Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (61 page)

Over the next several years, Guinan stared in 36 westerns (she said it was over 300, but Guinan was known to exaggerate), and
she was called in Hollywood the “Queen of the Cowgirls,” as well as the “Female William S. Hart.”

When Prohibition became law, Guinan saw the opportunity to get out of “kissing horses in horse operas.” She went back to New York City, and in 1923 Guinan got a job as Mistress of Ceremonies at the Beaux Arts, a popular (illegal) nightclub. A few weeks later, the Knickerbocker Hotel hired Guinan to be
Mistress of Ceremonies at the hotel's
King Cole Room
. Frequent customers were such thespians as Rudolph Valentino and John Barrymore.

Gui
nan decided with her new career she needed a complete physical makeover. Casting off her cowgirl image, Guinan dyed her brunette hair to a radiant blond. She also started wearing clusters of diamonds and low-cut dresses, with a Stetson hat haughtily perched on top of her new blond hair. At the
King Cole Room
, Guinan sang her whole repertoire of songs, with much gusto if not with great vocal talent.

One of the men who caught Guinan's act at the
King Cole Room
was ex-con Larry Fey. Fey was a small-time criminal with 40 arrests on his record, mostly for minor offenses. Fey operated a cab business and all his cabs were decorated with swastikas. This was not because Fey was a proponent of the Nazi Party, but because he won a ton of money betting on a long-shot horse named Scotch Verdict, whose blanket carried the swastika symbol which was not yet associated with the Nazi Party. Fey was so enamored with the swastika, he placed the symbol not only on his cabs, but also on his shirts, luggage, and other personal belongings.

Fey was so successful with his cab company, he tried to list it on the American Stock Exchange, which was then known as the Curb Exchange. However, due to his criminal record, the Curb Exchange turned Fey down flat. So Fey decided to use his cabs for a new branch of his business.

As an exploratory trip, Fey traveled to the Canadian border in one of his cabs. When he got there, Fey loaded his cab with illegal booze, and he brought the booze back to New York City to serve in one of the several dive speakeasies he was involved in with known gangsters. Realizing he had hit pay dirt with his new idea, Fey then used fleets of his cabs to run booze back and forth from the Canadian border to New York City.

Because of his involvement with illegal rum-running during Prohibition, Fey was real tight with celebrity gangsters like Owney Madden and Frenchy DeMange, who were partners in the upscale
Cotton Club
in Harlem. Fey, his pockets now brimming with cash, wanted an upscale nightclub (speakeasy) of his own. And in Texas Guinan, Fey saw his meal ticket to success. Fey took Guinan in as a partner (along with Madden and DeMange), and they opened a nightclub with the uninspired name of
El Fey.

Fey was the man with the money behind the scenes, but Guinan was the upfront star of the
show. She sat in the middle of the main room on a tall chair and greeted every customer with her customary “Hello Sucker!” In her hand Guinan held a clapper, or a noisemaker, and sometimes a police whistle, which she was not averse to using. Before, after, and sometimes during the floor show, Guinan would engage her customers with wisecracks, and sometimes, downright insults. But it was all in good fun.

One of her customers once said, Guinan was “Never at a loss for a retort discourteous. It was her custom to encourage heckling rather than frown on it.”

Guinan coined the term “butter and eggs man” referring to a rich customer. And she often said when someone had too much to drink, that "a man could get real hurt falling off a bar stool."

For her stage shows, Guinan employed 40 scantily-clad you
ng ladies, performing in groups and sometimes individually; singing and dancing and doing other uncategorized cutesy performances. (A policeman, who raided the joint, once held a 4-by-6-inch piece of cloth which was one of Guinan's dancer's entire outfit.) The stage was so tiny, when the 40-girl chorus line went into full leg-kicking mode during an especially festive song, the girls sometimes fell into the laps of the well-heeled customers, some legitimate businessmen, some not so legitimate.

“It's not my girl's fault,” Guinan once told the police, who said her girls were intentionally sexually engaging the customers. “It's because the place is so crowded, my girls have no place to go.”

Whenever one of her girls finished a solo performance, Guinan always bellowed to the crowd, “Give the little lady a great big hand!”

One day, an enterprising Prohibition Agent infiltrated the premises, and he spotted a waiter selling a bottle of Scotch to a customer. The agent immediately jumped to his feet and yelled to one of his cohorts in the crowd concerning Guinan, “Give the little lady a great big handcuff!”

When
El Fey
was raided, and it happened quite often, Guinan, as she was being led from the premises by the police, would yell to her band to play
The Prisoner's Song
as she made her grand exit in handcuffs.

When the joint was jumping, and it was jumping every night, Guinan would yell to the crowd, “Thank the Lord for Prohibition!”

The crowd would yell back, “Why Tex?”

She would smile and say, “Because I would be out of a job without it.”

Speaking of Prohibition, at the time it was estimated there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York City alone.
El Fey
was one of the most expensive. Even though Guinan swore she didn't sell illegal alcohol on the premises, and she also swore she never took a drink in her life (which was the truth), a bottle of whatever booze you liked cost $25 at the
El Fey
. And if you brought in your own libation, setups cost five bucks a person.

Not too shabby.

After one-too-many busts,
El Fey
closed its doors for good; or more correctly, the police padlocked
El Fey
for good. So, Fey and Guinan moseyed on a couple of blocks from
El Fey
and opened the
Del Fey Club
. Soon, Guinan was “packing them in like sardines” again.

However, the
police, not being as stupid as Guinan and Fey thought they were, closed down the
Del Fey Club
in a matter of weeks.

The
New York Times
wrote: “After Federal agents, fortified with writs and warrants, hauled her into court ... the indefatigable hostess moved into the
Texas Guinan Club
at 117 West Forty-Eight Street .... And her coterie willingly followed...”

