American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee

by Karen Abbott

  Whites also went to clubs meant for them and them alone, Connie’s Inn and Small’s Paradise and the Cotton Club, the last the most exclusive destination of all. There the gangster Owney Madden sold his personal brand of beer, Madden’s No. 1, and denied blacks entry unless they were light enough to pass. He hired Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway and produced every kind of black show that whites might want to see: the smiling black, the shuffling black, the blackface black, and a mandatory jungle number where a line of chorus girls, no darker than “high yellow,” shimmied until their costumes slipped off.

  Billy knew Minsky’s Apollo would have to distinguish itself in order to siphon customers from the more established clubs; the Minsky name was still unproven in this part of town. Hurtig & Seamon’s did a few things right, catering to the neighborhood with a mixed-race production called Super Black and White Sensation featuring “70½ People: 35 Whites and 35½ Blacks,” and an all-colored company, Lucky Sambo. At Minsky’s Apollo, black performers and customers would be just as welcome as whites, and he’d encourage them to interact and play off each other, just as they did at the National Winter Garden.

  The brothers placed ads for chorines, coochers, comedians. One comic, a young man named Joey Faye, had some of the freshest sketches Billy had seen in a very long time.

  “You got any more material?” Billy asked.

  “I got a lot of material,” Faye said, “but it’s all stolen—most of it, anyway.”

  “Stolen?” Billy asked, smiling.

  “From the First Little Show, from the Second Little Show, George White’s Scandals, Ziegfeld’s Follies, the Palace Theatre, the Greenwich Village Follies—all the shows around.”

  “Well, let me see some of the stuff,” Billy prodded, and the comedian obliged.

  “Can you put one of these on for Friday?” Billy asked. “For every sketch you put on, I’ll give you twenty-five extra bucks in addition to your salary.”

  “Won’t you get sued? After all, it’s not our material.”

  Billy leaned in close. “How can I get sued?” he reasoned. “We open on a Friday. We do the show Saturday and Sunday. They can’t sue me until Monday. Tuesday I go to my lawyer. By Wednesday, we answer the suit, Thursday the show is finished, and Friday we put on a new one. No show, no suit.”

  Faye finally understood, and smiled back.

  For his chef d’oeuvre Billy discovered a stripteaser working at the Olympic theater, and lured her away. He intended to rotate her appearances between the Apollo and the National Winter Garden and began remaking her into his own creation. By the time he finished she was no longer Mary Dawson from Philadelphia, born to a devout Catholic mother and Quaker father who worked, improbably, as a cop. Instead she was Mademoiselle Fifi, late of Paris, “an Oriental dancer” of astonishing magnificence and skill. Billy held full-scale press conferences to introduce his exotic star, instructing reporters to direct all questions to him.

  “Mademoiselle Fifi,” Billy explained haughtily, his arm wrapped around the girl’s waist, “does not speak so good the English. So I will be her spokesperson.”

  Next he placed cryptic signs in the subway—SHE DANCES TONIGHT—WHO?—FIFI—and mailed a perfumed letter to every business owner in Harlem. He penned each word himself in delicate, looping cursive:

  Dear Sir:

  You being a man about town, we are taking the liberty of sending you a season pass for the Apollo Burlesque Theatre on 125th Street, West Side. You will agree there is no greater thrill than to watch a fast, good-looking, perfectly formed chorus of young beautiful girls. We’ve got all of that, and lots more.…

  Yours for a good time,

  Mlle. Fifi

  On the Apollo’s opening night, the promise of Mademoiselle Fifi’s splendor had customers lining up around the block, a queue that reached as far as Hurtig & Seamon’s marquee. Mademoiselle Fifi delivered her finest performance to date, stepping onstage in her “gorgeous golden cape” only to drop it at the first note of her song. No union suit covered her flesh. She gave the crowd spins and kicks “with a few cooch movements thrown in,” cooch movements so brazen and raw that policemen began filing up the aisle, no doubt summoned by John Sumner and his cadre of prudes.

