The Night Club as an Institution

The Cabaret of Today: How It Is Inaugurated, Managed and Patronized

A NIGHT CLUB PROPRIETOR

EDITOR'S NOTE:—The author of the article on this page The Night Club as an Institution is a well-known New York restaurateur. For many years he has successfully operated a number of nightclubs in New York. Vanity Fair has deemed it of interest to publish a really authentic article on the technique of cabaret management. Because of the nature of his revelations the name of the author cannot in fairness be revealed in connection with it.

FIVE men, each inclined to heaviness, in feature and in flesh, are gathered round a table in one of the latest of New York's night clubs. It is not, candidly, what might be called a very select supper club. Here there is only an apology for food: here liquor is served in empty charged-water bottles. There is plenty of noise, to be sure, from clappers and from rattles in the hands of the guests. The light, being of an unabashed variety, has banished all pretentions to mystery and charm.

One of the flashily-dressed gentlemen turns to his companion.

"Look here, Moe" he says, "we've been coming to this place every night for two weeks. We spend, on the average, a hundred dollars a night here, sometimes a good deal more, when we have girls and champagne. Why don't we open one of these places ourselves? Everybody is doing it. We'll save the money we spend here, and possibly make a little besides. What do you say? " Then, to the rest of the five men, "What do you say?"

"Well, it's a good racket," one of them answers, "let's try it as a gag."

"How much money do we need"

"About ten thousand dollars—with five of us that means two thousand apiece. Why, we'd lose that in craps in a single night."

AND so, another night club is born in New York. Two of the five men are wellknown gamblers, the others are wholesale bootleggers. Two thousand dollars apiece means little to them. Any one of them would pay that much for a week's entertainment.

The number of New York night clubs and so-called speak-casies born in exactly this way is really amazing; money is so easy on Broadway. As a result of such financiering, the 'Limes Square district, Greenwich Village and Harlem are overstocked with cabarets; all cutting each other's throats in thei r battle fora clientele.

Lime was when a supper club in New York was really a supper club. Places like Castlcsln-The-Air, which Vernon and Irene Castle made famous; Reisenweber's, in the days of Mae Murray; Churchill's, Rector's, and the Little Club, were proud of their decorations, their service, and their food. They catered to somewhat exclusive clienteles, who demanded unusual continental delicacies with their liqueurs. World-known chefs were engaged to take charge of their cuisines. Head waiters with a strong following in Paris, Monte Carlo and Biarritz were imported to lend grace to such establishments. Real artists decorated the interiors.

Everything was arranged with a view to case and grace; the atmosphere, while one of enjoyment, was well bred; the service of the suavest variety; the music stringed and restrained, and the entertainment was supplied by one or two stars who could really sing or dance well. Thirty thousand dollars was enough, in those days, to open such a club— kitchen and all. Thus, each club was slowly assembled and built up, and, as a result, became an integral part of the night life of the city, not merely for weeks or months, as is the rule with cabarets today, but for decades.

The owner, instead of being a bootlegger, gambler, or cloak-and-suit merchant, had the true requisites of a supper club proprietor. He knew the restaurant business. He had a following. He had ability and personality.

Now, ten or twelve thousand dollars can open a night club. One can order one like an overcoat. .All that is needed is an empty loft over a garage, a deserted brown-stone house, or a fairly dry cellar. The club can be ready, decorations and all, inside of a month. The actual outlay in cash is slight, but the hazard, if the club intends to go in for selling liquor, is excessive.

To cite a recent instance: the Cameo Club was padlocked exactly three weeks after it had first opened its doors, and the owners are nowsinging an increasingly popular song, The Buckner Blues.

To show the reader how little cash is needed in such an enterprise, here are some of the things that can be done ii one desires to go into the cabaret business. 'The coatroom, washroom and cigarette privileges can be sold, to a concessionaire, for a year's rent. Most of the clubs also sell their kitchen privileges. The kitchen concessionaire will put in your kitchen fittings, food, and kitchen help for from half to two thirds of the food checks. The remainder, going to the house, will pay the waiters' salaries, cleaning, etc. The cover charge is rationed to pay for the entertainment and band. And the profit—if there is any—comes out of the sale of bottled water, which profit the owners reserve for themselves. As a quart of such water can be purchased for sixteen cents, and is usually sold, as you doubtless know, for two dollars, the profit can mount handsomely. Of course, if a club wants to go in for selling liquor, the profit soars accordingly. But that is another matter entirely.

"IF a successful club owns its kitchen, the profit is given another boost, for only the simplest sort of food is served these days, and enormous prices are charged. A portion of chow mein or chop suev, composed of cheap vegetables and a little chicken, costing not over twenty cents a plate, service and all, brings as much as two-fifty. A club sandwich is sold for a dollar, and costs about a dime. Scrambled eggs and bacon, costing thirty-five cents, bring a dollar and a half. These are the favorite dishes of the supper club of today. Gone are the days of lobster a la Nezeburg, Welsh rarebit that zees a rarebit, fate de foie gras, game prepared according to secret recipes, seafood that was the pick of the seven seas, and the various intricate desserts prepared with brandy and cordials.

Food today is bad and that for three very excellent reasons. First, the owners are not really restaurateurs at all, and know nothing of the business. Second, the kitchen is rented to a concessionaire, who naturally hires the cheapest help and buys the most ordinary food in order to keep his expenses down. Third, the patrons themselves are satisfied with inferior (or, at least, very simple) food. When they go to cabarets nowadays, they go to be amused. They eat only because they think it obligatory, or because they don't want to get too mellow.

