June 1, 2021
To refresh our understanding of America during the Roaring Twenties, Pulitzer Prize winner Applegate (The Most Famous Man in America) chronicles the life of Pearl Adler. Polly, as she was known, was a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe who achieved remarkable success in America--as madam of a series of Manhattan brothels where the rich, the notorious, and the cultivated, from politicians to writers to gangsters, routinely gathered. Expect Gatsby-style promotion.
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Starred review from September 13, 2021
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Applegate (The Most Famous Man in America) chronicles the astonishing rags-to-riches tale of Pearl “Polly” Adler (1900–1962), “the proprietress of Manhattan’s most renowned bordello,” in this spirited account. In effervescent writing, Applegate chronicles how Adler, after escaping anti-Semitic Russia for New York City in 1913, survived judgmental relatives, sweatshop work, and rape before stumbling into a job procuring women for Nick Montana, “the Henry Ford of the sex trade.” In 1920, Adler opened her own brothel and catapulted to the upper echelons of New York society as her house “became a favorite oasis of the bootleggers and bookmakers... eager to blow their ill-gotten gains.” As Applegate writes, “For the first time in American history, the luminaries of politics, finance, and show business were mingling as equals.” With notoriety, though, came vice raids and, eventually, a stint in jail in 1935 for “running a disorderly house.” Still, nothing could dim Adler’s fiery ambition; after retiring to California in 1945, she wrote her autobiography, and, like Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, “cannily turned the cult of the party into a ladder to climb out of the gutter.” The result is a rollicking examination of one of the country’s most sensational hostesses.
September 15, 2021
A portrait of the savvy woman who dominated New York's brothels during the 1920s and '30s. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Applegate places notorious madam Polly Adler (1900-1962) at the center of a vividly detailed social history of Manhattan's netherworld, peopled by gangsters and bootleggers, bookies and racketeers, corrupt policemen and politicians, and a seemingly endless stream of "working girls." Adler arrived in America from Russia in 1913, sent by her father to pave the way for the rest of her family. After enduring a few hard years with relatives in Springfield, Massachusetts, she lived with cousins in the teeming Brownsville section of Brooklyn, earning $5 a week from backbreaking labor in a corset factory. Dance halls--all the rage at the time--were her refuge and delight. Applegate draws on Adler's published memoir, her ghostwriter's notes, abundant archives, and contemporary sources to trace her rise from an ambitious, clever young immigrant to "Manhattan's top supplier of party girls." By 1920, Adler set up her own "call flat" and was on the road to fame and wealth, with customers that grew to comprise a who's-who of "luminaries of politics, finance, and show business." Among many others, clients included New York's mayor Jimmy Walker, governor Franklin Roosevelt, Algonquin writer Robert Benchley (Dorothy Parker came, too, as a drinking customer), the Marx brothers, John Hay "Jock" Whitney, bandleaders Paul Whiteman and Desi Arnaz, playwright George S. Kaufman, and kings of crime Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Always on the lookout for recruits, when Katharine Hepburn visited once, Adler suggested working for her as a better alternative to acting. Avoiding prosecution required "an endless round of daily payoffs" to protect herself, her "girls," and her customers. "In a world of villains," Applegate observes, "she became known as someone a villain could trust." Feisty and free-spirited, Adler claimed her goals in life were "To have money and have fun." She amply achieved both. An animated, entertaining history.
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October 8, 2021
Applegate explores the life of Polly Adler and her rise from immigrant refugee to one of the most powerful and wealthy madams in all of New York City. A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Applegate writes masterfully in linear prose, accompanied by visually engaging photography. After arriving in the U.S. from Russia, Adler faced many barriers to success before becoming the owner of an extremely in-demand brothel selling the "women of the night." For a character in history that seemed to hold an incredible amount of power, Adler is shown here as someone who sincerely attempts to make the American dream a reality. The summation of this era is so often centered around the male experience; Applegate takes this stereotype and flips the narrative to reveal the dark underbelly of New York and the women who ran it.
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