Transcripts For CSPAN3 Debby 20240705

We are thrilled to have, as our speaker today. Debby applegate she is a graduate of Amherst College and has her ph. D. In american studies from Yale University. She is a historian her previous was the most famous man in america a biography of Henry Ward Beecher and he was a minister sort of a progress administer. But in her acknowledgments she talked about how interesting it was to move from a minister to a madam who is ran a number of houses of prostitution in new york. So her latest book is the biography of polly adler, icon of the jazz age. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and it was one of the new york society of libraries best books about new york and was also a finalist for the us Angeles Times book prize and. The National Book critics circle award and shes been married to bruce torgan. 36 years. So i read the book. Its a fascinating, fascinating book. One of the things i didnt realize is that is as much about the history. New york during the 2030s and forties as it is about about polly and her her. Im not going to say too much because i know i want you to hear more from her, but youre from new york or you lived in new york. You love new york to visit. This is such a wonderful book because i could picture the map of new york in the city and the streets and how she went up and down and east and west trying to find a safe safe place to run her houses across the tution. And you will be amazed when you read the number of men and women who made use of her services in multiple industries. So with that, the other thing i want to say is, is how exciting it was to see all of the libraries she used to do research for this book and how much help she got from librarians. So im going to go with that and i hope you didnt say too much. Im going to turn it over to polly. So to polly polly, to debbie to talk about polly, you have. Im going to start by saying all my knowledge is theoretical. So am not i am not polly adler or a by any stretch i have that kind of stamina. So it is i cannot tell you what a joy it is to be here. Well, first of all, because you guys are alive and i havent been in a room most of my my book presentations have been on zoom, which is the dullest possible way to go speak to readers. But even i love librarians. You are my tempter and my angels, the people who have sent me down more rabbit than i could ever my way out of. But thats the part that i actually really like. And to be here at this particular conference, which i did not know until we had lunch, that this is one of the largest conferences in. The country by far, and that in this particular moment when you are all on the front, even the retired librarians are on the front lines of the culture wars right now. You have always been heroes to me, but this particular moment, it seems to me you should maybe start wearing bullet proof vests. Sorry, i should. That that was perhaps speaking too lightly, actually. So and this book in particular, when my first book even more was dependent upon librarians, but this book is really reflects ill talk about this a little bit as i go along. It reflects a shift so i started writing it in 2008 and library have changed so much in that period of time. What we can do where we can do it, whats available and i feel like everything about this book reflects that. Its amazing, that amazing combination of, old school libraries, old dusty volumes that nobody else would look at but thank god you guys are saving for the rest of us. And that cutting Edge Materials that are still coming out to day and was part of the reason the book took so long every single week there would be another new thing to see so my first book, the most famous man in america, about the minister, did have some sexual peccadilloes for sure. That was one of the charms of the book, but it was a much bigger deal than i realize to go from would be saints to unrepentant sinners. Much bigger deal. And of course, to go from the 19 century Henry Ward Beecher, probably best known, is remembered best known now as. The little brother of Harriet Beecher stowe. So it was a very different milieu to go to 1920s new york, which is the into a land of gangsters and bootleggers and more cops than i ever thought possible. So in this case, we really its much more of a dark of history and of course, that made research a very different thing. I mostly work out of the Yale University where as you may or may not be surprised. They have a really excellent collection on congregational ministers. And when i started using interlibrary loan i by the way, won the prize for best user. Eventually over a loan many years in a there also kids dont know what interlibrary loan is anymore but that that they finally were like they kept asking me what are you because i was ordering things about how to tell syphilis, gonorrhea or you know joke books about bordellos and. They finally said, oh, well just Start Building our collection. So if you ever at Yale University, you can thank me that theyre and collection is much bigger. Of course, polly did not think of herself in this this way as the underbelly she preferred to herself as a Horatio Alger hero in her own way, as she put it once. So this is the biggest difference from. The last time i published a book, a cynical person might say that my life has been typical american Success Story from the arrival at ellis island. The ladder rung by rung, 5 a week, 10 a week, 100 a week, a mink coat. A better address from neighborhood trade to an International Clientele from a nobody to a legend. Now there is some truth that Portrait Police speak with a heroine as she like to call it, was more than an oasis of illicit sex. These brothels that she ran in manhattan were, for many people, impromptu salons of a certain sort, where the low