The modern idea of the prohibition-era speakeasy is distorted via cinematic fantasies of the jazz age and by hipsterish cocktail bars.
In reality, it seems they were often pretty seedy places – as you might expect when (a) they weren’t really supposed to exist; (b) were entangled with organised crime; and (c) could only sell smuggled booze.
John O’Hara’s 1935 novel BUtterfield 8 (the upper case U is correct) was written just as prohibition was coming to an end and feels like a conscious effort to document the era.
It tells the story of Gloria Wandrous, a promiscuous 18-year-old who picks up men across New York City. A large chunk of the action takes place in one speakeasy or other, with a remarkable amount of space being dedicated to recording details of their atmosphere and operation.
For example, there’s a nameless speakeasy on Fortieth Street which is described as follows:
They went.. up a winding staircase. They were admitted after being peered at, it turned out, by a man with a superb case of acne rosacea… It was the longest bar in New York in those days, and the room was bare except for the absolute essentials. One half of it held tables and chairs and a mechanical piano, but there was one half in front of the bar which was bare concrete floor.
The word “bare” is repeated twice, once in reference to “bare concrete”. This hardly sounds like the stuff to excite Baz Luhrmann, the consummate maximalist.
Another speakeasy Gloria visits is described as “a converted carriage house, with no character except that”.
Later in the novel we get a list of Gloria’s favourite speakeasies, the names of which are admittedly evocative:
The Dizzy Club, the Hotsy-Totsy, Tommy Guinan’s Chez Florence, the Type & Print Club, the Basque’s, Michel’s, Tony’s East Fifty-third Street, Tony’s West Forty-ninth Street, Forty-two West Forty-nine, the Aquarium, Mario’s, the Clamhouse, the Bandbox, the West Forty-fourth Street Club, McDermott’s, the Sligo Slasher’s, the Newswriters’, Billy Duffy’s, Jack Delaney’s, Sam Schwartz’s, the Richmond, Frank & Jack’s, Frankie & Johnny’s, Felix’s, Louis’, Phyllis’s, Twenty-one West Fifty-third, Marlborough House – these were places where she was known by name and sight, where she awed the bartenders by the amount she drank.
You might think that’s quite a lot of establishments given that they were supposed to be illegal but one estimate reckons New York had 32,000 speakeasies in around 1930.
That article explains how many speakeasies were “hole-in-the-walls”. Crime scene photos from the New York Police Department archives shared by the NYC Department of Records & Information Services give us a sense of what that meant. They look dirty, untidy, unsanitary and not a little bleak – like very basic beerhouses, only without even the benefit of natural light.
But, just as pubs come in many shapes and sizes, so did speakeasies. In his novel, O’Hara explains how the speakeasy evolved in its final phase, at the beginning of the 1930s:
They went to a lot of speakeasies, especially to the then new kind, as it was the beginning of the elaborate era. From serving furtive drinks of bad liquor disguised as demi-tasse the speakeasy had progressed to whole town houses, with uniformed pages and cigarette girls, a string orchestra and a four- or five-piece Negro band for dancing, free hors d’œuvres, four and five bartenders, silver-plated keys and other souvenir-admittance tokens to regular patrons, expensive entertainment, Cordon Bleu chefs, engraved announcements in pretty good taste, intricate accounting systems and business machinery – all a very good and, because of the competition, necessary front for the picturesque and deadly business of supplying liquor at huge financial profit powerful radio stations, powerful speedboats and other craft not unlike the British ‘Q’ ships, powerful weapons against highjackers, powerful connexions in the right places. And often very good liquor and enough good wine to set in front of the people who knew good wine and still cared about it.
This more elaborate model feels closer to the speakeasy of modern popular imagination.
Speakeasies are these days associated primarily with cocktails and O’Hara’s characters certainly drink plenty of those, along with spirits in various configurations. If you’ve got to smuggle booze, spirits offer greater bang for your buck, after all.
Gloria Wandrous does drink a little beer, though, ordering an “ale” in one speakeasy: “She gulped some beer and left some in the glass. ‘That’s all I want.’”
The great selling point of O’Hara’s novel was its frankness, not only about sexuality but also about other matters. So, finally, that gives us something quite unusual – notes on the qualities of speakeasy toilets:
She had used toilets in speakeasies where to breathe the air seemed pretty risky. But there was something intimate about a speakeasy in the family. No one who went to the same speakeasy as you did would be so mean as to give you something. That was almost the way she felt about speakeasy toilets; but she always took elaborate precautions anyway.
They don’t show you that in The Great Gatsby, do they? Everyone holding their bladders to avoid using the bog and, when they do, having to hold their noses.
