Free Audition by Barbara Walters

was the modest price—a two-dollar minimum and an average dinner tab of eight dollars a person, which could include shrimp cocktail, salad, steak, and dessert. And while most of the other clubs were definitely for adults only, the New York Latin Quarter (unlike the Palm Island Latin Quarter) welcomed families. It became the club of choice for high school seniors after their proms and for their grandmothers’ birthdays. Servicemen on leave, many of whom over the years have sent me their old Latin Quarter photos, also flocked to the club. My father didn’t charge them.
    The Latin Quarter was such an important fixture in the cultural history of New York that more than sixty years later, Mayor Michael Bloomberg—after a vote by the city council—changed the name of Forty-eighth Street and Broadway, where the Latin Quarter reigned for two decades, to “Lou Walters Way.” I went to the unveiling ceremony, presided over by the mayor, on a beautiful spring morning in April 2006.
    When my father died, we never had a memorial. In a way this was it. I found out who among my father’s chorus girls was still alive (they were in their seventies and eighties) and I invited them. Twelve of them came, including the still beautiful movie actress Arlene Dahl (who had been in the chorus when she was eighteen), and the irrepressible former cancan dancers, the identical twins Twinnie and Winnie, now octogenarians, who stood on either side of the mayor and, in front of the photographers, kicked a leg straight up over their heads, revealing their lacy underwear. The mayor turned red and burst out laughing, as did we all on that happy occasion. Two of the showgirls wore their old costumes, at least parts of them, and showed up in their headdresses and feather boas. They brought treasures, like old photographs of themselves as much younger showgirls at the Latin Quarter, and had many fond memories of my father. I took them to lunch after the ceremony, and one after another told me that my father was the kindest and gentlest of bosses. They adored him, which is why, even now, six decades and counting after the Latin Quarter closed, the chorus girls still have annual reunions and reminisce about what they describe as the best years of their lives. When I can, I join them.
    When I was a kid, however, I didn’t feel the pride for my father that I would later with Mayor Bloomberg. The Latin Quarter may have been a special treat for everybody and his uncle, but not for me. I was old enough to recognize how other families lived, and they were not like mine. The fathers came home every night to have dinner with the stay-at-home mothers and the children. Cousins, aunts, and uncles gathered in their dining rooms for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Other kids had birthday parties at home and invited all their friends. We did none of that. We celebrated every Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and all our birthdays at the Latin Quarter. My father coming home for dinner once a week, on Fridays, was almost the only time I saw him. Other nights he came home long after I was asleep and he himself slept late into the morning.
    My father, I realize now, did try to include us in his life. Although the featured acts might change every two weeks, the big, elaborate productions usually changed just twice a year. When that happened my mother, Jackie, and I went with him on opening night. We sat at his table nearest the door, and he would spend most of the show talking over an intercom on the table to the lighting technicians or to Madame Kamerova, his longtime production director and choreographer. For the most part I just sat there quietly, and only roused myself, with my mother, to critique each new show. We usually forgot to tell my father how great it was and, God knows, I myself know today how much one wants to hear praise after a performance. Instead, more often than not, we told him only what was wrong.
    On some level I guess I was punishing him for not being