Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (49 page)

A broad smile on his face, Madden told Cole he'd think about it. Madden knew this was the perfect opportunity to get rid of Cole and his kidnappings, once and for all.

On March 8, 1932, Madden phoned Cole, and he told Cole to call him from the phone booth at the New London Pharmacy, across the street from Cornish Arms and he'd make arrangement for the hundred grand to be delivered to Cole. While Cole was in the drug store phone booth in the back speaking on the phone with Madden, a man with a machine gun hidden under his long coat, calmly walked up to Cole and emptied 15 rounds into Cole, making Madden and DeMange happy and relieved, to say the least.

In 1933, after he settle
d a little problem with the IRS and with Prohibition repealed, Madden decided to call it a day. He handed over the reins of
The
Cotton Club
to DeMange, and he hightailed it to Hot Springs, Ark., where he opened a hotel/spa, which became the favorite hideout for New York mobsters on the lam from the law. In fact, when New York Mafioso Lucky Luciano was in hiding, because a bulldog special prosecutor named Thomas E. Dewey had a warrant for Luciano's arrest on a trumped-up prostitution charge, it was at Madden's resort where Luciano was finally arrested after four months on the run.

Of course, Madden was still a silent partner with DeMange in
The Cotton Club
, but the huge profits would soon diminish, before coming completely to a halt in Harlem.

It started with the Great Depression, which had cut down dramatically on the disposable income of the rich, and the formerly rich. Downtown revelers who had frequented
The
Cotton Club
came less often, and when they did come, they spent less money. These same revelers got caught up in the street gang mentality, and as a result, an avalanche of bullets started flying in Harlem; whites shooting blacks, blacks shooting whites, and members of the same race slinging shots at each other. With so much lead zinging though the Harlem air, white-oriented Harlem clubs like
The
Cotton Club
suffered a dramatic decrease in attendance.

In addition, no area of America was affected more by the Depression than Harlem. By 1934, according to the New York Urban League, more than 80 percent of Harlem residents were on “Home Relief,” which we now call “Welfare.” The Reverend Adam Clayton Powell fanned the flames of racial tensions when he started leading boycotts of white-owned stores in Harlem, in order to force them to hire more black workers. Despair and resentment sprung up in the streets of Harlem, and this led to a fateful day in Harlem history.

A dark-skinned, 16-year-old Puerto Rican named Lino Rivera was sulking around the streets of Harlem, out of work and desperately looking for a job; any job. To pass the time, he took in a movie, and then went to the Kress Department Store on 125
th
Street. There he spotted a knife he wanted, but the knife cost 10 cents and Rivera didn't have 10 cents.

Rivera had just snatched the knife and put it into his pocket, when a male employee of the store grabbed Rivera
, and a scuffle ensued. While the two men were battling, another white employee jumped in and tried to help subdue Rivera. In seconds, a crowd of black shoppers surrounded the fight, obviously favoring Rivera. During the melee, Rivera bit the thumb of one of the white employees.

The injured man shouted, “I'm going to take you down to the basement and beat the hell out of you.”

Within minutes, the rumor had spread around the streets of Harlem that two white men were beating a black boy to death. This false rumor received dubious confirmation, when a blaring ambulance pulled up in front of the Kress Department Store. It made no difference the ambulance was there for the white man who had the severely bitten finger.

That night the streets of Harlem erupted in bedlam. Born out of resentment of the Depression, and the dismal way white people had been treating black people in Harlem for years, hundreds of blacks rioted in the streets. They looted white-owned stores
, and they pilfered merchandise as if it was their own.

The perception
of the downtown whites was that Harlem was no longer safe for them to venture into, even to see the wondrous entertainment at
The
Cotton Club.
In addition, black musicians and entertainers no longer considered
The
Cotton Club
as the top of the heap. It became a place where the entertainers could start their careers, but once they got noticed, they went on to bigger and better things. Business became so bad at
The
Cotton Club
(and other Harlem nightclubs that catered to the white downtown crowd, such as
Small's Paradise
on 7
th
Avenue), Harlem’s
The
Cotton Club
closed its doors for good on February 16, 1936.

DeMange and Herman Stark, with Madden's blessing from Hot Springs, moved
The
Cotton Club
downtown to 48
th
Street and Broadway, to a space formerly occupied by
The
Harlem Club
. The new
Cotton Club
was an immediate success. It had its grand re-opening on September 24, 1936. Cab Calloway and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson performed that night, as did Avis Andrews, the Berry Brothers, and the gorgeous Katherine Perry, who was so light-skinned she could easily pass for being white.

Because it was so accessible
with its new Midtown location,
The
Cotton Club
was raking in the cash. In the third week alone, it grossed more than $45,000, and in the first 16 weeks, the average weekly gross was $30,000.

The prices in
the new joint were higher than
The
Cotton Club's
in Harlem. A steak sandwich rose from $1.25 to $2.25. Scrambled eggs with Deerfield sausage rose from $1.25 to a $1.50 and lobster cocktails went from $1.00 to $1.50.

Still DeMange and Stark kept packing them in.

One price that did decrease was
The
Cotton Club's
cover charge. In Harlem, in order to keep the “undesirables” away, the cover charge was $3 per table. However, since blacks very rarely crossed the “Mason-Dixon Line” of 110
th
Street,
The Cotton Club's
cover charge was $2 per table during dinner time, and nothing after that.

