the conventional home ties there which bind the average American to
the hearth, or the radiator. Weekends are dismally dull and shop shuts
up from Friday night until Monday morning, with few exceptions. Civil
servants rate thirty-day vacations. The winters are sleazy and frosty.
The summers are insufferable in that swampy, flat region which enjoys
no ocean breezes.
Where to go? Anywhere. Those who can afford it scram to New York
or Atlantic City. The next layer hightails it for Baltimore or
Philadelphia. Some fly to far points. Eastern Congressmen and officials
rarely bring their wives and families to Washington, an arrangement of
mutual consent after the rookies have tried domestic life there for a
few months of high anticipation and depressing disillusionment. Most
Congressmen from east of the Ohio River don’t wait for Friday. They
are known as the “Tuesday-to-Thursday” set, because that’s the point
of departure and return. Frank Roosevelt, Jr. is its most consistent
member.
The great hegira starts Thursday, when the Congressional Limited
leaves, at 4 P.M. For the rest of the day and throughout the night
every outgoing train and plane is packed and the stragglers fill them
up on Fridays, too. For these trips and returns, hundreds of regular
reservations stand during sessions.
Weekenders who have no fences to mend or wives to mollify or private
practices to superintend hie to resorts in Virginia and the Carolinas.
But the pet dreamland of escape for the hiatus is Atlantic City. During
spring and summer the Pennsylvania Railroad runs a through Pullman car
daily to and from there, via the Delaware River bridge. This is hooked
onto or off the New York-Washington train at North Philadelphia, where
there is a rush for the club car. The drawing-rooms house either poker
games or shut-in shebas who long to smell the sea. Teetotal-voting,
Bible-Belt solons stagger up and down the boardwalk with potted
patooties on the arms that beat the righteous breasts in the hallowed
chambers.
The politicians favor the Claridge in Atlantic City, but the Brighton,
across the street, is rapidly becoming the gay spot, much patronized by
those who go up for laughs. Those who want seclusion usually stay at
the Ritz-Carlton, at the end of the boardwalk and off the beaten track.
The Ritz was once owned by Enoch “Nocky” Johnson, former Atlantic City
political boss, recently discharged from federal prison. Nocky is on
parole now and not supposed to drink or go to public places or engage
in politics, but he does and is still a power in the town and is called
on by visiting Washington G.O.P. dignitaries.
Nocky was one of the few leaders with underworld tie-ups prosecuted
during the Roosevelt administration. Of course, Johnson was a
Republican, not a Democrat, and the orders went out from Boss Hague in
Jersey City to get him.
Many Washingtonians seeking fun go to Philadelphia, of all places!
Philly is a natural for married men who want to do a little cheating,
because who would ever think of looking for them there? “Sleepy” old
Philadelphia is not so sleepy. It is one of the hottest towns in the
country, loaded with after-hour spots which offer fast floor shows and
run later than anything in New York.
Philadelphia is Mafia-controlled, run by the same branch of the mob
which owns South Jersey and its domestic wine industry, and Atlantic
City. Many Philadelphia spots break the law brazenly and openly,
protected by the Mafia.
But Philadelphia has one of the finest restaurants in the world,
operated by one of America’s best-known hosts. This is Jack Lynch’s
Zodiac Room in the Warburton Hotel. Lynch has more friends in show
business and high politics than any other man alive. Many top actors
break their trips from Washington or Baltimore to New York to stop
overnight for an evening with Lynch.
Philadelphia is two hours from Washington on fast trains. Many
show-starved Washingtonians, who don’t have the time to get to Broadway
to visit the legitimate theatre, find they can ride to Philadelphia,
catch a show--there are usually four or five big-time productions
playing--have a drink, and get back to Washington in time for bed.
Washington wolves go to Philly to howl. Mention New York or Atlantic
City and a bimbo knows that’s a weekend and all that goes with it. But
invite her to Philadelphia for an evening, then a few drinks after the
show--and the last train has left. A lady can’t sleep standing up.
Of course, New York remains the chief target for weekenders. Those
on small budgets stay at one of the popular-priced West Side hotels,
visit the usual tourist traps, occasionally see a Broadway show, and
have a hell of a time without spending too much. Government clerks
come away to New York for a weekend, a man and a woman, going Dutch.
