Pint Raid

Little did Herbert Cooper of Brooklyn, Benjamin McReynolds of St. Louis, James Carson of Philadelphia, John Atwater of Rockville Centre, L. I., and seven other men in evening dress suspect when they joyfully and separately entered the Hollywood Restaurant on Broadway one night last week, that they would soon be hustled out as subjects for a prime Prohibition test-case in Manhattan. The Hollywood is a popular middle-class night club of the post-Texas Guinan epoch. Its patrons are attracted by its moderate prices, its undress show. The place is Dry in that the management does not sell liquor, though it does furnish "setups" for guests who bring their own.

As Messrs. Cooper, McReynolds, Carson, Atwater and some 300 other patrons were dancing, two dozen U. S. agents fell upon their tables, plucked at hip flasks and pint bottles, set the place into an uproar. Women shrieked and fainted. One tore the sleeve out of her escort's coat trying to drag him to safety. Arrested were eleven patrons on the charge of liquor possession (a misdemeanor under the Volstead Act), 16 employes charged with providing "set-ups." Through a hooting, jeering Broadway crowd, the 27 men were taken to the police station, later held in $500 or more bail each for trial.

Never before in Manhattan had the U. S. pestered the "little fellow," the "hip flask toter." In Chicago and other cities this strategy has been used sporadically against night clubs. Declared New York's Prohibition Administrator Maurice Campbell after the Hollywood raid: "This is the first instance--but if the practice is not discontinued it will not be the last." Prohibition Commissioner Doran in Washington denied that any new national policy was involved. Purpose: to see if New Yorkers could be convicted for public drinking.

Adroitly the Hollywood Restaurant publicized the "pint raid" by printing large advertisements: "WE APOLOGIZE to our patrons if any annoyance was caused them . . . when a few of our great number carried flasks into this, the largest and most popular establishment of its kind."

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