E — Gun Moll
Those were some of the little pigs who went to market and who had roast beef. (And “pigs” is the backstage slang for chorines.) Here’s a little round-up on one who had none, and cried “wee-wee-wee” all the way home.
Marion Paterka was born in Boston, in 1908, child of Czech immigrants. Her mother married again, a man named Strasmick, and, as Marion Strasmick, a black-eyed, beautiful redhead, 16, descended on Broadway. You never saw a prettier girl. Ziegfeld never did, as he said when he glorified her on sight for his Follies.
In that show there was an ensemble number in which the kids did take-offs on the stars of the day. Lenore Ulric was in Belasco’s Kiki. Marion impersonated her. She was Kiki the rest of her life. Kiki Roberts she chose to make it. And that name was to shout from Page 1 headlines often—for Kiki became the sweetheart of Jack “Legs” Diamond, gangster, mass killer, riddled so often with bullets that he was dubbed “the clay pigeon of the underworld.”
Diamond first saw her in “practice clothes,” sweater and bloomers, trying out on a chorus call for Strike Me Pink, a revue angeled by gangster dough and starring Jimmy Durante and Lupe Velez. A dozen or more of “the boys” kittied the bank roll. That gave them the privilege of sitting in. Also of putting their young molls in the line.
As one went through her paces, a partner in the enterprise asked:
“Whose bim is dat one?”
“Nobody’s,” was the answer.
“Den what’s she doin’ in our show?”
Diamond took another look and almost fell out of his chair.
“She’s mine!” he barked.
And, though she didn’t know it yet, she was—so quickly and so suddenly that she didn’t even open in the show. Diamond wouldn’t let her out of bed long enough even to rehearse.
Not a bad-looking beast, Legs; he got his nickname when he was a boy thief, because he could outrun the bulls. Tall, slender, with regular features, dark and personable, Legs was a night club hound, even owned and ran some himself. He was boss of the Hotsy Totsy. There, one night, cockeyed, he shot two inoffensive customers. There were present, besides the corpses and the well-dressed man with the automatic, seven other men, including Diamond’s bartender.
When the cops arrived, Legs had legged it. Within six weeks, those seven—including the bartender—were shot down and killed, one by one. The night of the day the last one cashed in, Legs walked into a police station and asked, charmingly, “You boys looking for me?”
There were no witnesses.
That was the assassin Kiki idolized.
When he was sprayed with lead in the Monticello Hotel, a hide-out for his sort, she was with him. Almost every time, and that time, she was hauled in and put on the carpet. Yes, she was around—but she was asleep—she didn’t know from nothing.
Diamond had a younger brother, Eddie, a lunger, his lieutenant. The kid went to Denver for his health. Some New York murderers who hadn’t dared molest him while Legs was around followed him and sniped at him. The youngster scrammed back. Legs loved him and when he heard what had happened he boiled, got oiled and went out with two pants-pocket miniature.38’s to pay off.
In the next three days, four bodies were found, widely scattered. A meeting was called, a death sentence was passed on Legs Diamond, who had cheated so many such with only some scars as mementos.
Diamond was tipped off. He took it on the lam. He found a secluded cottage up in Sullivan County, a region of apple orchards. But he was a gangster in his heart.
Kiki, again, was with him. She begged him to stay under cover. He had enough money for existence. But Legs had a trade and he went to work.
Applejack had a ready and lucrative market. Diamond started to “organize” the farmers, to buy up their crops. Some yielded, for he offered cash. Others had commitments and refused. They found a muzzle in their bellies and a threat—sell him their apples or else.
One, Grover Parks, a young farmer, was game. When Diamond came back he had a pitchfork. But Legs had a cannon. He backed Parks into his barn, strung him up by the wrists and burned the soles of his feet. Parks didn’t die. He lived to get the local law to hunt down the stranger in the county. Legs was indicted. Kiki was taken in, too, released on $2,500 bail, cleared. She went back to New York and into another show.
In December, 1931, Diamond was tried, in Troy. He had a brilliant lawyer, Daniel Pryor. After a bitter contest, he was acquitted.
Diamond, all this time, had a wife, Alice. She knew a lot about Kiki—anyone who could read did. But she stuck—when he’d let her.
Kiki was then sharing an apartment with Agnes O’Laughlin, another Ziegfelder (she later made some sensational inconclusive accusations against Rudy Vallee, and, disgusted with the whole life, returned to her native Cleveland and married a boy she’d gone to school with). Kiki was ordered to stay far from Troy. Because of the notoriety with Kiki, Pryor had ordered that Alice Diamond, Legs’ wife, sit beside him through the trial.
But there were telephones.
The jury freed Legs about midday. He, Alice, Eddie and Pryor drove to Albany, a few miles off, and staged a celebration dinner. Diamond had engaged a shabby room where he was to spend the night with Alice.
At about 9 o’clock, half overboard, Legs said he was going to the washroom. Instead, he slipped outside, hailed a taxi and was driven to another bed-house, where he had parked Kiki.
At 3 A.M., a very drunken man staggered out and gave the address of the place where Legs had hired sleeping quarters for “J.H. Desmond and Wife,” to a hackman. He was unconscious on arrival. The driver pulled him together enough to get him upstairs. Diamond fell into bed with all his clothes on, including his derby hat.
A long, gray limousine had followed him. Five minutes later, it was roaring toward New York. In the bed lay the clay pigeon—this time shot for keeps. Alice and the party were still at the restaurant, waiting for him.
Kiki was questioned. Maybe she had an idea of who her man’s enemies had been. Maybe not. She wasn’t held.
She went back to Boston. Said she was licked—through. She posed for pictures with her mother, ironing, cooking. But she wasn’t through. They never are while they can help it.
She came back, danced in cafés, did fan numbers, worked in Jersey, Pennsylvania, sneaked to New York and was hired at an uptown smalltime spot, the Little Casino. The flat-feet tore down the billing and wouldn’t let her work. They said she was a peeler. But it is a policy of New York police not to permit exploitation of names connected with crime stories.
Alice also went into show business, got herself an act in which she preached against liquor, violence and violation of the marriage oath. The dicks gave her the bum’s rush, too. Soon thereafter she was put on the spot and murdered. The wise crowd said, “She knew too much.”
Kiki drifted. She was reported married to an athletic director, but that fizzled. She did marry a beer salesman, in an elopement, and she soon got a divorce. She flew to Memphis and became the wife of a Newark airport attaché.
She was reported running a lunchroom in Bridgeport. Broadway never knew her again.
Perhaps, somewhere, now 40 but undoubtedly still chic and attractive, a redheaded woman lives the simple, unrippled existence of a matured matron. Perhaps, though, in the dark, alone, she recalls the flash of guns, the thud of bullets, the mad love of a murderous madman, third degrees by police and prosecutors, days and nights of fleeing and being hunted with her lover—and the last glimpse of his riddled remains, in a basket in an undertaker’s morgue in Albany, where she slunk in after all others—except one of your authors, covering the story—had gone.
This little pig had no roast beef. But she certainly didn’t stay home!
22. White Way Wolves
Call a man a dog and he’ll fight. Call a woman a cat and she’ll scratch your eyes.
But speak of a guy as a wolf, a most loathsome, cowardly animal, and he’ll be pleased as all get out.
Of course, no man openly admits he’s a wolf. He smirks and smiles and blushes and tries to giggle it off. But he sure is proud.
The dictionary defines “wolf” as a fierce, rapacious, destructive beast—or person. None of that fits the New York canis lupus.
He is not fierce; he traps his prey with gentle wiles. He is not rapacious, being satisfied with one at a time. (But every day is a different time.) And he is not so destructive.
The subject of wolves has been written about ad nauseam, and to most people it’s an old and tedious joke. Yet, nowhere in the world save possibly Hollywood, are male wolves so much a part of the scene as in afterdark New York.
Here, wolfing has developed into an art, and though grandma’s girl, after she’s been around any time at all, spots the species immediately, tradition demands that she permit him to pursue and subdue her, wolf-fashion, and never let on she’s wise to his act. Wolves are very sensitive.
Though there are more femmes in Gotham than in any other city on earth, it takes much ingenuity to stalk the Little Red Riding Hood here. There are no forest paths. It’s the best-lighted place on earth—when John L. Lewis keeps his hands off. It is against the law to flirt on the streets of New York. He who would try it in public places, such as theatres or the subway, will get a punch in the nose if he doesn’t land in the hoose-gow.
There are so many wolves in Manhattan that, even if the entire female population of Scranton, with Reading and Mauch Chunk thrown in, were transplanted here, they wouldn’t cross the path of 1 per cent of our predatory males.
But here it takes specific knowledge and specialized scheming to perfect a pick-up. We have few social clubs and fewer church festivals, where you can meet the squabs in small towns. There are no corner drugstores with juke boxes to drop in on after school. People don’t ask motorists for a lift here, and motorists don’t give ’em.
None but professionals work cocktail lounges and hotel lobbies. Sailors provide too much competition on Riverside Drive. There are no cabaret hostesses or so-called “B Girls.” It’s illegal for the headwaiter to introduce you to a cutie in the show, or for you to sit out with her even if you know her or can get her to invite you.
So, where do wolves whistle? Shhh! We spent many sleepless nights gathering the info. Paste it in your hat. It tells where our choicest chickens perch.
CHORINES: If you see a plain-looking gal, sans make-up, in slacks or cheap dress, breakfasting at the fountain of a drugstore near Broadway at 5 P.M., she’s a show girl. Favorite spot is Hanson’s, 51st and Seventh Avenue.
Those who live on the East Side play the Belmont-Plaza drugstore. They’re back again between shows for dinner at the fountain, once more, after the show, when they sip coffee with one eye peeled for a musician, press agent or other Main Stem character. When the kids are really left flat, they frequently go bowling. Many patronize the Roxy alley.
MODELS: You can always spot a “pro” model. She’s usually slender, hipless, has small features, carries her make-up in a man’s hat-box. Powers girls tea at the fountain in Grand Central Palace; the Conover beauts patronize the cocktail lounge of the Roosevelt Hotel; Thornton’s youngsters make their headquarters at the Liggett fountain, 43d and Lexington Avenue. Smart wolves know you can always find models at cocktail time in Armando’s.
But we must tell you about the famed Round Table at John Perona’s El Morocco, expensive East Side rendezvous. The table is so situated that the town’s aging and more prosperous squab-hunters, like Macoco, who congregate at it nightly can case the door and ogle the bims brought in by younger and more energetic men. The bald and graying Knights of the Table Round select and signal, and by a method we cannot detail, get phone numbers.
Many of the most successful wolves do not drink. Alcohol is a hurdle in the chase. The trick is to let her do the imbibing.
It is strictly unprofessional for a wolf to pay a girl, ever. Anyone can pay.
Married wolves are debarred if they lie and say they’re single or pull the old one about being misunderstood. Naturally, the town’s top lupos are married.
WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:
“Woman is like your shadow. Follow it, it flies you. Fly, it will pursue you!”
—Ben Jonson.
When your doll starts showing an interest in another, don’t agree with her appraisal of him. If you make it too easy for her to leave you for another, she won’t—and you’re stuck with her.
Fastest way to a doll’s heart is not through protestations of love and undying affection. Keep her laughing, bud. That’s the block buster.
Guys who give seldom get.
It’s tough to romance a chorine while she’s rehearsing for a new show. Hard-boiled dance directors are mayhem on love life.
When you have a date with a chorus doll and she keeps you waiting after a show—being last to leave the dressing room—it can mean one of two things. Either she’s so thrilled to be going out with you, she primps more than usual. Or she’s so bored and unconcerned she stalls to the last minute. Make up your mind.
Dames that pull the share-a-date gag are carbolic acid. Give ’em the air when they do this: The evening is half over; suddenly she remarks that she’s got to go. “Why, dear,” says she, “I told you earlier I had this date, but to show you how much I care for you I ducked him all these hours to spend them with you.” The malarkey!
When a doll tells you she couldn’t get a job in the cabaret chorus because the boss tried to get fresh with her, it’s a phony. There’s such a shortage of pretty femmes who dance that managers would rather hire them than make love to them—paying up to $100 a week, two shows a night, six days a week—and saying “Please.”
Don’t try to start a conversation with the pretty pigeon at the end of the bar. She’s the bartender’s bim and no stray can steal her.
When your doll excuses herself to go to the powder room—a few minutes after she nods to the sleek dark musician—watch out that she doesn’t give you a powder.
23. The Noted and the Notorious
A big shot is just a pain in the neck to the average New Yorker, who has seen them all and seen them come and go. He is a nuisance who has to be endured; a nuisance because he gets in front of the line, has the best tables, blocks entrances with his car and generally makes himself obnoxious.
New York reeks with very important people. Most, of course, aren’t celebrities. They mind their own business and try to forget their fame.
But, if a New Yorker can take or leave his notables, a muzhik can’t. Next to the Empire State and Radio City, V.I.P.’s are the tallest things on his agenda, and if it’s your hard luck to nursemaid one, you’ve got to take him to one place where he can feed his obsession. And many celebs are only too anxious to oblige.
There’s a prosperous firm in town called Celebrity Service, which, for a fee, advises just which celebrities are where and when. Subscribers, in addition to newspapers, press agents and high pressure salesmen, often include fan clubs.
