Ben Graham’s Office, 52 Wall Street, Financial District, Lower Manhattan
Ben sits hunched over his desk, pencil moving across a slip of paper. At the top he has written American Smelting & Refining. Before him lie two open publications: the company’s annual report and a thick volume of Moody’s Industrial Manual, revealing orderly columns of figures. He extracts share price, earnings per share, book value per share, dividend rate, and long-term debt—jotting the numbers onto the slip and utilizing them to calculate price/earnings ratio and estimated intrinsic value. Now that he’s recovered from his Depression-era losses, he derives a sense of security from his desk’s familiar furnishings: stacks of white slips, piles of annual reports, heavy Moody’s manuals bound in deep burgundy cloth, and a mechanical adding machine pushed to one side. He records the margin of safety just as a knock sounds at the door. Before he can answer, his secretary, Estelle Messing, rushes in.
Petite and young, with wavy dark hair and observant eyes, she moves with elegant grace despite the urgency of her errand. “Ben.”
“Yes?” He doesn’t look up from his scribbling.
“Jean Shore,” Estelle says. “She’s here.”
Jean Shore enters, dressed in the black frock from the funeral, a sheet of cardboard clutched tightly against her chest.
Ben stands and offers her a chair, but she refuses with a shudder. She thrusts the cardboard in front of him.
Ben reads the words scrawled atop the page in red: “You’re next.”
He scans the article. “Richard and Jane Goldberg are survived by a daughter, Bess Goldberg of Harlem, New York, and Jane’s sister, Jean Shore, also of Harlem, New York.” The name Bess Goldberg is circled in red.
“Has Bessie seen this?” A lurch of alarm grips Ben’s stomach.
“Bessie took one look and ran out the door.” Jean sinks into the chair. “I’m scared she ran right out into the hands of this”—she touches the cardboard—”this lunatic. This crazy son of a bitch.”
“You’re right. It’s unsafe for her to run off like that,” Ben says.
“How can I stop her? She dodged me and took off.”
Ben takes a long in-breath. “You can’t. We can’t make her do anything. We can only convince her.”
“Of what?” Jean says.
“That she’s in danger,” Ben says.
“The more angry she gets, the less she listens,” Jean says.
Ben nods, wondering if this is what parents do, parents who get along—talk together about their rebellious teenage daughter. Has he ever talked like this with Hazel about a child of theirs?
“She’s just a kid, but she’s got to—” Jean breaks off.
“We need to talk some sense into her.” Ben pictures his own teenage daughter, Marjorie, age fifteen, who listens even when he and Hazel fight, who writes a sonnet daily, earns straight A’s, and watches the younger children after school.
With a defiant shrug, Jean folds her arms over her chest. “Yeah? How you going to do that?”
“I’m thinking.” Ben glances at his desk, its disorderly order, and gets a pang of loss. “Jean. Why would anyone want to kill Bessie?”
Jean shakes her head. “It makes no sense. No sense at all.”
Ben turns the cardboard face down on his desk. “The three of us need to talk.”
“Apologies, but she doesn’t want to talk, especially not to you.” Jean sighs. “Actually, there’s four of us who need to talk.”
Ben doesn’t ask about the fourth. Instead he asks, “Does Bessie like to eat?”
“Sure. Eats me out of house and home. Girl’s always hungry.”
“I’ll take you to lunch at the Waldorf.”
Jean looks downcast. “That’s real nice of you, Mr. Graham, but they don’t let us in there.’
Ben recalls the numerous times he’s dined or attended parties there. No Black faces come to mind—not a guest, not a waiter. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“No,” Jean says, her voice a weary rasp.
“My friend who works there might be able to help.” Ben thinks of Karen. Tall, statuesque, impossible to forget. Engaged—and unattainable—but friendly, and appreciative of him in a way that might be enough.
If he can make it happen, will Bessie join them?
Later That Same Day. The Front Room of Ben’s Wall Street Office
Ben waits until his employees have gone home for the day before using the office telephone. This is a private matter, after all. Karen has a telephone on her desk in her own separate office. As secretary to Ted Saucier, the Waldorf’s public relations director, she takes his messages. When she calls Ben, she seems to feel free to use the telephone for personal matters as well.
“Ben,” she says. “What a nice surprise.”
