Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway [Hardcover]

Jerome Charyn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2003

In this heady tribute to an unforgettable time and place, Jerome Charyn takes readers back to the golden era when Broadway the street became Broadway the legend. While Damon Runyon was the street's first chronicler, feting its good-guy gangsters and moxie'd molls, Charyn enlarges the story, capturing Broadway's vagabond nature, outlaw culture, and self-mythologizing. In prose both bombastic and cinematic, one of New York's quintessential contemporary writers brings a rollicking, rough-and-tumble time in the city's history to life, conjuring an intoxicating portrait of Jazz Age excess by examining the denizens of that greatest of all "staggering machine[s] of desire," Broadway. The stellar cast in this popular history includes Mae West, Fanny Brice, Legs Diamond, Irving Berlin, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and many more. 30 historic black-and-white photographs are featured.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charyn's paean to Jazz Age New York stars the multifarious characters who graced the stages, speakeasies and diners around Broadway in the 1920s and '30s. Never, he says, was New York "New Yorkier" than in this "lawless, unbridled mecca where everybody could meet-hoodlums, heiresses, jazz singers, funny girls, dentists from Des Moines (so long as they had a little money)...." Around Broadway, Al Jolson rubbed shoulders with Ellin Mackay, "the richest girl in America," and George Gershwin would run into Mae West. In the words of nightclub owner Texas Guinan, "Better a square foot of New York than all the rest of the world in a lump." High spirits, though, don't prevent deep flaws in Charyn's book. The author, who has written more than 30 books of fiction, memoir and cultural studies, presents a huge array of characters, few of whom are explored deeply or coherently. Many of the myriad players are cursorily glossed over and then dropped from the narrative. The result is like walking into a glittering party where you don't know a soul and nobody bothers to make introductions. Those who already know the major and minor stars of this era will glean some colorful anecdotes, taken from disparate sources. Al Capone, for example, "liked to drink whisky out of a teacup" and Zelda Fitzgerald, before her breakdowns, was prone to dive into the fountain at Union Square. The force of the running prose, reminiscent of the high-kicking Follies girls, might carry interested readers through the disorganized narrative. Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Exciting...vivid...anyone who's nostalgic about Manhattans history will cherish [it]." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1St Edition edition (November 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568582781
• ISBN-13: 978-1568582788
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #611,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in the mean streets of the Bronx and have remained a city wolf, dividing my time between New York City and Paris.

I grew up reading comic books and watching movies; you can see their influences in my books. I started writing novels at the age of eleven; Amazon carries 40+ titles, fiction and non-fiction.

For the past fourteen years I taught film at the American University of Paris.

I love Emily Dickinson's poems and William Faulkner's novels. I also love Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," which has the feel of a novel. (I wrote a book about Tarantino, "Raised by Wolves," after the film's release.)

My novel "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson," published in 2010, inspired a community of more than 3500 Emily Dickinson Facebook fans dedicated to the poet's place in the 21st century.

"The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" is now available in paperback in a reading group edition with online reading guide.

My most recent book, "Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil," was released on March 8, 2011, part of the Yale University Press series on American Icons. More than 1000 fans are already registered on its Facebook page.

I invite you to join me on Facebook for "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" or "Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil." Or visit my website: www.jeromecharyn.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underrated book on Broadway's colorful past, October 31, 2003

By 

B. M. Howard (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway (Hardcover)

Gangsters and Golddiggers is a fascinating book that introduces you to the unique characters that made up early broadway. From its early existence as an Indian trail to the rise of theater and organized crime, this book offers a glimpse into a world that vibrates with violence and lust. Gangsters and Golddiggers reads almost like an epic motion picture. Definately pick this one up.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Colorful Historic Era, December 21, 2003

By 

C. W. Emblom "Bill Emblom" (Ishpeming, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway (Hardcover)

Author Jerome Charyn provides the reader with a cast of colorful characters such as Arnold Rothstein who used to enjoy wasting his time in Lindy's Restaurant, Al Jolson who was very difficult to live with and a self promoter, Legs Diamond, who detective Johnny Broderick once stuffed into a garbage can, Flo Ziegfeld, who glamorized the American girl, former singing waiter Irving Berlin who sang at Nigger Mike's and then went on to become the writer of over one thousand songs. Author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, gangster Owney Madden, Fannie Brice and her husband Billy Rose who was 5' 3 1/2" in his elevator shoes "who walked with the bounce of an overwound toy." Bert Gordon, W.C. Fields, Ruby Keeler, boxers Jack Dempsey and Johnson, and, of course, The Bambino himself, George Herman Ruth. The book is filled with anecdotes of these and other famous and infamous characters that made The Great White Way the historic place it is today. If you like social history you should love this book. I did come to one conclusion about a great majority of these individuals. As famous or infamous they may have been, many of them shared a feeling of loneliness even though they were major players in American social history.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Who edited this book?, March 30, 2004

By 

Jacob G. Novak "Jakesjokes" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway (Hardcover)

Well, this book is filled with lots of interesting stories, but it's so disorganized it seems like it was written by an Jazz age drunk! Better editing would have done wonders for this book which has great stories about some of the celebrities of the 1920's, but flows sloppily from one anecdote to another.