Marty Levine knew that his grandfather's club in East Liberty was part of a jumping post-Prohibition club scene. But he was surprised to learn that the joint almost engulfed Mayor David Lawrence in a scandal.
Henry "Grimm" Itri (right) with the author's grandfather, Albert Rosenthal (middle), and some other gent, on Feb. 4, 1943.
When two plainclothes Pittsburgh police tried to raid the American Hunting and Fishing Club in East Liberty, Henry "Grimm" Itri threw them down the club's long, steep staircase.
For that, he paid a $10 fine in court.
It was Sept. 28, 1947, and the storied night spot that "Grimm" Itri helped to run was in its heyday. He paid $100 as well for damaging the officers' clothes. But what bothered Police Superintendent Harvey J. Scott even more than the assault or the light fine, the daily papers reported, was that another cop, Dennis Timpona, was already inside the club as a member, and was able to alert everyone to the raid.
It didn't hurt that Timpona was "Grimm" Itri's brother-in-law.
Police -- Lt. Lawrence Maloney's Marauders, as the press dubbed these "racket raiders" -- went back to the club later that night, but they "could find no evidence of gambling, although the club ... has been known for years as a place for the man or woman who wants to turn a card or roll the dice," the Post-Gazette said.
Until six months ago, all I knew about the American Hunting and Fishing Club was that my grandfather, Albert Rosenthal, had a hand in running it. Before he died, in 1981, the only thing left from the club days were a few hand-painted ties on his rack, and a few card tricks in his repertoire. He never talked about the experience. Because my grandmother Evelyn enjoyed a story, my mother Beverly had once heard about Grimm's actions. But she was a schoolgirl in 1947, and now remembered mostly the pool table, the small stage, the black music stands and microphones inside the club, and the entertainers who came to dinner in their home.
Then my brother, Mark, rediscovered two family photos of the club interior. Suited men and hat-wearing women, including a couple in uniform, were crowded at the S-shaped bar, smiling and smoking, surrounded by painted birds and mounted fish. "Our officers for 1945," said a sign above their heads: "Pres. Albert Rosenthal." Alex Itri Jr. held another office; the rest was unreadable. Hanging at the ceiling were the last few words of a motto. Mark traced it to Don Quixote: "I drink upon occasion. Sometimes upon no occasion."
What did the club president do? And when had my grandfather, or any of his friends, read Cervantes?
Digging through police records, contacting a club performer and searching ancient issues of the PG, Press and Sun-Telegraph, I discovered that my grandfather's place was part of a jumping post-Prohibition club scene. Thanks to newspaper portraits, I also realized that the man next to Albert in a few other family photos, which seemed to be all-male business meetings, was "Grimm" Itri.
But I wasn't prepared to find this: the American Hunting and Fishing Club was at the center of a half-manufactured scandal that threatened Mayor David L. Lawrence, other politicians and police. It would take two grand juries, several judges and four years to bring the place down.
The American Hunting and Fishing Club had been famous, and notorious, since 1934, when Prohibition ended and the club opened. "Swanky," "plushy," "one of the city's most elaborate gambling joints," "traditionally one of East Liberty's briskest night spots," the papers gushed -- when they weren't chiding the owners as "indoor sportsmen," and calling them racketeers. Such clubs -- and there were many [ see "Meanwhile, Across Town ..." at end of page ] -- were also labeled "the greatest evil of the liquor traffic" and "the worst feature connected with repeal" of Prohibition.
The liquor laws in Pennsylvania were unique: a restaurant liquor license cost $600 a year, incurred a 25 percent drinks tax and forced places to close after hours, holidays and Sundays. Licenses for chartered clubs, meanwhile, were only $50 and left them free to stay open any day until 3 a.m. The original American Hunting and Fishing Club was chartered on the North Side in 1899, and promoted outdoor excursions, but it died before 1934. How my grandfather's club -- and the Lepis Literary Guild, the Southern Outing Club, and on and on -- snagged such charters remains a mystery.
The American Hunting and Fishing Club flourished behind a peephole door on the second floor of a red-brick building at 5932 Broad Street -- half a block off Highland Avenue, two back from Penn -- as an after-hours spot for meals, dancing, live acts and gambling, from blackjack to dice. At various times it also had a horse room -- I picture the final scene of "The Sting," in 1940s clothing -- and one of the "gaudiest bingo operations in the East End," one paper said.
But the club also had a bowling team that competed in the Metropolitan Tenpin League with the likes of trucking companies and candy stores; the team's silver trophy even helped to prove the members were actually sportsmen, of a certain sort, during one court case.
Jazz pianist Frank Cunimondo recalls working the American Hunting and Fishing Club and many others in the late 1940s, when he was just in high school.
"It was one of the highlights of the era in Pittsburgh," Cunimondo says. "We'd start from 2:30 [a.m.] and play until 6, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You'd go to a club at 3 or 4 in the morning and they'd be jammed. They had a floor show and dancing and people had a good time. It was very exciting, especially for a kid. Those after-hours clubs don't exist anymore. The rules have gotten so strict."
He never saw the gambling. "I'm sure it was there. It was always in the back room. It was never a problem.
"I remember going to the drive-in with my girlfriend" in that era, he recalls, "and seeing people on the screen I'd played for the night before at one of these clubs."
After the 1947 cop-tossing incident, city officials and police turned up the heat. Police Supt. Scott posted officers at the club door to make sure it stopped serving alcohol at 3 a.m. City inspectors tested the club's front door, based on police complaints that illegal steel barriers prevented raids, but found it was only thick wood. In March 1948 there was a bingo crackdown to prevent the club's $2,500 jackpots from competing unfairly with churches.
