Who Was WHERE! Jan Wallman’s—The Godmother of Cabaret’s Labor of Love

By Kati Neiheisel***Intrigued by NLE’s Who Was Who!, I want to know who was where. I want to know about the hot and happening clubs and piano bars of previous decades. Perhaps the past can inspire today’s New York City nightlife.

On this year’s Mother’s Day, May 14, cabaret legend Jan Wallman, would have turned 101 year old. But in an earlier time, from 1976 to 1991, New York City was home to Wallman’s two eponymous cabaret clubs. The first was located at 28 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village, from 1976-1986. The second was located at 49 West 44th Street in the Iroquois Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, from 1987-1991. However, the story of the two Jan Wallman’s doesn’t begin or end with this 15-year time span. From 1959, when Wallman began managing Upstairs at the Duplex, to her passing in 2015, the Godmother of Cabaret was an undeniable influence on performers, New York City nightlife, and American popular culture.

Nearly a decade after her death, performers mentored by Wallman continue to express their gratitude. On a recent afternoon at PianoPiano Rehearsal Studios, I asked pianist Jon Delfin if he knew Wallman. “Yes, but I can’t believe you asked me that! Miriam and I were just talking about her.” He and Miriam Fond had been rehearsing for a show in which Fond recalls her early days in cabaret. She says, “Jan Wallman started my career. I opened for Rodney Dangerfield and introduced him as the ‘comic laureate’ of the Duplex. At that time, he was still selling aluminum siding!” Fond recalls how Wallman loved performers and always pushed them to do better.

Jan Wallman was born as Janet Jacob in Roundup, Montana on May 14, 1922, and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. She studied theater at the University of Minnesota, married young and was widowed, married again and was divorced, but kept her husband’s surname. In search of a new life and a good time, she moved to New York where she became an enthusiastic patron of the city’s nightclubs. She soon met and befriended singer Nina Simone and her husband, Donald Ross. In 1959, Wallman and Ross became managers of Upstairs at the Duplex, a small cabaret room on the second floor of the Duplex at 55 Grove Street in the West Village. Ross left after three weeks, but Wallman found her calling. Speaking with The New York Times in 1986, she recalled, “I was doing what I liked to do. I loved what went on there–the music, the performers. It was a party every night.”

Wallman’s inspiration for Upstairs at the Duplex was the Blue Angel, a supper club with a reputation for sophisticated, intelligent acts and a smart, supportive, mostly gay audience. The Blue Angel was Wallman’s idea of “the greatest place in the world.” In Yael Kohen’s We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy (2012), Wallman says, “Herbert Jacoby of the Blue Angel was my mentor and he used some of the acts that started with me. Mine was a room where people started and moved on.”

Wallman was known for recognizing the potential talent in up-and-coming comics, singers and musicians, but no one went on her stage without auditioning. Once accepted, performers had the freedom to try new material, to see what worked and what didn’t, then come back night after night, and try again and again. This was why, in 1960, Woody Allen performed at Upstairs at the Duplex nearly every night for months. He had to be pushed onstage by Wallman and his managers, Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe, but the goal was to overcome his shyness, hone his craft as a comedian, and move on to bigger and better rooms. Other acts at the club included Joanne Beretta with John Wallowitch, Bert Convy, Pat Scott and George Segal with his banjo. Following her first professional engagement at the Bon Soir, Barbra Streisand would appear as a guest artist so she could be seen by out-of-town bookers.

Wallman always made sure her performers were paid, even if it was out of her own purse with money she made bartending. In the video interview, “Ricky Ritzel, ‘Talking with…’ Jan Wallman”(NiteLife Exchange, 2013), Wallman recalls Jimmy di Martino, owner of the Duplex, asking her to go behind the bar to make his friends a drink. “I didn’t know how to do that, but I did it. Later I went down to the Five Oaks, the original Five Oaks, owned by Bill Normand and his wife. There was a marvelous guy named Al, we all called him Uncle Al. He was the bartender.” Uncle Al taught her how to make drinks and tend bar so she could bartend at the Duplex in the afternoon and run the Upstairs at night.

In 1961, persuaded by the offer of a budget and a salary, Wallman left the Duplex to manage the upstairs room at Jim Paul Eiler’s Showplace at 146 West 4th Street. Wallman’s acts from the Duplex followed her to the Showplace. Other performers included Linda Lavin, Mark Murphy, Tom O’Horgan and Joan Rivers, who auditioned for Wallman in 1962 at a critical time in her “nonexistent” career. In her book Enter Talking (1986), Rivers simply says, “Jan Wallman and the Showplace saved me.”