brow, the high brow happily mingled as she remembered from the parlor of house. I had a backstage three way view. I could look into the underworld, the half world and the high slumming intellectual bulls, broadway bohemians, newspaper reporters loved pollys blunt realism. Her of louche wisecracks. Many in the underground gay community, both male and female, found her parlor a relaxing a place where they could relax and be themselves without being judged. Executives in the new fields of radio, Motion Pictures and advertising employed her girls as party favorites, if you will, and grease to woo clients. Wall street traders packed passed along stock tips on their way to the bedroom racketeers used her parlor as an informal where they could confer with politicians and judges away from eyes. Entertainers knew they had hit the big time if they could afford an evening with one of her girls crooked cops made her place their home from home and everyone from park avenue aristocrats to Lower East Side bootleggers appreciated her ironclad discretion. No one beating polly on the street would have taken her for the proprietor of a famous bordello. She was was tiny. Like many of her generation, she was barely five feet tall. Even in her highest high heels. She had a very cute little cupid of kind of face. She did have a weakness for mink and flashy jewelry. But no more so than any good manhattan gold digger. Pearl so, as her parents called her, was born in 1900, more or less, in the a Russian Village in around in what is now belarus. She was an unusually clever and selfpossessed child like the daughters in. The stories of sholem aleichem. She was eager to shake off the confines village life, to go out and see the world and make something of herself in yiddish, which i did not know. And i still do not know as fully, but i know a lot more now. They might have said she wanted to be a mensch or somebody, a person her family unusually supported her ambitions, most girls did not. That sort of treatment. But as the old yiddish saying says man plans god when polly 13 her, he decided the family should go to america the golden land of america. The problem . It takes a lot of money to send a large that way. So he decided he was going to send them in installments. And as the oldest girl, she oldest child, she would be the first to go. She was only about 13 at this time. So she goes, she lands ellis island in december of 1913 and she goes to stay with friends of her father, people she did not really know actually. Then tragedy struck before her parents could immigrate. World war one breaks out. All travel is stopped. Most mail is stopped. Now polly is stranded among strangers. Shes forced to quit school, take a job in a paper factory earning 3 a week, working six days a week, nine hour days. Shes miserable, shes poor. Shes so she decides at the age of 15 she is going to light out for a better life and moves brooklyn, new york, where she has some cousins she can live with. Like many working girls of that era, she had not a lot of education, not home life, no money. But what she had was freedom. And thats what she put herself good use for. She threw herself into thrills of the ragtime dance, went to coney island, became obsessed with coney island. That was one of the joys working on this book. She had a million, million. She had it. She had a several pages. But you know what . It felt like a million pictures of herself as a young girl taken on the streets of coney island. And that alone was one of my favorite research. She promenade at avenue. She became girl. She became crazy for clothes. She did not know it then. But this would be the great turning point of her life. There is a wiseguy, a question i am sure you have probably heard it. Certainly. Who has ever worked in a sex trade, has heard it, and it has always been asked at least once, what is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this well, polly, like most women in her position, hated that question. And she, for good reason, was always cagey on the subject of how, at the age of 19, she went from being a girl, sewing corsets to becoming a a hustler, as she would have said. She did offer some explanation. Yes, there were traumas along the way. She raped by the boss at the factory where she lived. She an illegal abortion. She lost her job after that, she was kicked out by her cousins. Yet still, i think its hard to explain to anyone who has not experienced that kind poverty and that kind of loneliness, those feelings of powerless and hopelessness that people in that position feel so, like many young women in that position, she decided that selling sex would be a much quicker and more reliable path a glamorous, new, life filled cash, pretty clothes and camaraderie. It started to seem to her like a badge of smarts, even a badge of honesty in honor, even in a rotten that had nothing in it for her. So she opens her first brothel in 1920 in a two bedroom apartment right across from columbia university, where butler library. Now, i not sure why she must have done some market research. Its this is the same year that prohibition takes effect. And let me tell you this, it is a huge success right from the beginning. She insists that shes only going to do it for a little while. Shes going to shes making so much money, shes just going to save it up and open a legitimate business. And in fact, over to quickly, very quickly, two years she did as she had saved enough money to open a dress shop, but she quickly soured legitimate business. She had become addicted to what we guess we would the economists would call the high Profit Margins that profit prostitution offered in an era when the man, the average white man made 3,000 a year and women made half that, if they were lucky, she was soon pulling in 60,000 annually. And thats thats