Call Me Daddy

2011-10-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

Peaches Browning may have failed in her bid for wealth when her suit for divorce, a property settlement, and alimony against Daddy Browning failed in March, 1926, but all was not lost. Her fame was nationwide now, and her teenage dreams of a stage career on solid ground. Caroline Heenan, Peaches’ mother, who had encouraged her daughter’s relationship with the old goat so as to prevent Peaches from pursuing a questionable stage career, changed her tune fast now that marriage to the elderly Browning had failed to deliver its original, ostensible rewards for the Heenans. An about-face was warranted for the budding performer, now that something of value could apparently be salvaged from Peaches’ acquaintance with Daddy B.
Here’s a pub shot of peroxided Peaches, circa 1927 just when her vaudeville act took off.

Clad in dark velvet, expertly draped to conceal the zaftig nature of her major gams, the now 17-year old Peaches struck a demure a pose on a sawhorse that was surely cropped out of the shot before distribution.

While waiting for the trial court’s decision in her marital battle, Peaches and her Momma took a breather from the intense spotlight in which they had bathed since her April, 1926 nuptials. A cruise to Bermuda was just the thing. Here they are in early February, 1927 on the deck of S.S. Fort Victoria. She must have gotten something from the old geezer even though her divorce claim was foundering: perhaps the sale of some of the contents of the 20 or so trunks of finery carted away by her as she and her mom removed from the Kew Gardens Hotel in October, 1926 paid for the undoubtedly expensive passage. Six months of co-habitation with Daddy B. and his puerile antics had been more than enough. Temporary support was substantially denied to Peaches when Browning anticipated his teenage wife’s legal strategy and sued for a separation soon after she walked out.

During the pendency of the outlandish legal battle, fought in Carmel and White Plains, New York, wags paved the way for Peaches ’incipient stage career as a flaming chanteuse. Here’s Lon Mooney’s Tin Pan Alley hit, I’m All Alone in a Palace of Stone, with a morose Daddy staring at the tabloic headlines announcing his beloved’s flight. A winsome Peaches, clad in an unusually matronly frock, looks off into the distance, her grown-up visage belying her sum total of 16 years.

Peaches made quite a stir once she started appearing on the regional vaudeville stage. Despite a field crowded with Ziegfeld girls and Busby Berkeley wannabes, Cinderella Wannabe mattered enough for celebrity photographer Cheney Johnston to capture her inflammable essence in this smoking hot studio shot, her sizeable pins again gamely disguised, as she looks off-stage.
Peaches had earned her fame the hard way, battling competition at every turn. Browning was no easy catch during their short courtship, having solicited over 12,000 girls in his infamous 1925 newspaper ad that ended with a Czech girl, Mary Louise Spas, supposedly 16, being legally adopted until her true age was smoked out. Here he is in the same season of his and Peaches’ initial acquaintance, clad in what was reported as a gold vest.
The satyr is seated next to Miss Ethelinda Cooley, beaming at having brought down the house with his skill as her Charleston partner before a crowd of 1000 at the Commodore Hotel in late February 1926. Check out Mama Cooley’s stern smile behind her daughter’s smiling bee-stung lipped puss, an iron matron’s firm grasp on the white-haired so-called gentleman’s shoulder. Where is sweet Ethelinda’s mother’s other hand? Ready, aim, FIRE, just in case. Even old Daddy wouldn’t have dared fondle Ethelinda’s tight thigh. At least ‘til a bit later….

15 months later, a lot of water, under the bridge. Here is poor old Daddy again, May, 1928, kneeling on the ceiling of a glass vault in his real estate office, where 2,200,000 letters to him from young women all over the world were hoarded and savored by the old Terah. His appetite was never sated, even after Mary Louise Spas and Peaches were long gone.

