ON BROADWAY, MEN STILL WHERE HATS:

Most cultural historians have the American male hat wearer suffering a swift death in the early 60s. The blame is popularly put on President John F. Kennedy, the first Commander-in-Chief not to sport haberdashery as a matter of course.

On the Broadway stage, however, the hat is eternal. The guys in "Guys and Dolls" must have their snap brim fedoras. The gentleman at the Ascot Races in My Fair Lady are undressed without their silk top hats. Dainty June's Newsboys in "Gypsy" need tweed caps to complete their look. Quite, any play or musical that was written before, or takes place prior to, 1960 requires a wide array of headgear.

Broadway costume designers frequently hire a milliner to build a hat from scratch (this is often the case for specialized women's hats), but doing so for every pate in the chorus would prove prohibitively expensive. To fill the needs of a large male cast, outfitters often walk a few blocks down Eighth Avenue , just beyond the Broadway district, to an unassuming storefront which proclaims itself to be "Knox Hats." This is, in fact, Arnold Hatters, Inc., a presence on Eighth between 40th and 41st streets since, ironically, Kennedy's election, just as the hat trade began its long swan dive. It is here that many of the lids seen on the Rialto are purchased.

"Because of the huge variety we have, we do a great theatrical business," said Mark Rubin , who, along with his father Arnold, owns and runs the store. "We'd probably be out of business if it weren't for that trade."

Mark Rubin estimated that the theater provides ten to twenty percent of his business. "Most shows are set in an older time. So if you're doing '60s, you need small brimmed fedoras. If you're doing turn of the century, you need top hats and straw boaters. We love anytime there's a high school production of `Guys and Dolls.' Everybody in `Guys and Dolls' has got a hat on." The quietly composed Mark, who fits the description of "regular guy," paused in his easy patter, then stated the obvious: "We like the Broadway costumers."

Mark's impression of theater people is contrary to the established stereotype. He finds them easygoing, and a pleasure with which to do business. "They're the nicest people. Kind, genuine, patient. They really give you a chance. And if you give them what they want, they come back." Typically, the relationship between the Rubins and Broadway is personal and face-to-face. The designers or their assistants come in with the measurements of the actors in the show and voice their needs. "John Smith has a 23 inch head," said Mark as a for-instance. "He'll be in three scenes. In one of them, he'll be in a brown suit. We'd like a fedora. In another he's in a seersucker suit. We'd like a straw boater. Another one he's in a tuxedo. We need a satin collapsible top hat."

"They are wonderful people," said designer Martin Pakledinaz, who has worked often with the Rubins, "and they understand how difficult it can be for us. We may need to take out several hats and end up only buying one."

Certain hats are only kept in stock against the chance that some showman will suddenly produce "No, No, Nanette" or "The Boyfriend." "There are at least three or four styles that I wouldn't even carry if I didn't have such a theatrical trade," asserted Mark. "Straw boaters. Occasionally I'll sell one to a barbershop quarter or someone involved in a political campaign, but it's almost always used for shows set in the early 20th century." Rubin imports his straw hats from Italy . There, they're used for an equally artificial purpose, as the de rigueur accessory of Venetians gondoliers.

Top hats are another specialty item, all but completely divorced from everyday life (unless you are, say, a hansom cab driver). "I sell collapsible satin top hats for $260. There's only one manufacturer in the U.S. that still makes them: Top Hats of America. Nobody else on this side of the Atlantic Ocean makes them. He knows he's the only one. That's why I have to charge $260. To sell one or two is useless. We try to carry a few pieces of every size because at any given time a show may walk in and want a dozen of them. I don't want to make them wait for them. I love to sell twelve $260 hats for a show. It's a pleasure."

Arnold and Mark Rubin see their merchandise on stage all the time. "We don't think there's a single show on Broadway that doesn't have at least one of our hats in it," he contended. (Not that he sees them all. Mark is not a great fan of musicals, the shows that require hats most regularly. "I don't mind dramas, but I just can't sit through a musical. I get bored quickly.")

Probably the most famous Arnold Hatters item ever worn on Broadway is the black fedora donned by Nathan Lane when he played Max Bialystock in "The Producers." This was the topper which, Bialystock grandiloquently told his milquetoast partner Leo Bloom, a man couldn't honestly wear until he had produced a real and true Broadway show.

