Jay is Fay (The Broadway Gangster)

 

           Larry Fay               Live fast and die young

There was, very likely, a real-life model for Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby, 1925), forgotten today, whose life was as colorful as they come.  Larry Fay, like the fictional Jay, made his money the old fashioned way -- from bootlegging, bringing liquor in from Canada and from the rumrunner boats.  He sold it at his nightclubs in New York, the Casa Blanca and the El Fey, playing the part of the fashionable bon vivant dressed in custom Bond Street clothes.  Like Gatsby, he had a mansion on Long Island where he threw lavish parties.

And he had a Daisy of sorts, former showgirl Evelyn Crowell, who quickly became a mistress of Joseph P. Kennedy and then married another rich man after Fay's dramatic death.  He was shot four times by his club doorman, Edward Maloney, on New Year's Eve 1932, because he had reduced employee hours and pay.

Fay had hardly made a mistake before in the dangerous life he lived.  In the early twenties he made so much from a winning 100 to 1 odds bet at Belmont Race Track he bought a taxi fleet.  Then came his scheme to corner the New York milk market and fix prices, for which he was indicted but skated away free.  

Mary Louise "Texas" Guinan, former stage and film star, headlined at Fay's establishments -- so successfully that she took half the profits.  "The Queen of the Nightclubs" was the epitome of the Jazz Age,  still remembered for her catchphrase greeting, "Hello, suckers!"  Barred from bringing her road show to France because of her reputation, Texas opened a new one back home called "Too Hot for Paris."  The 300 Club, often raided, was all hers, but there was little time left to enjoy it as she died shortly after Fay, in 1933.  

Since Prohibition was over, maybe their time was up, too. 

  

 

Prime and Plus

 

How many times a day do they come at you through advertising (in any of its myriad forms)?  Unless you have the radio off driving through western Nebraska, it's endless.  One thing I've learned is that anyone proffering an unsolicited sales pitch does not have a good deal for you.  If you wanted and needed something, you would have already done your research and gotten it yourself.  

Take Amazon Prime "membership" or all the "+" streaming channels.  You can get free shipping without a whole lot of effort and don't need any Prime.  And Disney+ (and all the others): first, do you need any more content or entertainment?  There is always a lot that needs to be done, and you're not doing anything productive for yourself or your family by sucking in all those empty electronic calories.  The local library donation sale has all the Disney productions you might want, and they probably will be the older, really good stuff.  For a dollar or less.

We will never figure out why people fall so completely for the clever words and exhortations of others, be it a dictator or a marketer.  

Single-use small kitchen appliances, recreation vehicles which lose their value quickly and either must be maintained, insured and licensed or they will become yard clutter,  big houses, luxury cars, vacation homes...nothing you need, and the satisfaction felt after acquiring them is brief.  We used to think we needed a television in every room; it became clear they were really just ugly and space-wasting dust catchers.  We keep reducing the number of cable TV channels, but can't just get down to the half dozen we actually watch, which is undoable and may lead to the return of the cable box someday.

Unfortunately, novelty and quantity trump quality for the most part in an overheated global economy.  Two examples why quality is always the best route to go:  I have my father's WWII uniform jacket, made by Hart Schnaffner Marx (officers buy their own uniforms) -- it still looks great, actually new, after all these years.  I had several pairs of Florsheim shoes and they were near perfect many decades after they had gone out of style.

Less stuff is so much more.  This fellow knew what is needed and what is not --

  

"Let me tell you about the bear necessities..."