THE LITT FANTASTIC: ARCHITECT, CLOWN, PURVEYOR OF TEA

For Nathaniel Litt - architect, circus clown, magician, chef, jam-maker and tea shop owner - changing careers seemed as easy as changing his socks. If he got interested in something, he simply did it.

That attitude apparently began after he was seriously injured in an auto accident in 1969. On the way to the hospital, he realized that he might die before he had been a circus clown - a lifelong dream that he had deferred because his mother wanted him to be an architect.

Born in New York City, he had attended Columbia University and Pratt Institute, then studied at the schools set up by Frank Lloyd Wright in Arizona and Wisconsin. At the time of the accident, he had been working as an architect for 17 years and owned his own firm in New York City.

His wife, Margaret Williamson Litt, sided with his mother on the question of careers. Aware of the lure of the life of a clown, she had for years hidden from him any show business trade papers that mentioned job openings for clowns, fearing he'd run away and join the circus.

But after his accident, she changed her mind. Hoping to banish his depression, she told him about an article she read about Ringling Brothers' plans for a "clown college" in Florida.

And so, after the bruises had disappeared and the broken bones in his jaw, arm and leg had mended, Mr. Litt sold his business and hobbled south to sign up.

His son, Andrew, just 5 at the time, found it hard to comprehend. "Daddies don't run away to join the circus," he said then. "Only little boys do."

THE ARCHITECT WHO RAN AWAY TO JOIN THE CIRCUS AS A CLOWN LIFE MAGAZINE FEB. 20, 1970

In the years since, Mr. Litt had done many things. Designing buildings was not one of them.

For several years, he toured with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and other shows before settling down in Haddonfield, NJ to become a businessman.

But he continued to clown around, forming his own troupe, Nat Litt's All Star Clown Revue, to perform for fraternal organizations and schools. He also appeared with circuses in Bulgaria, Moscow, Mexico and Paris.

For several years, he ran the How To Do It Book Shop, a craft and hobby shop in the Cherry Hill Mall - where, between customers, he became adept at decoupage, said his wife.

For nine years he ran a magic shop in Philadelphia before a sweet tooth lured him into producing his own brand of jams and jellies, which he and his wife sold at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market, bearing the label of the South Jersey Jam & Jelly Co.

NAT EARNED A CHEF'S DIPLOMA IN 1991 FROM LE CORDON BLEU
	MR. LITT WITH HIS DAUGHTER, JESSICA LITT

His next career move was the Cordon Bleu in Paris, the cooking school where he earned a chef's diploma in 1991. For a time, he was the assistant pastry chef at Le Bec-Fin, one of Philadelphia's finest restaurants, and also worked briefly in the kitchens of several other area restaurants.

His most recent incarnation was connoisseur of tea and proprietor of The House of Tea on South Fourth Street near Bainbridge, where he was only too glad to introduce customers to the enjoyment - and the arcane knowledge - of teas from around the world.

Four years ago, when interviewed in his tea shop by Jim Quinn for Inquirer Magazine, Mr. Litt playfully summed up his attitude toward his life:

"I've had a wonderful life, it's still wonderful. I'd like to say I wouldn't change my life for all the tea in China. But that's more or less what I've done."

The above was paraphrased in part from an article which ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer, by Andy Wallace.

THE LITT FANTASTIC
REMEMBERING NAT LITT -
ARCHITECT, CLOWN, PURVEYOR OF TEA
BY JIM QUINN

Nat Litt is dead. He died peacefully in his sleep, probably the only thing he ever did peacefully, sometime in the night, September 29, 1997. He was 65 years old. Why not put the name of his store at the top of this obituary? If this is an obituary. I've never written one. But I have to write about Nat Litt. Nat's wife, Margaret, says the store will stay open "as long as people come in to buy. We'll manage. I worked there for a little while, till Nat threw me out. I went without argument. The shop was Nat's domain."

There's not a better, or cheaper, place to buy fine teas in Philadelphia, or as far as I know, the USA. Nat would like his obituary to say that, I think. He'd also like me to say that life was his domain.

