Rothstein (15 page)

But A. R.‘s life was far more than gambling, it was also Broadwaythe Great White Way, chorus girls, musicals, the legitimate theater, and grand, ornate motion picture palaces. It was only naturally that Rothstein’s world of gambling and gangsters intersected with that Broadway. Hoodlums like Larry Fay, Owney Madden, Legs Diamond, and Frenchy DeMange invested in Broadway shows, owned nightclubs, dated showgirls. Nicky Arnstein became Mr. Fanny Brice. Bucket shop operator Edward M. Fuller and W. Frank McGee married actresses Louise Groody and Florence Ely. Racketeer Larry Fay wed Broadway’s Evelyn Crowell. Rothstein attorney Bill Fallon won the devotion of showgirl Gertrude Vanderbilt.

Rothstein was no exception. He was married to one showgirl (Carolyn Green), had others as mistresses (Bobbie Winthrop, Joan Smith, and Inez Norton), and employed others (Lillian Lorraine and Peggy Hopkins Joyce) to steer suckers his way. He traded warm notes with movie star Marion Davies (mistress of William Randolph Hearst), and at one time held $1.5 million in life insurance policies on three Broadway producers.

In 1922 he borrowed $20,000 from Irving Berlin-and never got around to repaying it. On another occasion A. R. offered to become Berlin’s partner in music publishing. “I don’t need you for a partner,” Berlin responded brusquely, “and I don’t need your money.”

In 1918 two Broadway impresarios-the Selwyn brothers, Archie and Edgar planned to build a theater on West 42nd Street. Having known Carolyn Rothstein since her performing days, they approached Arnold for $50,000. “Arnold lent it to me at once,” Archie Selwyn recalled. “He didn’t even want an I.O.U. All he wanted was six percent.”

That 6 percent they paid earned the Selwyns a bonus from Rothstein. In 1922 they joined with fellow producer Sam Harris to open two adjacent theaters on Chicago’s North Dearborn Avenue. Before their opening, however, Chicago labor racketeer “Big Tim” Murphy demanded $50,000 for protection. Arch begged Rothstein for help.

“Listen, Tim,” A. R. informed the burly Murphy, “these fellows haven’t any such dough as that. They’re friends of mine, and what you’re doing to them, you’re doing to me. You leave it to me and I’ll treat you right. You can trust me. But call your dogs off and see that the boys get a square deal.”

Murphy’s price fell to $10,000. “He [Rothstein] had influence in every big city in the country,” said Arch Selwyn. “And he loved it.”

But Rothstein’s friendship had limits. George White, producer of a series of successful Broadway reviews-George White’s Scandalslearned the Selwyns were severely cash-strapped and offering to lease their Apollo Theater for a three-year term at drastically reduced rates. White could use the theater for his own productions, or sublease it to other producers. It was a no-lose situation-but he needed cash, a lot of it, to make it work and needed it quickly.

White knew Rothstein only as an occasional, but convivial, dinner companion. He now approached him for working capital. A. R. grasped the idea immediately and, as usual, had no problem profiting from the difficulties of old friends. Within a day, White had his cash, cash lent at a hefty interest rate. As White predicted, he had secured a tremendous deal, so lucrative the Selwyns tried breaking the lease. They failed.

On May 23, 1922, Abie’s Irish Rose, a play chronicling the romance between the Jewish Abraham Levy and his Irish sweetheart, Rosemary Murphy, opened on West 46th Street’s Fulton Theater to uniformly scathing reviews and smallish audiences. Playwright Anne Nichols, however, retained faith in her creation. To keep the show alive until audiences built, she approached A. R. for $25,000. In return she offered an interest in the show.

By this time, A. R.‘s own mixed marriage no longer was in the wonderful stage. “I’m not in show business,” he shot back. “I’ll lend you the money if you have collateral.” And with that he proceeded to interrogate her as to what collateral she might produce. His terms and manner frightened Nichols. “You’re sure the show’s going to be a hit,” he wheedled. “What are you risking? I have to be protected.”

A. R. received 6-some said 10-percent interest and forced Nichols to purchase numerous insurance policies from him. Ultimately, he netted $3,000 on the deal. Audiences, however, finally discovered Abie’s Irish Rose, despite continued critical hatred (Life’s Robert Benchley, for one, maintained a weekly drumfire of insults), the play ran a then-record 2,327 performances-almost longer than Rothstein himself. Had A. R. accepted Anne Nichols’s original offer he would have netted $1 million.

As for Miss Nichols, Arnold’s treatment left her so embittered that on the day she repaid her loan, she canceled every insurance policy held with him.