If the sidewalk outside a public place is filled with moronic-looking imbeciles of both sexes, grasping autograph books and candid cameras, it’s a pretty safe bet someone whom they consider important is inside or expected.
Exhibitionistic hams love it and you can find them with their silly smirking faces at any hour around the clock.
These are some of the places where they hang out:
Algonquin Hotel—Lunch place of the la-de-dah literary set.
Barberry Room—Socialites, for dinner.
Blair House—Broadway and sports figures.
Colony—Top money mob, for lunch and dinner.
Copacabana—Show and sport crowd, at midnight and 2 A.M.
Copa Lounge—Show, radio, sport and press crowd, 12:30 to 4 A.M.
El Boraccho—Show, screen and society glamor gals, at dinner.
El Morocco—Top movie stars, international society, rich wolves, Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Dinner until 4 A.M.
Larue—Social climbers.
Leon & Eddie’s—Ditto, Sundays, after midnight.
Lindy’s (old)—Sporting and racing crowd, lunch and dinner.
Lindy’s (new)—Song-writers and comedians, dinner and after theatre.
Luchow’s—Tammany politicos, Mencken and Nathan, opera and theatrical.
Moore’s—Movie executives and stars, sports, political and Broadway headliners.
Reuben’s—Broadway mob, after 4 A.M.
Sardi’s—The drama (pronounced draymah) bunch at lunch and dinner and after theatre.
Stork Club—Politicians, columnists—Walter Winchell, always—producers and movie bunch, lunch, cocktails, dinner, until 4 A.M.
Toots Shor’s—Broadway, especially radio, and sporting bunch for lunch and dinner.
Twenty-One—Hollywood, Broadway and semi-society, for lunch and dinner.
Other places where celebrities can be viewed include the Metropolitan Opera House, especially on opening nights, when all the sables, stomachers and high hats turn out.
Almost every theatrical opening brings out a few celebs, though only at events like the première of an expensive musical comedy or a show with Katharine Cornell, the Lunts or Tallulah Bankhead, do you find more than the regulars.
24. There Is No Society
If this title seems an overstatement, you may have something. But, as far as your eye can see, it is almost categorically true.
There is a Social Register, published and revised annually. Its standards for selection are vague and the private corporation which sets them doesn’t play according to its own precedents. Its principal excuses for continued existence are that it pays off, as every snob in town feels it is an essential household article, and it is the sweetest sucker list ever compiled for peddlers, panders, climbers and promoters.
The younger generation of what was once New York society has gotten largely out of hand. Its typical proponent is Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco Stokowski, who in her teens disported herself at bars, heavily made up, one wedgie on the rail and a foot-long cigarette holder between fingers with crimson mandarin nails. To make the picture perfect, her then-beloved mother was drinking with her.
Debutantes (who rarely have debuts any more) are largely silk-lined bobby soxers. They wear slacks and sweaters out loud and mingle with tea-dancers and gin-garglers in the more expensive but no more exclusive drop-ins.
The musty, crusty Old Guard is dwindling with death and high taxes. The few who have retained their aristocratic bearing go deeper and deeper into seclusion. But even they are smudged with the sins of modernity which penetrate all walls and past all butlers. Not so long ago, one of our dozen foremost real society matrons was committed to an insane asylum. The husband of an equally blue-blooded top-drawer grand dame was beaten to death by her gigolo when he walked in on them.
The in-betweeners, neither young nor old, make pitiful pretense of youthfulness, dance until they are lame and find dignity too old-fashioned for words—the kind of words they use.
Many women born to social position are horning into politics, not a few radical. It’s smart to talk red and the son of the late head of J.P. Morgan & Company is one of the loudest of this contingent.
Divorces among the social names are becoming as commonplace as they are in Hollywood.
As a backwash of the war, New York was invaded by many rich refugees and stranded titled bums. The latter found doors wide open for them.
What is left of Inanity Fair is on view rarely and only in a few spots. Great palaces have been razed or turned into dressmakers’ shops or offices. Increased real estate values, hardships with help, murderous income and inheritance taxes and the disinclination of the younger members to follow the old and more gracious ways have made mausoleums of the mansions.
When these fortresses of fashion fell, society went underground. A few Knickerbocker clans, from hidden retreats, still resist attempts at intrusion by war profiteers, black marketeers and that mixed miscellany of the gossip columns—Café Society. Contrary to general belief, that is not a new institution, though for generations it was regarded from above in about the same light as a daughter of a good family who had borne twins out of wedlock.
It originated toward the end of the golden 90’s, and its father was the esoteric Harry Lehr, successor to Ward McAllister, social arbiter supreme, creator of the great Mrs. William Astor’s sacred 400.
Lehr had at one time been the kingpin of those since-vanished Americans, the wine (champagne) agents. It never got out of his blood, though he lofted into the social stratosphere. Perhaps as a prank or caprice or a reversion to type, on a Sunday night he induced Mrs. Astor to attend a dinner he gave at Sherry’s, then at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. That night Café Society was born.
Next morning, a newspaper published this astonishing lead:
“What are we coming to? Mrs. Astor at Sherry’s table d’hôte! I never dreamt it would be given to me to gaze on the face of an Astor in a public dining room.”
Next day, all the newspapers featured the epoch-making feast. One society editor wrote:
“When I saw Mrs. Astor in coquettish raiment of white satin, with the tiniest headdress, at Sherry’s, dos-à-dos almost with Lillian Russell, I could scarcely believe my eyes. She seemed to enjoy it and nodded her head to the ragtime tunes. She wore her famous pearls and was a stunning sight.”
Lehr was a crony of Tom Wanamaker, who owned an apartment above Sherry’s. He gave Harry the use of a beautiful suite and arranged for him to eat on the cuff in the café and entertain friends there, likewise. His historic dinner to Mrs. Astor was a shill job, to break the ice for social patronage. Night clubs follow the same device today to pump up brilliant opening nights.
Mrs. Astor undoubtedly had no suspicion of Lehr’s object, but she gave the royal nod to the first big break in the fences, which eventually permitted an infiltration of Manhattan Okies into her own 400, which expanded the circle so widely that with every year it meant less and less as it grew more and more.
Perhaps the most conspicuous disintegration is visible at a glance at the Metropolitan Opera House. Première nights in the golden days were glittering spectacles, with the women of the Astor, Vanderbilt, Drexel, Gould and other proud dynasties wearing Paris gowns and radiant tiaras, and the newspapers covering the show avidly.
Today such events are drab. Anybody with the coin can buy a box in the Diamond Horseshoe. Night club managers, Broadway gamblers, cloak-and-suit salesmen entertain where formerly only meticulously screened millionaires basked in their own glory, a thousand sets of glasses trained on them from the seats of the lowly. Now strangers in business suits and women in frocks tilt back in the front chairs, originally reserved for ladies only, and rest their feet on the storied railing.
Among the last top-name regulars were Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Orme Wilson, who shared Box 3 on different nights. Newport’s famous spinster sisters, Edith and Maude Wetmore, occasionally occupy their Box 5. The Duchess de Talleyrand, née Anna Gould, retains her box, but rarely uses it. The Morgan family gave up theirs seasons ago. Most of the ladies who own rich gems no longer wear them—they’re afraid of stick-ups.
The most conspicuous display is put on by Ganna Walska, who has a box on the north—the unfashionable—side. Wearing emeralds as large as limes, she is rococo in dress and demeanor and is usually attended by minor diplomats and her latest husband. She never made society, though she married one millionaire and two multi-multimillionaires. The first, which was her second, was an elderly New York physician to whom she went because she thought a growth in her throat interfered with her ambition to be a diva. He didn’t cure her throat, but he married her, conveniently died and left her a home and her first million. This girl, who had sung in mid-European cabarets, was soon pursued by Harold McCormick (then married to the daughter of John D. Rockefeller); and Alexander Smith Cochran, even wealthier, the Yonkers carpet king.
Ganna decided to take a trip to Europe and both her suitors made the boat. McCormick was still married, so she took Cochran, who spent a fortune on repeated efforts here and abroad to make her a prima donna. When he failed, she blew him for McCormick, who had gotten his divorce and taken time out for a monkey-gland operation. McCormick was the foremost subsidizer and patron of the Chicago Opera Company, one of the principal heirs to the McCormick harvester fortune. But he couldn’t get her in that troupe and she soon waltzed out on him. (She was born with some unpronounceable Polish name and was nicknamed “Walska,” meaning “waltzer,” because she sang waltz songs to the accompaniment of a gypsy fiddler in Budapest.)
When last heard from, she was being sued for alimony by her sixth husband, a yoga practitioner who told her that his mysterious powers would bring forth her voice. She said she had been persuaded to believe that while she stood on her head.
First nights of old brought forth beautiful Mrs. George Gould, the former Edith Kingdon, and her friends. Now the lobbies are jammed with cigarette smokers overflowing to the sidewalks, and police reporters recognize more patrons than can the society reporters.
A recent première saw raffish exhibitionism that would have shamed Whitechapel fishwives.
Betty Henderson, a dowager past 70, in the opera bar, planted a leg on a table, showing more than plenty, and shouted, “What has Dietrich got that I haven’t got?” She was probably plastered and she is a Newport top-drawer hostess, worth dozens of millions.
Another elderly jewel-rack walked the balcony during intermission, puffing a big, black cigar. Maybe she was trying to smoke herself sober.
One matron arrived with two bodyguards, who stalked and sat on either side of her, making even more conspicuous her cables of pearls and her movie-marquee display of diamonds.
But the upper crust still exists.
The great private ballrooms are no more, so the fashionables give dances and receptions at the Colony Club (not to be confused with the Colony Restaurant). For women only, this is one of the last stands of exclusiveness—so snazzy that non-members, guests, must enter by the side door. Only those who belong may use the Park Avenue portal or the main elevator within.
The Union and Knickerbocker Clubs are as snooty as the day they were founded. To increase income they instituted ladies’ nights, when members may invite wives, daughters and guests to dine. The Metropolitan Club, founded by the first J.P. Morgan for the rich but outré rejected by the Union, has let down its bars, as have other smart clubs.
The Horse Show was another brilliant event in the golden age, but blue-blooded humans don’t patronize it as enthusiastically as before. Fashionable women who do now affect sports togs. Those who cling to dressy traditions are stared at curiously.
In the eras of rubberneck wagons, visitors got their money’s worth. Men shouted through megaphones untruthful descriptions of famous mansions. Provincials thrilled when they reached Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The four corners were sites of baronial citadels.
On the northwest corner stood the great château of Cornelius Vanderbilt, with its iron-grilled garden in the rear. On the northeast was the white marble residence of Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs. On the southeast was the somber castle of Collis P. Huntington, and on the southwest the Moorish-windowed retreat of William C. Whitney. Today, commercial buildings have replaced them all.
The great double mansion of Mrs. William Astor and her son, John Jacob, dominated upper Fifth Avenue at 65th Street. Its walls beheld entertainments that rivaled those of oriental potentates. Its most luxurious feature was a huge bathtub, carved from a single block of Carrara marble, with gold spigots shaped like dolphins’ heads. Mrs. Jack Astor, née Ava Willing, America’s most celebrated society beauty, now Lady Ribblesdale, laved herself there in eau de cologne. The architecturally impressive Temple Emanu-el now stands where all this was.
The white mansion of Mrs. Oliver Belmont, at 51st Street and Madison Avenue, is now the Administration Building of the Catholic Archdiocese. The brownstone Jay Gould town house, at Fifth Avenue and 47th Street, where shouting thousands clamored for the life of the Wall Street operator on historic Black Friday, is a furniture store. The famous Bertie Goelet home, a block away, was recently razed.
The largest private residence in the city, the brownstone palace at 640 Fifth Avenue, where Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt entertained royalty and the other elect, was sold to the English Astors and has since been demolished. Its famed marble mantelpieces and interior decorations were auctioned to Hollywood producers. An office building was erected on its site. Mrs. Vanderbilt, undaunted, carries on in a smaller house at 1048 Fifth Avenue.
On the upper stretch of this boulevard are the magnificent ménages of Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, Dr. A. Hamilton Rice, Mrs. Hamilton McTwombly, Mrs. William Hayward, Julia Berwind, Mrs. W. Watts Sherman, and the garden-enclosed, garishly grandiose show-place of the late Andrew Carnegie. The Carnegies are not gregarious and few fashionables have seen the interior. Set in between them, in a regal mansion once owned by Whitney Warren, a society architect, and designer of Grand Central Terminal, was an all-night “bottle club” that dispensed liquid refreshment after closing time to a favored few.
On Riverside Drive, the gingerbread château of the late Charles M. Schwab which long stood empty has also been torn down. The Schwabs were not social, but musical. Their Sunday afternoon concerts when Melba, Tetrazzini and other prima donnas sang, were discussed even in Europe.
At 1 East 78th Street, on the corner of Fifth Avenue, is the white marble palace of Mrs. James B. Duke, mother of Doris. This great house has a magnificent collection of 18th century English paintings and drawings.
The Harrison Williamses live at 1130 Fifth Avenue. The beautiful Mona entertains there against a distinguished background of paneled rooms, her portrait by Dali, and several Goyas.
The Byron Foys live at 60 East 93rd Street, in one of the finest houses in the city. Built by Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt, it has the most beautiful French 18th century paneling. On its walls are portraits by great masters as well as family portraits painted by Simon Elwes.
