The partners’ gamble paid off. The opening weeks of the Anglo-American Villa were very promising, even though expenses were high and the profits were thin. The changeable summer weather was also worrisome. A journalist who admired the place noted sympathetically that “the night winds are decidedly incommodating nowadays for outdoor theatrical performances. At Chichli they blow the stage curtain about and even the curtain doors of the bathing boxes, giving the public a glimpse of [the performers] Mme Milton and Mme Babajane in their preparations.” But as the weather improved, the number of customers increased; they were drawn by the unique combination of Russo-French cuisine, pretty Russian waitresses, dancing to the Codolban Brothers Gypsy band, and a cascade of lively variety acts onstage.
Frederick made even bigger entertainment history that summer. On August 31, the Anglo-American Villa announced what would become a key to his future success and renown in the city: “For the first time in Constantinople a Jazz-Band executed by Mr. F. Miller and Mr. Tom, the latest sensation all over Europe.” Freddy Miller was an Englishman who did parodies of musical acts and sang humorous songs—his most popular was the stuttering hit “K-K-K-Katie”; “Mr. Tom,” a black American, was an “eccentric” dancer with an amusing routine. They were not professional jazz musicians, but their comedy act included some jazz interludes. Their performance was a hit and, with Frederick, they get credit for introducing this quintessentially black American music to Turkey just as it was beginning to conquer London, Paris, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and everywhere in between. As he had in Moscow, Frederick continued to follow new trends in entertainment closely, and he would import more real jazz to Constantinople in the years ahead. However, even with his nose for innovation, he could not have foreseen how this jaunty music would contribute to the revolutionary transformation of Turkish society that was just beginning.
By the end of the summer, the Anglo-American Villa was pronounced a resounding success by the Orient News, the authoritative newspaper of the “Army of the Black Sea,” as the British occupiers of Constantinople styled themselves.
Far the best evening entertainment in town is to be found at the Villa Anglo-Americain, Chichli. Mme. Bertha and M. Thomas have succeeded in engaging the finest talent for their stage and attracting the most elegant monde to their tables…. There is no doubt that the Chichli Villa will continue to give the best vaudeville in Constantinople. That fine hunting ground for artistes, Bucharest, is to be searched by M. Thomas for new talent for the winter season.
But Frederick’s new plan to book acts in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, ran into a serious obstacle. To travel, he would need a passport, and to get one he had to apply to the American consulate general. This would be far more complicated and risky than appealing to Jenkins for help in Odessa had been.
Frederick took the plunge on October 24. It was a Friday, the Muslim day of worship, when the city’s usual noise and bustle abated somewhat as the faithful prepared to attend services in their mosques. When Frederick got to the consulate general, which was in the middle of Pera and around the corner from the embassy, he met with Charles E. Allen, the vice-consul.
Allen was a twenty-eight-year-old from Kentucky who had worked at a variety of jobs in the United States—high school teacher, principal, railway clerk—before joining the Foreign Service four years earlier. His first postings had been to Nantes, a small city in western France, and Adrianople, a provincial city in western Turkey—neither a very glamorous beginning to a diplomatic career. As Allen’s actions would show, he was not well disposed toward the black man in front of him, who arrived trailing stories of riches and fame in Moscow, and with a white wife and a clutch of mixed-race sons in tow.
Frederick had to give responses to questions that Allen then typed onto two forms—a standard “Passport Application” and a much trickier “Affidavit to Explain Protracted Foreign Residence and to Overcome Presumption of Expatriation.” The conversation between them was fundamentally dishonest. Frederick did not bother to be very accurate and made a series of big and small mistakes and doubtful statements about his past, including inventing a sister in Nashville who could supposedly vouch for him. But he was much more careful about his future intentions and said that he wanted the passport to go to Russia and France, where he intended to “settle my property interests en route to the U.S. to put my children in school.” This was an obvious smoke screen and it is unlikely that Allen believed him. Frederick had no financial interests in France, although he might have fantasized about moving there because Paris was becoming known for its hospitality toward black Americans. And he could not possibly have wanted to return to Russia while the Bolsheviks were in power and a civil war was raging. Frederick (and Allen) also knew perfectly well that he and his family would be unable to lead normal lives in much of the United States, where Jim Crow was riding triumphant together with a reborn Ku Klux Klan, and where his marriage to Elvira would be widely seen as not only reprehensible but illegal. (Constantinople’s English-and French-language newspapers regularly ran lurid articles about American racial policies and lynchings.)
Frederick’s biggest problem during his interview with Allen was clearly his decades-long residence abroad, which raised the suspicion that he had expatriated himself. There was little that Frederick could say to mitigate this, but he tried—he claimed that he had intended to return to the United States in 1905, but had gotten only as far as the Philippines. Whether or not Frederick took such a trip is uncertain, although he did mention it to other Americans later and provided some plausible-sounding details. In any event, it would hardly have satisfied Allen’s or the State Department’s misgivings.
For his part, Allen responded to Frederick with negligence, or worse, and did not fill out several important sections on the forms. These omissions would have been enough to invalidate the application in the eyes of the State Department, had it been sent. But Allen did not even bother to forward it to Washington; he let the documents languish at the consulate general for the next fourteen months. The most likely conclusion is that he had decided to sabotage the application by setting it aside.
Dealing with Allen was just the first of the problems that began to crowd around Frederick that fall. Money was next, and this too would do nothing to improve his standing at the consulate general. Despite the Garden’s popularity during the summer season, its income was still insufficient to cover all of the operating costs—food, drink, fuel, housing, and everything else were very expensive in Constantinople—or the loans that Frederick had taken out. When the weather deteriorated in the fall, the Garden’s attendance dropped and its financial problems worsened. At first, merchants tried to get what they were owed from Frederick himself. But when he put them off or evaded them, they (believing he was an American citizen) began to bring their complaints to the American consulate general. They did so not only because the city was under Allied occupation, but also because of the so-called Capitulations that gave the United States extraterritoriality in Turkey. This meant that American diplomats had the right to try their nationals in their own courts and according to their own laws rather than in Turkish courts.
The first complaint arrived at the consulate general at the end of November. A Greek subject, George Matakias, reported that Frederick had bought a piano from him for the Anglo-American Villa; when he could not pay for it, he changed the sale to a rental, and still failed to pay what was due. Because the complaint had been addressed to Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, who was the highest-ranking military and civilian American in Turkey (he commanded the American squadron of warships sent to Turkey after the war and was also the American high commissioner in the country), the matter landed on the desk of the consul general himself, Gabriel Bie Ravndal. His dealings with Frederick would prove to be somewhat more humane than Allen’s, perhaps because of his very different background (he had been born in Norway and grew up in South Dakota, where he published a newspaper and served a term in the state house of representatives before becoming a career diplomat in 1898). Ravndal decided to speak with Frederick in person and got him to agree to return the piano and settle his debt.