theaters, and restaurants lining its famous Boardwalk, there was nothing the city didn’t offer—legal or illegal. Food, drink, and entertainment of all kinds, from highbrow to low. If you couldn’t find it on the Boardwalk (or on one of its many side streets), it didn’t exist.
When I was first approached by HBO to use Nelson Johnson’s book as the basis for a TV series, my biggest challenge was choosing a time period in which to set it. From the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons, to the Roaring Twenties and the Prohibition Era, to the Glamorous 1950s of Skinny D’Amato, to the city’s decline and subsequent resurgence with the advent of legalized gambling in the 1970s, Atlantic City and its people have been nothing if not compelling.
Ultimately I settled on the 1920s of Atlantic City’s legendary Treasurer Nucky Johnson (fictionalized as Nucky Thompson in the HBO series), which was the era that most struck my creative fancy. Atlantic City at that time was a place of excess, glamour, and, most of all, opportunity. Loud, brash, colorful, full of hope and promise—it was a microcosm of America. A place of spectacle, shady politics, fast women, and backroom deals, but also a real community with real people, not only on its Boardwalk, but in its churches, schools, and neighborhoods. It was a place of real Americans, a melting pot of ideas and cultures.
On my last trip there, I walked the same streets as Nucky, stood in his hotel lobby, ate in one of his favorite restaurants. I strode the Boardwalk where he reigned as king, looking out at the vast ocean that he considered his own. I was taken back in time and imagined the place as it had been, and though I enjoyed it all immensely, I needn’t have traveled so far to recreate the experience. Nelson Johnson had already taken me there in his wonderful book.
—Terence Winter
Emmy Award-winning writer of
and Executive Producer of
PROLOGUE
Luxury hotels weren’t something she knew about firsthand. Until now, she had never been inside the Ritz Carlton. The closest she’d come to the grand hotel was when walking on the Boardwalk. But here she was in the anteroom of a large suite of rooms, seated in a chair that nearly swallowed her. She was frightened, but there was no turning back. She sat there trembling, folding and refolding her frayed scarf.
As a housewife and summertime laundress in a boardinghouse, she felt out of place and her nervousness showed. Flushed and perspiring, she noticed that her dress and sweater needed mending and she grew more self- conscious. It was all she could do to keep from panicking and running out. But she couldn’t leave. Louis Kessel had told her Mr. Johnson would see her in a moment and she had to wait. To leave now would be embarrassing and, worse still, might offend Mr. Johnson. If it weren’t winter, and if there weren’t so many unpaid bills, she never would have worked up the courage to come in the first place. But she had no choice; her husband had been a fool and she was desperate for her family. Louis Kessel appeared a second time and motioned to her. She followed him, not knowing what to expect.
As she walked into Mr. Johnson’s sitting room, he took her hand and greeted her warmly. It was several years since she met him at her father’s wake, but Johnson remembered her and called her by her first name. He was dressed in a fancy robe and slippers and asked what was troubling her. In an instant her anxiety vanished.
In a rapid series of sentences she recounted how her husband lost his entire paycheck the night before at one of the local gambling rooms. He was a baker’s helper, and during the winter months his $37 each week was the family’s only income. She went on and on about all the bills and how the grocer wouldn’t give her any more credit. Johnson listened intently and, when she was finished, reached into his pocket and handed her a $100 bill. Overwhelmed with joy, she thanked him repeatedly until he insisted she stop. Louis Kessel motioned, telling her there was a car waiting to drive her home. As she left, Johnson promised that her husband would be barred from every crap game and card room in town. He told her to come back any time she had a problem.
Enoch “Nucky” Johnson personifies pre-casino Atlantic City as no one else can. Understanding his reign provides the perspective needed to make sense of today’s resort. Johnson’s power reached its peak, as did his town’s popularity, during Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933. When it came to illegal booze, there was probably no place in the country as wide open as Nucky’s town. It was almost as if word of the Volstead Act never reached Atlantic City. During Prohibition, Nucky was both a power broker in the Republican Party and a force in organized crime. He rubbed elbows with presidents and Mafia thugs. But to Atlantic City’s residents, Johnson was hardly a thug. He was their hero, epitomizing the qualities that had made his town successful.
Originally conceived as a beach village by a doctor hoping to develop a health resort for the wealthy, Atlantic City quickly became a glitzy, raucous vacation spot for the working class. It was a place where visitors came knowing the rules at home didn’t apply. Atlantic City flourished because it gave its guests what they wanted—a naughty good time at an affordable price.
Popular recollections of the old Atlantic City, believed by many, is that it was an elegant seaside resort of the wealthy, comparable to Newport. Such a notion is fantasy. In its prime, Atlantic City was a resort for the blue-collar workers of Philadelphia’s industrial economy. The resort was popular with people who could afford no more than a day or two stay. These working poor came to town each summer to escape the heat of the city and the boredom of their jobs. Atlantic City gave them a place to let loose.
There were four ingredients to the resort’s success. Each was critical. Remove any one of them and Atlantic City would have been a very different place. The first ingredient was rail transportation. But for the railroad, the development of Absecon Island would have waited at least 50 years. The second was Philadelphia and New York real estate investors. They brought the money and expertise needed to build and manage dozens of hotels and hundreds of boardinghouses on an island of sand. The third was a large volume of cheap labor to run things. There was only one labor source: freed slaves and their children. The final ingredient was a local population willing to ignore the law in order to please vacationers. From the turn of the 20th century and for the next 70 years, the resort was ruled by a partnership comprised of local politicians and racketeers. This alliance was a product of the relationship between the economy and politics of the city.
From its inception, Atlantic City has been a town dedicated to the fast buck. Its character as a city is uncommon because it never had any other role to perform than that of a resort. It has always had a singular purpose for its existence—to provide leisure time activities for tourists. Atlantic City’s economy was totally dependent on money spent by out-of-towners. Visitors had to leave happy. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t return.
The key was to cater to patrons’ tastes in pleasure, whether those desires were lawful or not. Resort merchants pandered to the visitor’s desire to do the forbidden, and business owners cultivated the institution of the spree. Within a short time after its founding, Atlantic City was renowned as the place to go for a freewheeling good time. It grew into a national resort by promoting vice as a major part of the local tourist trade. However, maintenance of the vice industry required Atlantic City’s government to make special accommodations. It was inevitable that the principals of the vice industry would make an alliance with the local political leaders. Without some type of understanding between these two spheres of power, Atlantic City’s major tourist attraction would have had a tenuous existence.
The resort’s guests couldn’t be harassed while enjoying themselves. It would be bad for business. That gambling, prostitution, and Sunday sales of liquor violated state law and conventional morality didn’t matter. Nothing could interfere with the visitors’ fun or they might stop coming. Atlantic City’s leaders ignored the law and permitted the local vice trade to operate in a wide-open fashion as if it were legitimate.
