Life — June 14, 1928 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ALONG THE Dear Pac Wittarn: Your missive (pardon the elevated bonnet) just came, and I'm glad that you got a kick out of the Nick, the Greek yarn. But when you pant for more char- acter studies on the natives here I get frightened. In the first place, mine pel, most of the phonies along the Big Apple are as shady as the Street itself, and they no like having their skeletons rattled. The ones that I'm not afraid of have histories as uninteresting as girls who kiss with their eyes open, so I hope I've made my- self clearer than Mineralava. But there is one pay boy, who does his whoopcee-making right out loud along the canyon every night, whose past burns me up and knocks me cold. You should see the night club hostesses, bus boys, waiters and captains get limp every time he ankles into their upholstered cellars. His check is seldom less than five “C” notes and he has been known to tip that much. They say of him that he is the only man in the world who insists upon paying thirty bucks for alleged champagne which sells for twenty-five, and he is always surrounded with femmes who have adol- escent stares, Well, anyhoo, as we used to say in the old country, he was a racketeer not long ago. His gag was peddling phony oil stock to Somebody’s Mother and he was ripping and tearing the town wide open, until an old woman, who had invested heavily, squawked to the Law. It appears that the official who was assigned to in- vestigate him was one of his college chums. He got to him quickly and chirped: “This is one time I can’t save you because you haven't even tried to find oil. Shoot an outfit out to your property at once and erect some derricks. Then we can tell the speculators that you simply couldn’t find anything and they won't have a legitimate complaint.” So to make it all the more unbeliev- able, the villain carried out the counsel, MAIN STEM and not long after the crew had started to dig, they couldn’t stop the gold juice that gushed. Jt still gushes, for that matter, and the bozo’s income is three thousand dollars a day. So go ahead now—top that! But with all his money and with all his luck he hasn't had a sandwich named after him at Reuben’s, That’s where most of the so-called celebrities park their tor- sos every night after theater-time and snub each other. Of course the names of people tagged onto sandwiches mean nothing, unless you know your Broad- wayfarers. Frinstance, a “Texas Guinan Special” is a mouthy thing. A “Peggy Joyce” is simply two slices of bread con- tainingalotta bologny. A‘*Marilyn Miller” is something that goes with Ben Lyonnaise potatoes (didn’t some one once say that the lowest form of wit was a pun—pun my soul?). A “Milt Gross” is a kosher sandwich. An Al Jolson is a big ham sandwich and a “Senator Heflin” is a hj cheese sandwich. 8 I've discovered other nicknames for parts of the town, Broadway is known as Orange Juice Gulch, Mazda Lane, Coffee Pot Canyon, Fraudway and the Chow Mein Stem. Then there’s the Thumping Thirties, the Flaming Forties, the Four. flushing Fifties, the Sexy Sixties, the Salacious Seventies, the Elegant Eighties and the Nancy : Nineties. The latest news is that Beryl Halley is no longer posing in the lewd. Flasks are on the market re- sembling huge Dun- hill lighters. Tam- many Hall, the head- quarters for the Democrats, is located in a Repu n dis- trict. Childs’ new-fangled beaneries, which have gone tall millinery, call their head- itresses “hostesses.” The eat-and-run ints on Sixth Avenue formerly known as “Max's Busy Bee’ are now Roxy Food Shops, and believe you me when I tell you that they always are as busy as an orchestra during a Passé News Reel. The reason Row J follows Row H in the theaters is that too many clucks “Look out for jellyfish—I just stepped on one!” thoug Baker venter Silver comp: latest most cise b tory. famo Jo the / comicbooks.com