in 1922 money thats the equivalent of 1,000,000 about in todays dollars. That was less a year ago. But, you know, inflation has changed that for the first time. Almost the most important part is she had power over her circumstances. So in 1923, she quits legitimate business and she goes back into the sex trade. Then this is another fateful turn. She is taken up by the gambler and political fixer Arnold Rothstein. If you were a sports fan, you remember him as the gambler who is accused of fixing the 1919 world series. If you are a musical theater. Rothstein secret floating games inspired the Broadway Musical all guys and dolls. He he played a big role in boardwalk empire. If you watched that, who looked did a good job . I must say . Arnold rothstein introduces you to all the up and coming bootleggers and criminals and gangsters that is rising big shots, names you like you might recognize, like Lucky Luciano meyer lansky, bugsy siegel likes diamond, pollys house very quickly becomes the favorite house of all the criminal classes. Theyre the ones who are rising and have money to spend and are dying to spend it somewhere that makes them fancy all makes polly more ambitious. As she said. I had always told my girls, if you have to be a prostitute, be a good one. Well, same applied to me. If i had to be a, i would be a good madam. In fact, now she declares, i was determined to be the best madam in all of america because she couldnt advertise like a legitimate business. She had to master alternative forms of publicity. So she does things like she begins taking a posse of her most beautiful girls through the best nightclubs and speaking fees, parading them through, picking new clients as she went along, she cultivates gossip columnists and journalists like Walter Winchell, who became one of her oldest and most enthusiastic clients. They would not put her name in print, but they spread her name through word of mouth and all of this works very quickly. She becomes, you know, this is a silly phrase, but she becomes a sort forrest gump of 1920s. She turns up on all the cultural hotspots. Now, this was, of course, one of the great things about this, because i had discovered polly adler in the stacks of the yale library just looking a read literally. This is why i ventured out openstack x. So i just pulled out a little red volume. That was her memoir from the 1950s, which of course is not fully honest as you can like any memoir and let that be a lesson to you. I cant trust memoirs, but that as i was doing my research it becomes very clear that she becomes darling of the gossip column lists. And so things start to up. That was one of the things as you started as you people. Thank you so much. I started digitalizing things i could see that over. She was not a secret person. She was a wellknown person who was constantly the papers. She becomes deeply involved in the world of show business and tin pan alley. She counts entertainers like names that we would still like. Milton berle. Desi arnaz. Garfield. Duke ellington. Fats waller. George gershwin. Dozens of hollywood screenwriters, producers and directors she can see them as both customers, real friends. She many of the great athletes of the era, this golden age of sports i learned much more about boxing than i thought i would. She becomes a favorite hostess of the yankee state team and Madison Square garden crowds, including entertaining luminaries like jack dempsey, joe dimaggio, who apparently asked for cotton sheets, did not care for the silk sheets because his knees kept slipping. I footnoted it. I dont know if its actually true, but i do have a footnote behind that pseudo her brother becomes the after hours for the adventurous writers, actors and playwrights who at the Algonquin Hotel for lunch that is you know cultural influencers some of whom we remember like Dorothy Parker and George Kaufman and robert benchley, their stamp of approval because they are clearly what we would now call cultural influencers brings along the big moneymen from madison avenue, park avenue, wall street, broadway, hollywood. She counting true american aristocrats like jock whitney and Winthrop Rockefeller and the vanderbilt boys, as she just them as customers and friends but the bread and butter of her business was, as you might imagine, conventions and business meetings. I dont know what you people have been doing for this week, but you know, theres a lot of freedom in these places. Midtown manhattan at this time is, of course, the center of of business in the united, maybe even in the world for a while. And it is also the center of, a flourishing party girl racket that caters to the expense account men who come, who really this perhaps is one of the most shocking. I know there were a million shocking things, but this was one of them that just how much prostitutes and party girls are used as grease for the wheels of commerce. How . I dont know at. Well, we can discuss this afterwards. Common. This is still, but its certainly was surprisingly common back then and she becomes the leading provider of professional girls. So you know at this one of my favorite moments was running into and reading Sherwood Andersons autobiography. Of course fame is now is a novelist and short story writer, but he had been an advertising man. An advertising man of all of all of them are the ones who are most likely to need a stud to book, as they called it, or a little black book. But it was common anywhere you had or clients or salespeople, as he describes, everyone would have a book. They had a number of women in them who were good, was the phrase that they often used. And so after evening of drinking, youd be hanging out with your potential clients and somebody, as he puts it would inevitably suggest. What about some so a few phone calls later they would