Manhattan at Mid-Century

by Myrna Katz Frommer

  The big crime news in the 1950s was the Kefauver Senate Hearings into organized crime, which were televised. The star was the big mob boss Frank Costello, who took the Fifth more than anyone who had ever lived. It got so boring. But this TV director noticed that whenever Costello pleaded the Fifth, he made some nervous movement with his hands, and that’s what he focused the camera on.

  One night at Madison Square Garden, Rocky Graziano came over to me. “Come on. I’d like you to meet Frank.”

  “Frank who?” I asked. “Frank Sinatra?”

  “There’s only one Frank—Costello, the godfather.” Like many guys in those days, Rocky Graziano respected the gangsters. He had a diamond pinky ring that he was very proud of because Al Capone had given it to him.

  Costello was there with his bodyguard. Rocky brings me over. I put out my hand, but Costello won’t shake hands with me. I guess he looked at me as a wiseguy newspaperman. I don’t know what got into me, but I said, “I don’t recognize your face, Frank, but I know your hands very well.”

  He snapped, “Get this son of a bitch out of here.”

  You couldn’t be in the newspaper business and not know these guys. They were all around.

  JACK LANG: Frankie Carbo is a mafioso from Philadelphia who owned the contract on several fighters. You always saw him at the fights.

  This was the time when boxing was king. Every Friday night you had eight or nine boxing bouts at the old Madison Square Garden on 50th and Eighth. They televised them on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports. Celebrities, show business, theater people, you name it, loved to be seen at the fights.

  BILL GALLO: The gangsters and celebrities usually sat in the first row behind the working press. They would glitzy up. Usually an older guy would be with a young girl, sometimes two girls all draped in fur stoles. But the lobby of the Garden belonged to the newspapermen. We’d meet there before a fight, have a frank and orange drink at Nedick’s, and bandy around stories. Once in a while, a fight trainer would walk by, and we would get some items from him.

  The newspapermen also hung out at Costello’s on 44th between Second and Third. Hemingway used to eat there. Many foreign correspondents came in. James Thurber drew on the walls. I did, too. There was a whole wall of art there.

  I had wanted to be a newspaperman since I was a little kid. I applied to all the New York City dailies and got two job interviews scheduled on the same day, one with the News, the other with the Mirror. When I got off the subway, the News was closer.

  All through the years, my romance has been with the newspaper business—the hanging out, the having fun, the meeting so many people. Even when you weren’t working, you were out there working for your newspaper. If I went to the theater and something happened, I would call it in to the News. I didn’t get paid extra; I got the satisfaction of being a good newspaperman. There were many of us like that.

  Being a reporter made you a well-known figure around town, a Humphrey Bogart type with the fedora and trench coat. Doors opened for you. We of the printed word were kings of the media.

  JACK LANG: Mama Leone’s was right around the corner from the Garden. The basketball crowd lived in there. If you were covering basketball, you could go in and sign Madison Square Garden’s name and eat all you wanted. They gave you good-sized portions of good food, and there was always a big hunk of cheese on the table.

  Crowds were always standing outside waiting to get in, but if you came up to the front and mentioned Madison Square Garden, you got in right away.

  LEONARD KOPPETT: When I joined the Trib, the Knicks became one of my assignments because they were the least important of the basketball hierarchy. They played most of their games in the 69th Street Armory, which held five thousand and didn’t sell out very often. The few games they played at Madison Square Garden were sold out when George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers came to town. The marquee would say “Mikan versus the Knicks.” But the crowd was passionate. Kids had grown up playing and betting on basketball in the settlement houses, in high school. Pro basketball was a glamorous version of what had always been their game.

  The real rivalries were the local college teams, who played in college gyms that seated three thousand at most. When NYU played CCNY, they would rent one of the big armories, 168th Street and Broadway or 25th Street and Lexington Avenue, for one night, and they would fill it up.

  JACK LANG: They packed in eighteen thousand every time they played a doubleheader in Madison Square Garden. It got all the college people, the gambling element.

