Toots Shor

Shor attended the Drexel Institute of Technology and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before working as a traveling shirt-and-underwear salesman.

He became a man about town in Manhattan after opening his own restaurant, Toots Shor's, in 1940 at 51 West 51st Street with funding from Leo Justin, a New Jersey theater owner, who put up half of the $100,000 cost.

[2] While the food there was known to be "nuttin' fancy" – standard American, sports-bar fare such as shrimp cocktail, steak, baked potato—the establishment became well known for who frequented it, and Shor’s interactions with them.

According to David Halberstam in his book The Summer of '49, guests had to observe the unwritten "code" which prevailed in Shor's establishment[clarification needed].

Shor cultivated his celebrity following by giving them unqualified admiration, loyal friendship, and a kind of happy, boozy, old-fashioned male privacy.

Shor and his wife Marion ("Baby") lived for many years in a 12-room double apartment at 480 Park Avenue, where they raised their four children named Bari Ellen, Kerry, Rory and Tracey.

Tracey, who was Toots' youngest daughter and a late arrival, was taken in and raised by his friends, comedian Bob Hope and his wife Dolores (who was her godmother at birth and eventually her legal guardian).

Shor's financial affairs were usually shaky at best, thanks to a cavalier attitude toward the IRS, coupled with a generous nature; debts were frequently forgiven for friends who had fallen on hard times, and drinks and meals were comped on a regular basis.

[3] In 1950, Shor was the subject of a three-part biography published in The New Yorker entitled "Toots's World", written by John Bainbridge, who later combined the series into a book.

In 2006, the biographical documentary Toots, in which his granddaughter Kristi Jacobson profiled his life,[4] premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.