shamrock from the hotel.
Alas, if you are hoping to sample the Shamrock’s unique charms today, you will be disappointed. After Glenn McCarthy ran into money problems, the hotel was taken over by the Hilton group in the mid-1950s. The hotel chain threw in the towel (green, of course) in 1985 and donated the site to the Texas Medical Center.
Two years later it was levelled and, just like the Joni Mitchell song, they put up a parking lot. But without the pink hotel, boutique, and swinging hotspot. When word got out that the hotel was to be demolished, 3,000 people protested outside in a bid to stop it.
They included Glenn McCarthy, then almost 80 years old. He died a year after the hotel was demolished, but his St Patrick’s day party will be remembered for as long as Americans believe that corned beef is our national dish.