  Billy had always shared his city’s intolerance of timidity and hesitation, the belief that pausing to consider your place meant you were already far behind. During the Jazz Age the pace was doubled, the challenges amplified. He’d expected reformers at the Apollo’s debut but declined to activate Herbert’s red-light warning system—a tactical decision he hoped would pay off, yielding a just reward for being as bold and quick as the era demanded.

  The furor over Mademoiselle Fifi only lasted long enough for Billy to make his point: nudity on his stage was no more offensive or illegal than on Broadway. The rules should not change for burlesque, be it north or south of 14th Street. Recalling one critic’s assessment of the Apollo’s debut—“burlesque red hot off the grid and well-spiced with double entendre sufficiently suggestive to be understood by the blind and the deaf and dumb alike”—he decided to make his point again, this time with such theatrics and disdain for subtlety that no one would ever forget it, a plot worthy not only of New York’s attention, but also of its history.

  As the Minskys told the story and as it thereafter told itself, the trouble began with the member of the Minsky family least likely—at least at that point in time—to invite it. On Monday, April 20, 1925, Louis Minsky, who had maintained a careful distance from his sons’ burlesque enterprise, received a strange letter in the mail:

  I address you, sir, not as principal of the Minsky Realty Company, but as proprietor of the National Winter Garden Theatre, on which premises “burlesque” shows are produced.…

  On Monday the 13th I purchased a ticket to the balcony of the National Winter Garden and witnessed the show advertised to be “Burlesque As You Like It.” I did not like it. In particular I did not like the so-called “comedy sketches.” Specifically, I did not like the sketches entitled “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Desire Under the El.” I found them to be lewd, obscene, contributory to immoral conduct, and in gross violation of Section 1140-A of the Penal Law.…

  Might I suggest, sir, that your “comic” actors follow the suit of the singing and dancing young ladies of your company, who disport themselves with great jest and jollity, with no resort to unseemly actions.… I might go so far, sir, as to cite the Oriental shimmy-ballet of Mlle. Fifi as an exemplary model of popular entertainment. A certain tolerance may be observed in the case of the French-born performer such as this young artist.

  I shall purchase a ticket and be in attendance at the National Winter Garden on the evening of April 20th. If I find that the comedy sketches are still in violation of the law and public taste, I shall not hesitate to have your performance stopped. I shall summon the police and you will be served with my complaint flagrante delicto.

  —John Sumner, Secretary

  New York Society for the

  Suppression of Vice

  Louis Minsky wasn’t quite sure who Sumner was or what he was talking about. He didn’t know the allegedly distasteful sketch was called “Anatomy”—not “Antony”—“and Cleopatra” (and that it had a subtitle: “Shakespeare Shimmies in His Grave”). He also failed to connect “Desire Under the El “with Desire Under the Elms, the Eugene O’Neill play currently on Broadway. He didn’t even realize the absurdity of lauding Mademoiselle Fifi as a paragon of virtuous entertainment, considering she had already spurred a raid at the Apollo. But like his sons, Louis recognized a prime opportunity when he saw one: if he kept the letter to himself, and if the National Winter Garden were raided, his boys might be delivered back into a decent world.

  Louis tucked the letter into his vest pocket. What will be will be. God would handle Abe, Billy, Herbert, and Morton, even if both he and Mr. Sumner failed.

  Unbeknown to Louis Minsky or John Sumner, the brothers had ordered a “Boston” version of all performances on the
night of April 20. They feared a visit not from John Sumner but from Mary Minsky, who had declared her intention to finally spend an evening at the National Winter Garden (and who suspected that Billy’s interest in Mademoiselle Fifi extended beyond the professional). As a good and loyal wife, wasn’t it high time she met the people Billy called his “other family”? Besides, if the shows were truly as decent and respectable as Billy said, why would he object?

  Billy knew he must agree to Mary’s plan or risk wrath and headache at home. For that night, he and Morton would join Abe and Herbert downtown and let their team of managers run Minsky’s Apollo. As a precaution, Billy sent out word to his chorines that, for that performance only, “brassieres will be worn at all times.” Comedy personnel will not deliver unrehearsed lines in Yiddish. There will be no talking or fraternizing with the audience during scenes. He thanked them for their “splendid cooperation” and believed the situation was under control.