“I’m calling to ask your help,” Ben says.
“Oh, Ben. I’m the one who asks you for help. Like when you know who gets angry with me—” She breaks off.
“Engagements have their ups and downs.” Ben remembers Hazel in a rowboat on a lake, suddenly throwing herself overboard.
““What kind of help?” she says.
“I’d like you to arrange a lunch,” Ben says.
“Certainly.” Her voice lilts happily. “How many guests?”
“Three,” he says. “A lunch for the four of us.” A pause. “They’re Black.”
A beat of silence. “But Ben, I’m afraid I can’t—”
He cuts in. “My client, Richard Goldberg, was murdered in Berlin. I am now the guardian of his daughter, Bessie. Her mother was Black, and her aunt Jean, who she lives with, is as well. We need to discuss an urgent matter.”
Karen goes quiet.
For a moment, Ben feels the bluntness of what he’s asked of her—how clumsily he’s forced it, how badly it lands.
“Someone threatened Bessie’s life,” he adds.
A sharp intake of breath. “That’s terrible,” she says.
Her tone changes—professional now, but willing. She gives him instructions: the service entrance to use, the corridor to follow. He is to call from the house telephone; she will come down and unlock a private dining room. She will try to find a waiter who will take their order.
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Employees’ Entrance on East 50th Street, Manhattan, New York
Ben waits outside the staff entrance, glancing at his watch, then stepping out from under the overhang into the thin light. The sun is pale, almost without warmth. The steady thrum of Midtown traffic reaches him from the avenues.
His thoughts won’t settle. He pushed Karen too far—likely erased whatever affection she had for him. He asked for her help, at great cost. Now Bessie might not come at all. Bess doesn’t want to speak to him. Jean made that plain enough.
Footsteps on the sidewalk.
Jean appears, walking beside a tall youthful Black man Ben recognizes at once—the pianist who accompanied the Shore Sisters at Cowan’s. The man now wears the dark wool uniform of the New York Police Department: brass buttons dulled by use, a flat-topped service cap pulled low over his brow. His badge is pinned high on his chest, its nickel catching the weak light. A leather duty belt carries the standard equipment—holster, baton loop, and handcuff case. He moves with an easy, contained authority, the kind that comes from patrolling Harlem’s streets, where respect must be earned.
“Ben Graham,” Jean says. “This is Pruitt Jones.”
The two men shake hands.
“You’re a fine pianist, Mr. Jones,” Ben says.
“Thank you, sir,” He breaks into a fresh-faced grin.
Jean, in a brown wool overcoat, shifts uneasily on her feet. “You’re sure it’s all right?”
“My friend Karen said it was.” Ben wishes he believed her.
“When I told Bessie, she said not even her daddy could get her into that classy dining room of theirs,” Jean says.
“I’m afraid I can’t either,” Ben says. “Karen offered us a private room.” He sees Jean go still.
“That girl’s late,” Pruitt Jones says, but the look he gives Jean is all warmth.
“Even if I were her mama, I couldn’t make her do what I want,” Jean says.
“Have you spoken with her?” Ben asks. “Isn’t she worried?”
“She’s worried, all right,” Jean says. “That doesn’t mean she’s going to do what’s right.”
Footsteps slap the pavement, running. A tall, slim figure cuts across the street.
Bessie arrives without a hat, her curls loosened and lifted from the run, framing her flushed face. She nods once in greeting, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Ben says. “Thank you for coming.”
The girl looks away, as if his kind words don’t sit right.
Ben pushes open the heavy door and holds it for his guests. Inside, the vestibule smells faintly of soap and steam. A black house telephone hangs on the wall beside the time clock. Two men in dark suits occupy a wooden bench nearby, reading newspapers without reading them, black oxfords polished to a hard shine. Ben asks the operator for Miss Karen Delafield in Public Relations. While they wait, the muted growl of a Packard echoes from the distant, covered driveway.
Ben is familiar with the Waldorf Driveway—a passage through the building itself, from 50th to 49th Street, where cars enter, vanish briefly beneath a covered porte cochere, then reappear on the far side. Friends have driven him through it, but he prefers the subway.
