Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Suckers and Celebrities of the NYC Speakeasy Scene

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, it’s a battle between the lawman and the barkeep; we’re going to explore the New York jazz and speakeasy scene. Along the way, we’ll meet a few people who embodied that old adage: sometimes appearances can be deceiving. And, of course, if there’s anywhere in time and place to reinvent yourself, it’s New York City in the 1920s. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack. Dyson OnTrack headphones offer best-in-class noise cancellation and an enhanced sound range, making them perfect for enjoying music and podcasts. Get up to 55 hours of listening with active noise cancelling enabled, soft microfibre cushions engineered for comfort, and a range of colours and finishes. Dyson OnTrack. Headphones remastered.

Buy from dysoncanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply.

Details at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to episode six in our new series about prohibition from hatchets to hoods. Mayhem in a dry America. Today, we're going to explore the New York jazz and speakeasy scene and meet a few people who embodied that old adage. Sometimes appearances can be deceiving.

And of course, if there's anywhere in time and place to reinvent yourself, it's New York City in the 1920s. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. From a young age, the Prince of Wales, who would later become King Edward VIII of Britain, was captivated by American culture. He loved everything from cowboys to chewing gum. He made several visits to the United States in the 1920s when he himself was a devilishly good looking man of 25 and he delighted in the lavish parties, the jazz music scene, and above all, American women. He partied every night. He partied hard. The El Fae, a well-known New York City nightclub, was a melting pot of patrons. Everyone from the super wealthy to politicians, college boys, mobsters,

and the working class people jostled together for a space in the speakeasy. All it took to get inside was a little bit of pocket money and the passcode. To get inside was a little bit of pocket money and the passcode. In its heyday, it was visited by celebrities like Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, England's Lord Mountbatten, and on one fateful night, the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne. It was just his luck that on the night the Prince of Wales partied at the Elfay, prohibition agents raided the club. As the legend goes, a clever, quick-thinking hostess saved the Prince's bacon by tossing him an apron and directing him to cook eggs. Oh, Prince? No, there's no, I'm not sure. I don't know. What are you talking about? Prince?

There's no Prince here. How did you want your eggs again? I imagine that's exactly how it went down. Isidore Izzy Einstein and his partner, Mo Smith, were prohibition agents responsible for thousands of raids like the one on the El Faye. The media delighted in recounting the adrenaline-filled scenes because they were so entertaining, like this mention in a spring 1922 edition of the New York Herald. The agents had no trouble in most of the places, but at a few, the owners or bartenders resisted or tried to escape with the evidence. An escape was attempted at a hole in the wall, 137 Pierpont Street, and the agents had to smash a door leading to a rear room with an axe to catch a bartender who was trying to run away with several bottles of booze.

The owner of a saloon in 35 Central Avenue tried to smash the bottles containing his booze when the raiders entered, but missed with one bottle and it hit a boy on the head. But more entertaining than these news reports was Agent Izzy Einstein himself. Once, it's said, Izzy stood out in the freezing New York night wearing only his underclothes until he began to tremble and his teeth chattered uncontrollably. That was the cue for his partner Moe, who was much more appropriately dressed in a hat and coat. Moe led his near-frozen partner into an illegal bar and yelled urgently for someone to give him a drink to warm him up. As soon as the bartender handed a drink to Izzy, the undercover agents knew they had him. Izzy's cuffs came out and he delivered his line to the stunned bartender who thought he was helping a poor guy out. There's sad news here, Izzy said. You're under arrest. The beginning of Prohibition on January 17, 1920, shuttered thousands of previously legal

saloons, but did nothing to eliminate drinkers' desire or demand for alcohol. What it did do was force them to get creative about procuring it. Those in search of alcohol really had five options, several of which we talked about in previous episodes. You could get it from a doctor or pharmacy for quote-unquote specific medicinal purposes. Clergymen had access to it for specific religious purposes. Bootleggers made a living out of selling it. You could make it at home. Or people could patronize an illicit bar nicknamed a speakeasy because would-be entrants had to whisper a

password to keep the place discreet and secret. Interestingly, the term speakeasy predates Prohibition by a couple of decades and originated from Samuel Hudson, an American journalist in 1889 Pittsburgh. There, a new liquor law drastically reduced the number of taverns to under 100 for the whole city, which, in turn, led to an explosion of under-the-radar illegal bars. Hudson asked a friend to take him to one. During their adventure, the friend offered up an anecdote about a local old Irish widow who sold illegal alcohol and cautioned customers to spake easy now the police are at the der. You like my impression? It was really good. I sounded like an old Irish woman selling illegal alcohol, right?

