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Times Square Tintypes: Broadway

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In this, the final chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky offers not one of the show-biz profiles that were his bread and butter, but instead details a day in the life of the Great White Way.

BROADWAY CHRONOMETER

9 A. M. illustration of a Broadway streetsweeperPeople who don’t belong walking over a sleeping body. The lights are out and the sun is shining. Stores are opening for business and porters are cleaning out the theaters. Programs are swept aside. Last night’s opening is now an old story. Working people are hurrying to their tasks. They’re going to make money to spend when the light flicker. Nobody along the Street thinking of amusement. They’ll sell you insurance, a suit of clothes, a cup of coffee, but never a laugh. If Broadway were awake it wouldn’t let these people on it. But the Street is only human. It must get some rest. There they go, not a real double-crosser, not a gangster, not an actor, not a guy hopped up with fake dreams. Merely real people. Walking up Broadway when it is asleep.

*      *      *

10:30 A. M. Broadway yawns. Actors in their sleep wake to rehearsals. Some poor nut has a song hit that no one will take off his hands. Ham and eggs at Childs’. Countless actors who believe that today their break may come. Press agents are going to what they call work. Broadway yawns again. Part of it goes back to sleep. The other part marches. They don’t make a dent. The Street still belongs to the foreign invasion. School kids and people out of work standing in line to get into the Paramount at the cheap morning prices. The afternoon papers begin to appear on the newsstands. Sounds of a jazz band practicing. It annoys the realtor two blocks away. In a couple of weeks he’ll pay to hear the same band and call it amusement. Dreary-eyed coryphées leaving side street hotels to hurry to rehearsals. The rouge and lipstick are the only thing genuine about them. They could put that on in their sleep. Don’t you worry, they’ll be repaid. Have their name in lights, get a husband, or else. Yawn, Broadway, but put your hand over your mouth.

*      *      *

2 P. M. Broadway is waking up. The light, the air, the sunshine is foreign. Matinée crowds now fill the streets. Actors are going to work. Why do they have matinées? You ought to see the same show some night that you saw in the afternoon. Where do people get the time to go to theaters in the afternoon? Why don’t they sleep? Actors are going to matinées. To see how they would have played the part or to applaud a fellow performer. A night club has a rehearsal in the cellar. Work all night and work all day. It’s a racket. Some people find heaven in a dive. Producers having their breakfasts. Big business deals written out on tableclothes. Do you know who’s in town? Four guys are spilling the same exclusive inside story. Gray’s is filled and Cain’s is making room for another show. Broadway is waking up. Theatrical folks are hurrying to their doctors. To their dentists. To take a sun-ray bath. Must keep in good condition. What’s the daytime for? The curtain’s going up. More jazz bands are rehearsing. Someone just signed a big contract and is going to get his name in lights. What the hell good is daytime? You can’t see your name in lights. Come on, Broadway, wake up. Get hot. Get dark.

*      *      *

7:30 P. M. It’s getting dark on old Broadway. Its getting hot on old Broadway. Actors answering the 7:30 call of the theater. Grease paint. Bring in that latest shipment through the back door, will you? She’s meeting him in front of the Rialto. It’s an opening night down the street. Maybe they’ll holler, “Author, author.” He’s invested everything in this one. Gee, I hope he clicks. He’s a nice guy. The critics. I’d like to see one of them write a play. Bernard Shaw? I mean a New York critic. Someone just cracked a gag. Lights are flickering. Someone else just cracked the same gag. Horns are tooting. Someone just had a reputation shattered. A new one tomorrow. The sky is beautiful. In some part of the world people are looking at the moon. It’s getting dark on old Broadway. It’s getting hot on old Broadway. No one can see above the electric light. Loan it to me and I’ll pay you back tomorrow. I haven’t got it myself. They’re all friends. All buddies. Just trying to do each other a good turn if it will benefit themselves. She’s with another guy tonight. Don’t know how she can keep up the pace. There goes the curtain. First nights. Glory seekers. Critics. Folks in search of amusement. Panhandlers. Bums. Noise. Lights. Greed. Backslapping. Tomorrow’s papers. What you’re doing now doesn’t count. The present is of the past. Pretty important, aren’t you all? Ever walk through a graveyard? All tombstones read alike. Broadway is getting hot.

