The Telephone Booth Indian is a book by A.J. Liebling. Originally published in 1942, this sinewy compendium opens the door to the gritty underworld of grifters, showmen and hustlers from a bygone era of deadpan humor, decadent bonhomie and vigorous one-upmanship. With affectionate aplomb, Liebling introduces us to the colorful if unscrupulous denizens of Broadway’s Jollity Building, whose names alone are reminiscent of Garbage Pail Kids: Paddy the Booster, Acid Test Ike, Lotsandlots, Judge Horumph, Count de Pennies and Marty the Clutch (so named for his “custom of mangling people’s fingers when he shakes hands with them”). The “telephone booth Indians” moniker refers to promoters so pressed for cash that they must conduct their wheeling and dealing from one of the lobby’s eight coin-box phone booths. While it’s riveting to learn about the humble, hardscrabble beginnings of the Shubert brothers, what’s most memorable about this masterpiece is the nostalgia Liebling evokes in his reader for larger-than-life characters such as the sartorial peacock Roy Wilson Howard, a newsman whose self-control on the telephone Liebling irresistibly likens to that “of a fat woman waving away a tray of chocolate eclairs.”
The Telephone Booth Indian
