So, though the three hot-house lovelies sneered and pouted, Granny handed the youngster the prize. And he told her he was going to put her to work at the Strand Roof, at $50 a week. The girl almost fainted. As an afterthought, N.T.G. asked her name. She replied: "Ruby Keeler." She became that almost mythical creation, "The Toast of Broadway." She was taken under the "wing" of Johnny Irish, a long since forgotten gangster, whose hoodlums saw to it no others romanced her. But Al Jolson, then the king of show business, fell--and hard. Irish, who loved her with a love that passeth understanding, called the singer to his hotel room. Al, fearing he was about to be taken for a ride, was agreeably surprised when the mobster asked what "his intentions are." In relief, Al blurted out that he wanted to marry the dancer. Big-hearted Irish adopted a noble pose, gave the girl up. "I'll take my boys to Atlantic City," he said, "and you hop an ocean liner with Ruby. Otherwise maybe some of them will get an idea you're taking her away from me and maybe they won't like it. And heaven help you if you don't marry her." She married Al Jolson at 17. She hit film stardom. Then she chucked it, still in her twenties, to marry a poor boy, rusticate in Pasadena and have four children. b.--_No Cover Charge_ By 1928, it seemed Prohibition was here to stay. The easy money boys, grown fat and rich with two-by-four hideaway speaks, began to think about expanding. But when a law-evading night club got too big, too noisy, too public, even the usually complaisant cops had to smack it down. And if they didn't, a rival mob did. The hotel grills and roofs, forced to go straight to protect huge investments, long were dead ducks by now and so were the hotels. There just was no big place where a man and girl could go and have some dancing and fun, unless he was known to the gorilla at the door and could afford citrate of magnesia labeled Mumm's at $35 a throw. That year, Granlund had a vision. He conceived the idea of building a huge cabaret room large enough to pay off on quantity business alone, instead of bootlegging. As a further inducement to lure the wary man of moderate means, ducking high prices, fancy foreign headwaiters and tremendous tariffs, he invented the minimum charge, to supplant the imported and resented couvert. A syndicate built such a cabaret on Broadway, between 48th and 49th Streets, in a room once occupied by Rector's of hallowed memory, and after that having housed a chop suey palace. The new place was named the Hollywood Restaurant. It got off to an immediate success with big bands, famous acts, and the most beautiful girls this side of heaven. The great Ziegfeld, as a smart business, tied up with N.T.G. on an exchange policy, which called for a selected few of the Hollywood girls to double into the "Follies," an equal number of the glorified doubling into the Hollywood.