Thrilling Cities

by Ian Fleming

  The three best-known resorts for dinner, dancing and cabaret are the Empire Room in the Palmer House Hotel, the Chez Paris, where you can hear such celebrities as Nat ‘King’ Cole, Sammy Davis Jr and that lugubrious girl Keely Smith, and the Boulevard Room at the Conrad Hilton, where there is usually an ice show.

  Among the smaller clubs are Orchid, where Frances Faye may be singing about her strange friends; and Mister Kelly’s or the Cloister, where you can savour the gibes of Mike and Elaine or Mort Sahl. Another choice spot is the Junior Room at the Black Orchid, which, like the others, is on the Near North Side.

  Something special, requiring a member’s key to get in, is the Gaslight Club, where nude portraits enliven the Victorian decor and you can enjoy, if such is your taste, the society of advertising executives on lavish expense accounts.

  Jazz buffs make for the Blue Note and the bands of such leaders as Basie and Duke Ellington. For Dixieland music, go to Jazz, Ltd. There are many others, Chicago being a well-known centre of the art.

  Late-late-late snacks are served until six in the morning at the Tradewinds, where stage, sporting and other notables meet in the small hours.

  Chicago’s major sightseeing targets are detailed in the guide-books, but do not overlook the Chicago Historical Society in Lincoln Park, which not only specializes in local lore but also dramatizes American history in an interesting series of period rooms. Above all, don’t miss the Chicago Art Institute. It has the finest French Impressionists outside Russia.

  A leisurely drive along the twenty-five miles of magnificent lake front is an absolute must. Those who go night-clubbing should stay up long enough to see the sun rise over Lake Michigan.

  7

  NEW YORK

  I ENJOYED MYSELF least of all in New York. It was my last lap and perhaps I was getting tired, but each time I come back (and I have revisited the city every year since the war) I feel that it has lost more of its heart. Steel and concrete, aluminium and copper sheathing for the new buildings, have smothered the brownstone streets that had so much warmth in the old days. The whole of the beautiful Washington Square area has disappeared, and up town the new resettlement areas – vast blocks of tiny apartments for the negroes and the Puerto Ricans – have now overwhelmed the old happy sprawl of Harlem.

  There are still thrilling moments – when your taxi goes over the hump on Park Avenue at 69th Street and the lights turn to red and you pause and watch them all go green the whole way down to 46th, your heart turns over for New York. But this is an architectural, a physical, thrill. Go into the first drugstore, ask your way from a passer-by, and the indifference and harshness of the New Yorker cuts the old affection for the city out of your body as sharply as a surgeon’s knife. It is partly the hysterical pursuit of money, the fast buck, that chills, but it is also the disdain of the New Yorker for the guy who doesn’t know his way about, who isn’t on the inside.

  In New York you don’t get politeness unless you pay for it. Here, the tipping system has gone mad. You are ruled by the head waiter, the bell captain, the reservation clerk, the credit manager and the black-market theatre-ticket operator. They are the Establishment, and you must be ‘in’ with these people or you will sink without trace. And, of course, in New York the expense-account aristocracy have increasingly ruined one’s old haunts, deflating the quality of the food and inflating the prices.

  (At Christmas-time and New Year, for instance, fifty-dollar bills are slipped into head waiters’ hands all over America so that they will ‘look after you’ in the following year.) The latest expense-account joke is that two businessmen are having luncheon together. When the check comes, one man says, ‘Give me that, I’m on an expense account, it’s deductible.’ The other man quickly snatches the check from him, ‘No you don’t. I’m on cost-plus. I can make a profit on it.’

  My attitude was perhaps soured by the fact that there were only three days to go before Thanksgiving, when all America eats turkey with cranberry sauce, and my name was mud throughout the country because Mr Arthur S. Flemming, U.S. Secretary of Health, had announced the week before an almost nationwide ban on the sale of cranberries. This fantastically unpopular pronouncement by the Food and Drug Administration had been due to the fact that two shipments of cranberries from the Pacific North-West crop were found to contain a residue of a chemical weed-killer, aminotriozole, which can cause cancer in rats. Hundreds and thousands of pounds of cranberries and cranberry products were seized, and no cranberries could be sold unless they had been cleared by laboratory tests. So this certainly wasn’t a good time for any Fleming to be around in the United States.

