Chapter VIII: Part TWO: The People (2)

Iris received the package. Like a girl, she opened it in a flurry of anticipation. She took out the opal bracelet. It was beautiful and she put it on, though she knew it was hard luck.

In the same mail was a letter from her studio--a notice that her option wasn't taken up and in two weeks she would no longer shine at Paramount.

The two, coming at once, were more than a coincidence to Iris. She knew that the opals had jinxed her contract. In a rage, she threw the bracelet on the floor, broke a couple of stones, had her maid send it back.

Two days later, still furious, she married a man who had been proposing to her for a year. He was worth $30,000,000, but he had one drawback--he was deaf and dumb.

The honeymoon covered a cruise from California to New York, via the Panama Canal. When Iris got to New York, she left him, picked a good state and sued for divorce. She got her decree and, washed up with pictures, returned to New York clubs, this time doing a specialty, advertised as Iris Adrian of the films.

She worked a couple of weeks at Leon & Eddie's, featured, and got over so well that she was given another chance in Hollywood, with another studio. And this time she clicked.

Through the years, Herman Amron continued to love her. Once in a while she would give him a break and let him take her out. Though he had disposed of the opal bracelet years before, the curse apparently hung on. Every time she went out with Herman something unfortunate happened to her.

Once she got sick; again, she got word of a lost Hollywood contract.

The last time Iris was in the newspapers was when she married Georgie Jay, a personable character who owns an uptown night club, the 78th Street Taproom. The marriage, of course, wasn't meant to take, because Iris had to stay in Hollywood and he had to stay in New York.

Once, when she was East, she and her husband sat in Leon & Eddie's. Herman, the hoodoo, was at the next table. He came over to say hello to Iris and Jay. That night Iris and her husband had the squabble which resulted, a week later, in her divorce.

b.--_Edith Finds Love_

Newcomers to night life--and most people around town today--will not recognize her name, Edith Roark.

But we remember Edith well--also the fabulously funny story she told on herself, that made her for the time the best-known beauty on the White Way.

Edith came from Dallas ... went to Hollywood ... became a showgirl ... worked for Sam Goldwyn.

When N.T.G. opened the famous old Paradise Restaurant on Broadway, in 1932, he imported 12 Goldwyn girls--at $150 a week--for his première. Edith was one.

On the Coast, the luminous Miss Roark had been the constant companion of George Raft.

In New York, she met singer Harry Richman--my, how that guy gets into our stories!--and became his constant companion.

A few months later, Richman and Raft happened to meet in Chicago.

Raft said to Richman--"Harry, what's this I hear about you trying to steal my girl?"

Richman said to Raft--"Georgie, you're nuts. She's my girl and you keep away from her."

Raft replied--"I'll prove it."

He phoned Edith in New York, said--"Honey, Richman says you love him."

Miss Roark, not knowing Richman was listening in on the extension, cooed sweetly--"Why, Georgie, you know you're my only love. I'm just being polite to Richman. He's important and can do me good."

"Just wait till I call her," Richman said.

He got Edith on the phone, asked--"What's this I hear about Raft?"

Again cooing sweetly, unconscious of Raft's ear on the other receiver, Edith said--"Why, Harry, you know you're my only love. I'm just being polite to Raft. He was so nice to me on the Coast."

The pay-off is that when the two stars accused her of double dealing, Edith flew into a simulated rage, shouted she knew they were testing her all the time and she said it all on purpose.

She made them both apologize to her--in the presence of her real sweetheart!

c.--_Unto the Second Generation_

It's likely you have heard of Hilda Ferguson, even possible you vaguely remember her. But it is not likely you have heard of Yolande Ugarte, who did do a bit in a Broadway show which ran about a week.

This is the story to date of Yolande Ugarte, and so it must also be to a degree the story of Hilda Ferguson, because Yolande, now in her 20's, seemed compelled by a strange destiny to follow in the footsteps of her mother, Hilda Ferguson.

During the first 17 years of her life, Yolande led a sheltered existence with relatives in Baltimore. She went to school, had puppy-love crushes. And, like many girls of her age, she dreamed of the stage.

She had a vague notion that her mother, whom she hadn't seen for years, had something to do with Broadway. Beyond that she knew little about her. The mother's name was seldom mentioned where she lived.

One summer Yolande entered a beauty contest. She was chosen to represent Baltimore in the annual Atlantic City competitions. Her guardians hated to see her go, but her youthful, understandable enthusiasm overcame all objections.

Many Broadway producers visited the resort town the week "Miss America" was chosen. Among those seeking new faces for shows were Earl Carroll and Nils T. Granlund.

Yolande Ugarte is an attractive girl: tall, lissome, with nut-brown hair. The producers were much taken with her possibilities. They thought there was something vaguely reminiscent of Hilda Ferguson about Yolande. Granlund, who had been Hilda's press agent 15 years before, told her so.

"Hilda Ferguson? Why, I believe my mother used that name," Yolande replied.

He hired Yolande as a dancer in his new cabaret, the Midnight Sun. He changed her name to "Hilda Ferguson." She was startlingly like her mother and Broadway was thrilled when Granlund introduced her as "Hilda Ferguson."

The original Hilda Ferguson was a dainty, devastating beauty, born in Baltimore as Hilda Gibbons. At 15, she eloped with and married a young Honduran medical student, Ramond Ugarte. Yolande was born the next year.

Hilda and her husband separated soon afterward. Hilda came to New York and baby Yolande was left with relatives, with whom she lived thenceforth.

They still tell stories about the wide-eyed Hilda Ferguson, strange in New York, only 17, still naïve, though a grass widow and a mother.

