Betty Gordon is perhaps the world’s most unlikely first-time children’s book author.
For decades she lived at the center of a bohemian New York that has long ago faded into mythology. A glamorous and witty feminist — friends describe her as a modern-day Mae West crossed with Dorothy Parker — Betty mingled with artists, writers and entertainers. She even had a romance with one of the most famous undercover cops of all time.
But it was not until a couple of years ago — when she was in her early 90s, mostly homebound, in ill health and nearly destitute — that she began cranking out the story of Phoebe, the cat who wanted to be a dog. It may seem an odd way to start a writing career, but Betty had her reasons.
“My heart was breaking,” she recalled. “I had to do something.”
Betty’s wild years
Betty Gordon moved to New York from Detroit at the dawn of the 1950s, when she was in her early 20s, taking aim at a career in the theater. Like many aspiring actors, she held odd jobs — filing clerk, restaurant manager and occasionally, by her own account, a terrible waitress. But she was dedicated to her craft, assuming lead roles in productions of Shakespeare, Shaw, Chekhov, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, much of it in repertory and regional theater.
She also spent time in Manhattan nightclubs and Catskills resorts hanging out with jazz musicians, whom she met mostly through her husband of seven years, Hal McKusick, a saxophone player and leader of a quartet, who recorded with legends like Charlie Parker and Bill Evans. She studied acting alongside Sandy Dennis with Lee Grant, both Academy Award-winning actors, and circulated in a world of theater creatures and musicians.
It was a wild and stimulating time, and Betty slyly smirked when recounting tales of some of the best parties, and at least one orgy.
“I was really having fun in the ’50s,” she said from her hospital room during a recent stay there. “Maybe a little too much fun.”
The ’60s and ’70s were not dull, either. She was at Woodstock (“I took off my clothes and ran around in the mud”), and in the early 1970s she met a young couple of aspiring actors in her old building on the corner of Hudson and Charles Street in the West Village — Aviva and Jack Davidson.
The Davidsons were friends with a mysterious but gregarious chap from the neighborhood nicknamed Paco, who regularly changed his appearance and was known to carry a gun. One day, when Paco was visiting their apartment, Betty also happened by. It was as if an electric charge had sizzled through the room.
“We played toesies under the table,” Betty said. “It’s one way of getting to know someone.”
Betty came to learn that Paco was Frank Serpico, the undercover detective who revealed rampant corruption in the New York Police Department, and whose story would be turned into an instant best seller in 1973 and, later that year, a hit movie starring Al Pacino. They had a romance for about a year, just before he became famous worldwide as “the cop who couldn’t be bought.”
They walked their dogs together and went to the ballet. Betty remembered him as passionate, erudite and caring, but in constant fear of retribution from the police. Ms. Davidson, their mutual friend, recalled a magnetic pairing.
“She had this flowing red hair and she was really sexy, a larger-than-life figure,” Ms. Davidson recalled in a recent interview near their old apartment building. “And Paco was larger than life, too.”
Mr. Serpico, who is now retired and lives in upstate New York, fondly recalled Betty and their time together. He said her companionship was critical at a time when he was being hounded by fellow police officers for his efforts to report corruption.
“People always ask, ‘How did you get through everything?’” Mr. Serpico said. “There were so many amazing, creative and artistic people in the Village at those times. It was people like Betty, who was my friend and confidante, that helped me through it.”
Ms. Davidson, now retired as the artistic director of the nonprofit Dancing in the Streets, remembered that it was often like that with Betty Gordon. She recalled the time Betty invited her to stand in the wings and watch the great Mikhail Baryshnikov dance at the American Ballet Theater — Betty had a friend who worked there — and she introduced them to Mr. Baryshnikov backstage.
And whenever Ms. Davidson and her husband left town for a few days, they would return to find three casseroles in the refrigerator that Betty had cooked for them.
“She produced magic,” Ms. Davidson, now 84, said. “She was like an angel among us.”
After hours at the Stoned Crow
By the 1990s, Greenwich Village had changed, and a career in the theater seemed less likely for a woman in her 60s, especially one who, by her own account, had often been cast as the femme fatale. But around that time Betty was handed a new role, as the proprietor of the Stoned Crow, a divey old saloon on Washington Place.
Known for its excellent burgers, a solid jukebox and a competitive pool table, the Stoned Crow came to reflect Betty’s vivacious and bawdy personality for the two decades she ran it.
The walls were covered with 8-by-10s of movie stars, and Betty sat nightly in a thronelike chair by the pool table in her low-cut tops, adjudicating disputes and warning players not to put drinks anywhere near the felt.
“She was an expert player herself and she knew every way to win, to cheat, to hustle,” recalled Ian Spence, who was a young artist and Stoned Crow fixture in the bar’s heyday. “But if you were a hustler, she would boot you.”
Celebrities often popped in, from Jimmy Fallon and Jon Stewart to Janeane Garofalo and Kate Moss, as did musicians, including members of Led Zeppelin, the Dave Matthews Band and the Strokes. Betty was never overly impressed with any of them, and nobody received special privileges.
Many nights, after locking the doors and cleaning up, employees would stay back with Betty, sip a beer, smoke some weed and do improvisations until the sun rose. Betty always preferred the dark.
