Imagine if the government didn't just shut down
your business, but they took the unprecedented
step of legally banning your family's last name
from ever being spoken on a stage. Right. Just
completely erasing your identity from the industry
you built. Exactly. Welcome to today's Deep Dive.
Our mission today, for you listening at home,
is to really explore the incredible chaotic rise
and fall of Minsky's burlesque. We're going to
be looking closely at their empire from roughly
1912 to 1937. Yeah. And we are pulling all of
our insights today from a highly detailed historical
breakdown of the Minsky family and the entire
burlesque industry that they practically reinvented.
And this really isn't just a story about risque
dancing. Oh, not at all. Yeah. At its core, this
is an absolute master class in business pivoting.
It's a look at the intense push and pull of censorship
and a wild example of how a massive logistical
inconvenience accidentally revolutionized American
entertainment. What's really fascinating here
is how these four brothers Abe, Billy, Herbert
and Morton Minsky how they navigated the incredibly
strict societal rules of their time. Right. Because
the historical record shows that while their
shows were ultimately declared obscene and outlawed
they were by modern standards actually rather
tame. Very tame. But to understand how they built
their empire we have to look at the incredibly
restrictive environment they were operating in
and the physical constraints they were dealing
with from day one. Okay let's untag this because
the origins of this whole empire are just so
chaotic. It all starts in 1908 with the eldest
brother Abe. Right. He launches this business
on the Lower East Side of Manhattan running a
Nickelodeon that apparently showed some pretty
racy films for the era. Now I know the word Nickelodeon
from the kids TV network but what exactly was
that in the context of early 1900s New York?
Well in those days a Nickelodeon was essentially
the very first type of indoor exhibition space
dedicated to showing projected motion pictures.
They were usually just converted storefronts.
You paid a nickel, hence the name, and you sat
on a hard wooden chair to watch a series of short
silent films. Just a nickel. Yeah, they were
incredibly popular, incredibly cheap, and they
often operated in a bit of a legal gray area
regarding content. Which explains why Abe gets
shut down. But the wild part is, it wasn't the
city or the police who shut him down. No. It
was his own father. His dad actually forces him
to close the Nickelodeon, but then turns around,
buys the National Winter Garden Theater on Houston
Street, and hands the venue over to Abe, along
with two of his brothers, Billy and Herbert.
It is a very classic heavy -handed family business
dynamic. Yeah, seriously. But The Father's Gift
came with a massive structural flaw. The National
Winter Garden Theater was inconveniently located
on the sixth floor of the building. The sixth
floor? Yes. And in the early 1900s, getting audiences
to climb six flights of stairs for a show is
a tremendous logistical hurdle. Elevators were
not a standard luxury for these types of venues.
So they have this venue, but they have a massive
business dilemma. I mean, at first they try showing
respectable films, but they quickly realize they
just can't compete with a large, established
theater chain. Right, the big chains had all
the leverage. So then they pivot to vaudeville,
bringing in live acts. But they hit another wall.
They simply cannot afford the top -tier vaudeville
acts that would actually convince people to make
that exhausting six -story climb. They needed
a product that was economical to produce, but
possessed a dedicated, built -in audience. So
they considered burlesque. Makes sense. From
a pure business perspective, burlesque acts were
significantly cheaper to book. At the time, the
industry was dominated by these massive circuits
known as wheels. You had the Columbia Wheel,
the American Wheel, and later in the 1920s, the
Mutual Wheel. How exactly did those wheels operate?
Were they like a modern franchise? Very much
so. If a theater owner signed a contract with
a wheel, that circuit supplied a brand new fully
packaged show every single week. Oh, wow. Yeah.
provide the cast, the costumes, the scenery,
the scripts, everything. It was a turnkey entertainment
solution. You just provided the building and
took your cut of the door. That sounds incredibly
convenient, especially for guys struggling to
fill a six -floor walk -up. But they don't take
the deal. No, they don't. They decide to go totally
independent and stage their own shows. I know
part of that was to save money, but the research
highlights that Billy Minsky had these grand,
almost theatrical delusions of grandeur. He really
did. He longed to be the next Florence Siegfeld,
you know, the legendary Broadway impresario behind
the Siegfeld follies. He wanted complete creative
control. And if we connect this to the bigger
picture, think about it. You have. Entrepreneurs
who want absolute control over their product
operating in a cheaper independent lane, but
they still have that glaring physical problem.
