Intimate Nights

Description by OLDIES.com:

Before Beatlemania swept the country, Manhattan nightlife was a cabaret, and New York City was the land of discovery. Every few blocks stood a glamorously named boite - the Blue Angel, Le Ruban Bleu, the Bon Soir, Cafe Society Downtown, RSVP - where showbiz history was in progress. That whole wild age comes back to life in Intimate Nights: The Golden Age Of New York Cabaret, first published in 1991 and now extensively revised and updated, in which author James Gavin traces an era that stretches from the days of corrosive speakeasy gin to the genre's 1950s heyday to Cabaret's wacky renaissance of the 1970s. Intimate Nights won the 1992 Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism and has been called "diligently researched," "glittering" and "outrageous."