It’s entirely too funny and improbable to be true. Surely this book must be fiction. Not so, it’s not only non-fiction but the life to date of Elliot Tiber. Born Eliyahu Teichberg he found his new name in a New York Times theatre review called “Across the Tiber.”
Now, not only was he born with a name he “had come to loathe” but born to a mother who makes Mama Rose look saintly. She denigrated him with every sound, look and word. It was with her and a subdued father that he spent his growing up years in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. His only release was movies; his idol was Judy Garland.
At last he was able to escape the harangues of mama to Greenwich Village and a roach ridden apartment. On the plus side he found a host of gay friends, the first he had ever known. A bit unsure of how to earn a living he decided to settle on being an artist - better yet, an interior decorator. This was a field in which his talent was appreciated and his sexual preference ignored.
He worked hard for almost a decade and it paid off - he became one of the Big Apple’s foremost interior decorators enjoying lavish parties and high paying clients. The acme of his career (or so he thought) came in 1968 when he was asked to arrange a fabulous birthday party aboard a Hudson River dayliner. The guest list was all A-List including the woman whose records he played over and over again - Judy Garland. He created a scene straight from the Arabian Nights for the event - told all the suppliers the man who had commissioned him and signed his own name to the receipts. That was a night he would never forget, and not at all the way he had planned.
Quite simply, Palm Trees on the Hudson is the true account of Elliot Tiber’s meteoric rise and earth-shaking fall. Unbelievable, but true.
- Gail Cooke
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