“My good man,” I said after a moment’s pause, “last I heard this was a free country, and I don’t intend to do anything to change that.”
“Madam…” He began to look stricken. “I apologize for the inconvenience, but this is just not the kind of establishment that encourages such behavior from young women. I can have an ashtray taken up to Mr. Carmichael’s suite if you’d prefer to continue your tea in your room.”
My mother looked from the waiter to me, and I could see the pieces falling into place. I’d been staying here in his room, and she knew it. It felt horrible to let her down, but I wasn’t about to let her see me treated like this, so I looked in my purse and found a book of matches. While the waiter stood glaring at me in horror, and my mother probably did the same, I lit a match and brought it to the tip of the cigarette.
“We’re quite all right where we are, thank you,” I said, trying to enjoy the moment of defiance, but as I brought the cigarette to my lips I saw my hand tremble ever so slightly. Finally, I looked over to my mother, and the disappointment on her face was crushing.
“We can’t have them treat us like that, Mother,” I said after the waiter stormed off. “It’s wrong, we have the vote now, we must stand up for our basic freedoms.”
The waiter appeared at our table again. “Right here, please,” he said, and he instructed two younger waiters to place a Japanese screen around our table, shielding the other diners from our view. “The sight is offending our guests.”
“Now, if you’d said the smell was bothering them, I might have put it out,” I said. “But if they can’t stand to see a young woman exercise her rights, then maybe they need an education in how the modern world works.”
The waiter turned on his heel and left, and my mother began to collect her things. I reached out and put my hand on hers. “Where are you going, Mama? Don’t let them bully us into leaving.”
“It’s not them,” she said softly. “It’s you.” I saw her eyes fill with tears. “Your manners, your lack of etiquette, of decency—living here as an unwed woman with a man you’ve only just met—even your lovely hair…” She reached out and tucked a piece of my cropped hair behind my ear. “It’s all gone.”
She stood, pushed in her chair and gently placed her handbag on her arm. “Olive, you’re forgetting who you are.”
“You’re wrong, Mama,” I said, almost in a whisper. “For the first time in my life I know exactly who I want to be.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We had barely begun the second act of theFrolicwhen the doors flew open and about twenty policemen burst onto the scene, followed by a handful of men in suits who barked instructions.
“Everyone freeze!” one of them yelled.
The orchestra stopped abruptly, and some girls dashed offstage to grab their clothes while the rest of us onstage froze. We’d heard of raids where men and women were arrested by federal agents—I’d seen them photographed in the paper, publicly shamed for dancing or mingling in an alcohol-serving establishment. The last thing I needed, after my disastrous meeting with my mother, was my picture in the paper in handcuffs, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the vulgarity of it all. One minute there was music and dancing, appreciation and harmless enjoyment, many guests spending their hard-earned money on a late dinner, and the next people were running and cowering and scared. I was scared, too, terrified, actually, with no idea what would happen. What if we got hauled away? Wherewould we be taken, how long would we be kept there, who would I have to call to get released?
The irony of it was that Ziegfeld hadn’t wanted to sell alcohol in the first place. He would have been quite happy to serve the best food alongside the most desirable dancers and call it a night. Many of his elite regulars, however, asked him to store and serve their private wine collection behind the bar—which technically didn’t violate the rules. And the rest of the guests, well, they insisted that hooch and watching the show went hand in hand, and if they couldn’t have both, they threatened to take their business elsewhere. So reluctantly Ziegfeld appeased them, getting his hands on bottles of champagne for a pretty price. At the first sight of agents, the rumor was that the barkeeps knew to pull a hidden lever that sent an entire row of champagne bottles into a crate in the wall of the bar.
“I’m not selling this!” Ziegfeld shouted at the agents, clearly distraught as they stormed in, not caring to differentiate between what he was selling and what he was storing and serving.
I’d never been in a raid before, but I always thought the goal was to arrest as many patrons as possible for purchasing liquor and fine the owners so much that they’d be forced to shut down or pay off the police. But this raid seemed different. They weren’t making arrests. They weren’t even harassing Ziegfeld. Instead they headed straight for the bar.