The stairs. The stairs. How do you get patrons
to walk up six flights? You need an overwhelming
differentiator, something they literally cannot
see anywhere else in the city. And here's where
it gets really interesting. Abe Minsky had traveled
to Paris a few years prior. He had seen the Folies
Bergère and the Moulin Rouge. Right, world famous
venues. Yeah, famous for their avant -garde stage
design. So he suggests importing one of their
trademark architectural features. A runway. A
physical platform that extends out from the stage
right over the seats and right into the middle
of the audience. They completely reconfigure
the theater. And the Minsky's literally become
the very first to feature a runway in the United
States. It was a brilliant spatial solution.
It broke the traditional proscenium barrier between
the performer and the audience. And just to make
sure everyone walking past that building knew
exactly what they were selling. Billy changed
the sign out front. What did it say? It read,
burlesque as you like it, not a family show.
That is such a brazen piece of marketing. It
completely reframed the physical limitation of
the building. Think about how physical limitations
in business often force the most enduring innovations.
I mean, the runway is a staple of fashion and
performance today. And in the US, it traces right
back to four brothers trying to convince New
Yorkers that walking up six flights of stairs
was worth the effort. And it worked. The crowds
actually started climbing those stairs. But as
with any disruptive business, they hit some turbulence.
Yeah. And that brings us to an accidental moment
on stage that practically built their empire.
A pivotal moment. Yeah, it's 1917. A performer
named Mae Dix is finishing her act. She absent
-mindedly begins removing her costume before
she actually reaches the wings, right in full
view of the audience. Right. And the crowd goes
absolutely wild hearing this massive reaction.
Dix just returns to the stage and continues removing
her clothing to wild applause. It was an entirely
unscripted moment. But Billy Minsky standing
in the back and seeing the audience's visceral
reaction immediately recognizes the commercial
value. Of course he does. He ordered that specific
accident to be repeated every single night. And
that single decision locked them into an incredibly
complex, high -stakes business cycle. A constant
calibration of risk. Precisely. To keep their
operating license, the city required the Minsky's
to keep their shows relatively clean. But to
keep drawing those massive crowds and paying
the bills, they had to be risque. Whenever they
pushed the boundaries too far to boost ticket
sales, the police would raid the theater. Let's
talk about the economics of that controversy,
because the numbers they were pulling in were
staggering. Let's fast forward a bit to 1924.
The youngest brother, Morton Minsky, finally
joins the family company after graduating from
New York University. He starts managing the Little
Apollo Theater up on 125th Street. And Talk about
in an initiation there's a police raid during
his very first show. What a welcome to the family
business. Right. But for the next four years,
that theater showed a weekly profit of $20 ,000.
Now, $20 ,000 a week in the 1920s is massive.
Huge. But our source materials point out this
was $20 ,000 a week after Paola. Who exactly
were they paying off? Paola, in this context,
refers to the systemic bribery of local officials,
beat cops, and vice squads. Ah, OK. Operating
a business that constantly flirted with obscenity
laws in Tammany Hall -era New York required a
massive slush fund. They were essentially paying
a shadow tax to keep the doors open and ensure
that when raids did happen, they were often tipped
off in advance. Or the consequences were just
minimized. Exactly. Generating 20 grand a week
in pure profit after satisfying that network
of corruption highlights exactly why they were
willing to endure the constant legal harassment.
The margins were simply too high to walk away
from. Though the magic didn't work everywhere.
Billy attempted to present a so -called classy
version of burlesque at the Park Theater on Columbus
Circle, and it failed miserably. It was a total
flop. The audience didn't want polished and polite.
They wanted the edge, the transgression, the
danger of a potential raid. Which brings us to
the most infamous raid in their history. By April
1925, the legal landscape had shifted slightly.