  Billy waved to Mary, sitting with her brother high up in the last row of the orchestra, but missed John Sumner settling into a prime spot next to the runway, where the acoustics would amplify each crude double entendre and odious joke. For camouflage Sumner bought a hot dog, a box of Cracker Jack, and a bottle of celery tonic, but kept a notepad, pencil, and a paraffin whistle tucked inside his jacket pocket.

  He sat, pencil poised, as the Minsky band leader simultaneously lifted his baton and tapped a buzzer on the podium with his toe, alerting the doorman six floors below to hustle in the latecomers. The reformer winced through the faux-romantic overture, the sobbing saxophones and moaning violins, and shifted away from the patron sitting next to him, a man reeking of garlic and home-brewed beer. Next came Tom Bundy, the Minsky’s top comic and master of ceremonies, announcing the chorines in his bullhorn voice (“Presenting the fair, the fragrant, the fabulous, blushing, beauteous—Roses of Minsky Land!”) and now the girls themselves, sidling down the runway, one dozen kicking west toward the Bowery and the other dozen east toward Chrystie Street, the muted magenta spotlights rouging the skin of their thighs.

  He endured a tiresome sketch called “A Quiet Game of Cards,” which involved thick rolls of play money, hatchets, cudgels, pistols, a bladder, the occasional cannon, and the following dialogue:

  COMIC NO. 1: “My friend, that’s a terrible cold you have there, terrible! Didn’t you say you always slept in a nice, warm bed? How come you caught a cold?”

  COMIC NO. 2: “Last night her husband showed up and I had to get up out of the nice, warm bed and go home.”

  He watched “Desire Under the El” (during which the fellow next to Sumner complained about the “good parts” being edited out), and “Anatomy and Cleopatra,” which featured balloon bosoms, a prop phallus, and tasteless jokes about rigor mortis. Sumner didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed by the puerile splendor of it all. In the back of the house six of his detectives fixed their eyes upon him, watching for the crook of his finger, the invitation to charge forward.

  He had one last hurdle, or hope—however he chose to view it—and he waited for Mademoiselle Fifi to take the stage.

  So far so good, Billy thought, although he could sense that the regulars were annoyed and antsy and would probably demand a refund. He gazed upward at Mary, who was clinging to her brother and slicing her hand through the cigar smoke; how she hated the musky smell, the sting to her eyes. But the show had been clean enough to keep her in her seat and out of his business, which was all that mattered. Wait—was that Joseph Weinstock, his principal investor, sitting nearby? Billy felt something like a tuning fork churning in his gut. Weinstock was a rash, brash, temperamental man, and if he sensed that Billy was taming down the shows, he would rescind his partnership. Billy could take a Philly girl and transform her into a fille de joie, but he couldn’t produce burlesque on Minsky money alone.

  He found Mademoiselle Fifi in the wings. Her sheath of black netting made a grid of her skin, arms and legs and torso delineated into fleshy pink squares. She wore a scarlet cape studded with rhinestones and a matching headband topped with a towering exclamation point of feathers. She looked at Billy as if she couldn’t take a step without his personally positioning her feet. He had time for only a few words, so he chose them as judiciously as possible.

  “This is it, Feef,” he said. “The whole ante’s riding on you.” He hoped she understood. He coasted a hand toward her shoulder, intending to give her an encouraging push, but instead his fingers brushed her breast. That look again, and then she said, softly, “You do love me, don’t you, Billy?”

  He couldn’t hear. The music soared from the pit. From somewhere in the distance a candy butcher hollered about chocolate bonbons and girlie cartoons. Beyond the velvet curtain the audience waited, expectations pacing like caged animals in their minds.

  “God love you,” Billy said, and then there was no barrier between his star and the audience.

  He watched her dance. She was graceful as always but distracted, her angles lazy, her limbs sluggish. This was no time for artistry, the pirouettes and the arabesques, the coquettish dipping of her chin. The audience wanted bare flesh, and now. He began to mime directions: grinding his jowls and thrusting his hips and cupping imaginary Amazonian breasts in his hands. Fifi spun back toward the wings, her cape billowing behind her, and it came to her that for once she held the power in the relationship; she had Billy Minsky precisely where she wanted him. She froze, her torso bent, leg held aloft and curled behind her back.

