The movie industry is always skating on such thin ice, what with anti-trust laws, etc., that a request from Washington is a command. So it’s a happy out all around. Mr. Big gets rid of his discarded girl, she goes willingly because no girl can turn down a film contract, and Hollywood stores up a favor for the next time it needs one.
Many girls with talent originated here but they scrammed as soon as they were old enough to know better. Among them were Helen Hayes, Kate Smith and Mary Eaton, all members of the St. Patrick’s Players.
Washington has no clubs or theatres with lines of girls. The best a babe with light feet can do is get in as a teacher at a dance studio, quite a business in Washington. The local classified phone directory has four pages of listings of dance instructors. That’s because dancing schools are a swell way for lonesome people to meet each other, and that’s what Washington has plenty of. The local Arthur Murray licensee, across the street from the Mayflower Hotel, is the largest Arthur Murray studio in the world. At least 2,000 girls find full or part-time employment working as instructors in the dozens of studios. Many of these girls are little more than taxi-dancers.
Pretty, personable ones can make up to $100 a week with tips. Those who take dates after hours do even better.
The real Washington glamor girl is the kept woman. You’d be surprised how many there are. All the bigger hotels and the glossier apartment houses around Dupont Circle and out Connecticut Avenue are loaded with them. They are the ones you most often see in mink coats, in expensive beauty parlors and fine shops. They are maintained mainly by important government officials, Senators, sports and millionaires from all over the country who make their headquarters in Washington. Many an executive who commutes to the capital keeps a cutie there full time.
All Washington giggled when it heard the story of the tall, stately blonde whose bills were paid by a Cuban sugar millionaire, and who fell in love with an assistant manager of the Shoreham Hotel, where she was living in high style. Her Latin lover found her in flagrante delicto with the hotel employe. The men squared off for a fist fight, but first locked the babe in a clothes closet. They blacked each other’s eyes--but she fractured her ankle trying to kick the door down.
To add to the embarrassment of the unhappy Cuban, his wife had been spying on him and his love through high-powered binoculars from Rock Creek Park, across the street. She sued him for divorce in New York.
A genuine glamor-gal does pop up now and then. One was Evelyn Knight, the radio and record star, who warbled for $75 a week in Washington hotels until a couple of years ago, then clicked in Manhattan and is now dragging down thousands.
Bette Woodruff, another home-grown dish, seems to be on the upgrade. A dress model, Bette had a yen to sing. One day, on a dare, she phoned maestro Dick Williams to tell him she was available. He didn’t know her from Eve, took her name to shut her up. Next day his vocalist got sick. He phoned Bette in a hurry. That was less than a year ago. Now she’s thrushing regularly, and well.
But Jan Du Mond, a five-foot-three night club canary, pianist and composer, drives a cab by day.
“My little coupe broke down,” she told a reporter. “I couldn’t afford a new car. Becoming a taxi-driver provided me with transportation at night to get to my engagement--the company lets me take the car home.”
Besides, she meets the most interesting people!
Sometimes a government gal switches to a glamor gal. One was Sandra Stahl, “Miss Washington,” in last fall’s Atlantic City beauty contest. Sandra was a secretary for Air Force Intelligence, but she has a face, a figure, a noodle and a voice. She was the dark horse when she sang before 3,000 people in Rock Creek Park, but 14 judges, including the Treasurer of the United States, sent her to Atlantic City.
Sandra comes from Long Beach, California. In our “New York, Confidential,” we noted that many of Gotham’s orchids on display come from Southern California. Maybe Sandra got on the wrong train.
13. COMPANY GIRLS
This is a specialty known only to Washington.
With the procuring situation as it is, the business of getting girls for fun, friendship, or what have you in mind is so commercialized, it’s incredible.
In our excursions into life in New York and Chicago, we found that girls you pay for an evening can be divided into two classes: party-girls and call-girls.
You summon the former, but they are not necessarily whores. You whistle for the others only when there’s to be a party.
If this seems contradictory, it’s because the dividing line is so tenuous, it usually isn’t there. But for our purposes, we shall group them together and call both “C-girls,” which stands for company girls, which is just what the womanless men who call them want them to be.
There are as many kinds of C-girls as there are kinds of women. They range from the lowest, who will come to your room for $5 for a quickie, to the most ultra, who expects $100, plus expenses, as a fee for her company for an evening, and nothing guaranteed. If it happens, it must be romanced or financed with honorarium.
The C-girls include the cheapest cocottes and some of the smartest, prettiest New York models. The only thing they have in common is you can phone them or someone who acts as an agent to make a deal, sight unseen, for their presence. The more they get the less they give. The true party-pretty undertakes only to appear for the evening, maybe entertain an important customer or that Congressman who’s going to investigate you or that general who places the orders. The call-dames are cheaper and more reliable.
They are available from all hotel bell-boys. A friend who lives in Washington said they weren’t necessary, for you can find a street-walker on any avenue or a hustler at almost any bar. We asked how about the transient, who doesn’t know that, so doesn’t know where to look, or is afraid. The bell-captain, who can get anything, including booze after hours, is the functionary out-of-towners over the age of puberty call. Using his services also means no raid from the hotel dick, who is an ally.
Lobbyists have lists of company-girls whose services they utilize as required. They exchange names with each other, so most of them have a master-list. In addition, there are agents, quite often apparently respectable, middle-aged women, who run “secretarial bureaus” that supply company-girls, often do contract businesses with large users, whom they bill by the year.
The secretarial bureau is important in the blind date business in Washington. Without much trouble, you can get the kind of girl you want by calling almost any of them. The procedure is this: You phone for a stenographer to be sent to your hotel room. She, however, is never the “date.” After giving her a nominal amount of dictation, you remark you are alone and friendless. She tells you one of her girl friends is lonesome, too, and would consider a date. You wait in. She arrives.
A problem for those who must entertain men of class is the low quality of the female commodity obtainable except from specializing agencies. Government gals, many of whom are on call, are superior intellectually, have better manners, though the professional predators run prettier. With the short supply of charmers, those who maintain a superior standard import them. Many big lobbyists and others who entertain frequently have lists of New York models and showgirls who will come down to Washington for fun, expense money, and maybe a mink.
There is a middle-aged woman in New York, who gives her name as Mrs. Hansen, who makes regular monthly trips to such Eastern cities as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, where she meets prominent businessmen and offers to introduce them, at a fee of $10 each, to any of a hundred Powers and Conover models whose photos she has in a scrapbook and whose names she has on a typewritten sheet. She guarantees to produce any girl thereon in Washington within 24 hours, the girls to receive $100 and expenses for each day’s company.
But that is still run-of-the-mill. A babe named Teddie, with an apartment in the building on the southwest corner of 16th Street, in the 1600 block, handles knockouts, some married, for as much as $250 a night.
Virginia Wall, who lives at 2500 Q Street (phone Hudson 8783) at this writing, was chosen by those who know her as--“the most promising younger company-girl in Washington.” She knows many other company girls.
Florence Bowers, a Southerner who lives at 1716 Newton St., phone Hobart 5634, is a well-known company girl who will get others when needed.
Elizabeth Morley, 2124 P St., phone Hobart 7421, will get company-girls.
Mary Lou Vane, 1205 Clifton St., NW, is a superior company girl.
Washington has its corned beef and cabbage, but don’t say we don’t bring out its caviar.
14. FOR IMMORAL PURPOSES
It may startle you, though not necessarily stop you, to know what very few know--it is a felony to transport a female one step up or down or sideways in the District of Columbia with what grandma used to call “dishonorable intentions.”