Wednesday, August 29, 1934

Went over to Laten's. He drove us up home (Clay Center, Kansas). Got polish and went to Mart's then to Emmett and Melvin's. Stayed all night at Henry's.

Jimmy Durante's Stage Antics - August 29, 1934

Jimmy Durante says things have reached a pretty spot for him, as he can’t enter a night club without having the master of ceremonies ask him to sing. While he is an obliging person at heart, there comes a time when the best of clowns likes to sit quietly and enjoy seeing the other fellow work.


So now Jimmy has a new stunt. Whenever he’s called on to give a number, he obliges with the roughest song he knows; tears the music, smashes at the piano, wrecks music stands and does all the incidental damage possible.

The audience loves it. But the management? That’s another story.

Tuesday, August 29, 1933

We stayed all night at Mart's. Went up to Henry's in the a.m. Then we went back and had dinner. I stayed there all night. Smoked the ham.

Pietro "Sugar House Pete" DiGiovanni
Born in Sicily and arrived in Kansas City in 1903
Underboss in Kansas City crime syndicate for nearly five decades
His nickname came from his dealings in black market sugar during WWI

During Prohibition, Kansas City had a reputation as the wettest city in the nation.
To make bootleg liquor you needed sugar, and the DiGiovanni brothers along with some
of their cohorts formed The Sugar House Syndicate. The consolidation raised the price of
sugar to $5.00 a sack and sold it on credit to anyone wanting to set up a still. Rather than
taking cash in repayment they took the whiskey, paying $5.00 a gallon and retailing it for
$15.00 a gallon. This way they controlled the illegal liquor business from start to finish.

"Sugar House Pete's" death date is not known.