But the phrase stuck, spake easy, evolved, evolved into an American accent and speakeasy, and patrons began applying it to the hundreds of unlicensed bars that popped up throughout the city. Hudson returned home to Philadelphia and brought the term along with him, which meant that by prohibition's onset 30-ish years later, there was already an easy word to reach for when people whispered about illegal liquor joints. Prohibition birthed the rise of speakeasies, and by their very secretive hidden nature, they appealed to anyone looking for excitement. No longer was a bar a male-only space. Speakeasies offered a literal new place for women to drink and to dance and to smoke and to chat with other patrons, including men. In fact, speakeasies changed drinking and dating.

Women were welcome to sit at the bar and drink as long as they had the money to do that. And they did, giving rise to a popular new drink, the mixed cocktail. rise to a popular new drink, the mixed cocktail. Mixing alcohol with juice, sugared water, and soft drinks took some of the edge off of hard liquor and offered a sweeter option for people who didn't like unadulterated booze. They wanted to partake in the entire speakeasy experience. Speakeasies weren't the only type of illegal establishments. In urban areas, there was a whole spectrum of places to get drunk, from upscale clubs with jazz bands and dance floors to seedy dive bars and gin joints. What they had in common, of course, was illegal alcohol and people willing to risk breaking the law for a drink.

The atmosphere of a speakeasy, though, varied depending on its location and clientele. The speakeasies that doubled as jazz clubs, restaurants, and nightclubs usually featured live music and were popular with celebrities and the wealthy. In the less upscale places, there was usually not much more than a simple bar with a railing at the bottom for patrons to prop up a foot as they stood shoulder to shoulder facing a wall of illegal liquor. If drinking alcohol is going to get patrons in the door, then what is going to keep them there? Live music and dancing, of course. Jazz music had begun to find a dedicated audience when Prohibition went into effect. But what Prohibition did for jazz was

create an underground nightclub culture that made the already popular music of the 1920s even more mainstream. The Cotton Club in Harlem was the most famous because of its live lineup of the most popular jazz musicians of the time. And the swanky 21 Club in New York City had multiple floors with two dining rooms, a dance floor, two bars, and underground passageways to a secret room full of alcohol. While widely recognized as a genre of music with roots in Black culture, jazz was extensively marketed toward the wealthy white elite. Jazz legends like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, King Oliver, Bestie Smith, Fats Waller, and Paul Whiteman,

they became wildly popular with both Black and white audiences during what F. Scott Fitzgerald called the Jazz Age. The racial politics of jazz and the packaging of music for different audiences could be an entire episode in and of itself. Many Prohibition-era jazz players were Black Americans and their audiences exclusively white, especially in upscale establishments. But Black and tan clubs were born when the underground club culture promoted integrated audiences, which is groundbreaking in a time when segregation was both the social practice but also government policy. Some speakeasies were open at all hours so that working men getting off the night shift could pop in for a shot of liquor on their way home for breakfast. Others were all about the nightlife.

others were all about the nightlife. Photos of speakeasies from the 1920s often show men in suits and hats and women in dresses and jewelry and high heels. And you may not know this, but speakeasies helped to usher in the sale of finger foods. That's right, bar food. It wasn't mozzarella sticks and fries back then, but hors d'oeuvres, little bites of something delicious. This was ingenious for a couple of reasons. First, selling small quantities of food alongside drinks encouraged patrons to stay and spend and drink

more. Second, the food helped to absorb some of the alcohol so that when the patrons exited, they weren't as likely to stumble around the streets drunk. The modern mindsets of the youth and these new clandestine places with food, music, and alcohol completely changed the way they could experience romantic encounters. Flappers were a symbol of the 1920s, women who eschewed Victorian rules on how ladies dressed and behaved. These rebellious dancing women cut their hair into sleek bombs and they raised their hemlines. They rolled down or went without stockings. And they even painted their knees. Okay, are you aware of this? Are you aware of knee painting? Makeup, of course, has always been a way for people to express their individuality.