Now she’s here. Ben smiles at her dear face, her rosebud mouth, her blonde helmet of hair framing her expressive eyes. Karen’s winter-white lamé suit fits tightly at her slender waist—elegant, well maintained, defiant of her straitened circumstances. He’s struck again by her height, equal to Bessie’s. Her stiff posture and wary eyes signal him not to introduce his guests.
Jean, a queenly presence in her own right, seems to shrink beside this glamorous young white woman. Bessie maintains an aloof silence, while Mr. Jones summons a polite half smile.
Miss Delafield leads them along a narrow staff corridor, the kind reserved for hotel employees. The air shifts here—cooler, staler, threaded with the distant hum of a service elevator.
Ben follows a half step behind. They turn the corner. Ahead, the corridor appears occupied.
The two men in dark suits—law enforcement agents, he realizes—stand at attention, alert now, no longer pretending at idleness.
Ben sees the reason for it. He knows that bulldog face from the newspapers.
It’s the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The corridor seems to grow more confining. Even the air stills.
J. Edgar Hoover moves forward with his second in command, Clyde Tolson, at his side, the two of them engrossed in conversation.
Miss Delafield stops so abruptly Ben nearly walks into her.
Hoover’s gaze passes over them as if they’re not there. Tolson’s expression remains unreadable.
One of the agents shifts aside to clear the way.
Karen does not speak, but waits for the corridor to clear, her hand guiding them forward as if nothing unusual has occurred.
Something in her manner has tightened—just enough for Ben to notice.
They resume walking.
A few steps later, she leans in slightly, her voice low. “Director Hoover is in residence,” she says. “He’s staying in the house this weekend.” Her tone suggests this is routine.
Behind them, the corridor returns to its normal hush—agents resuming their posts, a door closing softly, the hotel sealing itself back into routine.
Ben walks beside her, aware that something has shifted.
A knot of well-turned-out hotel guests—lost, or on some wayward errand—looms in their path.
Ben notices Karen’s expression change. Her brown eyes, carefully made up to appear large and striking, flicker with irritation as she steers them past.
Only then does it fully register with him how carefully Karen has orchestrated their movements. She is avoiding the maître d’, making certain the lunching women in the main dining room—with their towers of parcels—will neither see them nor take offense at their presence. She must have gone to some trouble to obtain the key.
Karen unlocks the door to a windowless wood-paneled room and gestures them toward a heavy table laid with white linen, silver, and fine china. A small crystal chandelier casts a muted glow, barely bright enough to read the black leather-bound menus.
With a tense smile, she excuses herself to return to her desk.
“Thank you.” Ben wishes he’d taken his guests to Katz’s Delicatessen instead of burdening her with his awkward request.
But then Bessie probably wouldn’t have come.
The waiter arrives promptly—and, speaking only to Ben, takes their orders with professional efficiency and departs as quickly as courtesy allows. Pruitt Jones sits upright and commands their attention.
Pruitt Jones produces the cardboard and lays it on the table. “A threat like this—a threat in writing—we need to take seriously.”
Ben is surprised to find the young policeman, still in his twenties, assuming command of the room. No one challenges him.
“Here’s what we do,” Pruitt says. “We don’t leave Bess alone. Someone’s always with her.”
Pruitt Jones explicates his plan. Pruitt himself will walk Bessie to campus, wait outside her classroom, walk her back to Jean’s. He’ll work nights to be available every day. After each assertion, he looks to Jean, his boyish brown eyes seeking her approval. Clearly, Pruitt’s smitten with the charismatic singer he accompanies on piano. The fifteen years she has on him have only deepened her appeal, investing her beauty with a rare composure, depth, and an understated sensuality.
Jean tells Ben that her husband, Curtis, has fitted their apartment door with triple locks. Pruitt has already alerted the other Harlem officers to keep an eye on the building. If they spot anyone who doesn’t belong, they’ll sound an alarm.
“What do you do if the alarm comes?” Ben asks.
“An officer goes to their door,” Pruitt says. “Knocks. Stays there. Guards them till that person leaves.”
Ben is impressed, yet left wanting more. “Did you ask your captain for help?”
Pruitt Jones did. The captain only echoed Pruitt’s request. Every Harlem officer on the lookout. He also gave Jones permission to wear his uniform when off duty and in Bessie’s company.
Ben turns to the women. “Who would want to hurt Bessie?”
No one answers.