  LEONARD KOPPETT: In 1951, the big college basketball scandal broke. That made the NBA, which had not been touched by the scandal, more important. Their rise began from that moment in time.

  JACK LANG: You had two or three football teams, a couple of hockey teams, three New York racetracks. Four hockey games on a Sunday was the rule at Madison Square Garden. And you had three great baseball teams. For an eleven-year period, except for 1948, a New York City baseball team was in the World Series. There was no city that had as much going on in sports at one time as New York City did back then.

  The great sports columnists like Jimmy Powers, Bobby Considine, Red Smith, Bill Corum, Frank Graham, Arthur Daley—they worked every day, did all sports. With me, from about 1949 on, I did nothing but baseball.

  LEONARD KOPPETT: The Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium were one subway station apart, but people wanted to see the glamorous Yankees. In the 1950s, the Yankees are the lords of baseball. They win more than anybody. Everybody hates the Yankees except the diehard Yankee fans. They happen to be in the Bronx, but it is not a local Bronx thing since they are the aristocracy.

  JACK LANG: Before the war, the Giants were the big favorites of the show people. The Wall Street crowd also flocked to the Giants. This continued after the war but not as much. The Giants started to fall on hard times as the neighborhood around the Polo Grounds started to deteriorate.

  Right after the war the games at Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium, and the Polo Grounds started at 3:15 in the afternoon. They wanted to give the Wall Street crowd fifteen minutes after the market closed to grab a subway and get to the ballpark.

  MONTE IRVIN: Hank Thompson and I were the first black players on the New York Giants. We reported the same day, the first week in July 1949. I remember thinking how the Polo Grounds was more like a polo field than a baseball field. But I was very grateful that I had cracked the color line on the team that was in Manhattan, the capital of the world.

  My first major league at bat was as a pinch hitter against Joe Hatten of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Leo Durocher had said, “Monte, get a bat. You’re gonna pinch-hit regardless of what the next batter does.” On deck, my knees started to tremble a little bit. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I was thirty-one years old, and I had been a star in the Negro Leagues for ten years. I ended up walking, but I was just glad to get on base.

  Leo would invite Tony Martin, Stewart Granger, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis, people like that, into the clubhouse. Some of them would work out with us. They didn’t ask for our autographs, and we didn’t ask for theirs.

  In the years after the war, there were certain restaurants where you’d feel prejudice. If they weren’t friendly, we wouldn’t go back. Emlen Tunnell, the big defensive running back for the New York Giants, was one of the pioneers in terms of breaking down segregation in midtown because he’d go all over with Tom Landry, who played for the Giants then, too. Later on when we came into the majors, Emlen would take us to the places he liked, and we’d be treated very nice because we were with him.

  As the year passed, I became more confident and started to go out a bit more. People would recognize me. I’d go to a restaurant or a jazz club and they’d ask me to stand up and take a bow. That rarely happened when I was on the Newark Eagles in the Negro Leagues. Maybe it did in some places up in Harlem, but now it would happen downtown. And then of course when Willie Mays came along in ’51, he made things easier for us all over—uptown, d
owntown, everywhere because he was so popular.

  JULIE ISAACSON: Every major league ballplayer as well as all the actors and actresses came to the Stage Deli. The sandwiches were named after celebrities, but Max and Hymie Asnas fed more poor people than anyone else. Max was on the floor. Somebody would walk in. “What do you want? Sit down,” he’d say, and feed you like you were a millionaire. He knew the hang-around guys, the people who didn’t have money.

  When Roger Maris was going for the home run record in ’61, he would eat only bologna and eggs for breakfast. Every morning we would have breakfast together at the Stage Deli. We had the same waitress, and I’d leave her the same five-dollar tip every time. After, I would drive Roger up to the stadium.

  The Stage Barbershop was right next to the Stage Deli. Ten o’clock Friday mornings, I would go to get a haircut. One day I got there about ten minutes early and sat down. A guy walks in and talks to my barber. Then he comes over to me and asks if I would give up my place so Joe DiMaggio can get a haircut.

  “On one condition,” I say, “provided I can get an autographed picture.”