It was actually permissible for women in shows
staged by major producers as well as in burlesque
to appear topless, but only under a very specific
condition. What was the condition? It had to
be a static tableau. meaning they could not move
a muscle. It had to be presented as classical
living art. A legal loophole based entirely on
stillness. Yes. A very similar rule existed in
London burlesque around the same time. The authorities
reasoned that if it looked like a museum statue,
it was art. If it jiggled, it was obscene. So
a book and a subsequent film called The Night
They Raided Minsky's highlighted a show at the
National Winter Garden where a performer named
Mademoiselle Fifi, who was actually just a woman
named Mary Dawson from Pennsylvania, stripped
to the waist. And then crucially, she moved.
Right. The story goes that this triggered a massive
cinematic police raid that changed everything.
This raises an important question about how we
evaluate historical sources, especially when
dealing with entertainment history where myth
-making is baked into the business model. That's
a great point. We have several conflicting accounts
of this 1925 raid. You have the book and film
highlighting it as a watershed moment. But then
you have Mademoiselle Fifi herself, who explicitly
went on the record later to contradict that dramatic
account. Interesting. Furthermore, theater scholars
who have dug into the municipal records severely
doubt this particular raid even took place the
way it was described. Yeah, the best perspective
on this really comes from Morton Minsky himself.
In a memoir he co -wrote, he addresses that specific
date in 1925. He basically says the day the book
was based on was hardly epic. He played it down.
He wrote that the raid story was fun for Hollywood,
but the reality was that raids were simply one
of dozens they had become accustomed to. To him,
it was certainly no big crisis. It's a wonderful
reality check from the man who was actually balancing
the books to Morton. A raid wasn't a cinematic
climax. It was an operational hazard that they
had fully priced into their business model. It
was just a Tuesday. And business was absolutely
booming, especially as they moved deep into prohibition.
Now, you might assume that this was just a gritty
underground scene for a very specific type of
rough around the edges patron. Sure. But the
National Winter Garden's notoriety grew so much.
that it started experiencing massive cultural
crossover. We are talking about high society
elites. Yes, clientele shifted. Regular patrons
included Conde Nast, the legendary publisher,
writers like Jontos Passos and Robert Benchley,
the drama critic George J. Nathan. even the poet
Hart Crane, who wrote a poem literally titled
National Winter Garden in his famous collection,
The Bridge. It became a destination for the intellectual
and cultural elite. They were likely drawn to
the raw, unpretentious energy of the shows. A
real contrast to their normal lives. Exactly.
It served as a counter -culture experience, a
place to let off steam during the puritanical
restrictions of prohibition. Slumming it at Minsky's
became a badge of honor for the Manhattan intelligentsia.
But the macroeconomic environment was about to
shift drastically. Right, the Great Depression.
You would think an economic collapse of that
magnitude would wipe out a luxury -like entertainment.
But while the Depression devastated so many industries,
it actually solidified the Minsky Empire. How
did they survive when legitimate theaters were
going under? If we look at the mechanics of why
that happened, it all comes down to overhead.
When the Depression hit, those large, respectable
burlesque wheels we discussed earlier, the Columbia
and Mutual circuits have completely collapsed
under their own weight. No, because they were
too big. Maintaining massive touring productions
with centralized costume and set departments
became financially impossible. They couldn't
sustain the overhead. This massive structural
failure left Minsky's independent lower cost
model as the absolute standard bearer for stock
burlesque. And suddenly they had a monopoly on
the talent pool too. There was a massive supply
of unemployed women who desperately needed steady
work to support their families. They flocked
to the Minsky's. And the wages were incredible
for the era. Many of these women, some who began
in their teens, were making between $700 and
$2 ,000 a week. That is life -changing money
during the height of the Depression. And because
they were flush with cash and talent, the Minsky's
began expanding rapidly. They leased the Harlem
Opera House in 1924, and then Herdig and Siemens
Apollo in 1928. But the real gamble, the crowning
achievement, happens in 1931. Broadway theaters
are closing left and right because nobody can
afford legitimate theater tickets. Billy Minsky
sees the opportunity of a lifetime. He brings
the Minsky brand right to the heart of Broadway.
