Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure

11. Nights of Gladness (Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe)

203 11 Nights of Gladness D o r ot h y K I Lg A L L E N o N C E termed West 46th Street—the small sliver of it that extends from Broadway and empties into Eighth Avenue— “Girl Street.” Here, nightly during the 1940s, a string of five stage doors would release “showgirls, taxi dancers, floor show beauties, strip teasers, and chorines.” Merging into the 11:00 p.m. post-theater rush, they made this block “the happiest avenue in Manhattan for the tired businessman or the tireless Princeton smoothie.” Today, with the hulking Marriott Marquis having obliterated the original Helen Hayes Theater (formerly the Fulton), the number of stage doors has been reduced and the block offers an impression of having been tapered at either end, growing smaller each year like a retreating polar cap. A tall, glittering condo has replaced the neon-and-grime allure of McHale’s bar on the western or Eighth Avenue end, and, as seen in the previous chapter, the structure housing the Orpheum Dance Palace on the Broadway corner has been razed. Soon the Scientology building, which sits in the middle of the block (it was once the National Vaudeville Artists clubhouse), could be one of the only reminders of Girl Street’s architectural past, of the time when grizzle-voiced matrons swirled condensed milk into briny coffee at HoJo’s and wristwatch salesmen hawked their goods in open suitcases.1 Still, a few traces remain. The Thomas Lamb-designed Paramount Hotel, located just east of the McHale’s site, opened in 1928 and became known as one of Times Square’s most elegant establishments. After years of decline , former Studio 54 owner Ian Schrager took control of the Paramount during the late 1980s and renovated it using a puckish design by Philippe Starck; today the lobby, dominated by its wide stairway, remains a memorable public space, even if the cramped “boutique” rooms have caused the hotel to again seem dated. Not everything was altered during the Starck renovation, however, and outside, on 46th Street, the Paramount’s history is most strikingly represented by a pair of gilt window cases, rising on either side of a modern glass doorway. Laden with rococo ornamentation, the cases feature glass panels that swing on hinges, allowing signs for the 204 Chapter 11 Paramount’s bar—a manicured Caucasian hand grasping a cocktail—to be placed inside. Above each window a pair of wavy-haired cherubim sits in a bed of garlands, with a scalloped clamshell rising garishly in the middle. The window cases, seeming to drip baroque indulgence seasoned by a dash of tackiness suggestive of the Coney Island boardwalk, clash with the sophisticated ethic that the Paramount works so hard to cultivate. But in this they reflect the drive, spirit, and vulgarity of the man who installed them; at the same time they recall an era when Times Square did not shy away from being identified as the populist hive it has always been. In the restricted sphere of Broadway, where cabarets are born and die like morning glories in the hot noon-day sun, the fabulous success of Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe stands out like a lighthouse beacon in a fogshrouded night. (Diamond Horseshoe program, 1943) It’s Christmas Night, 1938. The Paramount’s bulbous window cases are filled with posters advertising Billy Rose’s newest venture, the Diamond Horseshoe. Having paid $5.00 for admission at the personal invitation of Mr. Rose, celebrity guests pass through the brass-railed door on 46th Street, cross the lobby, and descend a curving marble staircase. Along the way their eyes attempt to unravel the jumble of a Gay Nineties-themed 11.1. Diamond Horseshoe patrons, early 1940s. Nights of gladness 205 collage, dizzy with Police Gazette-styled images of women in garters and their male admirers; but the stairwell is soon overshadowed by what awaits them upon reaching the basement. Flashes of gold, offset by lurid crimson, glitter and sparkle throughout the compact room, bouncing from shiny chairs to fluted columns and then hitting the chandelier. Observant visitors murmur that the spiky proscenium and other decorations were here before, when the cramped space had been the Paramount Grill, but what of it? Even the most critical tongues are forced to subside in deference to what is uniformly agreed upon as Billy’s master stroke: the bar, which nestles underneath...