User:GWPirro

Chick Darrow a.k.a. Guido Alberto Eduardo Pirro [1910-1982] A vaudevillian by trade, one of the original "Nut Comics" of stage. Although his career never took off like his friends, Eddie Cantor, Red Fox or Jackie Gleason, he worked with them and many others into the nineteen sixties. His career began in the 1920's. As "Master of Ceremonies" for many traveling vaudeville shows, that played in theaters across the country. He was good friends with vaudeville legend Eddie Leonard, and many artists and performers, who'd hang around the Westside of Manhattan in between jobs trading "Road Stories". During one of his road trips in the 1940's, he saw a traveling display of old mechanical banks. He started collecting old "obsolete" and out of production toys at that time. In the 1950's, he had many television appearances, and would regularly hold court at the Nut Club, in Greenwich Village, between club dates. During the Kennedy Presidency, he performed a bombastic "Loony Balloons Show" in the White House, at the birthday party of a very young John F. Kennedy Jr. Internationally recognized as the first "Antique Toy Dealer". He opened Chick Darrow's Fun Antiques, in New York City, in 1964. Many early collectors of so called "antique toys", got bitten by the bug to collect toys of there own childhood, or for "intrinsic value" at his shop on 2nd Avenue and 62nd Street. Before his crammed little store opened, the only toys considered "collectible" were antique dolls, and toy trains. The shop continued to provide a sanctuary for old toys after his death in 1982, by his son Gary Pirro for 10 years, who left to start a lenticular photography company Depthography, Gary handed the shop to his brother, George Darrow, who unceremoniously shut it down in 2003.