Stork Club
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The Stork Club was a famous nightclub in New York City during the 1930s–1950s. It was located at 3 East 53rd Street, just off Fifth Avenue, now the location of Paley Park.
The Stork Club was owned and operated by Sherman Billingsley (1900-1966), an ex-bootlegger who came to New York from Enid, Oklahoma. From the end of Prohibition until the early 1960s, the club was the symbol of Café Society. Movie stars, celebrities, the wealthy, showgirls, and aristocrats all mixed here. El Morocco had the sophistication, and Toots Shor's drew the sporting crowd, but the Stork Club mixed power, money, and glamour.
According to Ralph Blumenthlal in his 2000 book Stork Club, another New York nightclub owner named Tex Guinan (Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan) introduced Billingsley to her friend, the entertainment and gossip columnist Walter Winchell, in 1930. In his column in the Daily Mirror, Winchell once called the Stork Club "New York's New Yorkiest place on W. 58th".
The activities of the "boldface" celebrities at the Stork Club were chronicled by the "orchidaceous oracle of cafe society," Lucius Beebe, in his syndicated column "This New York." The notable guests included Ernest Hemingway, Charlie Chaplin, J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Costello, Dorothy Kilgallen, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (once given the cold shoulder there by Winchell), the Kennedys, Elizabeth Taylor, Gloria Vanderbilt, the Roosevelts, the Harrimans, Frank Sinatra, the Nordstrom Sisters, Brenda Frazier, Judy Garland, Erik Rhodes, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour (who was turned down as a club singer by Billingsley early in her career).
The sanctum sanctorum, the Cub Room ("the snub room"), was guarded by a captain known to everyone as "Saint Peter" (for the saint who guards the gates of Heaven).
Billingsley's mistress for a number of years was Ethel Merman.
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[edit] Television
The Stork Club was a television series hosted by Billingsley who circulated among the tables interviewing guests at the club. Sponsored by Fatima cigarettes, the series ran from 1950 to 1955. The Stork Club was also featured in several movies, including The Stork Club (1945), Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956) and My Favorite Year (1982).
Storck Brewery, of Slinger, Wisconsin, produced a beer throughout the 1950's bearing the label "Storck Club." This was highly controversial, and although it was not spelled the same as the famous Stork Club of New York City, the Club eventually brought a lawsuit forcing the Brewery to cease and desist their production of that brew. These labels are highly sought after by collectors today, since they were produced in very limited quantities.
[edit] Movies
The Wrong Man, 1956 - Alfred Hitchcock directed this film, based on a true story, with Henry Fonda portraying Stork Club bass player Christopher Emanuel Balestrero, who was falsely accused of committing robberies around New York. Scenes involving Balestrero playing the bass were actually shot at the club.
[edit] Further reading
- Blumenthal, Ralph, Stork Club: America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Café Society, ISBN 0-316-10531-7
- Beebe, Lucius, The Stork Club Bar Book, 1945.
