Stork Club : America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society [Hardcover]

Ralph Blumenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

From the speakeasy era to the 1960s, Sherman Billingsleys Stork Club was North Americas most enchanting nightclub. But simmering beneath the romantic surface of the ultimate caf society rendezvous was a tale of mob and muscle. Billingsley, a graduate of Leavenworth, founded the club as a front for Jazz Age gangsters and fought running battles against racketeers for years. Stork Club, by New York Times journalist Ralph Blumenthal, tells the entire seductive and enthralling saga of the worlds most storied nightspot and its owner.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Rita Hayworth, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Marilyn Monroe, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor--the list of regulars who patronized New York's exclusive Stork Club is a who's who of early- to mid-20th century society. But this lively, resonant account from Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Blumenthal (Once Through the Heart, etc.) of the club's rise and fall is more than an exercise in name-dropping. At its heart, it's the story of Sherman Billingsley, the Oklahoma bootlegger who opened the Stork during Prohibition and spent the next four decades keeping gangsters and unions at bay while coddling every rich, influential and famous person he could, plying them with gifts ranging from pure-bred puppies to perfume (called Cigogne, French for "stork"). Billingsley, who served time in Leavenworth for bootlegging, wound up in New York on the heels of one of his convict brothers. There he continued bootlegging (hiding behind his legit business as a drugstore owner) and made a name in real estate before opening the Stork. Media savvy and skilled at mar-keting, Billingsley had a knack for befriending the right people, among them gossip columnist Walter Winchell, who held court at the club for years. The Stork flourished during pre- and postwar years--an era captured vividly by Blumenthal (and well illustrated with a rich supply of period photos). The disillusionment that blanketed the U.S. after the Kennedy assassination, however, heralded the end of those heady times, whichBlumenthal colorfully brings back to life in all their glamour. But the pleasant haze of nostalgia he creates (in telling details such as the 14-karat gold chain inside the club's door) doesn't obscure the ugly union-busting actions that helped bring the club down. 75 b&w photos. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When American celebrity was mainly reserved for swells and gentiles, gatekeeper Sherman Billingsley set the standard for glamour. In his Stork Club's smoky magic circle, powerful New York columnists like Walter Winchell chronicled diners and drinkers for the consumption of hungry "nobodies" on a limited budget. Ex-bootlegger Billingsley hosted the likes of superdebs, the Kennedys, Ethel Merman, Tallulah Bankhead, and J. Edgar Hoover, dispensing orchids, perfume, and whiskey on favorites with a generosity he recouped from tourists' tables. New York Times culture reporter Blumenthal dispassionately captures the city's pampered class, its glaring sexual double standards, and its unabashed bigotry. Tabloid-style, he depicts women as the "svelte redhead," the "willowy green-eyed brunette," or "blond and blue-eyed." Blumenthal reveals that Billingsley bugged staff and patron conversations. Facing down death threats, extortion, discrimination suits, and union pickets out front, he kept the nightclub going from Prohibition until its demise in 1965 when, as Jimmy Breslin, said, "New York changed, and the Stork Club became silly and old." Recommended for public libraries.
-Elaine Machleder, Bronx, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company; First Edition edition (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316105317
• ISBN-13: 978-0316105316
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #907,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ah! The Good Old Days!!, February 21, 2002

By 

Mcgivern Owen L (NY, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stork Club: America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society (Paperback)

"Stork Club" is a pleasant surprise. It is the remarkably well- researched story of a one-time bootlegger from Oklahoma, by way of Washington and Detroit, named Sherman Billingsley. The author had the obvious cooperation of Billingley's daughter. Mr. B ran Manhattan's Stork Club from the mid- 30s to the mid -60s. Located on East 53rd Street, it was arguably the world's most famous nightclub, when there were such things. "SC" deals relatively briefly with the glamorous café society clientele such as Ethel Merman, Humphrey Bogart or the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It concentrates on the harder edges of Mr. Bs life; the bootlegging days in the Midwest, his (successful?) fight to free himself from the mobsters like Dutch Schultz and Owney Madden, needless run ins with Civil Rights activists and the ultimately ruinous struggles with local unions. Mr. B was always fighting something including internal theft, a fickle public and disloyal employees who left him to start their own nightclubs. He appears to have been his own worst enemy. "SC" ends on an unsurprisingly depressive note. This reviewer would definitely recommend "SC" to any native New Yorker of a "certain age" or those curious about an earlier, VASTLY more gracious, more livable and more desirable New York than the current yuppie playground it has become. ...Mr. B had the well-deserved reputation of being kind to young people and servicemen. My two visits to the Stork, just prior to its demise bore this out. They were nice to my date and me. ... This must have been a high-class place in its day, a "day" that is gone for good. "SC" is your chance to at least read about it and imagine.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book about a Great NYC Club, May 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Stork Club : America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society (Hardcover)

This book is extremely informative for anyone looking to go back in time to the great supper clubs of the 40's. It also provides amazing true stories, and should be a great read for anyone! My high reccommendation

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A GOLDEN AGE RECAPTURED, January 19, 2002

By 

dennis middlebrooks (new york, new york United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stork Club: America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society (Paperback)

This book brings to life the glorious decades of the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's, when night life in New York meant more than yuppie scum club hopping and dancing to grunge music in lofts. The wonderful Stork Club, and its colorful owner Sherman Billingsley, were an integral part of those decades. The book abounds in great anecdotes and captures what it must have been like to be admitted past the gold chain at the front entrance to the elegant interior of the Stork Club, where the likes of Walter Winchell, Jackie Gleason, Errol Flynn and Ethel Merman, to name a very few, held sway. How I wish I could go back to that era for just one night and spend it at the Stork Club!

The book is much more than the story of the Stork Club. It covers in considerable detail the remarkable life of Sherman Billingsley, who grew up on the frontier of Oklahoma and came to New York in the 1920's as a bootlegger, founding the Stork Club as a speakeasy in 1929. Billingsley was a real character that the reader cannot help liking and the chapters dealing with the demise of the Stork Club in 1965 and Billingsley's death a year later had an emotional impact on me; it was like losing old friends.

The book abounds in wonderful photos of the Stork Club and the people who worked there and partied there. An added bonus is a special section at the end of the book written bu Billingsley's daughter, Shermane, on how to throw your own "Stork Club party"! In addition to recipes for food and drink and other advice, she provides additional colorful anecdotes on her memories of the Stork Club.

Sherman Billingsley, where are you now that we really need you?