The Black Russian

by Vladimir Alexandrov

  However, Constantinople’s weather can be erratic, and that summer, shortly after La Potinière opened, it turned disastrous. Torrential rains at the end of June flooded parts of the city, transforming the main streets into rivers, damaging houses, breaking windows, and knocking out electricity. There was serious destruction outside the city as well, with bridges in villages washed out and fruit and nut orchards badly damaged. On the heights of Pera, Maxim was not affected too much, and its open terrace remained popular. But the rainstorms apparently damaged La Potinière, and customers stayed away from the place, because after the summer season ended Frederick decided not to reopen it. He had lost some money on his investment, and such a stumble was unusual for him. It must have rankled him that two competitors in Bebek had succeeded where he had not. La Rose Noire, which changed hands several times after Vertinsky first opened it several years earlier, had also moved to Bebek that summer and appeared to be thriving. And the following year a resurrected Le Moscovite, which now advertised itself as the “ex-Potinière,” had a good season as well.

  More—and far more serious—competition was to come. Tourism was still on the rise in Constantinople. A noticeable jump occurred in early spring of 1925, when hundreds of American and British tourists started arriving every week. During the first half of 1926, the number swelled to twenty-one thousand, which was nearly double the tally for the same period the previous year. Although most tourists spent only a day or two rushing past the famous sights before heading off to the Mediterranean, it did not take long for other entrepreneurs to see the potential that Constantinople had and to start dreaming up ways to capitalize on it.

  The most audacious plan was to create a rival Monte Carlo on the banks of the Bosporus. In late summer and fall of 1925, word spread through Constantinople that a syndicate headed by Mario Serra, an aggressive young businessman from Milan, had rented for a period of thirty years the Yildiz Palace complex on the northeastern edge of the city as well as the Çiragan Palace on the shore of the Bosporus just below it. This arrangement had been approved at the highest levels of the Turkish government, by the Council of Ministers and President Kemal himself. The jewel of the Yildiz complex was the Şale Kiosk, a palace that had been the sultans’ residence in the late nineteenth century. Its appearance was highly incongruous for Constantinople because on the outside it resembled an enormous Swiss chalet (whence the first part of its Turkish name), whereas inside it was elaborately decorated with carved marble, mother-of-pearl inlaid wood, frescoes, and gilded plaster. Serra intended to transform the palace’s magnificent throne room into a gambling casino and to use the other halls for bars, restaurants, and dancing. In the huge park outside there would be sporting facilities, a roller coaster, and possibly a golf course, while other amusements would be set up by the large lake and in the smaller buildings on the grounds. Plans for the Çiragan Palace involved rebuilding the white marble structure, which had been badly damaged by fire (it had formerly been the sultan’s harem), and turning the entire place into a luxury hotel (which it is today). For all this Serra agreed to pay the Turkish government 30,000 Ltqs a year in rent—that would come to around $1 million now—plus an annual tax of 15 percent on his profits. Because the government of the Turkish Republic was hardly sentimental about the Ottoman past, it was also willing to let him buy some of the luxurious furnishings that remained in the palace, including massive pieces of furniture, handmade rugs hundreds of square yards in size, and mirrors covering double-height walls. The Yildiz project was on a scale that would eclipse not only every other attraction that the city might offer to a rich tourist, but also potentially any other comparable destination in Europe. Indeed, there was talk that it might lead to the birth of a new Turkish Riviera.