It took her little time to make the grade. She became a "Follies" girl. Ziegfeld featured her as one of his most beautiful. Then started the hectic career that to Broadwayites made the name "Hilda Ferguson" symbolize an era. Hilda came to Broadway in 1921, shortly after the beginning of Prohibition. Churchill's, Rectors, Reisenweber's, Bustanoby's, the Café de Paris, were fresh, green memories.

The speakeasies were getting going. The first of the bootleggers, later to inspire a bloody generation of crime, were feeling their way in wholesale law violation.

In this changing world, the girl decided to cast her lot.

Her tinseled career, running a parallel course with Prohibition, came to an end on a hospital cot two months and two days before Repeal.

During her short lifetime, Hilda went the pace with men and liquor. Young millionaires and old ones, powerful figures of the underworld and of politics were on the roster of her admirers. Her life reads like a history of America's crazy years.

She was a flat-mate of Dot King when the mysterious slaying of that youngster, kept by a Philadelphia financier, rocked Manhattan.

Hilda, questioned by police, denied she knew a thing about it.

She was engaged to Aaron Benesch, multi-millionaire Baltimore furniture king, only to lose him to Helen Henderson, another glamorous show girl.

She was the sweetheart of Enoch (Nucky) Johnson, Atlantic City overlord, and was featured by him in an elaborate show in Atlantic City's Silver Slipper, a night club he bought for the sole purpose of providing a stage for his current reigning favorite.

He gave her a $12,000 mink coat and a Rolls-Royce. They lived in half the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton.

She lost him to Kitty Ray, who claimed she was the ex-wife of Macoco, millionaire playboy of the Pampas, though he denied they ever wed.

Arthur Hammerstein was one of her most ardent admirers. Then it was rumored Hilda would marry Howard Lee, rich society scion.

She was questioned by police when "Tough Willie" McCabe, ex-bodyguard of Arnold Rothstein, was cut up in the "61 Club" stabbings. To General Sessions Judge Freschi, she exclaimed: "My dear, I was in the ladies' room."

The judge replied: "It's very nice to be called 'my dear.' I don't know whether I like it or not."

He held her in $5,000 bail. She spent the night in Harlem Prison until she was bailed out the next day by "Feets" Edson, another colorful Broadway mobster.

"I put up the bail," Edson said, "because she used to work for me." Hilda had appeared in the Club Abbey, another resort of pungent Broadway memory, where Larry Fay was later killed.

She had refused to talk after Dot King was slain. She kept mum when police grilled her about Willie McCabe. Broadway said: "Hilda knows how to keep her mouth shut."

So she forfeited the $5,000 bail for failing to appear.

When third-degreed about her dressing-room mate in _The Music Box Revue_--who was thought to have landed her job because her father was warden of Leavenworth Prison, where Nicky Arnstein, husband of Fannie Brice, star of the show, was on the rock pile--Hilda again "knew nothing."

She started her own little brownstone-front upstairs speakeasy. The opening was all New York in one place. It was soon the scene of raids and battles.

When she went to Europe to duck a judgment she resented, for $270 for ten pairs of specially built shoes, she traveled incognito, with her Rolls-Royce, two maids and 27 trunks.

Though she never earned more than $150 a week, Hilda once walked into Texas Guinan's, and bought a bracelet off Tex's arm for $25,000 in big bills, just to "burn up" Kitty Ray, who was sitting a few tables away with "Nucky" Johnson.

She was 29 when she died, in New York Hospital, of peritonitis.

Many of her friends are still on Broadway. At least one gentleman with whom she was known to be close cracked a bottle of champagne for her daughter.

A girl who also succeeded Hilda in the affections of "Nucky" Johnson worked at the same club with her daughter until she left to get married. With a subtle touch of irony, fate had decreed that this girl, Virginia Biddle, should dance next to Yolande Ugarte, Hilda Ferguson's daughter!

Hilda, Junior, after sweeping Broadway's most ardent off their feet, eloped with Frank Parker, radio tenor. The marriage, a stormy one, lasted all of two years, after which the pair took their troubles to court.

The court decision which severed their ties only brought more squabbles in its wake. For, when Hilda, Junior, became the constant companion of Duncan McMartin, Canadian multi-millionaire, and McMartin's wife inferred she was the cause of their separation, Parker hailed Hilda back into court.

He told the judge she was holding him up to so much ridicule he thought alimony payments should be stopped. The judge said Frank was no candidate for a monastery either, and ordered the payments to go on, with an urgent reminder to get the arrears up to date.

As these lines were written McMartin settled with his wife, obtained a divorce and married Hilda.

d.--_The Good Deed_

When Ruth Hilliard was eight years old, she was scalded by boiling water. One side of her face was terribly disfigured. When she grew up, she would have been beautiful enough, except for that hideous scar.

She worked as a cigarette girl in the old Hollywood Restaurant, and envied the chorines who had all the nice things in life.

Stars thronged the Hollywood, and so did the millionaires. But none noticed Ruth Hilliard. Or, if they did, it was to look at the scar and momentarily think, "what a shame!"

A constant visitor at the Hollywood was Jimmy Ritz, the comedian. Ruth often wished he'd say hello to her. Sometimes, when she had the money, she'd go to Loew's State to see him act, or to Earl Carroll's _Vanities_, in which he later starred.

One night, William Leeds, Jr., fabulously rich son of the Tin Plate King, bought a cigar from Ruth. He saw the scar, asked about it, took down her name and address. The next day Ruth's mother got a phone call from Leeds. He said he had made arrangements with a plastic surgeon to operate on her; had paid all the bills in advance. It seemed unbelievable, but Ruth and her mother visited the medico, the operation was decided on and Ruth went into a hospital.

Meanwhile, Leeds sailed away on a year's yachting cruise.