He leases the Republic Theater on 42nd Street,
staging their first show there on February 12th.
It was a brilliant strategic move. Billy realized
that while Burlesque itself could not be considered
classy by the theatrical establishment, it absolutely
could be presented in classy surroundings. By
placing it on Broadway inside a beautiful, legitimate
theater, he elevated the perception of the product.
And he proved it. The Republic Theater became
Minsky's flagship and the undisputed capital
of Burlesque in the United States. Today, that
theater is actually called the New Victory and
specializes in children's entertainment, which
is just a wild historical pivot. That really
is a contrast. But back then, the Minsky's inspired
a whole wave of other burlesque shows to open
on 42nd Street. By the time they finished expanding,
the Minsky's controlled over a dozen theaters
across multiple states. They essentially formed
their own wheel. They stepped into the vacuum
left by the older circuits and built an empire
on affordable, provocative entertainment during
the darkest economic days of the country. And
we have to talk about the talent that came out
of those theaters. The sheer volume of legendary
performers that used Minsky's as an incubator
is mind blowing. Yeah. Yes, they had headlining
strippers like Gypsy Rose Lee and Corio and Sherry
Britton. But Minsky's was also a crucible for
American comedy. It was a training ground. The
comedy and the stripping were entirely symbiotic.
How so? The comedians provided the necessary
pacing and relief between the burlesque numbers.
The crowds could be rowdy, and it took an incredibly
skilled comic to hold their attention. And look
at who was holding that attention. I was looking
at the notes for this deep dive, and the roster
of comics who worked there reads like a hall
of fame. Phil Silver's was their house comic
for nearly a decade. You had guys like Zero Mostel.
Red Skelton developed his timing there. Wait,
Red Skelton? Yeah. And I saw Abbott and Costello
on that list, too. They started in a Minsky Burlesque
show. They did, along with Danny Kay and Jack
Albertson. The Minsky's demanded top -tier comedic
talent because they understood the psychology
of their audience. And they were very clear about
the artistry involved in the striptease itself,
too. It wasn't just a crude display. They emphasized
that a good striptease dance required knowing
exactly the right psychological moment to rem
- remove each garment. As the brothers put it,
it wasn't just a matter of going on the stage
and taking off clothes. It needed finesse. It
needs finesse. I love that. But of course, when
you are operating 14 burlesque theaters and the
competition is fierce, you are constantly pushing
limits. Every year, licensed commissioners would
issue new restrictions. Naturally. But because
actual criminal convictions were incredibly rare,
theater managers essentially ignored the warnings.
They saw no need to tone down their shows. Which
sets the stage for a massive societal backlash.
In 1935, irate citizens groups began heavily
organizing and calling for action against Burlesque.
The mayor of New York at the time, Fiorello LaGuardia,
officially deemed Burlesque a corrupting moral
influence. He went right after them. He was determined
to clean up the city's image. The pressure was
mounting. The city's license commissioner, a
man named Paul Moss, actively tried to revoke
Minsky's operating license. But the State Court
of Appeals stepped in and ruled that Moss did
not have the legal grounds to do so without an
actual criminal conviction. Right. They needed
a smoking gun. Exactly. And in April 1937, they
finally got it. It all came down to a single
garment. A stripper performing at Abe Minsky's
New Gotham Theater in Harlem was spotted working
without a G -string. The fatal G -string. That
single missing piece of clothing triggered a
raid that finally stuck. It led to a criminal
conviction, and that conviction handed Commissioner
Moss exactly what he needed. The leverage he
was looking for. He instantly revoked Abe's license
and then went a massive step further. He flatly
refused to renew all of the other burlesque licenses
in New York. The entire industry was paralyzed
overnight. The erasure was swift and devastating.
After several frantic appeals, the Minsky's and
their rivals were told they could reopen, but
only if they adhered to draconian new rules that
completely forbade strippers. But you can't sell
burlesque without the burlesque. Business under
the new sanitized code was absolutely terrible.
