Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (44 page)

Then
Mayor Walker entered the lion's den and came face to face with Justice Seabury.

Right off the bat, there was terrible tension between the two men, who couldn't be more different in personality and in demeanor. Over a two-day period, Seabury spat his questions at Walker, and Walker fired back with the utmost contempt.

At one point Walker yelled at Seabury, “You and Franklin Roosevelt are not going to hoist yourself to the Presidency over my dead body.”

While Seabury hammered hard questions at Walker, it became evident that “Beau James” had insulated himself from direct connection to any political skullduggery. However, it was highly embarrassing to Walker, when it was discovered that there had been cash payments made to his girlfriend Betty
Compton after some connected businesses were awarded lucrative contracts from the powers-that-be in New York City; which included Walker,

In addition, Walker's brother Dr. William H. Walker, who had a monopoly on worker's compensation claims, seemed to have banked over $500,000 in a four-year period. Seabury uncovered evidence that William Walker had, in fact, padded ma
ny of the workman's comp claims and had secreted the difference into his own coffers.

Even though Seabury could not pin one illegal act on Mayor Walker himself, it was obvious that Walker had been blasted with political blows he could never recover from. As a result of the Seabury investigation, Seabury penned a recommendation to Governor Roosevelt which said that Walker should be removed from office for “gross improprieties and other instances of political malfeasance.”

Governor Roosevelt was just months away from the presidential elections. And since Walker still had legions of supporters in New York City, Roosevelt wasn't sure what was the best way to handle the Walker situation.

Walker took Roosevelt off the hook, when on September 1, 1932, he announced his resignation
as Mayor of New York City.

Within days, Walker hopped on a cruise ship to Europe, accompanied by his showgirl girlfriend
, Betty Compton. In 1933, Walker divorced his wife and married Compton. For three years, Walker spent his self-imposed exile in London with Compton. When Walker returned to New York City, LaGuardia was mayor, and Walker was out of politics for good.

Shunned by the political arena, Walker returned to his first love: the music industry. Walker
became head of Majestic Records, a big-band record label that included such popular musicians as Louie Prima and Bud Freeman. In 1946, two years after he assumed control of Majestic Records, Walker died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 65. Walker was buried in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

In 1957, comedian and song-and-dance-man Bob Hope starred in a movie based on Walker's
life called
Beau James
. This film was based on a biography of Walker, also titled
Beau James
, written by Gene Fowler. This book was also used as the basis for
Jimmy
, a Broadway play about Walker, that ran from October 1969 to January 1970. In
Jimmy
, Frank Gorshin played Walker and Anita Gillette played Betty Compton.

In the 1959 Broadway musical
Fiorello!
, the song
Gentleman Jimmy
, was dedicated to New York City's “Midnight Mayor,” Jimmy Walker.

                              The End

*******

Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps

Volume 3 - New York City

By Joe Bruno

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Knickerbocker Literary Services

EDITED BY:

Marc A. Maturo
and Lawrence Venturato

COVER BY:

Nitro Covers

Copyright 2011 by Knickerbocker Literary Services

*****

What Readers
are saying about “Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps – Volume 3 – New York City”:

AS GOOD AS A HISTORY BOOK
! –
RJ Parker “Best Selling Author”

Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps - Volume 3 by Joe Bruno is a masterpiece of New York City's history of crimes and criminals, and even disasters. Many of these people were the dregs of society who Bruno dug up from the sewer
s of NYC and placed in a book.
This is the second book I've read by the author and have added him to my favourites. I like his style and the substance of his material. Good as a history book. Highly recommended.
 

Best of the Best
! –
lcook0825

Volume
3 and is definitely the best of all of them. This was as good as any history book on the subject of the Mafia for the era in question. The way each person or event was covered left you knowing exactly what happened and being from New York I knew the places

Volume 3 keeps pace with "1" & "2"
–
John M. Bitowt Jr.

Joe Bruno has once again amazed and mystified the reading audience with "Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps-Volume 3 New York City"!! As in Volumes 1,2, & 3, the reader is destined to find out some previously unpublished or forgotten facts regarding the era, the feel of the city, or characteristics which were popular at said moments
.

Bruno does it again!
–
Mathew J. Mari

Volume 3 is as good as Volumes 1&2. It is easy to read and very interesting. You can read it through in a couple of sessions or a ch
apter at a time at your leisure, or you can skip chapters if you like as each is self contained.
 

An
excellent book; well written
– Jean M Kilgallen

This is a great book for those people who like to read about gangsters like Mafioso Carmine
Galante, Paul Castellano, Carlo Gambino, and Vito Genovese. But it also contains some interesting stories of long forgotten disasters like the Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876 and the General Slocum Paddleboat Fire of 1906.
I especially liked the article on Evelyn Mittelman, called "The Kiss of Death," because several of her boyfriends were killed by men who lusted to be her new boyfriend.

Volume 3 is as good as Volumes 1 & 2
–
Tony Palumbo

I had already read Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volumes 1 & 2 - New York City, so when I saw that Volume 3 was available I just had to buy it. And the aut
hor doesn't disappoint at all! All in all, for 99 cents, Volume 3, like Volumes 1 & 2, is a great bargain. Highly recommended!

*********

B
rooklyn Theater Fire of 1876

It started out as
a gala performance of
Two Orphans
at the Brooklyn Theater on Washington Street in Brooklyn. But thanks to inefficient and incompetent theater personnel, it wound up being the third-worst fire, occurring either in a theater or public assembly building, in the history of the United States of America.