In 1963, Wallman produced a two-act revue at Cafe Society, a new nightclub at 2nd Avenue and 56th Street. Directed by Bill Penn, with music by Jerry Powell and lyrics by Michael McWhinney, New York Coloring Book opened on April 2, 1963 and ran for 84 performances. The four stars: Gloria Bleezarde, Ronnie Hall, Carol Morley and Ronny Whyte, appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on May 19, 1963 to perform two of the songs from the Off-Broadway revue. (Other guests on “The Ed Sullivan Show” that evening were Ann-Margret, Steve Lawrence, Kate Smith, Vaughn Meader, Totie Fields and Lucho Navarro.)

In May 1964, Wallman returned to manage Upstairs at the Duplex, and again, her loyal performers followed. Also appearing were Claiborne Cary, Dick Cavett, Michael Dunn and Phoebe, Stanley Myron Handelman, Jim and Dorothy, Robert Klein, Marcia Lewis, Leslie Randall, Louis St. Louis, Stiller and Meara, Howard Storm, and Jo Anne Worley. Rodney Dangerfield debuted his catchphrase “I don’t get no respect” at this club. In an interview with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” in 2004, he recalled, “The audience came over to me afterwards and said, ‘Me, too, Rodney, no respect!’… All of a sudden, I found an image.” Dangerfield’s album The Loser was recorded live at Upstairs at the Duplex in 1966. On the cover, a tow truck pulls a car with a sign that says, “Just Married.” Dangerfield is in the driver’s seat and next to him, seen through the window, is his “bride”–Jan Wallman.

As her performers began to appear on popular television shows, such as “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “The Merv Griffin Show,” Wallman’s focus shifted to promoting the types of acts these shows were booking. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before these same shows were moving to the West Coast.

Coupled with the closing of the Blue Angel in 1964 and the Bon Soir in 1967, Wallman’s performers had fewer options in which to advance their careers. In 1968, Wallman resigned from Upstairs at the Duplex. For much of the next eight years she worked as a restaurant manager and bartender. She also appeared as the mother of the character played by Casey Donovan (aka John Calvin Culver) in the 1973 film Dragula, about a hairdresser/vampire whose victims, once bitten, turn into drag queens.

In 1976, Wallman was bartending at Mona’s Royal Roost, a tiny cocktail bar at 28 Cornelia Street. When owner Mona Katz offered her the lease, she eagerly accepted. Renamed Jan Wallman’s, the venue quickly became a popular destination. The New York Times raved, “Miss Wallman’s new restaurant draws a cosmopolitan crowd of old friends and strangers. With her current crop of entertainers posted at the spotlighted piano (and excellent amplification, with distinct lyrics and unobtrusive music), this is a rewarding spot for late listening.” One can catch a glimpse of the interior of Jan Wallman’s on an episode of “Emerald City TV” from 1976, in which Wallman is interviewed by Frank O’Dowd. His introduction begins, “To many Villagers, the name Jan Wallman is as familiar as Coca Cola. Her popularity as a hostess and impresario are common in both straight and gay circles.” Wallman appears motherly and modest, but proudly recalls, “A lot of people started with me. I was instrumental in the very beginnings of their careers, and I was interested in watching them move and watching it happen.” The segment closes with Ava Williams, house pianist on Sunday nights, singing “Nowadays” and “My Own Best Friend.”

Wallman initially saw her new establishment as an intimate restaurant with piano music, but friends started asking if they could perform. Wes McAfee, house pianist on Friday and Saturday nights, accompanied many of the singers including Thelma Carpenter, Arthur Kirson, Rick McKay, Loria Parker, Vida, and most notably, Barbara Lea, one of Jan Wallman’s primary stars. A collector of popular songs with an encyclopedic knowledge of American standards and jazz tunes, Lea was known for her sophisticated, sensitive interpretation of the lyric. In The New Yorker, May 20, 1985, Whitney Balliett proclaimed her “a singer who sings as easily as she breathes.” With John A. Murray, Lea also performed annually in Lovers at Christmas, a musical with a story line created by McAfee, also at the piano, with Jack Six on bass. With Brooks Morton, Lea performed a Cole Porter tribute show and a Gershwin revue called Strawberries.