find themselves the whole party. You guys in know somebodys apartment and having a good time and not that maybe even they were in a brothel because the money is exchanged. So or even on credit that many of the girls he might not even realize. One might not even realize that the girls were paid. I guess because i, i did spend some time quizzing the men in my life how common this would be now and mostly seemed not very common but i do think there are a lot of people who still use strip in this way. The psychologists refer it as the power of shared transgression which to say rebelling against rules, indulging in forbidden together and getting away with it together can create a sense, instant camaraderie and a delicious feeling of secret power as one Auto Industry salesman explained about bluntly, you get a bunch of guys together in a room who dont know each other, get drunk, and you look at naked women. And the next day youre great friends. Sometimes, of course, that bond was with something a little more sinister as one ceo explains. Well, the point that i know that the buyer spent a night with a prostitute, that i provided, and in most cases, the buyers married with families. So sort of gives me a slight edge. Well, i will not call it exactly blackmail, but it is a subconscious over the buyer. Its a weapon that i hold. So Arnold Rothstein also polly to an army, crooked politicians and police she becomes known for generous bribes. The vice squad and her wild parties, where gangsters mixed with many of the leading politicians, not just in new york, but in many judges, but also washington d. C. And she counted new yorks famous playboy mayor, jimmie walker, as one of her most valued customers. In fact, when i was looking through her fbi files, she is quite bold about that. She will say, oh, he listen, you dont want to touch me. Ive got jimmy walker and Walter Winchell as my peoples one critic summed up the charges against polly this way she provided liaison between the underworld politics, the professions, big business and desirable women. Judges tips were bartered in her plush parlor. Racketeer bosses formulated deals their Police Officers were broken or made. Candidates for Public Office gained or lost party support. As a result of conferences at pollys place. So no here im going to im going to stop and warn that we have come to what is maybe the most certainly for many people the most part of a story. So over the years, obviously becomes famous. She become successful because she is so discreet. Shes so good at keeping secrets of powerful men. But near the end of her life, when her health is beginning to, when her mind is dwelling a lot on the past and she has suffered a humiliation order to she made shocking confession to a young friend and i interviewed this friend when he was in his late and he knew her when he was in his early twenties according to his friend polly confessed pretty much out of the blue that Franklin D Roosevelt had been one of her clients at around the time that he ran for governor of new york city or excuse me, york state. She say very much about it, except say this is his quote that she was being taken care of for the rest of her life by the contributions of democrats. So you can imagine this is maybe not the moment to bring up and maybe not the place, but now you can imagine a house surprised i was by this story and this one was a Real Research devil to pursue. I spent probably i added a year practically on to the whole book process because i spent so many hours trying to figure this out and i have to say upfront that i never could confirm this. However, i did come to think that it was certainly certainly possible and probably likely. So, for example, there was lots of circumstantial connections between polly and fdr and their various crowds. There were one or two pivotal people, and it was also knowing, it was also well known that roosevelt loved a good Old Fashioned stag. In fact, he would throw one every single year for himself for. His birthday that included, you know, gambling, liquor, booze, liquor and women with all the trimmings. And even when he was in the white house and despite his wellknown illness and paralysis, roosevelt was apparently capable of enjoying sex, even with women who were not his wife. Again, quite Research Challenge to figure this out but by my lifted when i ran across memoir by the newspaper publisher schiff a very respectable person recounting a conversation she had with roosevelts doctor about whether the president , as she put it, was still potent. Clearly before hipa laws. I and i, she never did explain how she was having this conversation with him. So jesus, she asked. This still potent, i guess, is how she put it. And he the doctor says, oh, yes, yes, dont forget, only legs are paralyzed. Well, she says, somewhat naively, she saw, well, how does he do it . The french way the doctor replies. Well, now this i had done enough is enough research to know that what french way is is part please pardon me for going here. But this is a that is to say oral sex and this i can you was a specialty was practiced almost solely by prostate tutes at the time i so im sorry youre i know youre a librarian so youre very worldly people so please pardon. Im surprised to every time somebody sends you a picture that, my book is on one of your shelves. Every single obviously they dont know it yet. So now again, im going to pause one more time. So this this sordid story should be a good reminder that despite the customers and the luxurious, you know, accouterments being a madam was not a glamorous career as polished would be the first to say no matter how much money, celebrity or power is involved, prostitution is a physically and mentally demanding business. Alcoholism a drug addiction, suicide, physical abuse, sexually