But most socialites live in vast apartment houses or hotels. To see them in the flesh, one can peep in several restaurants. Tops is the Colony, on East 61st Street, just off Madison. It serves wonderful food at wonderful prices. Strangers find it difficult to get reservations. If one does, he will be far back, in the main room. Many regulars prefer it there, though, and you may land next to Winthrop Rockefeller, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Clark Gable, or, while she was here, you might have encountered Princess Martha of Norway.
Table No. 1, at the right of the entrance, was long reserved for the William K. Vanderbilts. After his death, his widow never returned. Now one is apt to find at this spot the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Mme. Frances, the Alfred Sloanes or young Lord Lascelles. Table No. 21 is bachelor-girl Beth Leary’s hangout. At No. 14, Mrs. George U. Harris and her charming daughter, Lucille, are on view. No. 34 is where Elsa Maxwell, Clare Boothe Luce or Dorothy Thompson sit, but not together. Table No. 4b is given to the Vincent Astors, to Lady Furness, or to society reporters.
Voisin is smart, but far more conservative, and none of the faces would mean anything to the uninitiated.
To El Morocco goes the International Set.
The remaining few aristocrats bide their time, believing and hoping for a revival which will never come. But they are curious. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt visited the Stork Club once. Mrs. Hamilton McK. Twombly went to dinner at the Monte Carlo ONCE. And that vital nonagenarian, Colonel Creighton Webb, has been to a night club twice.
Society departments still appear in the newspapers, a habit the editors fear to shake off. But their content is mostly betrothals and weddings of people few know—no charity balls, no formal functions, no musical soirées, no tally-ho outings, polo or fox hunts in season.
In another year or two, a new superior set may arise—composed of union labor leaders, rising reds and affluent Africans.
Until then, Society will go like the gallant G.A.R.—doomed by the toll of time.
25. Hoodlums’ Hierarchy
When this chapter first appeared in print in 1948, they said we were nuts. The following year, when we wrote Chicago Confidential, we expanded on the subject of the organized underworld. That made our critics hysterical.
But the findings of the Kefauver Committee, which got its original inspiration from these books, proved how right we were. In fact, the Senate Crime Committee’s final report was practically a plagiarism of Chicago Confidential, and Washington Confidential.
The rattle of the sawed-off tommy-gun, the whining whistle of the leaden slug and the thud of its impact against flesh and bone no longer are the sound effects in the orchestration of the gangsters’ theme song.
In the last decade an extraordinary metamorphosis has come over the characters who saw their big years of glamor and of terror during Prohibition and for a spell after repeal.
In truth, there are no gangsters, and there are no mobs. Yet, today’s underworld figures cast a far wider shadow and wield an incalculably greater influence on the life of the nation and its principal city.
Except for a few shabby neighborhood ruffians in squabbles about penny-ante rackets, such as fish-peddling, shakedowns of storekeepers, enforcing collections for double sawbuck loan sharks and similar bagatelles, the old and happy habits of killing each other have evaporated.
Everything is now organized into an institution a hundred times the proportion of any outfit dramatized by Raft and Robinson, including the empire of Al Capone, which is represented as a minor element in the set-up that grew out of it all.
Today we have the Syndicate!
Let it not be supposed that the hoodlums have gone straight. The Syndicate is almost entirely bossed by ex-convicts whose roots are in the lowest and most violent soil, where originated malignant morasses of the dirty trades that made America notorious around the world.
But they have grown up. They are fat and rich, they have wives who belong to clubs and children going to the best colleges. And they have brains.
These brains are like none other, because they combine the shrewdness and unscrupulous ruthlessness of high-powered criminals with the hired skill and concentration of first-line lawyers, accountants, business sharks and tax specialists.
Their operations and their holdings now run into the multimillions. And they range from the filthy numbers swindle in the Negro sections of most large cities to chains of America’s finest and biggest hotels, a building of their own in the heart of Wall Street, distilleries, breweries, real estate worth up to $5,000 a front foot, blue-chip stocks and bonds galore, night clubs and restaurants and the structures that house them.
At the same time, they juggle the Italian lottery, a gold mine which has had comparatively little publicity, and which flourishes in every city that has slums; call-girl vice, the last survivor of the woman traffic in New York and a prolific source of profit; the international narcotics trade, with a world-wide organization for supply abroad and distribution in the United States, which probably turns over more than $1,000,000 a day here; almost complete monopoly of American bookmaking, the slot-machine business where they can put on the fix, and the lion’s share of the gambling in Florida and Saratoga in season, in Nevada all the time and in various large centers where and when they can operate with comparative safety through political connections.
This strange hybrid of respectability and lawless monopoly was really born of Al Capone’s conviction on income-tax frauds.
It shocked the mobsters, who had thought themselves immune, into a realization that any one of them, without an hour’s notice, could be tapped for Alcatraz. Capone’s defense was childish and completely without preparation for a man who had proven himself not only big and bold, but crafty and cautious, when he had weighed the odds for and against himself.
There was in plain relief a record of big expenditures which he could not controvert and against which he could not prove income—that is, income which he had reported—and this was no trial for bootlegging or murder, but strictly a tax-evasion indictment.
It is an axiom accepted by thieves that you can’t do business with Uncle Whiskers.
There were a number of meetings, in Chicago, New York and elsewhere, and the principal subject was:
“How can we beat that Treasury rap?”
The government does not usually prosecute where there is a confusion or a possible one as to tax liability. It reviews a return, examines books, asks questions, snoops around and notifies the subject that his questionnaire was faulty and that he owes so and so much on such and such findings. He then pays up, or sometimes settles and is even given a leeway of time to make restitution. The worst that happens to him is that he kicks in.
These conferees represented leading mobsters from New York and Brooklyn, Newark, Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other points which do not seem important, but for strategic or geographical reasons developed gang personalities.
It was then and there decided that, instead of jamming their thousand-and ten-thousand-dollar bills into strong boxes, they would form a pool and invest in sound enterprises. In these they got actual, tangible, negotiable securities. They engaged the best management, often retaining the executives of properties they bought.
Then came the war and everything flourished and multiplied—everything honest and dishonest.
Their assets snowballed. Now they run into incalculable figures.
Every member has his exact “piece”—from the take of a prostitute summoned in the night, to the income on Park Avenue, State Street and Hollywood Boulevard frontage.
Any man who owns 2 per cent is a millionaire. The principal participant is said to own 7½ per cent and he is now the richest man in Italy. He is, of course, Charles “Lucky” Luciano.
When Luciano, a swarthy Sicilian with a drooping eye, who had been a pickpocket, a pimp, a collector, a gun-toter for his betters and in time the top racketeer of the United States, was convicted by District Attorney Tom Dewey, it was said that he was railroaded and that he was guilty of everything except what he was convicted for—peddling women.
He was guilty of them all and that, too. But Dewey, with his eye looking far ahead, realized that this was the most spectacular path and he took it and followed it through.
It was the same Dewey, as governor, who shortened Luciano’s sentence at Dannemora under circumstances never plausibly explained. It was published that Luciano had provided the government, then at war, with priceless information about the Italian underworld, which had helped us in the invasion. It was even bruited that he would get a medal of honor. This was all pure hokum, invented by the paid press agent of the syndicate in New York, which maintains a year-round public-relations employe who earns his $300 a week if he manages to get in one choice item, such as the above, in a year.
It was no political deal, which also was intimated, but which is as erroneous as the balderdash about Luciano’s service to his adopted country.
Luciano got an excessive sentence, running up to 30 years. It was not contemplated that he would ever sit out all of that. The Italians, who are rapidly overtaking the Irish as the leading power in Tammany and in Republican councils as well, had put on heavy pressure to get amnesty for the little mug, who was the head of the Sicilian Society in the United States, a branch of the ancient Mafia.
After Luciano was deported, he turned up in Havana.
This was kept out of the newspapers for a while, but the entire syndicate was notified and there was a concentration in the Cuban capital, where 36 rooms had been engaged in Havana’s leading hotel.
Meanwhile, the FBI and Federal Bureau of Narcotics tapped his phone-calls to the mainland and definitely established that he was still in undisputed command of the multifarious and nefarious operations of the infamous Unione Siciliano.
Columnist Robert Ruark sprung the story in a column which appeared in the second section of his newspaper and was treated as minor information. But the fact that he had seen Luciano holding court in the Havana Casino, surrounded by glamor gals, underworld and Hollywood celebrities, including Ralph Capone, the Fischetti Brothers and Frank Sinatra caused a national sensation, as a result of which the United States government formally complained to the Cuban government that Luciano’s presence on the nearby island meant a big development in the dope business of the United States. Washington had the goods.
Cuba thereupon deported him back to Sicily, where at this writing he is dispensing charity and undoubtedly buying and scheming great influence in public affairs.
During his incarceration, his dividends as well as his crooked profits were meticulously deposited to his credit. There was some difficulty transferring money to him in Italy during the last year of the war, and in that period some $2,000,000 accrued to him; that sum was brought to him in cash on a Pan-American clipper from Miami to Havana and carried in the hand of a well-known crooner of Italian extraction, with underworld connections past and present, guarded by two of the Fischettis, cousins of Al Capone.
The New York manipulator for Lucky, who visited him while he was held at Ellis Island for deportation, is Frank Costello. He is now the mightiest of the syndicate personnel, with an uncanny genius for mixing into highly important affairs with bigwigs in various spheres.
Costello also was born in Sicily, came to New York in his youth, had some juvenile delinquency troubles and did a stretch before he was out of his teens. He was part and parcel of gangster developments in a small way until his talents brought him to the top.
He was engaged in the slot-machine business in New York until the late Fiorello LaGuardia had his one-armed bandits smashed by police axes. Costello, teaming with “Dandy Phil” Kastel, who also had counted the bars on a cell, took a trial trip to Louisiana, then the one-man dominion of Huey Long.
They say a million dollars passed into the hands of the Huey Long inner group—and not a bad investment, for the first year’s profits, reported for Federal taxes, exceeded $1,200,000. Anyway, the Louisiana legislature voted a bill legalizing slot machines, and Costello and Kastel organized several inter-involved corporations with innocent names to run them. There was practically no competition—and very little shooting; Long simply passed the word around that the concession belonged to these two gentlemen from New York.
As a concrete example of how the tax situation is manipulated by intricate items of overlaying accounts, it was shown when Costello was hauled up for taxes apparently due, that the slot machines belonged to one corporation, that they were operated by a second, which rented the locations from a third.
Costello eventually settled for $600,000 cash. Among other little entries about which the government inquired were payments of $200,000 a year to each of his wife’s two brothers, as salaries in different slot-machine corporations. This transparent cover-up was laughable—but it was judged not criminal. Costello pleaded that he had been misadvised—excuse it, please—and he wrote a check.
This is only a ripple on the ocean of hundreds, probably thousands, of holding companies organized in various states and under various directorships and local laws, through which flow the vast garnerings of the syndicate from coast to coast, with an accounting system which in any emergency can explain and make good any entry, and thus avoid the peril of the penitentiary.
There is an intercommunicating liaison among the lawyers, many of whom are engaged for their exclusive services by the year, and all supervising the main channels and watching hawklike to guard against letting their employers become involved in actionable tax delinquencies.
As for all other matters, they can be handled locally. The syndicate owns plenty of judges, strong men in both parties and great fluid assets. It is no secret that money can square anything in the United States.
Luciano was no peanut when Dewey ruined him. But there are few Deweys. And Luciano had not yet learned to cover his tracks. The money came in so fast and his drag was so good, he felt immune, but Tom Dewey wanted to be President of the United States, and Lucky hadn’t thought of that.
Luciano had been taken for a ride in the orthodox manner, between two executioners, and had come out alive. They left him for dead in a lonely spot, but he beat it.
After that he felt that nothing could break him.
Like Samson, he was betrayed by infatuation for a doll. She was Gay Orlova, a fabulously beautiful, but plump, blonde White Russian refugee, who had come to Broadway and Earl Carroll’s choruses by way of Turkey.
Said by Carroll to be “the sexiest gal who ever worked for me,” Gay quickly found a protector in the late Theus Munds, rich and elderly Wall Street broker, who went whole hog with diamonds, furs and limousines.
During the Florida season of 1935, Gay appeared as a featured show girl in the floor show Carroll presented in the flamboyant Palm Island Casino, then operated by Bill Dwyer, a Prohibition-time big-shot rumrunner, on Al Capone’s private island.
There she met Luciano. Lucky, who had had the pick of girls, never had had one so glamorous—or amorous. He moved right in.
Gay was proud of her conquest. When asked by one of your reporters, “What about Munds?” she replied, “Oh, Theus is O.K. But all he’s got is money. Lucky, he’s sinister!”
When that was printed, it was the first intimation Dewey’s detectives had of the romance. When Gay returned to New York, they tapped her wires, and thereby traced Luciano to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he was hiding out.
After Lucky’s conviction, Uncle Sam deported Gay as an undesirable alien. When last heard of she was a Paris mannequin, still beautiful, still in love with Luciano, still bitter at your reporters—and trying to get a passport to Italy.
His conviction was another lesson to his kind. It showed them that, with all their accumulated power, they were not sure of their liberty.
Luciano had conducted his vice operations from a duplex suite in the Waldorf Towers. These activities were traced right into his two manicured hands. The syndicate came to the conclusion that that, too, must be changed.
