The wait staff at Small's Paradise, 1929. The venue, on 134th Street and today's Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard, was the rare Black-owned nightclub that was integrated. It became one of Harlem's most enduring hot spots, closing in 1986. New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images
For the Bowery Boys episode number 450, we’re looking at the glamour and mystery of Harlem during the 1920s, a decade when the predominantly black neighborhood, in the words of Langston Hughes, “was in vogue.”
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Alain Locke’s classic essay “The New Negro” and the literary anthology featuring the work of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen and other significant black writers of the day.
The rising artistic scene would soon be known as the Harlem Renaissance, one of the most important cultural movements in American history.
And centered within America’s largest black neighborhood — Harlem, the “great black city,” as described by Wallace Thurman, with a rising population and growing political and cultural influence.
The Survey Graphic, published in March 1925, focusing on “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro” and featuring the writing of Alain Locke.
And during the 1920s, Harlem became even more. Along “Swing Street” and Lenox Avenue, nightclubs and speakeasies gave birth to American music and fostered great musical talents like Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington.
Ballrooms like the Savoy and the Alhambra helped turn Harlem into a destination for adventure and romance.
While Harlem was truly the largest and most prominent African-American neighborhood in America, it was still tied to — and even reliant upon — the white New Yorkers who became fascinated by black culture. Many Harlem nightclubs (notably The Cotton Club) were not open to the black residents who lived around them.
What were these two worlds like — the literary salons and the nightclubs? How removed were these spheres from the every day lives of regular Harlem residents? How did the neighborhood develop both an energetic and raucous music scene and a diverse number of churches — many (like the Abyssinian Baptist Church) still around today?
FEATURING the stories of Sugar Hill, the Dunbar Apartments, and Hamilton Club Lodge Ball
Above: Karyl Norman welcomes you to the Pansy Club! FRIDAY NIGHT FEVERTo get you in the mood for the weekend, on occasional Fridays we’ll be featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive warehouse clubs of the mid-1990s. Past entries can be found here.
LOCATION:The Pansy ClubTimes Square, 48th Street and Broadway, Manhattan In operation December 1930-31
The moral crusaders who succeeded in banning alcohol sales via the Eighteenth Amendment must have wondered where it all went wrong. Instead of ushering America down a path of productivity and moral fortitude, Prohibition sponsored a decade of unwritten rules, creating a shadow economy and empowering a criminal underworld.
Norms were upended, and the fringes of New York were defined by experimentation and playful risk. Harlem and Greenwich Village became the centers of culture, women found new avenues for empowerment, and black musicians mixed with white to create the sophistication of jazz.
It’s in the light of this churning mix of invention that you have to approach one curious fad of the Prohibition era — the pansy craze, an appreciation of drag-queen worship cultivated in the heart of Manhattan.
I’m not sure a place called The Pansy Club would be popularly received today, but when it opened in late 1930 it was risque and cool. Its location at 48th and Broadway planted it firmly in the theater district where it truly belonged, of course. But given the entertainments it generously offered, it’s amazing to me it was allowed to open at all.
It makes sense that the speakeasy-fueled, white crowds, having fully sampled from black nightclubs of the 1920s, would venture into other subcultures on the fringe of bohemia. There were plenty of places in Greenwich Village for gay and lesbians to meet, and within them came camped-up forms of cabaret, with men in drag emulating the glamorous female stars of the day. It helped that some of those stars, like Sophie Tucker and Mae West, mixed with and borrowed from their costumed admirers.
It all built into a national, urban ‘craze’ in 1930 and 1931 for drag shows in a mainstream cabaret environment. Why it neatly fit on the nightclub circuit — and what made it somewhat more tolerable for conservative crowds — was partially due to drag’s close association with vaudeville. Although the term ‘pansy’ was a derogatory one for gay men, for this brief time ‘pansy clubs’ were the hottest ticket in town.
The Pansy Club, at 204 W. 48th, in heart of Times Square (and about where the M&M Store is today) was not the only nightclub of this type, but when it opened the week before Christmas in December 1930, it was the showiest of the lot.
The Pansy Club featured standard-era vaudevillian and cabaret acts, but with a decided gay (read: scandalous) twist — female impersonators, “a bevy of beautiful girls in ‘something different’ entitled ‘Pansies On Parade'” according to a newspaper advertisement, one of the few documents that verify the club’s brief existence.
Mistress of ceremonies was one Karyl Norman, known in drag as the ‘Creole Fashion Plate’. Born George Peduzzi from Baltimore, Norman became a star on the vaudevillian circuits in the US, Europe and Australia in a show that featured him both in and out of drag. As a published songwriter and a favorite of Tin Pan Alley, Norman would have been a big draw in 1930 and as a seasoned vaudevillian star would have brought a touch of credibility to a club with so shocking a theme.
