Palace of Pleasure

Manhattan is proud of its clear, sea-born air, which, especially in the first days of fall, Manhattanites find as heady as a new vintage. Manhattan is also proud of its nightspots, where the atmosphere, though equally shady, is not so crystal-pure. When Repeal put an end to Prohibition's frowzy summer, Manhattan's undercover nightclubs, legally uncorked at last, popped and fizzed into a boom-de-ay of business gaiety. When the egregious Billy Rose converted a theatre into his Casino de Paree, where hundreds instead of scores could wine, dine, dance and watch a show, he started something. The Casino de Paree died three years ago, but the French Casino, also a remodeled theatre, is still packing in its 1,500 patrons, has become probably the best-known nightclub in the U. S. Last week, as 100,000 visiting Legionaries romped through the streets, they found scores of nightspots where the rich pickings were mutual. If they wanted the very largest, very latest thing, they trooped into the just-opened International Casino, "world's largest'' night club (capacity: 2,300).

Once past the doorman--a 7 ft. 5 in. young Texan named Dave Ballard--visitors stepped into an interior whose smoothly modernistic, chromium-&-glass door reminded some of them of a Warner Bros. set, others of the Chicago World's Fair. A bar, starting at street level, spiraled all the way up to the mezzanine (an ingenious arrangement necessitated by a New York State law forbidding two bars in the same establishment). An escalator led up to a cocktail-and-dancing lounge. In a huge elliptical room whose shallow-bowl shape made it seem smaller than it was, 1,300 people could dine, dance and watch a show on a stage that moved up, down, sideways and around, had so many complicated mechanical gadgets that a last-minute breakdown forced the management to cut the opening show in half. The show itself, like the rest of the International Casino, was on the grand scale more calculated to appeal to the world-&-his-wife than to sophisticated socialites, included a juggler, performing poodles, athletic choruses and a troupe of new style, plump, dimple-backed, languorous European chorus girls with bangs in their eyes.

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