Now the important stockholders delegate everything illegal. In one season the outfit netted $6,000,000 in Miami gambling houses. But these were all run by stooges, few of whom knew to whom the money eventually went, and none of whom knew how or where it went—into corporations with strange and remote names, into sinking funds, reserves, depreciation allocations and undivided profits.
Corporations can be sued and can be taken, but they cannot be locked in a prison.
That, briefly, is the story of the gangsters’ progress, one of the biggest-monied combinations in the nation. That is the reason why the shootings have stopped and top men are no longer put on the spot.
“Bugsy” Siegel and Binaggio, slain after this chapter first appeared in print, were exceptions. Benny, who got his nickname because the boys said he was “nuts,” had threatened to blow the whistle on the syndicate when Luciano refused to bail him out of his $6,500,000 white-elephant gambling casino-hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He was put on the spot because he refused to be “organized”; preferred old-fashioned gang methods learned when he was the No. 1 torpedo for Murder, Inc. Binaggio, too, double-crossed the boys.
No independent operator can scratch the surface. Competition isn’t even a hearty joke. The boys have everything so tightly tied up, they work so far ahead and have so many trained eyes and ears, that they can take long vacations, enjoy a hangover as well as the next man and sleep in reasonable security under silk canopies in silk pajamas.
26. Hello Sucker!
Three different movie outfits, at three different times, took the trouble to consult with Jack Lait about authentic incidents in the life of Texas Guinan. He gave freely and at great length in response. We later saw “Incendiary Blonde,” supposed to be based on her life. It wasn’t a bad picture. But it wasn’t a good Guinan.
Tex was hardly incendiary, and wasn’t even a blonde by nature. The only three men in her life were—first, a quiet New England artist; second, a sedate California writer; and third, in later days, a bookkeeper, no less, who used to beat her up and who scrammed with a lot of her assets.
Texas and Lait were good friends back in 1913, when she was making two-reel, two-gun westerns. That’s when she acquired the “Texas” handle. Her name was Mamie. She had a little house near Hollywood, with Lottie Pickford and Mabel Normand. Lew Cody, Paul Armstrong and Lait would drive out there to play stud poker. Texas came east to join a musical show. Abe Erlanger, king of the legit, went soft for a little pug nose in the chorus and took Texas’ song away and gave it to the youngster. To make it worse, he wanted Texas to support her with an obligato. Lait stood on the stage of the Illinois Theatre, Chicago, when Tex told Erlanger off pretty in the presence of the entire troupe.
She was fired instanter and barred from every branch of theatricals except vaudeville. Lait wrote her an act, with four people and a horse. At the climax, Tex on the horse leaped in through the window and saved the post office from being robbed. Her name wasn’t good enough for the big time, and she played the Loew circuit. Transportation ate up most of the salary. So Tex got a job as a hostess in the Beaux Arts, New York, opposite Bryant Park, high up by elevator, sort of a secluded spot after the uptown speaks were emptied. There her personality caught on.
Larry Fay, the sentimental gangster, had gone mad over a lovely little ingénue whose name shall not be mentioned, because it might embarrass her and it wasn’t her fault. Larry pestered her so, she ran away to Florida and took a cheap night club engagement. This gave Larry a big idea, which made Texas Guinan, quite inadvertently.
The Friars Club, about to open its own building, was moving out of its temporary quarters on 45th Street, near Sixth Avenue. Fay leased the building for five years. His plan was to set up a magnificent club which he thought would lure back to New York the gal he was nuts about, if he offered her star billing and a big salary. He hired Tex as emcee, with a heavy guarantee. He called it the El Fey Club so it could be identified with him and still not carry his name, which was on record where it wouldn’t help. He began frantically telephoning the girl in Florida. She turned him down and after the first call refused to answer. So here he was, stuck with a five-year lease on a five-story building and a contract with Guinan.
Here comes the most interesting incident, which has never been truly told and which has been untruly told for years everywhere.
As each show went on, Larry would stand in the extreme rear, where it was dark and where he—always in plain blue serge suit, white silk shirt and black windsor tie—was inconspicuous. As Texas would mount her chair (that was how she worked) she would look across the long room at him. And, thinking of the lease, her pay, the flop of his romantic objective, she would cast a glance right over the heads of the audience and call out—to him—“Hello, sucker!”
Through some phenomenal human quirk, every other sucker in between thought it was addressed to him. And, as strangely, every man liked it. It became her trademark. Long after Larry passed out of her picture and was killed on a New Year’s morning, she still featured it—his only monument.
Texas played to a strange conglomeration—Wall Street, the world of art and letters, the Blue Book lorgnette set, New York’s usual concentration of out-of-town buyers, plus never-failing underworlders. These were all paying guests. There was very little passed out on the cuff in any of her deadfalls. There were very few beefs about atrociously phony “champagne” at $35 a bottle, and some of the bootleggers who made her Scotch and gin at perhaps $1 a quart came to her dives and paid $15 a quart for their own hogwash.
There was something in that “Hello, sucker!” which softened up a man and made him what she called him. She always had a flock of lovely young girls, but no customer ever got closer to them than seeing them on the floor. It was no place to pick up one on short notice. Texas watched over her kids like Diana guarded the doves on Olympus. Many a contented matron, perhaps now turning 40, may remember what a demon chaperon she was.
“Give the little girl a great big hand!” But that was all. Not a great big car; not even a sandwich.
She never got rich. She lived in a little flat on Eighth Street, which looked like a Chinese second-hand furniture store, where she had one servant. She certainly left no great sum. She dropped a wad in the stock market crash and had to hock her “ice,” in which she had sunk a bucket of bucks. She had thieves and thugs for partners and, though regarded as a shrewd operator, she was taken like Armour takes a sheep. From the moment she came to work at night, until daylight, she was on her job and had no time even to look at accounts. She could well have said “Hello, sucker!” talking to herself.
But she was dynamite as a drawing card. The sappos began laughing before they came in. They greased headwaiters heavily for ringside seats in front, and a few minutes later saw tables moved in front of them. The best act she ever put on was George Raft, doing a Charleston, which lasted a minute. Ruby Keeler broke through the barrier with her beauty and tap-dancing. Beyond this, there were practically no principals, except Guinan.
Yet, when the band struck up “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” her theme song, and the spotlight caught her scintillant smile and she shouted “Hello, sucker!” her customers were electrified, ecstatic. We have never known an exclamation from any person to carry the wallop that this impertinent quip packed when Guinan let go with it.
It is generally believed she got it from Wilson Mizner. Truth is, Bill Mizner got it from her!
27. No Pain, No Fun
The hotel hustler, age-old character more or less tolerated in the best institutions, making her hunting habitat in midtown lobbies and the various “peacock alley” passages, has become a police problem on grounds other than protection of morals.
In the main hotel sectors, she spurns the wage of service. She is generally a cold, calculating crook.
Her equipment is a small bottle of white crystals, chloral hydrate, a powerful concentrated hypnotic which will knock a man completely out in 15 minutes and keep him unconscious for some dozen hours.
This method requires that she be in the man’s room. She cannot take him to her own or to a neutral one, as he will wake up in due time, robbed of every nickel, his watch and ring, sometimes even some haberdashery.
A complaint, were the victim to regain consciousness anywhere but in his pro tem quarters, would set the dicks waiting for the lady to come home, if it were her place, or would convict a place that rented rooms to her as an assignation house, which in New York means lifting the license for keeps.
But, where traveling men, convention gatherers, visiting buyers and occasional migrants have accommodations, she combines in comparative safety the lure of her charms and the modus operandi of her larceny.
The flirtation is simple enough. The proposition comes in due course, usually in the cocktail lounge or café of the hotel. The acceptance is at first hesitant—she isn’t that kind, shouldn’t stay out long, but she has taken a fancy to the stranger (after she has worked out of him the information that he is stopping at the hotel and isn’t a permanent guest) and so, yes, she will go to his room—unaccustomed as she is to unconventional adventure—for a little while. He doesn’t dream how little time.
His room is not only her objective, but there is no other retreat.
Should he want to lead her somewhere else, he is stymied. All hotels are full up. Even if he got a handbag and tried to get into another haven with her, he would be asked for his reservation.
There are no more loose hotels specializing in such twosomes. In 1940, there were hundreds. Now there isn’t one. The war rush, the military police, the high rates for legitimate rentals turned them all respectable. They found that more profitable and kept it up.
Because of her system, she cannot take him to her abode or to any other which he can identify after his long snooze, even if she, a wise New York cookie, does know some side-street bed-house where a cheating clerk holds out a cubicle or two for quick turnovers.
So she plays quite helpless. She lives with her folks. Unless they go to his place—well, where else?
He takes the standard precautions of the seasoned wayfarer. He goes up alone, tells her to follow in five minutes and walk right in.
With few exceptions, the dreaded “Get that woman out of your room!” has gone the way of the one-buck blue plate. Guests are still protected, but not against their own peccadillos. The simp has pushed the little plunger so the knob will turn from the outside. The tough trollop, acting nervous and timid, but irresistibly tempted, enters.
He makes a grab. Oh—he mustn’t be so impulsive, so impatient. She is jittery and fluttery—natch, since she is doing what her breeding and better nature tell her she should never have yielded to.
A drink—one little drink to settle the nerves—and then—
He calls room service, even if he has a bottle in his bag. If he has seltzer, she can drink it only with ginger ale, or vice versa. When the waiter is called, she steps into the bathroom on his knock, and the cluck giggles and says he always takes two about that time of day. The waiter says lots of customers do, it’s getting to be a national habit. For that he gets a bill instead of a coin.
She has taken her purse into the bathroom with her, and when she can safely return she has the knockout dose held between the thumb and the palm of her gloved hand—she keeps the gloves on; no fingerprints.
She sits, then remembers she has left her handkerchief on the washstand—would he please get it? As he turns his back, she drops the tasteless, colorless grains into his drink, which dissolves them instantly.
They raise glasses. Here’s to crime! Skoal!
If he comes over for a grab right away, she holds him off. She wants to know—is he really married? Oh, dear, all attractive men are! She is a grass widow. Yes, she made a mistake, but what does a girl know when she’s 18, and unworldly? How about a cigarette? Is he sure the door is locked now? He makes sure.
By this time his eyes are heavy, his hands more so. He can’t understand—it’s been a hard day, of course, and last night—zowie! He’ll snap out of it in a minute. But he doesn’t.
She has stalled until a debilitating lethargy overcomes him. He sinks back, limp. She waits a few more minutes. She pokes him. No reaction. Then she goes to work. He may still see and know what she is doing. But he is paralyzed.
She goes through him, even taking off his shoes and socks, for she has learned that many a cautious cluck hides currency there. She frisks his trousers, vest and coat. Then she scrams.
Quite a number of official beefs to the cops have completely established every move. Though only an infinitesimal percentage of the total go to the police, these average a dozen a week, mostly at East 51st Street police station, which is in the district of most top-grade hotels.
The dicks often can name the dame on description. But, if they collar her, she gives them the horselaugh. No corroboration.
After a touch in one hotel, hustlers usually move on to others, to avoid running into the victim, though when they do, little can be done about it.
Time and again, when arrests are made, the bottle of chloral hydrate is found in the suspect’s handbag. That still isn’t convicting evidence.
Most of the saps, of course, really are married. And they are people of some standing back home. They will lie to avoid prosecution, which would invite publicity, even when the thieving broad is caught with their watches which have their full names engraved on the cases.
The drug, without which the entire clockwork would stand still, is not too difficult to get. Chloral hydrate is a recognized and respectable anodyne, in the pharmacopoeia, prescribed for quick insensibility when a patient has convulsions, and in drastic cases as a painkiller. It cannot be had ethically except on a physician’s prescription, but there are underworld druggists as there are underworld medics, and both serve out the stuff knowing how it will be used.
An overdose can be fatal, and women who feel secure in mulcting men do not want to chance a murder rap, which would set the bulls working in full cry. So they often have the powder put up in capsules with just the right dose, and they open the gelatinous envelope, spill the contents into the hand and drop the container into the drain.
All this gives you some idea of the intensive forethought and preparation expended to turn the ancient and never-too-honorable calling from whoring to robbery.
While the two have long been associated, only of late has it become the custom not only to give the sucker no even break, but no break at all. A glib grifter in this streamlined system could work it indefinitely and retain her virtue.
Newspapers continually dig up new versions of the “meanest thief.” We nominate this one!
PART THREE
THE LOWDOWN
(Confidential!)
28. But You’ve Got to Get Here First
The trouble with most books about New York is that their authors seem to think you are already here, before you begin to read the first page.
Though this is the atomic age, with transport planes winging through the air at 400 miles an hour, no one has yet materialized a magic carpet.
We take it for granted you plan to travel by one of the conventional means: train, plane, bus, ship or car. Allowances also will be made for hitchhikers and those who ride the rods. New York is no place for those who come by motorcycle or camel or trailer. There are no trailer parks or motels or roadside rooming houses in or near the city.
At this stage of the game, we will not inquire into your motives, though later on we expect you to do a bit of soul searching—confidential—to discover in which category you fit.
If you are attracted by the glimmer of the lights or the gold of the markets, it’s all the same to us. But first you’ve got to get here.
