David Hill understands Hot Springs. He came of age in the Spa City. Hill, whose work has appeared in publications ranging from The New Yorker to GQ, now lives with his wife and three children in Nyack, N.Y., where he serves as vice president of the National Writers Union.
Hill quit his previous job and spent five years working on a book that was released to national acclaim earlier this month by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It's titled "The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice."
The book will increase national interest in the city and perhaps even enhance the revitalization efforts downtown, which already were moving forward prior to the pandemic. Regardless of the economic impact, it's a good read.
Hill moved his family to Hot Springs for a year while working on "The Vapors" and became a regular presence at the Garland County Historical Society offices, learning everything possible about the period from 1931-68.
The book is named for the upscale nightclub and casino in Hot Springs that featured entertainers ranging from Tony Bennett to the Smothers Brothers. Dane Harris, a former World War II pilot, saved the money from his stake in the casino at the Belvedere Country Club in the 1950s, then partnered with Owney Madden to build The Vapors at 315 Park Ave. The spot had been occupied by Phillips Drive-In. The club opened in 1960 at a time when casino gambling was illegal but wide open.
Madden, an underworld boss in New York City during the 1920s, came to Hot Springs in the 1930s and became a powerful figure there. Madden died of emphysema in April 1965, not living to see Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller's successful efforts to shut down illegal gambling during his four years in office from 1967-71. Harris died at age 62 in 1981. The two made a formidable pair.
"According to his own account, Madden committed his first crime at age 14, clubbing a man and stealing $500," Shirley Tomkievicz writes in "Arkansas Biography: A Collection of Notable Lives." "He rose to lead Hell's Kitchen's most violent gang, the Gophers.
"In 1911, Madden married and briefly lived with Dorothy Rogers, with whom he had a daughter named Margaret, his only known child. A professional killer and gunman, he was wounded many times. In 1915, he was sentenced to Sing-Sing Prison in Ossining, N.Y., for manslaughter, and was paroled in early 1923.
"By then, the 18th Amendment, which marked the beginning of Prohibition, had made the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquor illegal. During Prohibition, numerous underground bars and saloons appeared, and the market for bootleg alcohol boomed.
"Now in his element, Madden made fast profits in bootlegging, nightclubs and show business. Among other enterprises, he turned a failing Harlem nightspot at Lenox Avenue and 142nd Street into the Cotton Club, the fabled showcase for black musical talent performing for white patrons in the Jazz Age. Madden also bankrolled the Hollywood careers of George Raft and Mae West, both of whom had lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was West's boyfriend and protector. 'Sweet, but oh so vicious' was how she described him in later years.
"By the late 1920s, Madden was a millionaire, chief of an underworld empire that included real estate, boxing, gambling, bootlegging, breweries and entertainment. With Frank Costello, Charles 'Lucky' Luciano and other mob figures, he organized a 'crime commission,' or syndicate, whose objective was high profits, a businesslike operating style and a minimum of bad publicity."
In July 1932, Madden was sent back to Sing-Sing for parole violations. He was released the next year. Tomkievicz writes: "In his 40s and in chronic ill health because of old bullet wounds, Madden was persona non grata in the New York underworld. Looking for a new life, he began visiting Hot Springs, which had for years been a haven for gambling, prostitution and bootlegging. The city was also a peaceful little spa, known for its beauty and its health-giving waters."
Madden began dating Agnes Demby, daughter of the Hot Springs postmaster. They married in November 1935 and bought a house on West Grand Avenue.
"Under what terms Madden left New York will never be known," Tomkievicz writes. "High-placed New York politicians and criminals may have struck the deal, possibly with Costello as broker or Luciano, who may have commissioned Madden to oversee mob operations in Hot Springs. Confined to Arkansas, Madden played a public role as a small-town gentleman. But it's reasonable to think that he played an active part in illegal activities."
Madden furnished the wire service that brought race results to bookies. He later had a controlling interest in the Southern Club, a casino on Central Avenue that was in a building that now houses a wax museum. Tomkievicz notes that a "who's who of gangland chiefs--Costello, Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis--visited Madden regularly and openly."
Hill weaves together the stories of three people: Madden, Harris and his own grandmother, Hazel Hill, a single mother of three boys who worked for Harris. This is a work of nonfiction, though David Hill reconstructs dialogue from sources such as FBI transcripts, newspaper reports and personal correspondence. "The Vapors" reads like a novel.
"Hot Springs grew into one of the most unusual cities in the country, with an economy that revolved around tourism and employed some of the South's most colorful characters," Hill writes. "From carnival folks to musicians and artists, people of all races and religions flocked to Hot Springs for work taking care of the diverse and often international guests.
"Despite being deep in the heavily Baptist and segregated South, Hot Springs boasted two synagogues and a Jewish hospital, two Catholic churches and a Catholic school, and 19 black churches that served the city's thousands of African American residents, most of whom worked in the bathhouses or hospitality industry. On the east side of Malvern Avenue were black-owned hotels, restaurants and theaters--even a black-owned and operated hospital.
"All this in addition to a growing number of Greek, Italian and other European immigrant families, all of whom followed paths to Hot Springs to either take the baths or take care of those who did. And taking care of the bathers meant more than just scrubbing them and drying them off. The hospitality business in Hot Springs was full-service. All that a visitor desired was available. They needed only cross the street."
In the 1920s, Chicago gangster Al Capone would "take the waters" to treat his syphilis. Hill notes that the people who visited Hot Springs from across the country built it "into one of America's first resort towns, one that aimed to rival the glitziest spas of prewar Europe. ... On the other side of Central Avenue, directly across from the federally owned Bathhouse Row, were saloons, brothels, crooked auction houses and all sorts of bookmaker shops and casinos.
"The diverse residents of Hot Springs weren't a bunch of Bible Belt wimps. Hot Springs was home to card dealers and bookies, jazz musicians and burlesque dancers, prostitutes and con artists and everything in between."
The Vapors, Southern Club, Belvedere and Tower Club were the top casinos.
"In addition to these four main clubs, there were over 70 more casinos, bookmaker shops and establishments with some form of gambling, large and small, scattered throughout the town of 28,000 people," Hill writes, setting the tone for the rest of this 316-page book.
"On a per capita basis, Hot Springs was perhaps the most sinful little city in the world."
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.