On his return, he and his fiancée, Olive Hamilton, later Mrs. Leeds, went to the _Vanities_.

A girl in the front line seemed familiar. After the show, the girl ran over to Leeds, threw her arms around him, showered him with blessings. She was Ruth Hilliard. The operation had been a complete success. But Leeds had forgotten all about his impulsive gracious gesture.

Ruth Hilliard had sighed and prayed to be like other girls, so that maybe Jimmy Ritz would notice her and take her out. He and his brothers were stars of the show in which she hoofed--and, sure enough, he did notice her. He took her out. A romance developed.

They were engaged a long time, then married.

Everyone figured Ruth now would be happy forever after. From an ugly duckling she had become a beautiful show girl. She got the man she always wanted. She went to Hollywood when the Ritzes were at the height of their fame and lived lavishly. She got a movie contract, too.

Though she later divorced Ritz, she remarried and is now living in Hollywood, happy and prosperous.

It's another of those things that could only happen on Broadway.

And it all started because Bill Leeds, Jr., was in a generous mood that night, and played Aladdin's genie to a sad, frustrated girl.

e.--_Gun Moll_

Those were some of the little pigs who went to market and who had roast beef. (And "pigs" is the backstage slang for chorines.) Here's a little round-up on one who had none, and cried "wee-wee-wee" all the way home.

Marion Paterka was born in Boston, in 1908, child of Czech immigrants. Her mother married again, a man named Strasmick, and, as Marion Strasmick, a black-eyed, beautiful redhead, 16, descended on Broadway. You never saw a prettier girl. Ziegfeld never did, as he said when he glorified her on sight for his _Follies_.

In that show there was an ensemble number in which the kids did take-offs on the stars of the day. Lenore Ulric was in Belasco's _Kiki_. Marion impersonated her. She was Kiki the rest of her life. Kiki Roberts she chose to make it. And that name was to shout from Page 1 headlines often--for Kiki became the sweetheart of Jack "Legs" Diamond, gangster, mass killer, riddled so often with bullets that he was dubbed "the clay pigeon of the underworld."

Diamond first saw her in "practice clothes," sweater and bloomers, trying out on a chorus call for _Strike Me Pink_, a revue angeled by gangster dough and starring Jimmy Durante and Lupe Velez. A dozen or more of "the boys" kittied the bank roll. That gave them the privilege of sitting in. Also of putting their young molls in the line.

As one went through her paces, a partner in the enterprise asked:

"Whose bim is dat one?"

"Nobody's," was the answer.

"Den what's she doin' in our show?"

Diamond took another look and almost fell out of his chair.

"She's mine!" he barked.

And, though she didn't know it yet, she was--so quickly and so suddenly that she didn't even open in the show. Diamond wouldn't let her out of bed long enough even to rehearse.

Not a bad-looking beast, Legs; he got his nickname when he was a boy thief, because he could outrun the bulls. Tall, slender, with regular features, dark and personable, Legs was a night club hound, even owned and ran some himself. He was boss of the Hotsy Totsy. There, one night, cockeyed, he shot two inoffensive customers. There were present, besides the corpses and the well-dressed man with the automatic, seven other men, including Diamond's bartender.

When the cops arrived, Legs had legged it. Within six weeks, those seven--including the bartender--were shot down and killed, one by one. The night of the day the last one cashed in, Legs walked into a police station and asked, charmingly, "You boys looking for me?"

There were no witnesses.

That was the assassin Kiki idolized.

When he was sprayed with lead in the Monticello Hotel, a hide-out for his sort, she was with him. Almost every time, and that time, she was hauled in and put on the carpet. Yes, she was around--but she was asleep--she didn't know from nothing.

Diamond had a younger brother, Eddie, a lunger, his lieutenant. The kid went to Denver for his health. Some New York murderers who hadn't dared molest him while Legs was around followed him and sniped at him. The youngster scrammed back. Legs loved him and when he heard what had happened he boiled, got oiled and went out with two pants-pocket miniature .38's to pay off.

In the next three days, four bodies were found, widely scattered. A meeting was called, a death sentence was passed on Legs Diamond, who had cheated so many such with only some scars as mementos.

Diamond was tipped off. He took it on the lam. He found a secluded cottage up in Sullivan County, a region of apple orchards. But he was a gangster in his heart.

Kiki, again, was with him. She begged him to stay under cover. He had enough money for existence. But Legs had a trade and he went to work.

Applejack had a ready and lucrative market. Diamond started to "organize" the farmers, to buy up their crops. Some yielded, for he offered cash. Others had commitments and refused. They found a muzzle in their bellies and a threat--sell him their apples or else.

One, Grover Parks, a young farmer, was game. When Diamond came back he had a pitchfork. But Legs had a cannon. He backed Parks into his barn, strung him up by the wrists and burned the soles of his feet. Parks didn't die. He lived to get the local law to hunt down the stranger in the county. Legs was indicted. Kiki was taken in, too, released on $2,500 bail, cleared. She went back to New York and into another show.

In December, 1931, Diamond was tried, in Troy. He had a brilliant lawyer, Daniel Pryor. After a bitter contest, he was acquitted.

Diamond, all this time, had a wife, Alice. She knew a lot about Kiki--anyone who could read did. But she stuck--when he'd let her.

Kiki was then sharing an apartment with Agnes O'Laughlin, another Ziegfelder (she later made some sensational inconclusive accusations against Rudy Vallee, and, disgusted with the whole life, returned to her native Cleveland and married a boy she'd gone to school with). Kiki was ordered to stay far from Troy. Because of the notoriety with Kiki, Pryor had ordered that Alice Diamond, Legs' wife, sit beside him through the trial.

But there were telephones.

