Miami in Flatbush

Dere's no guy livin' dat knows Brooklyn t'roo an' t'roo . . . It'd take a guy a lifetime . . . an' even den, yuh wouldn't know it all.

--Thomas Wolfe

Just inside the spotlighted, canopied double glass doors is an eloquent word of warning: "Occupancy by more than 1,700 people dangerous and unlawful." The only nightclub in the world roomy enough to fly such a banner is improbably located on the tawrdry, whiffy flatlands near the southernmost tip of Brooklyn. The Town & Country, sometimes referred to as "Miami Beach in Flatbush," is a 45-minute drive and a $6 cab fare from Manhattan, but it fields a line of first-class talent most clubs would hock their silverware to buy. Its big neon bill of fare regularly blazons such names as Harry Belafonte, Jerry Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Milton Berle, Tony Bennett. Last week, even with an ailing (laryngitis) Judy Garland as its husk-voiced headliner. the T. & C. was packing upwards of 2,000 patrons a show (including those in the bar and private dining room) under its high, star-spattered ceiling.

Boys with Their Sisters. The T. & C., which has made it big just when most large nightclubs are not able to make it at all, has the air of a neighborhood bar trying to masquerade as the Hollywood Bowl, and half-succeeding. The cavernous, turquoise-walled main room rises in tiers from an elevated stage that could double as a soccer field. The reservation crowd ("We like nobody off the street") comes mostly from Brooklyn; whole families take tables together, and women's clubs sit in solid platoons. Girls dance with one another, little boys with their sisters.

In deference to this home-cooking atmosphere, the club bans off-color acts, hustles drunks out of sight. On week nights groups of 20 or more who want to dance, munch steerburgers, and watch the show from left field, can get out of the Town & Country on a package deal for as little as $3 apiece. But. depending on the attraction, the minimum can also run to $6.50 a head, and there may be as many as 4,500 customers a night (the crowd is politely asked to leave after the first show to make room for the second shift). With such a take the club can afford weekly salaries that make even roulette-rich Vegas boggle: $40,000 a week for Jerry Lewis' act, $34,000 for Harry Belafonte's, $25,000 for Judy Garland's.

Success on the Tundra. The man who built up the world's biggest nightclub is a 47-year-old Brooklynite named Ben Maksik, and he built it from a hot dog stand. When he was cleaned out of the real-estate business by the Depression, Maksik borrowed $200, slapped together a wooden frankfurters-and-Coke stand, gradually expanded it into a nightclub by acquiring a jukebox, liquor and cabaret licenses and a dance floor. Two and a half years ago he borrowed $1,000,000, built his present colossus. The logistics of its operation, he soon found, were staggering. The 40-man kitchen staff is geared to turn out 1,700 meals (broiled sirloins, Chinese combination plates) in half an hour. To ferry these around, Maksik employs roughly 100 waiters (in black cutaways and black-and-gold-striped waistcoats), 40 busboys and seven captains. Counting his bartenders, stagehands and bandsmen, Maksik has 275 people on his staff at the height of the season, and a weekly payroll of $25,000. His towel bill alone runs to $1,200 a week.

Despite his success on the Brooklyn tundra, Maksik is a chronic worrier who believes that sooner or later his storied "Child's with music and a minimum" is bound to go the way of all the big clubs. "I'm in this business 21 years, and everyone always calls me a success, but how come I'm always borrowing money?" To that, a former associate replies: "Ben ain't in this to look at pretty girls in tights; he don't do nothin' that don't make money." Whatever else he may do, Club Owner Maksik looks like a guy who knows his Brooklyn t'roo an' t'roo.

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