  Although I saw him come into the Stage Deli and the Stage Barbershop many times, I never got to really know Joe DiMaggio. He was aloof. Rao’s is a restaurant in Harlem that is world known. It has fourteen tables. If you call for a reservation, they tell you to call back next year. DiMaggio ate there for maybe thirty years when the old man and lady owned it. He never got a check.

  Vincent and Anna Rao passed away; the place is now run by Ron Straci and Frank Pellegrino, their nephews. Joe comes in there with a couple of friends. Like his aunt and uncle, Frankie always makes room for Joe. This time a customer is there with his little boy. Frankie waits until Joe is having his coffee. Then he asks Joe to sign an autograph for the kid.

  “You know, Frankie, I get paid for signing autographs,” DiMaggio says.

  As DiMaggio and his friends are leaving, Frankie says, “Joe, you are not welcome here anymore.” DiMaggio never came back. This is a true story, the emis.

  Toots Shor in front of his restaurant in 1959. A big sports fan, Shor always reserved his best tables for the likes of Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, and Leo Durocher.

  JACK LANG: DiMaggio always got a premier table at Toots Shor’s, right in the front. He took Marilyn Monroe to dinner there several times. Toots Shor’s was one of the great sports hangouts. On Friday nights, the place would be empty until the fights at Madison Square Garden were over. Then everybody would come crosstown, and Toots would be mobbed until two in the morning. On any Monday after a Giants football game, the Madison Avenue types would be six deep around the circular bar. Monday-morning quarterbacking was in vogue. At the same time, Toots would be staging a Football Writers’ Luncheon in the basement of his restaurant for a couple of hundred writers and star players. Visiting ballplayers like Stan Musial or Ralph Kiner always came in. Toots made sure they got preferential treatment.

  Toots was a big New York Giants baseball fan and was very close with Horace Stoneham, owner of the Giants, and Leo Durocher. Both of them were in his restaurant all the time. The famous story about Horace is that he was out drinking all night. When he got home, it was raining. He phoned the Giant office. “Call the game off. It’s raining.” By one o’clock in the afternoon the sun was shining. I was at the game at Ebbets Field that day, and on the scoreboard it said, “Giant game canceled because of rain.”

  MONTE IRVIN: We didn’t like to go to Toots Shor’s because he was so rough. He was usually half loaded, and he could act terrible. We’d go in there quickly and not linger too long.

  JULIE ISAACSON: One day Roger Maris and I went to Toots Shor’s for lunch. Roger never dressed up; he always wore a sweater. Toots took a look at him and said, “You can’t come in here. You’re dressed no good.” I cursed him out, and we never went back there because he insulted Roger. Toots was good friends with Jimmy Hoffa—the money for the second restaurant came from Hoffa.

  JACK LANG: Toots could be surly if he didn’t like you. He turned a lot of people off. But those he liked and those who liked him were treated royally. His given name was Bernard; he was a great big heavyset guy who’d been a bouncer in Philadelphia and came up to New York during Prohibition to be a bouncer in a famous speakeasy.

  Toots originally opened a place on 50th Street after the war. When the building it was in was sold, he moved to 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, right next to the 21 Club where all the swells went, across the street from CBS, and right around the corner from NBC. TV, radio, and advertising people came in all the time. It was a celebrity place. I’d see Leonard Lyons there four, five times a week, writing things in his little notebook.

  You entered Toots Shor’s through a revolving door. There was hat check to the left and a huge oval-shaped bar to the right. That was what Toots wanted—a place where people could see each other. On any given night you could go in there and run into anyone and everyone. But not Walter Winchell. He was a regular at the Stork Club and friendly with Sherman Billingsley, who did not get along with Toots.

  People used to say that you don’t go to Toots Shor’s to eat, but he did have very good steaks. And his lunches were great, especially the roast beef hash made from the ground-up roast beef of the night before. By one o’clock, they were out of it.

  There was always a lot of table hopping. One night I was sitting at a table with Leonard Koppett of the Times when Howard Cosell came in. We invited him to join us. “I have to catch a train,” he said. “But I’ll stay for a minute.” He ordered a shrimp cocktail. The next thing you know he went over to somebody else’s table and had a bowl of soup. And before we left, we saw him having dessert with someone else. It was that type of restaurant.

