PART TWO

THE PEOPLE

(_Confidential!_)

15. THE MINX IN MINKS

(_For Gals Only_)

This is the Enchanted City where fables and sables come true and dreams have substance, sometimes. This is the magic spot where gentlemen pay the rent for terraced apartments hanging high over the river and jalopies turn into Rolls-Royces.

Every year they come here: the little gals from farms and villages, inland whistle-stops and, now again, foreign lands. They come here, breathlessly and hopefully, in search of fame and fortune.

The men they left behind were grease-station monkeys, cow manicurists, soda jerks and coal miners. Here they seek men whose pants match their coats, who stand when a lady comes to the table, who know the difference between a filet mignon and filet de sole, and can even pronounce same.

But they don't always find them.

You, reading this, may be one of the dolls bound for New York to take it over. Or you may be a perfectly prissy schoolteacher on a two-week vacation, but with a secret and ineffable hankering to know more about the things the movies mustn't show. Or maybe you are a lady buyer, coming to the fall showings; or a wife, who, left alone by her husband, doesn't want to be by others.

The same tips go for all:

Do not come to Gotham unless you have round-trip fare. If you intend to seek coin or a career here (or just a job) do not come at all unless you have enough to keep you for four months and are insulated against a city that can say no in any language.

Do not come to New York in answer to a solicitation, personal or by mail, for a job. If anyone comes to your home town with offers of good positions in Manhattan, turn him over to the police. Odds are he's an advance man for a call house.

Do not come unless you have friends here already, for it can be a mighty lonesome place. If you are an easy mixer and don't care, you can eliminate the requirement for friends.

Do not come to New York for a visit ALONE. There is practically nothing a girl can do here without an escort, or at least without the company of another girl, except ride the dirty subways and stare at the obelisk.

If you can't dragoon a man of your own you are just out of luck. Even the escort services have been banned by law.

But remember, New Yorkers seldom try for pick-ups on the streets, in buses or lobbies. Any girl who responds to a raw come-on may be smiling back at a handsome dick on the vice squad.

However, it is considered o.k. (at your own risk, of course, not ours) to respond to "It's a nice evening, isn't it?" at dance halls, at free dances, bathing beaches, swimming pools, cocktail bars, church and YMCA socials.

Also, on the street (but only if you or he may be walking a dog and one or the other stops to admire it).

* * * * *

Most night clubs and cocktail bars do not admit or permit unescorted women after 10 P.M.

(At this writing the City Council and State Legislature are considering bills to ban unescorted women at bars at any time.)

Never talk to strangers in theatres, on subways or in other public places.

You may nod to him in a hotel if you both live there and have seen each other before.

DO NOT walk in Central Park, or other parks AFTER DARK, even if escorted.

* * * * *

CONFESSIONS OF A CAUTIOUS CUTIE:

Smart Gotham gals don't keep diaries. If what goes into 'em is unimportant, why bother? If it's secret stuff, never put it in writing.

Gals who pass out after five (or 55) drinks should wear identification bracelets with name and address--especially when on a first date with a gent who may not know where to deliver the body. In no event should dolls who can't handle their liquor step out with men who can't carry theirs. Who takes whom home?

When entering a night club, a smart gal doesn't stop at the bar to greet every drunk, just to show her escort she's a doll-about-town.

Do not use cheap perfume when night clubbing (or at any time).

Don't invite gents who call for you into your apartment. Have them meet you below. If they once get in, they may decide they'll stay a while, smoke your cigarettes, drink all your liquor, raid your ice box, and then if you won't give in, they won't buy you dinner.

* * * * *

Few Gotham glamor gals are home-grown. Our gals don't go in much for show business and modeling. Those professionals you see on the street and in the night clubs almost all come from out of town.

The deep South--Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida--towns like Scranton, Pa., and West Coast points, contribute most of our flashy frails.

For a long time, during the war, our source of supply was cut off, when the gals made more money at home in defense work or as waitresses than they could expect to begin with in the expensive-to-live-in metropolis.

But in days before that, there was no horizon at home for a good-looker with ambitions.

They hitchhiked, rumbled in by bus, train and plane. The more fortunate became models or show girls. One of a thousand went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood or acquired a millionaire, in or out of wedlock.

But the reward for the lucky ones is so great that for every failure a dozen new, young, starry-eyed twists come to town.

The case of Mary Stuart, of Tulsa, Okla., is typical.

It is one of the stories that could only happen on Broadway.

The chief characters:

Joe Pasternak, famed movie producer and discoverer of Deanna Durbin; his wife, the former Dorothy Darrell, who was a chorus girl Cinderella, and Mary Stuart, the 19-year-old beaut from out West.

But let us start from the beginning. Destiny stopped in Tulsa and pointed his long, bony finger straight at New York. Mary took the hint.

That day she shoved off. Lacking the fare, she thumbed her way. She had no difficulty flagging rides. For Mary, as we've told you, is a beaut. She has soft brown hair and a figure curved in the right places to accentuate all her loveliness--all 118 pounds and five-feet-five of it.

So she had no difficulty finding work here, as a model by day and as a photo girl in the Grill Room of the Hotel Roosevelt at night.

Into the Grill one night came Pasternak and his own lovely wife, accepting an invitation extended by Guy Lombardo, maestro at the spot.

Miss Stuart, hotly hoping she'd be seen by a Hollywood mogul, had been fired from the photo concession the day before.

But Destiny hadn't been; it was still working.

Through the voice of one of the musicians in Lombardo's band, whom she knew well, Destiny whispered to her that Pasternak had a reservation for that evening.

For a few bucks, Mary fixed it up with another photo girl and paraded past the Pasternaks with the camera.

Mrs. Pasternak saw Mary first, remarked about her beauty to Joe.

Mary, near their table, began to hum in tune to the music.

Pasternak addressed her. "Do you sing?" he asked.

Mary modestly admitted she did--a little.

Pasternak asked to hear her. Mary was unprepared. He said he might leave town next day. So he asked Lombardo to let her try a number with the orchestra.

When Mary got there, she didn't even bother to talk the song over with the piano player. Confidentially, she had rehearsed it with him earlier in the day, framing up the whole thing for Pasternak's visit.

She sang two songs.

Pasternak later admitted she was no world-beater as a thrush. And he had caught on to the game.

"I decided that any girl with that much gall had a hell of a chance in pictures," he told Lombardo.

So he signed her to a contract--that night--without a screen test.

Pasternak, who also discovered the charming and talented Kathryn Grayson, has flirted successfully with Fate more than once. His own stunning wife was, before meeting him, a chorus girl who, in her teens, had been around Broadway so long she was considered "an old face" and practically washed up.

So she joined a touring line of rumba dancers. Far from New York, Pasternak saw her in a night club, asked to meet her, whipped out his fountain pen and a contract and shipped her to Universal, at which studio he then labored.

Dorothy appeared in minor roles in several pictures.

Then she interrupted her promising career to marry her discoverer--a dear friend of her ex-sweetie, Harry Richman, whom she had once followed to London only to be deported by the British authorities because she had neither passport nor money.

But, if any guy says to you, "Honey, you oughtta be in pichures. Let's go up to my room and talk it over," _DON'T_. That is _not_ the way to get in pictures. That's the way to get in trouble!

16. GUYS AND PEARLS

(For Men Only)

Don't be a cluck!

Sure, New York is the home of Tiffany and Cartier, Bonwit and Saks, Milgrim and Bergdorf-Goodman.

But Gotham gals don't flop for saps, simps or retail buyers.

They'll take everything you've got to give 'em--and take you for what you haven't got.

But the more you shower on them, the more they'll laugh at you--while cheating with another.

Of course, if you're only in town for a few days or a few weeks, and you have a penchant for orchidaceous glamor dolls, you've got to kick in and hand out--handsomely.

But don't overdo it. Be careful how you do it.

None but hustlers are for sale. So, whatever you give, make it look like a gift of appreciation for the pleasure, instead of a bribe or fee.

* * * * *

O.K. You are a lonesome gent in New York, looking for company, and where are you going to find _her_? Of course, we don't know what your taste is--whether you like them little or tall, blonde or brunette, breezily hep or delightfully dumb.

But, let us warn you, Manhattan is mined for a lonely guy.

Best policed city in the world, despite an occasional scandal, there's little opportunity for street pick-ups here, and the quality of what you could pick up is so inferior, you'd be cheated.

New York's cafés and clubs are forbidden by law to employ hostesses or "B" girls, and a police regulation bans mixing between female entertainers and guests.

This rule is so strictly enforced in the big, first-class night clubs, that the members of the casts are required to enter and leave the premises by the stage door.

A friend of ours, a newspaperman, was married to a redheaded hoofer in a Broadway night club. Because of the variance in their hours, the only opportunity they had to visit socially with one another was between shows at her club.

One night, while she was sitting with her husband, the cops raided the place and took up its license. The offense: A female entertainer "mixing" with a guest.

When it was explained to the police that the couple--if not respectable--were at least respectably married, the flat-feet scratched their heads. After prolonged and profound thought, they refused to drop the charges.

"The law says no gals can sit with guys," they stated. "It don't say nothing here about no husbands."

The club was suspended for 10 days.

Some of the taxi dance halls on Broadway employ broads who will dance with you for a dime a dance (and up) plus tip. They are not supposed to make dates with you, and you won't want to anyway, unless you are desperate or dizzy.

If they do date you, you've got to wait until the place closes, at one, or later, then meet them elsewhere than at the dance hall.

(But where are you going with them, during the hotel shortage?)

Turn to Chapter 33 for how to meet friends.

INSIDE STUFF: Many smaller night clubs, especially those on side streets and in Greenwich Village, cheat. Some headwaiters have been known to introduce strangers for a stiff tip. But if you sit out with the tramps in these places, count your drinks, watch your check--and better check your watch.

* * * * *

BEWARE of steerers. If a stranger in the street or hotel lobby or a cab driver asks you if you want to meet a gal, shake your head hard. Odds are he is a runner for a clip joint.

* * * * *

WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:

Don't date a late-dater unless you are her late date. (Late-dater: a doll who ducks out on her dinner date at midnight to meet another guy--usually a musician.)

Three funny gags that make 'em laugh are worth more than three hours of romantic salesmanship.

Get yourself a big, fierce-looking hound and walk him around the block. Not only is there a free-masonry between all pooch-lovers, male and female ... but plenty of soft little cuties will stop to admire the brute. Then....

Most girls are now too smart for the "ya oughta be in pichures" hokum, but no doll can stand off a guy who "breaks her down." Insults far oftener than flattery bust barriers on Broadway.

Never trust a gal any farther than you can throw a trap-drummer.

Common courtesy demands that if your doll airs you, she rates one day to return. (Unless you have to catch a train home that day--then give her two hours.) If she doesn't show up, find a stand-in. Census bureau says there will be 750,000 more does than stags in this postwar world.

When you take a likely candidate to the Stork or El Morocco, don't try to impress her with your friendship with big shots by introducing her to a movie star or millionaire playboy. She'll probably end up with him--instead of you.

But if she rhapsodizes about a good-looking guy or celeb at another table, go and bring him over and tell him in front of her that your little friend goes for him. She'll be terribly embarrassed.

(_Confessions of a Cautious Cutie_: Yes, but she'll slip him her phone number, too.)

If you get your dates mixed up and end up with two Little Red Riding Hoods on the same party, don't explain. Smile in a superior way and let the pigeons fight over you--not you over them.

Never enthuse to a fellow wolf about your latest conquest--unless you're trying to lose her.

If you are with a new pretty, tip the headwaiter NOT to give you a ringside table in full view of the other wolves.

Do not let her dance with your pals. Let them dig their own. Be a good fellow, but not that good.

Don't introduce her at all if you can get out of it.

Never pan your pal to your doll and surely don't tell her he's a bad egg with women or a quick-change lover. If you do, you'll find your femme so interested, she'll turn flipflops for him.

When a date stands you up, never give her another tumble, though her alibi about rushing her sick mamma to the hospital or getting an emergency call from the casting office sounded bullet-proof. What undoubtedly happened was that her secret heart throb got back in town unexpectedly.

When you book a babe, have her meet you wherever you'll be. Only chumps wait for dames at stage doors or pick them up at their hotels. Don't be one.

* * * * *

WARNING:

Do not start fights in night clubs. If you think you have a legitimate beef, take your complaint to the manager. If he won't listen to you, the cops or your lawyer will. But don't start swinging. You can't win even if you are a football player, a pug, or pack a rod. You can't whip a bartender who swings a bung-starter. If you can, there's a heavy-handed bouncer, a couple of captains and a wedge of waiters waiting to show you who's boss. If they keep hands off, they'll slip you a mickey finn--and you'll wish you had never been born.

17. GLAMOR PUSSES

New York has the most beautiful bimbos on earth, and it will amuse you to learn few of them come from New York.

The authors know the buying power of their territory, and one of their ways of paying their rent is selling books.

Yet, slaves to the verities, they must say--sadly, it is true--that if you want a rollicking time with a tootsie, avoid the Bronx and Brooklyn entries.

That is, of course, a generalization. There MAY be some pretty home-grown ones. But we can't find any. Don't say we haven't tried. In the interests of science, natch, we have pursued research. But when we find one worth intensive study, we find she's from Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, California or Quebec. Canadian chicks can be fun. But the gals who do best, and by "best" we mean what gals do best, usually come from below the Mason and Dixon line.

