527. Polly Adler, Queen of Tarts

                Polly Adler, Queen of Tarts

“Going to Polly’s?” was a question often asked among the city’s night-reveling elite in the Roaring Twenties, that fabled decade when Prohibition and the Charleston reigned.  But more often one heard “See you at Polly’s,” for the presence there of one’s partying friends could be safely assumed.  “Polly’s” was obviously a very “in” place at which to be seen.  But what was it, and who was Polly?

Polly’s: 215 West 75th Street, on the West Side of Manhattan.  Persian carpets, Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture, gilded mirrors, oil paintings of delicious female nudes, a Gobelin tapestry showing Vulcan and Venus wantonly engaged, and walls lined with books that added atmosphere but seemed rarely to be read.  Whoever she was, Polly was in the chips.

And in the evening the place was jammed with people: 

• Mayor Jimmy Walker and his chorus girl playmate;
• world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey;
• gangsters Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz;
• politicians, actors, judges;
• and Algonquin Round Table members Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.

There were late-evening dinner parties amid the buzz of gossip, while some guests played mah-jongg in a Chinese room, and business deals were struck over a Scotch and soda at the bar.

Presiding over all was Polly, short and dark-haired with a winning smile, no rare beauty but a friend to all.  She had come a long way from her humble Jewish origins to become the city’s most notorious and successful madam.  

Yes, Polly’s was a brothel, well stocked with young women available at the going rate of twenty dollars a tumble.  Some guests came for sex, some for cards and drinks, and some for an atmosphere mixing the elegant and the tacky.  But they all came for Polly Adler, Queen of Tarts.

* * * * *

For more about Polly, see chapter 14 of my newly released paperback, Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies.  Polly was certainly liberated.  You will learn

• How a nice Jewish girl became a procuress;
• How, one after another, her houses were raided and shut down, and she went to court in a mink;
• How charges against her were mysteriously dropped, allowing her to open another even more luxurious establishment;
• How Polly finally quit the trade, realized a childhood dream by finishing high school, and published a memoir that became a bestseller: A House Is Not a Home.

Though attracted to men, she never married.  Marriage had little appeal, compared to being Queen of Tarts.

Polly is just one of many New Yorkers, some remembered and 

some forgotten, some sinister, some admirable, and some notorious, who appear in Fascinating New Yorkers.  Knowing them, you may 

be shocked or puzzled or angered, but you will not bored.  The paperback is available from Amazon.  

©  2021  Clifford Browder

526. Wild Women of the West

 

Lola Montez

  

                  Wild Women of the West

To the American cities of the East, in post–Civil War days, came word from the West of wild women.  The West — meaning the Great Plains, the Rockies, and points west, all the way to the shores of the Pacific — was itself a wild and lawless region, full of crazy gold rushes, nasty rattlesnakes, grasshopper plagues, and desperadoes, which the civilized East could do without, though such matter made for fascinating reading.  

That there were wild women out there also — not the native women, secure in their tribal traditions, but white women who had somehow gone wild — was surprising, shocking, and tantalizing.  For instance:

• Four-Ace Dora, described as “crushingly beautiful,” who when the mood took her, rode a galloping mustang right down the main street of town with her hair streaming wild behind her, wearing only a chemise;
• Razorback Jennie, who swung a mean ankle at the dance halls;
• Minnie the Gambler, who took a cowhide to any gent fool enough to try to cheat her at cards.

But the queen of them all was was Lola Montez, ex-Queen of Bavaria and toast of three continents.  Her career was over by the time of our Civil War, but her legend lived on, and she was said to have done her Spider Dance in the mining camps.  Doing the dance, she darted about in short petticoats, as if all crawled over with tarantulas, giving kicks and wiggles that entranced her male audience.

Did I say “ex-Queen of Bavaria”?  A slight exaggeration; she was queen in all but name.  An Irish-born dancer who did Spanish dances, Eliza Gilbert (1821-1861) had already had a tempestuous continental career (affairs with Franz Liszt and others) when she performed in Bavaria in 1846.  King Ludwig became so infatuated with her that he made her his mistress and gave her a title and a handsome annuity.  But her influence on the king, and her arrogance and outbursts of temper, alienated the public.  When the revolution of 1848 broke out, the king had to abdicate, and Lola fled the country.

