Without prejudice it is obvious that a colored man with a white wife suffering no social ostracisms or discriminations over here would not be likely to return to the United States. Furthermore his interests in Russia and elsewhere in Europe, and his fairly popular standing would also tend to keep him away from the United States for years.
But none of this prevented Burri from using Frederick’s own words to hang him by concluding “that he will never return with his family to the United States for permanent residence.” And Burri’s final assessment of the application was devastating: “In my opinion Mr. Thomas is an American born negro, living with a free-love companion, [who] cannot satisfactorily explain his protracted foreign residence so as to entitle him to American protection; and this Consulate General should be instructed to deny him such protection.”
Frederick got the passport application out of the way at an exciting time in his life, when he was beginning to make plans for an ambitious new venture that could, with luck, make him rich again. By mid-September the summer season at Villa Stella was winding down. Its Winter Salon could continue to function for a while longer—Vertinsky crooned his decadent songs there to great acclaim in October—but the approach of cold weather meant that Frederick would once again have to move his operation to a properly heated space. What he needed was a place of his own that he could use year-round.
Frederick found it just off Taxim Square in Pera, an area where many amusements were concentrated, near the northern end of the Grande rue de Pera on Sira Selvi Street, and thus, unlike Stella, in the center of the European quarter. The space was actually the basement of a building that housed the “Magic Cinema,” one of the largest and most luxurious movie houses in the city. From the theater’s elegant, colonnaded main entrance a broad, bright staircase of twenty steps led to a large, well-lit, high-ceilinged hall that could accommodate several hundred people at a time. The far wall had windows and doors that opened onto a broad terrace with wonderful views of the Bosporus (a bonus provided by the steeply sloping terrain where the building stood, which also made it possible to enter the hall from the lower level). Frederick spared no expense in having the space renovated in a luxurious style, with ornate plaster ceilings, richly decorated columns, and polished metal and wood. When the weather warmed up, the terrace would become a spacious garden with gravel paths and cypresses framing the distant views of Asia. He called the new place “Maxim” in a nostalgic nod to its ancestor in Moscow, although its scale was more intimate and it was configured as a classic nightclub rather than a theater: a small stage faced a dance floor that was surrounded by rows of tables; there was also the obligatory American-style bar. For the next five years it would be Frederick’s most successful venture in Constantinople. It would also outlive him by another fifty and earn an indelible place in the history of Istanbul nightlife.
Word of Frederick’s plan for “a very special amusement rendezvous” first got out in early October and was greeted with enthusiasm by Villa Stella’s many fans. Frederick moved quickly and by the end of the month had hired the drummer Harry A. Carter to lead the enticingly named Shimmie Orchestra during the nightclub’s first, winter season. Carter, a white American from Minnesota, had been performing across Europe and in Egypt for several years and must have been very good at what he did, because Frederick was willing to pay him handsomely—20 Ltqs for an eight-hour workday, the equivalent of about $3,500 a week today; his contract also included “a first-class dinner” every evening.
Maxim opened on the evening of Tuesday, November 22, 1921. Frederick had designed it to appeal to the upper echelons of the city’s Westernized Turks, Levantines, and foreigners, and they responded enthusiastically: the “greatest artistic event in Pera… extraordinary tour de force… grand luxury… modern comfort… richness that does not exist elsewhere… a fairytale-like atmosphere… a real jazz band.” And all this was thanks to the “genial director,” whose “organizational skills” and “taste for the beautiful” ensured “complete success.” There were no superlatives left.
The fame and success that Maxim acquired immediately after opening were due not only to Frederick’s talent for serving up an intoxicating mix of first-class cuisine and drinks, hot jazz, beautiful Russian waitresses, and flashy variety acts. He also successfully put himself on center stage as Maxim’s public face and animating spirit. Impeccably turned out in black tie, worldly, poised, with a broad smile and a welcoming word for each new arrival—which he could deliver in French, English, Russian, German, Italian, or Turkish—Frederick relished what he had created as much as any of his nightclub’s most enthusiastic fans.
It was the rare visitor who did not succumb to his charm or identify it with Maxim itself. “Thomas, the founder, the host… the cheerful Negro with the big smile, who thrived in the gaiety, the din of the jazz band, the dazzling luxury, the women, amidst beautifully appointed tables decorated with flowers and crystal,” was how a Levantine devotee of Constantinople’s nightspots described him. Even a less worldly Turk found himself seduced by the new, electrifying atmosphere that jazz created, although it also overwhelmed him.
We came into a well-lit basement. This is where the famous Black music was being played. What a crashing of percussion instruments, what a noise, what a cacophony of sound…. One fellow was beating on the cymbals with all his might; another, seized with some rage, kept running his fingernails across a thickstringed instrument, as if he had gone quite mad; while the violin, the piano, and the drum all mixed it up with them…. it reminded me of the wild mystical rituals performed by old [African] Arab pilgrims on their way to Mecca….
After a while, the lights were turned down and two performers—a skinny bit of a woman and a muscular man, both of them half-naked, adapting their steps to this madmen’s music, kept throwing each other about. Then they stopped, and we clapped our hands and applauded. It was getting late, three o’clock; by now I was no longer in full possession of any of my three senses; neither my head, nor my eyes…. I could no longer feel, hear, or walk; in short I was no longer among the living!
Frederick won his patrons over by treating them like members of his own select circle. He was a bon vivant with “a heart of gold,” as a longtime fan put it, and often helped people in distress. Fikret Adil, a young journalist, witnessed one such occasion shortly after Maxim opened. It involved one of Frederick’s beautiful Russian waitresses, who styled herself a grand duchess, and who had beguiled a rich young Turk into spending all his money on her. The young man’s despair was so great that his friends began to fear he might shoot the woman. But then Frederick got wind of the situation and decided to get involved. To everyone’s surprise, he discovered that the waitress had fallen in love with the young man; however, since he was now ruined and she had hardly any money left, their future looked bleak. “Then Thomas did something that still brings tears to my eyes,” Adil recalled.
Maxim was packed that night. Frederick waited for two Russians to finish their dance number, and after they had taken their bows he walked out onto the center of the dance floor.
He quieted the crowd down, waving his long-fingered hands as if he was stroking everyone, and then announced [in French]:
“Ladies and gentlemen, tonight I will present a number to you that you will not see; you will not see it, but you will know it. Now I will begin. A young man loves a woman. He spends his entire fortune on her until it’s gone. The woman at first pretends to love him for his money’s sake. But then she also falls in love. And tonight she has said: ‘I will work and will support you.’ However, the young man, having lost his fortune, now does not want to lose his honor as well. The two lovers are making up their minds to die.”