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(Autobiography of Isabel Graham, who adopted the name, Bel...)
Autobiography of Isabel Graham, who adopted the name, Belle Livingstone, when she became a chorus girl. She was an international favorite during the Edwardian era, and later she operated a famous speakeasy. Common terms and phrases related to this book: American amusing arrived asked Asten Avenue baby beautiful Beers began Belle Livingstone boys Cairo called champagne Charlie charm Clare Briggs club cocktail colored courtesan croupier crowd dahabeah diamond Dick Dickerson dining dinner dollars door dress drink Edward Emporia English Ernest Boyd everything eyes face Fanny Ward Father finally flowers Fontainebleau French friends gave girl gold guests hand horses Hoyt husband jail Kitchener knew lady Laltazzi later laugh lived London looked Lord Lord Kitchener Madame marriage married Mohler Monte Carlo morning Mother never night once Papa Paris party play Prince remember satin seemed showgirl silver Sir Donald Stewart smart smile speakeasy Street taborets Texas Texas Guinan thing thought told took turned waiting walked walls Walter wanted Whoopee window woman women York young
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Belle Livingstone was born on January 20, 1875 in Emporia, Kansas, United States. Abandoned as an infant by her father, allegedly a mining prospector on his way west, she was found under a sunflower and was adopted by John Ramsey Graham, editor and co-owner of the Emporia News, and his wife, Annie M. Likly, who named her Isabelle Graham. In 1892 Graham sold his interest in another Emporia paper, the Gazette (which he had founded), and moved the family to Chicago.
Livingstone attended the Academy of the Immaculate Conception in Oldenburg, Indiana (1891 - 1893). After World War I, she attended the University of Paris.
Her burgeoning interest in the theater led her to join the chorus of the second road company of Wang. When her parents refused to let her live away from home unmarried, she asked the first well-dressed man she met to marry her. After the ceremony, in Saginaw, Michigan, they parted. To avoid further family scandal, she took the name Livingstone, in honor of the British missionary explorer David Livingstone.
She subsequently appeared in an Atlantic City summer production of the opera Falka. The details of Livingstone's theatrical career, as well as of her life, are a curious blend of press agentry, inspired fantasy, and self-created legend, diligently disseminated in three autobiographies. In these sources, her memory starred her as the Leader of the Drum Corps in the Broadway production of The Milk White Flag. Surviving programs record only her one-week appearance, in February 1897, in a Boston revival--last in the line. Nor can confirmation be found for her claim that she "led the beauty march" in Jack and the Beanstalk in 1896.
In 1897 she sailed for Europe. She soon established herself in London as a leading demimondaine, allegedly becoming an intimate of Prince Hussein, James Gordon Bennett, King Leopold II of Belgium, Lord Kitchener, the Prince of Wales, and Harry K. Thaw, in addition to luminaries of the stage and of bohemian society. Her fortune hunting led to a brief and unsuccessful foray to Cairo in 1901 to speculate in a turquoise mine. Capitalizing on her attractiveness and the novelty of her Kansas forthrightness, Livingstone lived in the lap of luxury until 1902. In that year luxury stood up. She discovered that she had been swindled in a stock certificate forgery and that her extensive investments in the Great Fingalls mine in Australia were worthless. On a whim, she bet her friends £5, 000 that she could travel around the world on a £5 bill--and her wits. Funded by friends along the way, Livingstone headed for the Far East.
To support herself she published her first volume of memoirs in 1906 and embarked for Monte Carlo to recoup her fortune at the gaming tables. On March 21, 1906, she moved to Paris and later, struggled to regain her past glory, to London. A series of memoirs for Cosmopolitan (1925) brightened things somewhat. Two years later, her patriotic feelings aroused, she was invited to return to the United States and write about her native country, which she had not seen for thirty years.
Finding America dull, and Prohibition hardly to her taste, Livingstone announced plans to open a salon "modeled on those of Mme. Récamier and Mme. de Staël, " where luminaries would gather to bandy trifles destined for immortality. The result was One Man House, a short-lived speakeasy on New York City's East 52nd Street. Despite its $200 membership fee, the "salon" went broke the following year. Undaunted, Livingstone opened The Silver Room, a Park Avenue after-hours rendezvous, in the fall of 1929. But her cultural ambitions were not without their detractors, and the following April she was arrested for the third time in as many months following a raid by federal agents. Arraigned in "bootleggers' row" the next day, she denied having violated the Volstead Act. "I merely did as any hostess did, " she explained. "I offered them a glass of champagne. " The confiscated liquor, she maintained, was owned by her clients.
