Larry Fay (1888 – January 1, 1933) was one of the early rumrunners of the Prohibition Era in New York City.

Biography

Fay made a half a million dollars bringing bootleg whiskey into New York from Canada. With his profits he bought into a taxi cab company and later opened a nightclub, the El Fey, on West 47th Street in Manhattan in 1924, featuring Texas Guinan as the emcee and a floorshow produced by Nils Granlund.^[1] In the 1920s, he married Evelyn Crowell, a Broadway showgirl. ^[2]

Fay, who had a record of forty-nine arrests but no felony convictions, was involved in several enterprises in the ensuing years, and was said to have amassed and lost a fortune. He was made a partner of the Casa Blanca Club, where he was fatally shot after a 1932 New Year's Eve celebration by the club's doorman Edward Maloney, who had just learned his pay was being reduced by Fay to accommodate a new employee.^{[3] [4]} After his murder his wife discovered he was broke.^[5]

On December 15, 1960, The Untouchables television series presented The Larry Fay Story. The second-season episode (and 37th for the series) starred Sam Levene as milk racketeer Larry Fay, an associate of Al Capone, and portrayed Fay's activities in New York City milk price-fixing case.^[6][7] Also, Fay's life served as the basis for James Cagney's character, Eddie Bartlett, in the 1939 gangster film, The Roaring Twenties.^{[citation needed]}

References