Shots Fired
But sometimes good luck wears thin. Blackie’s almost ran out on a February night in 1950, at the Moroccan Village nightclub on 8th Street in the heart of the Village. All the New York papers covered it the next day with detailed descriptions of “a pretty young woman dressed as a man” who “was on the stage of a Greenwich Village night club early yesterday, singing a parody of ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ when a gunman sky-high with whisky and marijuana stepped into the spotlight, jerked the mike from her and announced a holdup.” Pulling out his pistol and taking advantage of the loud speaker, he threatened, “This is a stickup. Put your jewelry, purses and money on the tables. I’ve got six others with me.”[1]
Two New York police detectives were hanging out in the Moroccan Village that night, at about 3 AM, and immediately pulled out their weapons. Gunshots shook the crowded night club while patrons cringed in fear under overturned tables and chairs. Blackie got off stage unscathed but another entertainer was shot in his right leg, and a patron was hit in his left arm and right side. A total of five persons, including a detective, a hold-up man, and three bystanders, were treated for gunshot wounds at St. Vincent’s Hospital. The robbers in taxicabs were apprehended by police cars in their flight across town. It was a night that made headlines.[2]
For Blackie it must have been at best unforgettable, at worst terrifying. On a positive note, her photograph was published in all the reports of the robbery, usually with a note identifying her as “Singer Blackie Dennis, who was pushed away from mike by a stickup man.” And there was no negative commentary on her male attire, which was referred to as “her stage outfit”; she herself was described as “a girl dressed in man’s clothes,” even when she was escorted down to the Mercer St. police station to identify shooters from the Moroccan Village.[3]
But New York was becoming a little too hot to handle. Crackdowns on the mob, prostitution, and other forms of shady entertainment would touch many, among them Blackie Dennis. Besides her close call on the night of the shootout at the Moroccan Village, Blackie received unexpected notoriety a few years later from events that were quite literally the talk of the town. Today the name Minot “Mickey” Jelke, oleomargarine heir, and his two trials (1953, 1955) for “compulsory prostitution”—forcing girls into sex for money with acquaintances—are history, long since abandoned on a far back burner. But in their day, they were the hottest news, with extensive press coverage and hard-cover editions of Mickey’s story and first-person narratives by key prosecution witness Pat Ward (aka Sandra Wisotsky), who had become a call girl in Mickey’s service when their love affair faded. Star of stage and screen Martha Raye took Pat Ward into her New York apartment during those hard times, until Pat’s attempted suicide spoiled the arrangement.[4]
In more recent times, the urgency of these events was clarified by Joan Nestle in her essay “Genders On My Mind” (2002), which addressed the fantasy inspired by “the story of Pat Ward, the call-girl mistress of the oleomargarine king Mickey Jelke”—the “woman of sin” who had made the cover of the tabloids. Of the several parts highlighted, Joan thought she would prefer to play the role of the male lawyer who defended Pat Ward in that mix of “gender, sex, rebellion, and exile.” It was a story hard to ignore.[5]
Blackie’s moment came unexpectedly mid-way through the 1955 trial when Pat Ward was being seriously cross-examined in an attempt, popular at the time, to forge a link between lesbians and prostitutes. In an obvious effort to diminish the worth of Pat Ward and her testimony, Jelke’s defense attorney took the judge and jurors on a romp through the Village of the era, asking Ward if she had gone to the Page Three or the Bagatelle, notorious lesbian hangouts.
He then threw another punch: “Do you know a person named Blackie Dennis?”
“I have met this person,” Pat Ward avowed.
“Who is Blackie Dennis?” asked the lawyer.
“An entertainer,” answered Pat Ward innocently.
“Is she a lesbian?” No holds barred.
“That’s for you to decide,” replied Pat Ward. “I don’t know.”
The purge continued. “Have you spoken to other people in the Village about Blackie Lesbian—Blackie Dennis?”
Pat Ward’s lawyer objected. Pat Ward acknowledged that Blackie wore a “mannish type of clothing” but only “for her job.”
At “the Moroccan Village?” inquired the lawyer.
Pat did not recognize the name and insisted that she did not go out on dates alone with Blackie Dennis.
In conclusion, the lawyer wanted to know if Pat Ward had “ever permitted any lesbian to engage in an act…”
She interrupted to reply, “I have not.”
The lawyer insisted on finishing his question. “Have you ever permitted any lesbian to engage in an act of sexual perversion with you?”
Negative, replied Pat Ward, and the topic was dropped.[6]
Certainly, neither Blackie nor any close friends would have been in that courtroom setting. But given the passion for gossip in the gay community, it would be hard to believe that word of this exchange did not reach her—or friends of hers—somehow. At this same historical moment, the cops and the politicians seemed determined to shut down as much gay entertainment as had blossomed lately in the Village.
Notes
[1] Julius Mahler and Anthony Marino, “5 Shot as Thugs Raid Night Club; 3 Seized,” New York Daily News, February 26, 1950, 3.
[2] “5 Shot as 2 Detectives Foil Hold-Up of a Crowded Club in the Village,” New York Times, February 26, 1950, 1, 55.
[3] Julius Mahler and Anthony Marino, “5 Shot as Thugs Raid Night Club; 3 Seized,” New York Daily News, February 26, 1950, 3; United Press, “Five Wounded in Abortive Club Holdup,” Miami Herald, February 26, 1950, 6.
[4] “National Affairs: The Guilty Student,” Time, March 9, 1953; “Blinded By the Glamour,” Chapter 7, Another Oleo Heir: The Great Vice Trial, accessed May 12, 2026, https://www.oleoheir.com/another-oleo-heir; Jean Maddern Pitrone, The Life of Martha Raye (University of Kentucky Press, 1999), 90.
[5] Joan Nestle, “Genders on My Mind,” in Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary, ed. Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins (Los Angeles: Alyson, 2002), 3.
[6] The People of the State of New York v Minot Jelke, 308 N.Y. 56 (1955), Record on Appeal, 451-453.