Imagine my surprise when the phone rang this past March, and an old man calling from Florida inquired. “Is this Benjamin Feldman? I’m Warren Lee, and you’re gonna WANT to talk to me. I read your book. I’m in the know.” Warren’s father, Henry Lee f/k/a Hyman Levy, knew Daddy Browning more than well. Back in 1919, Hy was discharged from the Army. An orthodox Jewish boy from Brooklyn was ready to go to work, and his training in the service as a stenographer and typist would come in to play. Edward West Browning ran a large realty empire by that time, but his proclivity for members of the distaff side made it inadvisable for him to have women in his office as employees. Male secretaries were on the outs already in much of this country, but Browning preferred them, and when Hy Levy answered the newspaper ad placed by WASP-extraordinaire Browning, he was hired for the job. Browning may have been anti-Semitic, but he recognized select male members of the tribe as extraordinarily capable. Perhaps Browning’s career as a black sheep in the staid and pedigreed Browning family made him sympathetic to the Jews as social outcasts.
Daddy Browning knew smarts and ambition when he saw them, and how to employ them in others for his own uses and aid. By 1926, when Warren was born, Browning had made Hy Levy wealthy, giving him pieces of deals and a healthy salary, advancing him from clerk to appraiser as Edbro Realty Corp. grew. Chartered day-boats up the Hudson River for company parties, lavish presents for children of favored employees, access arranged for Hy Levy to “restricted” uptown clubs were all Browning’s pleasure, his largesse as an employer matching the mis-directed efforts he made with young women. The secret of what possessed his twisted soul would follow Daddy to the other world, as children who benefitted from one of the Browning charities sprinkled white orchids into his grave.

With the onset of the Great Depression, Edbro Realty suffered, and Hy Levy left to strike out on his own. Leaving his race-horses at the Belmont track his New York Jockey club membership behind and his wife and two children at their home on 169th Street in Jamaica, Queens, Levy hied himself down to Dallas, Texas, where he was hired as a car salesman by the C.S. Hamilton Chrysler dealership. There was one hitch before starting day, though. Hyman Levy was required to deracinate his last name turning non-Hebrew: H.L. Lee. Gertrude Levy and her sons must joined Hy there, and Warren graduated from a Dallas High School. Lee’s sales acumen was probably considerable: Chrysler took Hy Lee away, making Warren’s father manager of its West Texas Mopar parts division. After being moved for that post to tiny Kermit, Texas, Hy Lee was rejoined by his wife, Gertrude in 1934. Warren and his older brother Robert, both over 18 by then, elected to return to New York, their last names also by then changed to Lee.

Warren was born on February 2, 1926 at Eastern Parkway Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, so it’s likely that the family lived not far away then. The Levys were itinerant, just like Daddy Browning, who rented his many homes despite massive real estate holdings of his own. One of Hy Levy’s perks during his tenure with Edbro was to occupy apartments for short periods in his boss’ holdings. He also took advantage of the liberal free rent periods that were customary in apartment rentals in those days. While Warren was a small child, the Levy family even lived around the corner from Caroline and Peaches, at 654 West 170th Street, and Warren told me that his older brother Robert remembered visiting the Heenan apartment back in the days of Daddy’s courting there. Warren also remembers living in the same Washington Heights neighborhood when he was a grammar school student at P.S. 173, a fortress that still stands on Fort Washington Avenue and West 173rd Street. Warren’s his apartment house neighbor, Neil “Doc” Simon, was teased mercilessly by his older classmates when he brought a new toy doctor kit downstairs to play.

Before or after the Levys’ residence at Browning’s typical needle-like apartment house that Edbro built at 42 West 72nd Street, Warren also remembers living at The Majestic, on the southwest corner of Central Park West and 72nd Street. Hy Levy must have been doing quite well! Today, apartments at the Majestic cost $2000 per square foot and UP; even in the Depression they weren’t too cheap. Little Warren, 7 or 8 years old, remembers well the gift one Christmas from Browning of a miniature coal-fired locomotive and tender hitched behind, which his mother would take him in to Central Park, across the street from the Majestic. Warren had to be the envy of even the richest kid on the street, trundling about in this contraption after he visited Browning in his West 61st Street office to thank him personally, with his Mom.