The jury freed Legs about midday. He, Alice, Eddie and Pryor drove to Albany, a few miles off, and staged a celebration dinner. Diamond had engaged a shabby room where he was to spend the night with Alice.

At about 9 o'clock, half overboard, Legs said he was going to the washroom. Instead, he slipped outside, hailed a taxi and was driven to another bed-house, where he had parked Kiki.

At 3 A.M., a very drunken man staggered out and gave the address of the place where Legs had hired sleeping quarters for "J.H. Desmond and Wife," to a hackman. He was unconscious on arrival. The driver pulled him together enough to get him upstairs. Diamond fell into bed with all his clothes on, including his derby hat.

A long, gray limousine had followed him. Five minutes later, it was roaring toward New York. In the bed lay the clay pigeon--this time shot for keeps. Alice and the party were still at the restaurant, waiting for him.

Kiki was questioned. Maybe she had an idea of who her man's enemies had been. Maybe not. She wasn't held.

She went back to Boston. Said she was licked--through. She posed for pictures with her mother, ironing, cooking. But she wasn't through. They never are while they can help it.

She came back, danced in cafés, did fan numbers, worked in Jersey, Pennsylvania, sneaked to New York and was hired at an uptown smalltime spot, the Little Casino. The flat-feet tore down the billing and wouldn't let her work. They said she was a peeler. But it is a policy of New York police not to permit exploitation of names connected with crime stories.

Alice also went into show business, got herself an act in which she preached against liquor, violence and violation of the marriage oath. The dicks gave her the bum's rush, too. Soon thereafter she was put on the spot and murdered. The wise crowd said, "She knew too much."

Kiki drifted. She was reported married to an athletic director, but that fizzled. She did marry a beer salesman, in an elopement, and she soon got a divorce. She flew to Memphis and became the wife of a Newark airport attaché.

She was reported running a lunchroom in Bridgeport. Broadway never knew her again.

Perhaps, somewhere, now 40 but undoubtedly still chic and attractive, a redheaded woman lives the simple, unrippled existence of a matured matron. Perhaps, though, in the dark, alone, she recalls the flash of guns, the thud of bullets, the mad love of a murderous madman, third degrees by police and prosecutors, days and nights of fleeing and being hunted with her lover--and the last glimpse of his riddled remains, in a basket in an undertaker's morgue in Albany, where she slunk in after all others--except one of your authors, covering the story--had gone.

This little pig had no roast beef. But she certainly didn't stay home!

22. WHITE WAY WOLVES

Call a man a dog and he'll fight. Call a woman a cat and she'll scratch your eyes.

But speak of a guy as a wolf, a most loathsome, cowardly animal, and he'll be pleased as all get out.

Of course, no man openly admits he's a wolf. He smirks and smiles and blushes and tries to giggle it off. But he sure is proud.

The dictionary defines "wolf" as a fierce, rapacious, destructive beast--or person. None of that fits the New York _canis lupus_.

He is not fierce; he traps his prey with gentle wiles. He is not rapacious, being satisfied with one at a time. (But every day is a different time.) And he is not so destructive.

The subject of wolves has been written about ad nauseam, and to most people it's an old and tedious joke. Yet, nowhere in the world save possibly Hollywood, are male wolves so much a part of the scene as in afterdark New York.

Here, wolfing has developed into an art, and though grandma's girl, after she's been around any time at all, spots the species immediately, tradition demands that she permit him to pursue and subdue her, wolf-fashion, and never let on she's wise to his act. Wolves are very sensitive.

Though there are more femmes in Gotham than in any other city on earth, it takes much ingenuity to stalk the Little Red Riding Hood here. There are no forest paths. It's the best-lighted place on earth--when John L. Lewis keeps his hands off. It is against the law to flirt on the streets of New York. He who would try it in public places, such as theatres or the subway, will get a punch in the nose if he doesn't land in the hoose-gow.

There are so many wolves in Manhattan that, even if the entire female population of Scranton, with Reading and Mauch Chunk thrown in, were transplanted here, they wouldn't cross the path of 1 per cent of our predatory males.

But here it takes specific knowledge and specialized scheming to perfect a pick-up. We have few social clubs and fewer church festivals, where you can meet the squabs in small towns. There are no corner drugstores with juke boxes to drop in on after school. People don't ask motorists for a lift here, and motorists don't give 'em.

None but professionals work cocktail lounges and hotel lobbies. Sailors provide too much competition on Riverside Drive. There are no cabaret hostesses or so-called "B Girls." It's illegal for the headwaiter to introduce you to a cutie in the show, or for you to sit out with her even if you know her or can get her to invite you.

So, where do wolves whistle? Shhh! We spent many sleepless nights gathering the info. Paste it in your hat. It tells where our choicest chickens perch.

CHORINES: If you see a plain-looking gal, sans make-up, in slacks or cheap dress, breakfasting at the fountain of a drugstore near Broadway at 5 P.M., she's a show girl. Favorite spot is Hanson's, 51st and Seventh Avenue.

Those who live on the East Side play the Belmont-Plaza drugstore. They're back again between shows for dinner at the fountain, once more, after the show, when they sip coffee with one eye peeled for a musician, press agent or other Main Stem character. When the kids are really left flat, they frequently go bowling. Many patronize the Roxy alley.

MODELS: You can always spot a "pro" model. She's usually slender, hipless, has small features, carries her make-up in a man's hat-box. Powers girls tea at the fountain in Grand Central Palace; the Conover beauts patronize the cocktail lounge of the Roosevelt Hotel; Thornton's youngsters make their headquarters at the Liggett fountain, 43d and Lexington Avenue. Smart wolves know you can always find models at cocktail time in Armando's.