“I used to go to bed at 7 in the morning,” she said. “I was a devil. But I put a lot of people to work that had trouble getting jobs, not because they weren’t bright or capable, but because they were in the arts. I’m a champion of the arts.”
Danielle Skraastad, an actress and teacher in the graduate acting departments at New York University and Columbia, was a waitress at the Crow for 10 years, and she credits her career to Betty, for allowing her to pursue her craft with the security that a job would always be there when she got back. Now 51, she continues to return that favor as Betty’s unofficial caretaker, nurse and personal organizer.
“We didn’t realize how much she thought of us as her children, encouraging us to pursue our dreams,” Ms. Skraastad said. “She was playing the long game for all of us.”
Desperate texts at 3 a.m.
Which brings us back to Phoebe, the cat who wanted to be a dog.
Of the many artists and actors who fell into Betty’s orbit, Ian Spence developed a special connection with her. A gifted illustrator, he spent hours in the bar, even when he was sober, and Betty eventually gave him a job. (She playfully described him as an awful waiter. He amicably disputes the characterization.) Before long, Betty developed a matronly affection for Ian.
He was 38 years younger, but they bonded over literature, film and the theater, especially Shakespeare. Mr. Spence’s loving illustrations of SuperBetty — a brassy comic book heroine dispensing juke-joint justice — adorned the walls of the bar, and he painted the iconic sign over the door.
He happily absorbed Betty’s amazing tales about a golden era of New York jazz, theater and cinema, about the rise and fall of beatniks and hippies. She told him where to find the best bagels and taught him that there was no East or West Village, just Greenwich Village.
But unable to meet skyrocketing rents, Betty was forced to close the Stoned Crow in 2010. Since then, the place has morphed a few times and is now a bitcoin-themed bar. Yet almost 15 years later, the Crow’s tight, core community, including Mr. Spence and Ms. Skraastad, is still connected, pitching in to help where they can.
But there was a time when Ian was the one who needed the help. He had been in recovery for substance abuse, anxiety and depression, but the isolation and uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic was too much for him to bear. He fell off the wagon, hard.
“I was drinking like they were running out of it,” he said.
He would text Betty at 3 or 4 in the morning, pleading for help and advice. Late nights were the worst, when his anxiety, insomnia and drug abuse spiked. He couldn’t focus enough to read, draw or even watch a movie. He pounded benzodiazepine to deal with the anxiety and insomnia, and spent nights pacing all over his New Haven, Conn., apartment.
Reading those late-night texts was agonizing. There was only so much a 90-year-old woman could do from so far away. Betty knew she had to find a way to get Ian to help himself.
The solution was his art. She always loved the SuperBetty comics and all of Ian’s other works, so she asked him: If I write a children’s book, will you illustrate it?
Betty had never written a book, though her own life could be the tableau for a marvelous romp through the last 70 years of New York’s rich performing arts scenes. Surely she could find inspiration in all of that to come up with a good story.
Ian loved the idea, and so began a unique collaboration that did far more than just produce a kid’s book. Soon, he was back to work, producing lively and amusing illustrations to match Phoebe’s adventures.
‘Never met anyone like her’
Betty, who has no children, needs her friends’ help now more than ever. She was hospitalized last year with congestive heart failure and spent months in rehabilitation. She was admitted again earlier this year, and spent 100 days in another rehab facility. Ms. Skraastad visited daily.
She is back home now, in her modest one-bedroom on East 26th Street in Manhattan, where she has lived for most of the last six decades. It has chestnut wood paneling from another era, and most of the wall space and countertops are decorated with photographs, along with drawings and paintings by friends. The shades are drawn during the day. Betty still prefers the dark.
She is unable to get down the one flight of stairs to the street, and she said it took every bit of her energy and willpower to get to the bathroom. “It’s like going to Siberia,” she said. Just getting up from her bed is painful, and she is taking several medications, including for pain. Money, despite the help from her friends, is still a concern, so she recently started selling her jewelry. She realizes that sounds alarming, but she’s at peace with it. “I collected it for 60 years,” she said. “Where am I going to wear it now?”
But the promise of the book has helped revitalize her, and in an unintended way, provided the same purpose and hope she originally sought for Ian. When she initially proposed the idea to him, she did not reveal her true motive, not until he had sobered up and was drawing again.
“She later told me, ‘You were in this downward spiral and I needed something to take you out of yourself,’” Ian said. “‘You don’t realize how much people love your art.’ She really built me up. I’ve just never met anyone like her.”
Betty proved exceptionally prolific herself, writing many lively chapters, which Ian edited down to a manageable length. They were so pleased, they decided to publish it themselves. Far more important, and just as Betty had planned, Ian emerged from his desperate gloom.
“I’ll never forget what Betty did for me,” he said. “Things are going much better now.”
These days, he attends regular sobriety meetings near his home in New Haven and is working on the final stages of a collaboration that, by his own estimation, may have saved his life. One day, he hopes to capture Betty’s remarkable life in a graphic novel.
It would be the story of a young woman from Detroit whose captivating adventures contributed to a vibrant period in New York’s cultural history, and who, at 93, is still writing new chapters.
the new york times
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