The
Cotton Club
continued to thrive until the summer of 1939, when the Internal Revenue Service served the club's management with indictments for income tax evasion. The indictments hit the Cotton Club Management Corporation, including Herman Stark, president, George Goodrich, accountant, and Noah Braustein, secretary-treasurer, with four counts of failure to pay and embezzlement of taxes. If convicted, all three men faced up to 25 years in prison, and fines of up to $20,000 apiece. Amazingly, because he was just listed as an employee, Frenchy DeMange escaped the indictment. At trial, the Cotton Club Management Corporation was found guilty, but the three officers escaped conviction. Still, Stark had to fork over a hefty fine to the government, in addition to $3,400 owed in back taxes.

At the start of 1940, it was obvious that
The
Cotton Club
, and Herman Stark, had money problems. Besides the high midtown rent and the effects of the Depression, the unions, especially the musician union, had a stranglehold on Stark and his profits. Before his problems with the I.R.S., Stark was skimming money off the top to make up for any shortfalls the unions and the high entertainment payrolls caused. But with the government watching
The Cotton Club
like a hawk, skimming was now impossible.

The
Cotton Club
closed its door for good on June 10, 1940. Stark and DeMange gave no official reason, but as one columnist put it, the main reason was, “the lack of the famous, old filthy lucre.”

Yet, that explanation would be too simplistic. Of course, money was a problem, but also America's taste for music like Duke Ellington's and Cab Calloway's was changing too. The younger generation of Americans was enthralled with the new jazz and “swing” styles of white bandleaders like Tommy Dorsey, Artie
Shaw, and the “King of Swing,” Benny Goodman.

The
Cotton Club
was a great idea whose life span had run its course. The black entertainers who had cut their teeth working at
The
Cotton Club
, people like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lena Horne, all went on to establish long and wondrous careers. But the concept of a nightclub with all black entertainment no longer appealed to the white mainstream of America.

The
Cotton Club
closed because it was a concept that had blossomed, then like a gilded rose, slowly withered away. Still, the impact of
The
Cotton Club
on society will linger for as long as song and dance remains an integral part of our American culture.

D
ewey, Thomas E. – The Special Prosecutor From Hell

He was a mean-spirited
runt; a little man with a large mustache that seemed to dominate his snarling face. However, liberal Republican Thomas E. Dewey, a man who made his bones as a Special Prosecutor in New York City and who would stop at nothing to further his skyrocketing career, was just an eyelash away from becoming President of the United States.

Dewey was born on March 24, 1902 in the little town of Owosso, Mich. Dewey's father was the editor and publisher of the local newspaper: the
Owosso Times
. Dewey Senior's mission in life was to right the wrongs of the political world, especially the tyranny of Tammany Hall, a corrupt Democratic political machine based in New York City, but with tentacles that reached all around America. Dewey Junior admired his father's zeal, and this later motivated Dewey to go after organized crime figures in New York City with a vengeance that not always adhered to the letter of the law.

But first Dewey wanted to sing.

Dewey was a talented operatic baritone, and while he was attending the University of Michigan he joined the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a national fraternity for men of music. Dewey was also a member of the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club. Following in his father's footsteps, Dewey wrote for
The Michigan Daily
, the university's student newspaper. However, Dewey was better at singing than he was at writing, so much so, that in 1923, Dewey finished third in the National Singing Contest. However, Dewey soon developed throat problems, and although he briefly considered a career in music, he opted to become a lawyer instead.

With his father's money, Dewey traveled to New York City
, and he enrolled at the Columbia Law School. One of his classmates was the radical socialist/communist Paul Robeson, who became a singer and actor of some note, in between moving to and from the country he really loved: Russia.

However, Dewey was no idealist like Robeson. After he graduated law school in just two years, Dewey decided to hang up his own shingle and go into private practice, which he did from 1925-31. In 1928, Dewey married actress Frances Hutt. After their marriage, Dewey's wife quit acting, and they eventually raised two sons: Thomas E. Dewey Jr., and John Martin Dewey.

In 1931, Dewey was named chief assistant to George Medalie and was given the official title of Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This was the springboard Dewey needed to further a political career which knew no boundaries and counted heavily on legal improprieties.

In 1933, Dewey’s first major case was the prosecution of former pickpocket Irving Wexler, better known as Waxey Gordon. Gordon was a protégé of Arnold Rothstein, considered “The Godfather” of the modern gangster. In 1928, after Rothstein was killed over a large gambling debt, Gordon to
ok over Rothstein's operations, in bootlegging and in the gambling business. Gordon's partners in crime included such illustrious gangsters like Lucky Luciano, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, Gurrah Shapiro, and Meyer Lansky. Even after cutting in his partners, Gordon was said to have made over $2 million a year in profits.

However, Gordon and Lansky hated each other, and after Dewey unsuccessfully tried to
prosecute Gordon for his crimes, Lansky, with the blessing of Luciano and Buchalter, funneled information, including specific documentation, to Dewey that showed that maybe Gordon was not paying his fair share of his income taxes.

Using the same tactic the government had
utilized against Al Capone, Dewey, now in the possession of books that said Gordon had hidden $5 million in taxable income over a 10-year period, lowered the boom on Gordon. Dewey cross-examined Gordon with such cruelty, spit was proverbially flying from Dewey's mouth and down his copious mustache.

Gordon, basically an oaf with the mentally and vocabulary of a 10-year-old, was no match for Dewey on the witness stand. After the most one-sided trial that could possibly occur, Gordon was slapped with a 10-year prison sentence.

Dewey next set his sights on Dutch Schultz.