It’s funny how you believe something for so many years and
are devastated when the cold, cruel truth of the matter is finally revealed by happenstance,
and from the mouth of an artist’s own brother, no less.
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| Anthony Springer, "Manhattan Houses" 16x20" www.mutualart.com |
Everybody loved Anthony “Tony” Springer, a former lawyer who
earned a well-deserved reputation as the Painter of Greenwich Village until his
unexpected death in 1995 at the early age of 67. Tony was a wonderful, quietly mysterious kind
of guy, who played poker all night long, slept until the late morning, and then
grabbed his half-box French easel and 16x20 inch stretched linen canvas to go paint
the narrow side streets of the Village in the dusty afternoon light, a habit he
kept up for 20 years or more. His plein
air work also took him to the nearby streets of Soho and
Chinatown, and the markets of Chelsea and Tribeca. To conserve energy, he took a cab to work,
but he walked home after the painting was finished.
You couldn’t miss him.
He always wore a hat, the same dark gray sharkskin suit jacket, and, if
I remember correctly, always had a cigar or a cigarette in his mouth while
painting his moody, atmospheric paintings of the old, low-rise buildings and curbside
vehicles in the various out-of-the-way cul de sacs he preferred. His tonalist paintings were all very easy on
the eyes, and he made tons of them, selling quite a few through two gallery
connections and from his home studio.
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| Tony, left, and me, about 1983 at the Outdoor Exhibit |
Tony lived around the corner from one of the main streets closed
off for the venerable Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit in Greenwich
Village in the spring and fall.
He would just drag his paintings down to the sidewalk in front of his old
pre-war apartment building to get the spillover from the natives and tourists
who were looking to buy art. During
one of those outdoor art shows, Tony gave me the key to his one-bedroom apartment
so I could take a look at his studio. There was hardly any place to put your
feet down. He had no shelves for his
canvases, so he just stacked them one behind the other on the floor and on
seating throughout the apartment. It was
an incredible sight, even for this space-challenged painter. He ordered his
pre-stretched canvases, by the gross, it seemed, from a canvas preparer in Brooklyn
who was well-known to many New York
artists. A guy in the Bronx
now prepares those hand-primed linen and cotton canvases for local artists and
a few art stores in the region.
Tony was out painting in all kinds of weather, only taking a
break in cold December to enroll in Frank Mason’s class at The Art Students
League, where he first began to paint at the age of 40 and learned how to
create pictures with a strong atmospheric effect. He always put a cityscape in the League’s annual
Christmas show and sale that month.
While out painting, Tony was unflappable in dealings with those
inevitable and annoying sidewalk art superintendents, who say things like, “I
have a cousin who paints,” “I don’t see
it that way,” “What colors are you using,” “You should use more red.” My all-time favorite was directed at the back
of my friend Richard B., who was painting in Central Park
on a balmy summer day some years ago. He
said a couple was watching him for awhile, and when they turned to leave, he
heard the man say, “All the good painters are out of town for the summer.”
But Tony, a native New Yorker and seasoned poker play, took
it all in stride, meekly agreeing with all suggestions because he wanted to
paint, not argue. Painting those
cityscapes was his passion, although he did occasionally hire models
privately. He sometimes placed a
classified ad on the back page of the “Village Voice” newspaper, seeking models to
pose for him. An actress I know, who was
Tony’s girlfriend for awhile when she moved to New York from Hollywood, said
she posed nude for him once, but only because he agreed to her demand to let
her just lie on her stomach for the painting.
I only saw Tony flustered and out of sorts on one occasion. I was walking with a girl through Washington
Square Park
in the Village in the early evening, and there was Tony playing speed chess
with a loud-mouthed hustler at one of the chess tables. The hustler was winning, and from the look of
annoyance on Tony’s face, I could tell he wasn’t interested in a warm and fuzzy
greeting from yours truly. So we
sauntered away, leaving Tony to reflect alone on this particular error of his
ways.
Tony had one other skill that made all his friends proud
to know him. He was a songwriter. We learned that he had co-written the
Christmas classic “Santa Baby,” with his brother Philip, a Los Angeles-based
songwriter. It turns out there was a
third co-writer, Joan Javits, the niece of New York’s
Sen. Jacob K. Javits. Every Christmas
season for years I sat through endless repetitions of the top 100 Christmas
classics on WCBS-FM radio to hear Eartha Kitt sing her iconic version of that famous
song. I’d get all teary-eyed because I
personally knew the great guy who had written that song in 1953 when he was
still working as a lawyer.
When Tony died he left hundreds of his beautiful, moody gray
cityscapes to be dealt with by his mother and sister. His sister arranged to have Tony’s work shown
at the David Findlay
Jr. Fine Art
Gallery at 41
East 57th Street.
In a press release for the gallery’s third solo exhibition of Tony’s
work, which opened on Sept. 2, 1999, the gallery wrote, “A musician as well,
Springer wrote and published the song, ‘Santa Baby.’” So there it was.
Then last year, feeling a bit nostalgic around Christmas
time, as I always do, I looked on the Internet to refresh my feelings of pride and
joy for Tony’s Yuletide accomplishment.
But to my great surprise, I found instead that the “Tony Springer”
credited with co-writing “Santa Baby” was a “legal fiction” created to get the
song published. Tony had no part in
writing the song. His brother Philip explained it all in a fascinating “true confessions” interview
in 2008 with the digital sheet music supplier Musicnotes: http://blog.musicnotes.com/2008/11/26/interview-with-santa-baby-songwriter-philip-springer.
Philip said that he and Joan, who both worked for ASCAP
publishing, had checked into the song title with the publishers from a company
called Trinity Music, owned by BMI. At
the time, BMI and ASCAP were entrenched in a “war,” as Philip described it, so,
in order to get “Santa Baby” published and settle their differences, they had
to create a fictional BMI songwriter.
Tony, who was associated with BMI at the time, became that songwriter. I may be wrong, but I think Tony publicly
endorsed his fictional role over the years to aid his brother’s long and
difficult struggles over legal and other matters regarding the Christmas
classic.
I was astounded by this bizarre, convoluted revelation. All the added enjoyment I got from hearing Eartha
Kitt sing “Santa Baby” over the years was due to a “legal fiction.” Our good friend Tony was in on this from the
beginning to the end. Well, he was a
poker player, so I guess he knew how to play his hand, and nobody ever called
his bluff.
