Dorothy Day.
The Dance Hall Series.

1. Dance Hall Life of City is Revealed
 

 

Girl Reporter Is Employed As Dancer
 

 

Pep Brings Cash
 

 

Loiterers and Riff Raff Fill Places Nightly
 

This is the first of a series of articles on the “free” dance halls of New Orleans by a girl reporter for The Item who worked in them.

In writing these stories, the reporter has given the uncolored facts and conditions as they exist.

The moaning of saxophones, the short staccato notes of banjos, the barbaric rhythm of the drums and above all the sentimentally slow notes of the piano, interspersed with whimsical and rather ridiculous runs and trills — these are the sounds you will hear every night from eight until twelve thirty, if you are lingering on the corner of Burgundy and Canal streets. On this corner are situated two of the three dance halls in the city where admission is free, and where once admitted, you are lured by the music and the smiles of girls, to pay the cashier the small sum of ten cents for a dance which lasts a little over a minute. Loiterers on street corners, sailors on leave, all the riff raff of the city streets, find these dance halls noisy and vivacious places to spend an evening, and every night hundreds climb the stairs and finding that they do not have to dance if they don’t want to, hang over the railing which surrounds the dance floor, and watch the dancers.

The Arcadia, which began business a year ago, and was the first of the three to open, is situated on Burgundy street, just a few doors off Canal. Danceland, a rival place of business, is on Canal. Women are not allowed in these halls, because girls are supplied by the house. There are thirty girls at the Arcadia, who are paid five cents for every dance they make, and twenty-five at the Danceland, who receive four cents a dance. These places never advertise for girls, for those who dance there are steady workers, and when new girls are needed they bring their friends.

New Hall Opens

Recently a new hall was opened by the manager of the Arcadia, called Roseland, situated at 318 St. Charles St. There are ten girls working here, and because of the fact that the place is new and off the main street, business is not so good.

The writer visited these halls; and then worked in them. Seven-thirty one evening found us heavily made up with rouge and powder, climbing the steps of the Arcadia. The music had not begun, but nevertheless there was a crowd of young men hanging around the stairs, shouting familiarly to the girls as they came to work.

“Hey, Redhead, save a dance for me, will yuh kid?” “See the little fat one — she’s some stepper but you wouldn’t think it. I danced ten with her last night and everybody was watchin’ us.” “Aw, I like the goil with the King Tut hair. But she’s got a guy what’s jealous as h-ll.”

The girls shouted back as familiarly. Upstairs the hall was half lit and cold, not yet warmed by the crush of human bodies, for there is no other method of heating. A few musicians were taking their instruments from their cases, and tuning them, and a man behind the soft drink stand was swabbing off his counter with red, chapped hands. A good-looking policeman sauntered around chatting with the musicians and the girls. From the dressing room, where the girls were taking off their coats and hats and applying more layers of rouge and powder, came the sound of shrill giggling.

“How much did you make last night, kid? Cheesus and Murry, I only made sixty dances. If this keeps up I’ll have to go back to the beanery. Say, did you hear that Marie made a hundred and twenty. Gosh, if I danced the way that b—— dances, I’d make it, too.”

Given Employment

Finally, after we had waited for half an hour, a tall gaunt man with eye glasses, the owner and piano player of the Arcadia came in, and fortified by the fact that we had as much paint and lip stick and powder on our faces as the other girls, we asked him for a job. “Need any more girls?” we said.

“How did you happen to hear I needed girls?” he asked, looking us over.

“Oh, I had a friend called Jackie who used to work up here and she said she made about three dollars a night. That’s better than working in the store.”

“Well, I don’t know — I do need some girls over at the Roseland — there’s only ten there, but of course if you want to take a chance here, you can. We’ve thirty already, but they all make pretty good money. You can stick around here for a couple of nights, and if you don’t make out, you can go over to the other place.”

Having taken us on, he became more genial and communicative. “There’s pretty good money in it for the girls that have lots of pep. Of course if you stand around talking to the fellows all evening you don’t get the dances. The only thing to do is to stick close to business. That skinny one there makes about three dollars a night and thinks she’s doing well. Whereas if she talked less and were a little more spry she’d make five and more.

“Do you see that little Wop with the frizzy hair. She danced for forty-eight hours in a marathon down in Texas and she makes six dollars a night most of the time. She’s got an eye for business.

“I’ll tell you what, though,” he added, “don’t wear your good shoes up here. The new ones always do, and they find out their mistake. The thing to do is to wear sneakers, or gym slippers and don’t give a damn how your feet look. Lots of them bring three or four pairs of shoes up here with them and change during the evening to ease their feet. Every couple of weeks, I have to throw out a pile of old shoes that they’ve danced the soles off of. I oughtta start in the second hand shoe business.”

Warned About Thefts

When the “lady manager” of the place arrived, we were introduced to her, and shown into the dressing room. “Don’t leave your bags around here,” she warned us, “because everybody swipes everything they can lay their hands on. Leave your bags outside where the men check their hats.”