When a night club is opened today, the owners, if they are wise, do not fail to engage as many "draws" as they can. The entertainers, band, head waiter and hostesses, if the cabaret employs them, are all carefully chosen for their following, or clientele. Competition being so keen, the highest prices in theatrical historyare being paid to cabaret players. Years ago, chorus girls who "doubled" from their musical revues were glad to earn thirty-five dollars a week for appearing at an after-theatre show in a cabaret. Today, they want from sixty-five to a hundred dollars. In the old days, a star cabaret entertainer who earned over five hundred dollars a week was written up in the newspapers, and people from Bogota to Dallas read about such an amazing salary with bated breath. Today, three thousand dollars a week is getting to be quite a common sum to pay headliners.

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Chariot's Rendezvous, recently opened as one of the smartest places in town, paid that much to Jack Buchanan, Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence, the stars of Chariot's Revue. The Mirador, another smart place, and a very successful one, did as well by Moss and Fontanna, its sensational team of dancers. Fred and Adele Astaire received that sum when they danced at the Trocadero. Furthermore, the management had to put up twenty thousand dollars, to guarantee their engagement, and the agent who arranged it all was paid a thousand dollars a week by the house. Maurice and Hughes would have been insulted by an offer of less than three thousand dollars. Other entertainers receiving sums in the thousands are Mary Hay and Clifton Webb, who danced at Ciro's, Florence Mills, at the Plantation, and Van and Schenk at the Parody. Lew Leslie, for staging the Plantation show, gets twenty-five per cent of a three dollar cover charge.

An indifferent "blues" singer making three hundred dollars a week in a musical comedy, gets as much as six hundred in a cabaret, and her name in electric lights.

Besides all this, it is now necessary for a proprietor to guarantee his star a five or ten weeks engagement, by contract, often before her first appearance. If the entertainer is a "flop" the proprietor is out that much money, for he must pay in full in order to get rid of the entertainer. One mediocre musical comedy star has appeared in five different cabarets during the last season, lasting only a week in each, and yet has been able to collect a full season's salary, having had contracts in each case for from five to ten weeks. As it is often true that a star will fail to "get over" because the room is the wrong size or has the wrong "atmosphere," cabaret owners sometimes try their luck with the same entertainer as often as they move their night club. All these causes have increased the cabaret's cover charges three hundred per cent since the good old days of yore.

The band is another feature that keeps the cover charges up. The oldtime band, usually five pieces, received from three to five hundred dollars weekly in the smartest New York supper clubs. Today, a six-piece band such as Emil Coleman's at the Club Richman, Hale (Pee Wee) Byers' at Cafe Barney's or Johnny Johnson's at the Mirador receives from sixteen to twenty-two hundred dollars weekly. Bands like Ted Lewis', Eddie Elkins', Roger Wolfe Kahn's, Vincent Lopez's and Ben Bernie's receive between twenty-two and thirty-five hundred dollars a week. ⅜ All this besides the entertainment, mind you.

Another "draw" for a supper club is the head waiter, if he has a following. Borgo, now at the Mirador, and Charlie Journal, formerly there but now owner of the Montmartre, were both guaranteed five hundred dollars a week for ten weeks. Louis Cantone, once at Ciro's, and Jean of the Lido were never paid less than three hundred. These men are personalities, and are as important as the band or entertainment; often more so, for it is they who build up the clientele of the club. Their patrons will follow them all over the city. They have private mailing lists of their own, and an announcement to their patrons is all that is needed to bring a goodly volume of trade to their clubs.

Certain cabarets also use hostesses, who are engaged for their good-looks and their following. These girls sit and dance with unescorted men, or parties lacking women, and it is their business to "mount the check," as well as to make the patrons feel satisfied and willing to return, a task more difficult than it sounds. For this the hostess, who is often a show-girl, ;s paid twenty-five dollars a week. She gets, besides, a percentage of the cover charges, and ten per cent of the bill for "tonic beverages." As a successful business man will often tip a girl ten dollars for dancing with him, hostesses sometimes earn from one hundred and fifty dollars a week (their average earnings) to four hundred dollars.

Hostesses, of course, are frowned upon in our best supper clubs. At the Mirador, Lido, and Chariot's Rendezvous, where the atmosphere is smart, and the entertainment in good taste, enjoyment is practised on a quieter basis. These clubs make money by maintaining their atmosphere of exclusiveness, and by catering to a more or less fashionable class of people.

There are other clubs, however, that make as much and more money through the year by throwing their doors open to anyone who has "the price." These are the smaller and more intimate clubs, some of which fall, quite naturally, into the class of the polite speak-easy.

Then, there is the type of night club that draws through its owner, a person with a strong personality and following. Texas Guinan is a phenomenal example of a club owner with a faithful following. She began as a hostess at the Beaux Arts, on West 40th Street; went to the El Fey, where she received the then unheard-of sum of a thousand dollars a week and twenty-five per cent of the cover charge. Today she is said to own most of the Three Hundred Club, and has an interest in another club on the Rialto.

How much clubs sometimes earn may be judged by the fact that one club, in a season lasting eight months, actually made ninety thousand dollars. During 1920 and 1921, before the great influx of clubs, a fairly successful cabaret, seating about 400 people, would earn from fifty thousand to sixtv-five thousand dollars in a season. Today, a club is content with a profit of twenty-five thousand, though some of the very successful ones get as high as seventy-five thousand.