"Atlantic City"

As I've said previously, I spent my summers in Atlantic City at the home of my grandparents and my Uncle Ray from the time I was two years old. They had a downstairs flat on Florida Avenue, an easy (and aromatic) walk to the boardwalk and the beach. What I remember best about that walk were the smells, the hanging cheeses and meats at the Italian deli, the fresh fruits at the produce market and the smoky, beery smell of the bar on the corner at Pacific Avenue.

My best friend Tommy Gallagher and I would spend every day at the beach *, every night on the boardwalk - Million Dollar Pier, Steeplechase, Steel Pier, Ice Capades - a blur of sights and smells, of ice cream, Planter's peanuts and salt water taffy. From Memorial Day to the week after Labor Day (and the Miss America Pageant **), we took it all in and took it for granted. I loved Atlantic City as it was then, before the casinos destroyed it all.

Before the casinos came, Atlantic City had been a city of great restaurants, especially the famous Hackney's and Capt. Starns lobster houses, elegant boardwalk hotels, amusement piers and dozens of movie houses both along the boardwalk and on Atlantic Avenue. The Steel Pier was probably the ultimate Atlantic City attraction, offering live appearances by the biggest names in show business, first-run movies, a water circus "a mile at sea" (a slight overstatement) and the famous "High Diving Horse".

The first job I ever had (at sixteen) was as an usher at the Apollo Theater on the boardwalk where in the course of one summer I saw "Elmer Gantry" (another Richard Brooks film) and Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" literally dozens of times. Both films made a lasting impression, but I'd never seen anything like the audience reaction to "Psycho". Never before had I seen grown men and women jump out of their seats screaming and run out of the theater in terror, not even stopping for a refund. If the shower scene didn't get them, detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) getting it on the stairs did.

But my favorite movie palace (and it was a palace) was the Warner Theater on the boardwalk at Arkansas Avenue. (For some reason, the locals called it "Ar-Kansas" Avenue.) Seeing a film there was an experience unto itself, with a skyline of Mediterranean-style houses and lighted balconies all around and a dome of blue sky above. And when the lights went down, the stars came out. I saw George Pal's "War of the Worlds" there when I was eight and I've never forgotten the thrill of it.

In 1956, my grandfather died suddenly of a massive heart attack, although some would say he had died years before. He had been Chief of Detectives for the Atlantic City Police Department until be became a fall-guy in a corruption scandal and lost his job, his pension and his reputation. Nearly unemployable, he took a series of menial and demeaning jobs, including bellhop at the President Hotel, carrying suitcases from the curb to the front desk well into his sixties.

The following year, with my father's financial help, my grandmother and uncle moved from the Florida Avenue flat to a small bungalow in the 'down beach' community of Margate, across the street from the Margate Yacht Club. For those unfamiliar with Atlantic City, it occupies the northern part of Absecon Island, with the communities of Ventnor, Margate and Longport to the south. (With all those familiar names from Monopoly: Boardwalk, Park Place, Marvin Gardens etc.)

The summer of 1958 was the summer of Ricky Nelson. (I learned later that he preferred to be called 'Rick'.) His single, "Poor Little Fool" hit number one on the charts a week before he was scheduled to appear at the Steel Pier. I was fourteen and he was eighteen, just enough older that he seemed to have and be everything that I wanted. According to a Life Magazine cover story, he had displaced Elvis as "Teen's Top Throb". And I actually looked a lot like him.

But even after my experience with the Alan Freed rock show, I was totally unprepared for the size and frenzy of the crowds that greeted his Steel Pier debut. Owner George Hamid's staff was clearly unprepared for what they would be dealing with as thousands of screaming fans jammed the pier for the two-day run overflowing the Midway Theater which was probably designed to hold no more than 500 people. He broke an attendance record set by Frank Sinatra that had stood since 1947.

On stage, Rick was like a young god, actually looking and sounding better (and somehow different) than he did on television where he had been performing a song at the end of each episode of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" for the previous year. What had started out as a lark, a brief, funny impression of Elvis to impress a girl, had turned into a full-blown rock & roll career - and he was the real deal. Without his parents' stern supervision, he seemed free to cut loose - and he did!

Like the Alan Freed shows, a back-up band of local musicians had been put together for him, but I found out later that he was very unhappy with it. And when he returned the following year, he had personally put together a truly kick-ass band that included lead-guitarist James Burton (who later played for many years with Elvis Presley and, more recently with the other Elvis, Costello) and this time they performed in the Marine Ballroom which could accommodate thousands. That year, 1959, Rick Nelson *** broke his own attendance record with over 50,000 people, four shows a day, over two days.

But by the early 1960's, as Rick Nelson's fortunes began to wane, so did Atlantic City's. The families that had once come down from Philadelphia and New York for entire summers now came for weekends. And jet travel made vacations in Florida or the Caribbean as easy and affordable as travel by car or train to the Jersey shore. And unlike these other destinations, Atlantic City was strictly a summer resort with a long, cold off-season. Basic economics began to take a toll.

When casino gambling came in a few years later, they didn't want competion from the very things that had put Atlantic City on the map in the first place. They wanted players at the tables and slots. They wanted them eating in the casino, not at some outside restaurant. They didn't even want to give them easy access to the beach. And one by one, the restaurants, the movie theaters, the amusement piers and many of the great old hotels were systematically demolished.


* By the end of the summer, I'd be absolutely black - which explains the skin cancers (basal cell carcinomas) they've been cutting off me for the last twenty-five years.

** My father played a pivotal role in bringing the Miss America Pageant to NBC.

*** Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash on New Year's Eve 1985 in DeKalb, Texas.


NEXT: "Year Round"