The girls treat the manager with an easy informality, but when Mrs. S., his associate, enters their dressing room, they quit their chatter and kill their surreptitious cigarets. During the course of the evening, some of them are running in and out of the dressing room, changing their shoes, eating sandwiches, drinking bottles of soft drinks from the fountain outside, and leaning out of the window, which looks down on Burgundy street, to take a few puffs of a cigaret. Down below, a gang of rowdy youths yell up at them, commenting on the details of their toilet.

Owing to the fact that it was the night after New Year’s and business was expected to be dull, Mrs. S. after showing us around, told us we needn’t start work until the next night, and adjured us to be there promptly at seven-thirty.

 

2. Dance Halls Flooded By Drink, Dope
 

 

Girls Are Told Of Kick In “Muggles”
 

 

This is the second of a series of articles on the “free” dance halls of New Orleans, written by a girl reporter for The Item who worked in them.

Drink, dope and men of all ages and occupations — these are to be found night after night at the Arcadia dance hall, corner of Burgundy and Canal streets, one of the three “free” dance halls in which the writer worked for a week. There was drink in abundance, that second night when we came to take the job of dancing given us by the manager the night before — although nothing but soft drinks are sold on the premises. And drunken men, as long as they can toddle around the dance floor, are welcomed both by the management and the girls because the drunker they are, the more they suffer under the delusion that they are reincarnations of Vernon Castle.

Dope came afterward, in the form of “Mary Warner” cigarets, which two young men who pressed their services on us as escorts home, offered us, assuring us that “they sure would give us a lift — much better than whiskey because you woke up in the morning without a head.”

The girls who dance are glad to accept liquor from their acquaintances of the dance floor, needing a stimulant after two or three hours of continual dancing, most often with clumsy partners or drunken ones, who have to be held up to keep them from falling to the floor. Dancing for pleasure and dancing for a living are two different things.

As to whether the girls accept offers of “Mary Warner” cigarets, we don’t know. We only know from our inquiries that all the girls had heard of them, all had been offered them, and all knew some girls who smoked them.

“But Cheesus, I’m scared to death of them — they make you crazy,” seemed to be the sentiment of most of them. “And you get a habit from them. Give me some good old whisky any day. That has a real kick in it.”

Drunken Nights Recalled

“Say kid, do you remember the night we were all so drunk that we couldn’t dance, and gosh, wasn’t Mrs. S. mad?”

“And do you remember the night that Sadie got so stewed she fell on the floor, and cut her face all up. Gee, I never laughed so much in my life.”

Not that the girls openly accept bottles from the men and tilt them on the dance floor. After all, these are times of prohibition, and there is a policeman on the floor whose uniform causes even the most riotous to moderate his conduct. But hip pockets bulge, and the men’s room in the rear is next to the girls’ dressing room, and bottles can be passed from the window of one into the other. The stuff is more palatable when poured into a bottle of limeade or such-like drink. Then, disguised by the innocent pop bottle, the girls can leave their drink on the shelf, and come in between dances every now and then and sip at it. “You need something to keep you going,” they say.

It is only the habitues who know that the policeman is after all a figurehead. Most of the customers are transients, salesmen, sailors and boys from the army and navy, high school boys out seeing life. But there is a goodly number of low-browed young men, dressed in the most dapper styles who hang about the dance hall every night as they would about a pool room. Some of these are the “steadies” of some of the girls, although one steady may have belonged to Marie last week, and Sadie the week before. Some of the girls have “husbands” who profess themselves to be very jealous of their wives. The fellows who look as though they made an occupation of “steadying” the girls, do little dancing, but lean over the railing, talk to the musicians, and escort their girls home. And woe unto the girl who dances, however innocently, with the steady of one of the others. Forthwith there will be a battle royal in the dressing room, and then the stream of filth and obscenity can be heard on the streets below. The girls of sixteen outdo the “girls” of thirty-five. The younger they look, the more hard-boiled they seem.

It was one of these steadies who gave us an inkling of the policeman’s position in the dance hall. The steady had proved himself objectionable New Year’s night, refusing to go home. The policeman shouted at him and he shouted back. They swore at each other, quite oblivious of their listeners.

“You’re nothing but a louse,” yelled the steady. “And what’s more you’re a d——d liar.”

At this we expected to see him turned out, but the policeman retreated, vanquished by the superior shouting power of the other.

Jerry, New On the Job

Jerry, which seems to be the policeman’s name, has been at the Arcadia only for the last six weeks. Before that he was required only on Saturday nights. “Oh, yes, I have lots to do,” he replied to our inquiries. “They keep me pretty busy around here.” And although he said nothing farther, he chuckled as though in reminiscence of some strenuous nights.

We were welcomed, that second night, with glances of hostility, by some of the girls, and with friendly overtures by the more assured and successful ones. However popular we might prove, the latter have a steady clientele, who come night after night and send their friends when they are out of town. For it goes without saying that only traveling men or soldiers and sailors spend their money in these places. The steady ones who hang over the railing know that you spend more in one of these dance halls than you can at a cabaret or a dance hall where they can bring a girl and where admission is charged. You can spend a dollar in exactly ten minutes, and if you are too drunk to realize that a hundred dances means a hundred times ten cents, you will wake up the next morning wondering where your money has all gone.