It was during an Australian tour in 1855-1856 that she entertained miners at the gold diggings with her notorious Spider Dance, raising her skirts so high that the audience could see her total lack of underclothing.  The Australian press was outraged, but when an editor gave her a bad review, she attacked him with a whip.

A caricature of Lola Montez departing for America, circa 1852.

Subsequent efforts to revive her career were not successful, and her later life in the US was quiet.  She reminisced with those who had known her in her wild days, but those days were over.  Stricken with tertiary syphilis, she wasted away and died in 1861 at age 42.  Buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, she has a tombstone giving her name as “Mrs. Eliza Gilbert,” that being her name (minus the “Mrs.”) at birth.

If legend, erroneously, has Lola Montez doing her Spider Dance in the American West, she should have performed it there, for she is the ultimate in wild women, even if her West was the goldfields of Australia.  But what made her tick?  A savage need to be noticed?  A sensuality so keen that it had to express itself, no matter what the cost?  A touch of the self-destructive?  One wonders.  But at least 

she had her fling -- a glorious one -- and is featured at length in Wikipedia today.  So honored, may her soul be at rest.

Wild women of the West — at least, assertive and unconventional ones — appear in the novels and short stories of Henry James.  Featured in “The Siege of London” is the aptly-named Mrs. Headway, who has been married and divorced in the West so many times that at one point even her sister didn’t know who she was married to.  Is she respectable?  That’s what a young English baronet wants to know.  Fascinated by her but ignorant of American society, he wants to marry her, but needs reassurance that she is respectable.  In the end she triumphs.  He proposes, and she is a raging success in English society, entertaining everyone with her tales of crazy doings in the American West.

James was probably the first writer to popularize the American girl, whether of the East or West.  She was independent with a mind of her own, adventurous, well-meaning, full of spunk.  I observed this during my two Fulbright years in France long ago.  The French girls had their appeal, too, but it was different.  The American girls always won me over, and we shared a rich and very American sense of humor as well.  They were spunky, lively, full of laughs.  I was there to learn French, but I found time for them as well.  I had to.  They were fun.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

525. The Art of Selling

                       

                        The Art of Selling

                                          Silas and me at BookCon 2018

Having exhibited at five New York book fairs, two of which ran for two days, I’ve accumulated a lot of wisdom (or pseudo wisdom) about selling to the public.  I was selling books, but much of it can apply to selling anything.  Here is what I’ve learned.

• Be visible.  If you can choose, be on an aisle so that visitors will be channeled toward you.  Avoid wide open spaces.  (This goes for any exhibit hall or fair.)
• Show your stuff.  Make your product visible, too.  For me, that meant having my books sitting upright or in a book rack, not all lying flat.
• Tell them what you're selling.  Display a big sign describing your product.  Mine said NEW YORK STORIES.
• Smile.  Frowns or deadpan looks repel.
• Gimmicks don't sell.  Gimmicks –– free bookmarks, flashing lights, funny signs, etc. -– get attention but don’t sell books.   Properly presented, your product sells itself.  I showed a series of funny signs; attendees watched with a smile, but not one came to my stand and bought.
• Smile.
• Be prepared for show-offs and attention-getters.   Among the attendees will be people who are there to display themselves, not to buy.  At BookCon at the Javits Center I saw young women in flaring skirts right out of Gone with the Wind, and one who was masked and garbed all in black.  Also a grinning troll.  
• Stand when they approach.  Sitting, you won't sell.
• Say hello, but nothing more.  Don't push.
• Smile.
• Have a short spiel handy.  If they ask about your product, make them yearn for it, feel incomplete without it.
• Don’t haggle.  Stick to your stated price.  But offering a second item at a discount is fine
• Be prepared for weirdos.  There will always be a few.  In my case, one who was all hopped up on meth or heroin, and another who talked grandly but vaguely of his "project" -- never fully described -- and wanted to involve me in it.  Just quietly get rid of them as soon as you can.
• Don't scream, gnash your teeth, scowl, or otherwise show displeasure.  When, after looking at your product and chatting with you, they put it down and walk away without buying, try to look cheerful, poised, serene.  We've all examined a product of some kind and then put it back without buying.  It's all part of the game.
• Don't believe the "bebacks."  If they leave saying they’ll be back, nod graciously but don’t believe it.  One in ten will return.  Maybe they’ve forgotten your location, or maybe, having spent time with you without buying, they’re embarrassed.
• Smile.
• Don't be discouraged.  When the fair ends, you won't have sold as many items as you had hoped.  You never will.  So what?  You did your best, had some fun (fairs are always fun), and can learn from your mistakes.