“We have to protect her,” Ben says, “but we also need to find out who wrote this.”
Bessie gives a short, disbelieving scoff. “If you find out, then what?”
“I’ll talk to him,” Ben says.
She straightens her long neck and fixes diminutive Ben with a cynical look.
“Oh, you’re going to talk to him. You’re going to talk to this homicidal maniac, so he’ll never dream of killing me again.”
The way she looks down at him carries him back to childhood, when his older brothers bullied and belittled the youngest, smallest, weakest of the three. Since recovering the fortune he lost in the Crash, they look up to him—but only because he’s become the richest.
“We need to find out why he threatened you,” Ben says. “Get to the bottom of it.”
Pruitt Jones studies him, then nods. “Your guardian’s right. We’ve got a mystery to solve.”
“Meantime, one of us stays with her. Always,” Jean says. “At night, she stays inside.”
“Oh no, I don’t,” Bessie says.
“This is not the time,” Jean says, her voice sharpening.
“Not Tuesday nights.” On Tuesdays, Bessie goes to Yorkville, Manhattan’s German American working-class neighborhood, and walks with the demonstrators outside the German-American Bund’s weekly meeting, signs raised.
“The Nazi group your father wrote about?” Ben says, recalling. “Led by that fellow at Cowan’s—Kuhn? I would think you’d want to avoid them.”
Bessie glares at him. “They’re worse than Daddy said. American Nazis, marching under swastika flags, sticking out their arms and shouting ‘Heil Hitler.’ Every Tuesday night I protest them, and I’m not stopping because they threaten me.”
“Your father wrote an unfavorable article about them. You think Kuhn and his Bund are behind this?” Ben gestures toward the red You’re next scrawled across the cardboard.
Bessie shrugs. She has no idea. People like them murdered her parents in Germany. No one seems to grasp how dangerous they are. Americans are joining them. They’re even sending their children to Nazi camps on Long Island.
She lifts her chin. “I’m going, whether you like it or not.”
Jean and Ben exchange a look. Once again, Ben has the unsettling feeling that they’re the parents of a headstrong teenager determined to hurl herself into danger.
“What do you think, Jean?” he asks. “Can Pruitt protect her at the demonstration?”
Pruitt shakes his head. “My shift starts at seven. I’m on nights so I can watch her every day.”
Ben looks to Jean. “Then it’ll have to be you.”
“You saw my boss, Kroeber, sitting at Kuhn’s table at Cowan’s,” Jean says. “I can’t let him see me protesting.”
“Will your boss go to the meeting?” Ben asks.
“For sure. Fritz Kuhn’s practically his only ally. Kuhn demands loyalty. No easy friend—he gives Kroeber orders like the führer himself. Kroeber hates it, but he needs him.”
Jean lets out a long sigh. “They even argue when I serve them dinner, like I’m not there.”
Ben takes all this in.
“I support a family—a son,” Jean says. “I can’t afford to lose my job.”
Ben, Wall Street investor Benjamin Graham, has no desire to spend a Tuesday night in Yorkville, however worthy the cause. He would have to leave dinner early and explain to Hazel and the children. He knows nothing about guarding people—least of all a headstrong girl who stands half a head taller than he does and barely speaks to him.
Yet the crude warning on the cardboard will not leave him. If something happened to her—
He stops. Should he, the family breadwinner, take that risk? His father did not choose to leave his children destitute. Death made that choice for him.
Ben has a choice. But what could he possibly do to protect her? A fund manager. A professor of finance. A man of ideas, not action.
He cannot let her get hurt.
“I’ll go with you,” Ben says.
“Why would you?” Bessie demands.
“I was fatherless, too,” Ben says. “I was beaten by bullies, but no one threatened my life. I won’t stand by while someone threatens yours.”
Now that he’s made the decision, it feels right—his moral obligation.
He arranges to meet Bessie outside the Bund headquarters at the appointed time. Jean will accompany Bessie there by subway, then continue on to work at Kroeber’s residence. On meeting nights, she prepares a late supper for him and his dog, serving it when he gets home.
“Let’s find out if one of them wrote this,” Ben says, gesturing toward the cardboard and its sinister scrawl.
The food arrives belatedly, plates crowded together on the waiter’s tray, no longer quite hot. Ben wonders if the discussion has dulled their appetites.
