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Read Ebook: New York: Confidential! by Lait Jack Mortimer Lee
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Ebook has 1789 lines and 69631 words, and 36 pages
off the nave. There he received esoterically but with broad hospitality, with a steward to serve drinks and tidbits.
In that room, one night, while a hit play was in action below, he got word from his stage manager that a feminine principal had fluffed some lines. He sent for her after the act. In the presence of one of your authors, he berated her as a gold-bricker and an ingrate.
"I gave you everything you ever had," he shrilled. "And the first thing I ever gave you was a bath!"
She bitched up no lines in the next act.
The next season another beauty gave him the romantic interest he required for a later success.
At the height of its run, he was stricken with pneumonia. His amazing constitution and will licked it, though he had passed his 76th birthday.
Weakened as the great Belasco was, the soul of the great lover still burned within him. He had been in retirement for weeks. The girl, a blonde this time, was young, and, he feared, fickle. As long as he was on his feet, none of his mistresses dared stray around. But he had been laid up for weeks.
The inamorata of the moment was ensconced in a private three-story residence not far from the Gladstone Hotel where he lived. Because of his family she could not come to see him during his illness. He did not tell her when he would be allowed out again. And, the first night he could ambulate, he decided to spy on her.
He set up his post across the street, where, from behind a light-pole, he could look up and over.
A sudden rainstorm poured out of the sky, and with it a cold wind. But he had seen a shadow--of a man and woman, it seemed to him. And with the consuming zeal and drive with which he did everything, he remained there, drenched and shivering, ignoring everything but those windows.
He found out nothing.
But the exposure resulted in a second attack of pneumonia.
That tawdry anticlimax ended the life of the genius at whose feet Broadway had bowed--a martyr to suicidal jealousy at his advanced age--jealousy over a run-of-the-mill gal whose name no one would remember on the street that will never forget him.
When Georgie Cohan penned his crude classic, New York's Main Drag ran from Herald Square at 34th Street, on Broadway, to Times Square at 43rd Street, with tentacles precariously reaching northward a few blocks and a few outposts of the Tenderloin's last frontiers stretching southward.
Broadway's uptown growth had been progressive from historic days when the theatre and hotel zones were around City Hall Park, not far from the Battery.
During the years, successively, Diamond Ditch moved up, centering at 14th Street, then again at 23rd Street, coming to anchor at Herald Square before its final migration to Times Square.
Within memory of men who for old time's sake are still called "middle-aged," the crest of the White Way was in the 30's. Here such noted playhouses as the Herald Square, Garrick, Empire and Casino had clustered about them the town's half-a-hundred legit theatres. The still standing and thriving Metropolitan Opera House was then the Mecca of Pittsburgh millionaires.
On Broadway, in the district and its side streets, were famous cabarets and night clubs, places like the Normandie, the Pre-Cat, Caf? l'Opera and others.
The tide imperceptibly but inevitably flowed northward. Even while Herald Square was in its ascendancy, Times Square bloomed and blossomed, with 42nd Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, flashing more legitimate theatres than any other block in the world.
The coming of Prohibition found most of Gotham's glamor studding what we still call the White Way.
The Paramount Theatre now occupies the site of Shanley's famed caf?. The Claridge, popular-priced tourist hangout, was originally Rector's and later, as the Claridge, top spot for stage and movie names.
The Palais Royale operated in the present location of the Latin Quarter, at 48th; the New York Roof was atop a structure on the site now occupied by the new Criterion Theatre; the Bartholdi Inn, celebrated theatrical boardinghouse, was at 46th and Broadway, where Loew's State now stands.
The coming of Prohibition dispersed the pickle factories. The big places with grand old names couldn't stand up without liquor revenue. The wining and dining industry was taken over by a new breed and operated in side street cellars and stables and old residences.
At the same time, a number of new night clubs, mostly intimate affairs, were opened on Broadway. These were not supposed to be speaks. You brought your own makin's and they supplied the set-ups. If you forgot your flask and they knew you, they'd get you all you could carry.
The most celebrated speakeasies were clustered in every side street of the 40's and 50's on both sides of Broadway, and down to the East River.
Some of the most famous night clubs of the present period such as the Stork Club and Leon & Eddie's began as humble blind tigers. More about them in later chapters.
Among the rooms best remembered from the torrid 20's are the El Fey, Tex Guinan's, the Madrid, the Hotsy Totsy, the Abbey, the Silver Slipper, the Plantation, the Argonaut, the Frivolities, La Sportiva, Cap Williams', the 50-50 Club, and Sid Solomon's Central Park Casino, which was Jimmy Walker's night "City Hall."
Some had lurid histories, with gangland killings and knifings an almost everyday commonplace. But many of today's Hollywood and Broadway greats came out of this hurly-burly.
Harry Richman and Morton Downey both played pianos in speaks.
Georgie Raft hoofed at Roseland dance hall, later for Tex Guinan, at a week.
Joan Crawford, then Lucille Le Seur, worked as a show gal at the Frivolities, where a fabulous story of Cinderella on the Main Stem happened.
It was the custom on Sunday nights to hold chorus girl "opportunity contests," at which outstanding youngsters appeared and sang or danced.
The winner was awarded a bill.
These contests were conducted by Nils T. Granlund, a character truly as fantastic as the lies told about him, who had been Marcus Loew's personal press agent and the first radio star in the country, working under the pseudonymic initials, N.T.G. He became the leading caf? man of his age.
N.T.G., known as "Granny" to thousands in show business, was then directing the entertainment policy of the Frivolities, as well as ten other midtown clubs, and the "opportunity contests" were rotated from club to club, week after week.
Tests of this sort, run on the level, can become tremendously dreary affairs. So Granny picked out three sparklers from as many shows and arranged for them to enter all the contests.
One of his trio always won.
One of these pert pigeons was a show gal named Ruby Stevens. Today, in Hollywood, she's known as Barbara Stanwyck.
Another was Clare Luce--the actress, not the playwright-politician.
The third was Lucilla Mendez, who became an exotic star.
One Sunday night, back in the 20's, the contest was at the Frivolities.
At the appointed time, each of the three took the floor and did her little song or dance. They were so good, having it down pat by now, that they expected no competition from uninitiated outsiders.
But one dared it, an unknown child who looked about 13. Compared to the three sleek and sexy sirens who had preceded her, she was bedraggled. Her heels were worn down, her stockings in runs and her face shiny.
The audience tittered. But she stole their hearts with a brand of dancing never before seen on jaded Gaiety Gulch.
The customers cheered. They shouted. They screamed.
So, though the three hot-house lovelies sneered and pouted, Granny handed the youngster the prize. And he told her he was going to put her to work at the Strand Roof, at a week. The girl almost fainted.
As an afterthought, N.T.G. asked her name.
She replied: "Ruby Keeler."
She became that almost mythical creation, "The Toast of Broadway."
She was taken under the "wing" of Johnny Irish, a long since forgotten gangster, whose hoodlums saw to it no others romanced her. But Al Jolson, then the king of show business, fell--and hard. Irish, who loved her with a love that passeth understanding, called the singer to his hotel room. Al, fearing he was about to be taken for a ride, was agreeably surprised when the mobster asked what "his intentions are."
In relief, Al blurted out that he wanted to marry the dancer. Big-hearted Irish adopted a noble pose, gave the girl up.
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