Press Photograph of Belle Livingston after Her Release from Jail.

New York: International Newsreel Photos, Inc., 1931. 8 x 10 inches. B&w press photograph with snipe on verso. Verso has stamps, recent sticker, and colored pencil notation, as well as evidence of paper removal (probably another snipe) and light spotting; shallow chip to lower border and tiny loss to lower corner, neither affecting body of image. Good.

Press photograph of legendary speakeasy proprietor Belle Livingston immediately following her release from jail in March 1931, after being incarcerated for 30 days for contempt of court after being arrested for violations of the Volstead Act, i.e., Prohibition. In the photograph, Livingston stands in the center of a large crowd outside a police car, while police officers and a reporter look on. The snipe reads:

"Crowds Greet Belle after Release from Jail: New York -- Belle Livingston, owner of New York's most luxurious night club, surrounded by a huge crowd of her admirers immediately after her release from the Harlem jail where she was sentenced to thirty days for contempt of court. La Belle was convicted of defying a federal prohibition injunction at her famous night life rendezvous. N-3-8-31."

Belle Livingston (1875-1957) was a traveling theater performer who ran her own salon in Paris prior to moving to New York in 1927, at the age of 52, when she tried her hand at speakeasies aimed at the high society crowd. Although her first and second clubs failed quickly due to lack of funds and federal raids, her third -- the Fifty-Eighth Street Country Club, at 126 E. 58th St.-- was a major hit while it lasted. Her October 1930 opening night drew such guests as Russia's Archduke Leopold, John D. Rockefeller, the Duke of Manchester, and Al Capone. However, the establishment was soon raided by federal agents, and Livingston, who famously tried to escape while wearing red silk pajamas, only managed to keep the Country Club open until January 1931. After her release from jail, she tried opening speakeasies out West, but never managed to make a go of it. Indomitable until the end, her gravestone reads, "This is the only stone I have left unturned" (https://prohibition.themobmuseum.org).