The proportion of pretty out-of-towners is higher than the home-bred, because New York gets the pick of the crop from everywhere else.

The homely ones stay home, marry the neighbor's son and raise pigs, chickens and brats.

The pretty pigeons get fed up on louts in lumber-jackets and hit out for Life.

So the imports are pretty, whereas the home output is pretty merely in the normal proportion, which is low.

It is worth noting that, once a doll gets the title of Glamor Puss, it adheres to her for life, a-la a British order of knighthood. Some of our more famous GPs are long past the age of consent, yet they continue to make front pages, collect husbands or boy friends and costly gifts.

An example is Peggy Hopkins Joyce, born Margaret Upton, daughter of a Virginia barber, who recently acquired a seventh spouse and who is working on her eighth. She long carried on a highly publicized feud with Mabel Boll, so-called "Queen of Diamonds," daughter of a Rochester pub-keeper, on the dimensions of their gem collections.

The feud between Peggy and Mabel dated back to when they were both in the sizzling set that made headquarters at old Bustanoby's. Others in that crowd included Lillian Loraine and the Dolly Sisters.

Peggy's sweetheart then gave her a diamond ring. It was a shabby little stone, scarcely over a carat, but it was Peggy's first diamond and it gave her far more of a thrill than many of the brooches and bracelets she was to amass later. Its effect on her friend Mabel was remarkable.

Scientists will tell you that the passion for possessing precious stones is as old as recorded history. It is like a potent drug that fires the blood and flames a desire that knows no rest. So it was with Mabel. Years later she said:

"I thought it was the most beautiful stone in the world. I used to admire it by the hour and beg Peggy to let me wear it sometimes. I never hoped to own anything so grand."

But if Mabel had no diamonds, she had beauty--and beauty is a magnet that has a way of attracting the heart's desire. Mabel craved diamonds. And so, what do you think?

The careers of Peggy and Mabel ran parallel along the road to wealth, fashion, luxury and husbands. If Peggy had the slight edge on Mabel in the number of marriages, Mabel was one up on Peggy in the diamond department.

Included in her collection was supposed to be a big hunk of the Romanoff crown jewels, reputedly given her by Señor Emil Pardo, ridiculously rich Brazilian coffee planter.

Those jewels, sold by the Soviet, had been contrabanded into the United States by an individual said in hush-hush circles to have been a prince. The royal baubles had a more fantastic and fabulous background than the famous late Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean's Hope hoodoo rock.

In 1922, the then Prince of Wales, now Duke of Windsor, visited Canada. Patriotic Canadians thought it would be jolly if he were to take a Canadian girl as a bride. They tapped Lady May Cambridge for the honor. The rumor grew so positive, the match was reported a certainty. A smart Canadian promoter got an inspiration to raise a half-million dollars by public subscription, buy the Romanoff jewels and have them studded into a necklace as a wedding gift for the Queen-to-be.

It all came to naught when the Prince announced he was not engaged to Lady May, had no intention of marrying. But the necklace had been made. It was a miracle of craftsmanship, consisting of 17 beautiful marquise diamonds and one huge egg-shaped clear blue-white diamond pendant that must have weighed 100 carats.

The promoter went broke, couldn't pay off the New York jeweler who executed the piece. The Maiden Lane merchant's bank took the necklace. Then came the depression.

Even banks needed money, so this one turned the gems over to a free-lance broker, who took them to Paris and showed them to La Boll, then the Queen of the Boulevards.

It was love at first blink. And when Pardo asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she already had the answer.

They were a swell investment for her, too. A few years later, when she no longer knew the rich Brazilian and was a little short, she sold the necklace to Harry Winston, the New York jeweler, who recently bought the Jonkers diamond. Winston paid her about $350,000, cash.

The guy who knows about such things said her collection was worth $3,000,000. Peggy's is valued at only $2,500,000. Poor kid!

Today's GPs don't do nearly so well. Taxes being as they are, they can't expect to.

* * * * *

Back on the migration of sweet pastry to Manhattan, consider another idiosyncrasy of New York night life.

In other towns--even the largest--the young boys own flivvers or borrow the family car and there are places in the country to drive to. And you can neck on the front porch or in the back yard, or at the barn dance or on a slab in the cemetery.

There's none of those in New York.

Most people live in cramped flats, where even the living room often is used as sleeping quarters.

The young femme can't entertain the young male at home; he usually hasn't a car, and if he had, there's nowhere much to drive to.

Most New York kids court in dark movies, kiss in hallways and doorways, and it's difficult to learn the fine points of love--or even of smooching--in such an environment.

So, in the wisest burg of all, the newcomer is wiser than the native.

18. MODELS

The highly paid babes who pose for the photographers are prettier but dumber than their sisters who hoof in the choruses.

Also, they're not as lively.

They may be more photogenic, yet usually they exude about the same amount of personality as those other models--the wax ones in Macy's window.

But they aren't as witless as they act. The average 18-year-old who poses for a living knocks down $100 a week; a good cover (on a mag) type makes as much as $250, and a $500 week is not unknown to the cream of the calling.

Hold your hosses, kids. Don't rush into town. It's just about as difficult to get pacted by one of the three leading agents, John Robert Powers, Harry Conover or Walter Thornton, as it is to wangle a movie contract.

Usually, a model earns more than a so-called contract girl in films, who often signs at $75 a week.

Many models have gone into films as stars. Others have made favorable marriages. (Definition: FAVORABLE--Moolah.)

Some of the town's top party-girls are models. You see them in all the best places, like Morocco and the Stork, with wine-buyers and wolves.

But most models are quiet, unobtrusive kids, who come to New York breathless and bug-eyed.

There are hundreds of them. All day you see them all over the East Side, scurrying from one advertising agency to another and from one photographer to another.

You usually can spot them, because they invariably carry their make-up and accessories in a Cavanagh, Knox or Dobbs' cardboard hat-box instead of a bag. Those are the insignia of their profession.

They live at the Barbizon for Women, the Shelton, the Beaux Arts, Tudor City and other similar East Side hotels, and they lunch along the counter at 247 Park Avenue and 420 Lexington Avenue, buildings in which models' agents, advertisers and photographers have headquarters.

At cocktail time, you usually find those with dates at Armando's or the Little Club.

Few models flash expensive furs or clothes, yet they are natty and neat, clean-cut, with small features, streamlined, slender and sober.

But these luminous lollipops are responsible for a pernicious influence in dress. Even the most girlish wear girdles, in a mistaken notion it makes their gowns look more slinky.

How really silly! There is nothing cuter than an undulating form swaying to a rumba band. And it's unfair to an escort to clasp a handful of rubber and steel when dancing--instead of something warm and human.

It's really simple, the way the New York girl-grabbers snag the new models.

There's a clique composed of guys who throw cocktail parties, and they manage to keep on excellent terms with the leading models' agents, photographers and publicity boys.

When they hear about a new subject in town, they throw a party in her honor and invite all the others in the gang.

Some are wealthy. But others make a very good living at the thing.

One gimmick is to tax all the male guests a "pro rata" share for the cost of the party, with it generally understood that the host is a major expense.

More indirectly, these connivers, known in other walks by an ugly four-letter word, get by through carrying files of desirable phone numbers.

Some of these characters have "pocket" businesses, such as the sale of diamonds or furs, and every time they complete an introduction to a money-man, the patron is expected to buy a hunk of jewelry or a neck-piece from the go-between, as a gift to the gal.

No classification or occupation is faked as much as that of model.

Many have filed their names with one of the big agents, maybe even done a couple of jobs. But they soon find other means to make money, less arduous than standing on their feet eight hours a day under hot Kleig lights, more steady than awaiting calls for their type.

The term "model" is loosely kicked around in New York and it covers a multitude of skins.

It's difficult for a stranger to meet a real one--that is, unless he has friends in one of the allied businesses, such as advertising, publicity or art.

We are, of course, referring to photographers' models.

There are classifications--much larger--of the ones who model fashions. They should be called mannequins, but that seems a word used only in Paris.

Every wholesale house in the huge cloak and suit industry employs at least one model and all the swank retail stores have whole staffs.

The girls who do this kind of work usually aren't as pretty as the babes who pose for cameras. Facial beauty is not a requisite, although a figure is supposed to be perfect in proportions, to fit commercial dimensions.

Many who work in the wholesale market are friendly and it is considered a regular part of their paid work to "entertain" the big buyer from Burlington.

Many models--photographers' models, that is--go into show business as chorus girls and, conversely, many chorines double as models.

Many of these have the most amazing experiences, and whenever tales like the one about redheaded Joanne Marshall are told, another thousand half-baked pigeons run away from their homes and hotfoot it to New York:

Joanne Marshall, whose real name was Joan Lacock, was born in Wheeling, W. Va., in the summer of 1922.

Her father ran a drugstore. She grew up, the average small-town girl, but shapely, lovely and with the most luminous eyes.

After her father's death, which left the family--her mother and her young brother--about destitute, she and Mrs. Lacock came to New York. Joanne was so entrancingly beautiful, she had little trouble catching on as a model, and quickly earned $75 to $100 a week. She was then about 18.

Some of the other Powers exhibits told her about the offer they had to become show girls in the new revue being prepared to star Al Jolson.

It would be loads of fun. Joanne joined the show, too.

It opened in Chicago in the summer of 1940, then made its Gotham debut that fall. Joanne was crazy about it.

Until then, she knew no serious romances.

Her male companions were young men without serious intentions; youths like Gar Wood, Jr., and George Church, a young dancer in the show, and George Miller, an equally young chorus boy.

One day the great man who starred in the show, the fabulous Jolson, tiffed with Jinx Falkenberg, then a featured show gal in the production, since then a film starlet and "breakfast broadcaster."

Jinx had often gone out with Al after his break-up with Ruby Keeler.

Jolson turned away, suddenly noticed the 18-year-old child who had been dancing, unseen by him, in his own chorus.

He took the gal to dinner, flattered her beyond anything she had heard in West Virginia or from youthful New Yorkers.

He swept her practically off her feet.

We say "practically," advisedly.

For, though she gave the air to all the boys, much to their anguish and unflattering cracks about the age of her new friend, she resisted Jolson's importuning to marry her.

Yet she was seen with him nightly, shared his favorite corner table at the Stork Club after every show, took him home to meet her family, did not deny published reports that this was the real thing.

The wise Willies said, "See what happens when an old guy with fame and dough comes along? He gets the rail post." So they thought.

They didn't even know about a good-looking young fellow who sang with a band.

Joanne met him in a night club, dated him one night when Jolson was busy elsewhere. He began to take up more and more of her time. Then she married him. It was at about the time he began to click on the radio. He did okay. He is now a top Hollywood star. His name is Dick Haymes. And Joanne is now Joan Dru, married to her second husband, actor John Ireland.

Earlier in this chapter, we implied that models are dumb. Most of them are. But one who was no dope was a blue-eyed rusty-mop who graduated from the local high school in Canton, N.C., at 13. Dumb, did we say? High school is correct. She finished it at 13.

Her name was Marianne Grey.

The next year, she matriculated at the University of Wisconsin, its youngest student. She majored in archeology--bone-dry digging up of things long dead. She got her degree in three years, at 17.

Luckily, all her spadework couldn't retard her physical development. She had curves and dimples wherever bewitching beauts at 17 can grow curves and dimples.

Carefully packing her sheepskin in mothballs, Marianne, the tomb-expert, set out to rummage around in the living world. She found it strangely clammy to specialists on mummies.

It might, though, find itself short of curves and dimples, red hair and blue eyes.

So Marianne Grey changed her diploma-distinguished name to Marianne Simms and headed for Broadway, where she registered it on the rolls of Powers' models.

All students of the Sunday supplements know these dolls get around and everybody looks at them.

In her peregrinations, she met Sinclair Lewis, who, captivated more by her ravishments than by her knowledge of King Tut, brought her to the attention of Edna and Red Skelton. They signed her to a personal contract pronto, brought her to Hollywood for a projected radio show--Skeltons instead of skeletons.

The show didn't materialize. But David O. Selznick did.

The great producer offered a screen test. Literate as well as gorgeous, the youngster wrote the script of the test, and in it she challenged the camera.

When she signed the contract, her name was changed again--to Cristofa Sims and she became a Hollywood favorite.

WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:

Smart guys seldom escort Powers, Thornton or Conover models. The cover gals arise so early to keep working appointments that, along about midnight, as the party gets in high, they suggest you take them home. Chorines and show gals are indicated for night owls. Models are for chumps who crave to show off with orchidaceous bric-a-brac.

19. SECOND FROM THE END

So many millions of inspirational and incoherent words are annually written in raves over New York's chorus gals that the time has come to do a little debunking.

1. Our chorines are not the prettiest girls in the world.

2. Nor are they the most immoral--

3. Or the most stupid.

4. They are usually poor dressers.

5. Few have passable gowns.

6. A small number live in penthouses.

7. Fewer win rich patrons or sweeties.

The New York rolls of Chorus Equity and the American Guild of Variety Artists list several thousand girls who work in the ensembles of musical shows, vaudeville houses and night clubs, or road-show in traveling theatrical troupes, tabloid units, circuses and carnivals originating in New York.

