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Articles by Debby Applegate
Polly Adler as Al Capone's guest at the "Battle of the Long Count", September 22, 1927
Debby Applegate Excerpt from Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age Forthcoming from Doubleday, November 2, 2021 Polly Adler as the grand madam in Chicago for the Dempsey-Tunney heavyweight championship, September 22, 1927. Photo from the Polly Adler Collection courtesy of Eleanor Vera. By the fall of 1927, Polly Adler was not merely Manhattan’s most notorious madam. She had earned a national reputation as the underworld’s preferred hostess and party-planner.
The Writers of Wrongs
Debby Applegate Excerpt from Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age (Doubleday, 2021) From Chapter 6 - "Thumbs Up With The Mob" Polly Adler wearing her first, fabulous mink coat, strolling the boardwalk in Atlantic City in 1924 with a pal. Photo from the Polly Adler Collection courtesy of Eleanor Vera.
When Gangland Was Jewish Original
THE TALENTED MRS. MANDELBAUM: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss,by Margalit Fox THE INCORRUPTIBLES: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld,by Dan Slater One hundred years ago, New York City was in the midst of what newspapers decried as "a Jewish crime wave." The causes were complex, but most observers at the time laid the blame on Prohibition, which created a lucrative black market for alcohol overnight.
Listen, World! | Allison Gilbert
Reviews An engaging tale… One does not tire of spending time with Elsie Robinson, nor stop wondering how many other women, with equally compelling tales, have also been lost to history. (read full review) Rousing biography (read full review) Deeply researched…Over the course of this biography, readers come to recognize Robinson’s shockingly contemporary voice. (read full review) Memoirist Scheeres and journalist Gilbert deliver a page-turning biography of Elsie Robinson (1883–1956), a...
MADAM by Debby Applegate Read by Erin Bennett
Erin Bennett's spirited narration breathes life into Debby Applegate's richly detailed biography of America's most celebrated brothel keeper. Polly Adler may not exactly have been an icon for her time, but she's a fascinating, colorful figure, and Bennett, who clearly knows a good story when she has one, gives this one her all. The narrative is well researched and well written, and full of famous names. But it has no particular thesis, no romance, and--maybe not surprisingly--hardly any sex.
MADAM | Kirkus Reviews
by Questlove ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 12, 2021 The iconic drummer, composer, and DJ tracks modern American history through music and vice versa.
The Manhattan ‘Madam’ Who Hobnobbed With the City’s Elite
nonfiction Polly Adler exiting a police van after being arrested in 1936. The more successful Polly’s brothel became, the more hounded she was — by the police, by Tammany Hall, by the Broadway mob.Credit...NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images Nov.
The Literary Adventures of Polly Adler, the Algonquin Round Table’s Favorite Madam
Polly Adler’s literary adventures began the winter of 1923-1924. She was only twenty-three years old then and had not yet been crowned New York’s “Empress of Vice. ” But she’d come a long way since opening her first brothel in a two-bedroom apartment across from Columbia University in 1920. That winter, she was ready to make the next move in her career. “I had always told my girls: If you have to be a prostitute, be a good one,” Polly said later. “Well, the same applied to me.
Debby Applegate on Jazz Age Madam Polly Adler
Madam to the stars Polly Adler, circa 1953. The notorious Jazz Age madam Polly Adler played hostess to every gangster, politician, and writer of the Roaring 20s—even, she once claimed, to F.D.R. October 28, 2021 Reading Time: 3 minutes Do you prefer to work with the living or the dead? Ask any biographer, wherever biographers gather, and they will offer a vigorous opinion on this question. I fall squarely into the “safely dead” camp.
The New York Times
So Goodheart turns the lens away from the usual stars of the story, the politicians, military officers, activists and editors who strove to direct the course of events. Instead, he explores the more obscure corners of antebellum America, introducing fascinating figures who loomed large at the time but have now been mostly forgotten. Many of these are young men struggling to decide what manhood requires of them when the old models of patriotism, loyalty and self-interest were rapidly dissolving.
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