20. CAFE AU CORN
Foreigners who have never seen the United States dream of beholding its wonders, of which the first two are New York and Washington. They envision not the monuments or the Government Printing Office, but a glittering world capital swirling with diplomats in colorful costumes, officers in dress uniforms, and pageantry punctuated with dazzling dames of the haute monde and the demi-monde. For this is the capital of capitals, and it must have everything, including what none of the others has--dough.
If there is any spectacular life in Washington, that is not for the eye of the uninitiated stranger. The days are vapid and the nights are stupid. Washington is dominated by elected and appointed functionaries who are schooled to believe they must never be caught having fun. Therefore, after dark it is more like Paducah than like Paris.
There are many hotel grills and lounges, which are night clubs after a fashion, and some cafes; but their chief patronage depends on visitors and government dependents. Both classes are drawn largely from farms and villages, with only a minor proportion from centers of laughter and light. Washington’s night life is a dull, dismal and dreary reflection of our Main Streets, hard cider and juke-box roistering.
The few local sports and the free-fingered lobbyists seek their pleasure at private parties and behind closed doors of hotel suites, or fly northward to nearby New York with its El Morocco and the Stork Club.
The two principal night clubs in Washington are operated by Chinese, with American shows and dance bands. They are the Lotus and the Casino Royal.
Both are built for the mass-consumption trade, with popular prices and acres of dance floors. Hicks and tourists are dance-bugs. Dick Lam, host at the Lotus, is one of the town’s best-known and best-liked showmen. He was one of the original founders of the China Doll, in New York, and has uptown manners and know-how.
The Blue Mirror, around the corner, specializes in hot jive. Kavakos, as mentioned, features nudes, as does the Players, opposite the Center Market.
Not only can and do some Washington cabarets get away with stuff that would land their owners in the clink in New York, but there seems to be no police control or regulation of acts.
For instance, Billie Holiday, the Negro singer who has served time on narcotics and prostitution falls, is barred from New York night clubs through the ukase of the Police License Bureau, which fingerprints all entertainers and thumbs those with records out of town. But while this was being written, Miss Holiday was starring in Washington’s Brown Derby.
Washington caters to visiting theatrical celebrities. Hollywood stars, to whom the capital spells spotlight, are flattered by attentions of politicians who, in return for free shows and broadcasts, flatter them. This racket was invented by President Roosevelt, and, ever since, theatrical headliners have been welcome luncheon and dinner guests at the White House. In Washington they generally stay at one of the five leading hotels and may be found dining or drinking in the lounges and restaurants of the Mayflower, Carlton, Statler, Shoreham and Wardman Park. Autograph collecting is not a highly developed hobby in Washington; but some juvenile half-wits plant themselves outside the hotels when such celebs are in town.
There is nothing the equivalent of Morocco, 21, Colony, Stork, or Toots Shor’s. The Mayflower lounge, nicknamed “The Snake Pit,” is that--the mad gathering-place at cocktail time for the local celebs: the Senators, lobbyists, army brass and blondest cuties.
Most Washington night-life is as flat as those who patronize it. The headwaiters are off the beam. The major-domo of the Wardman Park’s Caribar, typical of most of the town’s, is so provincial he doesn’t know he could get rich trying to cater to the few spenders that stumble in. We watched him a whole evening and didn’t see him snare a buck.
Patrons of Washington supper-clubs are lousy tippers. Most smalltown Americans adhere to a strict ten percent. When they think they can get away with it, they stiff even that. Captains, headwaiters, cigaret gals and retiring-room attendants they ignore. Southerners are worse.
We were twitting one Senator from a border state about the free haircuts the tax-payers provide for the members of the upper house in their private barber shop. This Senator replied, in all seriousness, “It’s almost cheaper to go outside. When you get it for nothing, you gotta tip the barber.”
The best palm-warmers are South American diplomats, who apparently have no regard for American money. Lobbyists, who like to flash big bills, especially when they are entertaining impressionable legislators, run for place.