If the men complain of the shortness of the dances, the girls are instructed to say that they were late in starting to dance — they didn’t get on the floor when the music started, and that’s why the dance seemed so short.

If we had been dancing for our living we would have considered it our good fortune that second night, to have been picked on by an especially drunken sailor who was intent on learning to dance. With him was a tall, serious faced sailor lad, who explained to all who would listen, that he did not believe in dancing himself, but that he was going to see to it that his friend learned how. Time after time he went to the cashier’s desk and bought a dollar’s worth of tickets which he gave to his friend, one at a time. On the ticket is written the words, “Good for one lesson,” and the girl tears off half which she keeps herself, and gives the other half to the keeper at the gate. The tickets which she collects, she keeps in the palm of her hand, held there by some elastic bands. Most of the men decline to pay for checking their hats, and the girl holds this for them while they dance. Sometimes, if she has been having nips from a bottle in the dressing room, she wears the hat herself.

Wild Scramble for Partners

When the dance is over, unless she thinks she can get another dance from her partner, each girl makes a mad dash towards the cashier’s desk, and stands there, ready to be taken for the next. The bolder ones elbow their way to the front, shout at the lookers-on, taunt the men into dancing, grab hold of the more timid ones before they have a chance to express their choice of girls. If they don’t get that dance, they stand at the gate swaying their shoulders and hips suggestively, looking with meaning eyes at the men around. Or if they have been standing around too long, they dance with each other exhibiting their various steps and movements, all the while with their eyes on the long line of men watching them.

The railing extends all the length of the dance floor, and from ten thirty to twelve, the crowd of onlookers increases until the men are standing, crowded three and four deep, peering over each other’s shoulders, elbowing to get a point of vantage. On good nights there are probably three hundred or so men in the hall, and you would think that thirty girls would not find it hard to make a living. Only the girls themselves know what a scramble it is.

 

3. Hangers-On Scramble to Gain Dance Hall Girls, Then Offer Them Whisky, Dope Smokes
 

 

This is the third of a series of articles on the “free” dance halls of New Orleans, written by a girl reporter for The Item who worked in them.

Whether it is the customary thing for the hangers-on around the dance halls in the business section to offer doped cigarets to the girls with whom they make dates, we will not say. We only know that the second evening we spent working at the Arcadia dance hall, on the corner of Burgundy and Canal street ended up by our finding ourselves stranded in the middle of City Park at one-thirty in the morning, not appreciating the whiskey, Marrawanna cigarets and other attentions which our escorts tried to force on us.

The long evening had finally come to an end. Owing to the fact that Danceland, another rival hall around the corner on Canal street, closes at twelve, the Arcadia keeps open until twelve-thirty or one every night to catch stray customers. The music becomes wilder and wilder, the drummer in a last spurt of enthusiasm becomes more and more entertaining to the onlookers, the piano player becomes more frenzied. The girls are tired out and keep shaking their heads at the manager. “Make this the last one,” they plead, their feet throbbing, their backs aching, their necks stiff from holding their heads up.

“Last Dance”

At last there is a shout, “Last dance,” everybody rushes for the floor, the girls’ faces light up, and there is a last abandoned fling. This last dance is perhaps the only joyous one of the evening. Everyone becomes gay and care free. Business is over until seven-thirty the next evening, and the girls are looking forward either to bed, or to regular hilarity and dancing, for which they are not paid, but for which someone else will pay.

The men crowd around the railing and entrance to the dance floor, trying to get a word with the girls. “Are you going home alone?” is the question, and if one already has an escort, it makes no difference, the question is again asked of the next one. “Can’t I see you home?”

From the chatter of the girls in the dressing room, we have learned that if you haven’t a steady, the place to find one is on the dance floor. If your regular “fellah” is not calling for you or waiting for you at the door downstairs it is customary to accept the offer of escort from anyone who asks you, provided he is young and passable looking. Then, too, there is always a chance to get a bite to eat, or to go cabareting. And if the fellah who asks to take you home says he has a car waiting downstairs, why all the better.

Would Be Very Nice

As we waited for our friend who had been grabbed for the last dance and left us standing by the railing, a young man leaned over and said, “Are you going home alone?”

“No,” we replied. “We’ve got a girl friend here with us.”

“Oh, that’s fine then, because I’ve got a friend with me in the car downstairs.” The tone implied that we had already accepted the offer. “What do you say we wait for you at the door and take you home?”

“That would be very nice of you,” we reply, and proceed to the dressing room for our wraps.

“The dance halls in themselves might be all right,” we had heard. “But it’s what they lead to. Cabareting and drinking and all that sort of thing.” So it was up to us to size up those who offered their escort. The two young men looked quiet and well mannered enough, we ruminated, and put on our things with no misgivings.

