No question at all, Nat Sandler was a hard-nosed conservative businessman. He certainly wasn’t a creative person.
“Actually, down deep, I think my mom kind of intimidated him,” suggests Tom Sandler. “He was an impressive guy, my dad, no question, really knew his way around any kind of business deal. But creativity wasn’t his thing, and I think it scared him. He didn’t get it. And Mom was so creative in so many ways. I’m sure he felt spooked by that. In fact, he was behind my mom nixing a possible MGM biopic about her life: she would have been played by Judy Garland. I really don’t think he wanted that kind of exposure for his family.”
“But let’s not sell him short,” says Cookie Sandler. “I mean, c’mon, we’re talking about a guy who re-launched Toronto’s first nightclub, the Club One-Two. And we’re talking about a guy who’d always squeeze fresh orange juice for everybody each morning at the cottage. I loved Nat. Yes, he was conservative. And sure, he didn’t have Ruth’s free spirit. But they loved each other and made a great couple. And I loved him: he was a great father-in-law.”
“Dad was a terrific promoter,” says Tom. “At one time, in the late 1950s, he owned the trains that carried people around the Canadian National Exhibition. It was pretty cool. What impressed me the most was that Dad had a parking pass that allowed him to drive his car right onto the grounds at the CNE and park there for free. That was totally rad!
“It was there that I got my first summer job. I played a werewolf at the Haunted Mansion. Great gig: I chased the girls around a lot (but I never bit any). I too got a parking pass for the grounds: the circle was completed. OK, I only made a buck an hour and worked 15-hour double shifts some days... but it was amazing!
“Dad also got me my first full-time job. He was friends with so many people, so he just calls up his pal, Harry Solomon, who ran—wait for it—the Exquisite Form Brassiere Company. Harry was a great guy and hired me to work full time in his factory making bras. And all this time, I didn’t think my dad had a sense of humour!
Figure 38: Nat Sandler in Tavern Magazine
“Pardon the pun, but life was full: music on one side, business opportunities on the other. What more could a guy like me ask for?”
“My memory of Nat is that he was pretty stern,” says Lynda Rapp. “Not the life of the party. But he was a really good dad, a good grandpa, and he loved his wife. And, you know, I can’t imagine being married to someone who wrote a song called ‘I’ll Never Smile Again,’ and it’s got nothing to do with you at all! He was a little more laid back while she was the rambunctious one. But they were a love affair for sure.”
Nat loved doing deals. He was like the Godfather, but without the bullets. He had a beautiful wife, who was a celebrity. He had two sons, who were good kids. He was respected, compassionate. But he’d grown up with an edge to him, his own father having been a real Russian tyrant. Still, for all the pluck, he was, in reality, quite a shy man who preferred staying under the radar while his wife soared high.
For her part, Ruth needed the structure that Nat could bring to their life. She liked tough guys. She liked a man to be a real man (think Sinatra; think Dorsey). It was a romantic kind of thing. Nat wasn’t one to back down or run from anything, and she had a lot of respect for him. She knew she had a pretty forceful personality, but she didn’t want a guy who would have to hang on her reputation to make a life of his own.
“My dad was crazy about my mom, that much I know,” says Tommy. “I mean, he’d grown up in a pretty conservative style. So, there you have my mom, the social butterfly whose free and spontaneous, and then you have Dad who’s very down to earth and grounded. He kept the trains running: whereas my mom would be the one playing on the train! But seriously, they lived a really good life. My mom respected my dad, thought the world of him. I’m not sure Dad ever understood how important Mom’s music was. He was locked into the male-as-the-provider role with a strong personality.”
“I worked downtown so I used to drive up to the cottage with him,” says Cookie. “It was kind of uncomfortable at first. But we started talking about how he and Ruth had met and stuff like that and before long, it became very easygoing. He’d tell me about parts of his life I knew nothing about, like when he was managing Casa Loma, the famous mansion in Toronto. He was really good to me. He and Ruthie would take me and Steve places. It was really fun.”
Cookie stops for a moment, lost in thought. A smile crosses her face.
“Here’s a funny story about Nat,” she says. “He was a founding member of Oakdale, a Jewish golf club. But once he and Ruth bought the property on Lake Simcoe and it became apparent that they’d be spending a fair amount of time there, Ruthie says, ‘Nat, forget it. You can’t spend all your life golfing if I’m going to be up here at the cottage.’ So, doesn’t Nat just give up golf. Just like that. Never golfed again. Literally. But here’s what’s funny. Later on, Ruthie goes out and joins Orchard Beach, the only Jewish golf club near the cottage. So, she ends up playing golf all the time and Nat goes fishing, his new pastime.”
