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

~ (Author) "SSSSssshhhhhhhh. A flat rectangle of water slides down the rocky wall of a sudden oasis in the skyscraper canyons of Manhattan's East Fifties..." (more)
Key Phrases: bar book, Stork Club, New York, Cub Room (more...)

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company; First Edition edition (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316105317
• ISBN-13: 978-0316105316
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #743,408 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 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 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

9 of 9 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 (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (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.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a lost world --, January 15, 2001

By	kellytwo "kellytwo" (cleveland hts, ohio) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

A good mixologist should be able to so skillfully blend together a bunch of seemingly disparate items into one smooth whole that identification of those individual items becomes nearly impossible. This book is the result of one such very skillful blending process.

Once upon a time, there was an 'alternate world' known as 'cafe society'. It was very glamorous--on the outside. The major habitat of the folks who comprised this society was nightclubs; the majority of the world's accumulation of these places were in New York City, between approximately 1920 and 1970. Reasons for this phenomenon were many, although they primarily grew from the Prohibition era, which seemed to have prohibited almost nothing, especially the sale of alcohol and the possibly resultant rise of gangsterism.

New York City with its many glittering facets--theatre, dining, drinking, and gambling among them--drew not only the many immigrants, adding their national cultures to the above mix, but also the 'beautiful people' who enjoyed the seemingly unlimited benefits of such a cosmopolitan setting. Thus, at the beginning of the mass-media explosion, radio and movies, plus more and more magazines and newspapers, the art of 'celebrity' was born into this new world.

The Stork Club was but one of many of its kind, and this fascinating book touches on all these elements. One entire section details the genealogy of Sherman Billingsley, the larger-than-life owner of the Club, and whose name was synonymous with the era he embraced so whole-heartedly. Anyone who was anyone (and most of them were) was to be found in the lush atmosphere of the Stork Club, where a variety of tastes could easily be accomodated.

If you can remember this time at all--a really truly, kinder and gentler one--at least on the surface, you'll enjoy this trip backward in time. If you're too young to remember when celebrities were fêted and treated with respect for who they were, rather than hounded and heckled and attacked for what they are in today's world, you'll appreciate the diligence of the author in unveiling yesterday.

On the other hand, if you want to read about the under-belly of society at that time--the Mob 'stars'--Dutch Schultz, Frank Costello and others, you'll find them all here. In many ways, it brings back memories of the Untouchables in Chicago, only in this case, many of New York's untouchables were the elected politicians, law enforcement officials and judges.

Granted, it wasn't always nice, but if we're to learn from our mistakes, then this lavishly-illustrated and well-researched book also provides an assortment of lessons.

It must have been one of those fortuitous coincidences that brought Sherman Billingsley to New York at just the right time to take advantage of the birth of cafe society and the onset of prohibition. He became one of those 'bigger-than-life' personalities whose outer shell seemed to be made of teflon, even before that substance was invented.

There is also a comprehensive bibliography and extensive index. I enjoyed every page.