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When one thinks of nightlife before World War II, one conjures up images of late-night hangouts serving food until the wee hours of the morning and music playing until dawn. Nowhere embodies being away from home quite like New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. It was a legendary moment in time.
After a four-year probation was revoked, King Kong brought Faye Ray to the side of the Empire State Building, Duke Ellington performed nightly at the Cotton Club on 125th Street in Harlem, and two witty cousins named Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns legitimized a speakeasy at 21 West 52nd Street and christened it The “21” Club.
Although “21” had been raided more than once during prohibition, federal agents could never blame Jack and Charlie. At the first sign of a raid, they activated an ingenious system of pulleys and levers, sweeping the bottles off the bar’s shelves and dumping the crushed remains down a chute into New York’s sewer system.
Throughout the 1930s, “21” was frequented by many literary figures of the day, including: John Steinbeck, John O’Hara, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, HG Wells, and Robert Sherwood. In fact, all of the notables of the mid-20th century made it to “21” at one point or another. It competed with patronage from other legendary New York City venues, such as the Stork Club and El Morocco, as one of Café Society’s most prominent gathering spots.
In the 1940s, Spellbound hit theaters starring Gregory Peck and is one of the first films to feature/mention the “21” Club. According to Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal, co-authors of Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock’s San Francisco, Hitchcock had a long-standing connection to the “21” Club. Beginning with his first trip to the United States from England in the late 1930s, he was a regular customer of the restaurant throughout his life. Humphrey Bogart frequented “21” as a struggling actor in his pre-Hollywood days. When he wasn’t out partying with friends, he was content to sit alone in “21,” hunched earnestly over a notebook, smoking a pipe and sipping Scotch, imagining himself a dramatist in the making. His taste in spirits ranged from Scotch, Black Velvet (equal parts Guinness and champagne), gin martinis in the bathtub, beer, and Jack Rose cocktails.
Bogart would return to his old haunt in 1944 and propose to a young Lauren Bacall at Table 30. They first worked together on To Have and Have Not, based on the novel written by “21” regular Ernest Hemingway ( who was caught making love to the girlfriend of mobster Legacy Diamond in the kitchen “21” in 1931). Hollywood reached out to “21” years later, in the 1950s, to film scenes from the classic movies “All About Eve,” starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, and “The Sweet Smell of Success,” with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. .
The first of the 33 replica jockeys that stood guard outside the front doors of “21” was donated by sponsor Jay Van Urk in the early 1930s. In 1992, a jockey was robbed from the restaurant, and that story broke in page 2 of the New York Post. The next day, a “21” regular was looking out his office window overlooking Washington Square Park and saw the jockey in a shopping cart and called the police. In 2004, there was a collection of 33 jockeys, the most recent from Saratoga Stables representing New York great horse Sunny Cide, winner of the 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness races.
In recent years, “21” has seen its share of renovations and remains one of the few surviving classic restaurants from the golden days of New York City nightlife. It’s still a refreshing return to the great dining of a bygone era. Classic American fare is still skillfully executed and the menu, with or without a great bottle of wine, remains an enjoyable experience for New Yorkers and visitors alike. It will certainly provide memories for generations to come.