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l!O
a cliche of mon,1rou, p<oportiona to <ema<k that day begins
JV
at dusk for the Stork Club, but such is indeed the case, and the
· daylight skirmishes with pots and pans which have been instigated
.by casual customers have been, in actual fact, a mere rehearsal for
the tumult and industry which sets in after six in the evening.
Although the Stork is, from the actual record, something less of a
night club than it is of -a restaurant and less of either than it is a
rendezvous of celebrities who may incidentally care to drink, eat
and dance, its fame h; s been founded as a night club and as a
night club it has flourished mightily in the public imagination.
The circumstance that there has never been a floor show, the
identifying hallmark of any night club ever before heard of, simply
doesn't abate the Stork's confusing reputation as a cabaret. More
than a hundred patrons or shoppers after amusement enquire, on
an average evening, when the floor show starts and are graveled to
find there is none, but it is impossible to disabuse suburbia of the
notion that the dancing girls will soon come on, and
Mr.
Billingsley's
vicars merely go on denying it year in and year out.
In
a way, Mr.
Billingsley himself is responsible for the legend since, from time
to time, he has inaugurated miniature balloon ascensions from
which thousand dollar hills have been showered upon the cus–
tomers, and these and other follies of a similar Tiffanyesque nature
have done nothing to discourage the widespread notion that all
hell is constantly on tap at No. 3 East Fifty-third Street. There is
always an optimistic fringe of customers who persist in the delusion
67: Night