But we must tell you about the famed Round Table at John Perona's El Morocco, expensive East Side rendezvous. The table is so situated that the town's aging and more prosperous squab-hunters, like Macoco, who congregate at it nightly can case the door and ogle the bims brought in by younger and more energetic men. The bald and graying Knights of the Table Round select and signal, and by a method we cannot detail, get phone numbers.

* * * * *

Many of the most successful wolves do not drink. Alcohol is a hurdle in the chase. The trick is to let her do the imbibing.

It is strictly unprofessional for a wolf to pay a girl, ever. Anyone can pay.

Married wolves are debarred if they lie and say they're single or pull the old one about being misunderstood. Naturally, the town's top lupos are married.

* * * * *

WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:

"_Woman is like your shadow. Follow it, it flies you. Fly, it will pursue you!_"--Ben Jonson.

* * * * *

When your doll starts showing an interest in another, don't agree with her appraisal of him. If you make it too easy for her to leave you for another, she won't--and you're stuck with her.

* * * * *

Fastest way to a doll's heart is not through protestations of love and undying affection. Keep her laughing, bud. That's the block buster.

* * * * *

Guys who give seldom get.

* * * * *

It's tough to romance a chorine while she's rehearsing for a new show. Hard-boiled dance directors are mayhem on love life.

* * * * *

When you have a date with a chorus doll and she keeps you waiting after a show--being last to leave the dressing room--it can mean one of two things. Either she's so thrilled to be going out with you, she primps more than usual. Or she's so bored and unconcerned she stalls to the last minute. Make up your mind.

* * * * *

Dames that pull the share-a-date gag are carbolic acid. Give 'em the air when they do this: The evening is half over; suddenly she remarks that she's got to go. "Why, dear," says she, "I told you earlier I had this date, but to show you how much I care for you I ducked him all these hours to spend them with you." The malarkey!

* * * * *

When a doll tells you she couldn't get a job in the cabaret chorus because the boss tried to get fresh with her, it's a phony. There's such a shortage of pretty femmes who dance that managers would rather hire them than make love to them--paying up to $100 a week, two shows a night, six days a week--and saying "Please."

* * * * *

Don't try to start a conversation with the pretty pigeon at the end of the bar. She's the bartender's bim and no stray can steal her.

* * * * *

When your doll excuses herself to go to the powder room--a few minutes after she nods to the sleek dark musician--watch out that she doesn't give you a powder.

23. THE NOTED AND THE NOTORIOUS

A big shot is just a pain in the neck to the average New Yorker, who has seen them all and seen them come and go. He is a nuisance who has to be endured; a nuisance because he gets in front of the line, has the best tables, blocks entrances with his car and generally makes himself obnoxious.

New York reeks with very important people. Most, of course, aren't celebrities. They mind their own business and try to forget their fame.

But, if a New Yorker can take or leave his notables, a muzhik can't. Next to the Empire State and Radio City, V.I.P.'s are the tallest things on his agenda, and if it's your hard luck to nursemaid one, you've got to take him to one place where he can feed his obsession. And many celebs are only too anxious to oblige.

There's a prosperous firm in town called Celebrity Service, which, for a fee, advises just which celebrities are where and when. Subscribers, in addition to newspapers, press agents and high pressure salesmen, often include fan clubs.

If the sidewalk outside a public place is filled with moronic-looking imbeciles of both sexes, grasping autograph books and candid cameras, it's a pretty safe bet someone whom they consider important is inside or expected.

Exhibitionistic hams love it and you can find them with their silly smirking faces at any hour around the clock.

These are some of the places where they hang out:

Algonquin Hotel--Lunch place of the la-de-dah literary set.

Barberry Room--Socialites, for dinner.

Blair House--Broadway and sports figures.

Colony--Top money mob, for lunch and dinner.

Copacabana--Show and sport crowd, at midnight and 2 A.M.

Copa Lounge--Show, radio, sport and press crowd, 12:30 to 4 A.M.

El Boraccho--Show, screen and society glamor gals, at dinner.

El Morocco--Top movie stars, international society, rich wolves, Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Dinner until 4 A.M.

Larue--Social climbers.

Leon & Eddie's--Ditto, Sundays, after midnight.

Lindy's (old)--Sporting and racing crowd, lunch and dinner.

Lindy's (new)--Song-writers and comedians, dinner and after theatre.

Luchow's--Tammany politicos, Mencken and Nathan, opera and theatrical.

Moore's--Movie executives and stars, sports, political and Broadway headliners.

Reuben's--Broadway mob, after 4 A.M.

Sardi's--The drama (pronounced draymah) bunch at lunch and dinner and after theatre.

Stork Club--Politicians, columnists--Walter Winchell, always--producers and movie bunch, lunch, cocktails, dinner, until 4 A.M.

Toots Shor's--Broadway, especially radio, and sporting bunch for lunch and dinner.

Twenty-One--Hollywood, Broadway and semi-society, for lunch and dinner.

Other places where celebrities can be viewed include the Metropolitan Opera House, especially on opening nights, when all the sables, stomachers and high hats turn out.

Almost every theatrical opening brings out a few celebs, though only at events like the première of an expensive musical comedy or a show with Katharine Cornell, the Lunts or Tallulah Bankhead, do you find more than the regulars.

24. THERE IS NO SOCIETY

If this title seems an overstatement, you may have something. But, as far as your eye can see, it is almost categorically true.

There is a Social Register, published and revised annually. Its standards for selection are vague and the private corporation which sets them doesn't play according to its own precedents. Its principal excuses for continued existence are that it pays off, as every snob in town feels it is an essential household article, and it is the sweetest sucker list ever compiled for peddlers, panders, climbers and promoters.