Choice space on de luxe trains, planes and ships will always be at a premium. It was so before the war and it is now. We assume you are coming here first class. And, coming for business or pleasure, we strongly recommend it.
If for the former, there’s nothing like putting on a front. It also helps you feel important to yourself. If for the latter, why not have all the conveniences?
If traveling by plane (and it’s your first flight) try to go nonstop. You will find that once aloft, you have no sensation of flying; it’s the landings and take-offs that jitter the tyro.
If you’re coming by train, try to get a private bedroom. Never take anything smaller than a drawing room for two people. (Most experienced travelers demand a compartment for one.)
(INSIDE STUFF: But the prettiest gals usually travel in coach trains or on the cheaper Pullmans. Passengers on extra-fare trains are almost entirely businessmen and some couples. It is difficult to make friends on such trains as the 20th Century and the Super Chief, because most passengers keep to their rooms for the entire trip. On the other hand, those who ride the more moderately priced trains are friendlier and easier to talk to. Travel etiquette does not prevent you from talking to the sweet sister in the next seat. But if you do, you are expected to invite her into the diner and pick up her check.)
Federal and many state laws make it illegal to offer a premium for plane or train reservations. But it is no crime, of course, to tip a hotel porter liberally for securing same.
Railroad and airline employes are forbidden to accept gratuities for tickets. But, during the war, experienced travelers found a legal joker which they are still using.
If you have difficulty getting a reservation to New York, go up to your local ticket agent and say to him, “I bet you $20 you can’t get me a compartment on the Century tomorrow.”
He doubtless will take you up.
And, strangely enough, he will win.
Neither railroads nor inland steamship lines are curious about the lady who accompanies you into your berth, compartment or drawing room.
If you pay for and buy your ticket for two, in advance, no questions are asked, nor does the line have authority to eject you if you forgot to buy her a wedding ring.
(INSIDE STUFF: Though Pullman employes may request the lady you met on the train to leave your room, they seldom do.)
(INSIDE STUFF: It is a felony to transport females across state lines for immoral purposes.)
(INSIDE STUFF: Adultery is a felony in New York State. But there hasn’t been a prosecution in more than 100 years.)
Experienced travelers carry as little baggage as possible. Furthermore (especially if you’re female) you’ll want to buy most of your clothes in New York.
Domestic airlines limit you to 40 pounds of luggage per person with a stiff surcharge for extras.
Tipping is not permitted on airlines and your stewardess will be insulted if you offer her one. But you are expected to remunerate the red cap porters who carry your luggage from cab to plane or airport bus.
On the contrary, your every move by train requires you to shell out.
Though most amateur travelers know they are supposed to tip red caps, Pullman porters and dining-car waiters, few realize the importance of slipping the diner steward a few bucks, five at least for a couple is usual if there are several meals.
Unless you have ridden with him before and he knows you give, you should hand him his as soon as you enter the diner for your first meal.
At a cost of a few dollars you will change your trip, especially a long one, from an experience in inferiority to one that’s at least tolerable.
The non-tipper stands in line for a table, eats only what’s on the menu (if still in stock) and gets the general pushing around he deserves.
But for the tall tipper, the steward turns the car inside out, whispers of steaks, mountain trout, and front-riding seats and tables from which the parsimonious will be barred.
The warning given all prospective voyagers in naïve old days, to beware of gamblers on trains, is no longer believed generally necessary. Human nature hasn’t changed, but trains have.
As already pointed out, passengers in de luxe cars keep to their rooms, whereas those who mix more are in the cheaper coach trains and therefore probably not considered bait by the predatory.
But watch your luggage in stations, especially for the old switch racket, in which the operator substitutes a bag resembling yours, stuffed with old telephone books, for your own valuable belongings.
At this writing, liquor is not sold or served to stock passengers on domestic planes except Northwest Airlines and it is against rules to tote your own hip pocket flask to drink while aloft. But no one cares if you do.
Most through trains carry club cars, in which excellent hooch is sold at moderate prices. Liquor is not sold in club cars or diners while traveling through dry states (such as Kansas) or on Sunday in many wet states (such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana).
If you can’t do without your firewater, consult the ticket agent before boarding the train. Most club cars stop serving at 11 P.M., but if you tip the porter he’ll provide you in advance with sufficient individual drink bottles and set-ups to keep you happy all the way.
Club cars, incidentally, are the only ones in which you can meet people on de luxe trains. If you fancy a gal sitting in one, etiquette permits you to offer a drink.
Dolls who don’t want such overtures shouldn’t sit in club cars alone.
Of all travelers, the bus passenger finds himself at once in the most congenial crowd and the most uncomfortable surroundings. But, for the young or the adventurous, it holds prospects seldom found in planes or trains.
Before you’ve gone 100 miles you are addressing the person next to you by the first name. If it should be an overnight trip, and she is cute and young, the odds are you’ll be cuddling to keep warm after the lights are dimmed and the others drop off.
If it’s a two-day trip, you’ll be engaged to marry before you reach the Hudson, and probably will have to.
The experts on such things tell us you find the prettiest girls (and handsomest men) on buses.
The dolls from the far, small places, who come to Gotham for gold and glory, to be chorines or models, seldom have more than a few dollars, which must be stretched to the limit. The bus is the economy way.
Joe Russell, a New York press agent, has achieved some local fame for usually being the first to escort the latest young innocent beaut in town.
We investigated to find out how he got them and learned that he made a practice of haunting the bus terminals and talking to the pretty ones who alighted.
He asked them if they came to get in show business and usually got an affirmative answer. Then he offered to help them, and sometimes did, but not before he had a chance to show them off before the wolves at the hot spots.
Many of these gals advanced; a few are stars.
When the others discovered his racket, some of them, too, began haunting bus stations. Our enterprising friend again jumped the gun.
He began going to Philadelphia, where he boarded a northbound bus from the deep south. It’s 100 miles from Philly to New York. Joe is a fast worker. Before the bus reached Newark, he had the names of all the likely squabs.
O.K. So you’re in New York now. If you came by plane, the airline limousine will transport you to the center of the city. Smart guys take a cab from the airport. It’s faster, and it’s as cheap or cheaper if two or more are riding. But if you arrived by train, you’ll face your first major problem trying to get a cab at Grand Central or Pennsylvania Terminal.
(INSIDE STUFF: New York cabs are permitted to carry no more than one party and no more than six passengers.)
Your redcap will be of great assistance, but you must let him know in advance that you’ll take care of him liberally if he puts you in a cab.
(The railroad exacts a charge of 25 cents for each unit carried. The redcap doesn’t get this. If you want him to get you a cab, promise him at least $1 for two bags.)
You may stand for an hour at the regular station loading platform. In Grand Central, smarties duck upstairs to Vanderbilt Avenue. At Pennsylvania, they go to the unloading platform instead of the loading one, for the same reason.
It is hoped you made your hotel reservation in advance, before leaving home, and got a wire confirming. New York has the worst housing shortage in history and no building program can overcome it before 1955.
But if you are an optimist and didn’t make arrangements, don’t ask strangers in stations to recommend a hotel or rooming house.
And never take a cab driver’s advice.
The Travelers’ Aid Society maintains a desk at all terminals where such information is free. Or else step into a phone booth and call the Hotel Association of New York.
Young people, especially girls, who do not know their way around, are especially invited to make use of the Travelers’ Aid facilities. It’s no disgrace, no confession of weakness. It’s protection. The public supports it.
Girls are warned not to talk to strangers who mosey up to them in stations.
If you know what hotel you’re bound for, do not allow the redcap or cab driver to steer you elsewhere.
If the cabbie argues, call a cop, or tell the driver to take you to a police station.
(INSIDE STUFF: Gotham’s hack drivers are an honest, intelligent lot, carefully investigated by the police before being given licenses, and seldom involved in crime. A bad one slips in only now and then.)
29. Room With Adjoining Blonde
There are “family” hotels in New York, where any woman is your wife. That just goes to show you the variety of accommodations in the Metropolis.
But try to get a room.
It is estimated that Gotham’s hostelries can sleep 200,000 guests. But we have a million daily visitors.
When the cab brings you to your hotel, try to look important. We realize that for many that’s not easy.
But if you flash big bills while paying the driver and give him a generous tip in view of the doorman, word will precede you before you reach the desk.
(INSIDE STUFF: New York cabbies spit on dime tippers. A quarter is legit, even for a quarter haul.)
You will now stand in front of the awesome functionary known as the room-clerk. Do not quail. Do not quake. Radiate confidence.
If there are no eavesdroppers, try the “I betcha” gag outlined for railroad tickets in the previous chapter.
Say “I betcha 20 bucks you can’t give me a room and bath.”
But if you think you’ll be overheard by others, try this stunt.
Palm a $20 bill in your hand. Reach out to the clerk, shake his flipper and say, “Hi ya, glad to see you again. You’ve got that reservation for Jones, haven’t you?”
For that 20, he will.
In normal times you can be choosey about your hotel, picking the one that suits your tastes and wallet. But now, thank high heaven if you get in a flop joint.
Generally speaking, the kind of yokels we spell with a capital “Y” prefer inns in the Times Square district. The tariffs are moderate and the location ideal for gawkers.
But smart visitors come over to Fifth, Madison, Park and Lexington Avenues. Businessmen quite often check in at hotels near the two rail terminals.
New York’s huge needle trade industry is centered around Penn Station. The printing trades cluster around Grand Central.
The chief hotels for women only are the Barbizon, the Allerton and the Martha Washington.1 At the Henry Hudson and others there are floors entirely reserved for women. The Y.W.C.A. provides less luxurious but comfortable accommodations.
Invariably, these hotels refuse to permit male visitors in guests’ rooms, but in case of illness, physicians are, of course, allowed to visit patients.
Until the management got wise, the favorite ruse of lovelorn couples pleasure bent was for the doll to notify the desk that she was ill and expecting her doctor.
Soon the pseudo-medico would arrive, carrying a black bag. Some gals got away with it... but no more. Now, when they say their doctor is coming, the hotel nurse remains in the room with the patient all through the “examination.”
Most hotels will not rent rooms to ladies and gents who check in without baggage, even though they offer to pay in advance.
(Inside Stuff: But practically every hotel lobby contains a drug or novelty store that sells paper-backed overnight bags, as low as 99 cents. Buy one, fill it with a dozen magazines, and you’re set.)
Hotels, of course, have no legal right to demand to see your wedding license. Suspicious couples are brushed off with the usual, “Sorry, no rooms.”
But if you call first, and are given a reservation by phone, then the hotel must accommodate you.
One large and famous New York hostelry was recently stuck for a huge settlement when a perfectly respectable married couple from the suburbs, caught in town over night, phoned for a room.
They were told to come right over. When the room clerk saw no baggage, he refused to permit them to register, though they offered to pay in advance. The irate husband insisted the lady was his wife, but the clerk turned up his nose.
Later, the guests’ attorneys proved to the management that it was costly to make such mistakes.
Before the war, many hotels operated OVERNIGHT CLUBS for their special guests, and by the time this appears in print, may be doing so again.
The privileges of these clubs included the right to check in at any hour of the day or night, with or without your wife, and without questions if you possessed no baggage other than the girl.
In that event, the hotel supplied pajamas, toothbrush, Kleenex, razor blades, etc., as well as feminine requisites, even intimate ones. Among the hotels with Overnight Clubs were the Waldorf, the Lexington, the Piccadilly, Plymouth and some branches of the Knott Chain.
Membership in these clubs was obtained by advance reference that could be checked or by being recommended by other members.
Application to hotel credit managers will enable you to open a charge account at most hotels and have bills sent to your home or office, in or out of town. You can cash checks, too.
(Inside Stuff: It is a specific crime to obtain lodging or food in a hotel with intent to defraud.... But hotels are obligated by common and statute laws to serve all comers to their capacity.... Guests may not be barred because of race or creed or the cut of their clothes.... But hotels are not required to cater to intoxicated or disorderly persons.... Their Association will spend a fortune to track down anyone who swindles them out of a few dollars.)
Most New York inns are liberal, adult in their attitude toward visitors of the opposite sex, even at night.
So long as you are quiet and orderly, and don’t shout or keep your radio on too loud, the house dick probably won’t bother you.
There is even some doubt among legal experts here whether New York hotels have the right to throw customers out into the street for the mere offense of entertaining gals or guys—as the case may be—in their rooms, because they failed to stop off at Niagara Falls.
(Inside Stuff: If you permit someone—even of the same sex—to occupy your room all night, without first registering him or her in at the desk, the hotel can prosecute you for defrauding it of the extra tariff charged for two in a room.)
In 1945, the house detective of a West Side hotel catering to tourists and the family trade, busted into a room occupied by a female guest—redheaded—because he saw a soldier enter it.
He found the couple in an embarrassing state of negligee.
The gal covered herself as well as she could, told the dick the man she was entertaining was her husband.
“Lady, I’ve heard that one before,” replied the flat-foot.
But here’s the pay-off: They were married. He was en route through town from one camp to another, had four hours between trains. It was in the afternoon, so she didn’t bother to check him in.
Both sued the hotel for fabulous sums. His was thrown out because he wasn’t a registered guest. But the courts awarded the gal a heavy judgment.
Hotels are, of course, required by law to provide every possible protection for the property and persons of guests. The innkeeper is not responsible for the loss of portable valuables such as jewels or money, unless checked or in safe-deposit boxes, furnished free on request.
