Usherettes at the Roxy Theater in 1945. Palatial theaters on Broadway like the Roxy would show first-run movies followed by live shows.
Movies would open in one of the big Broadway theaters. Then they would go to the big downtown Brooklyn theaters: the Albee, the Fox, the Brooklyn Paramount, and from there move out into the local theaters. This was true nationally as well. They’d use it in the advertising: “Direct from seven record-breaking weeks at Radio City . . . ”
Radio City doesn’t show movies anymore. The Roxy is gone; the Rivoli is gone. The Paramount closed with Sean Connery in Thunderball. It had stopped showing vaudeville long before that. The Capitol is now the Uris Building. Where the Victoria and Astor movie theaters and Ripley’s Believe It or Not were is now the Marriott Marquis Hotel. Bertelsman owns the building across the street where the Loews State used to be. The Warner and Strand were where Morgan Stanley is now. To think such a company would be in that area.
When I came to Broadway as a kid, it was like going to the most magical place you could imagine. Today you could be in downtown Minneapolis.
Nothing stays the same. It used to be Ed Sullivan, now it’s Regis Philbin. It used to be the fifteen-cent token, now it’s the metro card. It used to be moving to the suburbs, now it’s coming back at any price.
MARK FEDERMAN: I was always asked why I didn’t move Russ and Daughters uptown to where my customers were. Sooner or later uptown will move downtown, I said. It’s happening. The Lower East Side is becoming romantic.
KEN ARETSKY: Recently I got a phone call from a friend who had lived one floor above me in apartment 4D in the Amalgamated Houses. He told me there was a big cover story in New York magazine about gentrification on the Lower East Side. They listed the hot places to live, and one of them was the Amalgamated Houses. They have doormen now. “Can you imagine?” Jerry said. “Our parents did everything in the world to get out. Now they’re fighting to get in.” If you live long enough . . .
MICKEY ALPERT: The family that owns Ratner’s has been there for a thousand years. Now they’ve opened up something on the side street, the back end of Ratner’s, called Lansky’s Lounge. It’s a saloon where young people go. They’ve closed Ratner’s and plan to expand Lansky’s Lounge. The front will serve the old dairy food for lunch and that’s it. They’ll be open Friday nights and Saturdays—they won’t be kosher anymore.
MARK FEDERMAN: Not long ago, people from the Smithsonian came to the store to discuss Russ and Daughters participating in an American food and folklore event. My thoughts turned to my grandfather. I could just hear him saying, “I told you we would be assimilating sooner or later.”
ALVIN REED: One day in 1988, I saw an ad in the Amsterdam News: “Historical Place in Harlem for Sale.” Wait a minute, I thought. Could it be Small’s Paradise? I called the number and asked, “Where’s it located at?”
“Lenox and 124th Street, the Lenox Lounge,” they told me.
I was raised in Harlem. I knew this street. Our parents said, “Don’t ever go down there.” But now I thought, let me take a look, see what’s going on.
Outside are drug addicts and dealers. There isn’t a lot of dealing, but they’re just starting their day out there, negotiating, deciding what they’re going to do, where they’re going to be. I go in. And it’s like night and day. Outside was a mess, inside was something else.
I had been to the Lenox Lounge in the fifties as an eighteen-, nineteen-year-old. At that age, though, I didn’t know the history of the place. I didn’t know that Billie Holiday would come there to relax after she entertained downtown, that she had her own booth where no one could sit but her, that though she wasn’t a paid performer, sometimes she’d get up and sing anyway.
The Lenox Lounge was still in the hands of one of the original owners. He was in his late seventies; his kids didn’t want to take it over. I checked the books. The place wasn’t really making any money, but the price was right.
I couldn’t get any partners together. My wife was against it. I had to refinance my house. But I saw the future of Harlem and the future of this place, so I took it on.
I had moved out of Harlem when I got married. It had become a much less stable environment. Drugs had started popping up everywhere, people coming in from we don’t know where, a lot of transients in the community. Sanitation services, police services were dropping. Seemed like the better teachers left. Those who had a little bit of money moved out.
It got so I was embarrassed to say I lived in Harlem. When people asked, “Hey, Al, where you live?” I always said, “Upper Manhattan.”
I purchased a house in Queens Village, where I still live today. I also have a house in Pennsylvania. But I never left Harlem. I may live over there, I may sleep over there, but Harlem is where I stay. All my friends are from Harlem. I still go to the restaurants: Sylvia’s, M&G Diners, Charlie’s—I know all the best places.
When I bought the Lenox Lounge, it was like everything came together for me. It was built in 1939, the year I was born. At that time El Morocco said they had a patent on the zebra material that is on the walls here. I don’t know if they were in litigation or if there were strong-arm tactics, but because of that, the Lounge wasn’t able to open up until November 11, 1942. November 11th is my wife’s birthday. When we found out, we thought it was destiny.
BILL GALLO: My father died young so I needed to work. I would go to the theaters in the morning and ask the guy if I could sweep up. He would give me fifty cents. Doing that, I got to appreciate the theater. It is still the champ of the evening. The quality may change, but the feeling doesn’t. The same is true of New York. It may change, but it’s like that old dame. I still love it.
JOEL DORN: To me there is one story that defines the record business I knew. There was a very successful music publisher named Lou Levy who was married to one of the Andrews Sisters. He was a big gambler who went broke a couple of times, lost a million a couple of times. Then he married an Englishwoman and moved to England.
One day, another old-timer, Juggy Gayles, who was a music publisher and promotion man, called me up and says, “Listen, Lou’s back in town. Hook him up because he doesn’t know who the players are now.”
We meet for lunch. Lou tells me he’s got a big divorce pending and he’s settling a property in England with his third or his fourth wife. He’s gonna have money and start a publishing company and a record company, He’s back in the game.
Two months later I’m walking up 61st Street crossing Madison toward Fifth. I pass one of those phone booths that were like gigantic hair dryers. If you made a call from inside one of those little acoustic domes, nobody could tell you were on the street; you couldn’t hear the traffic. I see Lou in this phone booth. I tap him on the shoulder to say hello. He turns and sees me, and he says into the phone. “Harry, I gotta run. Somebody just walked in.”
P.S.
HARVEY FROMMER: In 1975, I met a man named Garry Schumacher, who had been the publicist for the old New York Giants and moved with the team to the West Coast. We met in San Francisco, where I was interviewing for a baseball book. We hit it off quite well and even went out for a couple of drinks. He was an incredible fund of baseball knowledge dating back to the days of John J. McGraw, and a true New York character.
Some years later, I read in the newspaper that Garry had died. And a short time after that, he came to me in a dream.
Standing there in my bedroom, he was as big as life, just as I remembered him.
I asked, “Garry, how are you? How are things where you are?”
And he answered, “Harvey, it’s okay. But it’s not New York.”
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Manhattan at Mid-Century Page 27