Some show-business folk found A. R. more than helpful. Once, when Ray Miller, one of the 1920s premier jazz bandleaders, cashed $76,000 in bad checks, the Chelsea Exchange Bank wanted to prosecute. A. R. promised to make good on Miller’s debt and kept the matter quiet.

At his West 57th Street offices in 1927, A. R. briefly employed songwriter Con Conrad. He opened Rothstein’s mail but, in actuality, possessed considerable musical talent, having already written “Barney Google” and the Eddie Cantor hits “Margie” and “Ma, He’s Makin’ Eyes at Me.” In the mid-1920s, however, Conrad had suffered a string of Broadway flops. Rothstein invited him to dinner and, in the course of the evening, mentioned how frequently he was propositioned to invest in plays but knew nothing about the business and never followed through.

Conrad sympathized with creative artists in need of the backing A. R. could provide-after all, he was now reduced to opening mail for gangsters. Later that evening, he whistled some new tunes he’d written for an all-black show he planned. Rothstein, who loved black dialect (“I like to hear those people talk”), thought the songs were great.

“Why don’t you get it produced?” A. R. asked.

“No money. I’m just like those other fellows who come to you.”

“How much would it cost to get it going?”

“Oh, about $25,000-might as well be $25,000,000.”

“Go ahead with it, and draw on me for the money from day to day as you need it. I’ll back it and take a cut on the profits. You can’t lose.”

Conrad’s Keep Shu f flin’ followed in the footsteps of Shuffle Along, a phenomenal success of the 1921-1922 season (and more significantly, Broadway’s first all-black musical). Keep Shu f flin’ featured Shuffle Along star Fats Waller and opened in February 1928 at nondescript, out-of-the-way Daly’s 63rd Street Music Hall. Despite mixed reviews, it ran for a respectable 104 performances before going on the road. A. R., though, was a slow pay even to show people he employed, at one time owing Waller $1,000.

Carolyn Rothstein wrote that A. R. owned a “cabaret in Harlem.” Actually, he owned pieces of numerous clubs, including two Harlem nightspots: The Rendezvous on St. Nicholas Avenue and the famed Cotton Club at Lenox Avenue and 142nd Street, held through mobster Mike Best, whose primary owner was the far better known mobster Owney Madden. Through hoodlum Harry Horowitz, A. R. also owned a $6,000 share of Big Bill Duffy’s Silver Slipper, a speakeasy made popular by the smash-hit comedy team of Clayton, Jackson, and Durante.

Sometimes, mere mention of Rothstein got you a piece of the action. In 1924 songwriter Billy Rose opened his Backstage Club in a second-story loft above a 56th Street garage. With comedian Joe Frisco as master of ceremonies and Helen Morgan as house chanteuse, it proved highly lucrative. So much so that a Rothstein bodyguard-his name has been lost to history-soon approached Rose. “The cops like me,” the thug informed him. “If you’re my partner, you won’t have to smash your liquor and pour it down the sink if the cops raid your nice little place.”

“Wait a minute,” Rose protested. “Who said anything about wanting a partner?”

His new friend did not hear Rose’s reluctance. “I want 25 percent of this club,” he responded, tossing an envelope full of C-notes at Rose. “Here’s a deposit.”

Rose still didn’t get the message: “Thanks, but I work alone.”

There were no protests from Rothstein’s stooge, no counterproposals. But that night, police visited the Backstage and, as predicted, busied themselves pouring Rose’s expensive liquor into drains ultimately reaching the East River.

The next morning the bodyguard reappeared. Rose admitted: “I was wrong. I don’t work alone. Not this time, anyway. Meet me at my lawyers and we’ll draw up the papers.”

“Who needs lawyers?” came the response. “We both know how to add. And if you don’t, we do!”

Rothstein hated to lose money, and would go to great lengths not to pay what he owed-or, better yet, to retrieve it once he had paid. Once he lost $2,000 to an associate known as “Abe” and asked of him what he had done with the money. Abe had invested it. “Good boy! Wise boy,” said Arnold. “But, Abe, I liked the way you took it from me. And, Abe, I’ve got a simp over in `The Place’ with about $5,000 he hasn’t any right to keep, he is so foolish. Drop around. I have a proposition to make to you.”

Abe met with A. R. and received $2,000 to bet against “the simp.” Abe lost it all, plus $12,000 more.

Several days later, Abe and A. R. met at Lindy’s. “I am sorry, A. R.,” said Abe, “but you owe me about $12,000. Your sucker friend not only took me for your $2,000 but trimmed me for $12,000 of my own money.”

“Listen, Abe,” Arnold replied. “You are getting a little off the track. I didn’t give you that $2,000. I lent it to you for an opportunity, and you owe it to me. And with interest. I didn’t tell you to risk $12,000. That was your own foolishness. You owe me $2,000, and the interest we will talk about when you pay the principal.”