Apparently not. His guests inhale the aromas and turn to the meal with evident delight. Waldorf and watercress salads, sole in cream sauce, Virginia ham, gumbo creole, and peach melba disappear steadily. Whatever slight the hotel has dealt them, the kitchen has not. Conversation yields to appreciative silence.
For an interlude, the danger outside the Waldorf recedes. They savor the meal with quiet pleasure and gratitude that surprise even Ben.
Jean asks if she may take a slice of ham for the German shepherd she has grown fond of at her work.
The waiter returns with the check on a small gold tray. Though he disappeared for long stretches, didn’t refill their water, or ask if they needed anything else, Ben lays down the cash and adds a generous tip.
Minutes Later. Waldorf Hotel—from the Employees’ Entrance to Miss Karen Delafield’s Second-Floor Office
Ben accompanies his guests to the staff entrance, inured by now to an offended glance or two, and sees them off.
Then he surprises himself with an audacious impulse. Tucking the cardboard beneath his arm, he hurries up the stairs to Karen’s second-floor office. Not because he wants to see her again, but because he needs one more favor.
Karen smiles up at him from her desk, her friendly manner apparently restored.
For a moment, her luminous smile almost makes him forget why he has come. Then he draws the cardboard close against his jacket.
“I need to talk with Mr. Hoover,” he says. “About preventing a murder. Please show me to his room.”
Karen holds Ben in the highest regard. Since they met on a Caribbean cruise that January, she has repeatedly sought his advice about troubles with her fiancé. Ben considers himself singularly unqualified for the role. His growing feelings for her make him the last person who ought to counsel her on matters of the heart. Yet whenever she asks, he cannot refuse. They meet for lunch, and he does his best to help.
Without hesitation, she rises and ushers him into the elevator. As she leads him down the corridor, she confides that Mr. Hoover and Mr. Tolson frequently come up from Washington on weekends to bet on the ponies, dine at the Stork Club, and attend prizefights at the Garden.
“But I don’t know him,” she says apologetically. “I can’t introduce you.”
“No matter,” Ben says. “I appreciate your taking the time.”
She turns to him. “That tall ward of yours—an orphan, you said. She could—she could do very well here. I could get her a position as a housekeeper. We’re always looking for good maids.”
“That’s kind of you,” Ben says. “But Bessie’s a college student.”
“We have college boys working as bellhops,” she says with a giggle, “but she’s not a boy.”
The smile fades. Ben knows Karen never had the chance to attend college. When her father died, she went to work to support her widowed mother and younger sister.
She points him toward the door of Mr. Hoover’s suite. “Best of luck.”
Then she hurries back to her office.
A Moment Later. Hoover and Tolson’s Two-Bedroom Suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
Her good wishes embolden him. He knocks.
A hotel maid—pale-skinned, in a crisp uniform—opens the door. “Oh, Mr. Robinson! You were wonderful in Barbary Coast,” she gushes.
Ben rewards her with the gracious smile he imagines a movie star bestows on an admiring fan. “Why, thank you.”
It isn’t the first time he’s been mistaken for Edward G. Robinson.
The maid apparently assumes that any celebrity should be admitted without delay. Ben has read that Walter Winchell, the gossip columnist, and Ethel Merman, star of Anything Goes, are known to drop in on the Director at the Waldorf on a whim. Curious, he thinks. For a man who guards his privacy, the Director seems remarkably accessible to the famous.
Ben enters the well-appointed foyer. The maid resumes polishing the fluted shaft of a neoclassical brass lamp, then waves him to the sitting room.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, age 41, and Assistant Director Clyde Tolson, age 35, sit close together on a silk brocade sofa, their legs crossed and hands at their laps, fingers nearly touching. Both wear dapper three-piece white suits, each with a distinctive tie and matching pocket handkerchief.
Mr. Hoover’s dark protruding eyes bore into Ben. “Who are you?”
“I apologize for the intrusion,” Ben says evenly. “My name is Benjamin Graham. I believe I have information that may concern your office—information that could prevent a death.”
“Not now,” Tolson says. “Not when we’re expecting Dorothy.”
Mr. Hoover reaches for the black telephone. “My G-men will arrive before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“They may look unarmed,” Tolson says, “but they carry Smith & Wessons under their suits.”