The younger generation of what was once New York society has gotten largely out of hand. Its typical proponent is Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco Stokowski, who in her teens disported herself at bars, heavily made up, one wedgie on the rail and a foot-long cigarette holder between fingers with crimson mandarin nails. To make the picture perfect, her then-beloved mother was drinking with her.

Debutantes (who rarely have debuts any more) are largely silk-lined bobby soxers. They wear slacks and sweaters out loud and mingle with tea-dancers and gin-garglers in the more expensive but no more exclusive drop-ins.

The musty, crusty Old Guard is dwindling with death and high taxes. The few who have retained their aristocratic bearing go deeper and deeper into seclusion. But even they are smudged with the sins of modernity which penetrate all walls and past all butlers. Not so long ago, one of our dozen foremost real society matrons was committed to an insane asylum. The husband of an equally blue-blooded top-drawer grand dame was beaten to death by her gigolo when he walked in on them.

The in-betweeners, neither young nor old, make pitiful pretense of youthfulness, dance until they are lame and find dignity too old-fashioned for words--the kind of words they use.

Many women born to social position are horning into politics, not a few radical. It's smart to talk red and the son of the late head of J.P. Morgan & Company is one of the loudest of this contingent.

Divorces among the social names are becoming as commonplace as they are in Hollywood.

As a backwash of the war, New York was invaded by many rich refugees and stranded titled bums. The latter found doors wide open for them.

What is left of Inanity Fair is on view rarely and only in a few spots. Great palaces have been razed or turned into dressmakers' shops or offices. Increased real estate values, hardships with help, murderous income and inheritance taxes and the disinclination of the younger members to follow the old and more gracious ways have made mausoleums of the mansions.

When these fortresses of fashion fell, society went underground. A few Knickerbocker clans, from hidden retreats, still resist attempts at intrusion by war profiteers, black marketeers and that mixed miscellany of the gossip columns--Café Society. Contrary to general belief, that is not a new institution, though for generations it was regarded from above in about the same light as a daughter of a good family who had borne twins out of wedlock.

It originated toward the end of the golden 90's, and its father was the esoteric Harry Lehr, successor to Ward McAllister, social arbiter supreme, creator of the great Mrs. William Astor's sacred 400.

Lehr had at one time been the kingpin of those since-vanished Americans, the wine (champagne) agents. It never got out of his blood, though he lofted into the social stratosphere. Perhaps as a prank or caprice or a reversion to type, on a Sunday night he induced Mrs. Astor to attend a dinner he gave at Sherry's, then at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. That night Café Society was born.

Next morning, a newspaper published this astonishing lead:

"What are we coming to? Mrs. Astor at Sherry's table d'hôte! I never dreamt it would be given to me to gaze on the face of an Astor in a public dining room."

Next day, all the newspapers featured the epoch-making feast. One society editor wrote:

"When I saw Mrs. Astor in coquettish raiment of white satin, with the tiniest headdress, at Sherry's, dos-à-dos almost with Lillian Russell, I could scarcely believe my eyes. She seemed to enjoy it and nodded her head to the ragtime tunes. She wore her famous pearls and was a stunning sight."

Lehr was a crony of Tom Wanamaker, who owned an apartment above Sherry's. He gave Harry the use of a beautiful suite and arranged for him to eat on the cuff in the café and entertain friends there, likewise. His historic dinner to Mrs. Astor was a shill job, to break the ice for social patronage. Night clubs follow the same device today to pump up brilliant opening nights.

Mrs. Astor undoubtedly had no suspicion of Lehr's object, but she gave the royal nod to the first big break in the fences, which eventually permitted an infiltration of Manhattan Okies into her own 400, which expanded the circle so widely that with every year it meant less and less as it grew more and more.

Perhaps the most conspicuous disintegration is visible at a glance at the Metropolitan Opera House. Première nights in the golden days were glittering spectacles, with the women of the Astor, Vanderbilt, Drexel, Gould and other proud dynasties wearing Paris gowns and radiant tiaras, and the newspapers covering the show avidly.

Today such events are drab. Anybody with the coin can buy a box in the Diamond Horseshoe. Night club managers, Broadway gamblers, cloak-and-suit salesmen entertain where formerly only meticulously screened millionaires basked in their own glory, a thousand sets of glasses trained on them from the seats of the lowly. Now strangers in business suits and women in frocks tilt back in the front chairs, originally reserved for ladies only, and rest their feet on the storied railing.

Among the last top-name regulars were Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Orme Wilson, who shared Box 3 on different nights. Newport's famous spinster sisters, Edith and Maude Wetmore, occasionally occupy their Box 5. The Duchess de Talleyrand, née Anna Gould, retains her box, but rarely uses it. The Morgan family gave up theirs seasons ago. Most of the ladies who own rich gems no longer wear them--they're afraid of stick-ups.

The most conspicuous display is put on by Ganna Walska, who has a box on the north--the unfashionable--side. Wearing emeralds as large as limes, she is rococo in dress and demeanor and is usually attended by minor diplomats and her latest husband. She never made society, though she married one millionaire and two multi-multimillionaires. The first, which was her second, was an elderly New York physician to whom she went because she thought a growth in her throat interfered with her ambition to be a diva. He didn't cure her throat, but he married her, conveniently died and left her a home and her first million. This girl, who had sung in mid-European cabarets, was soon pursued by Harold McCormick (then married to the daughter of John D. Rockefeller); and Alexander Smith Cochran, even wealthier, the Yonkers carpet king.

Ganna decided to take a trip to Europe and both her suitors made the boat. McCormick was still married, so she took Cochran, who spent a fortune on repeated efforts here and abroad to make her a prima donna. When he failed, she blew him for McCormick, who had gotten his divorce and taken time out for a monkey-gland operation. McCormick was the foremost subsidizer and patron of the Chicago Opera Company, one of the principal heirs to the McCormick harvester fortune. But he couldn't get her in that troupe and she soon waltzed out on him. (She was born with some unpronounceable Polish name and was nicknamed "Walska," meaning "waltzer," because she sang waltz songs to the accompaniment of a gypsy fiddler in Budapest.)

