Leisure | Flashback : Dallas

December 18, 2023

“This Month In Dallas” — Aug./Sept. 1962: The Clubs

Club Dallas, Browder Street

by Paula Bosse

Downtown Dallas was a cool place for entertainment and dining in the early 1960s, from high-class clubs and lounges to famous and infamous strip joints (some of which were higher-class than others). A few months ago on eBay, someone scanned a bunch of pages of a magazine called This Month in Dallas (“Where to Go, What to Do”), which seems to have been aimed at the conventioneer or out-of-town visitor. (I’ve never heard of this publication, but I would LOVE to see more!)

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As far as image quality, I’m at the mercy of the person doing the scanning, but here are several of the ads featured in the eBay listing. All appeared in the Aug./Sept. 1962 issue of This Month in Dallas. (At the top, a detail from an ad for Club Dallas — the full ad is below.)

Let’s just do them alphabetically.

ARAGON BALLROOM, 1011 S. Industrial Blvd. (now S. Riverfront). Featuring the Aragon Red Jackets Western Swing Band, the “Over 30” Club Dance, and Chuck Arlington and His Orchestra.

CAROUSEL CLUB (or “New” Carousel Club), 1312½ Commerce, at Field. Jack Ruby, proprietor. “Dallas’ Newest and Most Intimate Burlesque Nite Club.” This ad (the first of several) features stripper Peggy Steele, “America’s Suzie Wong.”

More CAROUSEL. “Dallas’ only burlesque nite club with a continuous girl and comedy show. No stopping, 9:00 PM ’til 2:00 AM.” “America’s Suzie Wong” is back, now spelled Peggy Steel. MC’d by comic Wally Weston.

More CAROUSEL. Here’s Mili Perele, “the Little French Miss.”

More CAROUSEL. Heck, let’s throw in another Peggy Steel/e mention.

More CAROUSEL (Jack’s advertising budget was impressive). Tammi True, then in the midst of a pinching brouhaha.

Pat Morgan’s CLUB DALLAS, 206½ Browder (just south of Commerce). I love this ad, but I’m not familiar with the establishment or Mr. Morgan. Looks like it opened in the summer of 1962 (“Owner Pat Morgan has eliminated the semi-nude waitresses and aims for the family trade” — Dallas Morning News, July 27, 1962), changed its name in September 1962 to simply “Pat Morgan’s,” and finally closed in February 1963. I bet he rued the day he dumped those semi-nude waitresses….

CLUB VEGAS, 3505 Oak Lawn. Yes, there was swinging nightlife beyond downtown. Club Vegas was famously owned by Jack Ruby’s sister, Eva Rubenstein. This club booked a lot of Black and Hispanic bands (for mixed audiences), including Joe Johnson and Trini Lopez. (I’ve been meaning to write about this place for the past 10 years!)

CLUB VILLAGE / ITALIAN VILLAGE RESTAURANT, 3211 Oak Lawn. Another happening place in Oak Lawn. I wrote and wrote and wrote about Sam Ventura’s Italian Village here.

COLONY CLUB, 1322½ Commerce. Abe Weinstein, proprietor. The “high-class” strip joint. Also featured acts like Deacon & Co., King and Queen of the Limbo.

More COLONY CLUB. An unnamed exotic.

GUTHREY’S CLUB, 214 Corinth, at Industrial (now Riverfront). Very popular back in the day. “Girls! Girls! Girls! Set-ups, beer, wine.” This ad features Dave Martin’s Tom Toms (James McCleeng, Glenn Keener, Gene Summers — vocalist, Charlie Mendian, Melvin Robinson, and Dave Martin).

THE SPOT, 4906 Military Parkway. This ad features Joe Wilson & The Sabers.

THE SPOT, the “other” location, 10635 Harry Hines. House band The Spotters.

THEATER LOUNGE, 1326 Jackson, at Akard. Barney Weinstein, proprietor. “Glamour Girls Galore.”

TOWN PUMP, 5021 Lovers Lane. “Dallas’ Original and Largest ‘Sing Along’ Piano Bar.” That is one scary sentence.