Down on Canal street a big car was parked. We gave our address and piled in, stiff and tired but nevertheless alert. Throwing in the clutch and shifting the gears, the driver started down Canal street, but in the wrong direction. A few block[s] passed, and we off-handedly reminded him that we lived in the other direction.

Need a Little Air

“Aw, that’s all right, you girls need a little air after dancing for so long,” they assured us. There was no mention made of having a bite to eat though it was now six hours since dinner time. We wondered what the girls did about it — whether they hinted delicately, “Say, what about something to eat out at the Moulin Rouge?” Or perhaps a little more frankly, “Hey, you cheap skates, we get plenty of rides. What about grub?” Not knowing the technique, however, we chattered brightly as is the manner of flappers.

At least the boys were going in the direction of the cabarets, we thought and did not take it amiss when the car entered City Park. The next move on the program, however, was to park in a shady lane of trees. Whereupon, the driver reached into a pocket and brought out a pint bottle of whiskey, and a little glass.

Thinking of all the stories we had heard or read of doped liquor, we pretended to take a drink. This was the signal for a greater show of geniality on the part of our escorts. Then, “You don’t act as though you liked the stuff, so what do you say we have a cigaret? Did you ever smoke a Mary Warner?”

Have Great Kick

That was the name of the cigarets as we understood them, never having heard of Mary Warner. When the cigarets were lit, a heavy, pungent odor, quite different from the smell of tobacco, filled the car. Since we had made no objection to smoking them, our escorts began to expatiate upon the virtues of the new weed.

“These cigarets have a great kick if you just draw it way down in your lungsÂ…Hey, that ain’t the way to smoke them — draw the smoke in. You’re wasting it, kid. We were out on a party one night and the liquor was running low, and everybody smoked these. We had a great time. Say, that was some party, wasn’t it?”

By this time we realized that we had pulled what the girls at the Arcadia would call blanks in the way of escorts, since no food or cabaret parties seemed to be forthcoming. As we pretended to sip the whiskey, we puffed at the cigarets, careful not to inhale, and trying to let the cigaret burn itself out as fast as it could. When ours was down to a stub, we put it out against the side of the car, and in an effort to save the “snipe” for evidence, if necessary, secreted it in the top of our stocking, which after the manner of young women was rolled.

Too Many Cigarets

When it was noticed that we had ditched the Mary Warner, our escort showed what would seem to be undue anxiety about it. “Gosh, what did you do with it? Say, give me a match so I can see if I can find it? Threw it out the side of the car, did yuh? What did you do that for?”

It took several moments to divert his attention from the cigaret. He seemed for the moment to be irrationally anxious about it. Then, forgetting the cigaret he dropped his head over the wheel and began to murmur to himself. As far as we could make out, he was trying to recite the face on the bar room floor. To all appearances, he was drunk, and since he had had not more than a sip of the whiskey, and there had not been the smell of liquor on his breath when we accepted the invitation to ride home, we came to the conclusion that he had been smoking too many of the cigarets which he recommended so strongly. Indeed, his further actions and remarks made this a certainty.

Auto Followed

Resisting importunate advances as long as we could — we took it for granted that all girls had to resist them enough to show that they were in earnest — we soon saw that it was no use. Our escorts were full of dope, and stubborn. Releasing ourselves from restraining arms, we slipped out of the car, and started to walk. Having an Indian’s sense of direction, we fortunately aimed in the right direction, and with the automobile following us through the park, we gained the streets, and started in the right direction home. For half a dozen blocks our would-be escorts followed us slowly along the curb, pleading with us to get back in and ride. But we had seen enough to know that they were indeed half crazy with the cigarets they had been smoking, and preferred walking if we couldn’t get a street car or a cab.

Luckily it was a fine night, just before the cold spell, so we struck out briskly and made the thirty blocks home in some forty-five minutes. How many times was it we had heard the slang term, “Get out and walk!” Well, we had done it at last. If we had not been on an assignment, we would have been both mad and ashamed. As it was, it was all in the night’s work.

 

4. Danceland Girls Make Only 4 Cents But Manager Explains That It “Isn’t a Rough Joint” — February 6, 1924.
 

Scene: The Danceland, corner of Canal and Burgundy, and just around the corner from the Arcadia.

Time: The third night of our employment in the free dance halls of New Orleans.

Dramatis Personae:

• Mr. Berg, manager of the Danceland,
• five members of a rather poor jazz band,
• twenty-five girls from the ages of sixteen to forty,
• three hundred or so men of all description,
• and us, reporters from The Item.

Mr. Berg: “So you girls have been dancing over at the Arcadia. Well you can come on up here and dance if you want to. As for me, I wouldn’t advise any girl to dance in a place like the Arcadia or the Roseland. They’re rough joints. Lots of our girls are living at home with their families. Why, you wouldn’t believe it, but sometimes their mothers come up here and watch ’em dance. Here, I only pay four cents a dance, I know, but a girl is safe in working here. Yes, give me your names, and hang your coats here, and there is the dressing room.”