Another primary star was Judy Kreston, best known for her work with pianist-composer David Lahm. Lahm says, “I walked into Jan’s because Judy had a job there with Cheryl Hardwick playing piano.” When Hardwick left town for a workshop, Kreston persuaded Lahm to accompany her. “She had to persuade me because our tastes in music were diametrically opposite. We eventually found an interesting and creative way of keeping us both satisfied.” In the Daily News, January 31, 1982, Kreston says Lahm “convinced me that I should sing what I was most comfortable with—Porter, Berlin, Kern, Dorothy Fields-Cy Coleman. David is Dorothy Fields’ son, so we’re sure to include her.” An album they recorded at the club, Live at Jan Wallman’s, was released in 1985. Lahm says, “We were tight with Jan. We knew her mother, Mercedes Jacob, and her poodle, Maggie. Legend was, when your act was finished, if the dog barked, you’d get another booking!”

Other performers at 28 Cornelia Street included Jon Anderson with Philis Raskind, Phillip and Seth Aronson, Bruce Vernon Bradley and May Ellis, Cynthia Crane with Bob Goldstone, Jimmie Daniels, Sybil Evans with Henry Jones, Claudia Hommel with John Walter, Mary Beth Kayson with Christopher Denny, Lynn Kearney with Denise Puricelli, Helen Klass with Buddy Barnes, Drinda Lalumia with Murray Epstein, Yvonne Roome with Paul Trueblood, and Ronny Whyte. Whyte dedicated his song “I Love To Stay Up Late” to Wallman, Wes McAfee and Suzanne Smith, a close friend of McAfee’s. He explains, “I lived on Cornelia Street near Jan Wallman’s. I would come down after playing the Mayflower Hotel—and stay up late! Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet was usually there on Friday nights and Jan would keep serving after curfew.”

Jazz pianist-singer Daryl Sherman says, “For me, Jan Wallman’s was an introduction to the intimacy of cabaret.” Sherman started her career in New York playing solo in restaurants as background music and in supper clubs including Jimmy Weston’s, where jazz trios played into the early morning for listening and dancing, and clients were often mobsters and their girlfriends. “Jan recognized, even before I did, the quirkiness and the variety of things I had the potential of doing. She allowed me the flight of fancy.” Encouraged by Wallman, Sherman put together a program of her original songs called the Tropical Belt Songbook. “I managed to get people there and it was such a sense of community. Many years later, I found out Roger Schore was at the show, and a few other people, and they remembered the songs I did! It was such a fertile ground, and Jan was so encouraging.”

“Meeting Jan changed my life,” says Rian Keating. “I was invited to see a friend perform and Jan met me at the door. She was very solicitous. There was a $5 cover and a $3 minimum—a lot of money for a 20-year-old in 1980. I sat at the bar and had a bowl of soup.” As he watched the show, he discovered, “I like this!” A few years later, Keating created “Spotlight!,” a show on public access television where he interviewed theater celebrities, including performers from Jan Wallman’s. When he told Wallman he wanted to interview a performer with AIDS, she suggested David Summers, who became an AIDS activist after being diagnosed with the disease in 1984. “David was working on a Sondheim show with pianist John R. Williams. Jan gave him dates for the show but didn’t know if he’d be able to do it. He did! He was a real mover and shaker. Jan adored him!” A documentary about Summers, Hero of My Own Life, originally broadcast on PBS in 1986, includes clips of his show David Summers Sings Stephen Sondheim, performed at Jan Wallman’s.

On September 13, 1982, the Daily News reported on the sixth anniversary of Jan Wallman’s: “There’s no dinner served tonight, but there is a free buffet as celebration. The club didn’t have much to celebrate not long ago when thieves walked off with the sound system, but friends donated money for a new one.” Three and a half years later, in 1986, Wallman’s friends would come through for her again when her lease expired and the rent was raised for the third time. She was trying to build a renaissance in cabaret, she told The Los Angeles Times. “I’m not looking to get rich; it’s a labor of love.”

The Cabaret Concert for Jan Wallman, a benefit to raise funds to relocate the club took place at Carnegie Hall on February 3, 1986. The benefit was conceived and produced by Judy Kreston, who also hosted and performed in the show with David Lahm. Other performers included singers and comedians mentored by Wallman at Upstairs at the Duplex and the Showplace—Dick Cavett, Bert Convy, Linda Lavin, Marcia Lewis, Joan Rivers, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and two of Wallman’s friends, Kaye Ballard and Margaret Whiting. ”I’m glad they’re doing it while I’m alive,” Wallman told The New York Times. ”Send me the flowers now.” Studio 54 gave a dinner after the show for participants and guests in their new upstairs dining room.