***

Sources & Notes

All ads from the Aug./Sept. 1962 issue of This Month in Dallas.

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4 Comments

November 23, 2023

Colony Club Billboard in Beautiful Kodachrome — Early 1960s

Downtown Dallas has it all…

by Paula Bosse

This. Is. A. Fantastic. Photo.

If only for the great, great, great Colony Club (“the best of the undressed”) billboard featuring Chris Colt (“the girl with the 45s”).

See this same view of the (one-time) intersection of Elm, Ervay, and Live Oak here and here. (The dazzling animated neon Coca-Cola sign was once where Chris Colt is showing off her 45s.)

I almost never post images with watermarks, but this photo is pretty spectacular. Look around the watermark!

I don’t know the seller of this color slide. I have no affiliation with the person. I get no cut in any sale. But I want someone reading this to BUY IT! Let’s keep this with someone who loves Dallas history! (And if you DO buy it and would like to send me a digital copy… well, I wouldn’t say no!) See this slide currently on eBay HERE. (HURRY!)

To see a naughty photo of Chris Colt, you can click on an antique collectors’ website here.

Colony Club ad, Nov. 22, 1962

And below is a photo of Colony Club owner Abe Weinstein in his younger years counting his moolah.

photo: Dallas Jewish Historical Society

***

Sources & Notes

Top image is from a color slide in a current eBay listing here. (Seller’s title: “Original Slide Dallas St Scene Colony Club Coca Cola Billboards Southland Life.”) There is no date, but Golden Steer Barbecue opened at 1713 Live Oak sometime in 1961.

Abe Weinstein photo — from his days as the co-owner of Abe’s and Pappy’s — is from the Facebook page of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society.

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7 Comments

November 20, 2023

Jack Walton’s Hot Barbecue

Restaurant No. 1, Haskell & San Jacinto…

by Paula Bosse

Arden Lee “Jack” Walton was born in Panola County (on his World War I registration card, he listed his home as Fairplay, Texas, which a town name I’m certainly glad to know exists). After the war, he moved to Dallas and opened his first restaurant — Walton’s Place — around 1925 or 1926. By the 1930s, he seems to have settled on barbecue as his primary specialty and had several of his self-named restaurants/drive-ins around town, branching out to Fort Worth in the early ’40s.

The photo above, from about 1946, is probably Walton’s first location, at Haskell and San Jacinto in Old East Dallas. The two photos below — showing a man working on the neon sign — were taken at the same time. (The photographer, James Bell, was a Dallas native back in town visiting — he took tons of unusual photos, often focusing on trucks, buses, cars, juke boxes, and various coin-operated machines. I’m sure he liked the look of the truck. They’re definitely amateur photos, but they’re great.)

The photo that crops up on places all over El Internet (the photo below) is one which has a variety of conflicting information attached to it, including photographer, date, and location. As far as I can tell, I think the photo was taken by Arthur Rothstein in Fort Worth, in the very early ’40s (the FW location, at 1900 E. Lancaster, opened around 1940). I think most of the locations had a similar design. (See a typical menu here.)

Here’s another photo (location unknown):

from the book Smokelore

Walton was very successful in his toasted sandwich endeavors (he also made some savvy real estate deals). When he died, he was described as “the barbecue baron of Dallas.”

…When he died. Jack Walton died on Feb. 19, 1960, at the age of 62. He was visiting one of his restaurants, at Tom Field Circle and Hwy. 183. The manager — Jack’s brother-in-law — had been drinking on the job, and Jack fired him on the spot. So the brother-in-law shot him, telling the police later that Walton “started fussing at me and told me to get out.” He shot him at close range, so inebriated that only two of the shots hit their target. He was DOA at Baylor. (Read the AP wire story here.)

At least one of Walton’s restaurants was taken over by the Semos family — the Haskell location lasted under non-Walton management for quite a while.

When I saw this matchbook cover several years ago, I was quite taken with the phrase “toasted chicken loaf.” What was a “chicken loaf”? I have to say, it didn’t sound that appetizing.

