In Darkest America

While scores & scores of guests at Belle Livingstone's "Mecca of Merriment" (TIME, Nov. 10) drank, ping-ponged, played miniature golf and rigadooned one night last week, a group of determined individuals muscled their way past the doorman. One of them interrupted the orchestra, seized a megaphone and--as every one acquainted with the place had expected would happen some day soon-- announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, the next number of the program will be a raid. The place is in the custody of the Federal Government." Hostess Livingstone fled across her wee golf course, tried to get to one of the windows which she had prudently equipped with rope ladders to the street below. She was caught, jailed, later released on $2,000 bond. The entertainment over, the cheer confiscated, dismally the guests went home. It was not the first time that Belle Livingstone--who tells stories about her friends Theodore Roosevelt, Lord Kitchener, Edward VII, King Leopold of the Belgians--has run afoul of the National Prohibition Act. Last April her speak-easy on Park Avenue was padlocked; she was released on bail. Although she did not know it, she was indicted on this charge fortnight ago. Her latest place--formally titled The Fifty-Eighth Street Country Club--was run along the same general lines as her Park Avenue establishment: $1 drinks, select clientele, open all night. It was an elaborate, three-storied affair, occupying the building once used by John Murray Anderson's dancing school. Emerging from jail, Miss Livingstone explained that she did not own the place but had agreed to run it for $100,000 for "someone who lived in France," remarked that she might write a book (she has already written two) called With Livingstone in Darkest America. Manhattan was mildly amazed at her temerity when it was reported that she had made no effort to distribute protection money.

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