From our lofty vantage point here in the 21st century, it’s easy to perceive Capt. Alexander L. Emerson, long-ago chief of the Baltimore Police Department’s Vice Squad, as some sort of half-crazed crusader.
But he was the precise embodiment of an uptight time.
He was the scourge of striptease artists, dice rollers and numbers operators everywhere. He saw himself as the defender of public morality in the heart of the “Great Sexual Drought” of the 1950s.
And he comes to mind today because his main target back then was The Block, which he wanted to shut down. And here we are, all these decades later, and the fight lumbers on.
In recent weeks, we’ve had political figures and police leaders argue that The Block — the 400 block of E. Baltimore St., with its neon string of X-rated strip joints and peep show parlors — is a nightly repository of lowlifes who bring violence to the city and overburden an already beleaguered police department.
Long ago, Capt. Emerson looked at The Block and mainly fussed about sex.
He was a native of Maryland’s Eastern Shore who moved to Baltimore and had a wife and six children. He never missed Mass on Sundays or holidays and never took a vacation.
He believed a flood of barbarism was drowning centuries of Judeo-Christian values, and he wished to turn back the tide.
“Look at this,” he muttered one night as he glanced at advertising posters of young ladies whose primary occupational skill was undressing in public. There they were, the famous Blaze Starr, and Irma the Body, and Virginia Belle and her Twin Liberty Bells, all wearing low-cut theatrical bras and fishnet stockings.
One night, Emerson presided over the arrests of an entire burlesque troupe. He confiscated their outfits as evidence. In criminal court, he demonstrated how flimsy such lingerie was by holding up
a nightgown — and reading a book through it.
(And this was long before Baltimore was known as “The City That Reads.”)
One night, Emerson slipped into a club on The Block and observed a young lady slowly disrobing. Emerson jumped onto the stage.
“Put your clothes on and never do this again,” he cried.
“Throw the bum out,” somebody yelled from the audience, clearly referring to Emerson and not the young lady.
“I don’t know who made that remark,” Emerson cried back, “but I’d like to inform you that everybody at his table is guilty of disorderly conduct. We have a dozen wagons at Central” — he meant police headquarters, conveniently located half a block away — “and if it is repeated, we’ll be glad to take you all up there and hold you until we find out who said it. Now just let me hear one more remark and we’ll see what happens.”
Nobody said a word.
Even on The Block, the post-war years were an uptight time.
Once at a newsstand there, Emerson found a nudist colony picture magazine. Some people were playing volleyball. Others, shuffleboard. There was nothing racier than that.
“But you can see their bare bottoms,” Emerson cried, and hauled the newsstand dealer off to jail.
Well, it was a long time ago, a time when Playboy magazine was considered a hot item because its centerfold Playmates would cautiously let a towel slip enough to bare a little cleavage, and a time when a U.S. congressional committee declared a national epidemic of unhealthy literature.
Included in their “epidemic” were works by John Steinbeck, James T. Farrell and Alberto Moravia.
Then there was the Maryland Board of Censors, happily reporting that they were snipping offending scenes from about 50 movies a year and killing about a dozen mainstream movies entirely.
“They’re doing things up on that screen that I wouldn’t do in my bedroom,” declared Mary M. Avara, chief bluenose
of the censor board for many years.
Not to be outdone, Baltimore leaders in the ’50s formed a Committee for Decency to examine books and magazines for obscenity. They investigated such dangerous offerings as “From Here to Eternity” and “Mister Roberts.”
And who led the investigation into such books?
Our man Emerson, that’s who.
Michael Olesker’s newest book, “Boogie: Life on A Merry-Go-Round,” will be published this spring. It’s the life story of Baltimore legend Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass, an original “Diner” guy who grew up to create the Merry-Go-Round clothing chain and contribute millions to charity.
What does it mean to be fully present with each other and the sacred, asks Maryland-born cultural anthropologist Alanna E. Cooper.
As millions mourn the passing of Stephen Colbert from the airwaves, Michael Olesker looks back on the "institution" of late-night TV.
As he gets ready to leave for California, Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg looks back on his time in Baltimore and his 10 years writing for Jmore.