  In addition, New York, and indeed the whole of America, was traversing yet another of those troughs of moral depression and self-chastisement they have suffered so frequently since the war, starting with the McCarthy scandals, then the revelations about Murder Inc., the Little Rock affair, the ghastly wave of juvenile crime, Mr Sherman Adams of the White House and the Affair of the Vicuna Coat, the Teamster Union hearings with their appalling revelation of rackets all through the labour world, the smashing success of Russia’s sputniks, and now, finally and worst of all because it struck at practically every home in America, the television scandals and the confessions of Charles van Doren, a national hero. These confessions and the wholesale revelations of dishonesty in other branches and amongst other local heroes in the television business hit America in her conscience as hard as when the Chicago White Sox were accused of taking bribes to lose the 1919 baseball World Series. Then, it is said, a small boy went up to his hero, an outfielder, ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson, and pleaded, ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe.’ Now the whole nation was making the same plea to its current idol; but it was so, a thousand times so, and America was beating its collective breast so dismally that one felt it only needed a scandal at the heart of the White House or in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church for the whole nation to commit hara-kiri. No nation likes to be held up before the world as a pack of fools and crooks, and everyone I met seemed to have a load of guilt and foreboding on his shoulders already sore from self-flagellation.

  ‘There’s worse to come yet,’ they were moaning on Madison Avenue, the home of the television and advertising moguls. ‘They’re investigating the ratings systems now. After that they’re going to get after the local station heads. If you give a disc jockey a hundred bucks a week payola to plug just one record, how much do you think the station head pulls in for closing his eyes to it? And think of all the other programmes that are subject to plugging. I can tell you, Iarn, if you want to get any programme, a detective series say or a variety show, on to these local stations all over America, you’ve got to square the station head first or he’ll take your rival’s programme and get squared by him. Payola accounts for upward of twenty-five per cent of the network’s overheads.’ The same psychology showed itself in occasional bitter, self-defensive cracks at England. ‘Glad to hear your country’s getting back on its feet, Iarn. But I hate to say this, and don’t misunderstand me. That paying-off of your debt to the International Monetary Fund, you know, that last £360 million. Well now, don’t misunderstand me, but running this country costs around $81 billion every year and that £360 million you turned in would be just about enough to run the United States for one day.’

  But what was riling New York particularly when I went through was a lengthy indictment, ‘The Shame of New York’ for which America’s reputable liberal weekly the Nation had cleared one whole issue. ‘The Shame of New York’ was an investigation by two journalists of repute, Fred Cook and Gene Gleason, into the rackets behind New York municipal government. Written with vitriol and apparent authenticity, the authors had taken New York apart, from the Mayor down to the cop on the beat, starting with the interesting statistics that there are an estimated nine million rats in New York compared with the eight million population (two citizens were actually gnawed to death by rats in 1959), and that the city’s police force of twenty-four thousand men is an army large
r than the military forces of many Latin American countries. There is not room here to give more than a specimen quote of the eighty-page indictment, but this, from the introduction, is typical:

  CITY WITHOUT A SOUL

  The illnesses of New York are many and they run deep. The ruthlessness of large-scale redevelopment, cloaked under the laudable aim of slum clearance, is only one of many cankers. Wherever you turn, there is crime. Some sections of the city are veritable jungles, the streets unsafe at night, the more remote sections of beautiful parks unsafe even in the day-time. Periodically, youthful gangs explode in violence that makes sickening, sensational headlines. There are gang fights, muggings, rapes in the schools, murders. It is commonplace for a horrified Press to blame these excesses upon the especial ‘depravity’ of the new, rising and degenerate generation. But it is perhaps even more reasonable to view them as the expressions of a sick society – as the kind of outbursts that are inevitable in a city that, in many respects, has lost its very soul.