transmitted diseases of them are hazards of the trade. For 25 years, polly was looking over her shoulder, looking for Double Crossing cops undercover blackmailers, sociopath ethic customers when she, of all the bribes she paid and all the beatings she took and, the hypocrisy. Sometimes it was that was the worst hypocrisy of her socalled respectable customers. It truly made her blood boil. But that was the secret to her success, her ability to it on the chin without squawking, then get back up with a smile on her face as she once quipped to an outsider, it might seem like ive got polly adler mixed up with pollyanna. I can only say im one of those people who just help getting a kick out of life even when its a kick in the teeth. Now, pollyanna attitude was put the test in the 1930s when all of a sudden the boom is over, the depression sets in, the mood has changed. All of a sudden people are not so tolerant of all those fun gangsters, all those colorful but crooked politicians. Her underworld, underworld and their political allies are being targeted, for the first time in a very serious by powerful federal and state investigation ins. And whether or not governor roosevelt was a client of pollys, she was very much on his radar when he was preparing to run for president. 1932. Pollys hard won notoriety was now a liability and got swept up in their nets. By 1931, she is making headlines in all the newspapers across the country with deadlines like the female al capone and the first world of the first lady of the underworld. I do think much as i love running across the female al capone, that did seem a little maybe a little exaggerate it. But first lady of the underworld, i will give her it was its the oc sorry i could just go on and on about too much of that when she herself even says in her memoir, i mean, this is going to be all about gangland, i dont stop with this. When the pressure grew too hot, she goes on the lam to miami and havana and. In fact, she was wily enough to come through this crisis relatively unscathed and to her surprise, when the storms passed. It turns out all this tabloid newspaper attention had only burnished her reputation, especially among the socalled of cafe society, who now, now think its the cool thing to do to go to her house and show off about it as one of her clients said, you know, it was a little like going to the opera whether you like the opera or not, which i thought was very selfserving. But so shes powerful enough to escape prison until 1935 when she is swept up the hunt for the gangster, the major bootleg baron dutch schultz. He had been using her house as a hideout. Her trial causes yet another media frenzy, but through the aid of her good pal, Lucky Luciano she is only given 30 days with five days off for Good Behavior when she gets out of jail, this is the first time she really thinks seriously about quitting for good reason. For nearly two decades, shes shes worn out. Shes older. Her pride, her nerves are shot. J. Edgar hoover has personally directed the fbi to try to find something on her. Fiorello laguardia, the mayor of new york, has sworn that hes going to drive her out of the city, but even then, even once she rebuilt her savings and had enough money to retire. She hesitated to as she had seen enough of human autocracy to know that in the square world shed be just another nobody. Or worse, as she puts it, as miss pearl adler, the reformed procurer is an honest citizen. I a social outcast as polly. The proprieties of new yorks most opulent bordello. Society came to me. So she continues on through the fat cat years of the world war to build up and then the wars. But by 1945 shes now really casting about. For an exit plan. Back in 18 excuse me, 1938, last vogel famous as the boy genius of the legendary William Morris agency, had urged her to write her memoir. But at this time, nothing could have been less appetizing. She would been paid a pretty penny for it. But that would have just about covered the cost of her funeral. But as the years went on this idea of becoming author, especially since so many of her friends were authors and book publishers, began to appeal to her much more. Dozens of mugs had made the fortune selling books selling screenwriter turning stories of gangsters and gold diggers into bestselling and hit plays and musicals and movies. Why shouldnt she . So in 1945, she up her house and moves out to california. Like so many people did of that generation still now. And so many of her pals had she goes back to high school. She is still dying for that education, never had. She goes to junior college. She goes to Los Angeles Junior College and gets her associates degree. And finally, after seven years and scores of, rejections by every single Publishing House in new york city in 1953, she publishes her autobiography, a house is not home, and probably none of you are old enough to remember it all. You might have seen it as little kids, like shoved up on a top shelf for. It certainly was around. It was fact. A huge bestseller. 