Queen of the Speakeasies: A Tale of Prohibition New York

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2017

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

EPISODE 234 Texas Guinan was the queen of the speakeasy era, the charismatic and sassy hostess of New York's hottest nightclubs of the 1920s. Her magnetism, sharpened by years of work in Hollywood, would make her one of the great icons of the Prohibition era. She's our guide into the underworld of the Jazz Age as we explore the history of Prohibition and how it affected New York City. The temperance movement united a very bizarre group of players -- progressives, nativists, churchgoers -- in their quest to eliminate the evil of alcohol from American society. Many saw liquor as a symbol of systemic social failure; others suspected it as the weakness of certain immigrant groups. Guinan, a Catholic girl from Waco, Texas, was introduced to New York's illegal booze scene by way of the nightclub. Her associations with rumrunners and gangsters were certainly dangerous, but her unique skills and charms allowed her an unprecedented power on the edges of a world fueled by the ways of organized crime. Come along as we visit her various nightclubs and follow the course of Prohibition in New York City from the loftiest heights to the lowliest dive. boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's show is supported by Open Campus, the new school's progressive approach to continuing
0:06.4	education.
0:07.9	Explore online and on-campus programs designed to satisfy every type of learner with courses
0:14.7	in art and design with Parsons, management, media, writing and more.
0:20.3	Open Campus is more than a course.
0:22.9	It's a new kind of network.
0:25.2	All courses begin August 28th, enroll today at OpenCampus.newschool.edu.
0:32.8	We love the new school and we want to thank them for sponsoring the Bowry Boys Podcast.
0:37.2	Episode 234 of the Bowry Boys, Prohibition and the Queen of the Speakeasies.
0:43.8	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
0:46.6	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:50.1	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:57.1	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys.
1:00.7	This is Greg Young.
1:01.7	And this is Tom Myers.
1:02.9	And thank you for joining us for part two of our series on the Roaring Twenties.
1:07.6	Now some of you may have noticed that one major aspect of life in the 1920s was largely
1:13.4	left out of our last show on Mayor Jimmy Walker.
1:17.6	We didn't really go too deeply into the subject of Prohibition in New York, Speakeasies
1:23.9	and Nightclubs.
1:25.3	Because this will be a show that is entirely devoted to that underworld industry that adds
1:31.6	a little glamour and danger to 1920s New York.
	...

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