Few Washington waiters deserve much. The service they give is as terrible as the tips they don’t get.
Dance floors are crowded with jitterbugs. Rumbas never flowered in Washington. When a band plays one, flabbergasted hoofers try to jive to it.
Few clubs or rooms have rules against parties of unescorted women or stag men. If they did, they’d starve. It is not unusual to see half the tables in any room surrounded by all males or all females. The larger popular-priced clubs have signs on the tables reading, “Dancing permitted with your escort only.” This is a dead letter, or there wouldn’t be any dancers.
Prices are cheap compared with Gotham’s. A few hotels impose cover charges when they book expensive name acts.
No room has more than one band, which plays both for the show and the dancing. During intermissions, the silence is broken by noisy drunks. Like all towns with early closing, people get loaded early. In Washington serious guzzling begins at cocktail time. Many of those who drink are oafs who don’t know how to hold their hooch.
Most Washington saloon-goers are ill-mannered. On Saturday nights, when the last round is announced at 11:45, many arise as one and walk out, even in the middle of an act.
Washington has no cafe society. Its gathering places are utilitarian--for foods and drinks. No warm camaraderie, no light good fellowship, no wit, no animation. Corny commoners in stereotyped surroundings. Peoria on the Potomac.
21. CALL ME MADAM
This is a brief brush-off of the social parvenus who scrambled up as Society scrammed out--through death and Democratic administration.
Faded and forgotten are the days and nights when Washington was ablaze with social brilliance and the gossip behind the fans reflected the sturdy foibles and feuds and infidelities of a class in superior strata of lineage, wealth and those graces which cannot be acquired with sudden fortune.
Society is always the shadow of one luminous, scintillant, predominant woman, such as Mrs. Potter Palmer was in Chicago and the dowager Vanderbilt remained until senility denatured her in New York. In Washington that woman, even though she seldom entertains or permits herself to be entertained, must be the wife of the President. She need not be a Dolly Madison. She can be a recluse, a Quaker like Mrs. Herbert Hoover; a New England villager, like Grace Coolidge; a grande dame like Mrs. Benjamin Harrison or an Ohio hick like Mrs. Warren Harding. But she is the undisputed ex officio queen bee of the social life of the capital. She sets its tempo, she elevates with a nod and she extirpates with a frown.
Few Presidents’ wives would have won social preference had their husbands not squirmed through the labyrinthian catacombs with that miraculous luck which makes one man what they say any American boy can become. But once he takes that oath, his lady assumes a crown. Whether she chooses to wear it or not, she can and must exercise its power over her realm, Society.
And Society withstood the hostesses of gentlemen, soldiers, backwoodsmen, a sheriff, a tailor, a school-teacher, a rail-splitter and a Buchanan. But it could not survive Eleanor Roosevelt.
Here came a woman of blood and millions, married to an equally high-bred, landed manor squire, perhaps the most charming and dynamic and handsome of all our Presidents. And the first tap of her flat heels across the White House threshold led off the funeral march of Society in the capital.
It is unnecessary to review her attitude and behavior; no First Lady was ever so unendingly publicized. That she became invested with certain homely and all-wooly virtues by the worship of millions is precisely why she choked the last breath out of social tradition with her Negro friends, her boondoggling, sweaty indigents, her professional Socialists, her dedicated slum-house guardians of gutter garbage, and her antics as the militant apostle of democracy and equality. The bedrock of Society is inequality, the existence and recognition of an aristocracy.
Whether it is good or not for fundamental Americanism, it was as lethal to the remnants of a baronial stratum in Washington as the Emancipation Proclamation was below the Mason and Dixon line.
No female in American history had ever been so despised in the drawing-rooms and so venerated in the kitchens and furnished rooms. But that hatred within the walls of the elegant was not enough to sustain even a social underground. A few dauntless matrons held out. They tried to continue executing the motions from memory, but they perished on the inglorious field of futility. They were the last. There were no wounded and no prisoners taken. A dynasty that had flourished for 150 years had been wiped out as were the Romanoffs.