2 million copies are sold enviable no matter when that is. The story was whitewashed, of course, and there was a lot she couldnt tell. But nonetheless she did tell created this backstage chronicle of the sexual revolution and really tells in a way that nobody else had. Up until then, the secret role that illicit sex played in business and politics. And it was a big eye opener for millions of readers. Polly gave the age of conformity, as we used to like to the 1950s, a shocking jolt on par with her fellow offers. Office excuse me fellow of 1953 simone de beauvoir or Alfred Kinsey and hugh hefner. As it happens, she became friends with dr. Kinsey and, approved heartily of both sexual behavior in the american female the second sex. Unfortunately, try as i might, i could find no comment on the newly founded playboy magazine. She was not without regrets. But when pressed, she was unrepentant to the end of her life. In 1961, she sold the film to a house is not a home, but she did not get to live. Enjoy the delicious irony of joan crawford, barbara stanwyck, merman and her friend martha raye all scrapping to play manhattans one madam on the silver screen. I say, of all the things she accomplished in life that might have been the thing that she would have loved most. In the the role went to shelly, who you might remember very zaftig, 40 something blond woman who she won an oscar for playing in a bravo people before she had some history wasnt crazy. Unfortunately, the movie is terrible. You can see it for free. You certainly shouldnt pay to see it on youtube, although its not a very its not a very good vision. You know, that was 1963 is still essential to the 1950s. And it just was not that did not have a great year 67 even would have been better but it still did have a few things going for it. The costume, the famous edith head was nominated for an academy award. The title song by Burt Bacharach became a top 100 hit, and the actress raquel welch made her acting debut on film in as one of pollys follies. When polly died lung cancer in 1962, long, respectful obituaries ran in every paper across the country, hailing her as a symbol of a decadent, long gone era. To her, her bravo was an intoxicating playground for the madcap modernists and the cutting edge capitalists, all in hot pursuit of, new pleasures. It was a space where the imagination allowed free play, unfettered outside eyes and conventional rules. In turn, her customers and employees turned these experiences into fodder for many of the great products of american 20th century culture songs, movies, books, plays, and all those daring new notions that we now associate with that era. But to her foes, polly exerted a sinister influence with powerful men whose, after dark Decision Making affected millions of americans. If we believe her claim she procured women for fdr and that her discretion was critical to his election to the white house, then her significance was even greater than her critics feared. Publishing a book, of course, boasted her legacy, as one journalist observed. After pollys corruption of both men, women when she cashed in her chips. What did the obituaries. Of course. Author dies. Thats all we can hope for. Really. So . Cause while writing this book, i thought often of the great gatsby. I reread it many times. Unfortunately, if polly ever met Scott Fitzgerald or read that great novel, she left no record of it. But surely would have had some thoughts. I think she would have found gatsbys romance with daisy very to swallow. Reverence towards women was not a common trait among the bootleggers that she knew. And undoubtedly, she would have had a few practical questions about how gatsby handled the mechanics of hosting a Massive House Party every single weekend. So much, so a laundry, so many dirty dishes. But the struggles of jimmy gatz as he transforms into jay gatsby, his heightened sensitive to the promises of life as fitzgerald put it, that would have been hauntingly familiar to. When fitzgerald began novel in 1923, he drew his inspiration from many of pollys actual gangster friends, and specifically a chance meeting with Arnold Rothstein, whom he recast as the gangster meyer wolff shun. In the book. But it was polly, who brought fitzgerald fantasy of the wild party a glorious vehicle for pursuing the dream to life like she turns this jazz cult to the party into a ladder to climb out of the gutter and into the upper rungs of society. Yet despite her passionate pursuit of posterity, it was not polly, but her male criminal colleagues who 20th century Cultural Icons prohibition as we all enshrined the gangster as an american archetype whose lordly and tragic flaws are considered essential to understanding ourselves as americans. But there is no chorus bonding myth of the female outlaw who uses sex as her weapon against. The world. The scarlet as Horatio Alger tale to, borrow his scholars phrase, has never grabbed the american imagination the way the rum runners and the racketeers did. Its why not. And it certainly isnt because women like polly unrecorded or are under scholars assume that there are well over a billion pages as have been published about prostitutes. Literally every single possible angle. Perhaps i would say is because pollys version of the story, the dark reality behind the gauzy dreams. In particular, she revealed how often the freewheeling flappers and the glamor girls and cafes society chicks were really sad. Young women being paid to provide other peoples pleasure. Sex workers in general polly in particular, are dealers in illusion the illusions of intimate between strangers of without limits or consequences of spontaneous ecstasy, command or whatever else the human id can dream up and for. Pollys mastery of this mysterious art was the source of her significance, and it contributed in no small part to the glorious legend of the age. But americans have very little appetite for examining the dreary mechanics behind the spectacle of our dreams. For that reason, despite her quest for fame, polly had far more of her story than she ever shared, even from herself. If polly has not received her historical due, it is in part because she is a symbol whose reality contradicts . The very myths that make this era so fascinating to us. And that, as she would be the first to say, is a very hard sell. But could be changing as who follows the news about figures like jeffrey or prince andrew. Andrew, Harvey Weinstein and the we are clearly only talking about the tip the iceberg here knows that there is a new vital interest in exposing the intersection of power and