"The Eleganza," said Rubin, naming the model. "It's a silk finish fedora. The hair is left a little longer than on a smooth felt and it's lightly oiled so it has a sheen. It looks great on a stage with lights on it it reflects." William Ivey Long, the show's costume designer, knew it was the hat for the show the moment he saw it. Since the opening, the musical has returned for replacements. "You stand on stage with heavy lights on you in a heavy fur felt hat for two to three hours, the hat's going to deteriorate," explained Mark. "The perspiration soaks into the felt, discolors the front. Plus, you're handling it, you're crushing the crown. I'm sure it gets stepped on a dozen times."

The store did not provide the top hats worn by the hero/villain of the long-running Broadway musical "Jekyll & Hyde," but it did contribute to their longevity. Rodney Gordon, a custom hat maker, fashioned the initial beaver finish creation. It cost more than $1,000. "When `Jekyll and Hyde' kept changing lead actors," told Rubin, "instead of having new hats made for each actor, the stylist kept bringing the hat to us to put tape inside to tighten it or to put in a stretcher to stretch it, because they wanted to use the same hat for each actor. They didn't want to spend $1,300 on each hat. $1,300 goes a long way sometimes. "

The Rubins are very proud of their storefront, which features two glassed-in showcases on either side of the entrance. More than 800 to 1,000 hats are on display and the sidewalk in front of the glass is immaculately swept. This ostentatious display results to a lot of street traffic and sales to passersby. Their location, on a rather seedy strip of lower Midtown, directly across from the looming Port Authority, does not, however, translate into a lot of big spenders. "We've tried Borsolino," Rubin said, mentioning the elite Italian hat manufacturer. "It's usually too expensive for what the theatrical trade needs. And, on Eighth Avenue, you don't find too many people looking to spend $250 for one hat."

Inside, the rectangular space is lined by three glass counters. Hats of all shapes and descriptions fill the cabinets as well as the shelves behind them. The room contains a few arcane machines you won't find anywhere but a haberdashery. There are two steamers and two stretchers. (Several more glass-globed steamers of older model, looking like equipment from a mad scientist's lab, sit downstairs.) And in a corner near the door is an initial machine, which will print a man's initials on the inside of a hat's leather sweatband. This is done as a courtesy for customers. The lettering is real 24 karat gold foil, but, explains Rubin, beaten to so thin a width as to be almost worthless.

In the basement storage area, which runs underneath the shop as well as a section of the neighboring American Value Center, ten of thousands of hat boxes are stacked to the ceiling. "We hate it when someone comes in and we don't have the color or size they want," said Rubin. "We take it personally." All the inventory is done by hand. There is a computer, but it is seldom used.

If Arnold Hatters doesn't have a hat on hand, it's not unusual for the Rubins to call a rival store. There were only recently four or five hat stores in Manhattan. Now there is only the Rubins and JJ Hat Center on Fifth Avenue. "It's a pretty small industry now," said Mark. "Most of us here in New York know each other. I've also spoken to other hat stores in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, trying to find something for customers. You'll find the hat somewhere. "

Most of the lids Arnold Hatters carries are made in the U.S. Stetson and Dobbs are the biggest brand names. Both are run by same parent company, RHE Hatco, Inc. Dobbs is located in Garland, Texas; Stetson in St. Joseph, Missouri. The Bailey Hat Company is in Denver, Pennsylvania. The Biltmore Hat Company is in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Kangal, originally a British company, was recently purchased by the parent company of Bailey hats, Bollman Hat Company, and all its operations moved to the U.S. "I spend half my day selling Kangal and half selling other brands. It's not a big item for the theatrical trade."

Arnold Hatters employs six full-time workers and three part-timers. Finding a good headwear salesman is mainly a matter trial and error, since only rarely does a man with experience walk in the door. "It's not rocket science," shrugged Rubin. "Be nice; Don't be a bum; Listen to what me and dad say. One guy has been there since 1975."

Papering the walls of the sales floor are signed black and white glossies of the emporium's famous patrons. There are not many theater stars—costume designers, who seldom possess 8 x 10 photographers of themselves, patronize the store, not actors. The photos are of rap and rhythm and blues stars. Janet Jackson, B.B. King, Run-DMC. The hat industry relies heavily on niche markets—the theater and rap artist are two of them. Arnold Hatters is very possibly the only place in America where the disparate worlds of legitimate theater and hip hop intersect.

Another portion of society still fond of headgear, for reasons that are unclear (beyond a penchant for flamboyant behavior), are pugilists. On the walls of Arnold Hatters are signed pictures from Joe Frasier, Riddick Bowe, Roy Jones Jr. and Evander Holyfield.