  And this, a few lines later on, from a Tammany Hall veteran who talked to the authors:

  Every town has its Tammany Hall. I’m no lily, but this is the limit. I’ve never seen it so bad in a lifetime of politics. You ask me what’s wrong with Tammany Hall? The Mafia. The underworld and the leaders they control – and a Press agentry that makes a fool of Lincoln’s statement that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

  If it is not Frank Costello today, it is whoever can make it pay for the privilege of making book, numbers, pimping, selling junk [dope] or anything else that is illegal. Today, if a political boss arrived at his office and found that in his absence the Mayor, the Governor and Genovese [Vito Genovese, often called the kingmaker of gangdom], had phoned, he would call Genovese back first.

  Like anywhere, the little guy in the street wants a ticket fixed. Or maybe he wants to get on or off a jury. But he’s paying one helluva price for it in the long run. Can’t they see the fantastic and open connections of politics with the mob? It doesn’t make any difference what the party is. I can name you one election in this town some years ago where all the top candidates were controlled by the mob. One was owned by Thomas (Three-Finger Brown) Luchese; one by Costello; one by Genovese. The mob couldn’t lose. They had it sewed up.

  Well, there it is – New York as seen by two New Yorkers. Perhaps my instinct that the town was rapidly losing its heart hadn’t been so wrong.

  The truth of the matter is that the East sharpens one’s mind about the West and, by comparison with the Orient, I had learnt and sensed in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York that America is temporarily in poor health and she is very conscious of the fact. Her scientific know-how has been shown up by the Russians, her industrial know-how by the six months’ steel strike and by the Teamsters and other union investigations, and now her private morals have suffered under the microscope of the television investigations. What is the matter? I suppose, and many intelligent American writers support my suspicion, that she has four basic troubles – first, the collapse of the family unit which today hardly exists in American towns; secondly, Momism and the vast economic power (via alimony, inheritance and other factors) held by women in America; thirdly, self-hypnotism about the ‘American way of life’, a concept which needs drastic reexamination by those who invented the slogan; and, fourthly, escapism and flight from reality, whether this takes the shape of the television myth and the enchanted world of the ad. man which seek to show people as better than they know perfectly well they are, or of such escapist drugs as the tranquillizer pill, the fat blue sleeping-pill, and the psycho-analyst’s couch.

  On this latter point, the abdication of free will to the chemical companies, Mr Dan Jacobson had an interesting comment on drugs in a recent issue of the Spectator. He wrote:

  Surely, it is clear that what the totalitarian state tries to do to its citizens is something very similar to what the drug-taker is doing to himself. He is denying his self the right to its own misery, its own happiness, its own unpredictability; he invades himself with a weapon from outside, and destroys what is most spontaneously alive and sentient within him.

  Perhaps the inviolability of the individual is a nineteenth-century superstition, and we are all going to end up, as Aldous Huxley has prophesied, drug-addicts of a kind; perhaps the totalitarian State of the future will realize how much more easily it can bring about its aims through the judicious use of tranquillizers and stimulants, rather than through mass-rallies and death-camps.

  Whatever is going on in American society, those who love America and have many American friends can only mourn the way the world’s stripling ‘most likely to succeed in the class of 1900’ and heir to world supremacy is growing up. Fortunately the country has a strongly beating heart and, once you have that, the marginal frailties, if taken in time, can be quickly subordinated. If taken in time! But the watching grandparents are worried and the body-snatchers sharpen their knives.

  These are depressing reflections, but they are widely shared in America where, as I have said, they create an atmosphere of deep malaise from which I was glad to escape; and, anyway, I was longing to be off on the last lap. Rather sadly I repaired to the oyster bar in Grand Central Station and consumed with relish perhaps the only dish that has maintained its integrity in the New York of my experience – creamed oyster stew with crackers, and Miller’s High Life beer – and then I was off to Idlewild. It was time for home.

  INCIDENTAL INTELLIGENCE

  Hotels

  (Out-of-date and uninspired, I fear – as would be a year-old guide to any capital city.)