Of these, not more than ten tyros in any year come forth as glamor gals, and the proportion of those with outstanding beauty is just about the same as in non-professional life.

New York's chorines, like her models, are drawn to the magnet from every state in the Union and all corners of the earth. Few hit the jackpot.

Many Hollywood femme stars once hoofed in Broadway lines and other cuties snared rich husbands or near-husbands.

But for every Paulette Goddard, Barbara Stanwyck, Alice Faye, Joan Crawford and Lucille Bremer, there are thousands of kids who pound out the soles of their aching feet for five or six years, then discover that at 21 or 22 they've been around the Stem so long the managers call them "old faces" and they no longer can get work.

If they have no particular talent to develop into individual specialties, or if they haven't the faculty to snare a man to take care of them, they've got to get jobs in inferior outlying night clubs or in out-of-town cafés or road-shows, and, typed as a "road louse," there is only one direction for them--down.

Yet nothing deters recruits. For every one who gets a Broadway job, there are 100 applicants.

Perhaps, because we're getting older, we mumble that "those days" were the best.

But the records prove the current chorus gal is not half so gay, glamorous or interesting as the ensemble entry of a decade and more ago.

The world has changed, and with it changed the choryphee.

In the old days, a chorus salary of 50 or 60 bucks a week seemed like a million to hicks in the sticks, and parental opposition was not too oppressive.

The playboys were still around; the mobsters rustled $1,000 bills and the Wall Street Blue Sky subdividers had gold mines up there.

Now, a survey will turn up the startling fact that most lilies of the line are using the chorus as a temporary makeshift while completing their education. They double between the cabaret floor or stage, and college. If they're seeking a theatrical career, they spend their days studying voice, ballet, dramatics.

The result is, few playgirls at that source. More and more duck home immediately after the show, so they can get up early and go to school or to the coach.

This is very bad on love-life, and the few still around with loose shekels don't look too longingly at Broadway.

It's getting extremely difficult to meet a chorus charmer.

Those in legit musicals aren't usually approachable unless you know someone to perform the introductions, which makes this puzzle something like the one about which came first, the egg or the chicken.

Night club quail is as hard to make up to, because of the law which forbids entertainers to sit with patrons in the dining room. All big cafés, with the choicest, enforce this rule rigorously. You'd hardly want to meet the girls in the kind of dumps that cheat.

Thus, the new babe has little opportunity to get in with the playboy set. There are, of course, exceptions. People still break out of Leavenworth, too.

The glamorous ten who crack through each year, to be quoted and itemed in the columns, wined and steaked at El Morocco and screen-tested by 20th Century-Fox are the phenoms.

The others go home every night and study--or end up with a musician.

That's orthodox.

Every night club and theatre with choruses must employ musicians. They work the same bastard hours as the girls. They duck out for smokes at the same time, have their crullers and java in the same lunchroom or greasy spoon. They talk the same language about the same interests.

Propinquity, plus opportunity, are Cupid's nets.

The young, strange gals are lonesome, their cheap rooms are depressing--and musicians are at their elbows.

So you can easily figure out the answer to this one: To meet a chorine, learn to slide a trombone.

Most of the kids live in midtown hotels between Sixth and Eighth Avenues, from 42nd Street to 55th.

Their favorites are the Piccadilly, Forrest, President, Plymouth, Belvedere, Victoria, Taft, Abbey, Century, Knickerbocker, Wellington, with those who can afford it staying at the Edison, Lincoln, Astor and Park Sheraton and dreaming of the Savoy Plaza.

A day in the life of the average chorine--without school obligations--would find her arising about 5 p.m., and getting out just in time to grab a cup of coffee before reporting for work. They look like hell at this time of day, minus make-up and with tousled hair in a net. The transformation that comes after they apply their stage war paint remains with them for the rest of the day. When a chorine has a date after or between shows, she never removes the pancake or the drugstore eyelashes.

When they are eating alone or with a musician boy friend (with whom they usually go "Dutch") you'll find them at the soda fountains of Hanson's pharmacy, 51st and Seventh Avenue, or the Paramount druggist, on Seventh near 52nd Street. Their favorite lunch counters are Rudley's and Rikers, and the greasy vest in the 49th Street side of the Brill Building.

Those who aren't cabaret hoppers frequently bowl at the Roxy alley after the show. Others prefer jam sessions in the small and smoky 52nd Street jitterbug joints.

* * * * *

The ambition of every cookie in every chorus is to be tapped by a Hollywood talent scout.

Each year several dozen "new faces" are approached by the local representatives of the major film studios and signed to "option contracts," with the company not obligated to hire the girl after she is tested.

A tiny percentage of those so signed arrive in Hollywood, and of these one in a thousand makes good.

Often they seek out your authors and breathlessly spill the info that it has come--the chance for a screen test!

What to do?

We ask whether the test is to be shot here or on the Coast. Mostly likely, it's in the New York studios.

We caution, "Don't take it; hold out for a Coast test."

Few movie contracts have resulted from tests in local offices here. The facilities and abilities available are undergrade. The best points are not brought out. There are no directors here, so any talent that does lurk is often kicked around.

But when a studio has enough faith to ship one to the Coast for the test, chances of a film break-through are considerably higher.

First, the studio must pay a salary during the testing period, on top of round-trip, first-class fare. With that invested, efforts will be made to bring out assets. And, should the first test fizzle, others will be given.

Another factor against Eastern tests is that the try-out is viewed by a tough jury, 3,000 miles away--hard strangers predisposed to turn thick thumbs down.

In addition to meaning little, these Eastern screen tests are a walkaway for wise wolves, most of whom manage to get close to casting agents of studios.

The procedure is to introduce the subject to the scout and get his promise to consider her for a test. Even if he eventually turns her down, the squab is on a string for weeks and has to be nice to her "benefactor." If she ever gets the test, she's hooked for at least three months, while the film is shipped to the Coast to await the verdict of producers and directors.

Actually, it's not necessary to know anyone to get consideration from the talent scouts. They're always looking for new faces. That's their business. Just barge in. (See page 301 for list of casting agents.)

But, suppose the candidate is lucky enough to run the gauntlet and find herself signed to the usual standard contract, which calls for $125 per week the first six months and options for seven years thereafter, at a slowly rising scale.

Should she take it?

We say, unless she wants the trip and a six-month paid vacation--no. She wants to be a dramatic actress. The odds against her making any talking screen role are about one in 500. If her heart breaks easily, movies will do it.

We tell her when she steps off the Super-Chief, with high hopes and enthusiasm, she will be plugged, for publicity, as a new star. A battery of photogs will greet her at Union Station. That afternoon she will get phone calls from every chaser in town, who will have learned everything about her by the grapevine from their opposite numbers in New York, who kissed her good-bye.

The first week will be a merry-go-round. She will dance till she's dippy at the Sunset Strip cabarets, meeting the biggies and the host of peculiar paranoiacs who infest the colony. She will go to swimming pool parties at mansions that look like De Mille film sets.

But the cabarets are fewer and not so glamorous as those she left behind. The people are duller, less intriguing. After a week, she'll realize Hollywood is pretty much Petoskey with palms.

Then will come the waiting--waiting for calls from the studio, waiting for appointments with the costumers, hairdressers, publicity department, still photogs.

She'll be snapped in every pose. If she's ultra-photogenic, she's sunk. For the rest of her career in Hollywood, while her gams are still straight and her figure otherwise, she'll pose cheese-cake for fan-mags and Sunday sheets--and find herself with a one-way ticket back to New York six months later.

The girl, of the hundreds under contract at every lot, who gets the attention of the producer or director, so he throws her a line in a picture, is the lucky one who is hit by a modern miracle.

She is the one each year at each studio who may possibly have a future.

The others, perhaps equally qualified, return to New York and sarcastic jibes, go back to the farm and marry the hired hand, or remain a part of the Hollywood flotsam, drifting from one extra call to another, back to a job in a chorus, possibly end up as a car-hop or checkroom-worker, as many have and will.

But, as we hinted, in New York dreams sometimes do come alive, though not always according to time-table or preconceived plan.

In the spring of 1937, Mortimer received a phone call from a 15-year-old redhead named Marianne O'Brien, who that day had joined the kid chorus of Ben Marden's Riviera, a glittering roadhouse on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge.

Said Miss O'Brien to Mortimer: "I'm 15, sweet, unspoiled and innocent. Rich men like to marry girls like me, the others tell me. Will you take me to the Stork Club and introduce me to one?"

Mortimer is an obliging soul, especially when he smells a story, so he escorted the youngster to Chez Billingsley, but ran into no millionaires.

Marianne got no proposals of marriage that season, but did achieve some attention due to publication of the following story:

It seems Ben Marden demanded all "new faces" for his chorus that year. When he interviewed Marianne in the line-up, he said, "Wait a minute, dear, haven't you worked for me before?"

Marianne demurely replied, "No, sir, you mistake me for my mamma, Mae O'Brien, who danced in your chorus at the Silver Slipper a few years ago."

Mae O'Brien, still beautiful and redheaded, was then selling programs and cigarettes at Jimmy Kelly's Greenwich Village bistro.

Marianne missed out on her millionaire, but soon the public prints linked her with many other men. She was pursued like the rabbit in a greyhound race. She was in demand as a photographers' model and finally won a speaking role in a road show of a Broadway hit.

A talent scout from Warners saw her, signed her to a $750 a week contract. She sat in Hollywood a year, on the payroll but not on a work-sheet. She was credited with romances in dizzy dozens, yet none with millionaires.

Then her film "career" faded and Marianne returned to New York. They said she was "through," though she was 22.

In the meantime, her mother, Mae, a widow, had wed. Her husband was no millionaire, but he got by. His name is Abe Attell, and three decades ago he was the world's featherweight champion, called by many the greatest boxer ever.

He had achieved fame of another sort by being named as the go-between in the Black Sox baseball scandal.

One night at El Morocco, Marianne was introduced to a good-looking, youngish fellow, who wanted to dance with her. He asked for a date. It grew into a romance.

The man, Richard Reynolds, Jr., heir to the $30,000,000 tobacco fortune, settled with his wife for $3,000,000--to be free to marry Marianne.

So the little redhead, no longer 15 or so unsophisticated, got her millionaire. No wonder O. Henry, who wrote so much so well about a town he knew so little, called it Bagdad on the Subway. It's a wonderworld--to its chosen few.

20. PARTY GIRLS

Just what and who is the party girl? Where does she come from? How does she live? What does she make?

There is a great deal of popular misinformation about the "party girl" and her function. The common error is to confuse her with a "call girl" and let it go at that. But there is a great and definite distinction between the two, though, of course, there are borderline cases.

But which is the "party girl"? You'll find her in many East Side hotels and apartment houses. Originally, she came to New York or Hollywood from Texas, Oklahoma, Florida or a small Pennsylvania town, with ambitions to become a model or an actress.

More often than not, her name is registered at one or more of the large model agencies.

All new girls in town quickly find themselves invited to cocktail parties given in swank apartments, where the local wolves get an opportunity to look them over.

These parties usually are thrown by hosts who make their living that way. They are smooth, suave characters with an unlimited acquaintance among show people, artists and models, and have access to every fresh young thing in town.

In return, the "guests" pay liberally for the privilege of being invited to the parties and also reward their hosts liberally otherwise, such as buying fur coats or jewelry through them, giving them tips on the market or commissions on deals consummated through contacts made at these parties.

The new girl in town soon finds she can make a good living merely by gracing these parties, and at the same time have a lot of fun with practically no labor or exertion. The usual fee these days is from $50 up, and the "party girl" is, unlike the "call girl," under no obligation whatever to give more than her presence.

What she does on her own, of course, is her own business. But many are good businesswomen. Quite often a "party girl" ends up with a wealthy protector and a luxurious apartment, if not marriage.

Many "party girls" have no means of support other than their fees for being on call to go out dancing. Some, however, continue to work as chorines or models, thus enhancing their desirability as guests and taking down the wages of toil. The girl with ambition to go places in show business often finds being a "party girl" a stepping stone toward a contract.

Many of the clients are visiting film executives who are lonesome and want to go out with a pretty girl, a semi-professional preferred, jailbait and film personnel avoided with horror.

The chief qualifications of a successful "party girl" are good looks, a range of smart clothes with the know-how to wear them, some wit, a fund of the day's small talk, superior dancing ability and a sense of humor--and, above almost all, she must be a good listener. She probably hears more bragging than she does "propositioning."

Clients fall into a variety of classifications. There are big businessmen with heavy deals to close, who find pretty girls help break down a customer's resistance. There are wealthy men who occasionally want to go out for a night on the town with a charming companion and no complications. And there are, of course, plain wolves.

"Party girls," unlike "call girls," are welcomed in all the best places in town and travel in the top strata of society--or, at least, café society. As steerers to some clubs they get commissions. All headwaiters know them, but none recognizes them.

21. IT COULD ONLY HAPPEN ON BROADWAY

The characters O. Henry, Damon Runyon, and Mark Hellinger wrote about were fictitious. None like them ever existed in New York or elsewhere. They were broad inventions that lived only in their gifted creators' imaginations.

Here are some Broadway beauts who actually lived and did make history. These stories are not fiction:

a.--_The Carrot Top and the Opal_

Iris Adrian, an oomphy redhead, who now plays tough girl parts in films, was a central character in one of the strangest love stories ever told on Broadway.