And flappers wanted to draw the eye to a body part that had long been concealed. to a body part that had long been concealed, the knees. They began by accentuating them with just a little bit of rouge to draw attention to them like you would your cheeks. But some went so far as to paint flowers or even portraits of people on their knees. It was such a popular trend, by the way, both in Paris and the U.S., that it became the subject of fashion articles, songs, there were even poems written about this. Just as speakeasies offered new space where women and men could share a talk or smoke or drink and a dance, so too did it expand the opportunities for socializing among white and black patrons. and the opportunities for socializing among white and black patrons. The influx of young whites into Harlem and Chicago clubs to dance to black jazz musicians led to some of the dance crazes of the 1920s, and suddenly everybody is out there doing the Charleston and the Foxtrot and the Lindy Hop.

But corruption was an inherent part of speakeasies. Owners regularly bribed police officers who were willing to look the other way for either free drinks or cash. These bribed officers tipped off bar owners about planned raids by federal prohibition agents. Stashes and stockpiles of liquor, if discovered, could be confiscated and used to prosecute owners of speakeasies. So most proprietors had multiple inventive hiding places for their inventory. Unfortunately for them, Izzy Einstein, an unlikely agent in the Federal Prohibition Unit, was uncannily successful in locating these types of stashes. Izzy always commented as he reached for his handcuffs,

there's sad news here. You're under arrest. Amazon's Black Friday week starts November 21st with new deals added every day. Save on home goods to deck their halls, toys to stuff their stockings, and fashion like slippers to mistle their toes. Woo! small coffee and a $2 small latte. Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Woohoo! Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding

your Visa Infinite Privilege card to your OpenTable account. From there, you'll unlock first-come, first-served spots at select top restaurants when booking through OpenTable. Learn booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. Izzy didn't actually set out to be a lawman.

In fact, he worked in a post office when Congress, in an attempt to bulk up their staff of prohibition agents, publicized an ad for more men. Izzy thought it might be more fun than dealing with the mail, and it might pay enough to help him keep his four growing sons fed. So he applied. He actually wasn't anti-booze, but he was pro-law. And he dedicated himself to his job. Izzy was a regular guy. He was pretty short. He was like

5'5". And he weighed well over 200 pounds. He wasn't the type that turned heads. And yet, it was his very average looks that made him an ideal agent. Right? Like if you're 6'5 and extremely good looking, that's not a good idea. You stand out too much. He could easily just blend into the crowd and he did and no one really took much notice of him until the cuffs came out. Izzy was also like weirdly talented with languages. He was super gifted. He could speak Bohemian, Hungarian, Italian, German, Polish, and Yiddish, all of which were assets in New York. With his partner, Mo Smith, they wore a big series of inventive disguises, which often included the use of props to help them bust thousands of Volstead act violators. Although a sketch of

his face was frequently included in newspaper articles about him, Izzy's ability to transform himself worked flawlessly on bartenders and patrons because there was nothing he would not do. He didn't just like put on a new hat each night and he didn't merely just put on a disguise. We're not talking about like a wig and some sunglasses. No, he would adopt an entirely new persona. In upscale clubs, Izzy would dress to the nines. He would adopt an air of sophistication and always remember to tip generously. He was so skilled at blending in that nobody suspected him of being law enforcement. While the accents and outfits changed daily, the routine was the same. Izzy and Moe would don a disguise, enter a speakeasy or other illegal bar, and order a drink. Despite not having a background in police work, Izzy quickly learned that in order

to successfully prosecute a lawbreaker, he needed evidence. He created his own apparatus that was made from a small bottle, a tube, and a funnel. He concealed the funnel in either his collar or his suit pocket, depending on his disguise of the day. He would pretend to take a gulp of his drink, but instead he would toss it down the funnel, where it collected in the bottle housed in his pants pocket. where it collected in the bottle housed in his pants pocket. Apparently, he became so skilled that no one noticed that the glass never reached his mouth. Izzy would retreat to the restroom where he would put a stopper in the bottle and noted the time and place of the alcohol sale.

