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César Ritz died 15 years ago. His widow now runs the Paris Ritz in the bar of which countless roustabouts have spent their leisure hours. Charlie Ritz, the one of César's two sons now living, has little of his father's interest in the hotel business, though it was last week rumored that he intends soon to share with his mother the management of the Ritz in Paris. An affable fellow, his mustache is waxed and he does not quite justify the magnificence of his last name.
The history of the Ritz Hotels in America is concerned less with César than with his ablest lieutenant, Albert Keller. Large, red, round and genial, Mr. Keller went to the London Ritz when it opened about 19 years ago. Before that he had worked in hotels all over Europe; had even at the very first been a kitchen apprentice in the National Hotel at Geneva, which is now the Palace of the League of Nations. He was made manager of the New York Ritz when it opened in 1910. Every since he has directed the policy of this hotel and its U. S. companions.
Last week, to Mr. Keller, there came a new promotion. The directors of the Manhattan Ritz elected him to succeed Duncan G. Harris as president of the New York Company of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Corporation. The directors who elected Mr. Keller to his new eminence were, without exception, gentlemen of ritzy appearance; all are listed in the Social Register; three of them were: George McAneny (architecture), Frank Presbrey (advertising) and Whitney Warren (architecture). The chairman of the board of directors is perhaps the most socially elect among their number. He is Robert Walton Goelet, who belongs to 19 clubs and who owns the ground upon which the Manhattan Ritz is built. It seems somehow typical of Cesar Ritz's enterprise that even the earth upon which his pompous monuments are raised should be hallowed by socially correct ownership.
It was chiefly upon Mr. Keller that the choice of the next Ritz city devolved. Chicago or Los Angeles? Last week he had not decided between them.
*There are Ritz hotels at: London (2); Paris (1); Mentone (1); Evian (2); Rome (2); Papallo (1); Lake Maggiore (1); Naples (1); Lucerne (1); Buenos Aires (1); Montreal (1); New York (2); Atlantic City (1); Boston (1); Philadelphia (1).