Officially, 110 people were allowed, but Mitchell often crammed in way more. Not only Ginsberg and Kerouac, but also LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), Gregory Corso, Bob Kaufman, Hugh Romney and Diane di Prima were among those who read for an often packed house. A year earlier, Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl had reached national recognition as the result of a widely publicized obscenity trial and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road had finally made it into print. The Gaslight in the late 50s, with Liz’s 65-cent hamburgers advertised in the window of Caricature (© Photo-File Service)Īt the Gaslight, Beat poets would showcase their radiating works of non-conformity, sex, spirituality and drugs. It followed earlier Greenwich Village artist hubs like Pfaff’s, frequented by Walt Whitman, and Cedar Tavern, where Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning hung out. Initially dubbed the Gaslight Poetry Café, the basement between 3rd Street and Bleecker in one of New York’s most eccentric neighborhoods, soon became a fixture of Manhattan’s bohemian life. Liz would serve many a hungry performer her 65-cent hamburgers even when they were flat broke and was, understandably, widely loved.Īfter finally opening up, Mitchell invited poets to entertain his coffee-sipping crowd. He kept alcohol off the menu, allowing the Gaslight to stay open throughout the night. “Mitchell was the world’s foremost maniac,” blues and folk singer Dave Van Ronk writes in his memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street, supporting his friend Liz, who ran the small restaurant above the Gaslight called Caricature. His do-it-yourself approach had made a mess of his neighbor’s plumbing, however, and resulted in the first of many confrontations. After a year he finally got permission to open up, but this troublesome relationship with the authorities would continue to pester the coffee house throughout its existence.Īccording to legend, Mitchell had dug out the accumulated dirt himself in an attempt to make the seven-foot basement a bit more accessible. Since then, an antique store, a plumbing warehouse and several different workshops quickly succeeded one another, as Mitchell argued in a letter that was intended to convince the municipality of the fact that the venue had been used for non-residential purposes before. Throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, the cellar had served as a speakeasy for a mostly gay and literary clientele, frequented by the notorious Jazz Age poet Maxwell Bodenheim, among others. Back in 1957 he had found a shallow basement on MacDougal Street in an 1883 landmark building and saw its potential. That owner was a man named John Mitchell. Maisel.The stairs that led down to the Gaslight (© Hannah Mattix) Midge is venturing into her own renaissance at a time when the Beat Generation is giving way to new interpretations of thought, furnishing a permanent cultural shift delivered firsthand by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino has said Midge was inspired by Joan Rivers, another Greenwich Village comedian who fearlessly cut her teeth at The Gaslight as a strongminded female. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, and countless other acts developed their signature sounds at the café where entertainers like Woody Allen were also booked to break up the flow of poetry and music. The burgeoning artistic tide at The Gaslight coincides with the evolution of Mrs. Maisel season 3, Midge comes into her own as single woman and a performer who doesn’t hesitate to hold true to her values, like when she refuses to perform during a live radio broadcast endorsing the paleoconservative politician, Phyllis Schlafly in season 3, episode 7 “Marvelous Radio.” The café would later add folk music to its lineup, a trend wryly addressed by Suzie in season 4, episode 3 “Everything is Bellmore.” In Marvelous Mrs. The Gaslight was one of several cafes on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village where beat poets like Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac read their nontraditional works addressing sex, politics, drugs, and spirituality to audiences. Women’s rights progressed alongside the booming voices of the Beat Generation. The purview of a woman’s world in the 1950s expanded at the decade’s end.
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