Among notable performers at Club 181 were “ Kitt Russell” ( Russell Paull), later the director of the Club 82 Revue, who got his start here in 1948 drag kings Buddy Kent, Gail Williams, and Blackie Dennis and lesbian stripper Toni Bennett. Live music was provided by the orchestra of prolific Broadway conductor and musical director Al Goodman. Three shows performed nightly were produced by Neil Stone and “conceived, staged, and directed” by Broadway dancer (and later Tony Award-winning choreographer for stage, as well as film and TV) Danny Daniels. that featured lavish shows of “female impersonators” (a term used at the time) and “drag king” wait staff and performers.
Except for a few years when it operated as a movie theater, the building was used continuously as a Yiddish theater from its opening in 1926 until 1945.Īfter the theater’s completion, the downstairs, entered at the south end of the building, was the location of a series of ethnic clubs, all featuring live entertainment: Russian Art Restaurant (1927-40), Adria (Polish) Restaurant (1940), Club Adria (1941), Club 181 (1941-42), an “outpost of Harlem swing,” and the Roumanian Folks Casino (1944-45).įrom 1945 to 1951, this was the popular Mafia-controlled Club 181, called “the homosexual Copacabana” as it was one of the most luxurious clubs in the U.S. Jaffe Art Theater is the single most tangible reminder of the heyday of Yiddish theater in 20th-century New York, when venues of this kind lined lower Second Avenue.