She had come to New York a young greenhorn, in 1932, from her California home.

She had no ambitions toward show business, but was visiting a girl friend, who one day answered a call posted by the late great Flo Ziegfeld. Iris went along to watch.

Ziegfeld didn't hire the friend, but he asked Iris if she would like to be a glorified clothes-horse. Iris thought it might be a lark and took the job.

At that time N.T.G., who was running the old Hollywood Restaurant on Broadway, had an agreement with Ziegfeld that the ten choicest Ziegfeld girls could double in both shows. Iris was one of the ten, easy.

Every night, after the final curtain of the Ziegfeld show--it was _Hot-Cha_, in which the late tempestuous Lupe Velez starred--Iris would scamper to the Hollywood and go into the chorus there for the midnight and two o'clock performances.

One of the owners of the Hollywood Restaurant was a very wealthy New York real estate man. His son, Herman Amron, was manager of the club. He fell in love with Iris and for a year or more it was one of the torrid romances of the Street.

When Iris took a summer off to go to Europe, Herman grabbed the next boat and followed her. When she returned, he bought her a mink coat, a diamond ring, a diamond bracelet--and kept buying.

He loved her so much, he did what so many other unwise, over-eager men on Broadway do. He tried to help her career. He begged talent scouts to go to see Iris. He spoke to friends--in the movie studios. Finally Iris came up with a contract--a year, with options each six months. She went out to Hollywood about ten years ago and appeared first in a George Raft picture. Herman was thrilled that he had done so much for his beloved. But, of course, he was very lonesome, since his job kept him here. He managed to fly out a couple of times to see her, but, as so many other men have learned, he found fame and adulation help a girl forget the man who isn't there.

Herman felt he was losing her. He grew desperate. He was back in New York. Christmas was coming. He had bought her diamonds and furs and didn't know what to send her now. He chose a beautiful, costly opal bracelet, packed it carefully, put in an affectionate card and sent it on to Hollywood, to Iris.

What Herman didn't know was, that among the superstitions in show business--like not whistling in a dressing-room or wearing yellow on opening night--opals are hoodoo 1-A.

Iris received the package. Like a girl, she opened it in a flurry of anticipation. She took out the opal bracelet. It was beautiful and she put it on, though she knew it was hard luck.

In the same mail was a letter from her studio--a notice that her option wasn't taken up and in two weeks she would no longer shine at Paramount.

The two, coming at once, were more than a coincidence to Iris. She knew that the opals had jinxed her contract. In a rage, she threw the bracelet on the floor, broke a couple of stones, had her maid send it back.

Two days later, still furious, she married a man who had been proposing to her for a year. He was worth $30,000,000, but he had one drawback--he was deaf and dumb.

The honeymoon covered a cruise from California to New York, via the Panama Canal. When Iris got to New York, she left him, picked a good state and sued for divorce. She got her decree and, washed up with pictures, returned to New York clubs, this time doing a specialty, advertised as Iris Adrian of the films.

She worked a couple of weeks at Leon & Eddie's, featured, and got over so well that she was given another chance in Hollywood, with another studio. And this time she clicked.

Through the years, Herman Amron continued to love her. Once in a while she would give him a break and let him take her out. Though he had disposed of the opal bracelet years before, the curse apparently hung on. Every time she went out with Herman something unfortunate happened to her.

Once she got sick; again, she got word of a lost Hollywood contract.

The last time Iris was in the newspapers was when she married Georgie Jay, a personable character who owns an uptown night club, the 78th Street Taproom. The marriage, of course, wasn't meant to take, because Iris had to stay in Hollywood and he had to stay in New York.

Once, when she was East, she and her husband sat in Leon & Eddie's. Herman, the hoodoo, was at the next table. He came over to say hello to Iris and Jay. That night Iris and her husband had the squabble which resulted, a week later, in her divorce.

b.--_Edith Finds Love_

Newcomers to night life--and most people around town today--will not recognize her name, Edith Roark.

But we remember Edith well--also the fabulously funny story she told on herself, that made her for the time the best-known beauty on the White Way.

Edith came from Dallas ... went to Hollywood ... became a showgirl ... worked for Sam Goldwyn.

When N.T.G. opened the famous old Paradise Restaurant on Broadway, in 1932, he imported 12 Goldwyn girls--at $150 a week--for his première. Edith was one.

On the Coast, the luminous Miss Roark had been the constant companion of George Raft.

In New York, she met singer Harry Richman--my, how that guy gets into our stories!--and became his constant companion.

A few months later, Richman and Raft happened to meet in Chicago.

Raft said to Richman--"Harry, what's this I hear about you trying to steal my girl?"

Richman said to Raft--"Georgie, you're nuts. She's my girl and you keep away from her."

Raft replied--"I'll prove it."

He phoned Edith in New York, said--"Honey, Richman says you love him."

Miss Roark, not knowing Richman was listening in on the extension, cooed sweetly--"Why, Georgie, you know you're my only love. I'm just being polite to Richman. He's important and can do me good."

"Just wait till I call her," Richman said.

He got Edith on the phone, asked--"What's this I hear about Raft?"

Again cooing sweetly, unconscious of Raft's ear on the other receiver, Edith said--"Why, Harry, you know you're my only love. I'm just being polite to Raft. He was so nice to me on the Coast."

The pay-off is that when the two stars accused her of double dealing, Edith flew into a simulated rage, shouted she knew they were testing her all the time and she said it all on purpose.

She made them both apologize to her--in the presence of her real sweetheart!

c.--_Unto the Second Generation_

It's likely you have heard of Hilda Ferguson, even possible you vaguely remember her. But it is not likely you have heard of Yolande Ugarte, who did do a bit in a Broadway show which ran about a week.

This is the story to date of Yolande Ugarte, and so it must also be to a degree the story of Hilda Ferguson, because Yolande, now in her 20's, seemed compelled by a strange destiny to follow in the footsteps of her mother, Hilda Ferguson.

During the first 17 years of her life, Yolande led a sheltered existence with relatives in Baltimore. She went to school, had puppy-love crushes. And, like many girls of her age, she dreamed of the stage.

She had a vague notion that her mother, whom she hadn't seen for years, had something to do with Broadway. Beyond that she knew little about her. The mother's name was seldom mentioned where she lived.

One summer Yolande entered a beauty contest. She was chosen to represent Baltimore in the annual Atlantic City competitions. Her guardians hated to see her go, but her youthful, understandable enthusiasm overcame all objections.

Many Broadway producers visited the resort town the week "Miss America" was chosen. Among those seeking new faces for shows were Earl Carroll and Nils T. Granlund.

Yolande Ugarte is an attractive girl: tall, lissome, with nut-brown hair. The producers were much taken with her possibilities. They thought there was something vaguely reminiscent of Hilda Ferguson about Yolande. Granlund, who had been Hilda's press agent 15 years before, told her so.

"Hilda Ferguson? Why, I believe my mother used that name," Yolande replied.

He hired Yolande as a dancer in his new cabaret, the Midnight Sun. He changed her name to "Hilda Ferguson." She was startlingly like her mother and Broadway was thrilled when Granlund introduced her as "Hilda Ferguson."

The original Hilda Ferguson was a dainty, devastating beauty, born in Baltimore as Hilda Gibbons. At 15, she eloped with and married a young Honduran medical student, Ramond Ugarte. Yolande was born the next year.

Hilda and her husband separated soon afterward. Hilda came to New York and baby Yolande was left with relatives, with whom she lived thenceforth.

They still tell stories about the wide-eyed Hilda Ferguson, strange in New York, only 17, still naïve, though a grass widow and a mother.

It took her little time to make the grade. She became a "Follies" girl. Ziegfeld featured her as one of his most beautiful. Then started the hectic career that to Broadwayites made the name "Hilda Ferguson" symbolize an era. Hilda came to Broadway in 1921, shortly after the beginning of Prohibition. Churchill's, Rectors, Reisenweber's, Bustanoby's, the Café de Paris, were fresh, green memories.

The speakeasies were getting going. The first of the bootleggers, later to inspire a bloody generation of crime, were feeling their way in wholesale law violation.

In this changing world, the girl decided to cast her lot.

Her tinseled career, running a parallel course with Prohibition, came to an end on a hospital cot two months and two days before Repeal.

During her short lifetime, Hilda went the pace with men and liquor. Young millionaires and old ones, powerful figures of the underworld and of politics were on the roster of her admirers. Her life reads like a history of America's crazy years.

She was a flat-mate of Dot King when the mysterious slaying of that youngster, kept by a Philadelphia financier, rocked Manhattan.

Hilda, questioned by police, denied she knew a thing about it.

She was engaged to Aaron Benesch, multi-millionaire Baltimore furniture king, only to lose him to Helen Henderson, another glamorous show girl.

She was the sweetheart of Enoch (Nucky) Johnson, Atlantic City overlord, and was featured by him in an elaborate show in Atlantic City's Silver Slipper, a night club he bought for the sole purpose of providing a stage for his current reigning favorite.

He gave her a $12,000 mink coat and a Rolls-Royce. They lived in half the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton.

She lost him to Kitty Ray, who claimed she was the ex-wife of Macoco, millionaire playboy of the Pampas, though he denied they ever wed.

Arthur Hammerstein was one of her most ardent admirers. Then it was rumored Hilda would marry Howard Lee, rich society scion.

She was questioned by police when "Tough Willie" McCabe, ex-bodyguard of Arnold Rothstein, was cut up in the "61 Club" stabbings. To General Sessions Judge Freschi, she exclaimed: "My dear, I was in the ladies' room."

The judge replied: "It's very nice to be called 'my dear.' I don't know whether I like it or not."

He held her in $5,000 bail. She spent the night in Harlem Prison until she was bailed out the next day by "Feets" Edson, another colorful Broadway mobster.

"I put up the bail," Edson said, "because she used to work for me." Hilda had appeared in the Club Abbey, another resort of pungent Broadway memory, where Larry Fay was later killed.

She had refused to talk after Dot King was slain. She kept mum when police grilled her about Willie McCabe. Broadway said: "Hilda knows how to keep her mouth shut."

So she forfeited the $5,000 bail for failing to appear.

When third-degreed about her dressing-room mate in _The Music Box Revue_--who was thought to have landed her job because her father was warden of Leavenworth Prison, where Nicky Arnstein, husband of Fannie Brice, star of the show, was on the rock pile--Hilda again "knew nothing."

She started her own little brownstone-front upstairs speakeasy. The opening was all New York in one place. It was soon the scene of raids and battles.

When she went to Europe to duck a judgment she resented, for $270 for ten pairs of specially built shoes, she traveled incognito, with her Rolls-Royce, two maids and 27 trunks.

Though she never earned more than $150 a week, Hilda once walked into Texas Guinan's, and bought a bracelet off Tex's arm for $25,000 in big bills, just to "burn up" Kitty Ray, who was sitting a few tables away with "Nucky" Johnson.

She was 29 when she died, in New York Hospital, of peritonitis.

Many of her friends are still on Broadway. At least one gentleman with whom she was known to be close cracked a bottle of champagne for her daughter.

A girl who also succeeded Hilda in the affections of "Nucky" Johnson worked at the same club with her daughter until she left to get married. With a subtle touch of irony, fate had decreed that this girl, Virginia Biddle, should dance next to Yolande Ugarte, Hilda Ferguson's daughter!

Hilda, Junior, after sweeping Broadway's most ardent off their feet, eloped with Frank Parker, radio tenor. The marriage, a stormy one, lasted all of two years, after which the pair took their troubles to court.

The court decision which severed their ties only brought more squabbles in its wake. For, when Hilda, Junior, became the constant companion of Duncan McMartin, Canadian multi-millionaire, and McMartin's wife inferred she was the cause of their separation, Parker hailed Hilda back into court.

He told the judge she was holding him up to so much ridicule he thought alimony payments should be stopped. The judge said Frank was no candidate for a monastery either, and ordered the payments to go on, with an urgent reminder to get the arrears up to date.

As these lines were written McMartin settled with his wife, obtained a divorce and married Hilda.

d.--_The Good Deed_

When Ruth Hilliard was eight years old, she was scalded by boiling water. One side of her face was terribly disfigured. When she grew up, she would have been beautiful enough, except for that hideous scar.

She worked as a cigarette girl in the old Hollywood Restaurant, and envied the chorines who had all the nice things in life.

Stars thronged the Hollywood, and so did the millionaires. But none noticed Ruth Hilliard. Or, if they did, it was to look at the scar and momentarily think, "what a shame!"

A constant visitor at the Hollywood was Jimmy Ritz, the comedian. Ruth often wished he'd say hello to her. Sometimes, when she had the money, she'd go to Loew's State to see him act, or to Earl Carroll's _Vanities_, in which he later starred.

One night, William Leeds, Jr., fabulously rich son of the Tin Plate King, bought a cigar from Ruth. He saw the scar, asked about it, took down her name and address. The next day Ruth's mother got a phone call from Leeds. He said he had made arrangements with a plastic surgeon to operate on her; had paid all the bills in advance. It seemed unbelievable, but Ruth and her mother visited the medico, the operation was decided on and Ruth went into a hospital.

Meanwhile, Leeds sailed away on a year's yachting cruise.

On his return, he and his fiancée, Olive Hamilton, later Mrs. Leeds, went to the _Vanities_.