“There’s nothing here!” we could hear Ziegfeld yelling at them. “These are private wine collections, collections that they already had in their homes. These are not for sale, I assure you!” But the agents didn’t care, and it was strange to see the all-powerful Mr. Ziegfeld ignored. One agent picked up bottles of vintage red wine, pulledout the cork with his teeth and took a swig. Then they formed an assembly line of sorts, agents behind the bar picking up bottles, some worth as much as my rent, I’d guess, and throwing them over the bar to another agent, who threw them across the room to another, who dumped it all into a large open-topped barrel. Some bottles just clanked in, but others shattered. Wine and bourbon spilled out onto the carpet. Some agents missed—intentionally, it seemed—shattering glass and spilling hooch all over the beautiful space. It was dreadful. Patrons ran for the doors and the agents didn’t try to stop them; they were intent on emptying out Ziegfeld’s entire stock of alcohol.
When they left, we all gathered out on the red and sticky dance floor. I was so relieved that I hadn’t been arrested but devastated at the sight of it all. Ziegfeld surveyed the damage.
“It’s horrible, Mr. Ziegfeld,” one of the girls called out, starting to sob. “It’s awful what they’ve done to this place, they have no right.”
He shook his head and took it all in. “This doesn’t matter,” he said. “This can all get cleaned up. This dance floor will be mopped, the linens will be washed, and the tables and chairs put back in their place. All evidence of this raid will be gone after the cleaning crew comes in and does its job, so don’t worry about that. What matters is that our patrons come to us for an exclusive, luxurious good time. They trust that my staff will treat them with the utmost respect, they will eat the finest food, and they will be treated with dignity. My patrons don’t deserve this. If we cannot operate without this kind of disrespectful intrusion, sending our moneyed clientele out into the streets like criminals, then I don’t even know if we should go on.” He shook his head, and some of the girls gasped. I tried to remainstoic, though inside I knew I was in hot water. I might not be in theFolliesanymore, but with Howie’s help I’d become one of the stars of theFrolic. I couldn’t fathom him closing it down. I’d have nothing.
“It’s been a bad night, Flo,” Howie said, stepping in and taking him by the arm. “Let’s not jump to any rash decisions tonight. We can beat this ridiculous Volstead Act, we can prove that those wine bottles belonged to patrons fair and square, and that they weren’t being sold. They didn’t see the champagne—it’s all in the back as planned.” I imagined Howie was also starting to worry and working hard to set Ziegfeld on the right track. “You make money with tickets and dinner. If you can’t sell hooch, people will still come.”
“Sure they will,” one of the girls agreed.
“We almost got taken off to jail,” Lara wailed. We turned and gave her a look—we were trying to keep our jobs here, not make things worse.
“No one’s going to jail,” Ziegfeld said. “I’m going to get all this cleaned up, and I’m going to take some time to think things through,” he added at last. “Ladies,” he said, turning to us and smiling, trying to act as if he weren’t shaken from the experience, “take the next week off, get some rest, let’s meet back here in a week, and I’ll have a plan.”
With that he left, leaving a group of nervous young women behind him, wondering if they’d get paid, wondering how they’d make their rent, worrying about their future.
“He just got spooked,” I told Archie when I met him at the Plaza that evening. We lay back on his bed after he’d just called down foroysters to be delivered. I didn’t feel like going out after all that, not yet, anyway. “He’s been raided before and the show has gone on. This shouldn’t be any different,” I said. But part of me was scared that the agents had gone too far this time, and he was getting tired of it.
“Can he still make a profit, though?” Archie asked, turning his head toward mine. “Without the alcohol sales? I’m not so sure he can. Between the costumes and the stage design, he seems to pay out a lot to make that place as luxurious and swanky as possible.”
“I sure hope so,” I said. “I don’t know what I’d do without that show, it’s everything to me.”