One year later, with the $40,000 raised by the concert, Wallman signed a lease on a two-room space previously known as The Barrister, at 49 West 44th Street in the Iroquois Hotel. The new Jan Wallman’s, a restaurant with a showroom and a piano bar, could seat ninety and served both lunch and dinner. The interior was described in The New Yorker as “a mirror-walled burgundy room that gives one the not unpleasant sensation of sitting in a giant glass of red wine.” On February 17, 1987, Kreston and Lahm opened the showroom with the songs of Anthony Newley. On Tuesdays in March, Ronny Whyte sang The Bad and the Beautiful – the Worst and Best of America’s Great Songwriters, and on Fridays, Barbara Lea and Wes McAfee performed songs inspired by Roy Hemming’s book The Melody Lingers On: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Musicals.

Others who performed in the club’s first year included Jon Anderson, Judy Bady with Gregory Toroian, David Berk with Loria Parker and Margaret Wright in a tribute to composer Ralph Rainger, Patti Bottino and Lynn Zeff, Claiborne Cary with Buddy Barnes, Dolly Dawn with Bernie Wayne, Joe Derise with John Dooley on bass, Nancy Harrow with Roland Hanna, Rian Keating with Russ Daisey, Emme Kemp, Stephanie Nakasian with Hod O’Brien, Lily Quin with Bobby Cole, John Remme, Arthur Siegel, Bob Stewart with Marty Napoleon and Mike Formenak on bass, and Anya Turner with Robert Grusecki.

On September 6, 1987, raved, “Jan Wallman’s handsomely appointed new club at 49 West 44th Street is a model of what 80’s cabaret ought to be. It offers good food, an ambiance that encourages intimacy but affords elbow room and consistently strong talent, all at reasonable prices.” Later in September, Buddy Barnes did a month-long Thursday night series featuring special guests, beginning with Rita Gardner. In November, Sylvia Syms, with David Lahm and Steve LaSpina on bass, was the first performer to play a full week in Wallman’s new midtown room, which normally offered entertainers one or two nights at a time. A month later, Marti Stevens, accompanied by Barnes, was the second performer to play a full week in the room.

In January 1988, songwriter Jimmy Webb debuted his cabaret show at Jan Wallman’s, performing in New York for the first time in a decade. In an interview with the Bistro Awards, May 1, 2022, Webb remembered, “There was a tiny bar, and you went through a curtain into the showroom—about as big as my living room. I loved it, and I immediately got a charge out of being that close to people… I remember walking out after a show with a warm feeling inside and the snowflakes landing on my black overcoat and loving New York and loving to be in New York.”

Also in January 1988, a long-standing New York City law that set a limit of three musicians on stage at city clubs and cabarets was ruled unconstitutional because it restricted the First Amendment rights of composers and performers. Jan Wallman’s headliners celebrated by adding extra musicians to their acts. Barbara Lea performed with Daryl Sherman on piano and vocals, Dick Sudhalter on trumpet and Loren Schoenberg on saxophone and piano in an ensemble called Mr. Tram Associates, named for saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer, also known as “Tram,” a major influence on saxophone legend Lester Young. The next evening, Kreston and Lahm appeared with a bass player and a drummer. There was, however, no dancing, as that portion of the law remained intact. (The 1926 New York City Cabaret Law was a dancing ban originally enacted during Prohibition, and not repealed until 2017.)

Among performers appearing at the club from 1988-1991, were Al Carmines and David Vaughan, Mark Coffin with Paul Trueblood, Yvonne Constant with Stan Free, Steven Davis, Brian Gari with D. Fetters and Robin Kaiser, Sebastian Hobart with William Roy, Richard Holbrook with Jeffrey Swinkin, Barbara Howard with Joe Bousard, Ellen Kaye with John Jacobson, Larry King with guest Charlotte Crossley, Sandra King with Richard Rodney Bennett, Helen Klass with Robert Bendorff, John Meyer, Ellen Mittenthal, Estelle Reiner with John Campbell and Jay Anderson on bass, Anthony Santelmo, Jr. with Nan Butcher, Janet Savage with the David Leonhardt Duo, Julienne Marie Scanlon, Kathrin King Segal, and Sara Zahn with Tom Toriello. Composer Bart Howard appeared in multiple revues of his own songs, joined by Buddy Barnes, KT Sullivan and John Loehrke on bass, and composer Philip Springer accompanied Shirley Lemmon and Peter Oliver-Norman in a revue of eighteen of his original tunes, three of them written with Carolyn Leigh.

