Blackie Dennis as “shoeshine boy,” auditioning for one of Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End Kids (Dead End, Belasco Theatre, 1935-37). The photograph is in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection Photograph File, New York Public Library Digital Collections, Image ID: TH-08029.

It seems remarkable to us nowadays that girls like Blackie, and many of her contemporaries who were “different,” found their way to the Village without telephones or social media. But word was out, and a dynamic club scene welcomed them all.[1] In a creative style that seems typical of her career, however, Blackie took a roundabout route. A clue is in the photograph of her that found a home in the New York Public Library’s Billy Rose Theatre Collection, a likeness the family identifies as “shoeshine boy.” More family gossip reports that Blackie auditioned in 1934 for a role in Sidney Kingsley’s long-running drama Dead End (Belasco Theatre, 1935-37) to play one of the boys, the “dead end” kids. Blackie’s theatrical skills reportedly made her a candidate, but stripping for a swim in the East River scene would have erased any illusion about her portrayal of a teenage boy. Her nephew Ronald Lombino insisted, however, that Humphrey Bogart wanted Blackie for an undefined role in the movie adaptation of Dead End (1937). No deal was forthcoming. Instead, it was the nightclub trade that took in Blackie Dennis, polished her dynamite good looks, and trained her sweet, penetrating alto voice, of which no recording survives.

The Howdy Club, “Where the Village Begins & Ends” and “Rendezvous for Sophisticates,” at the corner of 47 West 3rd Street and Wooster, opened its doors in 1935 as the drag scene in midtown faded. Babe Baker appears in official documents as owner and manager of the club. The photograph “Waitresses from Howdy’s, a New York City Bar, ca. 1940” is from the Lesbian Herstory Archives/Bubbles Kent Collection.

Midtown Broadway speakeasies run by the mob—like the Club Abbey, Club Calais, and others—disappeared as the pansy craze of the 1920s (and Prohibition) faded. But for fans of drag and burlesque, Greenwich Village offered space. In 1935, the Howdy Club opened its doors—to lesbians and straight clientele looking for variety—at 47 West 3rd on the corner of Wooster Street. Partners in this nightclub venture were Charles “Babe” Baker and his companion Neil Stone—Stoney and Babe, as the “old broads” who worked the downtown circuit used to call them. “Short, husky, and loveable,” they said of Babe, who would be in the nightclub business for another two decades. Babe also may have served in some capacity in the management of the notorious Ha-Ha Club on 52nd St, between 5th and 6th Avenues, also known as the Street of Jazz and Stripty-second Street. His career as a producer of drag shows would later blossom in the late 1930s at a Florida Ha-Ha Club and the traveling Ha-Ha Revue. While less is known of Neil Stone’s career, he appears as producer of a major revue at the newly-opened Club 82 in 1953, a show staged and directed by headliner Kitt Russell.[2]

Advertisement in Women’s Wear Daily, May 21, 1937, for Blackie’s show at the Howdy, at the center of other shows presumably of interest to readers. This photograph is from a clipping shared by the Lombino family.

As the doors of the Howdy opened, Blackie Dennis appeared in its “winter edition of the Howdy Revels of 1936,” a production that premiered in the waning days of 1935. That floor show, or some versions of it, apparently ran through 1936 with Blackie singing and dancing. Back uptown, on the old Italian Upper East Side, news spread of Blackie’s success in show business, and old friends of the family made the long trip down, probably by subway, to catch the show. While the Howdy is remembered for its lesbian patrons, we are assured by Carol Vigorito, now a Florida resident, that both her parents—neighbors and co-workers of Blackie’s sister Louise—went downtown to see the show. Blackie rewarded their efforts with dinner at a local Chinese restaurant alongside local Chinese strippers, friends of Blackie.[3]

But the Howdy soon began to lose its luster. One late night on April 12, 1938, a scene not entirely unusual for the Village of that period played out as three robbers pulled guns and began to collect valuables from the customers. Police officers arrived almost immediately and confronted the thieves, who responded with gunfire. All three were wounded and taken into custody but not before one police officer was fatally shot. Because Blackie was probably playing the Florida tourist season, which typically ran from late October to mid-March, she perhaps missed the shootout. But she could not have ignored the news of the suicide of a Howdy Club patron Norma De Marco, who was struck on the head by a gunman’s pistol while she tried to assist the police. De Marco’s interview at the District Attorney’s office the day after, accompanied by her lover Dorothy La Marr, generated publicity which might have hinted at a lesbian connection. De Marco ended her brush with notoriety by leaping out the 12^th floor window of La Marr’s West 58th Street apartment.[4]

More information about the detailed investigation that followed the Howdy Club shootout reminds us of “Babe” Baker’s key role in nightclub management from Miami to New York. The New York City Municipal Library and Archives preserves names and testimonies of witnesses to the Howdy Club shooting of a New York Police Department officer, and in the process identifies Charles Baker, of 200 West 54th St., as treasurer, manager, and owner of the Howdy, treasurer of the Howdy Club Corporation, and part owner and manager of the Howdy Club. His street address (200 W 54th) also hints at a possible connection to the happier, glorious burlesque times of 52nd St.[5]