Groups of government girls save up for a trip to the big city. They
go sight-seeing and gawking, send home colored postal cards and eat
box-lunches in Grant’s Tomb.
Most good New York cafes will not serve unescorted women. So the best
the typists and filers can do is wander around, oohing at the bright
lights and dreaming up lies to tell when they get back.
The guys in the bigger jobs have a hell of a time when in New York.
Embassy people come up regularly and are provided with introductions
to top models by the State Department. Key Congressmen and high
officials are brought up on junkets by lobbyists, entertained in the
swank joints, and if they don’t have their wives with them they can
have the best. If wives are along, they are invited by the lobbyists to
go shopping at places like Saks-Fifth Avenue, Bonwit Teller, Bergdorf
Goodman and Hattie Carnegie, and charge anything they want on the
lobbyist’s accounts.
The favorite hangout of the New Deal set in New York is the Stork Club.
The attorneys for the Stork Club are Goldwater and Flynn. The Flynn
is Ed Flynn, New Deal Democratic boss, campaign manager of the late
President Roosevelt. The Stork became a hangout for the left-wing and
do-gooder crowd during the 1930’s, when the late Supreme Court Justice
Frank Murphy used to cut up on the dance-floor with cuties. Harry
Hopkins, the ex-Mills Hotel Hopper, who addressed envelopes at a cent
each, favored its rich menu--on the cuff.
Many of the important bleeding hearts, labor union leaders and
spokesmen for the have-nots spent and still spend their time in
New York in the Stork Club, where the have-nots they bleed for are
rigorously barred by silken ropes.
Here such union bosses as the musicians’ Petrillo, a pal of Truman’s,
and the truckmen’s Tobin, a Roosevelt favorite, are served by a
nonunion restaurant staff. Sherman Billingsley, the Stork’s owner,
had to cough up more than $100,000 for back salaries and unfair labor
practices. But while he was fighting organized labor the chief union
bosses, all the Roosevelt sons and half the cabinet frequented his
place. They still do, though the restaurant unions still consider the
Stork unfair. But Sherman’s friends see the place is never picketed any
more.
The diplomatic set, visiting nobility and royal guests of the State
Department, and the older Washington dignitaries visit John Perona’s El
Morocco, the swankiest in New York. One may meet ambassadors, princes,
a dispossessed king and some South American presidents in Morocco at
one time. On these occasions there is more law scattered around the
room than there are customers in most other clubs. A visiting potentate
like a sultan or maharajah, in addition to rating a couple of Secret
Service men, gets four New York detectives.
When the boys come up from Washington with nothing good on their minds
they head for the Sun Up Club, in a private house in West 68th Street,
right off Central Park West. This place is run by a couple of sisters
who used to operate the Hour Glass Club. One, Helen O’Brien, is close
to Joe Nunan, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue and intimate
friend of Boss Ed Flynn. This place gets away with anything and has for
years. It freely sells liquor at any hour without a license and without
regard to closing ordinances.
Helen O’Brien knows a lot of amiable dishes who hang around there. If
there should happen to be none when a visiting padrone comes in, they
soon get there. This spot is practically unknown to New Yorkers, few of
whom, including newspapermen, ever heard of it. It is patronized almost
solely by august Democrats from Washington.
Visiting New Dealers pour also into Toots Shor’s restaurant, where
they are almost as welcome as baseball players and prize fighters. The
late Bob Hannegan, postmaster and Democratic Committee Chairman, was
a regular. Sometimes he brought an unknown Senator from his home state
with him, Harry Truman, who liked the conviviality of the place and
bent an elbow with the boys. When the Senator was Vice President, he
stopped in and played the piano in the private room. Toots, a genial
giant, fat and wide and tall, had lunch at the White House with the
late President Roosevelt and made him laugh. Sometimes at dinner
there’s more Washington brass at Toots’ than there is in Washington.
Toots also runs all non-union. But he can call a cabineteer a
crumb-bum, and is then set down as a character and a wit.
35. BALTIMORE, CONFIDENTIAL
(_Authors’ note_: This is a chapter, not the going-over that a
Lait-Mortimer excavating job on our sixth biggest city, our second
port in tonnage, truly rates. It is a by-product of this work,
because aristocratic, historic Baltimore is the slumming-ground for
thousands of escaping Washingtonians, only 36 miles away over fast
rails and modern autobahns.)
