Word: giro
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...born Francesco Castiglia, sixth child of a debt-burdened farmer. He was brought to New York when he was four; his father opened a hole-in-the-wall grocery on East 108th Street, and he was exposed early.to the neighborhood heroes: the torpedoes who worked for Giro Terranova, red-handed boss of the Unione Siciliana in Harlem and The Bronx...
Artist Rowe, Publisher Harte and the Oxford Press are now contemplating a book on the New Testament. Meanwhile, Guy Rowe is doing some TIME covers, and you can expect to see one of them soon-signed Giro...
Hover gets yeoman assistance from the daily gossip columnists. On occasion, they have reported enough celebrities in Giro's to fill a large section of the Hollywood Bowl. Hover encourages these exaggerations by spending $125,000 a year to promote the legend that anyone seen at Giro's must, of necessity, be a member of Hollywood's higher echelons...
Bettering Girls. In his tireless pursuit of jump, and on the theory that his patrons are easily jaded, Hover redecorates Giro's every two years. The cigarette and hatcheck girls, fetchingly attired in black-net hose, ballet skirts and tight bodices, are breathtaking and don't last long. If a girl hasn't "bettered herself" in three months, she is likely to be dropped. Betterment usually means getting some kind of movie job. One former Giro's girl, "Sunny" Ainsworth, married Tommy Manville (his seventh...
Despite its high prices and exalted clientele, the club itself doesn't make Hover as much money as his sidelines: Giro lipsticks, cigarette lighters, ashtrays, glassware. He makes his own ice cubes, carbonates his own water, and runs annual concerts-starring Xavier Cugat-in the Hollywood Bowl. Even juicier dividends come from the off-premises liquor sales and a catering service which runs many of the major studio parties. "I have found," Hover says, "that people will buy anything with the name Giro...