![]() Over the years, Rosie and Mazie move apartment so often it becomes a local running joke. Her streets are filled with men who have lost everything, “bodies all around, not dead, but some of them seemed barely alive … I gave them all I had in my pockets and kept digging to see if I could find more.” Why is this city so beautiful when it mourns?” Mazie asks, the spectre of future catastrophe looming between the lines. “I had to see today on the streets, the day Wall Street fell. That’s the real test.” Homelessness soars when the Great Depression hits. ![]() “Life’s plenty easy when you’re winning,” she says. ![]() ![]() She befriends a nun who is devoted to helping the poor, and Mazie’s humanitarian streak develops. Mazie wears bright dresses, bleaches her hair, and drinks her way through Prohibition. At first, Mazie thinks it’s a death sentence, but instead of being shut off from the world, the world lines up in front of her box office every day, and she becomes the centre of the Bowery. ![]() Rosie, who wants to keep Mazie safe, away from the streets, has persuaded Louis to employ Mazie in the “cage” of The Venice. It’s 1918 – one year before Prohibition, 11 years before the Wall Street Crash – and Mazie lives with her younger sister Jeanie, older sister Rosie and Rosie’s husband Louis, who owns a cinema called The Venice. ![]()
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