  Frederick understood what this grandiose plan could mean for him and that he needed to do something about it. He reportedly initially discussed with representatives of the Standard Oil Company of America, which had major long-standing financial interests in the region, the possibility of transforming Hagia Sophia into a casino or a “temple of jazz.” As absurd and blasphemous as this idea may sound—this was, after all, one of the most famous ancient religious buildings in the world—it was picked up by American newspapers at the end of 1926 and the beginning of 1927. One newspaper reported that “a group of business men” in Constantinople had concluded that “the edifice is unsuitable for religious services.” Word spread, and companies eager to take part started to write to the American consulate general in Constantinople. The “American Association of Jazz Bands,” for example, asked “for full acoustic details” of the vast edifice (whose central cupola is taller than a fifteen-story building), and with a “can do” aplomb that was undaunted by any cultural or practical concerns promised “to provide the largest jazz band in the world with the largest number of most powerful saxophones.” However, the Turkish authorities never seriously considered this appalling project, and it came to nothing. Frederick decided that he would have to expand on his own, and on as big a scale as he could manage. This seemed not only possible but plausible because Maxim continued to pull in crowds with its time-tested entertainments, which now regularly included black jazz bands.

  But history was not standing still in the Turkish Republic. In its ongoing process of secularization, it abolished the caliphate (formerly, Ottoman sultans had also been Muslim caliphs, but the republic’s experiment with separating the two ended in less than a year). The last representative of the Ottoman dynasty, Caliph Abdülmecid II, left Constantinople for Switzerland by train on March 3, 1924; a week later, he was followed by the few princes and princesses who had lingered behind. The fez was officially abandoned in favor of Western hats for men. On April 17, 1924, the Russian imperial embassy on the Grande rue de Pera was transferred to the Soviet government, marking Turkey’s friendly relations with the Soviet Union (and symbolically confirming Frederick’s now complete statelessness).

  There were new laws as well that targeted establishments like Frederick’s and that reflected the Turkish Republic’s attempt to find a path between Muslim traditions and secular Western culture (and to raise revenues). Taxes were introduced on the consumption of alcoholic beverages and on dancing in public: a “First Class” place like Maxim had to pay the equivalent of around $1,500 a month for the latter. Restrictions were also placed on the hours when “dancings” could operate, on the events they could organize without special authorization, and on the age of young women who could be admitted. Shop signs that were in Turkish and a foreign language were taxed, with the amount depending on the size of the foreign lettering. During the period 1924–1926, operating an establishment like Maxim became progressively more expensive.

  It was also becoming more difficult for foreigners to live and work in Constantinople. Xenophobia increased as the Turkish Republic dismantled the old privileges that had been granted to Europeans. In 1924 an unsuccessful attempt was made in Constantinople to force employers to replace their Christian employees with Muslims. Two years later a new law required that Turkish workers replace all foreigners, including dames serveuses, waiters, headwaiters, cooks—in short, the core group of Frederick’s employees at Maxim. He may have needed to hide behind Turkish partners himself. To verify compliance, officials began to check identification papers throughout the city. Early in 1926 a law was introduced mandating the use of Turkish in bars, in restaurants, and on bills; any establishment that persisted in using French would be punished.

  All these changes caused great anxiety and hardship for Constantinople’s many foreigners, including the several thousand Russian refugees who had stayed behind after nearly two hundred thousand others left. Some of the remaining Russians sought Turkish citizenship, as did Frederick. After vacillating for a while, the new republic decided not to grant it to large numbers of stateless foreigners, and this decision forced many more to leave the country. Even though the Russians’ identity papers had lost their meaning when their homeland ceased to exist, they were able to tra
vel on the strength of the “Nansen passports” that the League of Nations started to issue in 1921. Had Frederick not claimed all along that he was an American, he might have been able to get one of these too. Fridtjof Nansen and Frederick actually met on June 9, 1925, when Nansen, the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize laureate, went to Maxim during a visit to Constantinople. However, by then it was too late for Frederick to tell the truth, and Maxim was still doing too well for him to want to leave.

  By early spring of 1926 Frederick had found the property that would be his answer to Serra’s Yildiz casino. About a dozen miles up the Bosporus from Constantinople on the European side is a picturesque cove with a town called Therapia (now Tarabya) that was popular with wealthy natives and foreigners as an escape from the city’s crowds and summer heat. The rich built luxurious villas; the foreign diplomats built “summer embassies.” There were several good hotels and restaurants right on the water that caught the cooling breezes.