Cookie recalls that when Ruth first got sick with cancer, Nat stopped everything to look after her.
“After she died, my father-in-law and I stayed close,” she says. “Nat and I would go to movies together. My friends thought it was weird going to a movie with your father-in-law, but we enjoyed our time together. I used to say it took two Sandler men to keep me happy!”
“He was a good man,” says Tommy. “He was a real promoter. A real doer. An entrepreneur. And a charitable person raising money for Variety Club and B’nai B’rith and others. You know, from whisky funds in Scotland to gold mines in Costa Rica, he was a very smart businessman. Actually, I tried to work with him, but I was too much of a free-spirited teenager. Steve was able to do that, but I’m more of a romantic guy than a businessman.”
And then, there’s this from retired Canadian businessman, investor, author, and philanthropist Seymour Schulich:19
“Most of the time that I knew the family, we were in Montreal, and Nat was up here in Toronto,” he says. “We worked out an arrangement with Ned Goodman and myself: we were both partners in Beutel, Goodman and Co. for 22 years. Once a month, we’d come to Toronto and spend an hour talking to the stockbrokers. That’s when we got to know Nat. He was a securities salesman, very cheerful, very likeable man. He was older than us, and I had the greatest respect for him.
Figure 39: Seymour Schulich
Photo: National Post
“He had a lot of financial experience and he would share his expertise with you, and he was just an enjoyable guy, fun to visit. You looked forward to visiting the guy. Very positive. A character, a successful salesman.
“Here’s a Nat Sandler story you’ll love,” says Seymour. “I was pitching—maybe a little too verbose. And he stops me and says something that stuck with me for my whole life. He said, ‘Seymour, once you’ve made the sale, stop selling.’ It’s really...it’s remarkable how you’ll bring people around and you’ve made the sale, but you keep talking and you start creating doubts in their mind. It happens quite a bit. I was never a marketing guy: I’ve got one skill in life, which is the ability to pick stocks that go up. It’s a very good skill, and if you can do that, you can get up and pee on people’s desks. But Nat’s advice stuck with me my whole life. Often, I go into retail stores and I’m sold on something and the guy just keeps on blabbing away, and I say, ‘My friend, let me give you a piece of valuable advice: once you’ve made the sale, stop selling!’
“Nat was always a fellow we were closely aligned with. We liked him. I think we did the very first underwriting I completed for a company called Pinot Petroleum and I think Nat raised almost two million dollars. He was one of three underwriters that participated in the deal. He was a class act.
“On a personal level, I went to their country house a couple of times, on the east side of Lake Simcoe. It was very nice. The kids were there, Stephen and Tommy. I knew Steve better because he worked with his dad. And everyone knew that Ruth had written Sinatra’s theme song and we thought it was great but we, you know, we certainly never thought a lot about it one way or the other. Never realized she was getting a lot of royalty money, not something we really knew about or thought about much.”
At the end of the day, Seymour Schulich feels what defined Ruth and Nat was that they were a class act. “If there was a word to describe Nat Sandler, and both of them as a couple: they were very classy people. And I’m not saying that to be flattering or anything else: they really were a class act, and I always enjoyed the time I spent with both of them. Down to earth people, very much so. Self-made man. Brokerage firm was small: he took on deals that establishment guys wouldn’t take on. And Ruth: let me tell you something, no one ever talked about her songs. It wasn’t an area of particular interest to anyone in our business, so they never belaboured that.
“I do know Ruth came from no money. Her dad died penniless. Nat’s financial background? Don’t know. My view is that he was part of a small brokerage firm, so they had to take more of a speculative deal. But I loved the guy, he always made you feel good.”
Seymour smiles to himself, then offers this:
“You know, there are two things I’ve learned in life as I’ve gotten older that are very important. The first is that the only thing you can control in life is your own behaviour. Don’t try to control your wife or your kids or employees: it’s very difficult, and they’ll get aggravated. Stop doing that. I used to do that but don’t do it anymore. The second thing I learned in life is this: people forget what you say. People forget what you do. But no one will ever forget the way you made them feel. If I had a deficiency, it was that I didn’t suffer fools gladly in the old days. But Nat was always a classy guy, a guy who you always felt good seeing. He always had a smile on his face. He was always interested in your situation, your problems. He recognized us coming up: young Jewish boys trying to learn the ropes. Nat was a father figure to some extent. He would have been an integral part of the Toronto establishment then. A real class act.”
Out of nowhere, Seymour looks up, winks, then adds, “By the way, did I tell you that my daughter’s got a PhD? Yup. Poppa has dough!”