The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

by James Traub

  CHAPTER THREE

  Timothy J. Gilfoyle, “Policing of Sexuality,” in William R. Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Ethan Mordden, The American Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Charles Higham, Ziegfeld (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972); Ziegfeld Clip File, New York Public Library; Robinson Locke Dramatic Collection, New York Public Library; P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, Bring on the Girls: The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy, with Pictures to Prove It (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953); Ethan Mordden, Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); The Smart Set, August 1926; Playbill Collection, Seymour Durst Old York Library; Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957); Marjorie Farnsworth, The Ziegfeld Follies (London: Davies, 1956); Julius Keller, Inns and Outs (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939); Lewis A. Erenburg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Rupert Hughes, What Will People Say? (New York: Harper & Bros., 1914); Philip Furia, Irving Berlin: A Life in Song (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998); Julian Street, Welcome to Our City (New York: John Lane Company, 1912); George Bronson-Howard, Birds of Prey: Being Pages from the Book of Broadway (New York, W. J. Watt, 1918).

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (New York: Signet Classics, 2000); David Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990); Tama Starr and Edward Hayman, Signs and Wonders: The Spectacular Marketing of America (New York: Currency Books, 1998); Signs of the Times, 1907–; O. J. Gude Clip File, in Artkraft Strauss archives; Rupert Hughes, What Will People Say? (New York: Harper & Bros., 1914); Bayrd Still, Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by Contemporaries from Dutch Days to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 1956); Gregory F. Gilmartin, Shaping the City: New York and The Municipal Arts Society (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1995).

  CHAPTER FIVE

  George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, Dulcy, in The Drama Reader (New York: Odyssey Press, 1962); Brooks Atkinson, Broadway (New York: Macmillan, 1974); Scott Meredith, George S. Kaufman and His Friends (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974); “My Lost City,” in Writing: A Literary Anthology of New York (New York: Library of America, 1998); Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995); F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York: Scribners, 1995); Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday (New York: Harper & Bros., 1931); David Belasco, “A Flapper Set Me Right,” in Smart Set, August 1927; Robert Baral, The Revue (New York: Fleet Publishing, 1962); Abel Green and Joe Laurie, Show Biz: From Vaude to Video (New York: Henry Holt, 1951); Edwin P. Hoyt, Alexander Woollcott: The Man Who Came to Dinner (London: Abel and Shulman, 1968); Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957); S. N. Behrman, People in a Diary (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972); Phillip Dunning and George Abbott, Broadway (New York: George H. Doran, 1927); Eugene O’Neill, Beyond the Horizon (New York: Horace Liveright, 1920); Mary C. Henderson, The City and the Theatre (New York: James T. White, 1973); Moss Hart, Act One (New York: Random House, 1959); George S. Kaufman, The Butter and Egg Man (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926); George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, Beggar on Horseback (New York: Horace Liveright, 1924); Philip Furia, Irving Berlin: A Life in Song (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998); George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner, June Moon (New York: Sam French, 1929); Ethan Mordden, Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); George S. Kaufman and George S. Gershwin, Strike Up the Band, videotape in collection of New York Public Library.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Benjamin de Casseres, Mirrors of New York (New York: Joseph Lawrence, 1925); Stanley Walker, The Nightclub Era (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1933); Paul Morand, New York (New York: Henry Holt, 1930); Nils T. Granlund, Blondes, Brunettes and Bullets (New York: David McKay, 1957); Gilbert W. Gabriel, “Blind Pigs in Clover,” in Vanity Fair, April 1927; Louise Berliner, Texas Guinan, Queen of the Nightclubs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Texas Guinan Clip File, New York Public Library; “Speakeasy Nights,” in The New Yorker, July 2, 1927; Neal Gabler, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity (New York: Knopf, 1994); John Mosedale, The Men Who Invented Broadway: Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell and Their World (New York: Richard Marek, 1981); “Texas Guinan Says” File, New York Public Library; Damon Runyon, Broadway Stories (New York: Penguin, 1993); Jimmy Breslin, Damon Runyon (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1981); William R. Taylor, “Broadway: The Place That Words Built,” in William R. Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Gene Fowler, Beau James: The Life and Times of Jimmy Walker (New York: Viking Press, 1949).