When last heard from, she was being sued for alimony by her sixth husband, a yoga practitioner who told her that his mysterious powers would bring forth her voice. She said she had been persuaded to believe that while she stood on her head.

First nights of old brought forth beautiful Mrs. George Gould, the former Edith Kingdon, and her friends. Now the lobbies are jammed with cigarette smokers overflowing to the sidewalks, and police reporters recognize more patrons than can the society reporters.

A recent première saw raffish exhibitionism that would have shamed Whitechapel fishwives.

Betty Henderson, a dowager past 70, in the opera bar, planted a leg on a table, showing more than plenty, and shouted, "What has Dietrich got that I haven't got?" She was probably plastered and she is a Newport top-drawer hostess, worth dozens of millions.

Another elderly jewel-rack walked the balcony during intermission, puffing a big, black cigar. Maybe she was trying to smoke herself sober.

One matron arrived with two bodyguards, who stalked and sat on either side of her, making even more conspicuous her cables of pearls and her movie-marquee display of diamonds.

But the upper crust still exists.

The great private ballrooms are no more, so the fashionables give dances and receptions at the Colony Club (not to be confused with the Colony Restaurant). For women only, this is one of the last stands of exclusiveness--so snazzy that non-members, guests, must enter by the side door. Only those who belong may use the Park Avenue portal or the main elevator within.

The Union and Knickerbocker Clubs are as snooty as the day they were founded. To increase income they instituted ladies' nights, when members may invite wives, daughters and guests to dine. The Metropolitan Club, founded by the first J.P. Morgan for the rich but outré rejected by the Union, has let down its bars, as have other smart clubs.

The Horse Show was another brilliant event in the golden age, but blue-blooded humans don't patronize it as enthusiastically as before. Fashionable women who do now affect sports togs. Those who cling to dressy traditions are stared at curiously.

In the eras of rubberneck wagons, visitors got their money's worth. Men shouted through megaphones untruthful descriptions of famous mansions. Provincials thrilled when they reached Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The four corners were sites of baronial citadels.

On the northwest corner stood the great château of Cornelius Vanderbilt, with its iron-grilled garden in the rear. On the northeast was the white marble residence of Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs. On the southeast was the somber castle of Collis P. Huntington, and on the southwest the Moorish-windowed retreat of William C. Whitney. Today, commercial buildings have replaced them all.

The great double mansion of Mrs. William Astor and her son, John Jacob, dominated upper Fifth Avenue at 65th Street. Its walls beheld entertainments that rivaled those of oriental potentates. Its most luxurious feature was a huge bathtub, carved from a single block of Carrara marble, with gold spigots shaped like dolphins' heads. Mrs. Jack Astor, née Ava Willing, America's most celebrated society beauty, now Lady Ribblesdale, laved herself there in eau de cologne. The architecturally impressive Temple Emanu-el now stands where all this was.

The white mansion of Mrs. Oliver Belmont, at 51st Street and Madison Avenue, is now the Administration Building of the Catholic Archdiocese. The brownstone Jay Gould town house, at Fifth Avenue and 47th Street, where shouting thousands clamored for the life of the Wall Street operator on historic Black Friday, is a furniture store. The famous Bertie Goelet home, a block away, was recently razed.

The largest private residence in the city, the brownstone palace at 640 Fifth Avenue, where Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt entertained royalty and the other elect, was sold to the English Astors and has since been demolished. Its famed marble mantelpieces and interior decorations were auctioned to Hollywood producers. An office building was erected on its site. Mrs. Vanderbilt, undaunted, carries on in a smaller house at 1048 Fifth Avenue.

On the upper stretch of this boulevard are the magnificent ménages of Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, Dr. A. Hamilton Rice, Mrs. Hamilton McTwombly, Mrs. William Hayward, Julia Berwind, Mrs. W. Watts Sherman, and the garden-enclosed, garishly grandiose show-place of the late Andrew Carnegie. The Carnegies are not gregarious and few fashionables have seen the interior. Set in between them, in a regal mansion once owned by Whitney Warren, a society architect, and designer of Grand Central Terminal, was an all-night "bottle club" that dispensed liquid refreshment after closing time to a favored few.

On Riverside Drive, the gingerbread château of the late Charles M. Schwab which long stood empty has also been torn down. The Schwabs were not social, but musical. Their Sunday afternoon concerts when Melba, Tetrazzini and other prima donnas sang, were discussed even in Europe.

At 1 East 78th Street, on the corner of Fifth Avenue, is the white marble palace of Mrs. James B. Duke, mother of Doris. This great house has a magnificent collection of 18th century English paintings and drawings.

The Harrison Williamses live at 1130 Fifth Avenue. The beautiful Mona entertains there against a distinguished background of paneled rooms, her portrait by Dali, and several Goyas.

The Byron Foys live at 60 East 93rd Street, in one of the finest houses in the city. Built by Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt, it has the most beautiful French 18th century paneling. On its walls are portraits by great masters as well as family portraits painted by Simon Elwes.

But most socialites live in vast apartment houses or hotels. To see them in the flesh, one can peep in several restaurants. Tops is the Colony, on East 61st Street, just off Madison. It serves wonderful food at wonderful prices. Strangers find it difficult to get reservations. If one does, he will be far back, in the main room. Many regulars prefer it there, though, and you may land next to Winthrop Rockefeller, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Clark Gable, or, while she was here, you might have encountered Princess Martha of Norway.