Stories fade and collective memory fails us; even a fellow as well-known as Daddy Browning, the laughing stock of America in the Roaring Twenties, is now barely a cipher on the screen. I feel special having heard from Warren Lee. He’s quite possibly the only human being on the face of the earth who shook the hand that petted Peaches’ sweet hide.

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All images, except the Cheney Johnston portrrait of Peaches) are the property of and presented through the courtesy of The Green-Wood Historic Fund

Radio interview mp3 files for Bloomberg Radio and WBAI - June 2009

2009-06-29T07:48:00.001-07:00

Listen to Joe Franklin interviewing me on Bloomberg Radio:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mmtl8y

Listen to David Rothenberg interviewing me on WBAI on June 13th:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/56a8l2

BOOK TALK !

2009-06-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

On Sunday July 12th at 1:00 p.m. I'll speak at Green-Wood Cemetery's historic chapel about Call Me Daddy, with a slide show for your entertainment. Please join me by making reservations for free tickets by clicking

http://www.green-wood.com/store.php/store/category/2/event/13

CALL ME DADDY: Babes and Bathos in Edward West Browning's Jazz Age New York

2009-06-15T06:11:00.001-07:00

New York Wanderer Press is pleased to announce the publication of its second New York City history title, in association with The Green-Wood Historic Fund. Call Me Daddy, by historian Benjamin Feldman, brings to life the sensational Roaring Twenties tabloid story of New York real estate tycoon and publicity hound Edward West Browning. Call Me Daddy is available now from the co-publisher at

http://www.green-wood.com/store.php/store/category/4/item/36

or by calling Jane Cuccurullo at The Green-Wood Historic Fund at 718 768 7300 or sending her an email : janecuccurullo@green-wood.com

The list price is $24.95, but The Green-Wood Historic Fund is offering the work at $20 flat with NO SALES TAX, just normal shipping cost. I guarantee they will beat Amazon's price !

In the alternative, you can buy the book directly from New York Wanderer Press here in NYC at the same cost: $20 (sales tax included) plus $2.25 mailing cost. Use the Google Checkout Button:

Here's the synopsis. You won't believe your eyes....

After taking his first wife, Adele Lowen, on a magic carpet ride from a middle-class existence on the Upper West Side to a life of opulence, Browning was duly repaid by being cuckolded multiple times by the svelte and gorgeous Adele. The devastated property mogul divorced her, but retained custody of Dorothy "Sunshine" Browning, one of their two adopted daughters. His antics in seeking a young teenage "playmate" for nine-year old Dorothy in 1925 through the classified ad columns of The Herald Tribune attracted the attention of the Queens County D.A. and attracted mobs of reporters and cameramen to his West 72nd Street offices where he personally interviewed many of the 12,000 applicants for the position, finally selecting a Czech girl who lied to him about her age and family circumstances.

With the adoption annulled after one week, Browning, who preferred the nickname "Daddy" turned to other pursuits, sponsoring high-school sorority dances in New York with one condition: that he be invited to attend. 15-year old Frances "Peaches" Heenan, a sometime Textile High School student, met Browning at a Phi Lambda Tau social at the McAlpin Hotel. The two began a rapid-fire courtship with Peaches' parents knowledge and consent, and reporters dogging their every move.

Chauffeured to school in Browning's peacock-blue Rolls Royce and showered with expensive gifts, the zaftig girl soon acquiesced to Browning's proposal, and the couple was married in Putnam County, NY in April 1926, in part to avoid intense scrutiny from New York City child protection authorities. The marriage lasted only a few months, though, and after Peaches and her mother (who lived with Browning in a series of posh hotels) walked out in October of that year with 20 trunks of finery, Browning sued for an order of separation. Years of litigation followed with Peaches suing unsuccessfully for divorce and alimony, based upon allegations of sexual barbarity. Browning remained one of the premier laughingstocks of New York and across America until his death in 1934.

Call Me Daddy is author Benjamin Feldman's second book, and follows the successful publication of Butchery on Bond Street in the summer of 2007. Feldman's first book was brought out by New York Wanderer Press in association with The Green-Wood Historic Fund to a chorus of favorable reviews and extensive coverage in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Forward, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, many other newspapers, and on radio in the US and Canada.