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  J. Hoberman, 42nd Street (London: British Film Institute, 1993); Abel Green and Joe Laurie, Show Biz: From Vaude to Video (New York: Henry Holt, 1951); Bradford Ropes, 42nd Street (New York: Alfred H. King, 1932); 42nd Street videorecording; Bill Ballantine, Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas (New York: Rinehart, 1958); Irving Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show (New York: Hawthorne, 1967); Stanley Walker, The Nightclub Era (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1933); The WPA Guide to New York City (New York: The New Press, 1992); Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, New York Confidential (Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1948); Felix Riesenberg and Alexander Alland, Portrait of New York (New York: Macmillan, 1939); Margaret M. Knapp, “A Historical Study of the Legitimate Playhouses on West Forty-second Street Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in New York City,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1982; Brooks Atkinson, Broadway (New York: Macmillan, 1974); Ethan Mordden, The American Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Clifford Odets, Awake and Sing (New York: working MS in New York Public Library); Thornton Wilder, Our Town (New York: Perennial Classics, 1998); Raymond Sokolov, Wayward Reporter: The Life of A. J. Liebling (New York: Harper & Row, 1980); Thomas Kunkel, Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker (New York: Random House, 1995); A. J. Liebling, Back Where I Came From (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990); A. J. Liebling, The Telephone Booth Indian (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990); William R. Taylor, “Broadway: The Place That Words Built,” in William R. Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Joseph Mitchell, My Ears Are Bent (New York: Pantheon, 2001); Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel (New York: Pantheon, 1992).

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The New York Times; Alfred Eisenstaedt, Remembrances (Boston: Bullfinch Press, 1990); Jan Morris, Manhattan ’45 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City (New York: Harcourt, 1950); W. G. Rogers and Mildred Weston, Carnival Crossroads: The Story of Times Square (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960); Brooks Atkinson, Broadway (New York: Macmillan, 1974); Paramount Clip File, New York Public Library; Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams. The Early Years, 1903–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2001); Theatre History Society, Annual No. 6: Times Square Paramount Theatre; Arnold Shaw, “Sinatrauma: The Proclamation of a New Era,” Bruce Bliven, “The Voice and the Kids,” and E. J. Kahn, Jr., “The Fave, the Fans and the Fiends,” in Steven Petkov and Leonard Mustazza, ed., The Frank Sinatra Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); James Gavin, Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991); Helen Bloom, Broadway: An Encyclopedia Guide to the History, People and Places of Times Square (New York: Facts on File, 1991); Rivoli Theatre Clip File, New York Public Library; Cleopatra Clip File, New York Public Library; Brigadoon videorecording; South Pacific videorecording; Kiss Me, Kate videorecording; Oklahoma! videorecording; Annie Get Your Gun v
ideorecording; Ethan Mordden, Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Philip Furia, Irving Berlin: A Life in Song (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998); Douglas Leigh Clip File in holdings of Artkraft Strauss; Tama Starr and Edward Hayman, Signs and Wonders: The Spectacular Marketing of America (New York: Currency Books, 1998).

  CHAPTER NINE

  John Clellon Holmes, Go (New York: Scribners, 1952); Steven Watson, The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944–1960 (New York: Pantheon, 1995); Matt Theado, ed., The Beats: A Literary Reference (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001); Barry Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography (London: Virgin Publishing, 2000); Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City (New York: Harcourt, 1950); William S. Burroughs, Junky (New York: Penguin, 1977); The New York Times; Timothy F. Gilfoyle, “Policing of Sexuality,” in William R. Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); John Rechy, City of Night (New York: Grove Press, 1963); James Leo Herlihy, Midnight Cowboy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965); Jay Gertzman, “Street-Level Smut,” in The Position 5/26/2003; Josh Alan Friedman, Tales of Times Square (Portland, Ore.: Feral House, 1993); James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD: A City and Its Police (New York: Henry Holt, 2000); Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Family and Nation (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986); Fred Siegel, The Future Once Happened Here (New York: Free Press, 1997); Taxi Driver, videorecording; The New York Times; West 42nd Street: The Bright Light Zone, City University of New York study, 1978 (draft copy in Ford Foundation Library).