The scene changes to the dressing room. It is a small room with two small mirrors, two tables loaded with cosmetics. On one side of the room is a pile of shoes, worn out and stubbed as to toe and heel. Before the mirrors are three or four “nice” girls, painting and powdering and smoking cigarettes.

One, with a slick, straight hair cut and buck teeth. “How do you like my hair cut, kid?”

Another, little and plump and full of laughter and also obscenity: “Say you ___________, if you got out on the floor and __________ you’d make some money instead of standing in here and talking like a __________. You poor __________, what the __________ do you think you’re doing up here any way, __________.” Etc.

Another with a business-like face and a straight line for lips. She is dressed in a simple, little-girl dress of old rose. She is flat chested and round shouldered and from the rear looks like fifteen, from the front like forty. When she smiles, her face is contorted but not with mirth. Says she, “Look at the dollar tip I just got. Gee, that was a swell guy. He’s going to take me out afterward.”

Another, glaring after the last one as she left the dressing room to continue earning an honest living: “Would you look at that __________. Sure she gets a dollar tip. If you __________ they’ll give you a quarter, and if you __________,” etc., increasing the amount by twenty-five cents with every vile remark.

Outside the dance hall is dimly lit and seems full of smoke as another girl opens the door of the well-lit dressing room and bursts in giggling shrilly. “Say, Gawd help me, every time they play “A Kiss in the Dark” that sailor gets me off in the corner and kisses the life outa me. He’s a cave man and gosh I’m stuck on ’im.”

There is more talk of steadies, and fellahs and methods of love making, and emphasis is added by a plentiful use of profanity and obscenity, all in a friendly spirit. We wondered what they had left to say to each other when they started to get mad, as we had seen two girls do over in the Arcadia.

Business was not so good in the dance hall that night. The hall was crowded, jammed in fact, as usual, but the men were “pikers” and stood around and watched and talked to the girls instead of dancing. Always there were ten or twelve girls standing around a pole in the middle of the floor, waiting for partners. The only bench in the room was next to the band, but when you got tired of standing, it was better to have the blare in your ears and be able to rest than to stand in the midst of the smoke and chatter.

The piano player is a chinless youth of tender years whose air of sophistication sits on him heavily. His thin hair is parted in the middle and fits straight and tight to his head like a mannikin’s. He thumps heavily with both hands and feet, and occasionally stands up, with an air of boredom and plays while standing. The saxophone player almost reclines in his chair with his feet on the chair of the player next to him. He is a tall dark man, and when he takes his lips from his instrument, you notice that he has no teeth and that his mouth falls in like an old woman’s. The other saxophone player is pop-eyed and looks as though with every spurt of melody, he were going to burst. His face is long and mournful and a feeling of the grotesque creeps over you as you watch him. The drummer has a million little tricks by which he charms the girls, who watch him when they are not dancing, and giggle at him and try to catch his eye. But he is very insouciant and disregards them as he does the crowd of male admirers who hang over the railing of the coop which confines the band. With an air of great indifference, even of melancholy, he throws his drumsticks in the air, catches them lightly, sways hither and yon, lets his head fall forward and then catches it with a jerk. His shoulders are so broad and his face so impassive, that the diminutive figure of the banjo player by his side, has the appearance of a vivacious little gnome.

And every now and then some would-be dancer, stunted and cheaply dapper strides up with a ticket in his hand, which you grab before someone else gets it, get a strangle hold around his neck and with an assumption of pep and abandon which you do not feel, you dance. A hundred dances a night, if your heart is in your work and you want to make a living; 700 dances a week, 2,800 dances a month, 43,600 dances a year! Watta life, to quote the poor dancing girls.

 

5. Too Drunk to Dance, Some Swagger, Boast and Quarrel During Dance Hall Orgies
 

Everybody was drunk again. Or if they weren’t drunk, they looked as though they were. The scene this third night of the writer’s employment in the free dance halls of New Orleans, was the Roseland, a hall on the second floor of 318 St. Charles Ave. under the same management as the Arcadia. It was a cold night, but nevertheless the hall was crowded with men who hung over the railing which extended the length of the dance floor. On the whole the men were better dressed and better looking than those who frequented the Arcadia and Danceland.

It was one of those bitter cold nights when there were no loiterers below the open windows to listen to the strains of jazz from the hall above. The hall was unheated and draughty but nevertheless those who were there preferred to stay rather than go out in the cold night. From the aroma on the breath of those we danced with, we judged they were impervious to the cold. “You’re shivering, kid,” sympathetically. “Y’oughta have a bracer to keep you warm. What do you say should I slip my bottle under your cupe so you can take it out to the dressing room and have a little nip.” Offers of this sort were many.

Enters With Lugger

About ten o’clock a tall blond young man whose friends called him Mert, entered the hall with swagger and assurance and started to dance. “Feel this,” he boasted, slapping his pockets one by one. “Pound se’sugar — And this. Bottle of milk. And this. Bottle of booze. And in this pocket I have a glass and a spoon. I’m my own bartender and I carry my toddies around with me. Only thing to do on a night like this.”