  Frederick opened his “Villa Tom” there in early June and continued to operate Maxim during that summer as well. He spent lavishly to create a new destination that would give the members of Constantinople’s fashionable set everything they could possibly want: sophisticated dinners, dancing on a terrace by the water under a moonlit sky, a “Negro Jazz” band, a magnificently illuminated garden filled with flowers, and constantly varying entertainments—a “Venetian evening,” a “Neapolitan program,” an “aristocratic Charleston competition,” a “Monster Matinee.” And when the night’s performance drew to a close, there were spectacular fireworks overhead.

  At first, Villa Tom looked like a success—the city’s night owls came, enjoyed themselves, and lingered until dawn. But the place had cost a lot to open and was expensive to run. A problem also emerged regarding its location: Therapia was twice as far from the city as Bebek, where Frederick had tried opening La Potinière two years earlier, and the distance seems to have put many people off. Frederick realized that he would have to take on the additional expense of providing transportation from Constantinople if he was going to induce clients to make the trip. A few weeks after the opening, he hired and advertised a “luxury boat,” promising to return revelers to the city at 2 a.m. But this did not turn attendance around. Frederick’s income that spring and summer started to falter. He had to cut back on paying bills and other expenses, just as he had several years earlier.

  This time, one of his first victims was his own daughter Olga. A year earlier, in July 1925, together with her Russian husband, she had managed to get from Romania to Paris, where she enrolled as a student. For the previous three years Frederick had been supporting her with a sizable monthly allowance, but when his expenses began to mount prior to opening Villa Tom he stopped sending money to her and, inexplicably, broke off all communication. Olga waited anxiously for several months, until July 1926, at which point she went to the American consul general in Paris, Robert Skinner, for help in finding out what had happened to her father. Skinner, in turn, contacted Allen in Constantinople, reporting that Olga was “very worried” and “absolutely penniless.” Allen’s response was as brief as protocol required: he confirmed Frederick’s address at Maxim and explained that because Frederick had been denied American protection, “this office is… not able to exert any influence on him or otherwise interest itself in him.” Following this exchange in late July 1926, nothing is known about any further communication between Olga and her father.

  Although the government of the United States had washed its hands of Frederick, many of the people with whom he did business in Constantinople continued to think of him as an American. Consequently, when he stopped paying his bills on time, some of his smaller and less savvy creditors began once again to bring their complaints to the officials in the consulate general. A Russian waiter at Maxim, who had managed to circumvent employment regulations pertaining to foreigners, sent a pathetic complaint to Admiral Bristol about how Frederick had stopped paying him his full wages in June, around the time that Villa Tom had opened, and had not paid him for months despite repeated pleas. A merchant who supplied flowers to Villa Tom described how he had waited at Frederick’s office as late as “3 o’clock in the morning” in an attempt to collect the remaining half of the sum owed him, the equivalent of some $2,000 today. The Americans must have been dismayed to see such familiar complaints after their intercessions on Frederick’s behalf. They gave everyone the same response: “This office is unable to offer you any assistance towards collection of the sum which Mr. Thomas is alleged to owe you.”

  However, there was a new, ominous development as well: Frederick’s bigger and better-connected creditors did not bother to contact the consulate general. Because foreigners like Frederick no longer had extraterritorial protection, there was no reason to involve the American diplomats; Turkish laws were now sufficient to cover any eventuality.

  That fall and winter Frederick’s problems got worse. After closing Villa Tom for the season, he began to try to salvage his financial situation by refocusing exclusively on Maxim. But on September 26, 1926, the “Yildiz Municipal Casino,” as it was now officially called, opened for business. It did so not only with the fanfare befitting its size and splendor but also with official support from the city government, which made it into an even more significant event in the city’s nightlife. Invitations had gone out in the name of the prefect of Constantinople, and his assistant joined Serra in welcoming the six hundred guests at the palace doors and in cutting the ribbon to the gambling salon. Practically the entire diplomatic corps came, as did the city’s military and civilian authorities, the leading members of society, and representatives from the Grand National Assembly, the country’s parliament in Angora. Despite the large turnout, the palace was so vast that it did not feel crowded. The casino was an instant success: men and women flocked to the six baccarat tables and four roulette tables in what a journalist characterized as “probably the most luxurious gaming room in the world.”