sexual ity and dismantling the silence that protects powerful people from the full from bearing the full cost of their desires. Maybe now, to quote Norma Desmond in, sunset boulevard. Polly has finally ready for her close up, so i will stop there. I did not do as Much Research talk, perhaps, as i could, so im happy to im happy to answer any questions on anything, on anything at all, books or otherwise. We have a microphone and if you have questions, please come in to the microphone because so cspan can record it so as not to have any questions id like to ask ask. You have to go to the microphone. She didnt bring up the first thing. Where did you get all this information to find about all these people . I mean, i was ranting right. Well, so that is that is of course, we could go out for drinks afterwards and i could talk about for about 4 hours because unlike first book, which really was reading old sermons, reading all congregational newspapers and heavy tomes that people had written about themselves or collected regular collected archives archives. This was a much more piecemeal process for all the obvious reasons, but also because it is a later time. So that in. So in some cases its really toggled traditional libraries where you have all these old memoirs from old vaudevillians or comedians or you know old histories of tin alley or whatever would be are old political memoirs, that sort of thing that nobody would ever digitize. There was. So when i first began and i know we all of us as Library Lovers follow the question of google books and the copyright issues. Well, when book first began there there no. None of those real debates happening, except for very little very few. Of course, over time, the access changed. But the beginning. Google books was just putting things on willing lily and they were putting not frankly most things like old vaudevillian memoirs. They were putting enough of those things that even if they didnt have the full, i could then go use interlibrary loan. I could see there was a reference some sort because you could just her name was just thank god her name wasnt like Beverly Smith or, Something Like that. So it was just enough you could use. So that was that was one thing that i could use both. I could use books in both our modern format and and now, of course, happy trust does some of that work. So that is there was just beginning to use that at the end of this. Then course there were databases, proquest, things like, you know, even the New York Times actually did a surprisingly good job of covering her when she would come up in her in her problems, a of the syndicated papers increasingly the time really almost none of them were. It was all 19 century papers. Everyone cared about the 19th century, but little by little more tabloids started to come online. So every week there would be just like it was like a you know, they say thats how you addict rats to cocaine. You just get one little every one every week. I would get one more nugget and id be like, what who, who . What . And i would have to go, go. Then do a whole deep dive because context became very important, because these were not usually full stories. Hey, we went to this this heres that woman and it was here. This was you had i had to fill out who these people were. Why were they all there . And that that took a long time. The other thing was god bless the the nonprofessional archivists, the people who just saved things. So there were one last formal thing i should say god bless the who saved the culture that was destroyed in World War Two because one of the things that exists in israel are these things, these memorial books, closets, court books, and what they did was everyone who was still living, who they knew about from a particular village or shtetl would would write up their memories and then they would be collected into books. So many, many books. Many, many villages had their an actual book and she had an actual book her in fact that mentioned her father and her uncle in her uncle with much dignity than her father. And that also was clearly included girls that she would have known. And so that was huge. I had to have that translated, but thats still huge. That and those things are posted online actually. If you read more interested. But then the accidental archivists and were two huge, huge. One is i was able to a woman who had was tangentially related to polly who had taken care of pollys brother in the last years of his life. Now her parents this was one of the reasons she mentions fdr, i believe, is its right when her have told her yet again, hey thanks for your money because she supported them. But no, we wont be having you at the table. We wont be having you at the holiday table because youre prevent and it just to the end of her life hurt her tremendously mean even her own family would treat her that way. And this brother now this let this be. I know all know this lesson, but let this be a lesson. Pay to whos going to be the last one living because he ended up with everything. Hes the last of her generation. He is the last of all the adlers. He gets all the money and he gets all the stuff she had saved at least two trunks full of memorabilia programs, letters photo albums, books by signed copies, dozens, dozens and signed copies of books by her friends. Anything you could possibly, as a historian and was in there reel to reel that she made while she was her book and he throughout most of it because he was so ashamed. Some are, but some it was saved by this woman who became a very good friend, mine. And i think she i think she wanted turn it into a movie and it never came to fruition. So by the time i came on the scene, she was more than willing to share share it with me. Many of the pictures. Theres a lot of pictures. Theyre not even anywhere near as