Table No. 1, at the right of the entrance, was long reserved for the William K. Vanderbilts. After his death, his widow never returned. Now one is apt to find at this spot the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Mme. Frances, the Alfred Sloanes or young Lord Lascelles. Table No. 21 is bachelor-girl Beth Leary's hangout. At No. 14, Mrs. George U. Harris and her charming daughter, Lucille, are on view. No. 34 is where Elsa Maxwell, Clare Boothe Luce or Dorothy Thompson sit, but not together. Table No. 4b is given to the Vincent Astors, to Lady Furness, or to society reporters.

Voisin is smart, but far more conservative, and none of the faces would mean anything to the uninitiated.

To El Morocco goes the International Set.

The remaining few aristocrats bide their time, believing and hoping for a revival which will never come. But they are curious. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt visited the Stork Club once. Mrs. Hamilton McK. Twombly went to dinner at the Monte Carlo ONCE. And that vital nonagenarian, Colonel Creighton Webb, has been to a night club _twice_.

Society departments still appear in the newspapers, a habit the editors fear to shake off. But their content is mostly betrothals and weddings of people few know--no charity balls, no formal functions, no musical soirées, no tally-ho outings, polo or fox hunts in season.

In another year or two, a new superior set may arise--composed of union labor leaders, rising reds and affluent Africans.

Until then, Society will go like the gallant G.A.R.--doomed by the toll of time.

25. HOODLUMS' HIERARCHY

_When this chapter first appeared in print in 1948, they said we were nuts. The following year, when we wrote_ Chicago Confidential, _we expanded on the subject of the organized underworld. That made our critics hysterical._

_But the findings of the Kefauver Committee, which got its original inspiration from these books, proved how right we were. In fact, the Senate Crime Committee's final report was practically a plagiarism of_ Chicago Confidential, _and_ Washington Confidential.

The rattle of the sawed-off tommy-gun, the whining whistle of the leaden slug and the thud of its impact against flesh and bone no longer are the sound effects in the orchestration of the gangsters' theme song.

In the last decade an extraordinary metamorphosis has come over the characters who saw their big years of glamor and of terror during Prohibition and for a spell after repeal.

In truth, there are no gangsters, and there are no mobs. Yet, today's underworld figures cast a far wider shadow and wield an incalculably greater influence on the life of the nation and its principal city.

Except for a few shabby neighborhood ruffians in squabbles about penny-ante rackets, such as fish-peddling, shakedowns of storekeepers, enforcing collections for double sawbuck loan sharks and similar bagatelles, the old and happy habits of killing each other have evaporated.

Everything is now organized into an institution a hundred times the proportion of any outfit dramatized by Raft and Robinson, including the empire of Al Capone, which is represented as a minor element in the set-up that grew out of it all.

Today we have the Syndicate!

Let it not be supposed that the hoodlums have gone straight. The Syndicate is almost entirely bossed by ex-convicts whose roots are in the lowest and most violent soil, where originated malignant morasses of the dirty trades that made America notorious around the world.

But they have grown up. They are fat and rich, they have wives who belong to clubs and children going to the best colleges. And they have brains.

These brains are like none other, because they combine the shrewdness and unscrupulous ruthlessness of high-powered criminals with the hired skill and concentration of first-line lawyers, accountants, business sharks and tax specialists.

Their operations and their holdings now run into the multimillions. And they range from the filthy numbers swindle in the Negro sections of most large cities to chains of America's finest and biggest hotels, a building of their own in the heart of Wall Street, distilleries, breweries, real estate worth up to $5,000 a front foot, blue-chip stocks and bonds galore, night clubs and restaurants and the structures that house them.

At the same time, they juggle the Italian lottery, a gold mine which has had comparatively little publicity, and which flourishes in every city that has slums; call-girl vice, the last survivor of the woman traffic in New York and a prolific source of profit; the international narcotics trade, with a world-wide organization for supply abroad and distribution in the United States, which probably turns over more than $1,000,000 a day here; almost complete monopoly of American bookmaking, the slot-machine business where they can put on the fix, and the lion's share of the gambling in Florida and Saratoga in season, in Nevada all the time and in various large centers where and when they can operate with comparative safety through political connections.

This strange hybrid of respectability and lawless monopoly was really born of Al Capone's conviction on income-tax frauds.

It shocked the mobsters, who had thought themselves immune, into a realization that any one of them, without an hour's notice, could be tapped for Alcatraz. Capone's defense was childish and completely without preparation for a man who had proven himself not only big and bold, but crafty and cautious, when he had weighed the odds for and against himself.

There was in plain relief a record of big expenditures which he could not controvert and against which he could not prove income--that is, income which he had reported--and this was no trial for bootlegging or murder, but strictly a tax-evasion indictment.

It is an axiom accepted by thieves that you can't do business with Uncle Whiskers.

There were a number of meetings, in Chicago, New York and elsewhere, and the principal subject was:

"How can we beat that Treasury rap?"

The government does not usually prosecute where there is a confusion or a possible one as to tax liability. It reviews a return, examines books, asks questions, snoops around and notifies the subject that his questionnaire was faulty and that he owes so and so much on such and such findings. He then pays up, or sometimes settles and is even given a leeway of time to make restitution. The worst that happens to him is that he kicks in.

These conferees represented leading mobsters from New York and Brooklyn, Newark, Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other points which do not seem important, but for strategic or geographical reasons developed gang personalities.

It was then and there decided that, instead of jamming their thousand- and ten-thousand-dollar bills into strong boxes, they would form a pool and invest in sound enterprises. In these they got actual, tangible, negotiable securities. They engaged the best management, often retaining the executives of properties they bought.

Then came the war and everything flourished and multiplied--everything honest and dishonest.

Their assets snowballed. Now they run into incalculable figures.