It took Abe a year to discover that Arnold had set up the entire scenario, importing “the simp” from out of town for the express purpose of recouping A. R.‘s original $2,000.

Lending money was Arnold’s business. Collecting it was even more than a business; it was an obsession. Attorney Bill Fallon described A. R. as “a man who dwells in doorways. A mouse standing in a doorway, waiting for his cheese.” As Carolyn Rothstein recorded in her memoirs:

Often on my way home in a car, I would have myself driven slowly up Broadway, past Forty-seventh to Fiftieth Street. It might be a cold night, or a rainy one. Or it might be snowing. But more often than not, Arnold would be there. I would ask him to come home. He would shake his head and say: “I’m waiting to see someone to collect from. “

If you understood the sort of person to whom he loaned money, you’d realize that sooner or later that person would pass by where Arnold was waiting. You’d also understand that the thing to do, if you wanted your money, was to catch the person when he was in funds. Arnold was in a position to hear whether or not his debtors had had a good day. If they had, he knew he could get his money if he could find them. He would stay out hours in all kinds of weather to collect small sums, even of amounts as low as fifty dollars. Yet, he might have made thousands that same day.

The amounts, it always seemed to me, were not what counted so much with Arnold, as the percentages. He was playing with chips, and the chips must show a profit.

TO OWN A GAMBLING HOUSE was a dream come true. To be the underworld’s point-of-contact with Tammany Hall was better still. But to own your own stable and racetrack … that signaled that a man had arrived.

Racing. The Sport of Kings. Today, plebeian hordes throng Aqueduct and Belmont and Saratoga, lured by dreams of winning trifectas or a free T-shirt or bobble-head doll. In A. R.‘s days, kings may not have attended, but the rich certainly did. The rich-and not quasigovernment agencies-owned the tracks and ran them for their fellow rich. The wealthy put their money not into condos at Aspen or beachfront property at the Hamptons, but into racing stables. The Belmonts, the Whitneys, traction magnate Thomas Fortune Ryan, nouveau-riche oil baron Harry Sinclair, tobacco men like the Lorillards, and big-time gamblers like Frank Farrell, all raced thoroughbreds.

By the early 1910s, Arnold Rothstein was now rich and would take his place among wealthy society-whether they wanted his company or not.

Before even owning a horse, he owned a track, or at least part of a track: Maryland’s Havre de Grace racecourse. In 1912 local interests conceived the idea for a fairgrounds, with racing as an ancillary use. Quickly, however, Havre de Grace turned into a full-blown racetrack, built by a New York construction firm and funded, in large part, by August Belmont II and Arnold Rothstein.

Havre de Grace, “The Graw,” confounded skeptics and quickly earned large profits. Carolyn Rothstein called it her husband’s most successful real estate venture-if one may term a racetrack a real estate venture-thanks in part to Edward G. Burke, A. R.‘s partner in the Long Beach gambling house, who oversaw track management. Rothstein’s Maryland partners now regretted cutting him in for so large a share and offered to buy him out. When he refused, they cajoled Annapolis lawmakers to regulate racing in their state and to limit nonstate residents to 75 shares in any Maryland track. Rothstein’s attorney, William Fallon, urged him to fight the measure on constitutional grounds, but A. R. knew he was beaten and sold out for $50 a share.

In October 1917, after selling his Havre de Grace shares, Rothstein scored a major coup-his biggest to that time-at neighboring Laurel, winning $300,000 on a single race. Wilfred Viau’s Englishborn chestnut colt, Omar Khayyam, that year’s Kentucky Derby and Travers winner, and August Belmont’s Hourless, winner of the Belmont, the year’s best three-year-olds, met in a special match race. In both the Brooklyn Derby and the Realization, Omar Khayyam had defeated Hourless head-to-head. The latter defeat particularly irked Hourless’ trainer, the legendary Sam Hildreth, who cajoled Laurel management into staging a mile-and-a-quarter duel between the two horses. The prize: $10,000 and a gold cup donated by Washington Post publisher Edward B. McLean and presented by the governorand the unofficial title of “three-year-old of the year.”

Twenty-thousand people, the largest crowd in Maryland racing history, came to watch, arriving by the trainload from Baltimore and Washington, Philadelphia and New York-among them Arnold Rothstein. Despite Omar Khayyam’s superior record, Hourless, on the strength of some very strong workouts, remained a prohibitive 3to-4 favorite: to win $3.00, one had to bet $4.00. Betting was frantic, and officials installed special parimutuel machines to handle the track’s action-$71,000, a hefty total for the time.