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life. In the coming years, his eldest son, Abraham, endured the bruntof parental scrutiny. The boy clearly understood what money could buy, that much was clear, but he showed neither interest in nor aptitude for making it.

    A be was a rotund mama’s boy, moody and mercurial. Nothing—not his sartorial elegance, not his Tammany pedigree, not his growing bank account—made Louis Minsky feel as American as having a child with a sense of entitlement, this strange belief that one could be idle and still prosper. Abe had inherited his father’s penchant for fine things but none of his work ethic. And Esther, doting mother that she was, developeda cyclical pawning system to ensure he didn’t have to. She gave her favorite child watches, rings, and silver hairbrushes, which he promptly hocked in favor of suits, cologne, and dinner dates at Rector’s and Delmonico’s, a different woman on his arm each time. He married one of them in 1907, a union as short-lived as one of his cherished Havana cigars and not nearly as pleasurable—owing mainly tohis scheme to defraud his father-in-law of $150,000, which earned him a $500 fine and five months in prison.
    The incident mortified Louis and Esther Minsky, and they were relieved when their eldest son found a business venture that actually inspired him to work. An abandoned Protestant church in the neighborhood, Abe announced, would make the perfect venue for a nickel theater. The country was newly obsessed with motion pictures, withmore than 45 million Americans attending shows every week—nearly every second person in the United States. “It amounts practically to a revolution,”
Billboard
opined, “and yet those who are conversant with the inside workings of the business maintain that it is still in its infancy.” For a nickel or dime, customers could watch films that were sweet or silly or lewd, all ingeniously produced: a series of photographs, each with a slight variation, was reflected on a screen in such rapid succession that the images appeared to move, one action flowing seamlessly into the next.
    Abe bought the old church, called it theHouston Street Hippodrome, and opened for business, positioning the screen where an altarused to be. Customers didn’t complain about sitting on the hard pews; they could wedge salamis, frankfurters, and tongues from nearbyS. Erschowsky & Sons Deli into the racks that had once held hymnals. In the dark, no one could see the New Testament murals that still decorated the walls: a stoic Joseph with staff in hand, Jesus falling for the third time. Nor did the masses mind the pricey 5-cent admission for such racy pictures as
The Butler and the Upstairs Maid
. Between films Abe projected slides in Yiddish and English warning people against spitting, noisemaking, pickpockets, and the rude practice of reading titles aloud.
    The Hippodrome prospered for three years without Louis Minsky once passing through its doors. When he inquired about business, his son had a careful answer. “You know those slides you used to show when you ran for alderman?” Abe asked. “Well, now I show slides, too, and for holidays I hire actors to act out lessons from the Talmud.”
    When Louis finally discovered the true nature of Abe’s films, he ordered his son to shut the place down. No member of
his
family would make a living showcasing smut. Abe balked, but they reached a compromise. Louis had his eye on another project: the National Theatre on Houston Street and Second Avenue, a perfect venue for Jewish plays; the area was, in fact, becoming known as the “Yiddish Broadway.” Abe could show movies on the sixth-floor rooftop, as long as they depicted great dramas—
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ben Hur, Queen Elizabeth
—and not the randy rompings of butlers and maids. Father and son shook hands.

    T he long silver finger fired, and the gunshot was the loudest sound Billy Minsky ever heard. He lay facedown on his stoop, his immaculate tux now stained with dust and