Paradise Cabaret Restaurant – A New Yorker State of Mind

Lois Long welcomed 1933 by venturing out into the New Year’s nightclub scene…

…where she encountered the new Paradise Cabaret Restaurant at Broadway and 49th, where there was no cover charge and not much covering the showgirls, either…

THE GANG’S ALL HERE…Everyone from gangsters to sugar daddies (and a number of *New Yorker* staffers) took in the sights and sounds of the Paradise Cabaret Restaurant (shown here in 1937). (Pinterest)

THE SPIRIT OF NEKKIDNESS, as **Lois Long** put it in her “Tables for Two” column, could be found at the Paradise Cabaret Restaurant: clockwise, from top left, marquee on the corner of the Brill Building advertises a 1936 appearance of the comedy team of **Dewey Barto** and **George Mann** (photo by **George Mann** via Flickr); menu cover made it clear that food was not the main attraction at the Paradise; a 1933 poster advertising “a Galaxy of Stars”; a 1943 “Paradise Girls” poster; circa 1930s matchbook; circa 1930s noisemaker. (Flickr/picclick/Pinterest)

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT…known as the “laugh kings” of vaudeville, the comedy team of Barto and Mann rehearse at the Paradise in 1936. Their humor played on their disparities in height — Barto was under 5′ and Mann was 6’6″. If Mann (top right) looks familiar, later in life he portrayed “King Vitaman” in commercials for the breakfast cereal of the same name. As I recall it tasted like Cap’n Crunch. (Wikipedia)

While Mann went on to become King Vitaman, another Paradise performer, 16-year-old Hope Chandler, found the love of her life while performing in next-to-nothing at the Paradise…

SHE WAS ONLY SIXTEEN…**Hope Chandler**’s photo (right) was featured on the Dec. 20, 1937 cover of *LIFE* Magazine, which proclaimed the 16-year-old as the “Prettiest Girl in Paradise”. Photo at left was included in the magazine article. (Twitter)

…namely the 22-year-old son of William Randolph Hearst, who spotted Chandler during one of his visits to the Paradise. David Whitmire Hearst married Chandler in 1938 and they lived happily ever until his death in 1986.

YOUNG LOVE…**David Whitmire Hearst** and his new wife, **Hope Chandler,** after their wedding ceremony in New York, 1938. They would be married 48 years until David’s death in 1986. Hope would remain active in the Hearst organization until her death at age 90 in 2012. (Tumblr)

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Tragic Opera

Yes, the lovers die at the end of Tristan und Isolde, but for New York opera buffs the real tragedy belonged to Samuel Insull (1859–1938), a Chicago utilities magnate responsible for building a new Chicago Civic Opera House in 1929. When Insull’s opera house went bust in 1932, the Met landed two of its principal stars. Robert Simon reported for The New Yorker:

CHICAGO’S FINEST…Soprano Frida Leider (left) and mezzo-contralto **Maria Olszewska** were stars of the Chicago Opera from 1928 to 1932. When the company went belly-up, the singers headed for New York to appear in a much-acclaimed performance of *Tristan und Isolde.* (metoperafamily.org)

Insull was a famed innovator and investor who was a driving force behind creating an integrated electrical infrastructure in the U.S. In 1925 he addressed the financial difficulties of the Chicago opera community with a proposal to build a skyscraper with an opera house on the ground floor — he thought the rental of office space would cover the opera company’s expenses. The building was completed in 1929 — the same year as the market crash — and suddenly his grand plan didn’t look so grand.

Then Insull’s companies went under, and he was charged with fraud and embezzlement. He fled to Europe, but in 1934 he was arrested in Istanbul and brought back to Chicago to stand trial. Although he was acquitted, he was left a broken (and broke) man, his $3 billion utilities empire in shambles.

DUELING ARIAS…New York’s rival in the opera scene, the Chicago Civic Opera erected this skyscraper (left) in 1929 with the help of **Samuel Insull**; a door at the Cook County jail in Chicago is opened for Insull in May 1934, his $3 billion utilities empire in shambles. He was unable to raise the $200,000 bail in fraud charges, which were eventually dismissed; at right, New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1909. (classicchicagomagazine.com/Wikipedia)

FAME TO INFAMY…Insull’s appearances on the cover of *Time* said it all: left to right: issues from November 29, 1926; November 4, 1929; and May 14, 1934. (classicchicagomagazine.com)

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From Land to Sea

The National Auto Show left town to be followed by the annual Boat Show at the Grand Central Palace, featuring boats that were priced to meet the needs of some Depression-era buyers:

CRUISIN’ CRUISETTE…You could buy an Elco Cruisette for just under $3,000 in 1933, but that was roughly equivalent to $64,000 today, so it was still out of reach for most Americans in the 1930s. (Pinterest)

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From Our Advertisers

Yes, the boat show was in town, but automobile manufacturers were still making their points to potential customers including Chrysler, one of The New Yorker’s biggest advertisers in the early 1930s…here’s a two-page spread for the Dodge 8…

…Chrysler’s DeSoto line claimed a luxurious interior that would inspire even regular folks to put on the “haughty air” of a French Duchess…

…on the other hand, the folks at Cadillac went for understatement with this announcement of a limited edition V-16…

…with 16 cylinders under the hood, this thing could really tear down the road, but it was the Depression, and even though this edition was limited to just 400 cars, only 125 were sold…

…it really bothers me that the Savoy Plaza Hotel (1927) was knocked down in 1965 and replaced by the monolithic GM Building…and look, in 1933 you could get a single room for five bucks a night…

…maybe you’d rather take to the seas on the Hamburg-American Line…

The SS Reliance in 1937. Gutted by fire in 1938, she was scrapped in 1941. (Wikipedia)

…or you could chase away the winter blues in a steaming bath that the folks at Cannon Towels called “almost the ultimate in mortal content”…

…and no doubt a few lit up a Camel or two during their soak…note the tagline “I’d walk a mile for a Camel!”…it was a slogan the brand used for decades…