by Bruno, Joe
Governor Roosevelt was just months away from the presidential elections. And since Walker still had legions of supporters in New York City, Roosevelt wasn't sure what was the best way to handle the Walker situation.
Walker took Roosevelt off the hook, when on September 1, 1932, he announced his resignation as Mayor of New York City.
Within days, Walker hopped on a cruise ship to Europe, accompanied by his showgirl girlfriend, Betty Compton. In 1933, Walker divorced his wife and married Compton. For three years, Walker spent his self-imposed exile in London with Compton. When Walker returned to New York City, LaGuardia was mayor, and Walker was out of politics for good.
Shunned by the political arena, Walker returned to his first love: the music industry. Walker became head of Majestic Records, a big-band record label that included such popular musicians as Louie Prima and Bud Freeman. In 1946, two years after he assumed control of Majestic Records, Walker died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 65. Walker was buried in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
In 1957, comedian and song-and-dance-man Bob Hope starred in a movie based on Walker's life called Beau James. This film was based on a biography of Walker, also titled Beau James, written by Gene Fowler. This book was also used as the basis for Jimmy, a Broadway play about Walker, that ran from October 1969 to January 1970. In Jimmy, Frank Gorshin played Walker and Anita Gillette played Betty Compton.
In the 1959 Broadway musical Fiorello!, the song Gentleman Jimmy, was dedicated to New York City's “Midnight Mayor,” Jimmy Walker.
The End
*******
Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps
Volume 3 - New York City
By Joe Bruno
*****
PUBLISHED BY:
Knickerbocker Literary Services
EDITED BY:
Marc A. Maturo and Lawrence Venturato
COVER BY:
Nitro Covers
Copyright 2011 by Knickerbocker Literary Services
*****
What Readers are saying about “Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps – Volume 3 – New York City”:
AS GOOD AS A HISTORY BOOK! – RJ Parker “Best Selling Author”
Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps - Volume 3 by Joe Bruno is a masterpiece of New York City's history of crimes and criminals, and even disasters. Many of these people were the dregs of society who Bruno dug up from the sewers of NYC and placed in a book.
This is the second book I've read by the author and have added him to my favourites. I like his style and the substance of his material. Good as a history book. Highly recommended.
Best of the Best! – lcook0825
Volume 3 and is definitely the best of all of them. This was as good as any history book on the subject of the Mafia for the era in question. The way each person or event was covered left you knowing exactly what happened and being from New York I knew the places
Volume 3 keeps pace with "1" & "2" – John M. Bitowt Jr.
Joe Bruno has once again amazed and mystified the reading audience with "Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps-Volume 3 New York City"!! As in Volumes 1,2, & 3, the reader is destined to find out some previously unpublished or forgotten facts regarding the era, the feel of the city, or characteristics which were popular at said moments.
Bruno does it again! – Mathew J. Mari
Volume 3 is as good as Volumes 1&2. It is easy to read and very interesting. You can read it through in a couple of sessions or a chapter at a time at your leisure, or you can skip chapters if you like as each is self contained.
An excellent book; well written – Jean M Kilgallen
This is a great book for those people who like to read about gangsters like Mafioso Carmine Galante, Paul Castellano, Carlo Gambino, and Vito Genovese. But it also contains some interesting stories of long forgotten disasters like the Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876 and the General Slocum Paddleboat Fire of 1906.
I especially liked the article on Evelyn Mittelman, called "The Kiss of Death," because several of her boyfriends were killed by men who lusted to be her new boyfriend.
Volume 3 is as good as Volumes 1 & 2 – Tony Palumbo
I had already read Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volumes 1 & 2 - New York City, so when I saw that Volume 3 was available I just had to buy it. And the author doesn't disappoint at all! All in all, for 99 cents, Volume 3, like Volumes 1 & 2, is a great bargain. Highly recommended!
