Naturally, Miss Dawn Astra reciprocates Ambrose Hammer’s love, because all the time she is Julius Smung’s sweet pea, the best she ever gets is a free taxi ride now and then, and Julius seldom speaks of her as an artist. To tell the truth, Julius is always beefing about her playing the part of a strip dancer, as he claims it takes her too long to get her clothes back on when he is waiting outside the Summer Garden for her, and the chances are Ambrose Hammer is a pleasant change to Miss Dawn Astra as Ambrose does not care if she never gets her clothes on.
—Damon Runyon, “So You Won’t Talk!”
The various venues known as the Winter Garden are well-known in New York, but I had never heard of the Summer Garden. So far, all I’ve been able to turn up is a 19th-century theater also known as Wallack’s Theatre. Not much on dates of operation, but by 1937 the repertory at Wallack’s seems to have moved downscale.