An artist friend of mine who exhibits his paintings at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit tells me, “I get so tired of smiling.”  A real pro, he knows to be discreet, never pushy.  But when I lose a sale, it’s only a matter of a twenty-dollar book at most; if he fails to sell a painting, several hundred dollars is involved.  For him, the stakes are high.  But recently in one weekend he sold fifteen paintings.  He thinks it may be a loosening up in buyers, as the pandemic -- we hope -- winds down.

Have any of you ever tried to sell to the public?  If so, tell me all about it.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

524. A Murder That Rocked New York

                     BROWDERBOOKS

Evening of June 25, 1906.  A fashionable crowd has gathered on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden, a vast Beaux-Arts structure at Madison Avenue and 26th Street, for the premiere of Mamzelle Champagne, a frothy musical comedy to be performed on the rooftop’s outdoor stage.

At 10:55 p.m., as the performance was nearing its conclusion, a burly redheaded gentleman of fifty with a formidable red mustache entered alone and sat at the table customarily reserved for him, five rows from the stage.  Everything about him said money, power, success.

Ten minutes later a handsome younger man left his own table, walked about nervously while muttering to himself, then approached the older man’s table.  As a performer onstage began singing “I Could Love a Million Girls,” three shots rang out.  

A stunned silence gripped performers and audience alike.  Was this a part of the performance, spectators wondered, or another of the party tricks common in fashionable circles?  But the older man’s lifeless body fell to the floor, and the table overturned with a clatter.

People screamed, rose from their seats, and rushed for the exits. At the theater manager's insistence, the orchestra tried to continue playing, but the performers were frozen in horror, and the panic continued.  Someone put a tablecloth over the body, and when blood soaked through, added a second one as well.  

The murderer had left carrying his revolver high in the air to indicate that he was done shooting.  Himself in a daze, he was easily disarmed and arrested in the lobby. “That man ruined my wife!” he exclaimed.

The next day the headlines screamed it big:

    THAW KILLS STANFORD WHITE ON ROOF GARDEN

 

The victim was Stanford White, the most successful architect of his time, whose firm had created the Garden itself, the Washington Square Arch, and Columbia University's Low Memorial Library.

Unknown to his wife and family, he was also a connoisseur and seducer of young girls, among them the hauntingly beautiful Evelyn Nesbit.  

The murderer was Harry Thaw, a Pittsburgh millionaire and man about town who had married Evelyn Nesbit.  Morbidly jealous of White, he had plied his wife for details of her former relationship with White, stoking his anger to the point that it became murderous.

Trials of Thaw for murder followed (yes, more than one), Evelyn Nesbit told different versions of her story, and White's reputation was assailed by some and defended by others.  

The story has many twists and turns. Thaw was mentally unstable, his version of the story questionable.  

Was Evelyn a shamefully seduced victim or a dazzled, willing one?  

If White was a heartless seducer, why did he continue to give Evelyn  money long after he left her for other conquests?  

And what happened when, years later, Hollywood made a film of the story and hired Evelyn, now long forgotten, as an adviser?  And what finally became of her, the onetime “lethal beauty”?

This is just one of many stories told in Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies.  

A collection of biographical sketches of New Yorkers, some remembered and some forgotten, it is the second title of my #Wild New York series of nonfiction works about New York and New Yorkers, past and present.  

A new paperback edition with a stunning front cover is now available from Amazon.  

Readers won't soon forget these people.  They are sometimes admirable, often shocking, and sometimes despicable, but never, never boring.  

Where could they fulfill themselves better than in the wild, crazy,  vastly exciting city of New York?

©  2021  Clifford Browder