When leaving your room, always double lock the door from the outside. While this precaution will not prevent a sneak thief from entering, it will enable police to determine, from the condition of the lock, whether it was an outside job or an inside one with a passkey.
Hotel lobbies are convenient places for lonesome people of either sex to find someone to help them forget their loneliness. But if you are NOT looking for adventure DO NOT talk to strangers in lobbies.
It’s wise not to mention your room number to strangers whom you meet in lobbies, and don’t answer a knock on your room door unless the visitor has first announced himself on the house phone.
Many a gal has been konked on the head and raped, and many a man has found himself knocked out and his valuables gone because they opened to a tap.
If you hear a disturbance in another room, don’t get helpful and join in. Phone the desk, or forget it.
(Inside Stuff: Switchboard operators at most hotels have been instructed by the management to listen in on your calls and report pertinent things they hear.
That’s how they get wise, even in the biggest hotels, when you have a visitor in your room, often before the visitor arrives.)
New York hotels are not set up for kids or dogs. Many will not accept guests with animals. Find out if yours will before bringing the mutt from home.
A show girl we know recently told us that only dumb girls prefer musicians. She said smart gals chose bartenders and captains of waiters for sweethearts, because these gentry always have money—and while she waited for them to finish work, she could drink champagne—at the boss’s expense.
But, said the cutie, the best of all guys—if a twerp is lucky enough to get one—is a hotel bellhop. The only trouble with that aristocracy, she continued, was that they were too snooty and hard to get. They have the pick of the hotel.
The bell captain is the kingpin. He knows everyone and everything, can get you liquor after closing, women, men, anything at any hour; find a pair of nylons, a traveling crap game, or clean diapers for your pride and joy.
Conveniences and necessities provided by this functionary are to be rewarded lavishly. Ask for him if you want extraordinary service.
It is difficult and dangerous to fall in with streetwalkers on the avenues, and next to impossible to locate a gambling den or a house of joy.
But the cops can’t put a man on every bellboy. Many of them become intermediaries for purveyors of the particular kind of surreptitious pleasure you may seek; many also use them when the end in view isn’t particularly sinful.
For instance, they are strangers in town, find themselves in the mood to see a show or go dancing with a nice young lady. What do they do? Call the boy, of course. He gets them what they want.
There is a difference—more than a subtle difference—between “call” girls and “party” girls, as previously set out.
Those in the first category go through all the earlier motions—and the later ones, too. But the party girls are just what their name implies.
They’ll dine and dance with you, court and even romance with you. But they aren’t prostitutes, if that’s what you’re looking for, and when it’s time to go home, they go to their own home, unless you’ve clicked hard and registered high appeal.
Many of these gals are models or show gals trying to earn a few extra bucks, honestly.
Some of the call girls are also models or chorines, but their extra few bucks aren’t earned so honestly, by pious standards.
30. Tips on the Town
I. How to duck your wife or husband.
II. What to do and where to go.
III. Do it with what?
Problem I is only for the married.
This chapter is mainly concerned with problem II.
As for problem III, you will have to find the wherewithal yourself. Those without it are advised to remain in Steubenville and learn about New York from these pages.
Those without wives, husbands, children, mistresses, dogs or other encumbrances may skip the next few paragraphs.
I
Most married men of our acquaintance who visit New York regularly tell their wives it’s a business trip and get away with leaving the madame home. Once a year, however, or maybe twice, she insists on coming to Manhattan. She wants to shop and see the shows.
Now, if you are a smart guy, you will try to arrange your next such trip to coincide with the similar hop by your best friend and his wife.
You will find that, if supplied with dough, the women will keep occupied all day every day, foraging in the shops.
Though it’s more difficult to get rid of them at night, it can be done if you and your pal are halfway intelligent. You will want to load them up with tickets for all the highbrow shows, the opera and concerts, and pull the oldie about “Hon, you know I’ll fall asleep if I sit through that.”
Or you can tell ’em you and the pal have an important business date and will meet them at the hotel later.
But if you are here with your old lady and have no one to park her with, you are in trouble.
You can find some free daylight time, naturally, by bundling her off to the shops or the hairdresser’s, or alibiing with business. But, we ask you, what are you going to do with yourself in the daytime?
New York is strictly an owl town.
You might take a dance lesson at one of the numerous Arthur Murray branches or sit in a lobby and try your luck at ogling the dolls or kibitz with the manicurist, but none of these are exciting and they can be done better in your home town.
You know your wife better than we do, but if you can’t check her in a theatre by herself at night, or if you have no relatives in town to leave her with, you are out of luck.
Married ladies will not need our professional advice on ducking husbands. They know how. And husbands rarely refuse.
For the married couples who do want to make our town together, but are handicapped by children, dogs or canaries, ask the bellboy for services that mind infants, walk dogs and sit up with older children.
Midnight Manners: Don’t bring children to night clubs unless it’s someone else’s precocious daughter. Visitors, who have no other place to leave them, are the worst offenders. Cabarets are not for schoolkids—even at the early dinner shows.
II
If you haven’t a date, get one.
Call the bellboy or refer to Chapter 33 for friendship services.
(Inside Stuff: When a guy calls for you in a limousine or private car bearing a license number in the 82 series, it’s rented.
Hirers of rented limousines may be phonies or wise guys. If you want to make believe, there’s no better way of putting on the dog than engaging a Carey Car—a brand new Cadillac limousine with uniformed chauffeur, rate $5 an hour, less over considerable periods.
Many legitimate people also use these rented cars, sometimes hiring them by the month or year. They get 24-hour chauffeur service, perfectly conditioned cars, and thus eliminate garage, repair and insurance worries.
Other wise guys use these cars to go to the theatre, airport or outside the city limits. The fee is only slightly more than a cab, and cars are always available by phone. It saves time and trouble of waiting and whistling for cabs and arguing with drivers.)
New York, unlike other large cities, does not permit doubling of parties in taxis, and neither the passenger nor the driver is permitted to make an exception.
Main reason for this rule is Gotham’s huge transient population. Permitting strangers to share cabs would open an easy avenue of access for thieves and trollops to meet and make up to their quarry.
Under our law, a cab must take you wherever you want to go inside the city limits.
If the driver refuses to carry you to your destination order him to take you to the nearest police station.
There are no extra charges on or off the meter, other than 50 cents for trunks and waiting time. Pay only what appears on the meter, plus a tip.
If you are waiting for a cab at a public place, such as a hotel, theatre, night club, railroad station or hack stand, you must take the first in the feed line, if there is one there, instead of grabbing the one discharging passengers. This is a city ordinance.
It is next to impossible to obtain theatre tickets for the hits, and those you can get you won’t want.
There are, of course, the licensed ticket agents or “brokers” which you will find in every hotel lobby and around Times Square. They are permitted by law to charge a nominal premium.
But these brokers seldom have up-front seats for hits for the same night.
For any sell-out show or for an important baseball, football or other sports event, you must figure in an added premium of from two to five dollars per ticket, often more.
Your bellboy may be able to dig the ducats for you, or he can recommend a scalper who bootlegs them above legal price.
Otherwise, try your luck bribing the ticket agent’s clerk.
If you don’t have to plan in advance, a good tip is to go to the box office just at curtain time. Quite often you can get excellent seats at list price, and sometimes even cheaper when the last-minute returns come in from the agencies.
The choice tickets for the hits are in the hands of brokers and scalpers long before the shows first come to Broadway, through what is known in theatrical parlance as “buys.” The big agencies underwrite the shows before they are produced by buying anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 worth of tickets in advance.
Many expensive shows could not be produced if this money were not forthcoming from the speculators.
At the same time, the specs take a terrific gamble, for if the show is a flop they are stuck with worthless pasteboard.
That is why the premium for the hits is so steep, to let them recoup losses.
As aforementioned, the licensed officers do not sell tickets to strangers above legal maximums. For that reason, strangers rate only the secondary choice of seats, if any.
The good ones, way down in front, are held back for regular charge customers, for clubs and for the guy who tips the bellboy liberally.
Restaurant and supper club reservations can be made in advance by phone, but unless the headwaiter knows you, you will find your table behind a post or along the wall when you get there. Also, places like El Morocco refuse phone reservations from all except regulars, and the regulars don’t need them.
If you point to one unoccupied in a position of better vantage, the functionary will show you the “Reserved” sign.
The odds are it is not reserved, but is being kept for a liberal tipper.
Now, there are only two ways of beating this system. The first and best is to slip the headwaiter a few bucks. He will suddenly discover that he has made a slight error and the table he is really holding for you is way up front, on the ringside, because the reservee died a few minutes ago.
The other way is to get tough about it and threaten to walk out if he doesn’t give you a better table.
If the place is doing any kind of business at all, they will let you walk. But if they give you a better table it usually shows that things are so bad (either because of a bum show or lousy food) you won’t want to stay anyway.
Headwaiters at some of the swank night clubs like the Stork or El Morocco, where most people aren’t permitted in unless known, or at busy places like the Copacabana, are reputed to make more than the owners.
Some estimate that $5,000 a week for these factotums is conservative. They may have to kick some back. They all pay for their jobs instead of being paid for them.
(INSIDE STUFF about theatre tickets:
Though most houses invariably number their seats as A1, B2, and so on, there are exceptions.
Ticket C1, for example, is not always first seat on the aisle, third row.)
See page 299 for a list of theatres where the numbering system varies from the norm.
The reveler who plans to visit a café or supper club will find that a knowledge of the name of the headwaiter, maître d’hôtel or proprietor of the place quite often helps obtain a better table or service.
See page 301 for a directory of such functionaries at New York’s leading spots.
New York has more taxis per capita than any other city anywhere, but even in normal times, when the full quota of 20,000 is on the streets, it’s difficult to get them at certain times.
Few New Yorkers use their own cars to come to the shopping or theatre centers of town, because of the traffic and parking problems. Cab fares are so cheap and distances so short in Manhattan that few people are too poor to use cabs.
Most difficult times of day to get taxis are between 5 and 6, at the close of business hours; 8 o’clock at the theatre rush; 11 P.M., when the plays let out; and 4 A.M., when the night clubs close.
At night you can tell if a taxi is vacant. The light over the driver’s compartment is then shining. In the daytime, watch the flag on his meter. If it’s up, he’s free.
(INSIDE STUFF: If you have trouble flagging a cab at 8 P.M., it’s because the driver doesn’t want to take calls into the theatre district, where the fare comes to but a few cents. He gets stuck without a return load.)
So, if you’re not going to a Times Square show, shout that fact to a cabbie. Maybe he’ll stop if he hears you.
Better still, stand on a one-way street bound away from Broadway, and indicate with your thumb that you’re bound opposite from the White Way.
Contrary to general belief, New York is not an overly “dressy” town.
In many midwest metropolises people “dress” more at night than they do here, but certainly without as much success.
Even in the very best places, patronized by the bluest of the bloods, you will always see more men and women informal than in soup and fish.
New Yorkers generally dress only when the occasion demands it, such as the opera, an important theatrical opening, or a formal affair.
(INSIDE STUFF: The “tuxedo” or dinner jacket is semi-formal, not formal. When good dressers wear it, they wear turndown, never wing, collars.)
But if New Yorkers do not dress formally every time they go out, they surely dress with taste.
New York women seldom wear hats.
They NEVER wear white or pastels in the summer, nor white shoes or stockings.
Black is proper all year, even during the dog days.
Best-dressed men always wear hats, never wear sport clothes in the city.
MIDNIGHT MANNERS:
Wise dolls never wear two different kinds of flowers with one ensemble. If the chump sends you orchids, chuck the fake roses out of your hair.
It may be warm, but babe, if your construction calls for a girdle, wear it, at least while dancing.
During the rainy spring season and the slushy winter, do not dance with your galoshes on. Not that we care how funny you look, but it ruins the polish on the floor.
Women who wear evening gowns with cut-out backs should hide their straps and bras. (Women who need bras should not wear evening gowns with cut-out backs.)
The best dressed dolls never wear corsages in our town, but clucks insist on sending them. If you must, white orchids go with anything, but they cost $15 a throw. You may ask the lady what she is wearing and be guided accordingly. All orchids are in good taste; camellias and gardenias are cheaper but according to Hoyle, and violets are okay for afternoons. But well-dressed dolls never wear roses, lilies of the valley or such garden truck.
Dames with turret tummies should not wear evening gowns with bare midriffs.
This is one we thought we’d never have to mention: Dames who cover evening gowns with street coats look ludicrous.
(INSIDE STUFF; When you spot a New York gal in the subway so attired, ten to one she’s a taxi-dancer en route to work at the hall, dressed for the evening’s labor. Odds are 100 to 1 if she’s also carrying a make-up case.)
Gents never wear brown shoes or tweeds after 6 P.M.
It is crude for femmes to wear wrist watches with evening gowns. (If you’ve got to know the time, look into your boy friend’s eyes.)
Dolls who wear tight dresses shouldn’t eat until they bust. If you have to open the zipper at the side of your dress or pop out at the seam, cut down on the intake, honey. You can load up again when you get back into the house dress, on the farm.
No smart filly rolls her stockings. (Garter belts are a must—or don’t wear hose.) For, when she’s dancing and her skirt swishes around her knees, the bulge breaks the symmetry of the limb. Nylon all the way up is sexier and smarter.