*      *      *

AFTER
MIDNIGHT		 Broadway is Broadway. Broadway is making whoopee. Prohibition is only for the non-drinkers. Nobody knows what day it is. Hey, waiter, this table! Policemen standing in hallways. Long lines of cabs. We won’t get home ’til morning. Don’t talk like that to him. Want to get bumped off? Clubs banging on tables. That’s applause. Applause that’s life to an artist. I’m telling you it’s a sure in the third race at Havana tomorrow. Mr. Whoosis, I want you to meet Miss Whatsis. Now I’ve got a scheme. Some guys get all the luck. Broadway is making whoopee. Evening dress and gorgeous gowns. She was beautiful two hours ago. Legs. Arms. Eyes. Desire. Fill it up again, I want to forget. Tell me things, will you? I want to listen. Bad music. Bad gin. Whirling bodies. Isn’t this fun? We’re having a great time. I feel dizzy. It’s getting stuffy. You’re not used to it. People who are only eating sandwiches and drinking coffee in plain restaurants. Talking dreams. Giving the ego an outlet. A good listener is a good friend. Stray lights in an office building. Strays walking up and down as if they were going places. Couples window-shopping in dark windows. A practically empty street car darting through the night. Folks quarreling. Breaking their hearts. Giving it to Broadway so it can be paved. The street is practically deserted. But this is what the hick in the stick believes is the real Broadway. This is Broadway making whoopee.

In Your Hat, pt. 6

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Here’s Chapter 6 of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars, Renee Carroll, in which she reflects on her salad days and shares a true-life gangster chronicle, a tale in which she finds herself playing an unexpectedly key role.

WHEN people write of themselves as having been born on the lower East Side of New York, they hope you’ll overlook the fact and think of the place and the occasion as something to forget. But I first saw light on the lowest East Side with a couple of big Jewish mammas doing things to a couple of herrings in the kitchen and a bearded gentleman or two sucking tea through lumps of sugar they held between their teeth. Taking advantage of my birth by sponging on the family for a meal!
     Specifically it was a Friday, the day on which all my troubles subsequently descended, and the street was Madison, in honor of a president. The bawling infact raised a yell in the improvised crib and my father, than as now, an orthodox rabbi, descendant of a line of rabbis, muttered a prayer that his daughter would be a healthy and obedient child who would honor her parents and bring only happiness to Madison Street. Or maybe I’m wrong. I suppose a more sensible translation would be: “So if it can’t be a boy, it can’t be. And she should marry wealthy because where would a rabbi get anything resembling a dowry for his daughter?”
     From early girlhood I learned that life was a serious bowl of cherries. It’s all right for Eddie Cantor to reflect on his East Side upbringing with a great deal of sentimentality. Eddie has lost two million dollars since then—I haven’t saved two hundred. I’m the unique case of a lower New York birth with nothing to show for it but an aversion for dialect stories and a strawberry mark on my hip.
     I attended classes in Public School 62 and soon after I left they tore it down for a new subway. I didn’t exactly hate school, but when I heard that they were ready to tear down the building, I could honestly say that I threw the first stone—right smack through the window of the room where arithmetic gave me nightmares.
     Later when Jews found it fashionable to migrate to outlying districts such as Brownsville, Flatbush and the Bronx, my family found itself doing likewise because trade follows the flag, and the trustees of my father’s synagogue decided that it would be advisable to move to 115th Street.
     Once uptown the flyaway bug began to tell me stories and it occurred to me that there was nothing except the tradition of the home and keeping the family intact and all that sort of clannish business, to keep me from striking out on my own.
     My family wanted me to go to college and become a lawyer, but I figured that Portia had had a tough enough time and that men won’t listen to a women except when her legs are crossed, so I thumbs-downed that idea. Business college had a momentary appeal and I attended a business school and learned how to type. With this equipment I decided to flee the camp.
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