many pictures as. I would like the paperback copy. Besides being a good pound less in holding, you know, weight. Well also have some more pictures, actually. So all of the most of those came from her. Thats one of the things that makes it actually a rare book because its unusual. I have a friend whos a historian, a prostitute, and here you dont get as many pictures of people doing things like that. And the last actually there are no dirty pictures. I could have included some, but it would have been gratuitous. They wouldnt. They were my people they were to just been like, hey, look here. Here you go. And as i was saying to someone, there actually is no sex scene in the book, to my chagrin. Im a historian. I wasnt going to make it up. And nobody actually just me as nice sexting that i could. But the last the last on the Research Thing was i was happened to be going out to nebraska which i have never had reason to be there before and i had never had reason to be there since and just to give a speech and i it was again early days the internet and remember there used to be little like like rudimentary message boards. Oh, is anyone interested in books about this subject or know anything about old papers . And somebody had written i found suitcase full of things from. This woman polly adler and another woman, virginia faulkner, who i knew to be her ghostwriter. And what does anyone know what its worth . And i was like, okay, nothing to anyone else. Only, only to me. Only to me. And so i and he happened to be a junk dealer in a garbage hauler in nebraska. So i him in the holiday inn or the hilton park. Pardon me . I want to cast aspersions the fancier hotel in downtown lincoln, nebraska and he was quite suspicious of me of this big city slicker coming in to swoop in on his treasure. But by end, he could just tell how excited and thrilled i was that he said, ill tell you what, dont i just go home tonight and ill just photocopy whole thing for you and all i want. He did say. He would like to have a of the movie, rent the movie if its ever made. And i said, that is fine. You can if i ever get in. I mean that, sir. I know youre youre not watching even even if you are should a movie get made. You do get money. So and that that was really that i was at the last thing by the time i get to the very end, there is a list. Not only are there real names and things that have been changed in dates and stuff there is thats where i discovered Dorothy Lamour worked for her that a shock. But there a list of the final page that says names not to be used that listed. This is during kefauver hearings of the 1950s, listed every single star of the kefauver hearings right then and there. And thats how knew. Oh, ive got something here. I dont know what it is, but i got something. Thank you, nancy. I hope i didnt. Anyway. But thank you very much. Obviously we have time for two quick questions because i have two books and i will give one book each and i know name you already have one right on line. Oh, would you . So in honor of the first question, would you like one of your own . Sure okay. And then whoever asked the next question gets the next book. And there he is. Yeah, im sure. Debbie will will sign it. All right, you get the. Thats funny, because i thought you were leaving. You had your your. I am interested in her religiosity. Uh huh, yeah. Uh, she heard about you. Mm hmm. You didnt, but there. There. There was a surprising story because, like, as i say, odd Little Things just pop up. And there was a journalist guy named irving drutman. Whats his name . Probably forgotten, but he was syndicated columnist, and he tells a story in one of his autobiographies of going to hes a young man and somebody and hes become friendly with this nightclub singer named spivey, now mostly forgotten. And spivey says, you want to come to dinner with my friend polly and gets there and its just its in her later. Its just one girl and then a little middle class apartment and its quite lovely. Theyre having a great time having and that. But he says and they are bragging about how they both had been had Hebrew School educations which is unusual for girls and they didnt have like a school like a yeshiva. But they had they tutored by the local rabbi and they were quite proud of it and they knew some which most women were did not at that time and could read and write in it and and does not believe it like this is a little too good. There are. Oh yeah, yeah. Youre the rabbis daughter and then they actually out their got a stack of Rosh Hashanah new years cards. She takes them and they both right. There are new years greetings in hebrew just to show off. Now, i dont think that means she was a practicing, although she did give to jewish causes in jewish orphanages in particular. Lot of women of the night are very soft spots for orphanages, but i think like a lot of people of her generation in god, it seemed like it had very little to do with. The course that her life had, because clearly if there were if god had more cared more than maybe some things would have gone a little differently. So thats my thats my best guess. I just one more quick question for you next, but your next book, im never going to write again because this is the retired Library Association meeting. I know i literally been struck dumb and deaf. I no idea. It seems like all i want to do is Research Things. Maybe should just like ill just say this that ive made two little antiquarian bibles and theyre even so little and doesnt necessarily feel like much in this world maybe. So i keep thinking surely theres something more for me but you know to stage of life i may have unfitted myself for anything else. So trust me, you will be the first to know. Thank you. Thank you for me. Thank you for coming. Thanks for being such a great audience. Thank