*********
Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876
It started out as a gala performance of Two Orphans at the Brooklyn Theater on Washington Street in Brooklyn. But thanks to inefficient and incompetent theater personnel, it wound up being the third-worst fire, occurring either in a theater or public assembly building, in the history of the United States of America.
The title roles were played by Maude Harrison and Kate Claxton, who was thought to be one of the best stage actresses of her time. Others in the cast included well-known actors Claude Burroughs, J.B. Studley, H.S. Murdoch, and Mrs. Farren. All would play leading roles in the tragedy that followed.
The Brooklyn Theater, which seated 1,600 people, was built in 1871. It was an L-shaped brick building with its main entrance on Washington Street and a secondary entrance on Johnson Street, a smaller thoroughfare which ran perpendicular to Washington Street 200 feet to the east. One block to the north was what was then Brooklyn's City Hall. And one block to the south was Fulton Street, the main thoroughfare to the Manhattan ferries, which brought theatergoers from the mainland of Manhattan to the Brooklyn Theater. (The Brooklyn Bridge wasn't built until 1886.)
The Brooklyn Theater had three floors of seating. The ground floor was called the “Parquet and parquet circle” seating. It contained 600 seats. The second floor balcony seats were called the “dress circle” seats, and they seated 550 patrons. The third floor gallery, which was called the “family circle” seats, contained 450 seats.
The top level family circle seats, at 50 cents a pop, were the cheapest seats in the house, and it had its own box office on Washington Street. It also had one set of 7-foot wide stairs, designed with a zigzag of right-and left-angle turns and leading directly from the street outside to the third floor. The theater was set up such that the people in the family circle seats had no access to the balcony below, or to the main floor of the theater.
This turned out to be their undoing.
The second floor dress circle seats, costing one dollar, had two flights of stairs to enter and exit the theater. One was a 10-foot wide set of stairs that led to and from the lobby. The other was a narrower set of emergency stairs that led to Flood's Alley, a tiny strip of dirt behind the theater. The ground floor door to Flood's Alley was usually locked to stop gatecrashers from entering the theater on the sly.
The ground floor seating was comprised of three price ranges. The least expensive was the parquet seating, disadvantageously situated on the side of the stage and costing 75 cents. The parquet circle seats, which were in the middle of the auditorium, cost $1.50. There were also eight private boxes, four on each side of the stage, which were the most fashionable and expensive seats in the house. Each private box contained six seats. Box seats cost a whopping $10 apiece, a kingly sum in the 1870s.
Illumination in the theater was provided by gas jets in the lobby and in the vestibule. A few gas jets covered by ornamental globes were set on the orchestra floor. Border lights were lined in a row along the proscenium arch, which is the rectangular frame around the stage. These lights had tin on the side facing the audience and were covered by wire netting. Above the boarder lights were thin pieces of cloth that served as scenery. Some of these pieces of cloth dangled precariously close to the boarder lights.
As a precaution, buckets of water were usually kept on the side of the stage in case the dangling scenery caught fire. Plus, there was a fire hose backstage that was connected to a 2 ½-inch water pipe.
On December 5, 1876
, approximately a thousand people were in attendance at the Brooklyn Theater. About 400 people were seated in the upper family circle seats (an exact figure was never determined), 360 people sat in the dress circle seats, and 250 people sat in the parquet and parquet circle seats.
Edward B. Dickinson, who was seated in the middle of the parquet seats about five rows from the stage, thought the auditorium floor was not more than half-full. However, Charles Vine, who was sitting in the top family circle seats, thought it was “one of the biggest galleries” he had seen in a long time at the Brooklyn Theater.
Everything was fine until the short intermission between the fourth and fifth acts. During this time, the curtain was down hiding the stage, and the orchestra was playing during the intermission. People in the parquet circle heard loud noises from behind the curtain. But this was not considered unusual.
