Who was the mysterious ‘Mrs. Calabash?’

Calabash, N.C., promotes itself as the “Seafood Capital of the World.” 

Jimmy Durante, American comedian, actor, singer and pianist, once enjoyed a meal in Calabash, probably in 1940. 

He was popular entertainer who had his own show on radio (and then television) and would sign off with the words: “Good night, Mrs. Calabash…wherever you are.”

 

Finding the true identity of “Mrs. Calabash” became a scavenger hunt for journalists from far and wide, including Besha Rodell of Melbourne, Australia. 

Rodell fondly remembers time she spent in the small fishing town “on an off-shoot of the Intracoastal Waterway called the Calabash River. ‘Calabash’ comes from the French and Spanish words for ‘gourd.’ The town likely got its name from the gourd-shaped river it sits upon.” 

“Calabash is beloved for two things,” Rodell said, “fried seafood and hushpuppies.” 

“In the 1930s, people would wait at the docks in the early evening for fishermen to drop anchor with the day’s catch. Families began to set up tubs of hot oil and fry the fish along the riverbank, and these fish camps became so popular that they eventually attracted locals, and then visitors.” 

“Two sisters decided to turn their family fish fries into brick-and-mortar restaurants. Lucy Coleman and Ruth Beck each opened a restaurant. Coleman’s Original started up in 1940, and Beck’s came soon after. In 1950, their brother, Lawrence High, and his wife, Ella, opened Ella’s.” 

Phil Paleologos of WBSM Radio in New Bedford, Mass., told his listeners: “Jimmy Durante and his troupe stopped at a little restaurant in 1940 in Calabash, N.C., and made friends with the owner, Lucy Coleman.” 

Journalist David Perryman claimed that when Durante departed after a delicious meal, he turned to Lucy, winked, and said, “Good night, Mrs. Calabash.”

 

“For the rest of his life, until his death in 1980, every Durante on-camera appearance ended with: ‘Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are,’” Perryman said. 

Durante remained mum on the subject of the true identity of Mrs. Calabash until 1966, when he asserted that it was an endearing code name for his first wife, Jeanne Olsen, who died in 1943. 

Jason Frye, a freelance writer from Wilmington, N.C., said that names of other women were offered as candidates to be “Mrs. Calabash.” 

Cathy Altman, who grew up in Calabash and heard every story, has a different take on it. 

“I don’t think it matters,” she told Frye. “I think we’re all Mrs. Calabash.”

 

“Calabash restaurant royalty” has been passed down to the third generation of the High family – Kurt Hardee. He is now the “face” of Ella’s and “manager, cook, waitperson, oyster shucker, shrimp peeler and do-it-all business owner,” according to Frye. 

Here is Frye’s play-by-play account from Ella’s kitchen: 

“Hardee stands close to the fryers, tossing oysters in evaporated milk, then flour, then cornmeal, before putting them aside. He repeats the process with flounder fillets, then scallops. It’s lunchtime…and the popular platters fly out of the kitchen.”

 

Patricia Mitchell, a food critic and author based in Chatham, Va., who has eaten at Ella’s, wrote about the “endless basket of worthy-of-an-award hushpuppies. Now these are yummy, and hard not to fill up on!” 

“Some seafood eateries fry their fish, their fries and their hushpuppies all in the same vat of (aging?) fat. Everything therefore tastes sort of fishy-greasy-heavy.” 

“Not so here – these light…puppies actually taste of cornmeal.”