Hoover dials the operator. To Ben, he says, “My agents are standing by, as you no doubt perceived.”
“Festina lente,” Benjamin Graham replies in fluent Latin. “Make haste slowly. The phrase was a personal motto of the Roman emperor Augustus.”
“Forget it,” Hoover says into the mouthpiece. “Just a know-it-all egghead.”
Tolson laughs. “Make haste slowly, huh? Did that motto do this Augustus any good?”
“Yes,” Ben says. “It prevented rash decisions, minimized losses, and helped the emperor earn public trust while building an empire grounded in law.”
The Director, whose linguistic range did not extend beyond English, studies Ben’s composure, small stature, and command of Latin and Roman history. He appears to make up his mind.
“You have two minutes to state your business,” Hoover says.
Ben complies, laying the cardboard before him with calm assurance and his characteristic gravity.
America’s Top Cop exchanges a blasé look with his second-in-command. “If we arrested every man who says he wants to kill someone, there’d be no one left to run the numbers rackets, extort wholesalers in the artichoke market, or dabble in racketeering. If you want us to collar the man who wrote this, call us when he’s robbing a bank or committing an interstate crime. Till then—goodbye.”
If even Hoover won’t help him, Ben thinks, he’ll have to put himself in the line of fire.
As Ben turns to leave, Dorothy Lamour, age 21, nearly collides with him, clutching an embossed maroon box to her chest. She wears a simple navy-blue dress; her dark hair falls in loose waves to her shoulders, her eyes flash, and she ignores Ben entirely.
“Edgar!” she cries. “I must show you this gift. A German big shot gave it to me—and I think it’s far more precious than he wants me to know.”
Leaving the door wide open, she sweeps into the sitting room and places the box on the table in front of the two G-men. She opens the box with a flourish.
“Look how the pendant glows. The gold—isn’t it gorgeous?”
Overhearing from the hall, Ben sidesteps out of view.
“Let me guess,” says the Director. “A token of affection from Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl? I see him at the Stork Club.”
“Why yes,” she says. “He has the air of an important government man.”
“An important Nazi,” Hoover says, “though he’s losing favor. We keep an eye on him. Never mind—he sails for Berlin tomorrow.”
“So he told me,” Miss Lamour says. “I plan to keep my gift in a safety deposit box.” Spoken with the pride of someone who has just learned to handle such matters wisely.
“Very sensible, my dear,” Mr. Hoover says. “Put that thing in a safety deposit box, and you’ll be fine.”
Ben forces himself to turn and go, before he’s seen.
Minutes Later. Outside the Staff Entrance, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
Ben exits the hotel via the employee door. A half dozen of Hoover’s G-men stand outside smoking and schmoozing, manly in their well-cut suits with broad shoulder pads and pinched waists. He pictures the guns they keep tucked in holsters beneath those tailored jackets.
A teenaged orphan. A death threat. Nazis, cops, women, guns, gold.
“Quo me praecipitavi?” Ben asks aloud. Silently, he translates the Latin phrase: Into what have I thrown myself?
Appendix: Historical Notes
The Director of the FBI and his second-in-command really did share a two-bedroom suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, quite often on weekends. In New York, they liked to bet on the ponies and dine at the Stork Club, where in early 1936, they would hear Dorothy Lamour sing. They did have a friendship with Ethel Merman while she starred in Broadway’s Anything Goes, and with Walter Winchell, celebrity gossip columnist. Though Mr. Hoover and Dorothy Lamour did “date,” it’s unclear if they ventured into romance. Also unclear is whether Mr. Hoover’s friendship with Dorothy Lamour began in 1936, or a year later.
G-men really did carry Smith & Wesson pistols concealed under their suits. The Waldorf Hotel telephone operator did call them when Hoover summoned them.
Dorothy Lamour did perform as a singer at the Stork Club in 1936, accompanied by Herbie Kay and his orchestra. She later married Herbie Kay, though the date of their marriage is uncertain. She was a torch singer before and after her movie career. Regarding her friendship in the 1930s with J. Edgar Hoover, she never revealed if their relationship ever became intimate.
