Word: brecker
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Roseland building as the end of an era, the dance hall had actually been changing its function for a long time. It started as a refuge for the "poor young clerks" Scott Fitzgerald wrote about; it evolved into a place of family entertainment. From the beginning, Founder Louis Brecker, a onetime Philadelphia accountant, was determined to put Roseland in a class beyond the average taxi dance hall. He publicized it as the "home of refined dancing" and installed two continuously playing orchestras (practically unheard of till then). He spotted and hired the comers in the dance-band world: Vincent Lopez...
...Owner Brecker spiced Roseland's entertainment with female prizefights, yo-yo exhibitions, sneezing contests, and dozens of highly publicized jazz weddings, uniting couples who had found romance in Roseland's violet twilight. His finest inspiration, until it was banned by the police, was the dance marathon. To avoid the wrath of Mayor Jimmy Walker, he once carted a truckload of still-dancing marathoners to an excursion steamer and took them out beyond the three-mile limit, where they all became violently sick at the rail...
...years Roseland's most popular commodity was its hostesses. Brecker chose them, he said, for their refinement rather than their looks. In theory they were forbidden to date the customers. Charging 11? a dance or $1.50 a half-hour, they became something of a legend in the '20s and '30s. Ring Lardner, Sherwood Anderson, Fitzgerald and John O'Hara put them in their stories...
...Clientele. As it grew older. Roseland became even more decorous. In the '30s Brecker banned jitterbugging, and the number of hostesses steadily dwindled, finally (in 1950) disappeared. Tuxedoed bouncers (politely known as "housemen") prowled through the crowd to keep order. Last week's grand opening of the new Roseland (at 52nd Street, west of Broadway) suggested that henceforth it might be tougher to keep order...
...accommodate 5,000 people (more than twice the former capacity), and offers a purple-and-cerise tentlike décor that creates a definite harem effect. However, the emphasis is still on good dance music (next attraction: Xavier Cugat); rock-'n'-roll is banned, and Owner Brecker hopes to move on to a whole new type of clientele. The old Roseland was advertised only in the tabloids, but the new establishment will run regular ads in The New Yorker, where, presumably, they will appeal not only to the "poor clerks" but to the college prom trotters, eggheads...