And then that evidence could be used at trial. sale. And then that evidence could be used at trial. Izzy never seemed to really delight in another's misfortune, but he was pretty firm in his goal of upholding the law. What gave him the most satisfaction was that he could perform his job while flexing his creativity at the same time, which probably was not a good fit at the post office. You are not encouraged to wear disguises at the post office. He arrested bartenders as a pickle packer, a grave digger, a fruit vendor, a fisherman, and countless other working class laborers. Can you imagine being like, working class laborers. Can you imagine being like, this is my pickle packer disguise. He carried law books into establishments that catered to lawyers. And one time, he carried a trombone into a bar full of musicians. Luckily, when they cheered him on to play, he was able to

make a good enough sound so that they were all like, hey, great job. to make a good enough sound so that they were all like, hey, great job. He often changed his nationality with disguises. Now, this is not something that people would do today, but this is what he did then. He would change his facial features using different kinds of disguises. He would also use his language skills to pick different accents so that he would be able to better blend in with the crowd in the bar. It definitely helped serve his goal of staying undetected so he could make arrests. Izzy and Mo were so skilled and so unrecognizable that they were sent outside of city limits to bust up rural establishments even. They would pose with shovels as gravediggers in nearby fields. They would wait until vehicles with liquor deliveries would show up to small town bars, and then they would go in for the arrest.

As Izzy's success rate grew, his arrest locations grew wider. He was successful in Detroit as an unemployed mechanic, in Rhode Island as a construction worker, and in El Paso as a day laborer. In one Michigan speakeasy, the bartender refused to serve him because he swore up and down that he was Izzy Epstein. You mean Einstein? Izzy said. When the bartender insisted the correct last name was Epstein, Izzy bet him a drink. When the bartender poured him a drink, Izzy Einstein cuffed him and said, there's sad news here. You're under arrest. He actually began to set timed challenges for himself. I mean, like this shows his level of creativity that the disguises and the ethnicities and the accents and the locations, that wasn't enough. Now it needed to be timed. He claimed he could hop off a train and catch a bootlegger

in 30 minutes. In Chicago and St. Louis, he found liquor in 21 minutes. It only took 17 minutes in Atlanta and 11 minutes in Pittsburgh. But in New Orleans, dear sweet New Orleans, he broke all expectations by arresting someone in 35 seconds. He had gotten into a cab, asked the driver where he could cure his thirst. And when the driver reached back into the backseat with some alcohol, Izzy cuffed him and you guessed it, said, There's sad news here. You're under arrest. Of course, Izzy and Moe's unconventional takedowns and high success rates made for great headlines. I'm sure they were eating it up. They had to be. Their exposure in newspapers across the country made them celebrities. Reporters gave Izzy all sorts of clever nicknames like the incomparable Izzy, honest Izzy. And somebody put some extra work into this one.

America's premier hooch-out. Details of their arrests were always publicized, and the pair of agents opted to milk their celebrity by scheduling their arrests around the time of peak news hours. They were notorious for going out on Sunday raids in order to make the front page of the paper on Monday mornings the highest profile newspaper day. One Sunday, they made a record-breaking 71 raids in 12 hours. And the New York Times ran a huge story. Here's a little bit of what it said. Izzy Einstein and Mo Smith went out yesterday on one of their Sunday drives.

By nightfall, they had bagged 16 saloon keepers and bartenders for violations of the Volstead Law and had collected three truckloads of seized liquors worth $24,000 at present prices. Sporting disguises Einstein and Smith set out in a big piece aero car with three trucks trailing. They jumped all over town and leaving the trucks at an appointed rendezvous, entered one place after another and bought drinks without being recognized and exchanged pleasantries with the bartenders about Izzy and Moe. They were talking about themselves in third person. When they flashed their shields, smiles changed to frowns.

One bartender fainted and another collapsed and a physician had to be called. In reporting the raids, Izzy Einstein said, it was easy picking. Every bartender and saloon keeper thought he knew Mo and me, and in some cases they had our pictures on the wall. I could walk into nearly any place in town and buy a drink. The average saloon keeper is so anxious to sell his hooch that he loses all sense of precaution. This loss of precaution had dire implications. It should come as no surprise then that speakeasy culture went hand in hand with organized crime. Supplying speakeasies

with alcohol was an extremely lucrative opportunity for those who worked outside the law. Al Capone, who I actually have a lot to tell you about him in the next episode, controlled thousands of illicit speakeasies in the late 1920s and allegedly made like $60 million a year doing that. During Prohibition, New York City held the record for the highest numbers of illegal speakeasies at over 100,000. That is bananas. Most were just like cheap places to get cheap booze, cheap entertainment built around the simple business plan to part a working man from his money. But it was Texas Guy Ninh who dominated the more upscale establishments frequented by affluent patrons. She was an actress by trade.