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel had an uneven history of following segregationist policies, often denying entry to Black guests. In “The making of the Waldorf-Astoria,” The New Criterion states:
“The New York World reported that three black patrons were served in the Waldorf-Astoria bar in 1895, but on other occasions non-white visitors were turned away. Some integrated social events (like a Hunter College Senior Hop in 1932) took place, but in 1934 the managers of Gimbel’s were told their staff party (planned for the ballroom) could not include black guests.”
In 1946, the United Nations was established in New York City, and the UN Secretariat needed a hotel to accommodate all their delegates, guests, and personnel, including people of color.
“So, the UN made an arrangement with the Waldorf: the Waldorf agreed to welcome all guests regardless of color, and, in exchange, it would become the UN’s preferred hotel for housing and events.”
Starting in 1946, Ben Graham would have been able to take Black guests to lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria dining room. In 1936, his guests were not welcome.
Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes wrote a satirical poem about the Waldorf’s twenty-eight-million-dollar renovation in 1931. “So when you’ve no place else to go, homeless and hungry ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags.” When Hughes writes “They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will you,” he lists three of the dishes my characters order, from a 1930s Waldorf menu I perused on their behalf but can no longer find online.
- The New York Mafia did run a Violent Extortion Racket Controlling the Artichoke Market
A mobster named Ciro Terranova, “the Artichoke King,” forced wholesalers to buy artichokes at very high prices. Those who refused to pay were severely beaten. On December 21, 1935, Mayor LaGuardia fought back by banning the sale of artichokes in New York City. Mr. Hoover refers to this recent extortion racket when he refuses to help Ben.
-
What’s True About Benjamin Graham
In 1936, Ben did meet (on a Caribbean cruise) and fall in love with a statuesque, much younger blonde and beautiful woman whom I call “Karen.” She did work as a secretary to publicity director Ted Saucier at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. (She also occasionally worked as a model. Lucky Strike hired her as a painter’s model for one of their cigarette billboards.) She did need to work to support herself, her mother, and sister, because her father had died; Ben and Karen had the loss of their father and breadwinner in common. She often called Ben when she had difficulties with her fiancés. They’d talk on the phone at 12:45 when her boss, whom she called “Ted,” was out of the office, or Ben would take her to lunch at the Waldorf and she would ask for his guidance. For instance, he wrote about a question she wished to discuss with him an unpublished memoir:
“Should she seek another reconciliation with Tony, or should she accept Campbell’s proposal? She had great confidence in my judgement, and would be ‘eternally grateful’ for my counsel.”
He reflects with the hard-won hindsight of an elder memoirist:
“Nothing could have been more foolish than to inject myself into the romantic tangles of this much too attractive damsel.”
However, he wanted to spend time with her, and this was her way of including him in her life. He never asked her for a favor, like he does in The Graham Plan.
His two older brothers did bully and belittle him. He revisits these memories when, at sixty-three, he tried to understand why he built the wall around his heart.
He served as a professor of finance at Columbia from 1928 to 1955. He graduated from Columbia College in 1914. In 1936, he managed the fund called the Benjamin Graham Joint Account. He really did get mistaken for the actor, Edward G. Robinson. In his autobiography, Benjamin Graham: The Memoirs of the Dean of Wall Street, he recounts giving blood at the Red Cross on Fifth Avenue during World War II, when “the rumor went around that Edward G. Robinson was there under an assumed name, and lots of nurses ran in to look at me.” On page 270, he tells a lovely anecdote about Mr. Robinson’s remark when they met for the second time, at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Ben goes on to say: “In after years we became friends in Beverly Hills.”
Everything Ben said about his teenaged daughter was true. She’s my mother, Marjorie. She also became valedictorian of her class at the Lincoln School at Columbia Teacher’s College and played center forward on the soccer team. Her “good girl” persona may have been, in part, her way of trying to keep the leaky boat of her parents’ marriage afloat. Later, she rebelled in her own way, becoming a socialist—a Trotskyite—while a college student at the University of Chicago. She and her father stayed on good terms. They would walk around the Central Park reservoir together, arguing (affably, and in her case, passionately) about which economic system was superior. She told me Ben always won with his unassailable defense of capitalism.
Ben read, spoke, and translated many languages, including Latin and Greek. He memorized hundreds of lines of poetry and aphorisms in those languages and delighted in quoting them at opportune moments. His two quotations in this episode reflect his lifelong love of languages, literature, and learning.