There are character actors in movies that pop up occasionally and you’re overcome by a warm wave of recognition and delight. One unforgettable gal that used to drive me crazy was the mannish-looking Madame Spivy who appeared in such movies as Requiem For A Heavyweight, The Fugitive Kind, All Fall Down. But to investigate her life was to discover she was also a real LGBT heroine.
Born Bertha Levine in Brooklyn, she began her career in music as a cabaret singer/pianist in speakeasies and nightclubs, and her ribald lyrics caused many to crown her the “female Noel Coward.” She used the name Spivy Le Voe which she shortened to “Spivy.”
Short, plump, with her hair in a pompadour with a white streak, she delighted audiences and made friendships with many celebrities. Eventually she opened her own nightclub called Spivy’s Roof (the penthouse at 139 E 57th street) from 1940 to 1951. Tallulah Bankhead, Patsy Kelly and others used it as a hangout. Liberace played piano and artists like Mabel Mercer and Carol Channing performed. Openly gay, Spivy joked that she just wanted a place to entertain her girlfriends, and the place became a hang-out for well-heeled gays. Paul Lynde, in a wonderful Youtube video, reminisced to Johnny Carson about performing at the club while it was on its way down.
Spivy then branched out into acting and was riveting as Ma Greeny, a Fedora-wearing hood in Requiem For A Heavyweight starring Anthony Quinn. She was a potent presence in the movie.
She plays the tough owner of a nightclub in The Fugitive Kind, who informs Marlon Brando’s snakeskin-jacket-wearing Valentine to get his date out of the bar (a slattern-looking rich-girl-turned-bad Joanne Woodward) because she has been eighty-sixed, but sweetly invites him to comeback alone “any time.”
She shows up in a dream sequence in The Manchurian Candidate, where Frank Sinatra and his other soldiers are at a horticultural seminar with fancy-dressed matrons discussing hydrangeas. Spivy really stands out wearing a ludicrous flowered hat and smoking with a cigarette holder.
She was Mother Josephine in Studs Lonigan, but I haven’t seen that one yet.
She also played a bar bouncer in All Fall Down, and when she catches sight of Brandon De Wilde she says, “Have you lost your feeble mind? He’s still got his baby teeth.”
I do remember her vividly on Alfred Hitchcock Presents in a memorable black comic episode called “Specialty Of The House,” co-starring Robert Morley, about a secret restaurant (which Spivy ran) where the clientele sometimes ended up on the menu.
In 1969 she was diagnosed with cancer and Patsy Kelly kindly got her into the Motion Picture Country Home in Los Angeles, where she passed at age 64 in 1971.
Boy, would I love to drop by Spivy’s Roof for a cocktail tonight….
(Trying to find anything about Madame Spivy is hard- I was amazed when I discovered Brian Ferrari’s blog on line- he has done amazing research on this incredible woman- I urge you to check it out. Why isn’t there a book on her????)
Let’s meet a Spivy’s Roof for a stiff one.