Once upon a time, these accessorizing fighters and singers would have blended right into the crowd. "My grandfather would wear a small-brimmed felt fedora in gray," told Rubin. "He wouldn't wear brown, wouldn't wear black, didn't want a boater. He just wanted to go out on Sunday morning and get a paper, but before he did he'd have to shave, put on a shirt and a tie. The shoes had to be shined. Just to go to the corner store and pick up a newspaper and come back to the house."

The family business was founded in 1926 by Mark Rubin's great uncle, Irving Garten. He opened his first store in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and soon after christened additional stores in Manhattan.

Garden got out of the business when prohibition ended. The story goes that he decided to put a wall through the middle of the store and make it half hats, half liquor. After a couple of weeks of seeing the alcohol fly out the door, he gave the hat business to his brother-in-law Sidney Jacobson. Sidney opened more stores, eventually moving the whole business to Midtown.

The Rubins have a blown-up photo of the chain's Times Square branch, circa 1936. The small shop sat on the corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, nearly as central a location as possible. The picture was taken at the height of August. Still, every person in the shot has something on their head.

Like his son Mark, Arnold Rubin did not plan to spend his life selling hats.
Arnold sold shoes with his father and by adulthood, had had enough of retail and went into ship repair, mending vessels in Navy shipyards all along the east seaboard. "The way he tells it," told Mark, "the bottom fell out of the defense industry in the early 70s and he had three kids and a mortgage and he had to go find work. So uncle Sidney's offer for a job was the best he come up with. That took him back into retail. But instead of the bottom, he went to the top."

The Eighth Avenue store opened in 1960 and it is the only remaining location. In 1990, it, too, almost disappeared. "My great uncle decided to go out of business and closed up the last two stores, the one on 42nd and this one," explained Mark. "He laid off everybody, including my father, who spent about two months getting credit, getting loans, asking for extensions from manufacturers. He reopened here in June of 1990. My brother and I came to help him out. Some of the guys from the old store came also." (At press time, a projected skyscraper home for the New York Times had forced Arnold Hatters to vacate in mid-summer 2003. Mark, set on retaining his strategic foothold on Eighth Avenue, was determined to find a new space within a few blocks.)

Arnold still comes in from Long Beach five to six days a week. Mark's been managing the place for roughly a decade. His older brother left a few years ago with his girlfriend for, of all places, the Canary Islands (the brothers' mother was born and raised there).

So why, with all those Rubins, does the sign say "Knox Hats"? Uncle Sidney had a deal with Knox Hats, once a hat manufacturing concern, to stock a certain percentage of hats from the company. In exchange, Knox paid part of the rent. The arrangement was common at one time, resulting in Stetson stores, Dobbs stores, etc. The Knox company doesn't exist anymore and the store's official name is Arnold Hatters. But the Rubins won't alter the sign. "It's been there for so long," said Rubin. "We're afraid if we change it, people are going to think we're out of business."

Mark, incidentally, doesn't buy the legend that pins the demise of the hat on JFK. For him, the haberdasher's decline represented the substitution of one form of male vanity for another. "My own friends spend $50 for a haircut," he explained, which nary a touch of rancor in his voice. "And then every morning they stand in front of a mirror and after shampooing and conditioning, they comb and they spray, or they mouse and they style and they blowdry. They've got a perfectly sculpted head of hair. Many men won't take the chance of getting a `hat head.' I go to an Italian barber for $9 and give him a $3 tip. I don't care."

Mark Rubin does wear a hat. In summer, it's a cap. In winter, a small-brimmed fedora, black, gray, tan or brown, with the brims turned up all around.

Toward the back of the store one day in late spring, a few boxes of black fedoras and derbies were stacked near a counter. The dozen and a half lids were to be shipped to a newly embarked tour of "Chicago." Behind the boxes, a shelf supported a lime green derby. The uninitiated consumer may be at a loss to imagine who might seek out such a sombrero, but Rubin betrayed no surprise when confronted with the monstrosity. "I do a lot of derbies for the general public. A few years ago, it was a huge hip-hop style. Everyone had to have a derby." He recalls a time when a man came in with lavender suit, lavender suit, lavender shirt and tie. He wanted a hat to match.

The story reminded him of "The Life," the 1997 Cy Coleman musical which depicted life among the hookers and pimps of the pre-Disney 42nd Street. The show featured an outlandish fedora and Trilby in nearly every color of the rainbow. Mark shook his head.

"A shame they took out `The Life' so quickly."