A “nightclub” sought to circumvent the liquor laws by presenting itself as private, with members who dropped by for fine food, top entertainment, good conversation and, of course, their favorite soft drinks. That anyone who knocked three times might enter, and that the drinks were invariably hard, was the reality behind a fantasy kept alive by a casually law-breaking populace and their on-the-take law enforcement agencies.
By the time Prohibition was winding down, with the Depression kicking in, nightclub life was an American social tradition like baseball, circuses and the picture show. But the glittery clubs of the speakeasy era were an endangered species, saved from extinction by, as Fortune magazine put it, the “recent success of what is commonly known as the big Broadway joint, the gaudy bargain offer of fifty hot babies and a five-course dinner for $1.50 and no cover charge.”
Take the French Casino, a swooping, curving art-moderne exercise in scarlet and silver, their terraced rows of tables comfortably seating fifteen hundred. The same number of patrons could be welcomed by the International Casino (not a casino at all), in the heart of Times Square, a red and gold wonder with “curtains” that were mirrors riding on electric tracks, and a flooded, frozen stage accommodating the Ice Frolics. Billy Rose’s Casino de Paree-the remodeled New Yorker Theater on Broadway-offered a five-buck meal, gorgeous chorus girls, headliner Gypsy Rose Lee (America’s most famous striptease artiste) and the Benny Goodman orchestra.
An impressive new arrival-perched on the top floor of a building at Broadway and 48thStreet-was actually an old standby, a relocated Cotton Club, the famed Harlem landmark that had (in 1936) found its white clientele increasingly reluctant to travel to a Depression-ravaged ghetto for their entertainment.
The Cotton Club began in the fall of 1923 in an old theater on 142ndStreet and Lenox Avenue, its primary owner one Owney Madden, who’d come from Liverpool as a child to New York’s fabled Hell’s Kitchen, where he developed from a banty rooster nicknamed “the Killer” into a dapper, sophisticated elder statesman of racketeers.
Despite the Harlem location, Madden ran the Cotton Club strictly for white patrons-Negroes were allowed solely on stage and/or in service capacities-in the manner of a posh downtown club, only showcasing exotic uptown talent. Cover charge was three dollars, beer a buck a bottle, the food prices (including neighborhood favorites like Southern fried chicken and Kansas City-style barbecue ribs) in line with the better Broadway clubs.
That the Cotton Club’s late show began after-hours-when the late shows of other clubs were over-attracted entertainers, making it an “in” spot for the likes of Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle. On a big stage-invoking the antebellum South via white plantation-style columns and a stove-cabin backdrop-cavorted a chorus line of gorgeous “high-yallar” gals (light-skinned black beauties, “Tall, Tan and Terrific!”); all under twenty-one, these girls were among the best singers and dancers in New York, and the show they gave was as wild as it was scantily clad. Both Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington had reigned over Cotton Club house bands through the years, and Ethel Waters and Lena Horne made their mark there.
The new club on Broadway opened in the fall of ’36, and Calloway, Ellington and such other “colored” stars as Louis Armstrong, Steppin’ Fetchit and Dorothy Dandridge (with her sisters) made it the hottest nightspot in Manhattan, pulling in thirty thousand dollars a week (despite the Depression), a new dance called the Boogie Woogie creating a sensation. The stage shows featured choreography, music, costumes and sets challenging Broadway’s best.
Was it any wonder young Orson Welles was a frequent patron?
CHAPTER THREE
That human whirling dervish, Cab Calloway-wide eyes and wider smile turned skyward-was blazing through “Minnie the Moocher,” in tailored tails, forelock flopping, working that conductor’s baton as if nonchalantly yet energetically battling an invisible swordsman. Not merely his orchestra but the entire crowd-Walter Gibson and Orson Welles included-echoed the charismatic bandleader’s “Hi-de-ho” chant.
Gibson had been to the original Cotton Club a few times, once with first-wife Charlotte and then again with Jewel, and he rather preferred the thatched-roof jungle look of the lavish reinvented club over the former one’s Old South, moss-draped oak tree atmosphere. He full well realized the cannibal stereotype was even more offensive than that of the happy cotton-pickin’ slave, but a tongue-in-cheek humor took the edge off. And, unlike the former club, this one welcomed Negro patrons-though relegated them to the rear.
Gibson felt underdressed in his brown suit with a striped red-and-yellow tie, and he’d worn his vest, to seem at least a little respectable. He’d never guessed, leaving on this work trip, that he’d be going nightclubbing with Orson Welles, who in a black suit with black bow tie, black cape and black fedora didn’t seem to have thrown off his Shadow persona, even if he had stepped down from the role on the radio.
Hell, Gibson hadn’t even imagined he’d be sitting, clapping and yelling, “Hi de ho!” a mere few hours ago, back at the hotel….
After the early-morning meeting at the Mercury Theatre yesterday, Gibson had returned to the St. Regis and caught a few more hours of sleep. Though his family had been fairly well off, particularly before the Depression, Gibson found the St. Regis almost off-puttingly posh. The eighteen-story Fifth Avenue hotel, facing Central Park, had been built in 1904 by John Jacob Astor for himself and his rich pals; Astor hadn’t had much time to enjoy it, before going down with the Titanic, leaving behind this lavish relic of the Gilded Age.
But in hard times like these, you could feel guilty lounging around in a world of fine furnishings, marble floors and mahogany panelling with its gold-leaf-garnished molding. Bellboys didn’t attend you-butlers did!
And Gibson didn’t imagine any other pulp writer had ever before sat pounding away at a portable Corona at the antique writing desk in this high-ceilinged room with its silk wallpaper, Waterford chandelier and marble floor. He doubted the $75 he’d be receiving from Street and Smith for this short story (“Old Crime Week”) would pay for even a night in this mink-lined flophouse.
By two P.M., having worked through what would have been lunch if it had occurred to him, he’d about hit the halfway point with the story. It featured his character Norgil-a composite of Harry Blackstone, Joseph Dunniger and several other real-life magicians-who appeared in short stories (as opposed to his novel-length Shadow yarns) in the pulp magazine Crime Busters.
Pausing to take a drag on his umpteenth Camel of the day, he was just thinking how-with Welles’s interest in magic-Norgil might make an even better character than the Shadow for the boy genius when the phone on the mahogany nightstand trilled.
The voice in his ear was that familiar resonant baritone: “Walter, I didn’t bring you here to loaf!”
Gibson, his fingertips red from typing, said, “I’m sure you didn’t, Orson. Any suggestions?”
“I suggest you come up to my suite-toot sweet! I have a rehearsal at the theater at seven…so time is, as they say, a’wastin’!”
Soon Gibson, portable Corona in hand, stepped from the elevator onto the eighteenth floor, where-after calling ahead to check on Gibson’s pedigree-the butler stationed there walked him to Mr. Welles’s suite.
The door, which was unlocked, was opened for Gibson by said butler, and when Gibson entered, he was greeted by Welles, or rather Welles’s voice, which boomed from the bedroom.