Nat Litt was born in 1932 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was one of the funniest men I've ever met, full of deliberately awful jokes and unbelievable stories. He sold great tea, and threw in free an earful of advice and personal history. People would ask me, "Was he really on the cover of Life Magazine? Does he own a Picasso? Did he work with Frank Lloyd Wright as an architect? And for Ringling Brothers as a clown? And graduate from Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris? And do pastry at Le Bec-Fin? And run a magic store? And know Henny Youngman? And break windows for a mind reader?

Nat did what he wanted. Which was everything. Margaret sits in their handsome art-filled house in Center City. Nat's and Margaret's combined collection includes works by Manet, Turner, Jacques Villon and one of the original gels from the Beatle's Yellow Submarine move. Margaret is not always certain about dates, but dates don't really matter. This is a life.

"Nat's parents were immigrants. They wanted him to be a doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief, anything professsional. He wanted to perform. As a teenager he worked in Brooklyn summer stock, and at Coney Island. He made friends everywhere. We'd get visits from ancient men, eternally old, whom Nat had worked with. Al Flosso, the Original Coney Island Faker, who had a spiel call WHAT JOHNNY SAW WHEN HE LOOKED THROUGH THE KEYHOLE. He'd take a paper match, split it, twist it, fold it, talking the whole time. Very funny, and all to get people to part with one 'one thin silver dime,' for a piece of junk. Nat traveled with Jack London, a mind-reader famous in the '40s. One of his jobs was, when they got to a new town, to break a window in the local department store. Because Jack would predict that the window would be broken, and next day the papers would have the story about this marvelous clairvoyant.

"Then Nat went to Actor's Studio in winter, and did the Borscht Belt in summer. He knew Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. He introduced me to Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett. He was Buddy's warmer-upper for a while. We used to babysit Henny Youngman when he played Jersey nightclubs. Henny hated to be alone, so we stayed with him all the time he was here.

"Where am I in Nat's life? The Korean War, he was in Special Services. Doing a comic magic act with Josephine the Rabbit of Mystery. He disappeared a locomotive. It wasn't a trick. He was a corporal and somebody said, 'Take your men and get that locomotive off the track.' There was no way to move it, so they started at the top and took it apart. Separated all the pieces and stored in neatly in a warehouse. The army, Nat said, was not amused.

After the Army, he went to Columbia. Dropped out. But liked an architecture teacher. So he went to study with Frank Lloyd Wright, became a certified architect, and worked on getting the Guggenheim through the New York Building Code Inspectors. Then he worked with other architects. Edward Durrell Stone for one, doing buildings for the New York World's Fair of - I think 1968? Then, 1969, at our summer house in Cape Cod, he was in an accident. A car with four people ran into him. They all died. Nat recovered, slowly.

"He saw an article about Clown School. He said he wanted to be a clown, not an architect. I said to him, go then. He went, and got a job with Ringling Brothers. He stayed a year, then worked with other circuses. The family traveled along. The kids got to ride elephants. It was wonderful. Then Nat got sick. Appendicitis. But nobody knew. Thirteen weeks in the hospital in the Midwest.

"After that, we came back East to Haddonfield. He had his own troupe, Nat Litt's All Star Clown Revue. He opened a craft shop, so he could learn all the crafts and become an expert at decoupage. Then he ran a magic shop in Center City. Then we made jams and jellies and sold them at Reading Terminal. Then he decided to get serious about cooking. He went to the Culinary Academy at May's Landing. I said, why not finish off at a good school? He went to Cordon Bleu in Paris, and graduated in 1991. He came back and worked at several restaurants. Finally as an assistant to Robert Bennett at Le Bec-Fin. He was happy as a clam.

"Then in 1993, he opened The House of Tea. His leg was still bothering him from the crash in 1969. He needed to lose weight. And this last year he was managing to do that. He was feeling better. Then...."

Two weeks ago, Nat found a comic baseball cap with long gray hair attached to it. "Look!" he said, putting it on. "My Jim Quinn imitation! I'll wear it whenever you come in."

I never saw him again. The last thing he ever told me was a joke, so scabrous it could only be funny when Nat told it. And it sure was funny. Everything in life was funny for Nat. Philadelphia will miss him. So will I.

Besides a wife and son, Mr. Litt is survived by a daughter, Jessica; a brother, and his mother, Hannah Litt.