Autographed copies of Scollay Square (Arcadia Publishing, 2004) and Always Something Doing: Boston's Infamous Scollay Square (Northeastern University Press, 1999) can be purchased on our home page.

Who was Sally Keith and what did she do that caused such a stir?  I asked a very proper - and very embarrassed - Beacon Hill resident, who made me promise not to use her name but quite enthusiastically summed it all up for us: "It was the Crawford House where we used to go.  I worked for the government and my husband worked on newspaper row and we would get together and go down to the Crawford House where Sally Keith would perform.  She appeared in a very scant costume but I suppose today it wouldn't seem so scant.  She could make her tassels - oh, my I shouldn't be saying this to you - well she made the tassels on her breasts move in opposite directions [giggling now].  Don't tell anyone I said this!  She was an institution down there...I mean that's why we went!" When Sally performed at the Crawford House's Theatrical Bar there was rarely an empty seat (the cover of the Crawford House Theater menu, shown above, left no doubt as to who was the main attraction.) Nights that Sally was off or booked elsewhere usually meant poor box office, not only at the Crawford House but all around the rest of the Square, as well.

Like Ann Corio (who had an appeal that brought women into Old Howard for the first time,) Sally drew many women into the Crawford House.  Some came out of curiosity, others out of admiration.  For the rest it was sheer awe.  "Just how did she do that?," many of them wondered.  One former female patron reported that she... "would have made a million bucks with a tassel concession in the Ladies Room at the Crawford House.  During intermission I'd go in to powder my nose and I'd see all the women standing in front of the mirror trying to make themselves go in opposite directions!  I could have made a million!"

The anecdotes come fast and furious, much like Sally's nightclub act.  One of my favorite Scollay Square stories came from a former medical student, who claimed that his professor took his class to a Sally Keith show at the Crawford House, and the next day sprang a pop quiz which had only one question: name the muscles Sally Keith used in her act.  The med student reports that no one passed the quiz!

From Susan, Sally's neice, comes a photo taken at the Crawford House.  Susan wrote that "My parents went to Boston on their honeymoon and Sally took them on a whirlwind tour of the city and picked up the tab."

Dick Sinnot, who was head of the city licensing board (and therefore Boston's de-facto city censor) during part of Sally's reign, jokes about the reason her show was never banned.  "I always thought there was a conspiracy between the city censors that came before me and chiropractors.  You see, a lot of husbands would take their wives to the Crawford House to see Sally Keith, and later that night when the women got home they'd try and do the tassel number and throw their backs out!"

Another never-before-seen image from Sally's very owb scrapbook, from Susan, her neice., who wrote: "Taken at a nightclub in Chicago in 1945.  Left corner is Sally, then her older sister Libbie, who kept the scrapbook and next to her, my mother. The rest are 3 of my uncles another aunt and some family friends."

Another gem from Susan:  "Sally in Chicago.  On the right is her first husband, Jack Paar, who was her manager.  On the left is my father. The hat she is wearing is typical of the high fashion she outfitted herself in.  She ALWAYS dressed like that and as a little girl I was in awe of her.  Her jewelry was magnificent. I wonder what happened to it?"

So do we, Susan, so do we...

So just how big a star was Sally Keith?  When she was attacked and robbed in her Crawford House hotel room by two intruders, it was front page news:

Sally showing off the wounds she suffered at the hands of the intruders

On March 23, 1948 there was a three alarm fire at the Crawford House.  In a city still reeling from the tragedy at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub six years earlier (a conflagration in which over 450 people died) the Crawford House fire no doubt brought back horrific memories.  Thankfully, this blaze did not take any lives, but it did clear the fifty or so residents from their rooms onto the street, three of whom had to be rescued from the building as flames destroyed two floors of the hotel.

Living there at the time were several performers, some of whom were just waking up when the fire started at one that afternoon.  Sam Pierce and Bert Carr, who had been rehearsing an act in their third floor room, escaped by tying bed sheets together and climbing down the side of the building.  Pierce had already made his descent when the sheet that Carr was using broke in mid-air.  He fell about one story into the arms of a fireman who had just arrived below their window.  Harry Kelly, a fight promoter and owner of the Kelly and Hayes Gym on Hanover Street, also escaped injury.