The title roles were played by Maude Harrison and Kate Claxton, who was thought to be one of the best stage actresses of her time. Others in the cast included well-known actors Claude Burroughs, J.B. St
udley, H.S. Murdoch, and Mrs. Farren. All would play leading roles in the tragedy that followed.

The Brooklyn Theater, which seated 1,600 people, was built in 1871. It was an L-shaped brick building with its mai
n entrance on Washington Street and a secondary entrance on Johnson Street, a smaller thoroughfare which ran perpendicular to Washington Street 200 feet to the east. One block to the north was what was then Brooklyn's City Hall. And one block to the south was Fulton Street, the main thoroughfare to the Manhattan ferries, which brought theatergoers from the mainland of Manhattan to the Brooklyn Theater. (The Brooklyn Bridge wasn't built until 1886.)

The Brooklyn Theater had three floors of seating. The ground floor was called the “Parquet and parquet circle” seating. It contained 600 seats. The second floor balcony seats were called the “dress circle” seats, and they seated 550 patrons. The third floor gallery, which was called the “family circle” seats, contained 450 seats.

The top level family circle seats, at 50 cents a pop, were the cheapest seats in the house, and it had its own box office on Washington Street. It also had one set of 7-foot wide stairs, designed with a zigzag of right-and left-angle turns and leading directly from the street outside to the third floor. The theater was set up such that the people in the family circle seats had no access to the balcony below, or to the main floor of the theater.

This turned out to be their undoing.

The second floor dress circle seats, costing one dollar, had two flights of stairs to enter and exit the theater. One was a 10-foot wide set of stairs that led to and from the lobby. The other was a narrower set of emergency stairs that led to Flood's Alley, a tiny strip of dirt behind the theater. The ground floor door to Flood's Alley was usually locked to stop gatecrashers from entering the theater on the sly.

The ground floor seating was comprised of three price ranges. The least expensive was the parquet seating, disadvantageously si
tuated on the side of the stage and costing 75 cents. The parquet circle seats, which were in the middle of the auditorium, cost $1.50. There were also eight private boxes, four on each side of the stage, which were the most fashionable and expensive seats in the house. Each private box contained six seats. Box seats cost a whopping $10 apiece, a kingly sum in the 1870s.

Illumination in the theater was pr
ovided by gas jets in the lobby and in the vestibule. A few gas jets covered by ornamental globes were set on the orchestra floor. Border lights were lined in a row along the proscenium arch, which is the rectangular frame around the stage. These lights had tin on the side facing the audience and were covered by wire netting. Above the boarder lights were thin pieces of cloth that served as scenery. Some of these pieces of cloth dangled precariously close to the boarder lights.

As a precaution, buckets of water were usually kept on the side of the stage in case the dangling scenery caught fire. Plus, there was a fire hose backstage that was connected to a 2 ½-inch water pipe.

On December 5, 1876, approximately a thousand people were in attendance at the Brooklyn Theater. About 400 people were seated in the upper family circle seats (an exact figure was never determined), 360 people sat in the dress circle seats, and 250 people sat in the parquet and parquet circle seats.

Edward B. Dickinson, who was seated in the middle of the parquet seats about five rows from the stage, thought the auditorium floor was not more than half-full. However, Charles Vine, who was sitting in the top family circle seats, thought it was “one of the biggest galleries” he had seen in a long time at the Brooklyn Theater.

Everything was fine until the short intermission between the fourth and fifth acts. During this time, the curtain was down hiding the stage, and the orchestra was playing during the intermission. People in the parquet circle heard loud noises from behind the curtain. But this was not considered unusual.

Seconds before the curtain came down, stage manager
, J. W. Thorpe, saw a small flame coming from the lower part of a drop scenery hanging near the center stage border light. Thorpe later said the flame was about the size of his hand. Thorpe looked for the water buckets, but for some reason they were not where they were supposed to be. He thought about using the fire hose backstage, but so much scenery was in the way, he decided it was quicker to extinguish the fire by beating it with long stage poles. Thorpe directed his carpenters, Hamilton Weaver and William Van Sicken, to attempt to quell the fire by banging it with two large stage poles.

At around 11:20 p.m., the fifth and final act started. When the curtain came down, Kate Claxton, playing a blind orphan girl, was laying on a stack of straw, looking upward. J. B. Studley and H. S. Murdoch had taken their places on stage, in a box set representing an old boathouse on the bank of the Seine. Mary Ann Farren and Claude Burroughs were waiting in the wings for their cues to enter into the scene. Miss Harrison was not in this scene, so she stood backstage and watched the production.

Murdock had delivered just a few lines, when he heard someone whisper “Fire” from backstage. Murdock looked up to the proscenium arch. He saw heavy black smoke and the flickering of small flames. Murdock could see that the fire was spreading quickly upward towards the domed ceiling of the theater. Murdock stopped delivering his lines, but the audience had not yet noticed the fire and smoke.

Murdock heard Claxton whisper, “Go on. They will put it out. Go on.”

Murdock finished his lines, and Farren and Burroughs entered the scene from the wings. Miss Claxton had just delivered her lines to Murdock, saying, “I forbid you to touch me. I will beg no more,” when flaming parts of the ceiling fell onto the stage, igniting Claxton's costume. Studley hurried over and extinguished the flames on Claxton with his bare hands.