  Gambling made the Yildiz Municipal Casino a unique destination in the city, but the place also had everything else for which Maxim was famous, and more of it—fine restaurants, bars, tearooms, black jazz bands, dances in the afternoon, dinner dances in the evening, variety entertainment, and an enormous, beautifully illuminated park overlooking the Bosporus where one could stroll, ride, shoot, and play tennis. Yildiz also stayed open every day from 4:30 p.m. until 2 a.m., or later; it staged lavish special events regularly; and it provided fifteen automobiles to ferry guests back and forth from their homes and the city center.

  The money poured in. During its first year of operation, the Casino is estimated to have paid the city government 130,000 Ltqs, which would be around $3 million today; this means that Serra’s syndicate grossed $20 million. Yildiz had completely eclipsed Maxim, and Frederick’s clients began to abandon him at the worst possible time. He tried to continue, but nothing he attempted worked, not even the special evenings that had been exceptionally profitable in the past and that now proved very difficult to organize. He announced a “first grand gala” of the season with a “ball of parasols” only on December 18, 1926; the next such event, featuring a masked ball, was not until two months later, on February 17.

  Apart from the debts weighing him down, Frederick was also beset by new and continually shifting legal restrictions, taxes, and penalties. An Englishman who visited Constantinople in 1927 underscored this: “Obstacles are placed in the way of all foreigners now doing business in Turkey. Fines are imposed upon the flimsiest pretext and there is no redress without endless litigation in Turkish courts.” As for the legal system itself, “Laws and regulations are being passed at such a rate that none can keep pace with them.” In fact, early that year, a wave of stringent restrictions swept through Constantinople that were aimed at enterprises like Maxim. The governor of the province announced labyrinthine regulations about who could, and who could not, attend public dances, dance together, and receive dance instruction. A week later, several hundred cabarets were
closed because they had all somehow transgressed aspects of the existing regulations.

  The last glimpse of Frederick and Maxim that we have is a sad one, but it elucidates what went wrong. Carl Greer, a middle-aged businessman from Ohio on a grand tour of the eastern Mediterranean, visited three nightspots in Constantinople at the end of April 1927 and compared them. The first was a place near the consulate general called the “Garden Bar” that he described as “the only prosperous cabaret” in the city. Greer concluded that it was successful because it had “no such thing as a cover charge” and welcomed a range of clients, from big spenders prepared to pay several hundred dollars for a bottle of French champagne to penny-pinchers who nursed a glass of lemonade throughout an entire evening’s show. The second place was Maxim, which Greer characterized as “a much more ornate establishment than the successful Garden Bar.” But despite its swanky appearance he found it a “disheartening” sight because “the dance floor stood empty and the number of diners was never as great as the personnel of the orchestra that entertained them.” What had happened was obvious to Greer: after making “a great deal of money during the occupation,” Frederick could no longer attract his former clientele and was “now engaged in the painful process of losing all his profits.” The third place Greer visited was where Constantinople’s smart set had moved—the Yildiz Casino, and it elicited all his superlatives: “the show place among the resorts of the East, if not of the entire world… magnificence truly oriental… the gaming room causes any casino in the French Riviera to appear by comparison commonplace.” He also noted the crucial detail that there were “three hundred players” gathered around the Yildiz Casino’s tables. In short, the niche that Frederick had inhabited in the city’s nightlife was now gone, and he was trapped, unable to adapt. Maxim could not compete with Yildiz’s splendor and attractions, but neither could Frederick afford to make Maxim more broadly accessible, because of the size of his debt.