With Mert was a little short fellow who seemed to have some difficulty navigating around the floor. When he lurched against the railing and dropped a ticket over it, he couldn’t reach it, nor did it enter his mind to walk around the railing to get it. Being a direct actionist, he knocked the railing down, retrieved his ticket and went on with the dance, much to the amusement of the multitude, but not of the tall, gaunt, red-headed woman who stood like a sentinel at one end of the hall. She strode over to him fiercely, seized him by the shoulder and started to shake him.

The young man looked at her blankly, but Mert rushed to the rescue. “Tha’s mah friend,” he bellowed. “Do you know who I am? I’m the guy that supplies booze to the guy that owns this place. And do you know who mah friend is? He’s the son of the man who owns the B_____ H_____ cafe. You jus’ try getting fresh with mah frien’ and I’ll give yuh a sock in the toot,’ you red headed __________.”

Appeals to Policeman

Although Mert’s friend wasn’t known, Mert was, but nevertheless the red headed woman’s dignity had to be assuaged by an appeal to the policeman. Other policemen, summoned from goodness knows where, entered the discussion, but Mert was triumphant, retiring from the scene of battle to the dance hall with greater assurance than before. His little friend swung with painstaking precision into a waltz.

Much cheered and refreshed by the disturbance, the girls danced with renewed vigor.

Mert and his friend were not the only uplifted guests of the dance hall. A crowd of young boys, none of whom looked to be over seventeen came in staggeringly and danced. When they weren’t dancing with the girls on the floor, they danced with obscene posturing with one another, disregarded by the policeman, the manager or two women who acted as cashier and assistant managers. When the girls danced with them, they had to hold them to keep them from falling and ward off the objectionable advances towards intimacy which they fumblingly tried to make. Finally, late in the evening, assisting one another they staggered out giggling maudlinly.

“Too Drunk to Dance”

To dance or not to dance? Dancing meant keeping warm, but it also meant submitting to the embrace of a staggering youth who took it for granted that his ten cent ticket entitled him to far greater intimacy than the dance demanded. To avoid this we stood behind the cashier’s desk, behind a pole shiveringly most of the evening, content to be an observer rather than a participant of the so-called festivities. But finally we were confronted by a genial young drunkard who fumblingly poked a ticket at us, and clutching us around the waist, tried to dance.

He believed himself to be possessed of rare gifts in the way of dancing and painstakingly held us off at arm’s length while he gazed at his feet and executed strange and complicated steps. Realizing finally that we were not gifted as he was, he contented himself with strolling rhythmically around the floor simpering inanely.

“Whereupon,” he kept saying with a grin, “four hundred concupines uttered a very vulgar expression.”

“Surely you mean porcupines,” we told him. But no, he assured us gravely. “Four hundred, or was it five hundred concupines uttered a very vulgar expression. Whereupon — “

But the dance was over and our partner, forgetting that we hadn’t heard the rest of the story, lurched against the railing and watched the other dancers with half-shut eyes.

“Drunk again,” he kept murmuring sadly, as he watched the others. “All of ’em drunk. Too drunk to dance.”

And most of them were.

 

6. Woman With Knife Chases Dance Hall Girl Through Streets After Cafe Clash
 

 

“You can’t think what happened to me last night!”

This is the preface to many an amazing tale told in the dressing rooms of the Arcadia, Danceland or the Roseland, free dance halls in which the writer was working for a week. Every night before the dancing begins, the girls who are employed in these halls sit around in the dressing rooms and chatter, and this chatter is most illuminating to the listener.

The speaker this time was a young woman whom the girls called Jimmie — a black-haired, black-eyed young woman who is so popular with the men who hang around the dance halls that she is correspondingly unpopular with the girls who are employed there to dance.

Has 2-Year-Old Baby

This youngster, who confesses to a brief married life of six months during her fifteenth year, and who has a two-year-old baby, and who is now nineteen years old, was formerly dancing at the Danceland, a rival hall to the other two. Upon meeting the manager of the Arcadia a Mr. Baring, she said that she was guaranteed five dollars a night by him, if she would change her place of employment. The generous manager stands to lose little by this however, for during all the nights the writer was dancing at the Arcadia and the Roseland, Jimmie had every dance, averaging more than the hundred a night which would bring her income up to five dollars.

“You see I got a steady bunch of customers,” she explained her success. “These fellahs come in every night and dance about ten dances each with me and they wouldn’t ever think of dancing with any other girl. When there are only ten of them this brings my dances up to [a] hundred, but usually there are more.

Scads of Dates

“Did you see that little one what was dancing with me? My Gawd, the way he dances. When he got through doing his stuff, every guy on the floor was rushing to dance with me.”

And dates! Every night Jimmie has scads of them. She accepts them all, and not keeping an engagement book, gets all mixed up, and every night there are near battles as to who will have the privilege of taking her out. It’s on these dates that things happen.