31. Inside Stuff
Flirting: Don’t. If you do on the street, you’re apt to be arrested, and in the subway, killed.
MARRIAGE: Licenses are issued and ceremonies performed at City Hall, and in the Borough Halls of the outlying boroughs. A Wassermann test is necessary for bride and bridegroom and 72 hours must elapse between issuance of license and the fatal words. The nearest state where marriages are performed without delay is South Carolina.
DIVORCE: There is only one ground for divorce in New York State: Adultery, proven by two eye-witnesses. A few uncontested divorces are finagled by collusion between husband and wife, the former allowing himself to be raided while with a paid correspondent. There are no residence requirements for divorce. Final papers are issued after 90 days. The guilty party in an adultery action (obtained anywhere) cannot remarry in the state without permission of a Supreme Court Justice. Most New Yorkers remarry in New Jersey. New York courts have ruled these marriages valid.
CLIP JOINTS: To be avoided, unless you are looking for grief. These deadfalls, usually in old brownstone houses on side streets, in Greenwich Village or Harlem, operate without licenses. The sucker is steered by a runner or cab driver who promises “women.” Bills are brutally padded, bank checks raised, drinks loaded with knockout drops. If you protest, you’ll have your hair parted with a bottle.
CURFEW CATCH: We’re going to give you a hot tip. Don’t say we told you, but if you have an unfinished drink (or even bottle) on your table at 4 A.M., neither the club nor the cops can make you scram until you’ve finished it. The law here does not require liquor be removed on the stroke of curfew—merely that the bar close, the music and entertainment cease. See you at 4:01.
Though the legal closing is 4 A.M. daily, bars are required to shutter at 3 o’clock Saturday nights only (of all times). But clubs may sell food and entertainment until 4. What we noted about it being kosher to keep liquor on your table after the curfew, week nights, also goes for Sunday morn. Anything served before 3 may be consumed during the next hour, even after, if the weary waiters don’t thumb you on your way.
AFTER-HOUR SPOTS AND BOTTLE CLUBS: These used to be common, but few New Yorkers now seem willing or able to imbibe after the deadline. There remain practically no too-late spots. The few that do, pose as private clubs, selling no liquor, but serving “members” out of their own lockers. (If they know you well, your locker, by coincidence, is always stocked with just your brand.) Celebs go to the Club Carr, on Fifth Avenue, at E. 69th St. Once raided, not for liquor, but for entertainment sans license, the club beat the rap. Another is the Gold Key, W. 56th near Sixth Avenue.
CABARET INFO: Hostesses are not permitted in clubs. Female entertainers are forbidden to sit out with customers. Waitresses may not be employed after midnight, except in hotels.
Most night clubs present the first show at 8 or 8:30, their second at 12 or 12:30 and their last at 2 or 2:30.
The Latin Quarter presents two shows nightly, except on Saturday, three.
Few clubs except the Stork and El Morocco have a cover charge. But most good hotel grill rooms do.
All other clubs have minimum charges, from $2 to $5 on weekdays, up to $6 a person at some, Saturdays and $7.50 opening nights.
Though it’s not a law, the cops have advised saloon-keepers they don’t like ’em to cater to unescorted ladies after 10 P.M. even if they come in groups, so you femmes sans boy friends had better get yourselves one if you want to see our night life.
TIPS: If you want to get into many night clubs, or get good tables in any, you have to stake the headwaiter, the tip ranging from $2 in the more modest places up to $10 and $20 at the Stork and El Morocco.
Waiters, too, expect more here than in other cities. A 10 per cent tip will earn you an icy stare most anywhere. The average night club habitué usually adds on about 25 per cent, but more often figures the tip on the length of time he occupied the table and the amount of service he received. In other words, if his check was only $2, but he sat at the table so long the waiter lost two or three other parties, he’d reward him accordingly.
WAITERS’ RACKETS: Padded checks and switched checks are common. In the first instance, the waiter makes a “mistake” in the addition, in his favor, then, after you pay, he erases the wrong total and turns in the correct amount. On the switch racket, he presents you with a larger check written for another table. Most people don’t study the items. But if you do, he apologizes and says he gave you the wrong check. If you pay, he turns in your smaller right check, pockets the difference, then uses the large check over again.
CHECK YOUR HAT: Your “voluntary” contribution to the hat-room gal isn’t as voluntary as you imagine. The concessionaire’s license from the city permits him to exact a flat charge for each item checked, if he desires.
Hat-check and cigarette girls turn in all their tips (except those they manage secretly to pocket). They are paid $30 or $35 a week and a percentage of tips over $1. Camera girls are permitted to keep their tips, turning the $1.50 per picture over to the concessionaire, who splits with the cabaret.
The larger concessionaires have become the bankers of the night club business. Without them, half the town’s clubs would not have been able to open in the first place. Some of the larger clubs reap up to $50,000 a year for the privilege of checking your kellys. This money is paid in advance to new clubs, often covering construction costs. The concessionaire takes a mortgage on the enterprise to protect his investment. When a club goes broke, the concessionaire finds himself in possession of it. To keep his girls working, he turns it over to another operator, advances more money, takes more mortgage.
I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE: You’d be surprised how many guys make a living buying things for their friends “strictly at cost.” This is the town where every inhabitant thinks he’s a wise gee and squarely on the inside.
So he figures that retail stores are strictly for chumps, strangers, and the other fellow.
At the same time, practically everyone in New York either has a relative or knows someone with a relative who works in a wholesale house.
When his friend, or even his relative, takes him to the showroom, he’s convinced he’s being let in on the ground floor. Prices in wholesale establishments are never marked on the ticket.
So the wholesaler always jacks on a tidy sum, enough to take care of the steerer and give himself a neat profit (which he doesn’t enter on the books and so doesn’t pay tax on).
And the wise chump goes out, happy and feeling privileged, whereas he probably paid more than if he had shopped over the counter at a reputable store.
HOW TO BEAT THE HORSES: Some smart Gotham gazelles have worked out a sure-fire way to get a stake.
Whereas most guys won’t be touted by men, they don’t look at it that way when a cute filly (homo sapiens, not equine) asks them to put a bet on a certain horse for her.
Now, if she knows enough chumps and can get bets down on the three leading horses in any one race, it’s practically positive she’s going to collect on one.
And no gent is going to ask the cutie to pay up for losers. (We don’t recommend this unless the gams look nice in nylon.)
THE “PRODUCERS”: All these guys produce is a bank roll for themselves. They’re usually good-looking middle-aged fellows who dance and drink well, sling clever small talk and know everyone.
Their stock is their ability to flatter wealthy old dames and procure phone numbers of pert young patooties for wealthy old codgers.
When working on an overaged, rich hag who may be a widow or married to a guy who is happy to find a companion for his ugly wife so he can go stepping too, the “producer” gives out with the woo and ends up with a “backer” for the show he intends to produce, but never gets around to. The initial overhead, meaning himself, always eats up the bank roll.
On the other hand, if his backer is a rutty old male, the approach is to get him a girl, then sell the idea that she should be starred.
These “producers” live well, often luxuriously, dance and dine at the best and make Palm Beach every winter.
But we don’t call them gigolos or pimps, because the former work for five dollars an hour and the latter live off five-buck bims. This is big business.
THE INTRODUCERS: Hundreds of smart New York articles live and thrive because they manage to know the right people and can introduce you to whomever you want to know—banker, politico, social leader—on 15 minutes’ notice.
They travel in the best circles, are smooth, suave and likeable. For the proper fee, they’ll provide connections with senators, governors or financiers.
After that, it’s up to you.
SHARKS: Don’t carry large sums of money with you and don’t flash it; don’t carry your billfold in your hip pocket; don’t give money to touts who promise a “sure thing”; don’t play cards or shoot craps with strangers.
RETIRING ROOM: We were in Sherm Billingsley’s Stork with a curious young lady from Boston, who wanted to know why our washroom was on the main floor, whereas she had to climb a flight. That’s simple. Young men don’t patronize expensive clubs, so who could expect vets like us or Charlie Chaplin or George Jessel or George Jean Nathan to climb stairs? Whereas the filly is young, healthy and husky.
MUZHIKS—How to Spot One: He has a round haircut, a short coat, with or without belt in back, sleeves pressed into a razor-blade crease, carries shiny fountain pens and pencils in the kerchief pocket of his jacket, wears a lodge pin and a vest (which usually doesn’t meet his trousers).
32. Midnight Manners
Generously built dames should not sit on backless bar stools. Did you ever stand behind one? Did you ever see an Alp?
When night clubbing, keep your paw off your lady friend’s leg. There’s a time and place for everything.
Eating habits and appetites are personal. We snipers should keep our snoots out. But if you are a greenie in Gotham, trying to impress the headwaiter or Follies dollies with sophistication, DO NOT drink your coffee with your meal. Wait until AFTER dessert. DO NOT eat your salad as an appetizer (à la Hollywood) or as a side-dish (à la Chicago). Only between roast and dessert. This is New York.
Any man who wears white or two-toned shoes for dancing at any place above a coffee-pot should be sentenced to walk back in them to his farm.
Gents who like to dance cheek-to-cheek, say the dolls, should be closely shaven. But one who dances cheek-to-cheek ain’t no gent!
Do not table-hop in clubs. Never go to strange tables and ask women you do not know to dance. You may get a smack on the kisser. But, if you don’t, you may be bounced out. It is against the law for night clubs to permit people to mix from table to table. Besides, it’s corny, which is worse than illegal.
Gals should not straighten the seams of their stockings in the middle of the dance-floor. There are easier ways to attract attention to the gams.
When entering a night club, don’t head for the powder-room before the captain has shown you to your table, otherwise your escort has to stand in the crowded lobby waiting for you and looking foolish (while you take the usual 45 minutes!).
When the lady says she has to go, it is customary to give her four bits for the pro in the powder-room. Which reminds us of the tale about the gal whose nose got shiny eight or ten times, night after night, at great cost to her John. After five years, she walked out on him and bought an apartment house in the Bronx.
Warning: Most night clubs have phone booths in the ladies’ room. That’s where they call the guy they meet after they brush you off.
Weaklings who tend to become absent-minded after the third drink are advised to place their hat check in the upper left breast pocket. One blotto bird in a narrow night club foyer, yelling for his coat and insisting he never got a check, can hold up 300. When the checker assists the customer she is instructed to begin looking for the ducat in that pocket, working down and back therefrom.
The reverse table-hopper is as bad a pest as the original. Don’t demand the acquaintances at the next table join your party. Maybe they want to be alone!
Don’t stare!
Don’t try to get too hot with a girl in public, or you’ll wind up with the cold shoulder. If you want to hold hands, do it under the table. That’s what long tablecloths are for. Don’t try to hog the dance-floor, unless you want to be a pig shot. While an entertainer is working, don’t turn around and tell your friends what a great pal of yours he or she is—loud enough to drown him or her out.
Dolls who understandably want to show off their fur coats in cabarets should think of a better method than to drape them over the back of the chair and onto the floor, where they become traffic hazards for passing waiters and guests. Dames who do this deserve skunk, not mink.
Dames too ample in certain regions should not wear tight skirts for dancing. (Watch the next one and see what we mean.)
When a lady stops to chat at a table where men are present, she should ask the men to keep their chairs or she should sit down, so the guys won’t be kept standing while she gabbles. If she does neither, she’s no lady, and no man need then bother.
When a lunkhead and his twist spat in a night club, it’s etiquette for him to dash after her and slip her cab fare.
Dolls who must cross their pins at ringside tables should be sure they have nice ones.
When the emcee announces that the chorines will go through the room to collect for the Red Cross, don’t suddenly decide to phone.
If you have to go—or if you’re coming back—while an entertainer is working, don’t cross the dance-floor in front of the artist. Wait until the number is over; or, if you can, circumnavigate—flank the performer.
While dancing, don’t wave to a friend at a table. You may put someone’s eye out.... If your shoelace opens, don’t stop on the dance-floor to tie it—move off.
If you must take somebody’s phone number, write it at your table, not while on the floor. (Don’t take it at all if her brute is bigger than you.)
Do not show off on dance-floors. Even if you are as hep as Fred Astaire, the other customers do not want to see you. Besides, the bouncer is not sympathetic to amateur talent.
The almost morbid desire of young women to look in mirrors brings on one of the most horrendous of all night club gaucheries... when the sweet young things duck from their escorts every half-hour and remain away for time without limit while the escorts squirm alone. The condition is doubly disastrous when two or more young women are in the party, because whenever one goes, all go, and they stay forever while they discuss the men, who know it.
If the poetry in your soul forces you to beat time to singing or music, use your fingers, not a tablespoon.
It’s atrocious taste for two females to dance together. Good spots won’t permit it, though some of the claptrap caravansaries catering to tourists or sewing-circle society parties stand for it until 10.
If your escort asks you to dance, don’t turn him down. If you’re tired, don’t make dates. But if he doesn’t want to dance, DON’T BE A PEST AND BEG.
When you see a friend with a squab in a cabaret, don’t suggest that you and your pigeon move to his table and make it a foursome. He may have IMPORTANT business to discuss.
If somebody else’s dish (and we mean dish, not doll) looks particularly attractive, don’t sample it unless you’re first asked to. If you’d like to try it, order from the waiter!
Do not eat garlic or onions unless your escort also does. (Or unless you want to keep the wolf from your door.)
