Rochester

[helloagain]

I was listening to Rochester's first appearance the other day, and it sounds to me like Eddie Anderson is playing the part of the redcap as well as the porter.

[epeterd]

That's what I always thought.

peter

[Jack Benny]

I was listening to Rochester's first appearance the other day, and it sounds to me like Eddie Anderson is playing the part of the redcap as well as the porter.

Aren't a redcap and a porter the same thing? Like a car and an automobile?

[helloagain]

I'm not absolutely sure about this, but I always thought a red cap worked in the train station and carried the passenger's baggage to and from the train, and a porter tended to the passenger's needs inside the train during the trip. In any case, on the show the red cap and the porter were 2 different people.

[Moose Hatrack]

When the jet set arrived, redcaps became skycaps. And (as I recall) the skycap took your luggage off your hands as you stepped out of your car, and I think he checked your baggage into the plane. I don't think skycaps or redcaps ever rode in the planes or trains.
Like stewardesses (old terminology for flight attendants) saw to the comfort of the passengers inside the plane , in my memory, porters saw to the comfort of the passengers inside the train.
I did ride a train once; that's right bud, it was a sleeper in about 1964 or 1965. The passages were narrow and I was all eyes walking with Mom and my brother to our cabin. I remember passing a tall man in a tidy uniform. He was the porter, and he was kindness itself. Like so many men of his day, he had that unmistakable stamp of a true gentleman. You can't fool a child about these things: he didn't smile because he was told to smile or be fired, he smiled because he loved the people passing by and was genuinely concerned about everyone's comfort.

[helloagain]

'A true gentleman', as well as 'A real lady'. Both great examples of a dying breed.