  When Jackie Gleason was starting out as a comedian, he and Toots became friends. Toots let him eat in his restaurant for nothing. One night Jackie asked Toots for a hundred dollars. “What do you mean a hundred dollars? I’m letting you eat here for nothing. What do you want the money for?”

  “To tip the waiters.”

  Toots and Jackie were drinking late at night, as the story goes, and got into an argument over who could outrun the other. They decided to race around the block, and whoever came back first would win a hundred dollars. Jackie said, “You go that way toward Fifth Avenue. I’ll go this way toward Sixth Avenue.” Jackie walked down to the corner of Sixth Avenue, hailed a cab and was waiting in front of the restaurant when Toots finally made it around the block.

  “How did you get here before me?” Toots said, huffing and puffing. Then suddenly he realized that he never passed Jackie on the way around.

  Toots was friendly with members of the Kennedy family, particularly Steve Smith, who was married to one of the sisters. Around the time that Bobby Kennedy was running for senator from New York, I told him, “Toots, we would love to get Bobby Kennedy to speak at the New York Baseball Writers’ Dinner.”

  Toots said, “I can’t stand the little prick, Jack, but if you want him, I’ll try and get him.” So he picked up the phone and called Steve Smith’s office in Manhattan. The word was that Smith was on one of the Caribbean islands. Toots told the secretary to try to reach him.

  I went back home, and about seven o’clock that night, my phone rang. It was Toots. Steve had called him from the Caribbean and gotten in touch with Bobby Kennedy.

  “Jack,” he said, “you got the little son of a hitch.”

  Governor Carey was in Toots Shor’s a lot, but not Rockefeller, who was more the 21 type. Mayor Wagner was in there a lot, as was Frank Hogan, the Manhattan district attorney who wound up prosecuting all the college basketball players who fixed games in the fifties.

  One time, I was there with Toots. The place was basically empty. All of a sudden Joey Rivera, one of the waiters, came over and whispered something in Toots’s ear. “Okay,” Toots said, “set up the table.”

  About forty-five minutes later, Frank Sinatra came in with about twenty people. They were coming back from the cem
etery where they had buried Frank Sinatra’s father. They sat down, with Sinatra at the head of the table, had one round of drinks, got up, and left.

  That day, every waiter and every captain got tipped one hundred dollars. Joey Rivera used to say, “When Mr. Frank comes in, he pays the rent.”

  JULIE ISAACSON: Sinatra was a New York man. All his friends were here: mob guys, restaurant guys, nightclub people, entertainers. He was a real New York character.

  JACK LANG: In those days they had what they called house accounts. You got a bill at the end of the month. The Baseball Writers had an account at Toots Shor’s. At the end of the year, we got a bill for fifteen hundred dollars. Toots wanted the sportswriters to come in there because we mentioned the name of the restaurant in the papers all the time. I don’t recall ever spending a nickel of my own money there.

  After a while a lot of people didn’t pay their house tabs, and Toots finally lost the place. He opened another one that didn’t do so well. Finally he went out of business altogether and sold his name to Restaurant Associates, which opened up a series of bars around Manhattan with his name.

  I was one of the honorary pallbearers at his funeral at Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue. The place was packed with celebrities who came from all over. It was a sad thing to see him go.

  ELAINE KAUFMAN: Years ago I was at P. J. Clark’s late one night. Some people told me Toots Shor was there and that he wanted to meet me. I said, “Okay, fine, I’ll go over to him.” He was an older man by that time.

  They said, “No, no, he’ll come over to you.” They brought him over and he said, “I just want to see the broad that’s going to take my place.”

  I used to have this restaurant called Portofino’s on Thompson and Bleecker Streets in Greenwich Village together with Alfredo Viazzi, the man I was living with at the time. The business suited me just fine. I met the most interesting people. Then in the early sixties, Alfredo and I separated. At first I thought to take over the restaurant, but then I said to him, “No, you take it.”