Chicken loaf was (apparently) a very popular food in days gone by, similar to meat loaf (it was made with chopped, shredded, or minced chicken, eggs, breadcrumbs/rice/some sort of cereal, etc., with the addition of hard-boiled eggs and/or pimentos and/or peas and/or whatever else was lying around). There are lots of ads in newspapers beginning around 1900 showing it as a “potted” meat, sold in cans alongside Underwood Deviled Ham and Vienna sausages, etc. I can understand this as a cost-saving meal during the Depression, but it was also very popular in restaurants (several local restaurants advertised that they sold entire take-out “loafs”), and it was a favorite of many as a Sunday dinner (or as a way to use leftover chicken in the pre- and post-casserole days). By the ’40s, recipes started adding the dreaded gelatin (“Jellied Chicken Loaf”). Um, yes. There was also … wait for it … MOCK chicken loaf! I’m not sure what that was, but it probably got people through WWII and food-rationing.

While searching for “chicken loaf” info in the Dallas Morning News archives, I saw a few delicacies listed in grocery ads which one might be hard pressed to find on the shelves of one’s local supermarket today: oyster loaf, liver loaf, and deviled tongue — all sold in cans. There was also a New Year’s Eve recipe in there for “Hot Sardine Canapes,” with toast “cut in fancy shapes.”

FYI.

***

Sources & Notes

First three photos were taken by James Bell in about 1946; they are from the James H. Bell Collection, Dallas Historical Society — they can be accessed here, here, and here. (I have straightened and cropped the photos.)

The photo which is probably by Arthur Rothstein is from the Traces of Texas Facebook page.

Menu detail art is from Worthpoint; matchbook scans from eBay.

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5 Comments

October 16, 2023

Herbert A. Kline’s “Miniature Coney Island” at the State Fair of Texas — 1909

by Paula Bosse

Herbert A. Kline (1873-1934) was a showman and promoter from Michigan who provided acts to several state fairs and large carnivals in the U.S. — his heyday appears to have been the 1910s. In 1909, he brought his troupe of performers and sideshow features to the State Fair of Texas. Most of the photos in this post are from promotional material for that 1909 season, with most of the photos showing Kline’s traveling “amusements.”

Two weeks before he got to Texas, he posted this ad in the entertainment trade magazine Billboard — I hope Capt. Sorcho (“the great deep-sea diver”) dropped him a line.

sfot_kline_billboard_100209 Billboard, Oct. 2, 1909

“THE BEAUTIFUL ORIENT” — included were dancers, gun-spinners, magicians, acrobats, and — somehow — wedding ceremonies. It also boasted “the cleanest and most refined dancing-girl show in America.”

“SUPERBA, THE BEST” — a collection of vaudeville-type performers, including one woman whose “talent” appears to be that she was attractive.

“MRS. D. H. KINCHELOE, WARBLER” (a whistler/reader/vocalist/pianist from Kentucky — her name is misspelled below) and “THE GREAT McGARVEY, FEMALE IMPERSONATOR” (Bert McGarvey was known for a nicely turned-out ankle, charisma, magnetism, and a specialty number called “The Sacred Cobra Dance”). They — along with Galetti’s Musical Monkeys — would appear after the more high-brow operatic singers.

“THE IGORROTE VILLAGE” — native peoples of the Philippines gave a sort of presentation on how they lived, employing what might be seen as primitive customs in daily life. (A description of a “performance” in New York’s Central Park noted that there were demonstrations on how to shrink heads, which might have been too “exotic” for Dallas.)

John T. Backman’s Troupe of Glass Blowers — this was absolutely fascinating (the sign alone!). Check out this entertaining article about the sorts of things these people did.

Also in Kline’s family of traveling show-folk:

A creature half-reptile and half-human
Russian Prince Midget, who speaks three languages, weighs less than 16 pounds, and whose crib was a cigar box
Alice, The Wonder, “who is acknowledged by the press and the public to be the strangest girl in all the world”
Schlitzie, the Aztec Wild Girl, “whose head is no larger than an orange” (this is most likely the sideshow performer best known for appearing in Tod Browning’s cult movie “Freaks”)

Here is an image from an eBay item, showing where these photos came from.

