Lee Mortimer covered the night club scene for the Mirror. On Sunday April 14 he reviewed the shows at Leon & Eddies and Kelly's Stables, two 52nd Street establishments..
Mortimer, born Mortimer Lieberman, was the son of immigrant parents. His family move from Chicago to New York where his father started a business manufacturing boy's clothing and was still active in the business in 1946. Mortimer was fascinated with the underworld and wrote several books on the subject. He got into a fist fight with Frank Sinatra in 1947 after linking the singer to the Mafia and the Communist Party.
Leon & Eddies and Kelly's Stables were not the swank. sophisticated places people sometimes call up in their minds when they think of nightclubs. Like many of the joints on 52nd Street they were boisterous places, popular with the heavy drinking crowd. Most shows at Leon & Eddie's included a stripper and this week an artist who called herself June March did the honors. The eyes of ladies' man Lee Mortimer-- he was married five times- were drawn to "a skinny, dark doll called 'Helene,'" half of a slapstick dance duo, Helene and Howard, appearing at the club. He led off his column with a tribute to her talent. Comic ballroom dancing routines were a staple of nightclub floor shows back then. Mortimer called Helene "one of the finest deadpan comediennes I've ever seen" and predicted big things for her. (The act knocked about playing what was left of the vaudeville circuit, appearing for a spell with Bela Lugosi in minor venues, and later showing up on "Ed Sullivan" and other TV variety shows in the Fifties).
Mortimer found the show at Leon & Eddie's, at 33 West 52nd Street, "tops in all departments." One of his favorite singers, Sonny King, had been held over and was "still tearing the house down." King was 24-year- old former prizefighter, a streetwise Italian-American from a Brooklyn. A short time before, he had been sharing a single room at the Bryant Hotel, a favorite with nightclub performers and musicians located at 54th and Broadway, with his manager Lou Perry and two other aspiring talents, the singer Dean Martin and comedian Alan King. According to King in his book Name Dropping, two of them slept on the bed and two on the couch, while occasional guests got the bathtub. Sonny introduced a new friend, Jerry Lewis, to Martin in 1945. Lewis wrote in Dean and Me that King was something of an operator. (He would later be a sub-member of the Rat Pack and longtime part of Jimmy Durante's act.).
Also on the bill were acrobats the Arnault Brothers, back from the Service. They had added a young woman to their act, performed. The Barretts were a "fast, young tap team" while Lou and Lillyan Bernard did a harmonica act, another 1946 entertainment staple. Larry Adler and John Sebastian pere were the top practitioners. Adler could be heard that Sunday night performing classical music on radio and Sebastian had a stand at the the Waldorf Astoria that week.
Comic Jackie Whalen was the emcee of the show, standing in for co-owner Eddie Davis, who was often in charge of the proceedings. Whalen was noted for his hoary jokes. Mortimer wrote that he "got more laughs with old hoke than anyone in my experience." Other show regulars included the Sydney Sprague "gals" and Art Warner's band. It was quite a crowded show.
According to Davis's obituary in 1987 in The New York Times , Leon & Eddie's was "one of the most famous drinking and entertainment places in the world" in the 1930s and 40s. Like its neighbor, "21," it had started as a basement speakeasy during Prohibition. Davis was a gravel-voiced singer who often led the revelers in risque singalongs. His partner was Leon Enken. Restaurateur Toots Shor worked as a manager and part-time bouncer in the club's early days. In 1946 Davis and Enken opened a second Leon & Eddie's in Miami. (They dissolved the partnership and split the clubs in 1947. Davis got the New York location which he closed in 1953.).
One of the club's most popular features was their Sunday salute to a big name entertainer. The honoree that evening, according to the ad that ran in the Mirror, was "that peerless purveyor of priceless stories" and "hilarious dean of dialecticians" Myron Cohen (he and his jokes told with a Yiddish accent were a TV staple in later decades).
Kelly's Stable, at 137 West 52nd, that week featured Nan BlaKstone (that's how she spelled it), a singer of risque party songs. According James Gavin in Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret, BlaKstone had the air of a spinster aunt regaling children with her dirty songs. She had been banned in Boston but managed to get away with a lot everywhere else. Mortimer wrote that she was "an old favorite" who "really rocks the place with her ditties." Also appearing was Nellie Hill, "a looker with a voice."
Fifty-Second Street was known for jazz, particularly be-bop at this time, Even though there was no dancing at Kelly's Stable, two jive bands "make the customers' eardrums dance," per Mortimer. One was a sextet headed by sax player Earl Warren (aka Earle Warren). The other was the Teddy Kaye Trio with the three Osmond Sisters supplying the vocals. According to Billboard, the Osmond Sisters were bounced the next week, although Mortimer reported they were "socko." Sets at Kelly's Stable, whose patrons dropped by after a night of barhopping, often went until. 4:30 AM. according to Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzie Gillespie, by Alyn Shipton. Gillespie was just one of the many jazz greats who played at Kelly's Stables early in their careers. According to Mortimer the place had just had a facelift.
The Mirror carried a number of ads for nightclubs including the big, flashy joints the Latin Quarter and Copacabana, the second tier nightspots the Playgoers Club, the 400 Restaurant and La Martinique, as well as lesser spots like the China Doll, the Rendezvous Room, the Hotel George Washington and Jimmy Kelly's. Two clubs in the Bronx, Club Maxim and the Red Mill also advertised. (See nightclubs section for more info on who was appearing at these clubs).
A small ad announced a Passover dance sponsored by the Senior Young People's League (over 21 please) at the Mosholu Jewish Center on Hill Avenue in the Bronx. This was a thriving Orthodox congregation in the North Bronx with 3,500 members at its peak. (See NYT of Nov, 22, 1989, when it closed its doors after the Jews had deserted the neighborhood.) The Young Men and Young Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress was holding its annual spring dansant with the Roy Rogers Society Orchestra at the Manhattan Center on 34th and Eighth Avenue. Proceeds were going to European orphaned children.