A girl in the front line seemed familiar. After the show, the girl ran over to Leeds, threw her arms around him, showered him with blessings. She was Ruth Hilliard. The operation had been a complete success. But Leeds had forgotten all about his impulsive gracious gesture.

Ruth Hilliard had sighed and prayed to be like other girls, so that maybe Jimmy Ritz would notice her and take her out. He and his brothers were stars of the show in which she hoofed--and, sure enough, he did notice her. He took her out. A romance developed.

They were engaged a long time, then married.

Everyone figured Ruth now would be happy forever after. From an ugly duckling she had become a beautiful show girl. She got the man she always wanted. She went to Hollywood when the Ritzes were at the height of their fame and lived lavishly. She got a movie contract, too.

Though she later divorced Ritz, she remarried and is now living in Hollywood, happy and prosperous.

It's another of those things that could only happen on Broadway.

And it all started because Bill Leeds, Jr., was in a generous mood that night, and played Aladdin's genie to a sad, frustrated girl.

e.--_Gun Moll_

Those were some of the little pigs who went to market and who had roast beef. (And "pigs" is the backstage slang for chorines.) Here's a little round-up on one who had none, and cried "wee-wee-wee" all the way home.

Marion Paterka was born in Boston, in 1908, child of Czech immigrants. Her mother married again, a man named Strasmick, and, as Marion Strasmick, a black-eyed, beautiful redhead, 16, descended on Broadway. You never saw a prettier girl. Ziegfeld never did, as he said when he glorified her on sight for his _Follies_.

In that show there was an ensemble number in which the kids did take-offs on the stars of the day. Lenore Ulric was in Belasco's _Kiki_. Marion impersonated her. She was Kiki the rest of her life. Kiki Roberts she chose to make it. And that name was to shout from Page 1 headlines often--for Kiki became the sweetheart of Jack "Legs" Diamond, gangster, mass killer, riddled so often with bullets that he was dubbed "the clay pigeon of the underworld."

Diamond first saw her in "practice clothes," sweater and bloomers, trying out on a chorus call for _Strike Me Pink_, a revue angeled by gangster dough and starring Jimmy Durante and Lupe Velez. A dozen or more of "the boys" kittied the bank roll. That gave them the privilege of sitting in. Also of putting their young molls in the line.

As one went through her paces, a partner in the enterprise asked:

"Whose bim is dat one?"

"Nobody's," was the answer.

"Den what's she doin' in our show?"

Diamond took another look and almost fell out of his chair.

"She's mine!" he barked.

And, though she didn't know it yet, she was--so quickly and so suddenly that she didn't even open in the show. Diamond wouldn't let her out of bed long enough even to rehearse.

Not a bad-looking beast, Legs; he got his nickname when he was a boy thief, because he could outrun the bulls. Tall, slender, with regular features, dark and personable, Legs was a night club hound, even owned and ran some himself. He was boss of the Hotsy Totsy. There, one night, cockeyed, he shot two inoffensive customers. There were present, besides the corpses and the well-dressed man with the automatic, seven other men, including Diamond's bartender.

When the cops arrived, Legs had legged it. Within six weeks, those seven--including the bartender--were shot down and killed, one by one. The night of the day the last one cashed in, Legs walked into a police station and asked, charmingly, "You boys looking for me?"

There were no witnesses.

That was the assassin Kiki idolized.

When he was sprayed with lead in the Monticello Hotel, a hide-out for his sort, she was with him. Almost every time, and that time, she was hauled in and put on the carpet. Yes, she was around--but she was asleep--she didn't know from nothing.

Diamond had a younger brother, Eddie, a lunger, his lieutenant. The kid went to Denver for his health. Some New York murderers who hadn't dared molest him while Legs was around followed him and sniped at him. The youngster scrammed back. Legs loved him and when he heard what had happened he boiled, got oiled and went out with two pants-pocket miniature .38's to pay off.

In the next three days, four bodies were found, widely scattered. A meeting was called, a death sentence was passed on Legs Diamond, who had cheated so many such with only some scars as mementos.

Diamond was tipped off. He took it on the lam. He found a secluded cottage up in Sullivan County, a region of apple orchards. But he was a gangster in his heart.

Kiki, again, was with him. She begged him to stay under cover. He had enough money for existence. But Legs had a trade and he went to work.

Applejack had a ready and lucrative market. Diamond started to "organize" the farmers, to buy up their crops. Some yielded, for he offered cash. Others had commitments and refused. They found a muzzle in their bellies and a threat--sell him their apples or else.

One, Grover Parks, a young farmer, was game. When Diamond came back he had a pitchfork. But Legs had a cannon. He backed Parks into his barn, strung him up by the wrists and burned the soles of his feet. Parks didn't die. He lived to get the local law to hunt down the stranger in the county. Legs was indicted. Kiki was taken in, too, released on $2,500 bail, cleared. She went back to New York and into another show.

In December, 1931, Diamond was tried, in Troy. He had a brilliant lawyer, Daniel Pryor. After a bitter contest, he was acquitted.

Diamond, all this time, had a wife, Alice. She knew a lot about Kiki--anyone who could read did. But she stuck--when he'd let her.

Kiki was then sharing an apartment with Agnes O'Laughlin, another Ziegfelder (she later made some sensational inconclusive accusations against Rudy Vallee, and, disgusted with the whole life, returned to her native Cleveland and married a boy she'd gone to school with). Kiki was ordered to stay far from Troy. Because of the notoriety with Kiki, Pryor had ordered that Alice Diamond, Legs' wife, sit beside him through the trial.

But there were telephones.

The jury freed Legs about midday. He, Alice, Eddie and Pryor drove to Albany, a few miles off, and staged a celebration dinner. Diamond had engaged a shabby room where he was to spend the night with Alice.

At about 9 o'clock, half overboard, Legs said he was going to the washroom. Instead, he slipped outside, hailed a taxi and was driven to another bed-house, where he had parked Kiki.

At 3 A.M., a very drunken man staggered out and gave the address of the place where Legs had hired sleeping quarters for "J.H. Desmond and Wife," to a hackman. He was unconscious on arrival. The driver pulled him together enough to get him upstairs. Diamond fell into bed with all his clothes on, including his derby hat.

A long, gray limousine had followed him. Five minutes later, it was roaring toward New York. In the bed lay the clay pigeon--this time shot for keeps. Alice and the party were still at the restaurant, waiting for him.

Kiki was questioned. Maybe she had an idea of who her man's enemies had been. Maybe not. She wasn't held.

She went back to Boston. Said she was licked--through. She posed for pictures with her mother, ironing, cooking. But she wasn't through. They never are while they can help it.

She came back, danced in cafés, did fan numbers, worked in Jersey, Pennsylvania, sneaked to New York and was hired at an uptown smalltime spot, the Little Casino. The flat-feet tore down the billing and wouldn't let her work. They said she was a peeler. But it is a policy of New York police not to permit exploitation of names connected with crime stories.

Alice also went into show business, got herself an act in which she preached against liquor, violence and violation of the marriage oath. The dicks gave her the bum's rush, too. Soon thereafter she was put on the spot and murdered. The wise crowd said, "She knew too much."

Kiki drifted. She was reported married to an athletic director, but that fizzled. She did marry a beer salesman, in an elopement, and she soon got a divorce. She flew to Memphis and became the wife of a Newark airport attaché.

She was reported running a lunchroom in Bridgeport. Broadway never knew her again.

Perhaps, somewhere, now 40 but undoubtedly still chic and attractive, a redheaded woman lives the simple, unrippled existence of a matured matron. Perhaps, though, in the dark, alone, she recalls the flash of guns, the thud of bullets, the mad love of a murderous madman, third degrees by police and prosecutors, days and nights of fleeing and being hunted with her lover--and the last glimpse of his riddled remains, in a basket in an undertaker's morgue in Albany, where she slunk in after all others--except one of your authors, covering the story--had gone.

This little pig had no roast beef. But she certainly didn't stay home!

22. WHITE WAY WOLVES

Call a man a dog and he'll fight. Call a woman a cat and she'll scratch your eyes.

But speak of a guy as a wolf, a most loathsome, cowardly animal, and he'll be pleased as all get out.

Of course, no man openly admits he's a wolf. He smirks and smiles and blushes and tries to giggle it off. But he sure is proud.

The dictionary defines "wolf" as a fierce, rapacious, destructive beast--or person. None of that fits the New York _canis lupus_.

He is not fierce; he traps his prey with gentle wiles. He is not rapacious, being satisfied with one at a time. (But every day is a different time.) And he is not so destructive.

The subject of wolves has been written about ad nauseam, and to most people it's an old and tedious joke. Yet, nowhere in the world save possibly Hollywood, are male wolves so much a part of the scene as in afterdark New York.

Here, wolfing has developed into an art, and though grandma's girl, after she's been around any time at all, spots the species immediately, tradition demands that she permit him to pursue and subdue her, wolf-fashion, and never let on she's wise to his act. Wolves are very sensitive.

Though there are more femmes in Gotham than in any other city on earth, it takes much ingenuity to stalk the Little Red Riding Hood here. There are no forest paths. It's the best-lighted place on earth--when John L. Lewis keeps his hands off. It is against the law to flirt on the streets of New York. He who would try it in public places, such as theatres or the subway, will get a punch in the nose if he doesn't land in the hoose-gow.

There are so many wolves in Manhattan that, even if the entire female population of Scranton, with Reading and Mauch Chunk thrown in, were transplanted here, they wouldn't cross the path of 1 per cent of our predatory males.

But here it takes specific knowledge and specialized scheming to perfect a pick-up. We have few social clubs and fewer church festivals, where you can meet the squabs in small towns. There are no corner drugstores with juke boxes to drop in on after school. People don't ask motorists for a lift here, and motorists don't give 'em.

None but professionals work cocktail lounges and hotel lobbies. Sailors provide too much competition on Riverside Drive. There are no cabaret hostesses or so-called "B Girls." It's illegal for the headwaiter to introduce you to a cutie in the show, or for you to sit out with her even if you know her or can get her to invite you.

So, where do wolves whistle? Shhh! We spent many sleepless nights gathering the info. Paste it in your hat. It tells where our choicest chickens perch.

CHORINES: If you see a plain-looking gal, sans make-up, in slacks or cheap dress, breakfasting at the fountain of a drugstore near Broadway at 5 P.M., she's a show girl. Favorite spot is Hanson's, 51st and Seventh Avenue.

Those who live on the East Side play the Belmont-Plaza drugstore. They're back again between shows for dinner at the fountain, once more, after the show, when they sip coffee with one eye peeled for a musician, press agent or other Main Stem character. When the kids are really left flat, they frequently go bowling. Many patronize the Roxy alley.

MODELS: You can always spot a "pro" model. She's usually slender, hipless, has small features, carries her make-up in a man's hat-box. Powers girls tea at the fountain in Grand Central Palace; the Conover beauts patronize the cocktail lounge of the Roosevelt Hotel; Thornton's youngsters make their headquarters at the Liggett fountain, 43d and Lexington Avenue. Smart wolves know you can always find models at cocktail time in Armando's.

But we must tell you about the famed Round Table at John Perona's El Morocco, expensive East Side rendezvous. The table is so situated that the town's aging and more prosperous squab-hunters, like Macoco, who congregate at it nightly can case the door and ogle the bims brought in by younger and more energetic men. The bald and graying Knights of the Table Round select and signal, and by a method we cannot detail, get phone numbers.

* * * * *

Many of the most successful wolves do not drink. Alcohol is a hurdle in the chase. The trick is to let her do the imbibing.

It is strictly unprofessional for a wolf to pay a girl, ever. Anyone can pay.

Married wolves are debarred if they lie and say they're single or pull the old one about being misunderstood. Naturally, the town's top lupos are married.

* * * * *

WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:

"_Woman is like your shadow. Follow it, it flies you. Fly, it will pursue you!_"--Ben Jonson.

* * * * *

When your doll starts showing an interest in another, don't agree with her appraisal of him. If you make it too easy for her to leave you for another, she won't--and you're stuck with her.

* * * * *

Fastest way to a doll's heart is not through protestations of love and undying affection. Keep her laughing, bud. That's the block buster.

* * * * *

Guys who give seldom get.

* * * * *

It's tough to romance a chorine while she's rehearsing for a new show. Hard-boiled dance directors are mayhem on love life.

* * * * *

When you have a date with a chorus doll and she keeps you waiting after a show--being last to leave the dressing room--it can mean one of two things. Either she's so thrilled to be going out with you, she primps more than usual. Or she's so bored and unconcerned she stalls to the last minute. Make up your mind.

* * * * *

Dames that pull the share-a-date gag are carbolic acid. Give 'em the air when they do this: The evening is half over; suddenly she remarks that she's got to go. "Why, dear," says she, "I told you earlier I had this date, but to show you how much I care for you I ducked him all these hours to spend them with you." The malarkey!

* * * * *

When a doll tells you she couldn't get a job in the cabaret chorus because the boss tried to get fresh with her, it's a phony. There's such a shortage of pretty femmes who dance that managers would rather hire them than make love to them--paying up to $100 a week, two shows a night, six days a week--and saying "Please."

* * * * *

Don't try to start a conversation with the pretty pigeon at the end of the bar. She's the bartender's bim and no stray can steal her.