Stir up your memory and try to think when and where you have read an
“exposé” or any other study of Baltimore. You can recall pieces, kindly
or vicious, about San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New
Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, and discussions of the peculiarities
of Boston. But Baltimore, a main-line metropolis, with atmosphere and
tradition and volume and character, is by-passed.
We were almost complete strangers there on field-work, though our
tortuous delvings into the continental Mafia-managed Syndicate long ago
fixed for us its place in the national network.
Baltimore is perhaps the perfect example of a Mafia-controlled city in
action. For practical purposes it is a contraction of Chicago and an
expansion of Galveston, extreme gangster-throttled cities with the same
core of Sicilian manipulators who push the buttons and pull the levers.
Italians constitute one of the largest foreign elements in Baltimore
and can always be depended on to vote in a bloc. Little Italy is
centered around Albemarle and Fawn Sts., where much of the deviltry
is hatched over “dago red” wine. Add to this the huge colored vote,
which also is pretty solidly Democratic, and you have the makings of a
perfect boss-run burg.
Our investigations into other American municipalities have shown where
the Mafia dominates there is a disintegration of public morality and
private conscience.
To this major seaport huge numbers of Italian and Sicilian immigrants
have always been drawn. They formed the base for its underworld colony,
made it a star on the Mafia map. It is a concentration point for
illegally-entered Sicilians, stowed away on the freight steamers that
ply between the Mediterranean and Chesapeake Bay, by a smuggling-ring.
As these aliens become Americanized, grow rich and powerful in the
rackets, they import new waves of Sicilians for the underworld’s menial
tasks.
Baltimore is a favorite hide-out for Mafistas on the lam from
other towns, especially New York, and is used interchangeably with
Providence, R.I., for that. When one of your authors was assaulted
by Sicilian hoodlums in the pay of Mafia tycoons last spring at
Bill Miller’s Riviera in New Jersey, New York police investigating
the crime were tipped off that the sluggers were being sheltered in
Baltimore’s Little Italy, where they were feted as honored guests at
a two-week wedding blowout for the daughter of one of the richest and
most powerful Sicilians there. More recently, Tony Rotondo, a Brooklyn
ex-convict wanted on suspicion of being the torpedo who slew Bill
Drury, was found in Baltimore.
In recent years Baltimore has had an infiltration of Puerto Ricans.
It is in handy sea communication with the Caribbean. It has also
considerable air traffic with that area and at a cheaper rate than New
York’s. The affinity between the Mafia underworld and the new Puerto
Rican migrants quickly developed, as it did in East Harlem. Young
Puerto Ricans are employed as dope-peddlers, pimps, and torpedoes.
Their colony is not large as yet. What it lacks in size is made up for
with Latin enthusiasm.
Baltimore’s Negro population is around 300,000. On the whole, the
colored folk there are more orderly than their neighbors in the
District of Columbia. Maryland is still a Southern state and its
whites will stand for just so much. But Maryland’s Negroes have the
right to vote and they have been taken in hand by the professional
do-gooders, the New Dealers and other such ilk, who often work hand in
hand with the underworld. The result is that the Negro, the Italian and
the Puerto Rican votes are often enough to tip the balance in local
elections and perpetuate the criminal rule.
This is expressed on all levels with “fixes” necessary and available
for everything from a special license number which will exempt you from
arrest to the go-ahead for a bagnio. (When you see a Maryland license
ending in three zeros, you know the car is an untouchable.)
The town’s gambling czars are some Comi brothers, some Corbi brothers,
all Italians, and George Goldberg, big in numbers.
Tom Shaw, original owner of the swank Club Charles, also was important
in the gambling firmament until the Sicilians muscled in, taking a
part of his night club as well. Nick Campofreda, a local radio sports
announcer, was put in as permanent M.C.--not good either.
The Century Athletic Club on Baltimore St., was in the fight promoting
business, as well as the central clearing house for bets. The Mafia had
tried long and hard to declare itself in, always without success.
The deal was consummated three years ago, after a couple of swarthy
boys from Brooklyn “stuck” it up. Every newspaper printed the story,
but the cops denied it happened.
