Every once in a while I will be looking through a box in the garage and find something I haven't seen in years. When it's a photo, particularly a professionally made photo, I get excited. I love old photographs. I love them ten times more when they are photos of people I know.
At that time, the Paramount Hotel in New York was the home of Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe, a famous place. Here's more about it:
"Whether you were a tourist from Iowa or a head of state, if you passed through Times Square between 1938 and 1951, chances are you ventured into the Diamond Horseshoe, a glittering dinner theater and club in the basement of the Paramount Hotel. The brainchild of Billy Rose, a groundbreaking Broadway lyricist and producer known for his work with the Ziegfeld Follies and Oscar Hammerstein II, the West 46th Street venue featured themed shows that mixed wholesome vaudevillian acts like barbershop quartets with leggy showgirls dressed in little more than flower bras and filmy skirts. Gene Kelly got his start choreographing one such performance, Betty Grable and W.C. Handy were among the star entertainers, and the house was filled with guests like Orson Welles and Sugar Ray Robinson. The club even inspired the 1945 film Diamond Horseshoe, starring Grable."
I found the photo below in an old trunk in the attic sometime when I was a kid. I wasn't all that interested in it, except that the name Billy Rose was on it. I know who he was because I had seen the movie Funny Lady many times, about comedian Fanny Brice's marriage to Billy Rose.
Mom explains the photo below, which was made in the late 1940's in New York City at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe, thus:
"They [my grandparents, Bob Hasty and Wilma Butler Hasty] had been saving up money for a trip up north for some time. Mother was working and she was saving a lot of her money. They had been to New York many times and loved it."
My grandparents drove up to Washington DC with Mom, who was around 15, and my uncle Don, who was 4 years older, and toured all the touristy sights, then they headed to New York City. Mom and Don had never been to either city. My grandfather had been a professional baseball player in the early 1920's [for the Philadelphia Athletics] and knew both cities well. The family stayed at hotels where he had stayed in his playing days.
My uncle Bob Hasty Jr. was grown and working, and he stayed home and worked.
They got to the nightclub and were seated at a crappy table, way in the back. Due to Mom's age they almost didn't get in. Patrons were supposed to be at least 16. One of the waters recognized Papa from his baseball days, however, and sent out for a box of baseballs. Papa spent the rest of the evening autographing baseballs, and the family was moved to a great table right up front.
It's not a great photo of Papa or Mom, but it's a wonderful photo of my grandmother and my uncle. Many years later, Don would work for General Electric and live in Utica, New York, for several years.
The photo was made by a professional photographer at the club and it cost $1.50 -- seems crazy cheap, but today's equivalent price would likely be $15 or thereabouts.
