Augies Theater Lounge - Augies Secrets: The Minneapolis Mob and the King of the Hennepin Strip

NEAL KARLEN

Minnesota Historical Society Press

2013 Neal Karlen. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102-1906.

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International Standard Book Number

ISBN: 978-0-87351-889-5 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-87351-897-0 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Karlen, Neal.

Augies Secrets : the Minneapolis mob and the king of the Hennepin strip /Neal Karlen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-87351-889-5 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-87351-897-0 (e-book)

1. GangstersMinnesotaMinneapolis. 2. Organized crimeMinnesotaMinneapolis. 3. Jewish boxersMinnesotaMinneapolis. I. Title.

HV6452.M

2012051491

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In memory of my beloved late brother, Bruce Karlen
19532012
who always left food for the homeless
in the lobby of the Minneapolis Central Library,
located across Hennepin from Augies

For Bonnie and Dr. Markle Karlen
Family

And for Alison Mansfield
my Nebraska pal and a marvel at narrative
who, despite each fresh hell,
made this book get done.

Like most state capitals, St. Paul is quiet between sessions but loaded for bear when the hick legislators are in. Then the lobbyists rent suites at the St. Paul Hotel and treat rural solons to free liquor and free gals. Minneapolis is the home of the new rich, the traders with fat, loud wives who sport mink coats at Charlies Caf Exceptionale, which tries to make with the swank like Chicagos Pump Room and is just as corny. Personally, we prefer Augie Ratners Theatre Lounge on Hennepin.

Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer
U.S.A. Confidential (1952)

There were two words too powerful, too terrible, too ugly for my grandmother to pronounce fully aloud. She approached the first one in a normal timbre, then at the last second dropped her tone to sotto voce and whispered, in the heavy accent of her native Odessa, kan-suh.

The effect was mighty and dramatic. She would be sitting at the dining room table, with her almost-perfect son, my father, hiding behind the newspaper box scores and wax fruit, and she would say loudly, to no one in particular, in a full Merman-esque voice, Mr. Anderson, I heard he has a throat full ofthen shed whisper kan-suh.

She said the offending word barely audibly, like she wanted no one in the room to hear it but my father, as if she expected him personally to cure malignancy forever: kan-suh.

The second ghastly word was what she deemed the vocation of her misbegotten younger brother, Augie, who to my fathers mind was the only interesting person in the entire family. She would say, as a prelude to damning her damnable brother, that Augie is a no-goodnik or My brother is a scandal to the family! which he sort of was, to a few, because of that place he ran, Augies Theatre Lounge, or maybe that speakeasy for drunken shikkers he had earlier, the White Swan.

She would conclude her sermon of fire and damnation, just saying his name, Augiethen dropping her voice an octave andshhh!say it: geng-steh.

Geng-steh, shed whisper again, saying the word twice in overstated understatement, evoking images of gangland slayers like John Dillinger, Alvin Creepy Karpis, Ma Barker and her boys, and Pretty Boy Floyd, whose name shed translate from the newspaper, her English primer, as Handsome Fegeland the later ones, Davie the Jew Berman and Isadore Kid Cann Blumenfeld. Amazingly, my father became aware over time, Augie knew all of them and liked almost all of themand they all knew and liked Augie.

***

There were scores of people who thought they were closer to Augie Ratner, the King of Hennepin Avenue, than my father, his nephew. And they probably were, in their own way. Augies own wife, whom he married after he was fifty, and his two children knew vaguely of my dad but had no idea of how close he was. They lived in two of the myriad separate worlds in which Augie existed. My father Markle, an internist, had his office space on Seventh Street between Nicollet and Hennepin, three blocks from Augies strip joint.

I think Augie liked and trusted my father because he was one of the few relatives who didnt treat Augie as a shanda , a scandal, the black sheep of the family, just because he owned a burlesque establishment. My father invited him to family functions, and sometimes Augie came. Over the years, Augie told my father stories, secrets, about all kinds of things he knew, and my dad passed them on to me.

Although I never met him, I learned early on of Augies magic. Unable to attend my bar mitzvah, he sent me two 1927 silver dollars in an envelope postmarked Las Vegas. I thought he lived there, and I imagined him to be the only relative I had whod ever escaped Minneapolis.

Twenty years later, I was working on the memoirs of the vaudeville comic Henny Youngman, who decades before had been named the King of One-Liners by the king of the national columnists, Walter Winchell. Henny was getting well on in years, and he never remembered my name and seemed only vaguely interested in my presence. I was just kid.

Then one day he was telling a story about traveling with his good buddy, the late Augie Ratner, and I jumped out of my chair and claimed my relationship. Henny smiled, and he never forgot my name or presence again.

***

Henny Youngman had a favorite Augie tale that occurred while they were keeping each other company in Las Vegas. The yarn featured Henny, the King of One-Liners, playing a rather sadistic practical joke upon his pal Augie, the King of the Hennepin Strip. The story cast Augie as the buffoon, as did so many other peoples favorite Augie stories.

Some have claimed that Augie was an unalloyed idiot; others believe Chico Marx to be Italian. Yet Augie was no idiot; he wasnt even a real buffoon. He invented a new kind of clown prince: half Bud Abbott, half shtetl bachen , the village funnyman in the old country. In fact he smart, smart enough in business to evolve from street pug to speakeasy owner to burlesque proprietor to homeowner on Lake of the Isles Parkway, the toniest of Minneapoliss boulevards.

But Augie was also smart in the heart , feeling his best in his heart of hearts when nobody knew what goods he was doing privately. Meantime, his meshuggener -seeming public shenanigans appeared constantly in the newspapers.