Following the demise of The Silver Room, Livingstone moved to East 58th Street with her third venture, The Country Club. Guests who attended its opening, on October 29, 1930, entered a reconverted townhouse strikingly decorated in red and black with an ornamental motif of champagne magnums. In keeping with that year's fad, a miniature golf course was implanted on the fourth floor, together with Ping-Pong tables. The second and third floors offered a bar and jazz orchestra. On December 4, 1930, shortly before midnight, tuxedoed government agents entered the premises and, seizing a megaphone, ordered the 400 assembled patrons to leave. As the raid started, Livingstone recalled, "I saw agents all around. Someone shouted 'Fore!' 'Hell, no, ' I replied, 'there are twenty of 'em!' " Fifty bottles of bootleg liquor, as well as Livingstone, were seized. Livingstone again denied that she was the owner or had any proprietary interest and was released on bail the following day.
Another raid six weeks later had more serious consequences. Livingstone was in her top-floor apartment when a lookout signaled by bell that her patrons were scrambling for the door. Hastily donning a cloak over flaming red pajamas, she fled through the roof trapdoor reserved for such contingencies, dashed across to the neighboring brownstone, and raced downstairs to a waiting cab, where she was greeted by federal agents. "I could have escaped, " she told reporters at her arraignment, "but like Lot's wife, I looked back and that's all there is to it. " She pleaded not guilty to the charge of criminal contempt (violating a temporary personal dry-law injunction pending the outcome of her two previous proceedings). Describing the exercise as "a good way to keep from getting old, " she claimed to be guilty "only of good taste in being hostess in this club and not in another. " But Livingstone's elan diminished as her trial got under way. She insisted--as reporters devoured her testimony--that she had been hired only to supervise the decor, adding that her years of study at Cambridge and at the Sorbonne had made her eminently qualified for the job. When asked to name the owners, she demurred. "If I did, " she testified, "I'd be shot as soon as I walked out of here. " A lenient judge handed down the minimum, thirty-day sentence, taking into consideration her age, which she gave as sixty-five. Livingstone tearfully called herself a "fall guy" and avowed that "just a lot of lunatics" obeyed the Prohibition act. Ever adamant in her denial, she confessed that she was using the speakeasy only for material for her book, to be entitled With Livingstone Through Darkest America.
Released from Harlem Prison in March 1931, Livingstone was whisked to The Country Club in Texas Guinan's armored limousine and feted at a "coming-out party. " Jokingly praising the prison food, she was asked by a reporter if she thought that her morals had been impaired by her contact with prisoners. "No, " she replied, "in my opinion they have been improved. " Two months later The Country Club was padlocked, and after pleading guilty to dry-law charges Livingstone was fined $100. Expecting to profit from Nevada's relaxed divorce and gambling laws, Livingstone announced her plans for another "salon, " in Reno, "the one spot in America that is not infested with Puritans. " After filing for bankruptcy and claiming $33, 000 of debt, she left New York.
Two months later, over the protests of ranchers owning adjacent property, she was granted a gambling license. In October her club was raided. Another attempt, at East Hampton, New York, in the summer of 1933, proved equally unsuccessful. To a nation burdened by deepening economic depression and massive unemployment, Livingstone's free-spirited antics and lighthearted defiance of authority provided a bright light of escapism. But with the repeal of Prohibition and worsening conditions, her luster dimmed.
In December 1934 she opened her last nightclub, the Reno, in Texas Guinan's former New York City headquarters on West 54th Street. Ten days later it closed. The following summer she was denied a liquor license for a nightclub in Falmouth, Massachusetts No longer a headline-maker, she sank into obscurity, surfacing briefly in March 1939, when her top-floor apartment caught fire. In an encore of her pajama performance, she escaped by running across the roof. By 1949, when she was hospitalized for a heart attack, she was all but forgotten except by policemen, reporters, night workers, and habitués of East Side watering spots. After a second heart attack in 1955, she was confined to a nursing home in the Bronx, where she died. Her epitaph was to have read: "The Only Stone I Left Unturned. "
Belle Livingstone was one of the best-known speakeasy owners in New York during the Prohibition era. She dominated New York’s nightlife from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s. Her speakeasies (such as the Country Club with an indoor miniature golf course) drew celebrities as well as gangsters such as Al Capone and Owney Madden.
(Autobiography of Isabel Graham, who adopted the name, Bel...)
Livingstone was married four times. Her first husband was Richard John Wherry, a paint salesman. After his death she married Count Florentino Ghiberti Laltazzi in March 1903 in Yokohama. Laltazzi died of pneumonia in St. Petersburg while en route to rejoin her in Paris; and their marriage, performed by a missionary priest, was subsequently declared invalid. Then she married an American millionaire, Edward Keene Mohler; they had one son. She divorced Mohler in 1911. Livingstone married Walter James Hutchins, an American engineer, on September 3, 1912.