The Club has surrendered its fight charter, and is now simply a
gambling place. Five leaders of the Sicilian colony are James Caranna,
Frank Gattuso, Tom Lafata, John Maurice, and Joe Palozzolo. They
control the potent minority votes--through threats and payoffs--and
dictate to Baltimore’s political leaders.
The town’s top Democratic politicians are Bill “Boss” Curran, a lawyer,
and Jack Pollack, former bootlegger, now in insurance. He runs the 4th
District. Pollack was once arrested for murder but never indicted.
They split recently over patronage. Curran nominated his man for
Governor, but Pollack threw his weight to the G.O.P. candidate, thus
putting a Republican in the State House for the third time since 1864.
He is expected to remember his political debt to Pollack.
The new Governor, Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, was the last Republican
mayor of Baltimore. He had Pollack’s nod then, too.
The Governor can be a nuisance in Baltimore if he wants to, but never
does. City police heads are appointed by him, not by the mayor. Beverly
Ober, the incumbent commissioner, is “social,” and acceptable. Anyway
Maryland law provides a set term for the top cop. McKeldin is expected
to keep his snoot out of Baltimore--he needs it for re-election; and
its Democratic legislators--who control the legislature--to pass his
measures.
A powerful Democrat is Senator Herbert R. O’Conor. The R is for
Romulus. O’Conor is a member of the Kefauver committee. Locally he
works with whatever faction is in power.
George Muller, 4th ward boss and State Racing Commission Inspector is a
local czar.
Juke-boxes, vending-devices, slot-machines and other Frank Costello
monopolies are handled locally by Joseph Corbi, of the brothers, out on
bail at this writing after being arrested by the F.B.I. as one of the
chief operators of an international lottery ring.
Senator O’Conor is the sponsor of a new plan to bring in 36,000 Italian
immigrants forthwith, mostly from Sicily. The Baltimore underworld
hopes to route most of these to Maryland. But New York’s Republican
Senator Ives has boosted the ante to 130,000. There are more Italian
voters to appease in the Empire State.
The importation of Sicilians, legally and illegally, under the padrone
system, is again growing. Huge numbers of aliens have been brought
into the country and settled in certain key spots dominated by the
Mafia, where they work off their fare and keep, usually by acting as
dope-peddlers, numbers-runners or sluggers, or selling their daughters
into white slavery.
Now let’s catch up with our mythical refugee from Washington, who comes
to Baltimore for only one purpose--and that’s no good. You can be sure
he finds what he wants in Baltimore. It’s got everything that’s no good.
The visitor’s first impression is of a dirty old town, with ancient,
smoke-grimed structures and narrow, rambling streets, one-third of
which are still illuminated by gas-lights--with Welsbach globes!
Baltimore is overrun by rubes. And the dress, manners and customs of
most residents appear provincial. Washington is a city of hicks, too,
but it is a yokel cosmopolis, with farmers drawn from all sections of
the country, leavened with some civilized folk and foreigners.
Baltimore is the market for more chicken-farmers than any other of our
cities. It is the place, therefore, where they come to raise the kind
of hell a chicken-farmer would.
Washington women on the average seem smart and well-dressed compared
to those in Baltimore. Yet Baltimore has some famous high-fashioned
women’s shops which bring customers up from Washington. But the street
types don’t patronize them, for they walk around in cheap house-dresses
and shapeless coats of cloth, plush and phony fur.
This is the more surprising because Baltimoreans are the most finicky
shoppers in the world. As we write this, the local department stores
insert a pleading full-page ad in the papers:
“Gentle Reader.... Over 11,000 purchases daily are sent back to
Baltimore stores. NO OTHER CITY EVEN COMES CLOSE to our percentage of
returns.... Think how thousands of sales people lose productive time
making over 3,000,000 sales a year that come back.”
Baltimore has a Skid Row that turns your stomach even in Baltimore,
where so much of the burg looks like one Skid Row. Next door to and
around the corner from some of the best hotels, cafes and department
stores, you will find nude strippers, B-girls, hostesses and whores.
Guttered drunks and street-walkers may be the badge of the Bowery
elsewhere; here they are a common sight on every street.
The visitor heads for one of a half-dozen hotels, all but one of
which are almost as ancient as the city itself. The newest, the Lord
Baltimore, is almost a quarter-of-a-century old.
