Ben Cutler

Obituary

Ben Cutler, 96, Whose Bands Entertained the Society Set
January 15, 2001, Section B, Page 7 < NewYorkTimes.com >

Ben Cutler, an orchestra leader whose sounds ushered the society set from swing to rock and disco and back again, died on Jan. 5 in Bronxville, New York. He was 96.

For more than 60 years, Mr. Cutler was a fixture on the society circuit, weathering the advent of rock 'n' roll and the decline of the debutante ball. Working in all the right places, from the Persian Room at the Plaza to the roof of the Astor Hotel, Mr. Cutler was one of New York's top four society orchestra leaders, along with Lester Lanin, Meyer Davis and Bill Harrington.

With the build of a football player and the dark, aquiline looks of a matinee idol, Benjamin Crawford Cutler seemed born to take the stage. After attending the Phillips Andover Academy, he enrolled in Yale, where he earned seven varsity letters, sang in the Glee Club and the Whiffenpoofs and was inducted into the Skull and Bones society. He also taught himself to play the soprano saxophone, mimicking the sounds emanating from the room of his dorm mate, Rudy Vallee, who hoped to become a concert saxophonist.

Vallee instead became one of the great film idols of the 1920's. But after being chosen by the Yale class of 1926 as Most Versatile, Best Athlete and Most to be Admired, it was Mr. Cutler who seemed almost inevitably headed for stardom.

Though some expected him to have as film career, his passions lay elsewhere. Deep down inside me, I'd always wanted to be an opera singer, he confessed.

After a brief stint in Hollywood, where he found no takers aside from a small role in a Vitaphone reel, he focused his aspirations on the musical stage.

He sang the part of Colline in a touring production of La Boheme and gave recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and at Town Hall in New York. On Broadway, he appeared with Joe Cook in Rain or Shine after stepping in for the lead, who had taken ill; performed the Voice of God in the Max Reinhardt-Kurt Weill production of The Eternal Road; and for five months played opposite Mary Martin in One Touch of Venus.

But growing family responsibilities and tightening finances caused Mr. Cutler to take notice of the success of his old friend Vallee.

If the public is so interested in a Yale man who plays the sax and sings, why not do it, too, he told The New York Times in 1988.

Not only did the clubs want Mr. Cutler and his saxophone, they also wanted his orchestra. The problem was, he didn't have one.

First, I got the jobs, then I got out my Victrola records, and then I bought a baton and hired musicians, recalled Mr. Cutler, who had no formal musical training. I learned by doing.

With its dashing leader and his wailing soprano sax at center stage (no other band had the sax so high, he said), the Ben Cutler Orchestra gained a competitive edge, and soon its performances from the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Plaza were being broadcast by NBC three times a week. From the bright fox trots of the 1920's and 30's to the swing and Latin boom of the post-World War II era, Mr. Cutler and his orchestra prospered.

Offstage, Mr. Cutler cut a wide swath as well, inciting headlines with his romantic exploits and, in 1938, by narrowly escaping with his life after plunging his car into the East River. (The accident prompted an outraged Robert Moses, the commissioner of parks, to demand $241 in restitution for the trees, concrete benches and iron railing Mr. Cutler had plowed down.)

Then came the revolt, as he liked to call the meteoric rise of rock 'n' roll in the mid-1950's.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Cutler mastered the newest genres and created an amalgam of rock, disco and show tunes for the kids and nostalgic works for the older generation, bolstering his orchestra with a bass player whose repertory ranged from Cole Porter to Bruce Springsteen.

Mr. Cutler was heartened when, in the 1970's, he spied a resurgence of interest in earlier styles among young people, who demanded big-band music at weddings, charity balls and the now-recovered debutante cotillions. At the Hotel Pierre, a group of 20- and 30-year-olds revived the tradition of an annual waltz, the men dressed in white-tie and the women in ball gowns and white gloves as Mr. Cutler's music transported them back to the 1800's.
Perhaps they had rediscovered what he knew all along, Mr. Cutler said of the turnaround: that it's wonderful to hold a girl in your arms.

He is survived by a son, Tom, of Brooklyn; a daughter, Creel Cutler McCormack of Atlanta; and three grandchildren.

References

• "Actress Weds". Argus-Leader. South Dakota, Sioux Falls. Associated Press. August 25, 1939. p. 1. Retrieved June 27, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. open access. < link >
• “Creel C. Cutler Wed in Darien”. < NYTimes.com > May 25, 1975.
• http://johnlisle.us/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I71333&tree=st...

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• Residence: 1930 - Andover, Essex, Massachusetts, USA
• Race: White
  • Updated from 1930 United States Federal Census via mother Edith M Cutler by SmartCopy: Dec 16 2015, 17:49:30 UTC