Word: billingsley
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Abovestairs in his elegant Manhattan saloon, the Stork Club, ex-bootlegger Sherman Billingsley moves with exquisite aplomb. He is the Ward McAllister of café society. He dispenses a magnum of champagne to a favorite here, a fleeting, boyish smile to an attractive décolletage there. And he gives mad, mad gifts to the charmed inner circle of his customers...
...rations out three beers and a jigger of whiskey twice a day to the cooks and dishwashers. And there, some say, he also goes in for union-busting and Bowery billingsgate. Last week, Local 89 of the A.F.L.'s Chefs, Cooks, Pastry Cooks and Assistants Union had Billingsley up before the state labor relations board. The charge: that by alternate wheedling and bullying he had committed an unfair labor practice and caused the local to lose a bargaining election last...
...Skunk. Sherm was no stranger to the labor board. Back in 1937, nine of his waiters told the board that he had bounced them for joining a union; 2½ years later, the state court of appeals bounced them back to Billingsley, told him to cough up back pay. Four of last week's six witnesses had been fired, a fifth had quit, the sixth had been suspended...
...Stork Club," declared Sherman Billingsley, its money-making proprietor, "is more of a hobby with me than a business. I get a big kick out of it." He wanted to die working at the Stork, said...
...late Robert Benchley makes a genial appearance in the film, but unhappily his lines were provided by someone less talented than Benchley at writing a Benchley role. The Stork Club's Sherman Billingsley (played by Bill Goodwin) should be gratified by his screen portrait: he is pictured as handsome, witty, kindly, generous to a fault and extravagantly admired by all his own employes as well as by cafe society at large...