There was also a “ride” called “THE HUMAN ROULETTE WHEEL.” It was probably more fun for the spectators than for the participants.

Houston Post, Nov. 7, 1909

The prospect of being flung off a human roulette wheel might have been daunting to women of the period, who wore heels, corsets, long skirts, and big hats. Below are some typical fairgoers of the time, in a souvenir photo taken at the 1907 State Fair of Texas (Louis Block of Fort Worth, Miss Ray Goldsmith of Dallas, her sister Grace Goldsmith Rosenblatt, and Grace’s husband, David Rosenblatt). Imagine these people wandering around Fair Park and stopping in to see “the strangest girl in all the world” and watching people being hurled off a spinning disk.

via eBay

New York Clipper, Oct. 1912

This ad for a South Dakota fair — a few months before Kline’s stop in Dallas — shows descriptions of several of the acts. (“A tiger that rides horseback.”)

Aberdeen (South Dakota) American, June 9, 1909

And a promotional article sent to local papers ahead of Kline’s arrival.

McKinney (TX) Weekly Democrat Gazette, Oct. 14, 1909

***

Sources & Notes

All photos from a brochure/handbills listed earlier this year on eBay; sources of ads and other images as noted.

So many Flashback Dallas posts about the State Fair of Texas — here.

I’m on Patreon, where I post daily. Check it out!

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3 Comments

October 9, 2023

“Thrilling! Inspiring! Gorgeous!” — 1936

by Paula Bosse

I don’t think the 1936 Texas Exposition at Fair Park could have oversold itself. It was everything it promised. The sensory overload must have been almost debilitating!

The night beauty of the Texas Centennial Exposition at Dallas is breath-taking! Rainbow-hued fountains, rippling flags, colorful buildings, thousands of constantly changing lights blending into a symphony of thrilling, inspiring, gorgeous effects… A glamorous fairyland of scintillating light, color and cool water that alone will repay your trip. SEE this marvel of beauty!

“Have the time of your life in Dallas! […] Joyous days and nights of holiday-making await you … in one of the most magnificent settings ever conceived! […] The Texas Centennial Exposition at Dallas is being enthusiastically applauded as the most magnificent spectacle ever attempted on the American continent.”

“World’s Greatest Show for 50¢… Ample Tourist Accommodations… Come to Dallas!”

(According to the Inflation Calculator, 50¢ admission in 1936 would be equivalent to about $10 in today’s money. 10¢ hamburgers would be about $2, and 5¢ cold drinks would be about $1.)

“Dallas: Night Spot of the World! / Dallas: Day Spot of the World!”

***

Sources & Notes

Images from a promotional brochure offered recently on eBay.

Check out many previous Flashback Dallas posts on the Texas Centennial here.

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2 Comments

September 25, 2023

1500 Block of Elm — 1920s

1500 block of Elm Street, south side…

by Paula Bosse

This is a great photo by Frank Rogers showing businesses on the south side of the 1500 block of Elm Street, between Stone and Akard (see it today on Google Street View here — some of these buildings are still standing). Mid-1920s? Back when Elm ran two ways, and you could park your rumble-seated roadster at the curb.

Mostly out of frame at the left is the W. A. Green department store (1516-18 Elm), then, moving east to west, Leelands women’s fashions (1514 Elm), Fields Millinery Co. (1512 Elm), part of the Marjdon Hat Shop (1510 Elm), and, above the hat shop, Neuman’s School of Dancing. (“Marjdon” must be one of the most annoying and hard-to-say business names I’ve come across.)

The block continues in the photo below, in another photo by Rogers (this building has been replaced and is now a parking garage).

We see a full shot of Marjdon (that name…). Previously (1916-1924), that street-level space was occupied by the Rex Theater. Next door is Thomas Confectionery (1508 Elm, one of the company’s several downtown locations), which, according to the promotional postcard below was the “largest confectionery in the state.”

via Portal to Texas History

Dallas High School yearbook, 1916

March 1, 1924

April 21, 1922

March 1, 1925

Elm Street, 1925 Dallas street directory

Check out this block in the 1921 Sanborn map here.

