Alan Meltzer: 

A Generous Man of Music

Alan Meltzer, who died on Halloween 2011 at the age of 67, left a rather unusual will: He bequeathed $1 million to his chauffeur, and another half million to the doorman at the Manhattan building in which he lived.

Meltzer, who had a home on Old Branchville Road in the 1980s and 1990s, was a wealthy music entrepreneur whom The New York Post described as “the colorful former head of the New

York-based Wind-Up Records and a celebrity high-stakes poker player.”

Wind-Up, which has produced recordings for Creed, Evanescence, Seether, and many other artists, is one of the largest independently owned record labels in the world; the company says it’s been responsible for establishing many multi-platinum and diamond artists. (Creed’s three CDs had by 2003 sold 30 million copies.)

But when he and his wife, Diana, moved to Ridgefield, Alan Meltzer was involved in the retail side of music instead of production. He’d owned Titus Oaks Records, a small music chain in Long Island and, after moving here, opened Rainbow Records at 88 Danbury Road.

In 1985 he founded CD One Stop, a wholesaler of pre-recorded music. The business, which operated out his house here, was called the first of its kind to distribute only compact discs. Later merged into CDNow, it eventually became part of Amazon.com.

Meltzer was also a serious poker player, and frequently appeared on televised poker programs.

Tragedy struck in 1991. The Meltzers’ only child, Michael, a 20-year-old honors student at Syracuse University and a 1989 Ridgefield High School graduate, was killed in an auto accident on Danbury Road. In Michael’s memory, the couple established a scholarship for music and art students graduating from RHS that has given away tens of thousands of dollars in the years since.

Not long afterward, the Meltzers moved to Manhattan and acquired a small record label, Grass, soon turning it into Wind-Up Records. He ran the business while Diana sought out the musicians — Newsweek called her “the chief talent scout, the woman with the golden ears.”

Eventually, the two divorced. Meanwhile, Alan struck up friendships with his doorman and chauffeur —  The Post called them “two faithful workers who gave him a shoulder to cry on.”

Both were surprised at the bequests.

“I appreciate it,” the doorman said in a 2012 Post story reprinted around the world. “He was a generous guy. He was a really good friend of mine, and I was a good friend of his. It’s a surprise. Peace and rest to him.”

“I don’t know what to do exactly with the money, but one thing I know for sure, every year I’m going to bring the guy some flowers at his grave,” said the chauffeur, the father of five. 

That grave is in Ridgefield: Alan is buried next to his son Michael in Ridgebury Cemetery. 

Sascha Jacobsen: 

Violinists’ Violinist

One of the 20th Century’s finest violinists spent seven years in Ridgefield and brought some of the era’s leading classical musicians to town.

Sascha Jacobsen was born 1895 in Helsinki, Finland, then part of Russia, and came to the United States as a boy. He graduated from the Institute of Musical Art, now called the Juilliard School of Music, in 1915 and earned the school’s highest honor, the $500 Loeb prize.

That year he made his recital debut in Manhattan’s Aeolian Hall, the venue where the likes of     Rachmaninoff,  Prokofiev,  and Paderewski  appeared and where the world premiere of George Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue,” with the composer at the piano and orchestrated by   Ferde Grofe, was performed. (Jacobsen is one of the subjects of George Gershwin’s humorous 1922 song, "Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha.”)

“At the end of the concert the applause was tumultuous and Mr. Jacobsen responded with so many encores that his supply threatened to run out,” wrote a “Musical America” critic. “He had to repeat [Cecil Burleigh’s] Village Dance for a second time before the ardor of his hearers could be appeased. Many of them were reluctant to leave even after the hall was darkened.”

Jacobsen performed with the New York Philharmonic, the New York Symphony and the Metropolitan Opera. He toured Europe and North America with pianist Samuel Chotzinoff  (who became a longtime Ridgefielder and head of music at NBC — Chotzinoff twice brought conductor Arturo Toscanini to Ridgefield for concerts). 

Jacobsen founded the Musical Art Quartet which performed from 1927 to 1933; Jascha Heifetz occasionally appeared with them. 