We’ve already inveighed against the bore who table-hops and asks to dance with your dame. Now the might of our wrath is directed toward the gal who makes things worse for her man by encouraging the intruder. When a stranger comes to your table, say “No,” immediately. Don’t prolong the agony by turning to your escort and asking if you should dance with the drunk or dope.
33. Confidential Guide to New York
AMUSEMENT PARKS: Back-breaking sky-rides, pink lemonade, cotton candy and hot dogs are available at Coney Island’s famed Steeplechase (BMT subway); Palisades Park in Fort Lee, N.J. Bring your own gal or pick one up.
Astrologers And Fortune Tellers: Predicting futures is against the law, but horoscope readings are not. (Consult Classified phone directory for “Astrologers.”) Many night clubs employ “readers” who “analyze your palm, handwriting or tea leaves.” Service is gratis, but you’re expected to shell at least a buck.
Inside Stuff: Society babes have their palms read at the Golden Earring—54th and Madison.
Midnight Manners: When your gal is having her fortune told by the night club palmist, don’t listen in. The seer will say a tall, dark man is coming into her life. And you’re probably short, fat and gray.
Wisdom of a White Way Wolf: Slip the palmist a fin before she starts. A short, fat and gray man will plunge into the gal’s life.
Baby Sitters: Phone SU 7-6779. If she’s over 15 call us.
Ballet: Personally, it’s way above us. We don’t like muscular calves. But the longhairs say we have some of the best ballet in the world. Consult daily papers.
BARBER SHOPS, LATE: If you get an unexpected night call, and you haven’t a razor blade, you’re out of luck. There aren’t any all-night barber shops any more, since two gorillas were killed in one. Most of them close at 8; in Grand Central and Penn Terminals, at 9. The following shops are open until midnight: Victoria, West 51st Street; Taft Hotel; Spinrad’s, 50th and Broadway; Dawn Patrol, Seventh Avenue and 53rd Street; Claridge Hotel. (All cabaret men’s room attendants will supply safety razors and blades.) Barber shops are closed Sundays, except in private clubs.
Boating: Row boats are available in all the city parks in summer, at two bits an hour (peanuts for yourself and the ducks, extra). Swell way to woo a doll; she can’t walk home.
Bridge Games Found: Are you looking for congenial opponents? Call Mildred Lovejoy, CO 59290. Or try the bridge clubs in many hotels. Though patrons are charged for playing, the law says they aren’t gambling houses. Why? We wouldn’t know. For lessons, Banfield, PL 5-0980, or Cummings, CO 5-9515.
Burlesque: Who brought that up?
Bus Rides: Hurry, hurry, hurry, if you still want New York’s cheapest thrill, riding with your gal on top of a Fifth Avenue bus. The company is gradually retiring all the double deckers. No open-top buses are left, anyway.
CHAPERON SERVICE (For girls or unaccompanied wives): If pretty, call us.
CLEANERS, ONE DAY: Yep, we still have ’em here. Your hotel valet will take care of it; otherwise Misch, on West 47th Street.
Midnight Manners: Don’t smear your lipstick on a man’s lapel while dancing. Cleaning rouge and powder stains is expensive. And his wife might get fussy.
Clothes Rewoven: If the doll accidentally burns your suit instead of you, while protecting herself with her cigarette from your mad advances, consult the Classified phone directory.
Wisdom of a White Way Wolf: You should wait until she finishes the cigarette.
COMFORT STATIONS AND REST ROOMS: Saloonkeepers aren’t hospitable to men’s room customers and get downright sore at ladies’ room patrons. But if you gotta, all subway stations have free comfort stations, usually filthy. Often degenerates and thugs lurk there. Many hotels maintain pay (5 or 10 cents) stations, others have the tip-as-you-go system. Minimum, 25 cents, if you use a towel. Rest rooms in railroad stations are open all night. (Fee, 5 and 10 cents. Also baths, 25 cents and up.) Free comfort stations, operated by the city at 47th Street and Broadway, 60th and Central Park West, 42nd Street behind the library, and in all parks.
Concerts: You’d be surprised how many young chippies patronize Carnegie Hall since Stokowski took Gloria Vanderbilt away from Pat di Cicco. Our chief concert and recital halls are Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, Steinway Hall, and Times Hall, with the City Center Theatre often going in for same.
Confidential Detectives: Bolan (ex-Commissioner of Police) Agency, Empire State Building, LA 4-5100.
Dancing: Smart guys find too much dancing interferes with romancing. It saps the gal’s energy and their own; sobers her up if she’s had a few; makes her miss the drinks she’d consume if she were sitting at the table. But, if you’d rather dance than progress, New York’s the place for it. Almost all its 1,500 cabarets present dance music; there are dozens of dance halls where you can go; and the Y’s, churches and other social organizations throw hops on the slightest provocation. But, unlike smaller towns, there’s neither cocktail nor lunch dancing here. (Revolting thought—dancing at lunch time.)
But dinner and supper dancing: How can you miss it?
If you haven’t a partner, any dance hall will supply you one at a small fee per dance. Or you can easily pick one up, as unescorted ladies are permitted in all the halls, usually at a reduced fee to encourage attendance.
If you can’t dance, you will find hundreds of studios in the Classified directory, guaranteeing to teach you in from five to ten lessons.
You will find some of these studios (especially a number in old brownstone houses on the West Side) sell more than dancing instructions. It’s up to you to feel your way.
If you’re a swing addict, consult the newspaper ads for the places where that kind of band is playing, usually at a hotel grill.
Club bands play mostly rumbas and sambas, with a few fox trots and hardly any waltzes except at the dreamy hour, after 3 A.M.
New Yorkers are not jitterbugs. Most clubs hustle jive addicts off the floor.
TERP TIPS: You dames with wide circumferences should not rumba. If you must, please don’t quake below the equator.
Don’t shift your right hand up and down her spine while dancing, like a chiropractor or indecisive sax player.... Don’t be a floor hog.... Don’t grab the girl around the waist, hiking her dress up by inches. (Why not? That’s why we sit at ringsides.)
Don’t ask the band leader to play a conga unless you want to be spotted as a square-head.
When the band plays a rumba or samba, if you can’t do it, remain at your table instead of trying to dance a fox trot to the complicated rhythm. New York is the only city where a large part of the dance program consists of rumbas and sambas. (In the East Side clubs they form the major part.)
Never chew gum when dancing—but if you must, do it in time to the music!
Most clubs feature two bands with continuous music, whereas small-town cabarets operate with one, which usually plays a set of three tunes, then 10-minute intermissions. So it is suggested that when you ask a gal for a dance in a New York club, you release her from your clinging embrace after a maximum of 15 minutes. Though the music goes on forever, the endurance doesn’t.
DRUGSTORES, ALL NIGHT: Lexington and 49th; 66th and Columbus; Seventh and 52nd Street; Seventh and 51st; Broadway and 50th; 47th and Broadway; Seventh and 50th; Broadway and 44th.
Emergency Info: Birth Control Ass’n, 220 East 12th Street, AL 4-4437; Birth Control Bureau for Marriage Consultation, 55 East 86th Street, AT 9-4250; Birth Control Center, IWO, 80 Fifth Avenue, AL 4-2321; Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, WA 9-6200; Planned Parenthood Federation, WI 2-8600.
Errands: To pick up railroad tickets, send flowers, call for your laundry or get your lunch, phone Rapid, EL 5-6100; Mercury, LE 2-0543; Airline, VA 6-5145; Western Union, WO 2-7111.
Eschatologist: Oh, yes. We have one of those, too. Whatever it is. Mrs. M.E. Nase, Lorraine 2-8722.
Escorts: At Your Service, MU 9-4378—Hostesses, too.
FRIENDS—TO MEET NEW ONES: Personally we’re misanthropes, but if you’re lonely and haven’t the guts to brave strangers, phone ABC, WI 7-2430; Social, TR 3-2013, or Clara Lane, LU 2-2617.
GIRDLES—FIRST AID: If your favorite girdle busts while you’re away from home, call Jean Kaufman, 54 West 56th Street. But if you’re the kind who needs a girdle, why didn’t you stay home?
Gambling: All forms, except on-track parimutuel, are illegal, but you will have little trouble finding bookmakers and policy-slip sellers. There are no casinos or gambling houses as such in the city limits. As soon as one gets started, the cops crack down. There are no exceptions. Yet you can find card games going in some political clubs and so-called social and bridge clubs. Traveling crap games are common around Broadway and in Harlem, and there are steerers to take you to them.
Slot machines are vigorously banned, but of late the authorities have been winking at a new type of electrical gambling machine, similar to pinball, which pays off on poker hands. These are being set up in some of the best midtown locations and in other parts of town, and though they pay off in “merchandise,” which is as illegal as cash, they seem to have plenty of protection way up. Some buy back the “merchandise” for currency. Frank Costello makes them.
Horse Racing: You can lose your money pleasantly at Belmont, Aqueduct, Empire and Jamaica, all within the city limits or environs. Betting is by parimutuel, with bookmaking and off-track betting forbidden. But how are you going to put a fly cop in every cigar store, saloon, newstand, elevator, lobby and bellboy’s cap?
Lotteries And Numbers: It’s agin the law, as your soda jerk or cigar clerk tells you, as he sells you.
Maid service: in your apartment, by day, week or month. Also housemen, wall and window washers, baby sitters. Bennett, SP 7-7820; Maid-to-Order, TR 3-3185; Taylor-Maid, TE 8-7171.
Manicurists: All barber shops and hotels. Some want their nails filed, others just like to sit and talk to the cute ones. But why is it any different here than in your own home town, where lonesome bucks always go first for the finger mechanics?
Masseurs: Some people go to masseurs to be massaged and some masseurs massage, but some use the title to cover an older going-over. Sorry, you’ll have to find them yourself. We don’t ache enough for a massage.
Midwifes: If you’re in that condition, don’t come to New York. If you do come, get a doctor. But if you’re old-fashioned and demand a midwife, you’ll find some in the Classified phone directory.
Palmists: They’re against the law, but Diana, LO 5-4530 is a “hand analyst.”
Parties Planned: We like our parties impromptu, you know, like when the blonde drops in unexpectedly and says: “Let’s get stinko.” But if you like to entertain and want to do it big, call Service Delicatessen, BU 8-7384; Daniel, PL 9-5941; for children’s parties, Arnold. Amusements and entertainment provided, Harrington, CI 6-5979.
RENT, FOR: You can rent practically anything in New York, including a wife, but not an apartment. If you are interested in hiring any of the following, consult the Classified phone directory: Airplanes, bikes, cameras, cars, diamonds, evening clothes, furs, private railroad cars, radios, typewriters and yachts. (No open listing for wives.)
Shooting Galleries: What’s the matter, bud, didn’t you have enough of it in the Army? If not, try Broadway and 48th Street, Broadway and 51st Street, or Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 47th; 42nd Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, or any amusement park.
Shopping Services: Will buy anything for you from a layette to a tombstone, except a broad or bride. At Your Service, MU 9-4370; Lili Personal Service, MU 2-5266; Finders, MU 2-8196.
Show Gals: Consult newspaper for current musical attractions. Or visit these night clubs: Latin Quarter, Copacabana, Leon & Eddie’s, Hotel New Yorker (on ice skates). Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and Gae Foster girls at the Roxy.
Sight-seeing: The rubberneck buses are back. You’ll find steerers at every Times Square corner.
Sky Views: Surest way to wow a wench is to take her to the 102nd floor observatory of Empire State Building on a clear, starlit night. The thrilling view of the city below, twinkling lights that look like diamonds on a giant diadem, will bring something into her eyes. If you need help, there’s an excellent cocktail bar in the observatory, highest on earth. Other observatories, RCA, Chrysler and Woolworth Buildings.
Swimming: Why pay a premium for a front row ticket at a musical when you can see more at any beach? New York’s popular public beaches are not recommended, as the waters are unsanitary, crowded and dirty. Those with dough belong to clubs in Long Island or Jersey, where water is clean and girls ditto. Smart ones, without much money, patronize pools.
TELEGRAPH OFFICE—ALL NIGHT: If you have to wire home for money after an evening: Western Union, at 40th and Broadway, Penn Station and Grand Central, always open. Or phone WO 2-7111.
Wake Up Service: If you can’t get up after that big night with the blonde, phone MU 7-6500. But who’s going to wake you first?
WALL STREET AND STOCK MARKET: Talking of gambling, a few pages back, how about it? But even if you’re not a gambler, an ogle at the greatest money mart is a daytime kick. But the Stock and Curb Exchanges are closed to visitors. You can look at Trinity Church, though.
Wet Nurses: Who thought of that one? Phone New York Academy of Medicine, AT 9-4700, and ask for “Information.”
WORRIER, PROFESSIONAL: You may not have had a care in the world when you picked up this volume. But now you rate a nervous breakdown. Under the heading “Psychologists” in the Classified directory, you will find guys willing to do your worrying—for a fee, of course. They advise on sex and the lack of it. If you get any good info, please advise the authors. (For inclusion in the next edition, of course.)
PART FOUR
THE APPENDIX
(Confidential!)
Notes
1 INSIDE STUFF: If the gal you’re calling isn’t home, ask the operator at the woman’s hotel if any others said they’re lonesome. They frequently confide in the “Hello Girl.”