* * * * *

When your doll excuses herself to go to the powder room--a few minutes after she nods to the sleek dark musician--watch out that she doesn't give you a powder.

23. THE NOTED AND THE NOTORIOUS

A big shot is just a pain in the neck to the average New Yorker, who has seen them all and seen them come and go. He is a nuisance who has to be endured; a nuisance because he gets in front of the line, has the best tables, blocks entrances with his car and generally makes himself obnoxious.

New York reeks with very important people. Most, of course, aren't celebrities. They mind their own business and try to forget their fame.

But, if a New Yorker can take or leave his notables, a muzhik can't. Next to the Empire State and Radio City, V.I.P.'s are the tallest things on his agenda, and if it's your hard luck to nursemaid one, you've got to take him to one place where he can feed his obsession. And many celebs are only too anxious to oblige.

There's a prosperous firm in town called Celebrity Service, which, for a fee, advises just which celebrities are where and when. Subscribers, in addition to newspapers, press agents and high pressure salesmen, often include fan clubs.

If the sidewalk outside a public place is filled with moronic-looking imbeciles of both sexes, grasping autograph books and candid cameras, it's a pretty safe bet someone whom they consider important is inside or expected.

Exhibitionistic hams love it and you can find them with their silly smirking faces at any hour around the clock.

These are some of the places where they hang out:

Algonquin Hotel--Lunch place of the la-de-dah literary set.

Barberry Room--Socialites, for dinner.

Blair House--Broadway and sports figures.

Colony--Top money mob, for lunch and dinner.

Copacabana--Show and sport crowd, at midnight and 2 A.M.

Copa Lounge--Show, radio, sport and press crowd, 12:30 to 4 A.M.

El Boraccho--Show, screen and society glamor gals, at dinner.

El Morocco--Top movie stars, international society, rich wolves, Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Dinner until 4 A.M.

Larue--Social climbers.

Leon & Eddie's--Ditto, Sundays, after midnight.

Lindy's (old)--Sporting and racing crowd, lunch and dinner.

Lindy's (new)--Song-writers and comedians, dinner and after theatre.

Luchow's--Tammany politicos, Mencken and Nathan, opera and theatrical.

Moore's--Movie executives and stars, sports, political and Broadway headliners.

Reuben's--Broadway mob, after 4 A.M.

Sardi's--The drama (pronounced draymah) bunch at lunch and dinner and after theatre.

Stork Club--Politicians, columnists--Walter Winchell, always--producers and movie bunch, lunch, cocktails, dinner, until 4 A.M.

Toots Shor's--Broadway, especially radio, and sporting bunch for lunch and dinner.

Twenty-One--Hollywood, Broadway and semi-society, for lunch and dinner.

Other places where celebrities can be viewed include the Metropolitan Opera House, especially on opening nights, when all the sables, stomachers and high hats turn out.

Almost every theatrical opening brings out a few celebs, though only at events like the première of an expensive musical comedy or a show with Katharine Cornell, the Lunts or Tallulah Bankhead, do you find more than the regulars.

24. THERE IS NO SOCIETY

If this title seems an overstatement, you may have something. But, as far as your eye can see, it is almost categorically true.

There is a Social Register, published and revised annually. Its standards for selection are vague and the private corporation which sets them doesn't play according to its own precedents. Its principal excuses for continued existence are that it pays off, as every snob in town feels it is an essential household article, and it is the sweetest sucker list ever compiled for peddlers, panders, climbers and promoters.

The younger generation of what was once New York society has gotten largely out of hand. Its typical proponent is Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco Stokowski, who in her teens disported herself at bars, heavily made up, one wedgie on the rail and a foot-long cigarette holder between fingers with crimson mandarin nails. To make the picture perfect, her then-beloved mother was drinking with her.

Debutantes (who rarely have debuts any more) are largely silk-lined bobby soxers. They wear slacks and sweaters out loud and mingle with tea-dancers and gin-garglers in the more expensive but no more exclusive drop-ins.

The musty, crusty Old Guard is dwindling with death and high taxes. The few who have retained their aristocratic bearing go deeper and deeper into seclusion. But even they are smudged with the sins of modernity which penetrate all walls and past all butlers. Not so long ago, one of our dozen foremost real society matrons was committed to an insane asylum. The husband of an equally blue-blooded top-drawer grand dame was beaten to death by her gigolo when he walked in on them.

The in-betweeners, neither young nor old, make pitiful pretense of youthfulness, dance until they are lame and find dignity too old-fashioned for words--the kind of words they use.

Many women born to social position are horning into politics, not a few radical. It's smart to talk red and the son of the late head of J.P. Morgan & Company is one of the loudest of this contingent.

Divorces among the social names are becoming as commonplace as they are in Hollywood.

As a backwash of the war, New York was invaded by many rich refugees and stranded titled bums. The latter found doors wide open for them.

What is left of Inanity Fair is on view rarely and only in a few spots. Great palaces have been razed or turned into dressmakers' shops or offices. Increased real estate values, hardships with help, murderous income and inheritance taxes and the disinclination of the younger members to follow the old and more gracious ways have made mausoleums of the mansions.

When these fortresses of fashion fell, society went underground. A few Knickerbocker clans, from hidden retreats, still resist attempts at intrusion by war profiteers, black marketeers and that mixed miscellany of the gossip columns--Café Society. Contrary to general belief, that is not a new institution, though for generations it was regarded from above in about the same light as a daughter of a good family who had borne twins out of wedlock.

It originated toward the end of the golden 90's, and its father was the esoteric Harry Lehr, successor to Ward McAllister, social arbiter supreme, creator of the great Mrs. William Astor's sacred 400.

Lehr had at one time been the kingpin of those since-vanished Americans, the wine (champagne) agents. It never got out of his blood, though he lofted into the social stratosphere. Perhaps as a prank or caprice or a reversion to type, on a Sunday night he induced Mrs. Astor to attend a dinner he gave at Sherry's, then at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. That night Café Society was born.

Next morning, a newspaper published this astonishing lead:

"What are we coming to? Mrs. Astor at Sherry's table d'hôte! I never dreamt it would be given to me to gaze on the face of an Astor in a public dining room."

Next day, all the newspapers featured the epoch-making feast. One society editor wrote:

"When I saw Mrs. Astor in coquettish raiment of white satin, with the tiniest headdress, at Sherry's, dos-à-dos almost with Lillian Russell, I could scarcely believe my eyes. She seemed to enjoy it and nodded her head to the ragtime tunes. She wore her famous pearls and was a stunning sight."

Lehr was a crony of Tom Wanamaker, who owned an apartment above Sherry's. He gave Harry the use of a beautiful suite and arranged for him to eat on the cuff in the café and entertain friends there, likewise. His historic dinner to Mrs. Astor was a shill job, to break the ice for social patronage. Night clubs follow the same device today to pump up brilliant opening nights.

Mrs. Astor undoubtedly had no suspicion of Lehr's object, but she gave the royal nod to the first big break in the fences, which eventually permitted an infiltration of Manhattan Okies into her own 400, which expanded the circle so widely that with every year it meant less and less as it grew more and more.

Perhaps the most conspicuous disintegration is visible at a glance at the Metropolitan Opera House. Première nights in the golden days were glittering spectacles, with the women of the Astor, Vanderbilt, Drexel, Gould and other proud dynasties wearing Paris gowns and radiant tiaras, and the newspapers covering the show avidly.

Today such events are drab. Anybody with the coin can buy a box in the Diamond Horseshoe. Night club managers, Broadway gamblers, cloak-and-suit salesmen entertain where formerly only meticulously screened millionaires basked in their own glory, a thousand sets of glasses trained on them from the seats of the lowly. Now strangers in business suits and women in frocks tilt back in the front chairs, originally reserved for ladies only, and rest their feet on the storied railing.

Among the last top-name regulars were Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Orme Wilson, who shared Box 3 on different nights. Newport's famous spinster sisters, Edith and Maude Wetmore, occasionally occupy their Box 5. The Duchess de Talleyrand, née Anna Gould, retains her box, but rarely uses it. The Morgan family gave up theirs seasons ago. Most of the ladies who own rich gems no longer wear them--they're afraid of stick-ups.

The most conspicuous display is put on by Ganna Walska, who has a box on the north--the unfashionable--side. Wearing emeralds as large as limes, she is rococo in dress and demeanor and is usually attended by minor diplomats and her latest husband. She never made society, though she married one millionaire and two multi-multimillionaires. The first, which was her second, was an elderly New York physician to whom she went because she thought a growth in her throat interfered with her ambition to be a diva. He didn't cure her throat, but he married her, conveniently died and left her a home and her first million. This girl, who had sung in mid-European cabarets, was soon pursued by Harold McCormick (then married to the daughter of John D. Rockefeller); and Alexander Smith Cochran, even wealthier, the Yonkers carpet king.

Ganna decided to take a trip to Europe and both her suitors made the boat. McCormick was still married, so she took Cochran, who spent a fortune on repeated efforts here and abroad to make her a prima donna. When he failed, she blew him for McCormick, who had gotten his divorce and taken time out for a monkey-gland operation. McCormick was the foremost subsidizer and patron of the Chicago Opera Company, one of the principal heirs to the McCormick harvester fortune. But he couldn't get her in that troupe and she soon waltzed out on him. (She was born with some unpronounceable Polish name and was nicknamed "Walska," meaning "waltzer," because she sang waltz songs to the accompaniment of a gypsy fiddler in Budapest.)

When last heard from, she was being sued for alimony by her sixth husband, a yoga practitioner who told her that his mysterious powers would bring forth her voice. She said she had been persuaded to believe that while she stood on her head.

First nights of old brought forth beautiful Mrs. George Gould, the former Edith Kingdon, and her friends. Now the lobbies are jammed with cigarette smokers overflowing to the sidewalks, and police reporters recognize more patrons than can the society reporters.

A recent première saw raffish exhibitionism that would have shamed Whitechapel fishwives.

Betty Henderson, a dowager past 70, in the opera bar, planted a leg on a table, showing more than plenty, and shouted, "What has Dietrich got that I haven't got?" She was probably plastered and she is a Newport top-drawer hostess, worth dozens of millions.

Another elderly jewel-rack walked the balcony during intermission, puffing a big, black cigar. Maybe she was trying to smoke herself sober.

One matron arrived with two bodyguards, who stalked and sat on either side of her, making even more conspicuous her cables of pearls and her movie-marquee display of diamonds.

But the upper crust still exists.

The great private ballrooms are no more, so the fashionables give dances and receptions at the Colony Club (not to be confused with the Colony Restaurant). For women only, this is one of the last stands of exclusiveness--so snazzy that non-members, guests, must enter by the side door. Only those who belong may use the Park Avenue portal or the main elevator within.

The Union and Knickerbocker Clubs are as snooty as the day they were founded. To increase income they instituted ladies' nights, when members may invite wives, daughters and guests to dine. The Metropolitan Club, founded by the first J.P. Morgan for the rich but outré rejected by the Union, has let down its bars, as have other smart clubs.

The Horse Show was another brilliant event in the golden age, but blue-blooded humans don't patronize it as enthusiastically as before. Fashionable women who do now affect sports togs. Those who cling to dressy traditions are stared at curiously.

In the eras of rubberneck wagons, visitors got their money's worth. Men shouted through megaphones untruthful descriptions of famous mansions. Provincials thrilled when they reached Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The four corners were sites of baronial citadels.

On the northwest corner stood the great château of Cornelius Vanderbilt, with its iron-grilled garden in the rear. On the northeast was the white marble residence of Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs. On the southeast was the somber castle of Collis P. Huntington, and on the southwest the Moorish-windowed retreat of William C. Whitney. Today, commercial buildings have replaced them all.

The great double mansion of Mrs. William Astor and her son, John Jacob, dominated upper Fifth Avenue at 65th Street. Its walls beheld entertainments that rivaled those of oriental potentates. Its most luxurious feature was a huge bathtub, carved from a single block of Carrara marble, with gold spigots shaped like dolphins' heads. Mrs. Jack Astor, née Ava Willing, America's most celebrated society beauty, now Lady Ribblesdale, laved herself there in eau de cologne. The architecturally impressive Temple Emanu-el now stands where all this was.

The white mansion of Mrs. Oliver Belmont, at 51st Street and Madison Avenue, is now the Administration Building of the Catholic Archdiocese. The brownstone Jay Gould town house, at Fifth Avenue and 47th Street, where shouting thousands clamored for the life of the Wall Street operator on historic Black Friday, is a furniture store. The famous Bertie Goelet home, a block away, was recently razed.

The largest private residence in the city, the brownstone palace at 640 Fifth Avenue, where Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt entertained royalty and the other elect, was sold to the English Astors and has since been demolished. Its famed marble mantelpieces and interior decorations were auctioned to Hollywood producers. An office building was erected on its site. Mrs. Vanderbilt, undaunted, carries on in a smaller house at 1048 Fifth Avenue.

On the upper stretch of this boulevard are the magnificent ménages of Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, Dr. A. Hamilton Rice, Mrs. Hamilton McTwombly, Mrs. William Hayward, Julia Berwind, Mrs. W. Watts Sherman, and the garden-enclosed, garishly grandiose show-place of the late Andrew Carnegie. The Carnegies are not gregarious and few fashionables have seen the interior. Set in between them, in a regal mansion once owned by Whitney Warren, a society architect, and designer of Grand Central Terminal, was an all-night "bottle club" that dispensed liquid refreshment after closing time to a favored few.

