Customer Reviews

Chance of a Lifetime: Nucky Johnson, Skinny D'Amato and how Atlantic City became the Naughty Queen of Resorts

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Chance Of A Lifetime is the inside history of how Atlantic City earned its reputation for being the Queen of Resorts, especially focusing upon the lives and labors of political boss Enoch "Nucky" Johnson and 500 Club owner Paul "Skinny" Johnson who founded an economy on vice as a matter of civic pride. An engaging, uproarious true tale of sin, scrambling, and glittering legacy, Chance Of A Lifetime is a unique and welcome addition to 20th Century American History in general, and New Jersey State History in particular.

Being a native New Jerseyan, I really appreciated this book. the author makes you feel as if you have a front row seat at the "Queen of Resorts" a.k.a. Atlantic City, New Jersey! The reader will get a close up view of the "Rat Pack" boys,Frank Sinatra and Dean Martine..and the close relationship they had to "Skinny" D'Amato. This wonderful book is packed with photos of life Atlantic City back in the 40's and 50's...how different life was then in the "nightclub" era..when people dressed up and went out in search of entertainment..how different we live now with cable TV, computers, etc. This book can almost be an historical document..into the past..and what a contrast between the Atlantic City of today with her towering casinos, and the Atlantic City of yesterday!

While the subject matter of this book is quite intriguing, the writing style of Ms. D'Amato leaves a great deal to be desired. Quite frequently the text goes off on a tangent, then quickly returns to the subject at hand, and the reader is left scratching their head, wondering why the author even brought up the "sidebar".

As it is probably the only book available (to my knowledge) on Mr. Johnson and Mr. D'Amato, I can recommend it from a subject perspective. Just be prepared to have to go back and re-read sections trying to make some sense of them.

Given that individuals such as "nucky" johnson were corrupt and in cahoots with the notorious gangsters of the time,murderers,drug kingpins and other assorted lowlife types,Grace Anselmo D'Amato's account of the history of Atlantic City,New Jersey,and her brother-in-law,"Skinny" D'Amato's part in that history is naive at best,selective in what is and,perhaps,what is not included,and ultimately not a history at all.
Ms.D'Amato does make mention of the fact that crime,prostitution,bootlegging and such did flourish in and around Atlantic City during the time period which is covered by her book,and she likewise mentions the fact that gangsters and the entertainers most associated with them played the town,and were seen in the "500 club" her brother-in-law's establishment there..But from Ms.D'Amato's account all of this was a distant second to what she describes as a glitzy,charming if somewhat rougish romp,a time for"fun"in the sun and high class entertainment for the masses..
I have read elsewhere,in other less naive books about Atlantic City,that Johnson and his circle were thugs,facilitating thier gangster cronies on any number of levels..Indeed,according to many of the official government documents and reports regarding Atlantic City and its overlords written at the time covered in and around the period covered in Ms.D'Amato's book,the Atlantic City that most concerns Ms.D'Amato's text,the gaming halls and many of the clubs were mob owned,and that crime and corruption,not good"clean" fun was the order of the day...
On another level one cannot help but be suspect regarding this book..In many places Ms.D'Amato's scholarship is suspect..For example,on page23 she mentions the fact that in the 1920s "Nucky" Johnson owned the silver slipper supper club(a"classy joint" according to Ms D'Amato) and the "joint" offered as entertainment,among others,one Evelyn Nesbit,described by Ms.D'Amato as"a showgirl who married the neurotic,jealous millionaire Henry'Harry'Kendall Thaw"..So far so good..It is only when Ms.D'Amato decides to further explain to us who Ms.Nesbit was that she gets into trouble..."A famous architect named Stanford White fell in love with Evelyn and threatened her marriage.Thaw ended that threat by shooting and killing White in 1906 at Madison Square Garden in New York.Out of passion for Evelyn White had built her a swing in his home and padded it with red velvet.Thus Evelyn Nesbit gained notoriety as'the girl in the red velvet swing'whose husband had shot her lover out of implacable rage"..Wrong on almost all counts,and perhaps an indication of the calibre of research involved in the writing of"Chance of a lifetime"(but strangely familiar as part of a script for a 1950s "biopic" film starring Joan Collins as"The Girl in the red velvet swing")..Long before Harry Thaw entered her life Stanford White had taken the teen-aged Evelyn Nesbit under his wing,getting her jobs as an artist's model(she being the original"Gibson girl")and making her his mistress(one among many)..The notorious"red velvet swing" far from being built for Nesbit existed long before she entered White's life,having been used as a prop by him with other similiar proteges,and it did not reside in his"home" but,instead in one of his many secret hideaways,used as places of rendevous with his mostly underage"showgirl" mistresses..As for the "implacable" rage mentioned by MsD'Amato,it originated long before Evelyn Nesbit entered the picture,inasmuchas Thaw,from Pennslyvania and a "big wheel" there was consistently denied similiar status in Manhatten,often because White,a big apple darling of the rich jet set found him to be crude and eccentric..All of this factual information is readily available on the internet,in books found in most libraries,and one wonders why Ms.D'Amato got it all so wrong?..And,given how easy it would have been to get it right one wonders also about much of the rest of Ms.D'Amato's book..How much is real history,and how much,like the Nesbit-Thaw-White episode isn't?