And during Prohibition, the El Fé was her stage. What made Texas so great as an emcee was not her booming voice or her cowboy tricks, but her ability to create a festive atmosphere that made her patrons want to stay and, of course, have another drink. One night in 1924, the bootlegger and racketeer Larry Fay saw her performance and gave her the job as hostess of his popular El Fay Club. The patrons ate it up. Her lively MC bit became famous. Word spread, not just to thrill seekers, but also to federal authorities who were constantly on the lookout for places that violated the law. And Texas liked to tell people that it was her quick thinking that saved the prince's skin. She said she put him to work in the kitchen until the coast was clear. It must have worked because there is no evidence that the Prince of Wales was arrested

or even recognized by the agents who infiltrated the Elf Bay. But it is well documented that he carried on in his carefree, partying lifestyle as long as he could. Edward VIII was crowned the King of the British Empire in 1936. If only shortly. He abdicated his role in just under a year for literally the only thing that could get a guy to give up his kingship. Love. But that is a story for another time. You can also watch the TV series The Crown. Texas Guy Nin, queen of the New York social scene, was welcoming to everyone from gangsters to socialites. Anyone with cash, you can all get in here. You got money, come on in.

She was the OG embodiment of Texas chic. Would-be customers waited in lines that wound around entire city blocks. They were that eager to experience some of her hospitality and of course her booze. And they would sometimes pay the high rate of a $25 cover fee, which is like $428 today. You can get a premium Hamilton ticket for that much money. So that's just the money to get into the bar. That's not covering any of the booze once you get in there. But Texas's larger-than-life personality was amplified by her lengthy arrest record,

which she used as material to entertain the crowns. So when agents arrived to shut down speakeasy after speakeasy where she performed, Texas worked it into her act. She'd blow into a gold police whistle that she kept on a chain around her neck and then she would direct the band to play the prisoner's song as she was escorted out. Although she was arrested several times for operating a speakeasy, she was never convicted. And writing about all of this was a journalist named Lipstick.

The New Yorker magazine's resident party girl, Lipstick, reinvigorated the publication at a time when it was struggling to stay afloat. Lipstick allowed readers to live vicariously through her reporting of the outrageous, the shocking, and the disgusting realities of New York City party life. Lipstick was actually Lois Long, and she would become one of the New Yorker's most well-known columnists for nearly 50 years. Lois was the first to make fashion criticism a hallmark of her writing, which she paired with juicy tell-all chronicles of her escapades in 1920s New York. After graduating from Vassar in 1922, Lois moved to New York and worked at various publications, including Vanity Fair and Vogue.

She was the epitome of the modern woman. She drank, smoked, and enjoyed all of the nightlife adventures that the city had to offer. She reflected, if you could make it to the ladies' room before throwing up, you were thought to be good at holding your liquor. It was customary to give $2 to the cab driver if you threw up in his cab, which happened from time to time. If you're picturing a young Carrie Bradshaw in 1924 at age 23, writing about her adventures with jazz, gin, and jitterbugging her way across New York City, you would probably be spot on. jazzed gin and jitterbugging her way across New York City, you would probably be spot on. Lois's work expanded to include a column called Tables for Two, which reviewed nightclubs. And Lipstick flouted all modest conventions. She staggered, still drunk, into work in the pre-dawn hours so that she could write her column while the night escapades were still fresh in her mind. If it happened to be a humid New York day, she shed her clothing and worked in a slip.

At one point, she and her assistant delighted in using roller skates to move about the office. Women like Texas, lipstick, and the countless flappers and women frequenting speakeasies and jazz clubs found some freedom and flexibility in the illicit underground scene. And women would have a voice too in the repeal of prohibition, which we're going to hear about later in this series. Despite their 95% success rate, Izzy and Mo were laid off in 1925. It was speculated that it was because Izzy and Mo got more attention than their superiors. The New York Times lamented the loss, saying that the public, which viewed them with as much delight as Robin Hood,

were now denied their adventures as thrilling as Sir Lancelot and Richard Lionheart. Remarkably, in their five years as prohibition agents, Izzy and Moe made nearly 5,000 arrests and confiscated more than 4 million gallons of illegal alcohol. Without a doubt, they were the most successful prohibition agents of all time. Two years after being fired slash laid off, the FBI offered Izzy a transfer to Chicago, which he declined. He had no desire to leave New York, nor did he want to find himself entangled with Al Capone and his Chicago outfit. Because while some of the debauchery that dominated Prohibition fizzled out after its repeal, the underbelly of the city, organized crime, remained, and it flourished. So too did the options for alcohol and the fat of cocktails and mixed drinks increased in popularity.

We'll get into those lasting results and the stories that preceded them next time. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.