On Riverside Drive, the gingerbread château of the late Charles M. Schwab which long stood empty has also been torn down. The Schwabs were not social, but musical. Their Sunday afternoon concerts when Melba, Tetrazzini and other prima donnas sang, were discussed even in Europe.

At 1 East 78th Street, on the corner of Fifth Avenue, is the white marble palace of Mrs. James B. Duke, mother of Doris. This great house has a magnificent collection of 18th century English paintings and drawings.

The Harrison Williamses live at 1130 Fifth Avenue. The beautiful Mona entertains there against a distinguished background of paneled rooms, her portrait by Dali, and several Goyas.

The Byron Foys live at 60 East 93rd Street, in one of the finest houses in the city. Built by Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt, it has the most beautiful French 18th century paneling. On its walls are portraits by great masters as well as family portraits painted by Simon Elwes.

But most socialites live in vast apartment houses or hotels. To see them in the flesh, one can peep in several restaurants. Tops is the Colony, on East 61st Street, just off Madison. It serves wonderful food at wonderful prices. Strangers find it difficult to get reservations. If one does, he will be far back, in the main room. Many regulars prefer it there, though, and you may land next to Winthrop Rockefeller, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Clark Gable, or, while she was here, you might have encountered Princess Martha of Norway.

Table No. 1, at the right of the entrance, was long reserved for the William K. Vanderbilts. After his death, his widow never returned. Now one is apt to find at this spot the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Mme. Frances, the Alfred Sloanes or young Lord Lascelles. Table No. 21 is bachelor-girl Beth Leary's hangout. At No. 14, Mrs. George U. Harris and her charming daughter, Lucille, are on view. No. 34 is where Elsa Maxwell, Clare Boothe Luce or Dorothy Thompson sit, but not together. Table No. 4b is given to the Vincent Astors, to Lady Furness, or to society reporters.

Voisin is smart, but far more conservative, and none of the faces would mean anything to the uninitiated.

To El Morocco goes the International Set.

The remaining few aristocrats bide their time, believing and hoping for a revival which will never come. But they are curious. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt visited the Stork Club once. Mrs. Hamilton McK. Twombly went to dinner at the Monte Carlo ONCE. And that vital nonagenarian, Colonel Creighton Webb, has been to a night club _twice_.

Society departments still appear in the newspapers, a habit the editors fear to shake off. But their content is mostly betrothals and weddings of people few know--no charity balls, no formal functions, no musical soirées, no tally-ho outings, polo or fox hunts in season.

In another year or two, a new superior set may arise--composed of union labor leaders, rising reds and affluent Africans.

Until then, Society will go like the gallant G.A.R.--doomed by the toll of time.

25. HOODLUMS' HIERARCHY

_When this chapter first appeared in print in 1948, they said we were nuts. The following year, when we wrote_ Chicago Confidential, _we expanded on the subject of the organized underworld. That made our critics hysterical._

_But the findings of the Kefauver Committee, which got its original inspiration from these books, proved how right we were. In fact, the Senate Crime Committee's final report was practically a plagiarism of_ Chicago Confidential, _and_ Washington Confidential.

The rattle of the sawed-off tommy-gun, the whining whistle of the leaden slug and the thud of its impact against flesh and bone no longer are the sound effects in the orchestration of the gangsters' theme song.

In the last decade an extraordinary metamorphosis has come over the characters who saw their big years of glamor and of terror during Prohibition and for a spell after repeal.

In truth, there are no gangsters, and there are no mobs. Yet, today's underworld figures cast a far wider shadow and wield an incalculably greater influence on the life of the nation and its principal city.

Except for a few shabby neighborhood ruffians in squabbles about penny-ante rackets, such as fish-peddling, shakedowns of storekeepers, enforcing collections for double sawbuck loan sharks and similar bagatelles, the old and happy habits of killing each other have evaporated.

Everything is now organized into an institution a hundred times the proportion of any outfit dramatized by Raft and Robinson, including the empire of Al Capone, which is represented as a minor element in the set-up that grew out of it all.

Today we have the Syndicate!

Let it not be supposed that the hoodlums have gone straight. The Syndicate is almost entirely bossed by ex-convicts whose roots are in the lowest and most violent soil, where originated malignant morasses of the dirty trades that made America notorious around the world.

But they have grown up. They are fat and rich, they have wives who belong to clubs and children going to the best colleges. And they have brains.

These brains are like none other, because they combine the shrewdness and unscrupulous ruthlessness of high-powered criminals with the hired skill and concentration of first-line lawyers, accountants, business sharks and tax specialists.

Their operations and their holdings now run into the multimillions. And they range from the filthy numbers swindle in the Negro sections of most large cities to chains of America's finest and biggest hotels, a building of their own in the heart of Wall Street, distilleries, breweries, real estate worth up to $5,000 a front foot, blue-chip stocks and bonds galore, night clubs and restaurants and the structures that house them.

At the same time, they juggle the Italian lottery, a gold mine which has had comparatively little publicity, and which flourishes in every city that has slums; call-girl vice, the last survivor of the woman traffic in New York and a prolific source of profit; the international narcotics trade, with a world-wide organization for supply abroad and distribution in the United States, which probably turns over more than $1,000,000 a day here; almost complete monopoly of American bookmaking, the slot-machine business where they can put on the fix, and the lion's share of the gambling in Florida and Saratoga in season, in Nevada all the time and in various large centers where and when they can operate with comparative safety through political connections.

This strange hybrid of respectability and lawless monopoly was really born of Al Capone's conviction on income-tax frauds.

It shocked the mobsters, who had thought themselves immune, into a realization that any one of them, without an hour's notice, could be tapped for Alcatraz. Capone's defense was childish and completely without preparation for a man who had proven himself not only big and bold, but crafty and cautious, when he had weighed the odds for and against himself.

There was in plain relief a record of big expenditures which he could not controvert and against which he could not prove income--that is, income which he had reported--and this was no trial for bootlegging or murder, but strictly a tax-evasion indictment.

It is an axiom accepted by thieves that you can't do business with Uncle Whiskers.

There were a number of meetings, in Chicago, New York and elsewhere, and the principal subject was:

"How can we beat that Treasury rap?"

The government does not usually prosecute where there is a confusion or a possible one as to tax liability. It reviews a return, examines books, asks questions, snoops around and notifies the subject that his questionnaire was faulty and that he owes so and so much on such and such findings. He then pays up, or sometimes settles and is even given a leeway of time to make restitution. The worst that happens to him is that he kicks in.

These conferees represented leading mobsters from New York and Brooklyn, Newark, Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other points which do not seem important, but for strategic or geographical reasons developed gang personalities.

It was then and there decided that, instead of jamming their thousand- and ten-thousand-dollar bills into strong boxes, they would form a pool and invest in sound enterprises. In these they got actual, tangible, negotiable securities. They engaged the best management, often retaining the executives of properties they bought.

Then came the war and everything flourished and multiplied--everything honest and dishonest.

Their assets snowballed. Now they run into incalculable figures.

Every member has his exact "piece"--from the take of a prostitute summoned in the night, to the income on Park Avenue, State Street and Hollywood Boulevard frontage.

Any man who owns 2 per cent is a millionaire. The principal participant is said to own 7-1/2 per cent and he is now the richest man in Italy. He is, of course, Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

When Luciano, a swarthy Sicilian with a drooping eye, who had been a pickpocket, a pimp, a collector, a gun-toter for his betters and in time the top racketeer of the United States, was convicted by District Attorney Tom Dewey, it was said that he was railroaded and that he was guilty of everything except what he was convicted for--peddling women.

He was guilty of them all and that, too. But Dewey, with his eye looking far ahead, realized that this was the most spectacular path and he took it and followed it through.

It was the same Dewey, as governor, who shortened Luciano's sentence at Dannemora under circumstances never plausibly explained. It was published that Luciano had provided the government, then at war, with priceless information about the Italian underworld, which had helped us in the invasion. It was even bruited that he would get a medal of honor. This was all pure hokum, invented by the paid press agent of the syndicate in New York, which maintains a year-round public-relations employe who earns his $300 a week if he manages to get in one choice item, such as the above, in a year.

It was no political deal, which also was intimated, but which is as erroneous as the balderdash about Luciano's service to his adopted country.

Luciano got an excessive sentence, running up to 30 years. It was not contemplated that he would ever sit out all of that. The Italians, who are rapidly overtaking the Irish as the leading power in Tammany and in Republican councils as well, had put on heavy pressure to get amnesty for the little mug, who was the head of the Sicilian Society in the United States, a branch of the ancient Mafia.

After Luciano was deported, he turned up in Havana.

This was kept out of the newspapers for a while, but the entire syndicate was notified and there was a concentration in the Cuban capital, where 36 rooms had been engaged in Havana's leading hotel.

Meanwhile, the FBI and Federal Bureau of Narcotics tapped his phone-calls to the mainland and definitely established that he was still in undisputed command of the multifarious and nefarious operations of the infamous Unione Siciliano.

Columnist Robert Ruark sprung the story in a column which appeared in the second section of his newspaper and was treated as minor information. But the fact that he had seen Luciano holding court in the Havana Casino, surrounded by glamor gals, underworld and Hollywood celebrities, including Ralph Capone, the Fischetti Brothers and Frank Sinatra caused a national sensation, as a result of which the United States government formally complained to the Cuban government that Luciano's presence on the nearby island meant a big development in the dope business of the United States. Washington had the goods.

Cuba thereupon deported him back to Sicily, where at this writing he is dispensing charity and undoubtedly buying and scheming great influence in public affairs.

During his incarceration, his dividends as well as his crooked profits were meticulously deposited to his credit. There was some difficulty transferring money to him in Italy during the last year of the war, and in that period some $2,000,000 accrued to him; that sum was brought to him in cash on a Pan-American clipper from Miami to Havana and carried in the hand of a well-known crooner of Italian extraction, with underworld connections past and present, guarded by two of the Fischettis, cousins of Al Capone.

The New York manipulator for Lucky, who visited him while he was held at Ellis Island for deportation, is Frank Costello. He is now the mightiest of the syndicate personnel, with an uncanny genius for mixing into highly important affairs with bigwigs in various spheres.

Costello also was born in Sicily, came to New York in his youth, had some juvenile delinquency troubles and did a stretch before he was out of his teens. He was part and parcel of gangster developments in a small way until his talents brought him to the top.

He was engaged in the slot-machine business in New York until the late Fiorello LaGuardia had his one-armed bandits smashed by police axes. Costello, teaming with "Dandy Phil" Kastel, who also had counted the bars on a cell, took a trial trip to Louisiana, then the one-man dominion of Huey Long.

They say a million dollars passed into the hands of the Huey Long inner group--and not a bad investment, for the first year's profits, reported for Federal taxes, exceeded $1,200,000. Anyway, the Louisiana legislature voted a bill legalizing slot machines, and Costello and Kastel organized several inter-involved corporations with innocent names to run them. There was practically no competition--and very little shooting; Long simply passed the word around that the concession belonged to these two gentlemen from New York.

As a concrete example of how the tax situation is manipulated by intricate items of overlaying accounts, it was shown when Costello was hauled up for taxes apparently due, that the slot machines belonged to one corporation, that they were operated by a second, which rented the locations from a third.

Costello eventually settled for $600,000 cash. Among other little entries about which the government inquired were payments of $200,000 a year to each of his wife's two brothers, as salaries in different slot-machine corporations. This transparent cover-up was laughable--but it was judged not criminal. Costello pleaded that he had been misadvised--excuse it, please--and he wrote a check.

This is only a ripple on the ocean of hundreds, probably thousands, of holding companies organized in various states and under various directorships and local laws, through which flow the vast garnerings of the syndicate from coast to coast, with an accounting system which in any emergency can explain and make good any entry, and thus avoid the peril of the penitentiary.

There is an intercommunicating liaison among the lawyers, many of whom are engaged for their exclusive services by the year, and all supervising the main channels and watching hawklike to guard against letting their employers become involved in actionable tax delinquencies.

As for all other matters, they can be handled locally. The syndicate owns plenty of judges, strong men in both parties and great fluid assets. It is no secret that money can square anything in the United States.

Luciano was no peanut when Dewey ruined him. But there are few Deweys. And Luciano had not yet learned to cover his tracks. The money came in so fast and his drag was so good, he felt immune, but Tom Dewey wanted to be President of the United States, and Lucky hadn't thought of that.

Luciano had been taken for a ride in the orthodox manner, between two executioners, and had come out alive. They left him for dead in a lonely spot, but he beat it.

After that he felt that nothing could break him.

Like Samson, he was betrayed by infatuation for a doll. She was Gay Orlova, a fabulously beautiful, but plump, blonde White Russian refugee, who had come to Broadway and Earl Carroll's choruses by way of Turkey.

Said by Carroll to be "the sexiest gal who ever worked for me," Gay quickly found a protector in the late Theus Munds, rich and elderly Wall Street broker, who went whole hog with diamonds, furs and limousines.

During the Florida season of 1935, Gay appeared as a featured show girl in the floor show Carroll presented in the flamboyant Palm Island Casino, then operated by Bill Dwyer, a Prohibition-time big-shot rumrunner, on Al Capone's private island.

