Texas Guinan: Queen of the Nightclubs

"Texas Guinan was a night club hostess-funny, magnetic, loud."So begins the story of the notorious Roaring '20s personality who, with her signature "Hello Sucker!" transformed the simple grab-a-drink Prohibition speakeasy into a glamorous club with dancing girls, entertainment, and a star-studded clientele. Her friends and guests ranged from newspapermen like Walter Winchell, who quoted her daily, to Mae West, Rudolph Valentino, the Prince of Wales, and President Harding.Guinan was a devoted mythmaker and publicity hound, and her fictions were just as much of her story as the facts. Berliner's biography explores this as it chronicles Guinan's journey from small town Waco through multiple careers in vaudeville, musical theater, and the 2-reeler silent westerns that billed her as the "Female Bill Hart," to her emergence as an icon of the '20s. It follows the nightly shenanigans in Guinan's clubs, complete with her tangles with gangsters and U.S. Prohibition agents, culminating in her arrest for maintaining a public nuisance, i.e. working at a club that sold liquor illegally. She hired a young lawyer to defend her and 60 years later, his trial notes were uncovered by his granddaughter, the author.