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Cypress
Gardens, America's Tropical Wonderland: How Dick Pope Invented Florida by Lu Vickers
(University
Press of Florida, Hardcover, 376 pp., $34.95) Reviewed
by Nick Garnett
Long before interstate highways carved up Florida into a series
of marquee destinations connected by wide, sterile and efficient thoroughfares, long before Disney came and transformed thousands
of acres of farm land into a fantasy land, there was a different Florida. On roads such as Rte. 27, the Orange Blossom
Trail (which runs down the center of the state along an ancient sand dune), travelers, most of them sun-starved northerners,
drove through miles and miles of fragrant citrus groves. The road was also, from the 30s through the 70s, a gateway
to some of Florida’s major tourist attractions: Bok Singing Tower, Citrus Tower, the Reptile Institute, Silver
Springs, Highland Hammock State Park and the Cypress Knee Museum. None of these could compare in popularity and
national influence, however, to Winter Haven’s Cypress Gardens, the “Technicolor Florida dream,” the subject
of Lu Vicker’s lovingly told and lushly illustrated retrospective, Cypress Gardens—America’s
Tropical Wonderland: How Dick Pope Invented Florida.
Cypress Gardens chronicles
the rise and eventual demise of an attraction which began in the 30s as swampland and, by 1963, drew more than a million people
a year to tie the Grand Canyon as the country’s number-one tourist attraction. The Gardens would welcome JFK,
the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Johnny Carson and The
Tonight Show, and Elvis. Its grounds served as the setting for several movies and led to a long-term relationship with
the competitive-swimmer-turned film star Esther Williams, who had not one, but two, swimming pools built for her—one
in the shape of Florida.
As Vickers points out, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for Dick Pope Sr., a diminutive and determined
entrepreneur (dubbed “the Swami of the Swamp”) who, quite literally, helped put Florida on the map. The
son of a Winter Haven real estate developer, Pope, whose motto was, “Think big about everything,” seized on the
idea of creating a lush, tropical paradise that would draw northerner in droves. “We are going to sell 100,000
of them 25 cents worth of Florida,” he said. But even the hype-spouting Pope vastly underestimated his creation’s
drawing power. The Garden’s extensive tropical plantings and meandering canals, carved out of swampland by WPA
workers, opened in 1935, and made it onto the 1937-38 American Automobile Associations travel guide at just about the time
Americans began to travel widely in their cars. We, like them, are along for the ride. Vickers’s narrative sticks close to Pope Sr. and his
two sons, who became accomplished speedboaters and water skiers. Their death-defying antics caught the attention of
newsreels which gave the Gardens free publicity in movie houses across the country and caused a burst of interest in the brand-new
sport of water skiing. Dick Pope knew a marketing opportunity when he saw one. He added lavish, choreographed
water shows in which water skiers—many of them attractive women—performed all manner of acrobatic, gravity defying
stunts. Photos of these beauties, gliding along on water skis wearing the latest bathing suit designs, became so popular
that, by the 40s, Dick Pope’s models had landed more magazine covers than anyone else in the country. Vickers relies on interviews
with dozens of friends, former employees and business associates of the Pope family, resulting in an intimate and detailed
story of the Gardens through the years. As Dick Pope knew so well, however, the story of Cypress Gardens is one best told
in pictures. The more-than 250 photos which appear in Vickers’s book, many drawn from the Garden’s archives,
evoke a time long past—when a tutu-clad girl performing ballet moves on water skis at 35-miles-an-hour and demure, hoop-skirted
“southern belles” who posed for pictures with visitors, could pack them in. Then came
Disney. Dick Pope welcomed the arrival of Disneyworld, figuring that what was good for Florida tourism would also be
good for Cypress Gardens. At first, his hunch seemed correct. Attendance at Cypress Gardens surged in the early
70s. Eventually, though, a combination of recessions, rising gas prices and the expansion of the Disney empire into
a self-contained mega-resort would eat away at the Gardens’ attendance and its increasingly aging clientele. The
death of Dick Pope in 1988 seemed to hasten the inevitable—the end for Cypress Gardens, which sputtered along through
various changes in marketing strategies, ownership, bankruptcies and closings until its most recent shuttering in 2009. The
park has recently been purchased by the owners of Legoland. Vickers (who previously
wrote a book about another culturally significant Florida tourist attraction, Weeki Wachee) obviously cares deeply about her
subject. It is only near the end of the book, however, that she reveals her longing for another Florida:
“If only we could undo what has happened to all of Florida, roll history backward like a film.
Cinderella’s Castle would crumble into dust to be reclaimed by blackwater swamp, cypress trees, and alligators; the
jerking robots in the Small, Small world would bore the tourists, who would then ooh and ahh again over the sight of a great
blue heron stalking fish at the edge of a lake . . . Highway 27 would fill with oranges and grapefruit, and rental cars would
be replaced with station wagons filled with screaming children wanting Pop to follow that sign go Cypress Gardens, where they
would be awed by bougainvillea, one big banyan tree, a pyramid of water-skiers and a bevy of waving belles."
It is difficult to read Vickers’s lovely and at times lyrical book and not feel the same.
Nick Garnett enjoys writing about road trips and all things retro, including himself.
Our review of Lu Vickers' Weeki Watchee
CIty of Mermaids is archived here.
The
Young Wrecker on the Florida Reef, Or, The Trials and Adventures of Fred Ransom, by Richard Meade Bache
(Ketch & Yawl Press, Paperback, 235 pp., $12.95)
Reviewed by Keith Ferrell
This handsomely reproduced edition
of Bache’s 1866 novel is salutary in a number of ways. First – and, always, most important – the book
is worth reprinting, and not just for reasons of historical context. The Young Wrecker on the Florida Reef
is a lively and well-told story in and of itself: cast as the reminiscences of Fred Ransom from the perspective of old age,
the novel can be read either as an adventure story for young adult readers, or as an exceptionally detailed account of the
sailing life onboard a wrecker (a ship out for salvage) ca.1839. Either way – or both! – the book rewards
the reader with a solid (even when, occasionally, stolid) narrative pace, descriptions that are both vivid and precise, characters
that are well and deftly drawn, and an ongoing sense of the beauty and harshness of Florida, Cuba, and their surrounding waters. Over the
course of the novel Fred Ransom grows both as a sailor and as a young man, traveling onboard the Flying Cloud and
encountering and absorbing adventures ranging from the death of a shipmate seized by a shark, to lessons in navigation and
fishing (there’s a pretty good lesson in constructing throw-nets here), from how to get along with crewmates to rescuing
the crew of a wrecked ship (and salvaging her cargo) to a battle with Indians (sic) and more. Bache reminds us with
nearly every sentence of just how the world of the wreckers worked, including how central salvage was a century and a half
ago to communities now long-known for other things. Take a look, for instance, at this passage from the
second chapter, as young Ransom recalls his first encounter with Key West: The chief
business of the town consisted of fitting out and supplying the wreckers, and all the people were devoted to nothing else:
if, perhaps, we except a few travelers, who came for health, and sometimes left their homes. Everything
revolved about that business; and everyone was an owner of a wrecker, or a captain of one, or a mate of one, or a sailor on
one, or some female relation of these. Bache’s prose is generally straightforward and without stylistic effect.
His vocabulary is wide (though always accurately deployed) and a reminder of a time when writers, even writing for
younger readers, could count on the audience possessing an equally wide vocabulary. The story is surprisingly unmannered
in its telling. Bache reminds us every few chapters that this is a reminiscence of “an old bachelor,”
but otherwise remains focused on re-creating the experiences of his youth, both in narrative and occasional journal entries
from Ransom’s time as a wrecker. Throughout the book we’re rewarded with memorable (if idiosyncratically,
by modern standards anyway, punctuated) passages that let us experience the Florida that was: Sometimes
we rowed our boat through a little inlet, so narrow that the oar tips scarcely cleared the foliage on the banks and, with
a few strokes, darted into the waters of a placid lake studded with green islets. We found many Keys like
this. From the outside, they seemed a dense growth of trees extending from shore to shore; but they were
really nothing but a rim of land encircling waters which ebbed and flowed through obscure inlets. These
places always had great charm for me. Coming from the seaward side of a Key, where the breeze drove on
the restless, chafing sea, which frets at every barrier, day and night, and never ceases its hollow murmuring or thunderous
crash upon the shore, -- we could come with one swift glide into waters unruffled by a ripple; where there was not a sound,
save the scream of a wild bird; where the brilliant flamingoes stood in gorgeous troops; and the solitary heron watched moodily
beside the bank. As young Ransom’s adventures at sea draw to a close and he prepares to return to his home and a (far duller)
life that is approaching its close as the narrator completes his story, Bache creates a deep tone of wistfulness, of regret
that in some ways re-casts all that has preceded the final few pages. There is no bitterness here, but
an unavoidable sense of a long life ashore that was as unlived as Fred Ransom’s months at sea were fully lived. The
Young Wrecker is a still-readable artifact of another literary time, and it’s good to have it available.
A brief introduction by Tom Corcoran is informative and may make readers wish there was more information about the
novel’s author. Bache (1830-1907) was a great-great grandson of Benjamin Franklin; the rest of his
family was equally distinguished in the sciences and maritime arts. A bargain at $12.95, the volume is handsomely produced,
well-printed, durably bound. Which is a good thing – I will probably return to it, and the book will
hold up to repeated readings or, even better, to being passed along to younger readers who might for the space of a couple
of hundred pages, enjoy being in the company of Fred Ransom, young wrecker.
Keith Ferrell is the author of
a dozen books, including the novel Passing Judgment, and more than 1,000 magazine articles
and essays; he was Editor of OMNI Magazine from
1990-1996. You can read more from him at his blog.
Editor's note: You can also read Keith
Ferrell's feature about Florida writer John D. MacDonald on our feature page.
Florida on Film: The Essential Guide to Sunshine State Cinema & Locations by Susan Doll & David Morrow (University Press of Florida, Paperback, 394 pp.,
$19.95) Reviewed by Susan Jo Parsons
Who could forget when Kathleen Turner
turned up the temperature, even by Florida standards, with her femme fatale role in the 1981 film Body Heat?
What about the final shoot-out scene of Scarface? Or the unusual fountain of youth a group of Florida senior
citizens discovered in Cocoon? Did you know that when Where the Boys Are was filmed in
1960, 40,000 college students were already traveling to Fort Lauderdale each spring? And that before Hollywood
(CA) became the home of American filmmakers Jacksonville was a hot spot? You can read about all this and more in Florida
on Film: The Essential Guide to Sunshine State Cinema & Locations by Susan Doll and David Morrow.
Florida on Film is a bit of a film buff’s book, a bit of a history
book, and a bit of a travel guide. The comprehensive catalog of films is divided into sections such as
“Silent Florida,” “The Golden Age,” and “Florida Noir.” What about
stars you ask? Florida has hosted them all, from the critters in Creature from the Black Lagoon, Flipper
and Jaws 3D, to bombshells and hunks such as Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, Jennifer Lopez, Burt Reynolds,
Tom Cruise, and Elvis. The list of films made here includes comedies (The Birdcage, Parenthood,
Operation Petticoat), dramas (Key Largo, Days of Thunder, and Monster), sequels (Smokey
and the Bandit 3, Tarzan Finds a Son) and even a James Bond film. For each
movie featured in the book, Doll and Morrow include a brief plot synopsis, followed by a longer section taking you inside
the making of the film. For 1992’s Brenda Starr, which featured Brooke Shields, they discuss
how Shields was eager to “transform her image from the provocative Lolita established in Calvin Klein ads.” They
also write that the film was financed by Sheik Abdul Aziz al Ibrahim, a “billionaire businessman” who had a crush
on Shields. They analyze the 1948 film, Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, starring William Powell and
Ann Blyth, focusing on the psychological state of the character, Peabody, who had just turned fifty, and how he begins a romance
with a possibly imaginary mermaid, Lenore, who “represents the desire and passion of youth. . .” The fact that
the mermaid doesn’t speak allows for Mr. Peabody to explore his thoughts on “. . . the meaning of attraction and
desire—and the loss of it.” They also describe how Ann Blyth’s underwater scenes were
performed by employees from Florida’s popular theme park, Weeki Wachee. Each section ends with
a mini travel guide. “Flori-Drama,” concludes with information about a biker’s bar where the serial killer
in Monster used to hang out. At the end of the “Florida Noir” section, Doll and Morrow
point out the highway where a famous scene from the 1991 remake of Cape Fear was filmed. And
the “Fun in the Sun” section mentions the famous Miami Beach Fontainebleau Hotel, where Jerry Lewis was filmed
in The Bell Boy. While popular movies have their coverage, the book also preserves the memory of some
lesser known films. In the “Flori-Drama” section you can read about Rosewood, from
1992, where “tensions simmer between two communities in 1920’s Florida, one prosperous and black, the other struggling
and white.” In the“Silent Florida,” section we meet the star of the 1911 film, Lost
in the Jungle, Kathlyn Williams, who had a studio deal and was an “animal lover who thrived on adventure for much
of her life.” Williams won over one of her co-stars, a troublesome male elephant named Toddles, by
“tossing him oranges every morning.” Doll and Morrow’s focus on Florida pulls out interesting facts
another guide might miss, noting, for instance that three of Florida writer Marjory Kinnan Rawlings’ books were filmed—The
Yearling (1946) “starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman,” Cross Creek (1983), her autobiography, and
Gal Young’Un (1979), which “offers a darker slice of rural life with the tale of a callous moonshiner
who takes advantage of both the spinster he marries for her money and the young girl he brings to her house as a mistress.” The
book examines “more than eighty films that were shot within the borders of the Sunshine State or that use Florida as
a primary setting.” It is a wonderful look at Florida’s diverse film history, whether you are
a fan of Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot, Jack Nicholson in Blood and Wine or Denzel Washington in Out
of Time. It might also be a great starting point for a fascinating Florida road trip.
Susan Jo Parsons is Publisher of The Florida Book Review
Florida's
First People by Robin C. Brown
(Pineapple Press, Inc., Hardcover, 262 pp., $29.95)
Reviewed
by Mark M. Martin
If you grew up in Miami in the 1970s and 80s, as I did, it is likely
you remember numerous fieldtrips to the Museum of Science & Natural History (now the Miami Museum of Science & Planetarium)
located in Coconut Grove. Among the indelible images I carry with me from those visits are a gigantic world
globe, a towering, taxidermic bear poised for attack, its fierce claws and teeth exposed, and a scene, encased in glass, showing
how the first people in Florida lived, ensconced in their natural environment. Everything they wore, the
spears they carried, even the boat they used to journey through Florida’s wetlands originated from the untamed surroundings.
I remember standing at the edge of that glass for a long time. Over the next 30+ years living in
and exploring my native state, I never stopped wondering about that scene, those people. How did they survive
hurricanes? Florida’s torrential, passionate rains? The unforgiving heat and relentless swarms of mosquitoes?
Thanks to Robin C. Brown’s book, Florida’s First People, which combines contemporary archaeology,
the writings of early European explorers, and replication experiments that paint a vivid picture of the state’s original
inhabitants, we can begin to understand. As Brown explains, “The first people arrived in Florida
about 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, when much of North America was still covered with glaciers…Grasslands
were home to now extinct species of horse, bison, camel, and magnificent herds of elephant-like mammoths.”
We know this, because “over the past half century, wondrous advances in archaeological technique have been made
in methods of locating and excavating ancient living sites, in the identification and preservation of finds, and in methods
of dating.” What I found most intriguing about Brown’s book is its simplicity despite its
overwhelmingly complex subject. The first section discusses six major dig sites, the priceless artifacts
they yielded, and the challenges the archaeologists faced in securing the sites. Not surprisingly, many
of the sites were discovered on private lands where owners, in the process of building, were more concerned about turning
a profit than unearthing the remains of a people who lived in Florida 5,000 years before the birth of Christ.
This book – scientifically structured and detailed, fantastically illustrated with hundreds of drawings and photographs
– is as much a tribute to Florida’s history as it is an homage to archaeologists everywhere who, despite the odds,
continue to shed light on the lifestyles of our world’s ancient ancestors. The second section,
“How They Lived,” is devoted to the description and explanation of what the remnants reveal regarding the early
inhabitants’ shelter and worldly goods, the food they ate, and their burial practices, customs, and religions.
As you read about each artifact, it doesn’t take long to comprehend that these were truly a gifted and complex
people. Staunch enough to hunt large mammals such as horse, bison, and mammoth, they were also crafty enough
to kill small game and fish, and knowledgeable enough to gather wild plant foods such as roots, berries, and nuts.
As Brown surmises, “In the varied environment of late Pleistocene Florida, [their] fishing, hunting, and gathering
way of life may have been surprisingly successful, providing both ample food and considerable spare time.” Throughout
the second and final section of the book, Brown explains how – with the help of his family and friends – he attempted
to duplicate aboriginal skills, crafts and cookery. An advocate of replicating, as opposed to theorizing
about, his subjects’ methods, Brown’s duplication activities took five years to complete and are explained in
great detail for any readers who wish to explore for themselves the life-sustaining processes of Florida’s first people.
According to Brown, “We really learn about prehistory only when the site of an ancient culture is systematically
studied, digging not just to find, but to learn.” The final section of
the book provides all you need to know about participating in Florida archaeology, as well as a glossary and a complete list
of the scientific names of plants and animals mentioned in the book. I recommend Brown’s book to
anyone interested in Florida history, and especially to anyone interested in archaeology and learning more about what it was
like to live in a world without cars and appliances, without air-conditioners and king-sized, comfortable beds. For
more information about ongoing Florida archaeology, visit the Florida Anthropological Society at http://www.fasweb.org/index.html, or write to: Membership Secretary Florida Anthropological
Society P.O. Box 13191 Pensacola, FL 32591
Mark M. Martin is a poet and business writer who is not currently digging up the yard in his rented duplex
to find the bones of an elephant-like mammoth.
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Fifteen
Florida Cemeteries: Strange Tales Unearthed by Lola Haskins
(University of Florida Press,
Paperback, 258 pp., $22.50) Reviewed by Molly McGreevy
While dramatic deaths sometimes inspire ghost stories, Lola
Haskins digs up her tales from visiting the graveyards themselves. Haskins, an award-winning poet who lives in Gainesville,
toured burial grounds across our state and in Fifteen Florida Cemetaries: Strange Tales Unearthed gives us a well-researched
history of the host city, its cemetery, and—as an added bonus in most chapters—the history of a buried citizen
inside its gates.
Just like our state, Florida’s burial grounds are aesthetically and culturally diverse. The “varying heights of
the grave markers “ in Old City Cemetery in Tallahassee give Haskins the sense she is entering a different kind of cityscape—albeit
a segregated one, with many children’s graves. In Appalachicola’s disarrayed cemetery, many deaths are water-related.
Micanopy's local citizens won't truly accept you in the community until you purchase your own plot in their cemetary's beautifully
shaded grounds. In Key West, Haskins finds among the vandalized statuary many quirky epitaphs that epitomize the city’s
“wild” sense of humor. One was seemingly penned by a wife finally relieved to see her active husband at rest:
“At least I know where he’s sleeping tonight.” These graveyards record
Florida’s past. St. Augustine’s old yard contains many victims of its 1821 yellow fever epidemic, and Port Mayaca
Memorial Gardens on Lake Okeechobee was established for the thousands of victims swept away by the Great Hurricane of 1928
(the subject of Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God). In the Upsala Cemetery in Sanford, Haskins
admires the “intimate and natural” grounds, whose markers reveal the waves of Swedish migrants who were enticed
to the New World to find work in the orange groves.
But there appears to be no burial ground in Florida as intimate and natural as Glendale Nature Preserve and Cemetery—my
personal preference—a “green” alternative located on privately-owned land in the Panhandle, run by what
appear to be truly progressive hippies. John Wilkerson, one of the owners, has managed to make the ultimate recycling
bin. While you’re alive, he can construct for you a pine-wood cabinet to hold your books or knickknacks, and then, after
you die, your loved ones can take the shelves out, put you in, secure the lid, and bury you among native-born plant species
with a modest grave marker. You only need a few prerequisites to be buried at Glendale: a non-embalmed corpse, a bio-degradable
container, a Florida death certificate, and no objections to the large junk sculptures on site, such as the recycled air-duct
piece affectionately referred to as “Miss Nessie.” Deceased citizens in the
“spotlighted” section at the end of each chapter include a color-blind botanist, a friend of Andrew Jackson, a
female Confederate spy, a philandering doctor who made and sold contraceptive tablets, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, a prizewinning
racehorse and a famous family of circus acrobatics. Haskins mildly titles the
story that accompanies the Key West cemetery “All For Love,” but the dimensions of this last story are as compelling
and repulsive as anything devised by a nineteenth century Gothic novelist. In 1927 a man called Count Carl von Cosel showed
up in Key West to work as a radiologist in a naval hospital. Unbeknownst to the community, he was actually not a Count but
a retired German naval doctor apparently suffering from full-blown psychosis. Imagining a beautiful, dying TB patient to be
his fateful lover, the Count managed after her death to become even more obsessed with the woman’s person. He stole
her remains and for the next seven years he worked alone experimenting different ways to preserve her decaying body. He smeared
embalming lotions and waxes on her, reconstructed a “mask” of her face, and last, but not least, graced her bones
with different bridal gowns, complete with a gold tiara. By the time the sheriff showed up at his house, he was sleeping in
bed next to her. Haskins does not come right out and say “necrophilia,” but you can fill in the rest. Among
the many strange facts surrounded the story was the public’s reaction. People across the country—mostly women—actually
wrote letters in his defense. Haskins keen interest in history leads her to a variety of
resources. “Because there are no known maps drawn between 1840 and the 1870s, the exact evolution of the cemetery’s
[St. Michael’s] boundaries…isn’t clear,” she writes, but using a Union General’s journal which
details an order to knock down the gravestones, she surmises that “after that incident, St. Michael’s didn’t
change substantially,” and “an 1884 map of Pensacola shows it in exactly the form it bears today.” In Micanopy,
she digs up the Cemetery Association records: “They include, for instance, a 1906 sexton’s contract in which one
E.R. Sandler agrees for the sum of 108 dollars per year to rid the cemetery of debris during the first week of each month.”
She continues to detail the long list of duties he should perform in exchange for grave-digging jobs. Although I believe this book could have used a little bit more editing
to slim down some of Haskin’s detailed research, and although I sometimes wished to experience these cemeteries more
from a poet’s angle rather than a historian’s, I found this book fascinating reading. Cemetery enthusiasts and
Florida history buffs will find this book a good companion to their adventures.
Molly McGreevy lives and writes in Miami.
See more Florida history reviews in our Florida History Archive:
Miami Beach Memories by Joann Biondi, reviewed by Marjorie Klein
The Swamp
by Michael Grunwald, reviewed by Brian Sullivan
Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids, reviewed by Lynne Barrett
America's Real First Thanksgiving, reviewed by Yaddyra Peralta
Click here to visit our Florida History Archive.
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 Pleasure Was My Business
by Madam Sherry as told to Robert Tralins
(Paperback Library Inc,1963 Hardcover 1961)
Reviewed by Lynne Barrett
The proper end of the career
of a notorious madam is a memoir. For those who were anticipating the recollections of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the Washington
Madam, her death May 1 by hanging in a shed outside her mother’s mobile home in Tarpon Springs so violates this natural
order of things that many believe her to have been murdered. Meanwhile, volumes about the Elliot Spitzer affair are
expected.
While waiting for those, let’s contemplate the memoir of a Florida madam, Ruth Barnes
a.k.a. Madam Sherry, as told to Robert Tralins in Pleasure Was My Business, published
in 1961. The book was banned in Miami in a censorship case that went to the Supreme Court. There, and in a libel case
brought by Egypt’s King Farouk, Barnes and Tralins triumphed.
At a distance, vice has
glamour. In Pleasure is My Business, Madam Sherry evokes Miami on the rise,
a time when crime and style intertwined, from the construction of her “Moorish Castle” just off Biscayne Boulevard
in 1929 to the postwar frolics by the pool of her Rancho Lido near the airport.
The story of Madam
Sherry’s rise and fall is, fundamentally, a business book. The title, with its echo of Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business, promises that insider’s view: she’s a pro, taking us
inside the sex trade.
From its inception, Madam Sherry’s plan is based on a frank assessment
of the business climate. Having spent time on the continent with her not-at-all-explained “Papa,” she is
in Havana, supposedly thinking of dealing in fine art in Florida, but in truth engaged in the smuggling of whiskey, when she
runs into an old friend, Zadel, who sets her course, advising “a whorehouse is the only business in Florida.”
She puts together capital accumulated through smuggling liquor into Key West via a customs inspector who she kisses (ahem)
into compliance. And by 1929, she has commissioned the construction of her Moorish Castle in Miami, off Biscayne at
NE 54th St., an area not yet too developed and respectable, accessible to Miami Beach (“wonderful isle of erotic dreams”),
and to the Hialeah racetrack, the gambling joints and nightclubs where Madam Sherry would parade her beauties.
Like the Castle, the parts of the book we enter first are made to look as elegant as possible. What peeks out is less sexual
provocation than the ruthless understanding of a businesswoman. She speaks of “getting the right kind of merchandise
and displaying it attractively.” The assembling of her stock-in-trade occupies quite a few early chapters of the
book. While boasting that she wants college girls and professional entertainers, girls with style, manners, class (yes,
this is a standard line in the sex business to this day), the characters we meet seem more often to be beauties drawn to the
business from Depression-impoverished states, or, memorably, a tall blonde who is working at the ribbon counter of a 5 &
10 downtown when Madam Sherry goes to see her and recruits her on the spot. The hiring of the girls, their characters,
abilities, and foibles, are handled with fairly restrained language and a continuous emphasis on Madam Sherry’s benevolence.
She explains the set-up: when a girl fetches $100 “a throw,” the girl gets $60, Madam Sherry $40.
And she pays for their elegant costumes. This deal is apparently good enough to pull girls in from all over the country,
and she is able to select those who are, to hear her, drop-dead gorgeous (there are no pictures in the book), who, dressed
as ladies, appear at the race track, gambling joints and nightclubs, drive around in the house Caddy, and have the customers
flocking in.
In this halcyon period, the customers are for the most part rich and appreciative.
There is the prominent man who is happy to pay for his son to be with a reliable prostitute rather than let him fall for society
adventuresses, the millionaire who stays for days and whose trust is shown in a large check. Honor and big tips fill
Madam Sherry’s memory of the good old days.
Like any small business owner today,
Madam Sherry’s biggest lament is government interference, though the taxation that bites her is the pay-off. As
her business booms in the 30s, an ever-larger number of cops and officials get in line for bribes in cash and kind.
After she seeks the advice of Al Capone, she learns the principle to manage this: pay off the top guy and make him keep those
below in line, and from then on, at least for a while, she has an agreement whereby she is warned of raids, pays her fines,
and is back in business with barely a pause. She pays off journalists, as well—one night a week they can show
up for freebies on the house—-and receives excellent publicity, mentions in social columns and photos in the rotogravure.
As the book goes on, we see more of the sexual side of the bordello. The focus is on the peccadilloes
of the clientele: the angry wife who is not a wife at all, the insatiable society woman, the kinky customer who turns out
to be a priest. She brings in famous names. Dutch Schultz is difficult, but Madam Sherry can handle him.
Dr. Kinsey shows up to interview her for her know-how about sex. A Spanish royal, Prince Alfonso, Count of Covadonga,
heir to King Alfonso XVII, likes fat girls. The sturdy prostitute Sherry finds falls for him and several years later
reports that Mildred, the cigarette girl he is now hanging out with, is the agent of a foreign power that wants him dead.
Madam Sherry tries to warn him by alerting his personal bodyguard, Jack Fleming, but Fleming is unable to get the Prince to
listen to reason. Soon after, Mildred crashes a car they were in on Biscayne, and the prince “wasn’t scratched”
but “died of shock and a fractured skull.” Mildred disappears. This incident is characteristic, with
Madam Sherry wise and seeking to help and the implied corollary that the Prince would have been safer with a pro than a freelancer.
But the business climate changes. Prohibition ends. In addition to the ever-bigger
burden of payoffs, there are those who try to con Madam Sherry, troublesome pimps, disruptive customers. With World
War II and the impending arrival of servicemen, the War Dept. orders the Castle to be closed down. An era is over.
The rise and fall of the Castle takes up the first 130 pages of this 160 page book. The later
chapters zip through some events which it seems Madam Sherry would rather not dwell on. Military rules ruin the sex
industry, and Madam Sherry co-manages a massage parlor, then opens a new house, the La Rue. Hypocrisy forces new forms
upon vice. A furniture buyer for a large South Florida retail furniture chain, unable to get scarce merchandise, needs
girls to allure furniture reps into giving him their allocations; for this, call girls are needed, and billing which can sanitize
the expense, and so, Madam Sherry boasts, she becomes “one of the first madams to specialize in the altogether new field
of supplying whores for business.”
In the postwar period, as tourists begin to come to Miami
by plane, Madam Sherry opens up her Rancho Lido outside the city limits, near the airport, ready to thrive again. But,
although business is good, and movie stars and a king come to the Rancho, the world has changed. There are shakedown
men in the sheriff’s office and, as we go into the 1950s, the moralists are putting pressure on the rackets. Moreover,
a code of honor that used to exist is gone. Sherry is most bitter about one Mary McNary who (she says) betrayed her,
giving false testimony against her. After a trial, while on appeal, supposedly with permission from her attorney and
assistance from the sheriff’s office, Sherry is in Mexico chasing McNary down when she is arrested. She winds
up spending six months at the Women’s Federal reformatory in Alderson, West Virginia (where Martha Stewart served her
time), having gotten half a year off for good behavior.
There is a certain haziness in some
spots and too-good-to-be-true-ness in others. Like much memoir by the famous or infamous, Pleasure Was My Business is self-serving. The character Zadel strikes me as the kind of figure we see
now in memoirs as “composite” characters: he pops up to say things that are needed to add salt. Various
anecdotes seem well-polished, and why wouldn’t they be? One imagines Sherry entertaining people with them down
the years. The late incidents leading to the arrest and imprisonment are hastened through, and there’s a sense of Madam
Sherry’s illusions about herself crashing against reality. Early on she describes herself as an “attractive
redhead” but the middle-aged procuress who was arrested weighed two hundred pounds and was compared to Kate Smith. There
is no author picture. The babe on the cover of the paperback is carefully noted to be “posed by a professional model.”
A photo of the Moorish Castle (taken in the 50s after it had been out of Sherry’s hands for over a decade; it was torn
down not long after) shows it to be smaller than the splendor evoked—though its Arabian Nights turret certainly made
it a landmark. At a distance, memory romanticizes.
This book is out of print, but copies are available
through on-line dealers. In the May Biscayne Times you can read a detailed assessment of the Moorish Castle (with floor plans)
and the Rancho Lido by architect and writer Antolin Garcia Carbonell (whose piece on Florida Poet Laureate Vivian Laramore Rader is an FBR feature.) Carbonell has gone through public records and
learned, among other things, that Madam Sherry lopped a husband out of her narrative: a Joseph Barnes appears with Ruth Barnes
on documents relating to the purchase and (by this time they were divorced) sale of the Castle. Carbonell reports that
Robert Tralins (who has further information on his website) is working on a follow-up account of the publication, banning, and eventual exoneration of the book.
One wonders what most offended. The language is for the most part nothing today’s public would blink at, and while
late chapters run through the menu of sexual perversities, they are not depicted in any detail. But there’s a
frontal assault on the society’s hypocrisy. “If it weren’t for the reformers, no madam would be in
business,” Madam S. says on page one, and she consistently confronts received opinion. In a late chapter, she
excoriates the results of moral forces. “Perhaps I’m biased a bit on this score, but it seems to me that
attempts to stamp out ‘sin’ actually breed more sin.” She points out that with the closing of gambling
houses and brothels, the activities simply moved to hotels, where “bellboys, to this day, can fix up hotel guests and
visitors with a bookie or a broad.” Girls are driven onto the streets, where they make less and give more to pimps.
“The net result is that instead of protecting the tourists and fun-seeking errant males, this ‘reform’ set-up
actually subjects them to disease and robbery and even worse crimes. This is because they are not under control of a
system that could very well keep things in check if society would ever wake up...” One wonders if the local forces
of moral authority who banned the book were bothered as much by her frankness as her salaciousness. Today, while gambling
has been legalized in various forms, the debate on legalized prostitution hasn’t budged. You can imagine Madam
Sherry looking at the exposure of a puritanical governor and a family values touting senator or two, and laughing at the same
old story.
Lynne Barrett is Editor of The Florida Book Review This photo of the Moorish
Castle appeared in The Miami New in June 1952. Photo courtesy of the Historical Museum of South Florida.
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Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History by Dana Ste. Claire
(University Press of Florida, Paperback, 255 pp., $19.95)
Reviewed
by Susan Jo Parsons
In Cracker:
The Cracker Culture in Florida History Dana Ste. Claire writes that the Cracker population of Florida has been misunderstood
over the centuries. While pioneers of the West have been glamorized, this group of Florida pioneers has
been stereotyped as racist, violent, backwoods idiots. Even the study of Crackers itself is fairly rare,
since the subject has been snubbed by academics over the years. But they are misunderstood, Ste. Claire
writes, because while many of the Crackers were of Celtic origin, there were also African-American Crackers, Spanish Crackers,
Native-American Crackers, Russian Crackers and even Lebanese-Syrian Crackers. The word Cracker describes
a way of life rather than a specific racial makeup. The book emphasizes that the population should be appreciated
for the resourceful pioneers that they were, and that all the adventures that occurred in the West, including gunfights and
showdowns, also occurred on Florida soil. There is much debate about the origin of the name Cracker itself. Some
theorize that it came from the sound of the long whips the Cracker cowhunters used. Others thought it might
have come from the crude, hard biscuits they made, since they rarely could afford flour to make them rise. But
Ste. Claire’s research found evidence that the word Cracker was used in England as early as 1509 to describe “a
braggart or a liar.” Shakespeare even uses the word in King John: “What cracker is this that deafes our
eares with this abundance of superfluous breath?” While Ste.
Claire isn’t sure when the Crackers arrived, he found that they were already in place by mid 18th century.
Like the pioneers that headed west, the Crackers often arrived in covered wagons. The early Crackers were squatters
who moved around from place to place, which made the local government uneasy. They were fiercely independent
and settled their disputes and dealt with their criminals amongst themselves.
Eventually they settled in crude houses which Ste. Claire describes in the chapter “Shotguns and Saddlebags.”
The houses were huts, he explains, with roofs thatched with palmetto. There were no window screens,
so anyone living in Florida can imagine the kinds of critters that made their way indoors.
But the Crackers’ resourcefulness in living off the Florida land is most evident in the chapter about “Cracker
Cuisine.” Home-ground corn meal was the most common food, but the Crackers thrived on a variety of
local foodstuffs. What we might consider roadkill—raccoons, squirrel and possum--served as fine dinners
for the Crackers. In the swamp waters, they hunted alligator and caught catfish and frogs. Ste. Claire includes recipes for
some of the delicacies, such as armadillo, which was also called “swamp pork.” Ste. Claire
writes that it was “prepared by marinating the shelled animal in vinegar or garlic water and deep frying it.”
“Somewhere in the history of Cracker cooking,” he continues, “rattlesnakes became an
entrée, probably when they wandered too close to the homestead.” Bacon grease was used as
gravy and Ste. Claire includes a remark from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings about her astonishment that the Crackers’ bodies
could tolerate so much bacon fat “gravy” every day.
For fiber, the resourceful Crackers consumed native plants such as palmetto berries, prickly pear, and coontie, a native
fern which is “deadly poisonous unless prepared properly.” They ate cattail, hickory nuts and
acorns, and all sorts of berries.
Fowl was a rare treat, and usually shared at the rare gatherings and celebrations the Crackers held. “Chicken
Perleu” was a popular boiled chicken and rice dish at these gatherings. Crackers would travel from
far away for these celebrations. A dance would last as long as three days. Moonshine
(known as “low-bush lightning”) and homemade wine and beer made the events merry.
But mostly it was hard times for the Crackers. Ste. Claire writes that “Cracker women would
rise well before dawn, sometimes as early as 3 a.m., to cook bread, biscuits and meats for the rest of the day, as hearths
and woodstoves in a closed kitchen were insufferable.” Ste. Claire includes a few pages about laundry
day, which was a long, dreaded, drawn-out process for the Crackers who often couldn’t afford conveniences such as ringers.
The women made their crude dresses and aprons from grain bags which they carefully bleached then stitched into garments.
The men spent most of their days hunting for food for their families. Those who had jobs were cattlemen
who were referred to as “cowhunters.” They were often away from home for months at a time and
they experienced numerous dangers in the Florida wilderness. One cowhunter recalls evading a stampede of
cows. Others feared being killed for the cows they protected from thieves: “. . . out in the wilderness
low-browed cow-folks shoot and stab each other for creatures not fit for a pointer-dog to mess on.”
Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History is so rich with detail, I can’t possibly share all of
it in the limited space of a review. Dana Ste. Claire, according to the book, “is Curator of History
and a professional archeologist with the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach.” There are
countless historical photos and sketches in the book and Ste. Claire includes extensive colorful interviews with Crackers
and descendants of Crackers, and pulls in information from Rawlings and numerous settlers and travelers who investigated Cracker
life before him. The book itself struck me as a wonderful museum—one well worth a visit.
Susan Jo Parsons is Publisher of The Florida Book Review
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