“Modern Babylon”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 466, 22 September 1928, Page 27

“Modern Babylon”

NEW YORK’S NIGHT CLUBS

Gaieties of the Cabaret

UPPOSING the great cities of the world were to meet in contest for the title of “ The Modern Babylon,” which would you back?

I should plump for New York, and in order to be sure of winning I should bring before the Court of Trial the evidence of Mr. Stephen Graham’s book, “New York Nights” (Beun, 12s 6d). It is an amazing picture that Mr. Graham unfolds. Compared with it Paris resembles a highly respectable cathedral city in the provinces.

Mr. Graham describes in detail his experiences as a visitor to most of the celebrated New York night-clubs —such as Romany Marie’s and Texas Gulnan’s —to the speakeasies, which are the places where one drinks alcohol illicitly, and to the dancing saloons of Harlem, the negro quarter of the city, which is ironically known as “Nigger Heaven.” Broadway is the backbone of the night-life of New York. When dusk falls it is a blaze of lights. It is more light by night than by day. Hence the label bestowed on it—“ The Great White Way.” At night it is unquestionably the brightest place in the world. Mr. Graham very nearly suggests the high intensity of the illumination by the remark that “the blind are aware of some extra luminosity when they are taken along it.” As for the strange exotic life that begins when the lights on Broadway go up, it is largely generated by the aching desire of the New Yorkers to escape from the material stress and strain that residence in the city imposes on them. Their drab daily life creates an irresistible passion for illusion at night. “New York is a fortress—and how shall the soul escape? .... The night-club dis-

enchants New York.” Such is Mr. Graham’s summing-up of cause and effect. New York’s Faked Dixie There is the Cotton Club, for instance, where you step straight from the din of the metropolis into an artificial Dixie. “You are in a village street in Millen, Georgia, with wisps of cotton blowing about. There is dancing in the village square. But it is not Millen of to-day, not of the twentieth-century. Old wooden lampposts stand round the square, with smoky kerosene lamps in the qqaint lanterns above. Lamp-dazzled. Emperor moths are on the wing, and float above in the dim light. Men and women sit about at tables, talking or listening or merely existing. It is a Southern night with all the enchantment of indolence, of dusky faces, of soft music, easy laughter, and song.”

If you do not feel like escaping to this fake Dixie, with its tall slender lime trees, its owls on the walls and its soft black sky (made of sombre pleated cloth) you can try Gipsy Lands where the illusion of Hungary is created, or the Samarkand, which is Persia. Most of these places seem, from Mr. Graham’s description, to be quite harmless and rather ingenuous. Sentimentality reigns in them, rather than viciousness. But there are others of which this obviously cannot be said. Swarm of Speakeasies

New York owes its swarm of speakeasies to the Prohibition Act. Some are charming places which deserve their existence on better grounds than law-dodging. Many of them are run by Italians, and most of these are known as “Tony’s.” At the speakeasy one enters a rather absurd atmosphere of spy-holes, moving shutters, pad-

locks, chains, bars, and passwords. The Italians, with their Mafia and Camorra traditions behind them, are adepts in all this secret society foolery. They take it quite seriously. The Anglo-Saxon looks upon it as a huge joke—like playing smugglers’ caves when a schoolboy.

“The speakeasies are a remarkable feature of American life. Every time you go for a drink there is adventure. I suppose it adds pleasure to change into a pirate or a dark character entering a smuggler’s cave. You go to a locked and chained door. Eyes are considering you through peep-holes in the wooden walls. There is such a to-do about letting you in. Someone must, for the first time, be sponsor. . . You are admitted to a back parlour bar with a long room of stooping and loquacious drinkers. There may be only three bottles in use, the main supply being hidden away in some place less liable to raids. There may be a red signal light, which can be operated from the door in case of the revenue officer or police demanding entrance, and at the red light signal the contents of the three bottles are incontinently emptied into the street. Plain Women Barred Women have their own speakeasies where they entertain both their feminine and masculine friends. Mr. Graham has some enlightening observations on the use of the pretty woman to the night life investigator. Apparently a pretty partner is the best passport to New York by night. With the right sort of lady on your arm you can obtain admittance into any resort, even the most guarded and exclusive. “It is a sad comment on chivalry, but plain women are looked upon with suspicion. Place aux dames has given place to Place aux jolies femmes.” The reason is that in America most plain women have the cause of Women or of Public Morals at heart. They are ardent temperance reformers, or belong to Purity Leagues. Plain women, therefore, are regarded with suspicion, and door-keepers of night-clubs have orders to exclude I them.

There is a saying in New York that all the night life in the city starts from Texas Guinan’s. An American will say to a swanker: “Because you call Texas Guinan by her first name don’t think you won the war.” Which is sufficiently explicit of the nature of the lady’s fame. The polite name for her club is the Three Hundred, and Texas herself is a big buxom woman, of any age, but with the grace of twenty-five. Her real name is Marie Louise, Texas being her first place of origin. Clapping Machines Here to amuse the jaded guests are troupes of young dancing girls in silk trousers; jazz players, and Castilian guitarists who wander among the tables serenading the diners. Visitors are served out on entry with little click-clacks of painted wood to be used as clapping machines when the dancing and the miniature revues are in progress. The audience is encouraged in every way to take a personal interest in the proceedings, and Texas never allows the fun to flag. It goes on like this all over New York till about six in the morning. In “Nigger Heaven” the proceedings are more unsavoury. On the whole I do not thing we need envy New York night life. It reads exciting and alluring, but in matter of fact there is nothing that palls quicker on the sampling than these hectic artificial pleasures which rob a man of a good night’s sleep. None' of them is really worth it. —K.S. in "T.P.’s.”