Further information about Call Me Daddy, which is copyrighted and the sole property of the author and New York Wanderer Press, is available by contacting the publisher at newyorkwandererpress@hotmail.com

The Locus Delicti and other gems...

2009-06-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

Those who've read this amazing story will recall that Daddy rented a house for Peaches Heenan and her mother Caroline to inhabit in Cold Spring, NY in early April 1926 so that he and his child bride could qualify for a marriage license in Putnam County, just out of reach of the child welfare authorities in NYC. After a LOT of digging in the dusty files of the Putnam County recorder's office, I've nailed it down, and the other day I hied my obsessed brain up to Cold Spring and found the house at 37 Paulding Avenue on a sunny day, its owner sitting on the side porch. The genteel young fellow warmly welcomed my inquiry and I was given a house tour where Peaches and Daddy cavorted as the nuptials approached.

Through these arches, 15-year old Peaches tiptoed, in awe of the splendor, her heart undoubtedly fluttering with anxiety and pleasure at the game she was playing. What thoughts flew through her mother's mind are anyone's guess...First the dining room, then the arch and stairway up to the boudoir, where I daresay Daddy Browning left the girl alone for the night or two before the actual ceremony, her mother sleeping in a chamber nearby. Two shots of the exterior of the house follow and then one of next-door 35 Paulding Avenue's driveway that separated the two houses, in which a burly cop stood to ward off the hundreds of curiosity seekers and scribes who camped outside the pre-marital abode as soon as word leaked out of Daddy's doings.

Wait, wait, though. We're not done yet: the locus mori and items from beyond the grave follow:

Here is a shot or two of 40 Birchall Drive in the best part of legendary Scarsdale, NY where Daddy rented the premises in question to try and recuperate from severe pneumonia in mid-1934. His attempts were valiant but unsuccessful, and there he passed on to his eternal reward, surrounded by acolytes, relatives and several well-compensated nurses and sawbones. Whether tears were shed is unknown to this day.

Daddy died with a fortune in the high seven figures, almost all in real estate whose value had already suffered greatly by the depth of the Great Depression. Almost every penny was left to a newly created charitable foundation, designed by its wannabe progenitor to mimic the Nobel Prizes. Seven distinguished men of arts and letters as well as science were appointed testamentary trustees. Five survived Browning, and only one was personally acquainted with him, the Rev. Henry Stimson, who had married Browning to his first wife, Adele Lowen. The others included such luminaries as Nicholas Murray Butler, long-time president of Columbia University, and the heads of City College and NYU. Within weeks after the will was probated, the embarrassed dignitaries all resigned their posts. No one wanted anything to do with the notorious buffoon's post-mortem self-aggrandizement. A title company took over administration of the real estate and rode its value into the ground as the Depression continued and the portfolio of secondary commercial and residential properties slid for the decades. No prize monies were awarded to the intended recipients for 37 years: awards were designated in seven fields of human endeavor, but a life estate in the income from the trust to Browning's precious adopted daughter Dorothy "Sunshine" Browning was clung to and litigated by her until her death.

Diligence is a virtue, and same paid off in spades when Jeff Richman at the Green-Wood Historic Fund found a special surprise on e-Bay recently. Jeff told me on the phone a few weeks ago that he had seven special surprises for me for when I next showed up at Green-Wood Cemetery to continue my work there as a volunteer archivist. Special ain't the word...

For a VERY modest sum, the Historic Fund is now the proud owner of the seven dark pasteboard boxes below, their contents intact and in mint condition. The Browning Foundation had medals designed and struck for the prize winners. Heaven knows whether these were ever given out, even after Sunshine passed away. The first awards began in 1971. But here they are in all their glory. Harry Winston, step aside: the anonymous designer was true to Browning's personal wishes. The homo-erotic tendencies embedded in his psyche and body-building obsession during his adult life found full flourish beyond the grave: