Read Online American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott - Free Book Online
Authors: Karen Abbott
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which to steal.
A fter Billy’s close call with the gunman, Abe accepted his little brother’s offer to join his movie theater business—on one condition: he, Abe, was boss, and would have final approval on all decisions. Abe was going to build an empire, make the Minsky name famous across the country, and Billy was lucky just to be standing with him now, at the beginning.
Billy looked at his brother for a long, silent moment. He agreed and left it at that.
Privately the brothers marveled that anyone made it to their National Winter Garden at all.Access to the seats was maddeningly difficult, requiring patrons to ride a rickety, temperamental elevator, squeeze through a narrow lobby, and then shimmy around the theater’s back wall by way of the fire escape landing. A swarm of shrewd thieves infiltrated the crowd, picking pockets while their victims focused on reaching their seats alive. Customers didn’t care much about the quality of the films or music; they were willing to risk robbery or injury for the rooftop atmosphere alone.
Rooftop gardens were the height of fashion. On summer nights wealthy New Yorkers flocked tothe roof of Madison Square Garden, where braids of colored lights connected a forest of palm trees and Chinese lanterns swung low from rafters. The Minskys’ rooftop wasn’t quite so glamorous, but it offered a rare luxury for tenement dwellers. For once they could look down on the city rather than being trapped in the thick of it, high above the screams of slum boys playing slugball and hit-the-crack, the first-floor parlors crowded with old men hunched over hands of pinochle, the rotten scent of the street vendors’ overripe peaches.
Despite the rooftop ambiance, the brothers soon realized that a local, family-based operation couldn’t compete with new movie chains, like the nearby Loew’s Delancey Street Theatre. Nor could they book any major vaudeville acts, since the big-time palaces outbid them. They knew they had to transform their operation, one way or another, into a house that could draw the stars. Maybe films and vaudeville weren’t the way to go, Billy suggested. The Minskys were, after all, men who took risks and who appreciated the risqué—men more suited to burlesque.
What began in ancient Greece as an art form that mocked social conventions, spoofed politics and current affairs, and titillated audiences with suggestive dialogue became, ultimately, a bold celebration of the female form. Just after the Civil War, a play called
The Black Crook—
considered the original Broadway musical—debuted, marking the first time in the history of the American stage that women appeared nakednot as an integral part of the plot but for the brazen appeal of nudity itself. Burlesque evolved further, drawing from circuses and dime museum freaks, dance-hall honky-tonk and minstrel shows, behind-the-barn tent and cooch dancers, and by the turn of the twentieth century it had fully distinguished itself, for better or worse, from vaudeville. While middle-class men took their wives to see Tony Pastor’s sweet dancers and clean comics, working-class men flocked alone to watch the gyrations of ample blondes and “screaming farces” with titles like
Did You Ever Send Your Wife to Jersey?
“Variety became vaudeville and aligned itself with talent,” as one historian put it. “Burlesque became itself and aligned itself with dirt.”
Abe and Billy vowed to reinvent the National Winter Garden as the best burlesque house in New York, dubious though that distinction may have been. Their Lower East Side comrades would appreciate burlesque—what man in his right mind would choose
Ben Hur
over
Bend Her
, complete with scantily clad chorus girls as Roman charioteers? They learned that the business of burlesque revolved around “wheels,” organizations that supplied shows to theaters across the country: the Columbia Wheel, the Mutual Wheel, and the American Wheel. A typical year for the American Wheel
A fter Billy’s close call with the gunman, Abe accepted his little brother’s offer to join his movie theater business—on one condition: he, Abe, was boss, and would have final approval on all decisions. Abe was going to build an empire, make the Minsky name famous across the country, and Billy was lucky just to be standing with him now, at the beginning.
Billy looked at his brother for a long, silent moment. He agreed and left it at that.
Privately the brothers marveled that anyone made it to their National Winter Garden at all.Access to the seats was maddeningly difficult, requiring patrons to ride a rickety, temperamental elevator, squeeze through a narrow lobby, and then shimmy around the theater’s back wall by way of the fire escape landing. A swarm of shrewd thieves infiltrated the crowd, picking pockets while their victims focused on reaching their seats alive. Customers didn’t care much about the quality of the films or music; they were willing to risk robbery or injury for the rooftop atmosphere alone.
Rooftop gardens were the height of fashion. On summer nights wealthy New Yorkers flocked tothe roof of Madison Square Garden, where braids of colored lights connected a forest of palm trees and Chinese lanterns swung low from rafters. The Minskys’ rooftop wasn’t quite so glamorous, but it offered a rare luxury for tenement dwellers. For once they could look down on the city rather than being trapped in the thick of it, high above the screams of slum boys playing slugball and hit-the-crack, the first-floor parlors crowded with old men hunched over hands of pinochle, the rotten scent of the street vendors’ overripe peaches.
Despite the rooftop ambiance, the brothers soon realized that a local, family-based operation couldn’t compete with new movie chains, like the nearby Loew’s Delancey Street Theatre. Nor could they book any major vaudeville acts, since the big-time palaces outbid them. They knew they had to transform their operation, one way or another, into a house that could draw the stars. Maybe films and vaudeville weren’t the way to go, Billy suggested. The Minskys were, after all, men who took risks and who appreciated the risqué—men more suited to burlesque.
What began in ancient Greece as an art form that mocked social conventions, spoofed politics and current affairs, and titillated audiences with suggestive dialogue became, ultimately, a bold celebration of the female form. Just after the Civil War, a play called
The Black Crook—
considered the original Broadway musical—debuted, marking the first time in the history of the American stage that women appeared nakednot as an integral part of the plot but for the brazen appeal of nudity itself. Burlesque evolved further, drawing from circuses and dime museum freaks, dance-hall honky-tonk and minstrel shows, behind-the-barn tent and cooch dancers, and by the turn of the twentieth century it had fully distinguished itself, for better or worse, from vaudeville. While middle-class men took their wives to see Tony Pastor’s sweet dancers and clean comics, working-class men flocked alone to watch the gyrations of ample blondes and “screaming farces” with titles like
Did You Ever Send Your Wife to Jersey?
“Variety became vaudeville and aligned itself with talent,” as one historian put it. “Burlesque became itself and aligned itself with dirt.”
Abe and Billy vowed to reinvent the National Winter Garden as the best burlesque house in New York, dubious though that distinction may have been. Their Lower East Side comrades would appreciate burlesque—what man in his right mind would choose
Ben Hur
over
Bend Her
, complete with scantily clad chorus girls as Roman charioteers? They learned that the business of burlesque revolved around “wheels,” organizations that supplied shows to theaters across the country: the Columbia Wheel, the Mutual Wheel, and the American Wheel. A typical year for the American Wheel
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