So bad that many New York burlesque theaters
were forced to close their doors forever. It
ruined them. And to put the final nail in the
coffin, by the time Mayor LaGuardia was successfully
re -elected, the actual word burlesque had been
legally banned from theater marquees. And soon
after that, the name Minsky itself was banned
because the government determined the two words
were completely synonymous. Incredible. Just
like that, Burlesque and the Minsky's were entirely
finished in New York City. It is a remarkable
example of state power completely dismantling
a thriving cultural and economic empire. They
didn't just shut down the theaters, they erased
the vocabulary. It is a heavy ending for the
founding brothers. But there's an epilogue here.
and it's a story that really brightens the mood.
It involves Harold Minsky, who was Abe's adopted
son. Right, the next generation. While the band
wiped out the traditional empire, Harold stayed
incredibly active in the business, and he had
a massive heart. During the height of the Great
Depression, when Harold was just 19 years old,
he had taken over operations of the Gaiety Theater
in Times Square from his father. Historical accounts
note a very touching detail about how he managed
the Gaiety. Every summer, his parents would go
to Europe for vacation. Normally, the theaters
would close entirely because the heat in New
York City was unbearable and theaters back then
were not air conditioned. Imagine a packed theater
in August in New York with no AC. It sounds like
a nightmare. Brutal. But the performers literally
begged Harold to keep the doors open. The girls
were completely broke, and they desperately needed
the performance money just to survive the summer.
Yeah. So Harold agrees. He kept it going. He
keeps the theater open through the sweltering
heat. He charges just a dime for a ticket so
people could afford to come. And according to
his wife, Dardie Minsky, by doing this, he supposedly
made over a million dollars. He built immense
loyalty among the performers. Throughout the
1930s and into the 50s, Harold discovered and
groomed dozens of famous names. He claimed to
have discovered future headliner Sherri Britton
when she auditioned at just 14 years old. Wow,
fortune. He also employed and nurtured first
rate comic talents. He deftly understood the
formula his father and uncles had perfected.
And he takes that exact formula to the desert.
In 1956, Harold takes the Minsky name, which
was banned in New York, remember, and he brings
it to Las Vegas. He launches a massive review
at the Dunes Hotel. A perfect fit for Vegas.
Luke Cotello, after splitting with Bud Abbott,
actually appeared in the 1958 edition of that
review. Harold kept the entire Minsky DNA intact.
Chorus lines, top -rate comedians, a snazzy band,
and of course, the strippers. If we connect this
to the broader evolution of American entertainment,
Harold Minsky fundamentally shaped the future
of Las Vegas casino entertainment. That review
ran for six years at the Dunes and then moved
to other landmark. like The Silver Slipper, The
Thunderbird, and The Aladdin. He built the template.
He absolutely did. He institutionalized the exact
blend of comedy, music, and provocation that
Las Vegas is still globally known for today.
Harold resided in Las Vegas running these shows
until his death in 1977. So what does this all
mean? We've gone from a sweaty, inconvenient
six -floor walk -up theater on Houston Street
to the bright lights of Broadway, through an
aggressive government ban that outlawed a family's
name, all the way to laying the foundational
blueprint for Las Vegas review shows. It really
proves that innovation almost always stems from
the fringes. Yeah. The lowbrow entertainment
of yesterday, the shows that are rated, censored
and deemed inappropriate by the establishment
frequently serve as the critical incubators for
the legendary comedic and theatrical talent of
tomorrow. The Minsky's didn't just sell scandal,
they funded the development of modern American
comedy and stagecraft. It's been an incredible
journey. through the source material today. I
want to leave you with one final provocative
thought to mull over. Think about the entertainment
you consume. If the name Minsky was literally
banned by the government for being entirely synonymous
with obscenity in the 1930s, only for their exact
style of show to become the totally standard
accepted form of entertainment in Las Vegas,
shortly after what completely normal form of
entertainment that you consume today might be
viewed as wildly scandalous a century from now.
or vice versa. That's a fascinating question.
Something to think about. Thanks for joining
us on this deep dive.