Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza
Authors: David Pietrusza
Tags: General, Social Science, Crime, History, Biography & Autobiography, Sociology, True Crime, 20th Century, Biography, New York, New York (State), New York (N.Y.), Criminology, Urban, Criminals & Outlaws, Criminals, Baseball, Sports & Recreation, Nineteen twenties
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conversation. He wanted customers for his new card games and for his primitive Water Street gambling house. But his already-large ego demanded he match wits with Broadway's cleverest lads. He found them at Jack's-newspapermen like "Spanish" O'Brien, Frank Ward O'Malley, Ben de Cas- sares, and Bruno Lessing; songwriter Grant Clarke, cartoonists Hype Igoe and "Tad" Dorgan; and all-around scamp Wilson Mizner.
In their time they more than had their followings. Despite his nickname and surname, editor "Spanish" O'Brien was born in Paris. Donald Henderson Clark pegged him as "a handsome, irresponsible Irishman ... who worked at editing newspapers as a sideline to his vocation of indulging in Homeric conversations with his friends."
New York Sun reporter Frank Ward O'Malley was too nice for the Broadway crowd. "There was never a man on Park Row," the Times later wrote, "who was more friendly or more sensitive to human nature." H. L. Mencken called O'Malley "one of the best reporters America has ever known." When O'Malley wasn't reporting, he was phrasemaking, providing us with the observation, "Life is just one damned thing after another"-and the term "brunch." O'Malley didn't enter journalism until age thirty-one after having "flopped," as he put it, in art ("Commercial illustrator ... for four years, drawing full-length portraits of vacuum cleaners and canned soup"). He described his newspaper career:
Reporter, New York Morning Sun, for fourteen years, thirteen of which were spent in Jack's restaurant.
Ben de Cassares, a collateral descendent of the philosopher Spinoza, worked for the Herald having just returned from Mexico City, where he founded El Diario. De Cassares, wrote Rothstein biographer Leo Katcher, would "balance a Seidel of Pilsner on his head and take the solar system by the oratorical tail and whirl it around the room to the dazzled delight of all and sundry."
When Rothstein wasn't listening to these gentlemen, he met songwriters like Clarke Grant and other newspaper people like Bruno Lessing. Grant wrote Fanny Brice's signature song "Second Hand Rose" and Ethel Waters's "Am I Blue?" Lessing wrote a daily column for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, but that wasn't his real value to the journalistic empire. He edited-not news, opinion, theatrical reviews, or sports-but something of far more important to Mr. Hearst's readers: the Sunday comics.
Hype Igoe and Thomas A. "Tad" Dorgan were two friends who migrated east together from San Francisco and were now immensely talented cartoonists for Hearst's Evening Journal. Igoe dabbled at sportswriting among any number of odd activities. Playing the ukulele at Jack's was one. Refusing to wear an overcoat in even the coldest weather was another. This foible hospitalized him several times with pneumonia. Hype loved the cold, even refrigerating his ukulele to improve its sound.
Tad Dorgan was master of the early-twentieth century catchphrase. "Hot dog," "cat's pajamas," "yes, we have no bananas," "twentythree skidoo," "dumbbell," "drug-store cowboy," and "skimmer" are all Dorganisms.
Wilson Mizner proved to be a more memorable wordsmith than Igoe, Dorgan, or the entire bunch put together. But beyond that, he was simply a great character. Consider this description of Mizner, provided by his biographer, Alva Johnson:
Mizner had a vast firsthand criminal erudition, which he commercialized as a dramatist on Broadway and a screenwriter in Hollywood. At various times during his life, he had been a miner, confidence man, ballad singer, medical lecturer, man of letters, general utility man in a segregated district, cardsharp, hotel man, songwriter, dealer in imitation masterpieces of art, prizefighter, prizefight manager, Florida promoter, and roulettewheel fixer. He was an idol of low society and a pet of high. He knew women, as his brother Addison said, from the best homes and houses.
That's a lot to say about any one person in any one paragraph, but (and this is no
In their time they more than had their followings. Despite his nickname and surname, editor "Spanish" O'Brien was born in Paris. Donald Henderson Clark pegged him as "a handsome, irresponsible Irishman ... who worked at editing newspapers as a sideline to his vocation of indulging in Homeric conversations with his friends."
New York Sun reporter Frank Ward O'Malley was too nice for the Broadway crowd. "There was never a man on Park Row," the Times later wrote, "who was more friendly or more sensitive to human nature." H. L. Mencken called O'Malley "one of the best reporters America has ever known." When O'Malley wasn't reporting, he was phrasemaking, providing us with the observation, "Life is just one damned thing after another"-and the term "brunch." O'Malley didn't enter journalism until age thirty-one after having "flopped," as he put it, in art ("Commercial illustrator ... for four years, drawing full-length portraits of vacuum cleaners and canned soup"). He described his newspaper career:
Reporter, New York Morning Sun, for fourteen years, thirteen of which were spent in Jack's restaurant.
Ben de Cassares, a collateral descendent of the philosopher Spinoza, worked for the Herald having just returned from Mexico City, where he founded El Diario. De Cassares, wrote Rothstein biographer Leo Katcher, would "balance a Seidel of Pilsner on his head and take the solar system by the oratorical tail and whirl it around the room to the dazzled delight of all and sundry."
When Rothstein wasn't listening to these gentlemen, he met songwriters like Clarke Grant and other newspaper people like Bruno Lessing. Grant wrote Fanny Brice's signature song "Second Hand Rose" and Ethel Waters's "Am I Blue?" Lessing wrote a daily column for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, but that wasn't his real value to the journalistic empire. He edited-not news, opinion, theatrical reviews, or sports-but something of far more important to Mr. Hearst's readers: the Sunday comics.
Hype Igoe and Thomas A. "Tad" Dorgan were two friends who migrated east together from San Francisco and were now immensely talented cartoonists for Hearst's Evening Journal. Igoe dabbled at sportswriting among any number of odd activities. Playing the ukulele at Jack's was one. Refusing to wear an overcoat in even the coldest weather was another. This foible hospitalized him several times with pneumonia. Hype loved the cold, even refrigerating his ukulele to improve its sound.
Tad Dorgan was master of the early-twentieth century catchphrase. "Hot dog," "cat's pajamas," "yes, we have no bananas," "twentythree skidoo," "dumbbell," "drug-store cowboy," and "skimmer" are all Dorganisms.
Wilson Mizner proved to be a more memorable wordsmith than Igoe, Dorgan, or the entire bunch put together. But beyond that, he was simply a great character. Consider this description of Mizner, provided by his biographer, Alva Johnson:
Mizner had a vast firsthand criminal erudition, which he commercialized as a dramatist on Broadway and a screenwriter in Hollywood. At various times during his life, he had been a miner, confidence man, ballad singer, medical lecturer, man of letters, general utility man in a segregated district, cardsharp, hotel man, songwriter, dealer in imitation masterpieces of art, prizefighter, prizefight manager, Florida promoter, and roulettewheel fixer. He was an idol of low society and a pet of high. He knew women, as his brother Addison said, from the best homes and houses.
That's a lot to say about any one person in any one paragraph, but (and this is no
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