  We all know about the Waldorf-Astoria, roosting-place of kings, queens, presidents and press lords; and the Pierre, where Barbara Hutton is to be found when in New York; and the now overrated St Regis, where Edith Sitwell and her brothers stay; and the Plaza, whose wedding-cake style (circa 1907) did not deter the late Frank Lloyd Wright from living there.

  The Stanhope, opposite the Metropolitan Museum, is a less obvious choice, although it is also a five-star hotel, where a single room costs something in the area of $16 a night. Mrs Jesse Sharp, who owns it, aims to give the kind of service you expect in London but seldom get in New York, and guests who indicate the time of their arrival are even met at the pier or airport. A quiet, immensely dignified place where you get individual, tender, loving care.

  The Carlyle, also up-town on the East Side, and also five-star, is another hotel of character; it has preserved its decorum in spite of the unaccustomed publicity which hits it during the occasional visits of the President and his entourage.

  In the same general area is the Volney; as this hotel has been for years the home of Dorothy Parker, it must be beyond criticism. Five-star, of course.

  Mention of Dorothy Parker recalls the days of the celebrated Round Table and Alexander Woollcott at the Algonquin. This is a good place to stay if you wish to be within strolling distance of Broadway theatres. Sir Laurence Olivier lives at the Algonquin when he is in New York, and so does Terence Rattigan.

  This is not quite so outrageously expensive as some, and neither is the Warwick, which is also convenient for the theatre. Remember, in telling taxi-drivers to go to the Warwick Hotel, that although the second W is silent in English, it is pronounced in American, otherwise utter confusion will result – say ‘Worwick’.

  A modest-looking hotel down town on East 39th Street is one of the most expensive: this is the Tuscany, which is considered more chic than the huge places that resemble Grand Central Station at the rush-hour, and pay you about as much attention. Rates here are from about $17 to $22 a night for a single room, but that includes a colour TV set and a refrigerator.

  The New Weston is less expensive and more conveniently situated for the Fifth Avenue shops, but it is infested with English people.

  Really cheap hotels are generally unappetizing, but a pleasant one, with single rooms (with bath or shower) ranging from $5 to $10 a night, is the George Washington, on the fringe of Greenwic
h Village near Gramercy Park. Right in the Village, the Van Rensselaer is another good choice among less expensive places.

  Restaurants

  There are so many restaurants in New York that probably the best way to choose is to walk slowly until you see one you like.

  One of the most expensive, where the French food is superb, is the Chambord, unpretentiously situated on Third Avenue. The bill for dinner for two, with aperitifs and wine, will probably run from about $30 to $60. Serious eaters also frequent L’Armorique on Second Avenue. For sumptuous decor, magnificently embossed menus, big-name clients and grandly expensive dishes with resounding classical names, try the Forum of the Twelve Caesars.

  This is very, very expensive, and so is the Four Seasons, launched by the same company, with opulent settings (changed four times yearly) to match the impressive bronze Seagram Building where it is situated. Here, too, is the Brasserie, more moderately priced, and open for twenty-four hours daily. Another experience not to be missed is luncheon or late dinner at the ‘21’ Club. Fashionable and also madly expensive places where one goes to see and be seen are the Colony (not to be confused with the Colony Club) and Le Pavilion, where the celebrated Henri Soule provides exquisite food.

  On the moderate side, a good place for lunch is Le Chanteclair, where you will find Stirling Moss and other racing motorists when they are in New York. For tremendous portions of Italian food, try Leone’s: it is not far from Madison Square Garden, and boxers and other sporting characters frequent it. Two very pleasant French places are Le Moal on Third Avenue (Normandy and Provencal cuisine) and La Toque Blanche, near United Nations. A really cheap French place is the Champlain, on the West Side not far from Rockefeller Center; it is packed full and terribly noisy, however.

  If you are looking for a not too expensive place for after-theatre supper, think of Sardi’s: although familiar Broadway faces are on exhibit and most of the menu is not cheap, there are reasonably priced choices among the snacks.