The hotels are cozy, but musty. The elderly Belvedere, once the class
joint, is now part of the nation-wide Sheraton chain. Its cocktail
lounge is the only social hangout left. The Emerson and the Southern
are doddering old ladies. There is an air of laissez faire in Baltimore
which extends to the inns. If you are quiet and gentlemanly about it,
they probably won’t throw that broad out of your room. For it is a
friendly town, as you will have many occasions to find out. Everyone
talks to you, half the girls you meet want to go to bed with you. The
name of its new airport is Friendship International.
When Judy Coplon worked for the Department of Justice she was
considered the most amenable gal there, which made her the most
popular. Harold Shapiro, a good-looking assistant attorney general,
dated her frequently. It was testified at her first trial that they
went together to Baltimore, where they spent a night in a room in the
Southern Hotel.
Judy admitted that, but claimed she did not undress. Shapiro was an
unhappy witness against her, because many thought he had acted for the
government to lure her--kissed and told.
He moaned to friends in Baltimore, “It happens to lots of guys. But not
everyone has a G-Man under the bed.”
The first item on the tourist’s agenda after he gets out of the hay is
East Baltimore Street, part of the main commercial thoroughfare. From
Gilford Avenue to Fallsway it is Hobo Heaven. You know when you are
getting to what you want to find when you see a Salvation Army meeting
on a street-corner, in front of a barker for a burlesque house. Other
towns have honky-tonk lanes, too, but this is the only one where it is
the main attraction.
Skid Row starts as soon as you walk past the Emerson and Southern
hotels. You are right in the middle of it--a good half mile of avenue
lined on both sides with burlesque theatres, cheap bars, low-class
night clubs, novelty stores, shooting galleries, penny arcades,
flop-houses and second-hand clothing stores. All burlesques and some
saloons have hawkers who will pull you in by main force if you hesitate
or stop to look at the pictures.
The most famous dump in town is a basement dive called the Oasis
Club. Years ago, when we first visited it, it specialized in a rowdy
floor-show, with a chorus of elderly relics, their drooping bosoms
unencumbered by brassieres. It is now a strip-joint selling a parade
of nudes, some “refined” with bubbles or fans, pretending to “tease.”
Many peelers make $1,000 a week. But not these in Baltimore. The Oasis
is non-union. The maximum salary is $35. They earn the rest of their
living sitting out with male customers. We had seen crummy shows
before, but nothing quite like the Oasis. Yet, when we stepped around,
we found it tame for the course.
In Chicago, where nudes run wild, they never work at floor level. They
are lewd on raised stages or on platforms behind bars. At the Oasis and
a good many others in Baltimore, they work on the floor. If you are
sitting at the ringside, you can reach out your hand and tap the babe
on her bare behind. And she’ll love it.
One or two Oasis girls strip completely, without G-strings, plaster
or anything on. The m.c. mouths continuous patter of dirty talk in
which he encourages the customers to tickle the girls--anywhere. The
girls talk back to the patrons, jump on their laps, stick their bare
backsides in their faces, in the spirit of good clean fun.
Max Cohen sold the Oasis to Sam Levin. He agreed to get out of the
strip business. But he immediately opened another room, around the
corner, called the Miami. Levin sued for breach of contract and
collected $50,000. The competition between these two sewers opened the
town up wider than it had been in decades. Each tried to outdo the
other in nudity. But a girl can’t take off more than all. Meanwhile,
other strip dives found themselves outstripped and had to meet the new
mode.
The Miami is around the corner from city hall and police headquarters.
The mayor can turn at his desk and look into the Miami, and many other
dives. This is one of the most vicious and lawless areas in the world.
The mayor of Baltimore, whose present term expires in May, 1951, is
Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., a Democrat. He was chosen Permanent President
of the U.S. Attorney-General’s Continuing Conference on Crime and
Corruption last winter.
Mayor D’Alesandro was, before his election as the city’s chief
executive, the “Mayor of Little Italy.” His rise to the seats of the
mighty, did not turn his head. He refused to move from the slums where
he had always lived, at 245 Fawn St. Instead he rebuilt his home into a
modernistic mansion, a show place surrounded by hovels.
Next door, and connected, is a new commercial building in which the
Mayor operates his insurance business and his wife her home-beauty
treatment supply company.