There she met Luciano. Lucky, who had had the pick of girls, never had had one so glamorous--or amorous. He moved right in.

Gay was proud of her conquest. When asked by one of your reporters, "What about Munds?" she replied, "Oh, Theus is O.K. But all he's got is money. Lucky, he's sinister!"

When that was printed, it was the first intimation Dewey's detectives had of the romance. When Gay returned to New York, they tapped her wires, and thereby traced Luciano to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he was hiding out.

After Lucky's conviction, Uncle Sam deported Gay as an undesirable alien. When last heard of she was a Paris mannequin, still beautiful, still in love with Luciano, still bitter at your reporters--and trying to get a passport to Italy.

His conviction was another lesson to his kind. It showed them that, with all their accumulated power, they were not sure of their liberty.

Luciano had conducted his vice operations from a duplex suite in the Waldorf Towers. These activities were traced right into his two manicured hands. The syndicate came to the conclusion that that, too, must be changed.

Now the important stockholders delegate everything illegal. In one season the outfit netted $6,000,000 in Miami gambling houses. But these were all run by stooges, few of whom knew to whom the money eventually went, and none of whom knew how or where it went--into corporations with strange and remote names, into sinking funds, reserves, depreciation allocations and undivided profits.

Corporations can be sued and can be taken, but they cannot be locked in a prison.

That, briefly, is the story of the gangsters' progress, one of the biggest-monied combinations in the nation. That is the reason why the shootings have stopped and top men are no longer put on the spot.

"Bugsy" Siegel and Binaggio, slain after this chapter first appeared in print, were exceptions. Benny, who got his nickname because the boys said he was "nuts," had threatened to blow the whistle on the syndicate when Luciano refused to bail him out of his $6,500,000 white-elephant gambling casino-hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

He was put on the spot because he refused to be "organized"; preferred old-fashioned gang methods learned when he was the No. 1 torpedo for Murder, Inc. Binaggio, too, double-crossed the boys.

No independent operator can scratch the surface. Competition isn't even a hearty joke. The boys have everything so tightly tied up, they work so far ahead and have so many trained eyes and ears, that they can take long vacations, enjoy a hangover as well as the next man and sleep in reasonable security under silk canopies in silk pajamas.

26. HELLO SUCKER!

Three different movie outfits, at three different times, took the trouble to consult with Jack Lait about authentic incidents in the life of Texas Guinan. He gave freely and at great length in response. We later saw "Incendiary Blonde," supposed to be based on her life. It wasn't a bad picture. But it wasn't a good Guinan.

Tex was hardly incendiary, and wasn't even a blonde by nature. The only three men in her life were--first, a quiet New England artist; second, a sedate California writer; and third, in later days, a bookkeeper, no less, who used to beat her up and who scrammed with a lot of her assets.

Texas and Lait were good friends back in 1913, when she was making two-reel, two-gun westerns. That's when she acquired the "Texas" handle. Her name was Mamie. She had a little house near Hollywood, with Lottie Pickford and Mabel Normand. Lew Cody, Paul Armstrong and Lait would drive out there to play stud poker. Texas came east to join a musical show. Abe Erlanger, king of the legit, went soft for a little pug nose in the chorus and took Texas' song away and gave it to the youngster. To make it worse, he wanted Texas to support her with an obligato. Lait stood on the stage of the Illinois Theatre, Chicago, when Tex told Erlanger off pretty in the presence of the entire troupe.

She was fired instanter and barred from every branch of theatricals except vaudeville. Lait wrote her an act, with four people and a horse. At the climax, Tex on the horse leaped in through the window and saved the post office from being robbed. Her name wasn't good enough for the big time, and she played the Loew circuit. Transportation ate up most of the salary. So Tex got a job as a hostess in the Beaux Arts, New York, opposite Bryant Park, high up by elevator, sort of a secluded spot after the uptown speaks were emptied. There her personality caught on.

Larry Fay, the sentimental gangster, had gone mad over a lovely little ingénue whose name shall not be mentioned, because it might embarrass her and it wasn't her fault. Larry pestered her so, she ran away to Florida and took a cheap night club engagement. This gave Larry a big idea, which made Texas Guinan, quite inadvertently.

The Friars Club, about to open its own building, was moving out of its temporary quarters on 45th Street, near Sixth Avenue. Fay leased the building for five years. His plan was to set up a magnificent club which he thought would lure back to New York the gal he was nuts about, if he offered her star billing and a big salary. He hired Tex as emcee, with a heavy guarantee. He called it the El Fey Club so it could be identified with him and still not carry his name, which was on record where it wouldn't help. He began frantically telephoning the girl in Florida. She turned him down and after the first call refused to answer. So here he was, stuck with a five-year lease on a five-story building and a contract with Guinan.

Here comes the most interesting incident, which has never been truly told and which has been untruly told for years everywhere.

As each show went on, Larry would stand in the extreme rear, where it was dark and where he--always in plain blue serge suit, white silk shirt and black windsor tie--was inconspicuous. As Texas would mount her chair (that was how she worked) she would look across the long room at him. And, thinking of the lease, her pay, the flop of his romantic objective, she would cast a glance right over the heads of the audience and call out--to him--"Hello, sucker!"

Through some phenomenal human quirk, every other sucker in between thought it was addressed to him. And, as strangely, every man liked it. It became her trademark. Long after Larry passed out of her picture and was killed on a New Year's morning, she still featured it--his only monument.

Texas played to a strange conglomeration--Wall Street, the world of art and letters, the Blue Book lorgnette set, New York's usual concentration of out-of-town buyers, plus never-failing underworlders. These were all paying guests. There was very little passed out on the cuff in any of her deadfalls. There were very few beefs about atrociously phony "champagne" at $35 a bottle, and some of the bootleggers who made her Scotch and gin at perhaps $1 a quart came to her dives and paid $15 a quart for their own hogwash.

There was something in that "Hello, sucker!" which softened up a man and made him what she called him. She always had a flock of lovely young girls, but no customer ever got closer to them than seeing them on the floor. It was no place to pick up one on short notice. Texas watched over her kids like Diana guarded the doves on Olympus. Many a contented matron, perhaps now turning 40, may remember what a demon chaperon she was.

"Give the little girl a great big hand!" But that was all. Not a great big car; not even a sandwich.

She never got rich. She lived in a little flat on Eighth Street, which looked like a Chinese second-hand furniture store, where she had one servant. She certainly left no great sum. She dropped a wad in the stock market crash and had to hock her "ice," in which she had sunk a bucket of bucks. She had thieves and thugs for partners and, though regarded as a shrewd operator, she was taken like Armour takes a sheep. From the moment she came to work at night, until daylight, she was on her job and had no time even to look at accounts. She could well have said "Hello, sucker!" talking to herself.

But she was dynamite as a drawing card. The sappos began laughing before they came in. They greased headwaiters heavily for ringside seats in front, and a few minutes later saw tables moved in front of them. The best act she ever put on was George Raft, doing a Charleston, which lasted a minute. Ruby Keeler broke through the barrier with her beauty and tap-dancing. Beyond this, there were practically no principals, except Guinan.

Yet, when the band struck up "I'll See You in My Dreams," her theme song, and the spotlight caught her scintillant smile and she shouted "Hello, sucker!" her customers were electrified, ecstatic. We have never known an exclamation from any person to carry the wallop that this impertinent quip packed when Guinan let go with it.

It is generally believed she got it from Wilson Mizner. Truth is, Bill Mizner got it from her!

27. NO PAIN, NO FUN

The hotel hustler, age-old character more or less tolerated in the best institutions, making her hunting habitat in midtown lobbies and the various "peacock alley" passages, has become a police problem on grounds other than protection of morals.

In the main hotel sectors, she spurns the wage of service. She is generally a cold, calculating crook.

Her equipment is a small bottle of white crystals, chloral hydrate, a powerful concentrated hypnotic which will knock a man completely out in 15 minutes and keep him unconscious for some dozen hours.

This method requires that she be in the man's room. She cannot take him to her own or to a neutral one, as he will wake up in due time, robbed of every nickel, his watch and ring, sometimes even some haberdashery.

A complaint, were the victim to regain consciousness anywhere but in his pro tem quarters, would set the dicks waiting for the lady to come home, if it were her place, or would convict a place that rented rooms to her as an assignation house, which in New York means lifting the license for keeps.

But, where traveling men, convention gatherers, visiting buyers and occasional migrants have accommodations, she combines in comparative safety the lure of her charms and the modus operandi of her larceny.

The flirtation is simple enough. The proposition comes in due course, usually in the cocktail lounge or café of the hotel. The acceptance is at first hesitant--she isn't that kind, shouldn't stay out long, but she has taken a fancy to the stranger (after she has worked out of him the information that he is stopping at the hotel and isn't a permanent guest) and so, yes, she will go to his room--unaccustomed as she is to unconventional adventure--for a little while. He doesn't dream how little time.

His room is not only her objective, but there is no other retreat.

Should he want to lead her somewhere else, he is stymied. All hotels are full up. Even if he got a handbag and tried to get into another haven with her, he would be asked for his reservation.

There are no more loose hotels specializing in such twosomes. In 1940, there were hundreds. Now there isn't one. The war rush, the military police, the high rates for legitimate rentals turned them all respectable. They found that more profitable and kept it up.

Because of her system, she cannot take him to her abode or to any other which he can identify after his long snooze, even if she, a wise New York cookie, does know some side-street bed-house where a cheating clerk holds out a cubicle or two for quick turnovers.

So she plays quite helpless. She lives with her folks. Unless they go to his place--well, where else?

He takes the standard precautions of the seasoned wayfarer. He goes up alone, tells her to follow in five minutes and walk right in.

With few exceptions, the dreaded "Get that woman out of your room!" has gone the way of the one-buck blue plate. Guests are still protected, but not against their own peccadillos. The simp has pushed the little plunger so the knob will turn from the outside. The tough trollop, acting nervous and timid, but irresistibly tempted, enters.

He makes a grab. Oh--he mustn't be so impulsive, so impatient. She is jittery and fluttery--natch, since she is doing what her breeding and better nature tell her she should never have yielded to.

A drink--one little drink to settle the nerves--and then--

He calls room service, even if he has a bottle in his bag. If he has seltzer, she can drink it only with ginger ale, or vice versa. When the waiter is called, she steps into the bathroom on his knock, and the cluck giggles and says he always takes two about that time of day. The waiter says lots of customers do, it's getting to be a national habit. For that he gets a bill instead of a coin.

She has taken her purse into the bathroom with her, and when she can safely return she has the knockout dose held between the thumb and the palm of her gloved hand--she keeps the gloves on; no fingerprints.

She sits, then remembers she has left her handkerchief on the washstand--would he please get it? As he turns his back, she drops the tasteless, colorless grains into his drink, which dissolves them instantly.

They raise glasses. Here's to crime! Skoal!

If he comes over for a grab right away, she holds him off. She wants to know--is he really married? Oh, dear, all attractive men are! She is a grass widow. Yes, she made a mistake, but what does a girl know when she's 18, and unworldly? How about a cigarette? Is he sure the door is locked now? He makes sure.

By this time his eyes are heavy, his hands more so. He can't understand--it's been a hard day, of course, and last night--zowie! He'll snap out of it in a minute. But he doesn't.

She has stalled until a debilitating lethargy overcomes him. He sinks back, limp. She waits a few more minutes. She pokes him. No reaction. Then she goes to work. He may still see and know what she is doing. But he is paralyzed.

She goes through him, even taking off his shoes and socks, for she has learned that many a cautious cluck hides currency there. She frisks his trousers, vest and coat. Then she scrams.

Quite a number of official beefs to the cops have completely established every move. Though only an infinitesimal percentage of the total go to the police, these average a dozen a week, mostly at East 51st Street police station, which is in the district of most top-grade hotels.

The dicks often can name the dame on description. But, if they collar her, she gives them the horselaugh. No corroboration.

After a touch in one hotel, hustlers usually move on to others, to avoid running into the victim, though when they do, little can be done about it.

Time and again, when arrests are made, the bottle of chloral hydrate is found in the suspect's handbag. That still isn't convicting evidence.

Most of the saps, of course, really are married. And they are people of some standing back home. They will lie to avoid prosecution, which would invite publicity, even when the thieving broad is caught with their watches which have their full names engraved on the cases.

The drug, without which the entire clockwork would stand still, is not too difficult to get. Chloral hydrate is a recognized and respectable anodyne, in the pharmacopoeia, prescribed for quick insensibility when a patient has convulsions, and in drastic cases as a painkiller. It cannot be had ethically except on a physician's prescription, but there are underworld druggists as there are underworld medics, and both serve out the stuff knowing how it will be used.

An overdose can be fatal, and women who feel secure in mulcting men do not want to chance a murder rap, which would set the bulls working in full cry. So they often have the powder put up in capsules with just the right dose, and they open the gelatinous envelope, spill the contents into the hand and drop the container into the drain.

All this gives you some idea of the intensive forethought and preparation expended to turn the ancient and never-too-honorable calling from whoring to robbery.

While the two have long been associated, only of late has it become the custom not only to give the sucker no even break, but no break at all. A glib grifter in this streamlined system could work it indefinitely and retain her virtue.

Newspapers continually dig up new versions of the "meanest thief." We nominate this one!