Before the 21 Club and Sardi’s became famous as hangouts for New York’s glitterati, The Stork Club on East 51st Street was the most prestigious club in town, frequented by the wealthy elite, movie stars, celebrities, showgirls, and aristocrats. Founded in 1929 by Sherman Billingsley, a former bootlegger from Oklahoma with mobsters as his partners, it became the preferred speakeasy of the “smart set” after the owner cleverly promoted the club to Yale and Harvard students who passed its reputation up their family trees.
“My father was always having a bit of a problem with the Mafia wanting to infiltrate the business,” says Billingsley’s daughter in the opening to The Stork Club Cookbook and Bar Book. “So, naturally there was a lot of rivalry and threats to the family. In the building that housed the club, he had an apartment. If shady characters were waiting outside the club, he took the fire escape down from the apartment to the nightclub without having to walk into the street.”
Her childhood friends were the children of club members like Gary Cooper’s daughter Maria, Jack Benny’s daughter Joan, and Bert Lahr’s daughter Janie. Among her favorite celebrities at the club were William Boyd of Hopalong Cassidy fame, Jack Webb from Dragnet, and actor Yum Brynner.
This book, edited by Broadway historian Ken Bloom, reprises The Stork Club Cookbook by Sherman Billingsley with 100 recipes and The Stork Club Bar Book by society columnist Lucius Beebe along with “Throw a Stork Club Party” by Shermane Billingsley.