“What didn’t happen to me last night!” she chortled. “I went out with that big handsome fellah — his name is Oil” — she probably meant Earl — “and went cabareting. I can’t think of all the places we went to, because I’m getting a habit of drawing a blank when I’m drinking. And I never could stand that apricot brandy, and Oil always has a bottle of that in his pocket. Now Sallie here gets a crying jag on. Three drinks and she just opens her mouth and howls. She was on a wailing jag last night, and down on the corner of Iberville and Royal, she just doubled her legs up underneath her and refused to move another inch, and we couldn’t get a cab to save our lives. So we hailed a big truck, and piled her into it, and then we rode down to Canal street where we found a taxi.

Chased By Woman With Knife

“But anyway, what I started to tell you was this: I must have had a lucid moment or so, or I couldn’t remember it. Anyway, we were all going into some dump on Royal street, where they have the rottenest orchestra I ever heard. We only go there when it’s getting late and the liquor is running low, because they sell drinks there. It’s a regular dive where sailors and loose women hang around and I always forget myself and josh the sailors and make the guy I’m with sore. Gee, last night, I was so far gone that every time one of them would look at me I’d yell.

“And then when I was dancing I bumped into one of the dames and I said, ‘Get outa my way, you rough neck,’ and she said, ‘Who’s a rough neck, you little __________,’ and came after me. And Gawd, she had a knife strung around her neck on a string, and she started chasing me. Did I run? I’ll say I run. I forgot my hat and coat and guy and Sallie here and just beat it out the door and down the street with her after me. And after her came a couple of guys and I didn’t know whether they were trying to protect me or whether they were her friends. So I just kept on running. Sallie and the two guys we was with didn’t catch up to me until the next morning when they found me at home after looking for me in every cabaret in New Orleans. Some night, I’ll say, I’m offa apricot brandy for good!”

 

7. Girl Supplements Wages As Store Clerk by Work At Dance Hall at Night
 

 

This is the seventh of a series of articles on the free dance halls of New Orleans, written by a girl reporter for The Item who worked in them.

“Say kid, where do you live? What’s your telephone number? Can I take you home tonight?” These are the questions asked dozens of times every hour of the girls who are employed to dance at the Arcadia, Roseland and Danceland, the three public dance halls of New Orleans in which the writer worked for a week.

Asked by the hundreds of men of all style and description, from the traveling salesmen just in New Orleans for a week and out for a good time, to the lowest riff raff of the streets, the girls pay little attention to such questions. Usually of course, they give the men their telephone number, make dates with them and recruit from their ranks their “steadies” without one of which they never seem to be.

But asked by a woman of a girl at the dance hall, and the question assumes a more sinister aspect.

One of the women at the Roseland is a tall, handsome looking blonde. She was pointed out to us at the dance hall as being rather notorious. In a way she is a beauty with her large blue eyes with drooping lids and thick lashes which curl up heavily. But her mouth is hard, and her voice has a peculiar hoarse quality.

Wants “Roommates”

“Where are you living, kid?” we heard her ask an attractive, eighteen-year-old girl who had been dancing at the Roseland for only a week. “Do you know, I’m looking for a room mate, or rather not a room mate, but two of them. I got a friend with me already, but I know of a nice little flat that we could all get together.”

This question, to our knowledge was repeated every night to the eighteen-year-old girl, who confided that she had left home some months before and whose mother did not know where she was living. She said that she already had a room mate, a girl who was a year younger than herself.

“But she may not be with me long,” she said. “You see she’s from the country, and every day she gets a letter from her mother asking her to come home, and she gets homesick. She’s dancing over at Danceland now, though, and she’s having so much fun, that she says she doesn’t guess she’ll go home. But if she does, why I’ll let you know.”

What is the basis of these overtures from a woman well over thirty, to this girl of eighteen, is the question which arises. It is not often that a woman of her age desires close companionship with a girl twelve years her junior. The contrast between the two reacts against the older. But she continues her questioning, “Why don’t you come and live with me, girlie?”

“Crush” on Musician

As for the little country girl who was home sick before, but who isn’t going home now because she is having so much fun at Danceland — “I’m not earning so much money,” she confessed, “because I’m such a nut. I gotta an awful crush on the fellah that plays the saxophone, and he quits playing as often as he can and dances with me.”

And Jenny doesn’t get so many dances either, because she is still a little country girl and doesn’t like to push her way to the front and swagger and sway at the fellahs like the other girls do. So she makes only about a dollar a night, which isn’t enough to live on, of course, and continues her work at a store where she clerks in the day time.

Though she doesn’t have so many dances as the others, she has quite as many offers of escort, and the reason she likes the dance hall is because there are parties every night.

Out of bed at seven in the morning in order to be at the store on time, on her feet all day, at the dance hall at seven thirty in the evening and on her feet again until twelve, then continuing the dizzy whirl until two or three in the morning, and up again at seven. She is no longer homesick. She hasn’t the time to be.

