American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee (24 page)

A
s the Minskys told the story and as it thereafter told itself, the trouble began with the member of the Minsky family least likely—at least at that point in time—to invite it. On Monday, April 20, 1925, Louis Minsky, who had maintained a careful distance from his sons’ burlesque enterprise, received a strange letter in the mail:

Louis Minsky wasn’t quite sure who Sumner was or what he was talking about. He didn’t know the allegedly distasteful sketch was called “Anatomy”—not “Antony”—“and Cleopatra” (and that it had a subtitle: “
Shakespeare Shimmies in His Grave”). He also failed to connect “Desire Under the El “with
Desire Under the Elms
, the Eugene O’Neill play currently on Broadway. He didn’t even realize the absurdity of lauding Mademoiselle Fifi as a paragon of virtuous entertainment, considering she had already spurred a raid at the Apollo. But like his sons, Louis recognized a prime opportunity when he saw one: if he kept the letter to himself, and if the National Winter Garden were raided, his boys might be delivered back into a decent world.

Louis tucked the letter into his vest pocket. What will be will be. God would handle Abe, Billy, Herbert, and Morton, even if both he and Mr. Sumner failed.

U
nbeknown to Louis Minsky or John Sumner, the brothers had ordered a “Boston” version of all performances on the night of April 20. They feared a visit not from John Sumner but from Mary Minsky, who had declared her intention to finally spend an evening at the National Winter Garden (and who suspected that Billy’s interest in Mademoiselle Fifi extended beyond the professional). As a good and loyal wife, wasn’t it high time she met the people Billy called his “other family”? Besides, if the shows were truly as decent and respectable as Billy said, why would he object?

Billy knew he must agree to Mary’s plan or risk wrath and headache at home. For that night, he and Morton would join Abe and Herbert
downtown and let their team of managers run Minsky’s Apollo. As a precaution, Billy sent out word to his chorines that, for that performance only, “brassieres will be worn at all times.” Comedy personnel will not deliver unrehearsed lines in Yiddish. There will be no talking or fraternizing with the audience during scenes. He thanked them for their “
splendid cooperation” and believed the situation was under control.

B
illy waved to Mary, sitting with her brother high up in the last row of the orchestra, but missed John Sumner settling into a prime spot next to the runway, where the acoustics would amplify each crude double entendre and odious joke. For camouflage Sumner bought a hot dog, a box of Cracker Jack, and a bottle of celery tonic, but kept a notepad, pencil, and a paraffin whistle tucked inside his jacket pocket.

He sat, pencil poised, as the Minsky band leader simultaneously lifted his baton and tapped a buzzer on the podium with his toe, alerting the doorman six floors below to hustle in the latecomers. The reformer winced through the faux-romantic overture, the sobbing saxophones and moaning violins, and shifted away from the patron sitting next to him, a man reeking of garlic and home-brewed beer. Next came Tom Bundy, the Minsky’s top comic and master of ceremonies, announcing the chorines in his bullhorn voice (“
Presenting the fair, the fragrant, the fabulous, blushing, beauteous—
Roses of Minsky Land
!”) and now the girls themselves, sidling down the runway, one dozen kicking west toward the Bowery and the other dozen east toward Chrystie Street, the muted magenta spotlights rouging the skin of their thighs.

He endured a tiresome sketch called “A Quiet Game of Cards,” which involved thick rolls of play money, hatchets, cudgels, pistols, a bladder, the occasional cannon, and the following dialogue:

He watched “Desire Under the El” (during which the fellow next to Sumner complained about the “good parts” being edited out), and “Anatomy and Cleopatra,” which featured balloon bosoms, a prop phallus, and tasteless jokes about rigor mortis. Sumner didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed by the puerile splendor of it all. In the back of the house six of his detectives fixed their eyes upon him, watching for the crook of his finger, the invitation to charge forward.

He had one last hurdle, or hope—however he chose to view it—and he waited for Mademoiselle Fifi to take the stage.