***

Sources & Notes

The two photographs were taken by Dallas photographer Frank Rogers for real estate developers McNeny & McNeny; they were found on eBay.

8 Comments

September 17, 2023

Woodrow Teens Hang Around — 1948

by Paula Bosse

Photos from the 1948 Woodrow Wilson High School yearbook show how kids hung out in post-war Lakewood and Lower Greenville. I don’t know where some of these photos were taken — if you do, please let me know!

Above, there were lots of soda shops/pharmacy fountains to patronize. Including Harrell’s, in the familiar-to-anyone-who-has-spent-any-time-in-Lakewood turreted still-there building, below.

And here:

And here, where dressed-up teens are waiting for a table:

And here, the “fancy” Sammy’s on Greenville Avenue (right across the street from the less fancy Sammy’s):

I have been obsessed with this building (just south of the intersection of Greenville and Ross) my whole life. Was there open-air dining upstairs? Dancing?

Since I mentioned it, these were the three Sammy’s which were in operation in 1945 — the two on Greenville and one in Highland Park Village:

So, yeah, there was lots of hanging around for Woodrow kids back in 1948.

***

Sources & Notes

All images (except the ad for Sammy’s) are from the 1948 Crusader, the yearbook of Woodrow Wilson High School.

Sammy’s ad is from the 1945 Highland Park High School yearbook.

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16 Comments

September 11, 2023

The Stagecoach Ride at Six Flags: 1961-1967

What could possibly go wrong?

by Paula Bosse

Did you ride the stagecoach at Six Flags?

The stagecoach at Six Flags? What? This:

And this (with grazing buffalo for added Old West atmosphere):

When I first saw Six Flags postcards touting stagecoach rides, my first thought was, “How did they ever manage to get insurance for that?”

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The “Butterfield Overland” ride debuted in the “Confederate” section when the park opened in 1961 and lasted until about 1967. It was very, very popular.

1965, via UTA Libraries Special Collections (det)

Why did I never know about this when I was a kid? I never saw a stagecoach. I would have LOVED to ride a stagecoach. What happened? Well, here’s what happened: in May 1967, one of the stage’s wheels came off mid-ride, and the stage overturned, injuring 11 of the 14 people on board, most of them children. A 4-year-old Haltom City girl — who was riding on the top — was pinned beneath the overturned stagecoach. When she was freed, she was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery on both feet. One of the news stories about this unfortunate incident ended with, “Saturday’s accident was the first involving the stagecoach since the park opened in 1961,” adding that more than 4 million persons had ridden this ride between 1961 and 1967. (Four million!) (Granted, I think there were four stagecoaches and four teams of horses, but… four million!!)

One month after the accident, it was reported that the girl’s father had sued Six Flags for $531,000, contending that park officials were guilty of 30 counts of negligence. ($531,000 would be the equivalent in today’s money of about $5 million.) I can’t find anything about what happened with this lawsuit, but I assume there was probably a quiet settlement. Coincidentally or not, that spelled the end of the Butterfield Overland stagecoach ride at Six Flags Over Texas.

And that’s why I never heard of — or got to experience — a stagecoach ride at Six Flags.

(I don’t know what happened to the buffalo.)

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo of a Six Flags stagecoach jam-packed with kids from Fort Worth magazine.

The 1965 image is a detail of a larger photo from the Jack White Photograph Collection, UTA Libraries Special Collections — see the full photo and more details here.

Read more about this Butterfield Overland stagecoach ride at Parktimes.com.

The whole “Confederate” and “Texas” sections of SFOT were kind of weird, including a several-times-a-day lynching (!), as can be seen in one of the postcards in the 2014 Flashback Dallas post “Angus Wynne Jr.’s ‘Texas Disneyland’ — 1961.”

For real, non-amusement-park stagecoach tidbits, check out the post (also from 2014) “Dallas to Austin by Stagecoach: Only Three Days! (1854).”

A slightly different version of this post originally appeared on the Flashback Dallas Patreon page in August 2023. If you’d like to see daily Flashback Dallas posts, please consider supporting me on Patreon, for as little as $5 a month.