  “Billy,” she whispered. “Tell me you love me.”

  “Feef! I’m trying to tell you—cut the ballet! Go to the cooch! The cooch!”

  “Are you going to say it, Billy?”

  He was apoplectic now. “Feef!” His spittle sprayed her face. “You goofy kid! Go to the cooch!”

  She twirled away and back again.

  “Say it, Billy!” she said, stretching toward him. “Say, ‘I’m in love with you, Fifi.’ ”

  He could no longer control his hands. One reached out and coiled like a tentacle around her wrist. She lost her balance and fell against him.

  “Get this straight, kid,” he said. “I am not in love with you. Have you got that? Now get the hell into your cooch.”

  He let her go and she let herself go, spinning into a haze, her feet so brisk against the runway they seemed to whip up tendrils of smoke. The orchestra heaved and flailed, a medley of Puccini, Joplin, and Offenbach’s Gaité Parisienne, and even after Mademoiselle Fifi shed her cape and netting and brassiere, she did not stop spinning.

  Minsky “Rosebuds” have their day in court. (photo credit 18.1)

  Beneath the crash of cymbals John Sumner’s paraffin whistle blew meekly.

  Since it was a Minsky story—and an entirely fabricated Minsky story, at that—the details of the fictitious raid grew bolder and more absurd with each retelling, skipping over all the inconveniences that littered up their path. No one questioned why this incident, so notorious it inspired a 1968 movie starring Jason Robards and Bert Lahr titled The Night They Raided Minsky’s, was never reported in any trade or mainstream or tabloid newspapers of the time. Or why John Sumner, a prodigious keeper of his own records, felt compelled to throw away his letter to Louis Minsky. Or the true whereabouts of Mademoiselle Fifi on that night, when she claimed to be attending a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria for the American Medical Association, three miles and a world away from the National Winter Garden.

  Instead they recalled how Fifi, devastated by Billy’s rejection, bit her lip and stripped with blood beading down her chin, a burlesque of a sacrifice, a cooch dancer scorned. And how, at the inevitable trial, the judge, an old family friend of the Minskys, asked Sumner to demonstrate Mademoiselle Fifi’s “pelvic contortions.”

  “Your honor,” Sumner reportedly said, “it would be very difficult without musical accompaniment.” Four Minsky employees hummed a tune, the judge waved his gavel, and Sumner’s hips rotated with all the fluidity of a rusty wheel.

&
nbsp; “That poor man!” Mademoiselle Fifi cried. She veiled her eyes with a graceful hand. “They mustn’t make him do that.”

  “Mr. Minsky,” the judge said. He nodded toward Sumner, who had collapsed, breathless, in his seat. “Would you as proprietor of the National Winter Garden hire this dancer for your show?”

  “Your honor,” Billy answered, “I wouldn’t wish this dancer to waltz on the grave of my own worst enemy.”

  But the finale of the most famous burlesque raid in New York history remained the same: the trial lasted for seven weeks, and the Minskys always won.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The only time I’d ever marry again is if someone beat on my door and said, “I have $27 million and I’ll live elsewhere.”

  –JOAN BLONDELL

  On and Off the Set of The Naked Genius, 1943

  Gypsy reappears in Boston on September 27, when The Naked Genius premieres at the Wilbur Theatre, a plain but handsome redbrick building on Tremont Street. Mike gnaws on his cigar and keeps his face free from expression. Kaufman grins his excruciating grin. She can barely stand to peek through her fingers at the stage and focuses instead on the critics’ section, watching them scribble and cringe, listening for their groans. They hate every facet of the play except for Joan, which doesn’t stop the actress from cornering one reviewer and screeching until his ears “smarted.” The notices are so bad, in fact, that Mike sends a personal gift to each critic, thanking them for the constructive criticism, although he intends to ignore every bit of it. In truth, he confides to Gypsy, he doesn’t much care about the reviews—just that the play makes money.