The
Texas Guinan Club
was such a success that Hollywood, in the name of Paramount Pictures honcho B.P. Schulberg, summoned Guinan again; this time to star as herself in the 1924 movie
Night Life in New York
. Her co-stars included Rod LaRocque, Ernest Torrence, Dorothy Gish, Helen Lee Worthing, and George Hackethorne. The title editor was Guinan’s ex-husband No. 2, Julian Johnson.

Night Life in New York
opened at the
Rivoli Theater
in New York City on July 12, 1924, the same week the prohibition agents and the local police shut down more than 30 New York City speakeasies, one of which was the
Texas Guinan Club.
Guinan was arrested at her club, put in handcuffs, and led from the premises, as the band again played “The Prisoner's Song.”

On August 4, 1924, Guinan and her lawyer Harold Content met with Assistant United States Attorney Frederic C. Bellinger. Guinan insisted that she was not aware of any liquor was being sold in her club, and that in fact, she was only
an employee of Larry Fey anyway and should not be held responsible for anything illegal that transpired at the club. Fey also appeared before Bellinger and confirmed what Guinan had said. Guinan worked for him, Fey said, and in no way did she have any real ownership in the
Texas Guinan Club
. Bellinger refused to press charges against Guinan, but he gave Fey a slap on the wrist by forcing him to close down the
Texas Guinan Club
for six months.

Unfazed, Guinan and Fey hightailed it to Miami, where in weeks they opened the
Miami Del Fey Club
. Guinan immediately went to work, taking a little time off to divorce her third husband, George Townley.

Guinan explained why she was a three-time failure at marriage: “It's having the same man around the house all the time that ruins matrimony.”

(Author’s  note: In Jimmy Breslin's biography on Damon Runyon, Breslin stated that Guinan was “a big loud lesbian.” I have trouble believing a woman married and divorced three times could be a lesbian. Possible, but not likely. But since Breslin was around in those days, and I wasn't, I'll give Breslin the benefit of the doubt.)

News of Guinan
and Fey's new venture traveled fast up north. The
New York Times
wrote, “Striking the high mark of the Florida real estate boom, their venture was a bonanza. The profits were enormous. So conspicuous was the Guinan-Fey success that both were hounded by real estate brokers, hoping for a quick turnover. Miss Guinan had an answer that repulsed all advances. She said 'Listen suckers. You take them by the sun. I take then by the moon. Now, let's don't interfere with each other’s businesses. ”

For some unknown reason, Fey and Guinan had a fallout in Miami. Fey
stayed in Miami while Guinan packed her bags and headed for New York City, where she opened her own
300 Club
at 151 West 54
th
Street.

Fey was not amused, nor was he very happy about the split, because the fact was, Guinan was his meal ticket to success. As a result, in New York City, Guinan bought herself a
bulletproof sedan and hired a slew of gangster bodyguards, just in case. Knowing Guinan had as many friends in the underworld as he did, (Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Owney Madden among them), Fey backed down from any planned aggression against Guinan, and instead he sent her flowers and a few diamonds to soothe over the misunderstanding. Guinan replied in kind with some presents of her own.

(On New Year’s Day, 1933, Fey was shot to death by one of his own employees, after Fey announced to the employee that he had to take a cut in pay.)

On February 16, 1927, Guinan's
300 Club
was raided by federal agents and the New York City police. Guinan spent nine hours in custody at the 47
th
Street police station before bail could be arranged. It was Guinan's sixth arrest, but the only time she had spent more than a few minutes in the slammer.

However, Guinan, the quintessential entertainer, made the most of her predicament. Without any prompting from anyone, Guinan went into full-entertaining mode. To the astonishment and pleasure of the other arrested party-goers, reporters, photographers, and even the police and federal agents, Guinan sang her entire repertoire of songs to the crowd for almost the entire nine hours of her stay. No one said a word,
nor did anything to stop her. And when Guinan was finally released from jail, she left to resounding applause. Even the lawmen were clapping.

Three days after Guinan's jail ordeal, famed evangelist Aimee
Semple McPherson made her grand entrance into Guinan's
300 Club
. McPherson was vehemently against drinking and carousing, and when she arrived at the
300 Club
most people thought trouble was a-brewing. But nothing could have been further from the truth. Guinan immediately diffused the situation. She introduced McPherson to the crowd, saying, “Let's give a big hand for the brave little woman!”

McPherson, a charmer herself, addressed the room by saying, "This is an experience such as I never had in all my life."

Then she admonished Guinan and all the other party-goers in attendance, by saying their behavior was not good for the well-being of their souls. Then before she left the premises in the wee hours of the morning, McPherson invited everyone to attend her revival meeting later that same day.

Guinan took that invitation seriously, and just a few hours later, Guinan and a dozen or so of her dancing girls, dressed to the nines in fur and diamonds, arrived at McPherson's Glad Tidings Tabernacle on West 33rd Street. The newspapers had been tipped off about Guinan's arrival, and as the photographers snapped away, Guinan shook hands with McPherson and told the crowd that McPherson was “a marvelous woman.”

Finished with her compliments, Guinan barked at her girls, "Come on, my chicks, let's get on to the club."

Over the next several years, Guinan opened and closed several night clubs, or to be more exact, the Feds and the New York City police closed them for her. These clubs included
Club Intime, Salon Royale
, and the
Argonaut
, which was the last nightclub Guinan owned.

In 1927, while the Feds had closed down
Salon Royale
for six months, Guinan decided to use her newfound free time to produce and star in a Broadway review called
The Padlocks of 1927,
which was little more than an extension of the stage shows she put on at her nightclubs. While Guinan belted out her best songs to the crowd, Guinan's girls danced and caroused on stage wearing padlock belts, but little else.