![]() ![]() Following this decision, both Leon and Barney were attacked by the press, leading to the clubs’ revenue dropping 45% in three weeks. As he refused to answer the committee’s questions he was charged and convicted for contempt of Congress and began a one-year jail sentence in March of the following year. In 1947, Josephson’s brother, Leon, a well-known communist and attorney for both locations of the club, was subpoenaed by House Un-American Activities Committee for his political beliefs. Unlike its downtown counterpart, Café Society Uptown sought to attract a more affluent clientele, which ranged from prominent Black artists and intellectuals such as Sterling Brown and Langston Hughes, the world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, and even Eleanor Roosevelt. As a means of saving it, a second branch of the club was opened on 58th Street between Lexington and Park Avenue, coming to be known as Café Society Uptown, while the original location was Café Society Downtown. Unfortunately, though the club was able to book well-known performers, profits were still not high enough to keep the business afloat. Café Society also helped to launch the careers of Ruth Brown, Lena Horne, dancer Pearl Primus, and Big Joe Turner and popularized gospel groups like the Dixie Hummingbirds and Golden Gate Quartet. Holiday would go on to perform at the club for most of 1939, an endeavor that helped to build her onstage confidence and refine her act. At the insistence of Josephson, Holiday closed her set with the song and then proceeded to immediately leave the stage, allowing for the audience to fully digest the weighted meaning behind its lyrics. One such musician was Billie Holiday whose first live performance of the song “Strange Fruit,” which sold more than a million copies after its release, took place on the club’s stage. Even so, over its ten-year run, Café Society held performances from many of the country’s greatest black musicians. Alongside the club’s name, Josephine also adopted the slogan “The wrong place for the Right people,” with the capital ‘R’ signifying the club’s leftist leanings.ĭespite the club being fully integrated, most of its clientele ended up being white as the Great Depression prohibited most New Yorkers, especially those of the working class, from being able to afford the entrance fee, despite being reasonably priced for the time. Josephson would go on to trademark the name which had previously been coined by the society columnist Maury Paul who wrote as “Cholly Knickerbocker” for the New York Journal American. Along this vein, the club’s name was suggested by Clare Booth Luce to satirize the usage of “café society” as a term that represented members of the moneyed crowd, with Josephson’s club having been created to defy the pretensions of the rich.
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