In 1926, he became a teacher at Juilliard, succeeding his late instructor, Franz Kneisel, who had died. Over the years many of his students became internationally known concert violinists. He even gave violin lessons to his close friend, Albert Einstein.

He also made many recordings, including some 50 solo performances.

In 1937, he bought an old house and 15 acres at what is now 257 Old Branchville Road. He “had chamber music sessions in our barn, which was then a studio in the 1930s,” said Alan Rockwell, who lives there now. “His friends who visited were Jascha Heifetz, Artur Rubenstein, and other members of the New York Philharmonic. They had some great parties here.”

Jacobsen was probably drawn to Ridgefield through his association with Chotzinoff. However, in 1944, he decided to go west. He resigned from Juilliard, where he had been head of the violin department, sold his house here, and moved to Los Angeles. There he joined the faculty of the Los Angeles Conservatory and did stints as concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under Alfred Wallenstein.

It was while he was concertmaster that Jacobsen was involved in an amazing story.

On Jan. 16, 1953, he was driving along the coastal highway to Pacific Palisades during heavy rainstorm. On  the seat beside him was the Red Diamond Stadivarius in its case. The 1732 violin was famous for its special glow created by an unusual ruby-colored varnish Antonio Stradivari had used on it. 

The car stalled near Santa Monica and water from an overflowing stream began rising around the vehicle.  Jacobsen grabbed his violin case, escaped from the car,  and struggled through the rising torrent to reach higher ground, but the violin was swept from his arms and carried toward sea. “He watched, helpless, as the violin case floated away,” according to an account of the event.

The next morning, a Los Angeles attorney named Frederick Sturdy was walking along a beach and spotted a violin case stuck in the sand. “Inside the case he found slime, sand, water—and the pieces of a violin,” the report said.

Sturdy just happened to be a friend of Wallenstein,  the philharmonic director. “When he learned the following day of Jacobsen’s disaster and the loss of the Red Diamond, Sturdy immediately contacted Wallenstein.”

The heavily damaged violin parts were given to Hans Weisshaar, an expert luthier, who spent nine months painstakingly restoring it to what Jacobsen called  its “former glory...both in tone and appearance,” He also said the Red Diamond sounded ‘better than ever.’”

Jacobsen died in 1972 in Los Angeles. 

Thirteen years later, Sotheby’s tried to auction the Red Diamond for $1 million, but a sale did not occur until a few years later when an anonymous collector bought it for an undisclosed sum.

Jessie Royce Landis: 

Mother to the Stars

“I am probably one of the most prolific mothers out there,” said Jessie Royce Landis in a Ridgefield Press interview in 1966, the year she moved to Old Branchville Road.  “But I am lucky enough to have children who are doing nicely and give me no trouble.” 

Those “children” included Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, June Allyson, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins, Jean Peters, and Kim Novak. 

Miss Landis played mother to all of them in Hollywood films. As a stage and screen actress for 50 years, she was often cast as a mother, but also played countless other parts with the likes of Noel Coward, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Ray Milland, and Ingrid Bergman. Among the best-known

films she appeared in were Alfred Hitchcock’s two classics, To Catch A Thief and North by Northwest, both starring Cary Grant. She was only eight years older than Grant when she played his mother in the latter.

Born Jessie Medbury in Chicago, Ill., in 1896, she began her career on the stage, performing in plays ranging from Shakespeare to modern comedies. She wound up on television, where she appeared in scores of shows – often as a mother. One of her roles was as Madame Olga Nemirovitch in The Man from U.N.C.L.E, a popular TV series that starred Robert Vaughn, who also made Ridgefield his home.

Miss Landis was also a writer who penned several comedies for the stage. She detailed much of her life in her autobiography, “You Won’t Be So Pretty, But You Will Know More,” about which one critic wrote: “It’s a pity it is true. It would make such wonderful fiction.” 

Miss Landis, whose husband was Army Major General J. F. R. Seitz, died in 1972 and is buried in Branchville Cemetery.