Admiral Balbo sent me…

In The Purple Menace and the Tobacco Prince, Wright Williams takes a trip to New York City to watch Bizzy Holy perform at the Selwyn Theater and later joins her and a cadre of Broadway cognoscenti at their favorite post-show gin joint, Tony Soma’s. Most of the names in the novel have been changed for various reasons (not least of which was to allow me to massage the truth into a more titillating shape…) but Tony’s was a very real place, and its depiction in the book is as factual as I could make it.

Tony Soma was an Italian immigrant who settled in Manhattan in 1913 and found work as a waiter in the city’s hotels and restaurants. Tony’s landlord was a dentist known for accepting liquor as payment for services. In 1920, however, the Volstead Act took effect and the dentist found himself in possession of a surplus of illegal alcohol. Tony took the supply off hands and thus Tony’s Speakeasy was born. The spot quickly became the watering hole of choice for such Jazz Age luminaries as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, Irving Berlin, Tallulah Bankhead, Gypsy Rose Lee, Billie Holiday, and the clique of New York City writers and actors known as the Algonquin Round Table.

Algonquin Round Table by Natalie Ascencious

Tony’s was famous for having the best Italian food in Manhattan, as well as its proprietor’s penchant for standing on his head while singing Puccini, much to his patron’s amusement. Tony’s regulars gave him the nickname “Admiral Balbo,” after Italy’s Marshal of the Air Force, and I incorporated the phrase as the secret password required to gain entry into the speakeasy in The Purple Menace and the Tobacco Prince.

In 1929, Tony sold his property to John D. Rockefeller and opened a legitimate restaurant next door called Tony’s Wife. Tony’s daughter, Ricki, would go on to marry legendary director, John Huston, and Tony would eventually become the grandfather of Anjelica Huston. Rockefeller Center, and specifically the 70-story RCA Building (known today as 30 Rock) was built in 1933 and sits on the spot where Tony’s was located. Home now to NBC Studios, this is where Saturday Night Live and Today are produced. If you want to find out what debauchery happened afterhours in the future birthplace of Schweddy Balls and Dick in a Box, it’s only a click away…

-WEB3