Among the rooms best remembered from the torrid 20's are the El Fey, Tex Guinan's, the Madrid, the Hotsy Totsy, the Abbey, the Silver Slipper, the Plantation, the Argonaut, the Frivolities, La Sportiva, Cap Williams', the 50-50 Club, and Sid Solomon's Central Park Casino, which was Jimmy Walker's night "City Hall."
Some had lurid histories, with gangland killings and knifings an almost everyday commonplace. But many of today's Hollywood and Broadway greats came out of this hurly-burly.
Harry Richman and Morton Downey both played pianos in speaks.
Georgie Raft hoofed at Roseland dance hall, later for Tex Guinan, at $50 a week.
Joan Crawford, then Lucille Le Seur, worked as a show gal at the Frivolities, where a fabulous story of Cinderella on the Main Stem happened.
It was the custom on Sunday nights to hold chorus girl "opportunity contests," at which outstanding youngsters appeared and sang or danced.
The winner was awarded a $50 bill.
These contests were conducted by Nils T. Granlund, a character truly as fantastic as the lies told about him, who had been Marcus Loew's personal press agent and the first radio star in the country, working under the pseudonymic initials, N.T.G. He became the leading café man of his age.
N.T.G., known as "Granny" to thousands in show business, was then directing the entertainment policy of the Frivolities, as well as ten other midtown clubs, and the "opportunity contests" were rotated from club to club, week after week.