Sally Keith, who normally stayed at the Crawford House, had moved out a few weeks before the fire after a robbery attempt in her room.  Her appearance at the fire that day gave a writer at the Boston Herald the chance to pen this headline and story:

Whether performing under a spotlight at the midnight show, or wading through water in the burned-out Crawford House in mid-afternoon, Sally Keith, danseuse and "Queen of the Tassel Tossers" has a true sense of the dramatic - $100,000 worth of it.  Just as the Scollay Square fire scene was beginning  to  pall - the blaze was under control  and  hose was being rolled up  -  the platinum  blonde,   swathed  in  furs,  tapped through the thinning crowd on her spiked heels, brushing  past a policeman guarding the  hotel entrance and strode into the foyer.  She  was  finally  stopped  in  a   soot-blackened   stairway  by  an equally sooty fireman  who  asked her  brusquely  where  she was going.

"I   must  get  up  to  my  suite,"   she answered,   referring  to rooms  209  and  210.  "I've got $100,000 worth of costumes, furs and jewelry up there."

The  staggering sum nearly staggered the fireman  into compliance but  not quite.   Her list of threatened valuables included a  white ermine suit, $6,000; a mink suit, no estimate; a sequin wardrobe used in her "heat wave" act, $4,000;  a platinum stole, $3,000; and a white fox cape, $6,000.

The entire wardrobe,  including her famed tassels she valued at $50,000 and the  jewelry at the same amount.   She did not itemize  the latter (Boston Herald, March 24, 1948)

Sally's niece Susan and her daughter Holly recently made the content of several 78 rpm records - which Sally Keith recorded during the 1940s - available to this web site.  They have been cleaned-up by our good friend Lee Heretich (at 782CD), and we are pleased to present them here:

1. Sally at the Hotel Lenox on June 13, 1948 Side A
2. Sally at the Hotel Lenox on June 13, 1948, Side B
3. Holiday party at the Lenox, December 19, 1948?
4. Goody Godell singing "My Hapiness" June 13, 1948
5. At the Ritz Carlton, date unknown
6. The Ritz Carlton, date unknown, Side B

Though Harvard boys were known for their affinity towards the Old Howard (one nick-name of the venerable theater was "The Old Harvard," they also seemed to have a warm spot for Sally:

More proof that Sally was popular not just in Scollay Square but across the Charles comes from these on line archived Crimson articles:

Sally's other legacy is surely her devotion to people who used to be called "the underdogs."  While true that her press agents (among them Jack Parr, whom she would later marry) made sure that the Tassel Queen's photo would appear in Boston papers carrying out her good deeds, there were apparently many, many other acts of kindness that avoided the camera's lens.

Let's start with this absolutely fascinating 1948 article from THE AMERICAN WEEKLY, which is reproduced below in its entirety...

Sally was a frequent performer at army bases around the country, and was VERY popular with servicemen, as evidenced by the certificate she received from the grateful men of Camp Standish:

In this Boston Record American photo from November of 1945, Sally is shown visiting some wounded veterans of the war.

And here she presents a check to Alphonse MacDonald, a Boston MTA motorman who lost both his legs attempting to stop a runaway train from crashing at Dudley Station.  Sally and other performers put on a benefit for Mr. MacDonald, and here they present him and his family the proceeds from the show.

And how many of us knew that Sally was a composer?  Here is a copy of a page of a song that she wrote both the words and music.  Preston Sandiford's name might be familiar to readers of Always Something Doing, mentioned as he was by trumpeter Leon Merriam, another performer in the Scollay Square:

Sally's fame was countrywide, and she was featured twice on the covers of this erstwhile "men's magazine:"

Here is the article from one of those issues:

David is grateful to Susan Weis, who generously provided the opportunity to pour through Sally's scrapbook.  Thanks, Susan.