 

8. Dance Hall Girl Wakes Up In Strange Room After Night Of Carousing in Cabarets
 

 

Here is a story heard at the Roseland, one of the three public dance halls at which the writer was employed for a week. In telling the story, it is better not to give a description of the young girl who told it. For although she told the story herself, laughing the while, she was telling it to her associates, girls who were paid to dance every evening, and perhaps it will look different to her in print.

“Gee, I had some time last night!” This is the way most of these stories begin. “I had a date with His Nibs and I had a date with that little shrimp in the derby hat, who has such an adorable car, and I had a date with this guy I been going regular with who said that he would call for me at twelve o’clock

“And then when twelve o’clock came, I ditched them all. You didn’t happen to see that tall blonde-haired man who came in around eleven o’clock last night, did you? Gosh, he certainly was a darling, and he danced every single dance with me after that. He kept asking me if I liked him a little bit, and I said no I hated him, you know, and he kept asking me to go out with him.

Waited at the Door

“When twelve o’clock came I just ditched all the others and there, sure enough, he was waiting for me outside the door, and we went to get something to eat. He wasn’t no piker, he wasn’t, and we had a swell feed, lobsters and everything. He had a quart of likker with him and before I knew it I was getting woozy. I shouldn’t have been drinking any of it, because the guys had kept slipping me drinks all evening and by the time twelve o’clock came I didn’t know whether I was going or coming.

“But I kept pouring it down me just the same, and this guy kept telling me, ‘Gee, a little girl like you shouldn’t drink so much. You’re pouring it down like water.’ But I kept right on drinking it.

“Then we went out to the Moulin Rouge, and there were only a few girls out there, but there were lots of fellahs and they were all stewed and every time my guy and I would dance, they’d keep jumping up and trying to cut in. There was one of them there who said that he was going to smash up the place unless I danced with him, so I went over to his table, only he was so drunk and he couldn’t dance, so I sat down with him and kept telling him to calm down.

“Cusses Out Everybody”

“And of course the guy I was with kept coming after me and saying I was a cheap sort for jumping tables and all that sort of thing, and he’d drag me back to our table again, me swearing like mad. Every time I get drunk now, I swear all over the place, cussing out everybody.

“I couldn’t see where we were going half the time, but I know we went to lots of places after that and then I don’t know anything more at all until I woke up this morning.

“And gosh, what do you think. I wasn’t home at all — I didn’t know where I was. I was in a perfectly strange room, a great big room furnished with swell bird’s eye maple furniture. I had all my clothes on except my dress and shoes and you can bet I got them on quick.

“When I got out in the hall, I ran into a woman who looked as though she worked around the place, and when I talked to her, she turned out to be the proprietor. I asked her where I was, and she said the __________ Hotel on Baronne street and when I asked her she laughed at me.

Treated Her Swell

“She said, ‘lots of girls come in here and then wake up the next morning and don’t remember how they got here. It’s the bum liquor that does it.’ And she said that she had undressed me the night before and that I had been sick. Gee, she was nice.

“Believe me, I rushed home pretty quick and it’s a good thing for me I’m not living at home, for I wouldn’t know what to tell my mother. Anyway, I thought I’d seen the last of that fellah, but it turns out that I gave him my telephone number and he called me up this afternoon and wants to buy me a new dress because I spilt liquor all over the one I had on. He certainly did treat me swell, like a real gentleman, and I’m going out with him again tonight.”

Notes

1. Muggles. In the 1920s, ‘muggles’ was New Orleans slang for marijuana.

Text prepared by:

• Bruce R. Magee

Source

Day, Dorothy. “Dance Hall Girl Wakes Up In Strange Room After Night Of Carousing in Cabarets.” New Orleans Item, 10 Feb. 1924, p. 1. Print.

Day, Dorothy. “Dance Halls Flooded By Drink, Dope.” New Orleans Item, 4 Feb. 1924, pp. 1, 3. Print.

Day, Dorothy. “Danceland Girls Make Only 4 Cents But Manager Explains That It “Isn’t a Rough Joint.” New Orleans Item, 6 Feb. 1924, pp. 1, 4. Print.

Day, Dorothy. “Girl Supplements Wages As Store Clerk by Work At Dance Hall at Night.” New Orleans Item, 9 Feb. 1924, Evening Edition: Home Special Edition pp. 1-2. Print.

Day, Dorothy. “Dance Hall Life of City is Revealed.” New Orleans Item, 3 Feb. 1924, pp. 1-2. Print.

Day, Dorothy. “Hangers-On Scramble to Gain Dance Hall Girls, Then Offer Them Whisky, Dope Smokes.” New Orleans Item, 5 Feb. 1924, pp. 1, 4. Print.

Day, Dorothy. “Too Drunk to Dance, Some Swagger, Boast and Quarrel During Dance Hall Orgies.” New Orleans Item, 7 Feb. 1924, pp. 1, 4. Print.

Day, Dorothy. “Woman With Knife Chases Dance Hall Girl Through Streets After Cafe Clash.” New Orleans Item, 8 Feb. 1924, pp. 1, 5. Print.