Seconds before the curtain came down, stage manager, J. W. Thorpe, saw a small flame coming from the lower part of a drop scenery hanging near the center stage border light. Thorpe later said the flame was about the size of his hand. Thorpe looked for the water buckets, but for some reason they were not where they were supposed to be. He thought about using the fire hose backstage, but so much scenery was in the way, he decided it was quicker to extinguish the fire by beating it with long stage poles. Thorpe directed his carpenters, Hamilton Weaver and William Van Sicken, to attempt to quell the fire by banging it with two large stage poles.
At around 11:20 p.m., the fifth and final act started. When the curtain came down, Kate Claxton, playing a blind orphan girl, was laying on a stack of straw, looking upward. J. B. Studley and H. S. Murdoch had taken their places on stage, in a box set representing an old boathouse on the bank of the Seine. Mary Ann Farren and Claude Burroughs were waiting in the wings for their cues to enter into the scene. Miss Harrison was not in this scene, so she stood backstage and watched the production.
Murdock had delivered just a few lines, when he heard someone whisper “Fire” from backstage. Murdock looked up to the proscenium arch. He saw heavy black smoke and the flickering of small flames. Murdock could see that the fire was spreading quickly upward towards the domed ceiling of the theater. Murdock stopped delivering his lines, but the audience had not yet noticed the fire and smoke.
Murdock heard Claxton whisper, “Go on. They will put it out. Go on.”
Murdock finished his lines, and Farren and Burroughs entered the scene from the wings. Miss Claxton had just delivered her lines to Murdock, saying, “I forbid you to touch me. I will beg no more,” when flaming parts of the ceiling fell onto the stage, igniting Claxton's costume. Studley hurried over and extinguished the flames on Claxton with his bare hands.
The orchestra, for some reason, broke out into a cheerful song, but it did nothing to quell anyone's fears.
By this time, the people in the theater had realized a fire was occurring, and screams of terror began to reverberate against the theater's walls. Farren and Murdock stopped play acting and stood on one side of the stage, imploring the people to leave quickly and quietly. Claxton and Studley did the same on the other side of the stage.
Claxton yelled to the crowd, who were now on their feet in an extremely agitated state, “You can all go out if you can only keep quiet. We are between you and the flames! Keep cool and walk out quietly!”
But the frenzied crowd had a mind of its own. People ran out into the aisles and panic ensued.
Studley yelled to the crowd, “If I have the presence of mind to stand here between you and the fire, which is right behind me, you ought to have the presence of mind to go out quietly!”
Claxton later told the police, “We were now almost surrounded by flames; it was madness to delay longer. I took Mr. Murdoch by the arm and said 'Come, let us go.' He pulled away from me in a dazed sort of way and rushed into his dressing room, where the fire was even then raging. To leap from the stage into the orchestra, in the hope of getting out through the front of the house, would only add one more person to the frantic struggling mass of human beings, who were trampling each other to death like wild beasts.”
Burning timber began raining onto the stage, and the actors were forced to run into the wings. Claxton suddenly remembered there was a small hallway which led from her dressing room, through the basement and into the box office. Claxton ran backstage, met Harrison, and both ladies fled though this passage in their dressing room to the box office outside. On the other hand, Murdock and Burroughs ran back to their dressing rooms to get warmer clothing to fend off the frigid December air outside the theater.
Neither man made it out of the theater alive.
By this time a fire alarm had been sent out from the First Precinct police station, which was next door to the theater. Also, a telegram was sent to Mayor Schroeder, informing him of the dire situation.
Some of the theater's crew ran to the Johnson Street exits, and they made it safely outside. But the fire soon spread and cut off access to those exits. All of the remaining exits were either in the front of the theater, at the main entrance on Washington Street, or through the emergency doors on Flood's Alley.
While the crowd was set in panic mode, head usher Thomas Rochford rushed to the rear of the theater, and he opened the special exit doors on Flood’s Alley . Because of Rochford's action, the people on the ground floor were able to exit the theater in less than three minutes. So in effect, the people in the least crowded part of the theater had the fastest escape routes.