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6 Comments

August 14, 2023

Highland Park Cafeteria and the Knox Street Business District

Highland Park Cafeteria (and Delicatessen!)

by Paula Bosse

A quick post today! Above, the much-loved, much-missed Highland Park Cafeteria (3212 Knox), a proud member of the Knox Street Merchants’ Association, the latter of which has drawn up a not-terribly-helpful, pre-Central Expressway map, as seen below, with handy arrows pointing to town.

1932

From a couple of decades later, a matchbook graphic (with a more helpful map), reminding you that the HPC has been “serving particular people since 1925”:

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1939 (North Dallas High School yearbook)

See other photos of this block in the Flashback Dallas post “Knox Street, Between Cole and Travis.”

I’m just going to add these things here, because, so far, this is my only post on the HPC, and I might as well keep everything together.

I saw the 1956 ad below, and, even though the photo in the ad is pretty poor quality, it looked like there was a mural there. I’m always interested in murals — most of the time a photo like this is the only chance to see them because they are inevitably painted over or demolished. Anyway… was there a story behind the mural? What did it show?

Dec. 1956

Here it is larger, but the resolution is still low, and the hanging light fixtures directly in front of the mural don’t help:

I found only one mention of a mural at the Highland Park Cafeteria — in this 1950 ad, which mentions “the Williamsburg mural,” as if it were a well-known feature of the restaurant:

April 1950

Then I asked about it on the Flashback Dallas Facebook page — and that led to this muddy screenshot glimpse of the mural from unknown news footage from 1953. Yep, Colonial Williamsburg, above a long planter. I’m not sure why that was immortalized on a wall of the Highland Park Cafeteria, but if anyone was wondering about any sort of HPC mural, these few paragraphs are for you!

***

Sources & Notes

Photo from Pinterest.

Knox Street Merchants’ Association ad from the 1932 SMU Rotunda. (That whole area has gotten cramped and is certainly more claustrophobic than when I was a kid, but I’m sure the present-day business owners would probably still echo the 1932 sentiment “Knox Street Business District has them coming from blocks … to shop on Knox.”) (Also, it isn’t often that I see ads mentioning Greenland Hills, the general M Steets area, adjacent to the neighborhood I grew up in.)

Matchbook (detail) from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU Libraries — the full image and more information can be found here.

I’m on Patreon! If you’d like to support me and get new posts daily, head over here.

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17 Comments

July 26, 2023

Sinead O’Connor — 1990

oconnor-sinead_rolling-stone_june-1990_ebay

by Paula Bosse

Sinead O’Connor died today. I loved her. When she came to Dallas to play the Bronco Bowl on May 25, 1990, I was there. She sang “Nothing Compares 2 U” a capella. The audience was so quiet while she sang you could hear a pin drop. It was one of the most memorable live music moments I’ve ever experienced.

In the early days of alternative radio station KDGE, I spent a lot of time at the Edge studios and provided a surprising amount of (uncredited, unheralded, and uncompensated) “comedy” writing for one of the on-air personalities. I even did a few on-air bits.

One night, out of the blue, I got a phone call at home, and was told to call the station’s answering machine and give ridiculous directions to a secret Sinead O’Connor party which was supposedly being given in her honor while she was in town for her show at the Bronco Bowl. So I did. The sound quality is atrocious, but I had to scramble to find a tape recorder before the bit aired a few minutes later. I’m still waiting for my Peabody.

So here’s one of the improvised stealth comedy bits I did on The Edge (and, yes, I really do give directions like this). It is followed by a commercial for Sinead’s appearance at the Bronco Bowl, produced by 462 (pure ’90s nostalgia). I’ve been told by a friend that he could access this link on his laptop but not his phone, but I’m going for it anyway.

Listen to it here.

I wish Sinead hadn’t had such a hard life. She made many of our lives better. She made my life better. RIP.

***

Sources & Notes

Rolling Stone cover, June 1990, from eBay.

Recording from collection of Paula Bosse.

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3 Comments

Category: Leisure

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