A Slice of the American Dream, Warts and All

Politics makes for strange bedfellows — or so the adage has it. Anyone who watches “Queen of the Deuce,” a documentary by Valerie Kontakos, might conclude that strange bedfellows can stem from many other sources as well, including geographical displacement, capitalist initiative, and participation in a country as variegated as our own. The “queen” mentioned in the title, Chelly Wilson, was as American as mom, baseball, and baklava drizzled in honey.It’s probably wise to refrain from dubbing Chelly’s consorts “bedfellows,” given that she not only produced pornographic films but owned a number of theaters that exhibited them. Among the most renowned — or, depending on how you look at these things, notorious — was the Adonis Theatre on Eighth Avenue, a movie house that catered to all-male entertainments. Chelly hobnobbed with members of the trade, but she also fraternized with more mainstream elites like clergymen, mobsters, politicians, and Shirley MacLaine. That, and she had to contend with Hitler.Ms. Kontakos, a native New Yorker with roots in Greece, has put together a film that is less lubricious than its title suggests. “The Deuce” was, of course, the nickname for Times Square back in the day: a gritty hodgepodge of peep shows, strip clubs, illicit doings, and movie palaces of ill repute. Was it an environment whose dangers made the Vietnam War pale in comparison, as one of Ms. Kontakos’s interviewees contends? Certainly, it was less anodyne than 42nd Street as it stands now.Chelly was born Rachel Serrero in Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece and once the home of a sizable Jewish population. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 set into law the expulsion of Jews from Spain, many of whom settled in what came to be known as La Madre de Israel. Thessaloniki was, in fact, majority Jewish for close to 500 years. Nazi occupation put an end to that. Chelly received a visa to the United States by imploring upon the good will of her connections. She spoke not a word of English and arrived at New York City with $4 in her wallet.Chelly left behind an ex-husband she reviled and two children she adored. Having grown up in a conservative household and culture, her actions were decidedly out-of-the-norm. The ex-husband took their son to what was then Palestine; Chelly left their daughter with a non-Jewish family. After gaining a financial foothold in New York City, she sent for the girl. In the meantime, Chelly remarried, had two more children, and took on a host of lesbian lovers.American Greeks are renowned as entrepreneurs and Chelly was no exception. Husband no. 2 was a film projectionist who provided the initial entry into the world of cinematic pursuits. Along with a string of theaters and a film production company, Chelly opened Mykonos, a restaurant frequented by celebrities and city elders, including the mayor of Thessaloniki who enabled her exodus to America. All the while, Chelly hosted poker games in her Eighth Avenue walk-up, a home littered with correspondence, accounting, and shopping bags filled with cash. Her porn empire came to an end through various legal and political injunctions — Ms. Kontakos includes a newsclip of Rudy Giuliani underlining his mayoralty’s efforts to clean up the Times Square area. Chelly’s health deteriorated; chain-smoking will do that to one.Along with interviews with family, former associates, and historians, Ms. Kontakos fills out “Queen of the Deuce” with historical footage, vintage photographs, and, memorably, an audio recording of Chelly detailing her sojourn to the U.S. from Greece. The picture includes animated segments in which Chelly is rendered as a no-nonsense moll surrounded by a gallery of cartoonish toughs — a cinematic tack that is wholly appropriate given the colorful character at the core of this fascinating (and sometimes unseemly) avowal of the American Dream.

A Slice of the American Dream, Warts and All

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