However, the open doors on Flood’s Alley caused a brisk airflow to blast into the theater, which increased the intensity of the fire.
The people on the second floor had two stairways from which they could escape. The main 7-foot-wide stairway, the stairway in which they had entered the building , led to the vestibule near the Washington Street exit. The other exit was a narrower stairway that led to Flood's Alley.
Most decided to rush for the main stairway, because it was the one they were most familiar with. This caused a logjam of the greatest proportions, since instead of an orderly exit, the people worked themselves into a frenzy. People started getting tangled with each other. Some people jammed into doorways, and others fell forward down the stairs onto the people below them, causing the flow of people out of the building to stop completely.
Sergeant John Cain, from the First Precinct next door, fought his way into the theater and with the help of janitor Van Sicken, he began to untangle the fallen people so that the crowd behind them could get down the stairs to safety. By all accounts, almost all the people from the second floor dress circle seats were able to exit the theater alive. But the people jammed into the gallery on the third floor were doomed from the start, and they knew it.
People started jumping from the family circle seats into the auditorium below. Some were injured so badly from the jump they were not able to exit the theater. Other people lowered themselves from a small third-floor window to Flood's Alley below. One man forced himself through a ventilator shaft which deposited him onto the roof of the police station next door.
But most of the people in the gallery had no way to save themselves. After a few people were able to stumble down the stairway from which they had entered the building to the safety outside, the supports for the gallery collapsed, thrusting hundreds of people three floors down onto the bottom level.
Charles Straub had been sitting in the gallery near the stairway. He was sitting with his friend Joseph Kremer.
Straub said afterwards, “We could hardly run down the stairs; we were crowded down.”
Even though hundreds of people had tripped and fell on top of him, Straub was somehow able to make it down the stairs and out of the theater. He estimated about 25 people from the gallery had made it out before him and about 12 people after him. The rest were trapped inside.
He never saw his friend Kremer again.
Charles Vine had been sitting in the gallery, but far away from the only stairway. He thought about jumping from one of the windows fa
cing Flood's Alley, but it was a 60-foot drop, and he would certainly perish from that jump. So Vine hurried to the front of the gallery, and he decided to jump from there to the dress circle below. Vine cut himself badly on a chair and was knocked out for a moment. But Vine quickly regained consciousness, and he was able to force his way down the second floor stairs to the exit door below.
Fire Marshall Keady said later that he thought Vine had been “the last person to leave the gallery alive.”
Fifteen minutes after the fire had begun, the entire interior of the theater was in flames. At 11:45 p.m., the east wall of the theater fell with a loud grumbling, burying more than 300 men, women, and children under tons of bricks and burning debris.
Thomas Nevins, the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Fire Department, had arrived at the theater around 11:26 p. m. He immediately saw there was no way to save the theater and that his job was now to confine the fire to that single structure. When the additional fire-fighting equipment arrived just before midnight, Nevins used that equipment to keep adjoining buildings free of sparks and burning debris.
By midnight, around 5,000 spectators had assembled in the streets outside the theater. Some were looking for signs of loved ones who had gone to the theater, but had not yet returned home.
At 1 a.m., the Flood's Alley wall collapsed, and by 3 a.m. the fire had started to burn itself out. At that point, Chief Nevins considered the fire under control. The early newspapers that morning reported the fire, but said that only a handful of people had been killed.
At the break of dawn, Chief Nevins led a contingent of fire personnel into the building. Chief Nevins discovered almost the entire theater had collapsed into the cellar. As the firemen made their way through the ruins, they made a terrible discovery. What appeared to be plain rubbish, was in fact, a mangled mess of charred human bodies. Some of the bodies were intact, and some had missing limbs. All were burned beyond recognition. It was later determined that almost all the dead had been sitting in the third floor gallery when the fire started.