1922 | Restaurants
Restaurants
"Texas" Guinan begins her career as Prohibition-era New York nightclub hostess. Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan, 38, goes to work as mistress of ceremonies at the Café des Beaux Arts and is soon hired away by Larry Fay of El Fey, from whose club she will move to the Rendezvous, 300 Club, Argonaut, Century, Salon Royal, Club Intime, and to several Texas Guinan Clubs that will serve bootleg Scotch at $25 per fifth, bootleg champagne at $25 per bottle, plain water at $2 per pitcher as she earns $700,000 in a 10-month period. The clubs will charge their "butter-and-egg men" customers cover charges of $5 to $25 each while Texas Guinan ("give the little girl a great big hand") welcomes customers from her seat atop a piano with the cry, "Hello, sucker!" Speakeasies pay off the police or in various other ways evade Prohibition laws.