Police Inspector John J. Dean told the Press: "They tell me that I can't make these hell-holes close their doors at 3 a.m., but I can make sure that they don't sell liquor after the closing hours or have any gambling. And I'm going to do it."
He didn't. But the Green Hornet did.
The Green Hornet -- the nickname of another "racket raider," Al Florig -- had been both a city and county cop. Now he was a private detective. On June 17, 1948, he used a meeting of the East Liberty Lions Club to accuse nearly everyone in local power of being on the take from gambling.
The East Liberty police district was "racket-ridden, controlled by a numbers racket boss who holds his power through the influence of a city councilman with the police," he said. An assistant of the previous county district attorney had taken bribes, he maintained.
Florig named some names during his speech, but the papers weren't so foolhardy. The only name they both used was the American Hunting and Fishing Club, where Florig claimed "the numbers boss has an interest," and where there was "$68,000 on one of its tables recently for a single play," according to the PG. All this information supposedly came from Florig's secret source.
The club had already proved its political influence by beating license revocation tries by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board in 1938, 1942 and 1946, even with court testimony that "a battery of slot machines reaped a golden harvest and keno ... operated under the alias of bingo," the PG said.
"No racketeer can open a peanut stand in the City of Pittsburgh unless they clear it through the mayor and the Democratic headquarters," the Green Hornet claimed.
On July 23, 1948, Mayor Lawrence shifted police inspectors and every plainclothes officer to a fresh district, where presumably they hadn't yet been bought. It wasn't enough. The next day, he called for a grand jury investigation.
Florig testified first -- and was the first person threatened with arrest, since he wouldn't name his inside informant. Instead, he named the other alleged American Hunting and Fishing Club officers. That didn't include my grandfather, who had apparently left office by then. But now I knew what Albert had risked. Club officers were retrieved from Atlantic City to testify.
Florig also named "Grimm" Itri and his brother-in-law the cop, Dennis Timpona. The club chose this moment to close for renovation. So the grand jury subpoenaed the architect and the building owner. It brought in several club waitresses, a bartender, and the doorman. Nobody knew anything.
Over two months, the grand jury called nearly 250 people and compiled more than 5,000 pages of testimony about Pittsburgh's gambling scene, recommending indictments for 65 people.
But no one ever went to jail for running or owning the American Hunting and Fishing Club. "Grimm" Itri was acquitted of his only charge -- perjury, for claiming not to be an owner. One club officer was sent briefly to jail for running a horse room Downtown. Another was acquitted of setting up another club's gambling operation.
Timpona resigned from the force. In its final statement, the grand jury called East Liberty Police Commander John J. Dean "unfit" for the job -- he was soon fired -- and Police Supt. Scott "not wholely blameless." As for the Green Hornet -- he got off easy. The grand jury dropped its contempt charges, even though it concluded that Al Florig's secret informant was "nonexistent."
Still, all the attention hadn't been good for the American Hunting and Fishing Club. It moved to two new locations in Larimer, and finally to Mount Oliver. On March 28, 1951, a county judge ordered its charter burned.
Those last club locations are gone, and 5932 Broad St. is boarded up. Just recently, I discovered that the club's S-shaped bar and motto copied the famed Morrison Hotel in Chicago.
Now East Liberty is trying to rebuild again, without the gambling, which takes place elsewhere, licensed by the state. I've never even set foot in one of those brightly lit places. It just doesn't sound as fun.
Meanwhile, across town ...
The Bachelor's Club, at 6300 Penn Ave., was the American Hunting and Fishing Club's chief rival in East Liberty. It started life as the chartered American Musical Society -- or the East Liberty Republican Club. Accounts differ. But there was certainly a lot of competition in the night-club, liquor and gambling business in that era between the end of Prohibition and the club crackdown of 1948.
In East Liberty alone, those accused of being horse rooms, gambling joints, liquor license violators or "one-man clubs" (since they lacked official members) included the Disraeli Literary Association, the Del-Moro Canoe Club, the Iroquois Club, the Harmony Club, the East Liberty Democratic Club, the Larimer Athletic Club and the Hazelwood Literary Association.
Downtown sported the Pittsburgh Mailers Social Club, the Mercantile Progressive Club, the Chelsea Club, the Allegheny Sportsmen's Club, Victory Club and the Paddy Nee Horse Room . The North Side had the Independent Beneficial Association, the Native Sons of Pennsylvania, the Knickerbocker Social Club , while throughout the area there was the Harlem Casino in the Hill District, the Jungle Club in Rankin, the Master Barbers' Association in Oakland, plus the James Blackmore Boating Club , the Laboccie Club and the Squirrel Hill Veterans Association .
Among the witnesses called to the grand jury in 1948 were James P. Rooney , brother of Art Rooney, described by the Sun-Telegraph as the "well-known football, horse-racing and political figure ... reputedly connected to the Allegheny Sportsmen's Club, Blvd. of the Allies after-dark spot," above which a horse room had been raided. The jury also called Tony Grosso , who was at the beginning of his career as a top numbers man here.
How big was business here? Among the performers who dined with my grandparents was the Harmonic-Aires , the harmonica-playing duo of Pete Pedersen and Fuzzy Feldman , who autographed a picture (above) for the family. In his memoir "Be of Good Cheer," Pedersen recalls all the work Pittsburgh provided:
"Pittsburgh became probably our biggest source of income, and we had all kinds of friends there. Most of them were gamblers and people in the numbers racket. ... The club that we worked at was called The Lepis Literary Guild . It was for people who were interested in books and reading.
"But the only thing these folks ever read were the numbers. They had gambling and they had crap tables and blackjack and everything else. They had a guy on the door that would watch and see when it looked like they were going to be raided.
"Then they'd flash this thing in the back room and everybody would suddenly get out their books and start reading."
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