with the lurid tabloid. Now, as advertising budgets grew tight, the paper’s fortunes began to slide.
The Depression, of course, was a change of mood as much as a change in business fortunes. The world that Ed inhabited, the nightspots and cabarets of Broadway, felt a sobering chill. It could hardly have been otherwise: by March 1930 the breadlines in New York snaked block after block, and the city’s YMCA fed twelve thousand unemployed workers daily. The mad spirit of the 1920s—the rouged flappers, the insouciant evenings at gin joints—was slipping away. The carefree effervescence was replaced by a deepening shadow. Even romances, once content to be casual, now faced a make-or-break point.
Ed and Sylvia’s relationship had grown ever stronger since its beginning in the fall of 1926, despite their steady-as-a-clock pattern of breakups and reconciliations. Although by the spring of 1930 it was clearly a longstanding romance, Ed appeared to be moving no closer to marriage. Sylvia, however, needed to move things along. “Ed had no intention of getting married,” she recalled much later in life, “but finally I trapped him into eloping.”
In April, Sylvia told Ed that she was pregnant. Hurried discussions ensued. Ed agreed to get married, but the two decided to keep the wedding a secret from their families until after a short honeymoon. Ed planned a City Hall ceremony, witnessed by close friends, to be followed the next evening by a short Catholic ceremony. (Ed wanted any children raised as Catholics, which Sylvia agreed to.) Then the couple planned on honeymooning for the weekend in Atlantic City, after which they would break the news to their parents.
Ed and Sylvia went to City Hall on April 28. The witnesses were Sylvia’s close friend Ruth Sanburg, and Ed’s friends Jim Kahn, a sportswriter from his Evening Mail days, and Johnny Dundee, the boxer who had shown him around New York when he first arrived. A quick wedding ceremony was performed, and the couple went to dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel with Dundee.
Everyone understood it was to be kept secret until Ed gave the okay, but apparently someone at City Hall hadn’t agreed to the plan. As soon as the newlyweds got back to Ed’s apartment the phone started to ring. Reporters quizzed them about thedetails; a photographer was on the way. This put Ed and Sylvia in a quandary—their families would soon read about their wedding in the newspapers. They realized they had no choice. The two of them placed hurried calls to their parents to let them know they had gotten married.
Sylvia’s family took the surprising news with relative equanimity. “At that point I was so emotionally involved with Ed that they wanted me to have anything that would have made me happy,” she said. But the Sullivans were aghast. As Sylvia described it, Ed’s family was “all devout Catholics—who were opposed to the marriage.” It would take several years—and diplomatic efforts on Sylvia’s part—before Ed’s family would speak to him.
Ed and Sylvia moved into an apartment on 154 West 48th, not far from where Ed had lived when he first moved to New York. They lived over Billy LaHiff’s tavern, a Broadway watering hole frequented by show business types, celebrity athletes, and politicians. (The apartment, owned by LaHiff, had once been rented by Jack Dempsey and, later, by Broadway chronicler Damon Runyon.) The couple’s only child, Elizabeth, named after Ed’s mother, was born on December 22.
In June 1931 the Graphic needed a new Broadway gossip columnist. Walter Winchell had gone to Hearst’s Daily Mirror in 1929, lured by a hefty salary increase and a signing bonus. Winchell’s high-profile post at the Graphic had been filled by Louis Sobol. As written by the mild-mannered Sobol, the Graphic ’s gossip column was never as talked about as it had been under Winchell, yet Sobol still parleyed it into a career boost. In mid June, he too landed a column in a Hearst
The Depression, of course, was a change of mood as much as a change in business fortunes. The world that Ed inhabited, the nightspots and cabarets of Broadway, felt a sobering chill. It could hardly have been otherwise: by March 1930 the breadlines in New York snaked block after block, and the city’s YMCA fed twelve thousand unemployed workers daily. The mad spirit of the 1920s—the rouged flappers, the insouciant evenings at gin joints—was slipping away. The carefree effervescence was replaced by a deepening shadow. Even romances, once content to be casual, now faced a make-or-break point.
Ed and Sylvia’s relationship had grown ever stronger since its beginning in the fall of 1926, despite their steady-as-a-clock pattern of breakups and reconciliations. Although by the spring of 1930 it was clearly a longstanding romance, Ed appeared to be moving no closer to marriage. Sylvia, however, needed to move things along. “Ed had no intention of getting married,” she recalled much later in life, “but finally I trapped him into eloping.”
In April, Sylvia told Ed that she was pregnant. Hurried discussions ensued. Ed agreed to get married, but the two decided to keep the wedding a secret from their families until after a short honeymoon. Ed planned a City Hall ceremony, witnessed by close friends, to be followed the next evening by a short Catholic ceremony. (Ed wanted any children raised as Catholics, which Sylvia agreed to.) Then the couple planned on honeymooning for the weekend in Atlantic City, after which they would break the news to their parents.
Ed and Sylvia went to City Hall on April 28. The witnesses were Sylvia’s close friend Ruth Sanburg, and Ed’s friends Jim Kahn, a sportswriter from his Evening Mail days, and Johnny Dundee, the boxer who had shown him around New York when he first arrived. A quick wedding ceremony was performed, and the couple went to dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel with Dundee.
Everyone understood it was to be kept secret until Ed gave the okay, but apparently someone at City Hall hadn’t agreed to the plan. As soon as the newlyweds got back to Ed’s apartment the phone started to ring. Reporters quizzed them about thedetails; a photographer was on the way. This put Ed and Sylvia in a quandary—their families would soon read about their wedding in the newspapers. They realized they had no choice. The two of them placed hurried calls to their parents to let them know they had gotten married.
Sylvia’s family took the surprising news with relative equanimity. “At that point I was so emotionally involved with Ed that they wanted me to have anything that would have made me happy,” she said. But the Sullivans were aghast. As Sylvia described it, Ed’s family was “all devout Catholics—who were opposed to the marriage.” It would take several years—and diplomatic efforts on Sylvia’s part—before Ed’s family would speak to him.
Ed and Sylvia moved into an apartment on 154 West 48th, not far from where Ed had lived when he first moved to New York. They lived over Billy LaHiff’s tavern, a Broadway watering hole frequented by show business types, celebrity athletes, and politicians. (The apartment, owned by LaHiff, had once been rented by Jack Dempsey and, later, by Broadway chronicler Damon Runyon.) The couple’s only child, Elizabeth, named after Ed’s mother, was born on December 22.
In June 1931 the Graphic needed a new Broadway gossip columnist. Walter Winchell had gone to Hearst’s Daily Mirror in 1929, lured by a hefty salary increase and a signing bonus. Winchell’s high-profile post at the Graphic had been filled by Louis Sobol. As written by the mild-mannered Sobol, the Graphic ’s gossip column was never as talked about as it had been under Winchell, yet Sobol still parleyed it into a career boost. In mid June, he too landed a column in a Hearst
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