An animated, entertaining history.
A portrait of the savvy woman who dominated New York’s brothels during the 1920s and ’30s.
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Applegate places notorious madam Polly Adler (1900-1962) at the center of a vividly detailed social history of Manhattan’s netherworld, peopled by gangsters and bootleggers, bookies and racketeers, corrupt policemen and politicians, and a seemingly endless stream of “working girls.” Adler arrived in America from Russia in 1913, sent by her father to pave the way for the rest of her family. After enduring a few hard years with relatives in Springfield, Massachusetts, she lived with cousins in the teeming Brownsville section of Brooklyn, earning $5 a week from backbreaking labor in a corset factory. Dance halls—all the rage at the time—were her refuge and delight. Applegate draws on Adler’s published memoir, her ghostwriter’s notes, abundant archives, and contemporary sources to trace her rise from an ambitious, clever young immigrant to “Manhattan’s top supplier of party girls.” By 1920, Adler set up her own “call flat” and was on the road to fame and wealth, with customers that grew to comprise a who’s-who of “luminaries of politics, finance, and show business.” Among many others, clients included New York’s mayor Jimmy Walker, governor Franklin Roosevelt, Algonquin writer Robert Benchley (Dorothy Parker came, too, as a drinking customer), the Marx brothers, John Hay “Jock” Whitney, bandleaders Paul Whiteman and Desi Arnaz, playwright George S. Kaufman, and kings of crime Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Always on the lookout for recruits, when Katharine Hepburn visited once, Adler suggested working for her as a better alternative to acting. Avoiding prosecution required “an endless round of daily payoffs” to protect herself, her “girls,” and her customers. “In a world of villains,” Applegate observes, “she became known as someone a villain could trust.” Feisty and free-spirited, Adler claimed her goals in life were “To have money and have fun.” She amply achieved both.
An animated, entertaining history.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-385-53475-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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