  CHAPTER TEN

  Documents, correspondence, clippings, etc., in City at 42nd Street File, archives of the Ford Foundation; Lynne B. Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001); 42nd Street Development Project: General Project Plan, 1981; 42nd Street Development Project: Draft Environmental Impact Statement, 1984; and 42nd Street Development Project Design Guidelines, 1981 (all in archives of 42nd Street Development Corp., O unit of the Empire State Development Corp.); The New York Times; The New Yorker; Hilary Lewis and John O’Connor, ed., Philip Johnson: The Architect in His Own Words (New York: Rizzoli, 1994); Franz Schulze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work (New York: Knopf, 1994); Final Environmental Impact Statement (1984, archive of the 42nd Street Development Corp., O unit of the Empire State Development Corp.).

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Robert Stern, New York 1960 (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995); Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972); Lynne B. Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001); Marc Eliot, Down 42nd Street: Sex, Money, Culture and Politics at the Crossroads of the World (New York: Warner, 2001); The New York Times; The New Yorker.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The New York Times; Lynne B. Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001); 42nd Street Now! (1993); H. V. Savitch, Post-Industrial Cities (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989).

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1995); Michael Sorkin, “Introduction: Variations on a Theme Park,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992); Alexander J. Reichl, Reconstructing Times Square: Politics and Culture in Urban Development (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1999).

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Andrew Kirtzman, Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City (New York: William Morrow, 2000); Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin, 1988); Sharon Zukin, The Culture of Cities (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995); Robert Beauregard, Voices of Decline (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993); Herbert Gans, The Urban Villagers (New York: Free Press, 1962); Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities (New York: Knopf, 1990); West 42nd Street: The Bright Light Zone, City University of New York study, 1978 (draft copy in Ford Foundation Library); Laurence Senelick, “Private Parts in Public Places,” in William R. Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Mary C. Henderson, The City and the Theatre (Clifton, N.J.: James T. White, 1973); Neil Smith, “New City, New Frontier: The Lower East Side as Wild, Wild West,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992); Albert LaFarge, ed., The Essential William H. Whyte (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990); William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation, 1980).

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lynne B. Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001); Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Marshall Berman, “Signs of the Times,” in Dissent, Fall 1997; Lynne B. Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mark C. Taylor, Hiding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

  JAMES TRAUB has been writing about the politics, culture, characters, and institutions of New York City for twenty-five years. Currently a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, he has also served as a staff writer for The New Yorker and has written for the country’s leading publications in fields as diverse as foreign affairs, national politics, education, urban policy, sports, and food. He is the author of two books with

  New York City settings—one on the Wedtech scandal of the mid-1980s and a second on the City College of New York. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and son.

  ALSO BY JAMES TRAUB

  TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: THE OUTLANDISH STORY OF WEDTECH

  CITY ON A HILL: TESTING THE AMERICAN DREAM AT CITY COLLEGE

  2005 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

  COPYRIGHT © 2004 BY JAMES TRAUB

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,

  an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon

  are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Traub, James.

  The Devil’s playground: a century of pleasure and profit in

  Times Square / by James Traub.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

  1. Times Square (New York, N.Y.)—History—20th century.

  2. New York (N.Y.)—History—20th century. 3. New York (N.Y.)—

  Social conditions—20th century. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Biography.

  5. Popular culture—New York (State)—New York—History—

  20th century. I. Title.

  F128.65.T5T73 2004

  974.7’1—dc22 2003061629

  Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-43213-1

  v3.0