S
o far so good, Billy thought, although he could sense that the regulars were annoyed and antsy and would probably demand a refund. He gazed upward at Mary, who was clinging to her brother and slicing her hand through the cigar smoke; how she hated the musky smell, the sting to her eyes. But the show had been clean enough to keep her in her seat and out of his business, which was all that mattered. Wait—was that Joseph Weinstock, his principal investor, sitting nearby? Billy felt something like a tuning fork churning in his gut. Weinstock was a rash, brash, temperamental man, and if he sensed that Billy was taming down the shows, he would rescind his partnership. Billy could take a Philly girl and transform her into a
fille de joie
, but he couldn’t produce burlesque on Minsky money alone.

He found Mademoiselle Fifi in the wings. Her sheath of black netting made a grid of her skin, arms and legs and torso delineated into fleshy pink squares. She wore a scarlet cape studded with rhinestones and a matching headband topped with a towering exclamation point of feathers. She looked at Billy as if she couldn’t take a step without his personally positioning her feet. He had time for only a few words, so he chose them as judiciously as possible.

“
This is it, Feef,” he said. “The whole ante’s riding on you.” He
hoped she understood. He coasted a hand toward her shoulder, intending to give her an encouraging push, but instead his fingers brushed her breast. That look again, and then she said, softly, “You do love me, don’t you, Billy?”

He couldn’t hear. The music soared from the pit. From somewhere in the distance a candy butcher hollered about chocolate bonbons and girlie cartoons. Beyond the velvet curtain the audience waited, expectations pacing like caged animals in their minds.

“God love you,” Billy said, and then there was no barrier between his star and the audience.

He watched her dance. She was graceful as always but distracted, her angles lazy, her limbs sluggish. This was no time for artistry, the pirouettes and the arabesques, the coquettish dipping of her chin. The audience wanted bare flesh, and now. He began to mime directions: grinding his jowls and thrusting his hips and cupping imaginary Amazonian breasts in his hands. Fifi spun back toward the wings, her cape billowing behind her, and it came to her that for once she held the power in the relationship; she had Billy Minsky precisely where she wanted him. She froze, her torso bent, leg held aloft and curled behind her back.

“Billy,” she whispered. “Tell me you love me.”

“Feef! I’m trying to tell you—cut the ballet! Go to the cooch! The cooch!”

“Are you going to say it, Billy?”

He was apoplectic now. “Feef!” His spittle sprayed her face. “You goofy kid! Go to the cooch!”

She twirled away and back again.

“Say it, Billy!” she said, stretching toward him. “Say, ‘I’m in love with you, Fifi.’ ”

He could no longer control his hands. One reached out and coiled like a tentacle around her wrist. She lost her balance and fell against him.

“Get this straight, kid,” he said. “I am not in love with you. Have you got that? Now get the hell into your cooch.”

He let her go and she let herself go, spinning into a haze, her feet so brisk against the runway they seemed to whip up tendrils of smoke. The orchestra heaved and flailed, a medley of Puccini, Joplin, and Offenbach’s
Gaité Parisienne
, and even after Mademoiselle Fifi shed her cape and netting and brassiere, she did not stop spinning.

Minsky “Rosebuds” have their day in court.
(photo credit 18.1)

Beneath the crash of cymbals John Sumner’s paraffin whistle blew meekly.

S
ince it was a Minsky story—and an entirely fabricated Minsky story, at that—the details of the fictitious raid grew bolder and more absurd with each retelling, skipping over all the inconveniences that littered up their path. No one questioned why this incident, so notorious it inspired a 1968 movie starring Jason Robards and Bert Lahr titled
The Night They Raided Minsky’s
, was never reported in any trade or mainstream or tabloid newspapers of the time. Or why John Sumner, a prodigious keeper of his own records, felt compelled to throw away his letter to Louis Minsky. Or
the true whereabouts of Mademoiselle Fifi on that night, when she claimed to be attending a dinner at the
Waldorf-Astoria for the American Medical Association, three miles and a world away from the National Winter Garden.