Stork Club: America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society [Anglais] [Broché]

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Rita Hayworth, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Marilyn Monroe, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor--the list of regulars who patronized New York's exclusive Stork Club is a who's who of early- to mid-20th century society. But this lively, resonant account from Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Blumenthal (Once Through the Heart, etc.) of the club's rise and fall is more than an exercise in name-dropping. At its heart, it's the story of Sherman Billingsley, the Oklahoma bootlegger who opened the Stork during Prohibition and spent the next four decades keeping gangsters and unions at bay while coddling every rich, influential and famous person he could, plying them with gifts ranging from pure-bred puppies to perfume (called Cigogne, French for "stork"). Billingsley, who served time in Leavenworth for bootlegging, wound up in New York on the heels of one of his convict brothers. There he continued bootlegging (hiding behind his legit business as a drugstore owner) and made a name in real estate before opening the Stork. Media savvy and skilled at mar-keting, Billingsley had a knack for befriending the right people, among them gossip columnist Walter Winchell, who held court at the club for years. The Stork flourished during pre- and postwar years--an era captured vividly by Blumenthal (and well illustrated with a rich supply of period photos). The disillusionment that blanketed the U.S. after the Kennedy assassination, however, heralded the end of those heady times, whichBlumenthal colorfully brings back to life in all their glamour. But the pleasant haze of nostalgia he creates (in telling details such as the 14-karat gold chain inside the club's door) doesn't obscure the ugly union-busting actions that helped bring the club down. 75 b&w photos. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

When American celebrity was mainly reserved for swells and gentiles, gatekeeper Sherman Billingsley set the standard for glamour. In his Stork Club's smoky magic circle, powerful New York columnists like Walter Winchell chronicled diners and drinkers for the consumption of hungry "nobodies" on a limited budget. Ex-bootlegger Billingsley hosted the likes of superdebs, the Kennedys, Ethel Merman, Tallulah Bankhead, and J. Edgar Hoover, dispensing orchids, perfume, and whiskey on favorites with a generosity he recouped from tourists' tables. New York Times culture reporter Blumenthal dispassionately captures the city's pampered class, its glaring sexual double standards, and its unabashed bigotry. Tabloid-style, he depicts women as the "svelte redhead," the "willowy green-eyed brunette," or "blond and blue-eyed." Blumenthal reveals that Billingsley bugged staff and patron conversations. Facing down death threats, extortion, discrimination suits, and union pickets out front, he kept the nightclub going from Prohibition until its demise in 1965 when, as Jimmy Breslin, said, "New York changed, and the Stork Club became silly and old." Recommended for public libraries.
-Elaine Machleder, Bronx, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

This evocative, well-researched book by a veteran reporter for The New York Times is an important addition to our social history. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Sherman Billingsley and three partners who turned out to be gangsters founded the Stork Club during Prohibition. Although "Prohibition meant that nothing was prohibited," business languished until premier chronicler of posh doings Walter Winchell dubbed it "New York's New Yorkiest place." Thus, the Stork Club became synonymous with swank, from the Roaring Twenties to the swinging sixties. Blumenthal recounts the club's stories in detail, paying special attention to Billingsley, a character in his own right, not unlike fellow restaurateur^-bon vivant Toots Shor. One episode in particular illustrates something not so good about the good old days, blatant racism. Billingsley was prejudiced, not that that set him apart in his time, and one night either did or didn't tell the staff not to serve Josephine Baker's table. The subsequent brouhaha and what Billingsley's role in it was eventually involved J. Edgar Hoover, Sugar Ray Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, and Winchell. Do pop cultural tableaux get any better than that? Shelve this book proudly next to histories of Studio 54 and other, later Stork Club knockoffs. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

A comprehensive, anecdote-laden history of the rise and fall of a man and his gin-mill-cum-glamour-machine. The youngest son of an Oklahoma pioneer, Sherman Billingsley grew up on the frontier of American civilization at the turn of the 20th century. Introduced to the bootlegging trade during his adolescence by a renegade older brother, Billingsley made several attempts at assorted legitimate and illegitimate businesses in cities around the country before coming to New York in 1920. Struggling to stay one step ahead of the municipal and federal authorities, the unions, and even Dutch Schultz and his henchmen, Billingsley started the Stork Club as a Manhattan speakeasy a few years later; it gradually became his life. With Prohibitions repeal at the end of 1933, Billingsley moved his business into its most famous (or infamous, depending upon your point of view) address3 East 53rd Street, where it flourished during the years of wartime and televisions infancy. Utilizing every possible source from the archival to the apocryphal, veteran New York Times reporter Blumenthal (Once Through the Heart, 1992) chronicles the complicated and interwoven stories of a place, its patrons, its night-to-night operation, and its difficult, omnipotent owner. Microphones installed in the flower arrangements on the tables for eavesdropping, Sortilege perfume and orchids showered on the celebrated, gold chains and doormen holding back the banishedBillingsley ran the Stork with a monomaniacs combined sense and senselessness. The accounts of the celebratedWinchell, Runyon, Grable, Sinatra, Merman, Kennedy, and many, many major and minor othershave a bubbly, gossipy frenzied quality, but the nature of the material eventually overwhelms Blumenthals grasp on the narrative andmore importanton the character of Billingsley himself. The Stork Club thrived based on the rule of more rather than less, yet the secret of Billingsleys success eludes Blumenthal in the end. (75 b&w photos) (TV/radio satellite tour)-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

The enthralling, definitive account-with guns, diamonds, and champagne that never stops-of the world's most storied nightspot, where starlets stalked millionaires, where Jack wooed Jackie, and where Walter Winchell snubbed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. € This edition includes a new "Throw Your Own Stork Club Party" postscript that features recipes for food and drink, suggestions for music, decoration, etc., to help readers throw their own Stork Club celebrations.

Ralph Blumenthal has been reporting for The New York Times since 1964; his current beat is the Arts. In 1994 he led the Pulitzer Prize-winning Times team that covered the bombing of the World Trade Center. He is also the author of Once Through The Heart and Last Days of the Sicilians, and a co-author of Outrage.