According to Brooks Peters, the club was also “a haven for aging flappers and party-goers who liked “slumming.—
Down the street was an even more popular draw. At Club Abbey (46th and 8th Ave) was a young Jean Malin (at left, courtesy Flickr), a Brooklyn-born wit and sometimes ‘female impersonator’ who hosted drag performances while charming audiences with interludes that made no disguise of his homosexuality.
What distinguished these places is that they were not considered gay and lesbian bars of the sort in the Village. However they did have a similar thread in common with them — ownership by the mob, an association that led to the club’s swift closings.
A gang shooting closed Club Abbey in January, and the police raided the Pansy Club that same month. While the ‘pansy craze’ would live on in other cities — it made a more lasting impression in Hollywood, naturally — it retreated to the fringes again in New York.
And finally, for your Friday night celebration, here’s a look at Jean Malin, who made a brief appearance in Hollywood films before Malin’s untimely death in 1933. The film is ‘Arizona To Broadway’.
To get you in the mood for the weekend, every Friday we’ll be celebrating ‘FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER’, featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive warehouse spaces of the mid-90s. Past entries can be found here
We’re reaching way back for this week’s entry, to the heyday of New York nightlife, the 1920s, when prohibition hardly prohibited anything. The underground speakeasy The 300 Club at 151 W. 54th Street was one of the most successful, despite being raided many, many times, and all because of one scrappy, lovable dame.Â
Ladies and gents, I give you New York’s reigning queen of nightlife, Ms. Mary Louise Cecilia — but the boys call her  “Texas” Guinan.
Born in Waco in 1884 to Irish immigrants, she coined her nickname on the youth rodeo circuit, then ran off to New York for a short stint in vaudeville. Her cornfed, bawdy charms caught the eye of a movie scout who rustled her to Hollywood, where she became the silent era’s first movie cowgirl, starring in a string of corny Westerns — The Girl Sherriff, The White Squaw, The School M’arm, Little Miss Deputy.
But New York lured her back, where saloon owner Larry Fay (his speakeasy El Fey Club was on West 47th) convinced her to crack open her own establishment. And the 300 Club* was born.
The bar practically bristled with Guinan’s outsized personality. Its relatively small size worked in its advantage, especially as 40 fan dancers flew from the wings and had to basically dance in the aisles, to the delight of those tippling the bar’s illegal sauce.
Texas was always around greeting customers with her signature slogans, “Hello, Suckers! Come on in and leave your wallet on the bar!” and “Give the little ladies a great big hand!”
It wasn’t just the underbelly of New York captivated by Texas’ charms. The toast of the town often popped by to ogle at her dancing beauties, including Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and Pola Negri. Young composer George Gershwin would sometimes leap to the piano and pound out a ragtime. She also took a young Walter Winschel under her wing, a man who would later become the most influential gossip columnist of the 1930s and 40s.
With all that attention, it’s no surprise the club was perpetually raided. Guinan never once admitted she sold liquor, claiming her hundreds of customers had brought it in with them. According to one adoring fan site:
“Legend has it that the joint was raided one night when the Prince of Wales was there. She popped an apron on him and hid him in the kitchen, washing dishes.”
After a few weeks she would reopen, and the party would begin again. Occasionally, she would have to move to different locations, and reopen under different names (Salon Royale, Club Intime, the Argonaut), but she always returned W. 54th Street, where the legends of the jazz age were bred.
It ended a little too soon for Texas. The Great Depression rolled over her good fortunes, and she attempted to take her show on the road, touring the United States. (She even attempted to take it to Europe and was denied a permit to perform in France due to Texas’ notorious reputation.) While in Vancouver, she contracted dysentery and died in Nov 5, 1933, age 49.
The tales of her midtown speakeasys have helped to shape our entire perception of New York in the 20s, with its excess and abandon. Guinan herself lived on as an primary influence to Mae West. In fact Guinan was actually considered for West’s debut role in the film Night After Night in 1932.
You can still have a drink at Guinan’s speakeasy Club Intime; the space where she once entertained New York’s greatest is now the champagne bar Flute . The location of the 300 Club has been turned into The London luxury hotel.
She literally was the end of an era; the day after she died, the US government repealed prohibition.
Texas Guinan lives on in an incredibly exhaustive blog in her honor and in reruns of Star Trek: the Next Generation (Whoopi Goldberg’s bartender character is named after her). Who knows what mayhem Texas would be getting herself into if she were alive today.
*I admit I couldnt find anything on why it was called the 300 Club, however it could be because when customers would ask her how many films she had made in Hollywood, she always answered, “About 300 of ’em.” Even though it was more like a couple dozen.