On February 4, 1991, after four years at 49 West 44th Street, an All-Star Tribute to Jan Wallman celebrated Wallman’s retirement from the business. Judy Kreston and David Lahm immediately took over the lease and Richard Hendrickson took over the management of the club. The menu was changed and the name was changed to Judys (no apostrophe), as a tribute to famous singers named Judy. (In 1998, the club lost its lease and moved to Eighth Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets, where it was renamed Judy’s Chelsea, with an apostrophe, after owner Judy Kreston.)

Sue Matsuki was honored to be one of the last acts to perform at Jan Wallman’s West 44th Street location, accompanied by Bruce Levine. “I did two different sets—show tunes, then jazz standards. After the show, Jan affectionately said, ‘Stick to the standards, kiddo…it’s clearly your heart music!’ She came to see me perform at St. Peter’s Church, accompanied by Gregory Toroian, and gave me the nicest review, Matsuki continues. “Jan was such a champion for me and would come to all my shows. I think the world of her.” In recent years, Matsuki has been referred to as “The Godmother of Cabaret,” but says, “I make it a point to say it was Jan Wallman’s original moniker. I wear it with pride to honor Jan—and Julie Wilson. I try to give the love and support they gave me back to those who come to me for guidance.”

Scott Barbarino, publisher of NiteLife Exchange, who watched over Jan like a son, remembers, “In 1988, I became general manager of the Duplex at 55 Grove Street. One day, a woman and a man were at the bar, and the woman was giving me advice. I was young, and when you’re young, you don’t always want to hear advice. But it was good advice. Then I found out it was Jan Wallman and Gregory Moore, her assistant for many years and her roommate later in life. One of the most important pieces of advice she gave me was ‘never let anybody onto your stage that you haven’t seen in performance.’ I broke that rule twice in my life because the people had big names. I regretted it both times.”

Wallman and Barbarino became friends and would go out to see shows together. “When I started NiteLife Exchange in 2007, Jan became a reviewer. She was very, very particular about the music. She did not like when people would change lyrics and adjust things that she felt weren’t respectful to the original. The song ‘In Other Words,’ written by Bart Howard, a very good friend of hers, became known as ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’ She would not be happy to see a press kit with the song listed as ‘Fly Me to The Moon.’ She’d make a note of that. She never minced words when it came to the Great American Songbook. She was a great defender of the composers and lyricists that put the song together.” Wallman also produced shows for artists at other clubs where Barbarino worked, including a show with Yvonne Constant at Dillon’s Supper Club on West 54th Street, across from Studio 54. “I would go from one place to another,” Barbarino says. “Show me a stage and I’ll figure out a way to bring cabaret in. It gave her the opportunity to present.”

Cindy Miller became a close friend of Wallman’s in their later years. “I knew her club, her mother and her mother’s poodle at Cornelia Street, but I worked at night in the restaurant business–and so did she! I got to know her well after she closed her clubs. We got along great and had the same interests. She knew everybody. I met lots of interesting people through Jan and we went to see their shows. She enjoyed the annual Cabaret Convention and one of her favorite places was Don’t Tell Mama. I don’t remember names, but I remember Sidney Myer! I’m crazy about him! One of her good friends was Helen Klass. Helen started out in a little piano bar on 2nd Avenue and worked her way up. An excellent singer and entertainer, but she never got anywhere big—which was good. It can be a real pain in the ass to be somebody big!”

Miller continues, “In this city of a $20+ cab ride, you can’t go everywhere you want to go, so Jan took the subway, even in her 80s. She didn’t walk very fast, and the stairs were murder, but she did it. Her roommate yelled at her for doing it.” Wallman and Moore lived near New York University. When NYU wanted to take over the building, Wallman publicly refused to move. NYU eventually gave in and found her another apartment she liked, across the park with an elevator. “Jan was a fabulous person. She produced acts and people asked for her help. She gave great advice… what to sing first, what to sing second, how to end the show, how to talk to the audience. She wasn’t judgmental the way most people are. And she enjoyed what she was doing.”

The love and respect Wallman had for her performers was clearly reciprocated in her lifetime. She was among the first group of Bistro Award recipients in 1985, and in 2006, she received a special Bistro Award for her longtime contributions and dedication to cabaret. In 2007, Joan Rivers presented Wallman with the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, when Linda Lavin was presented with the MAC Lifetime Achievement Award, she acknowledged Wallman, saying, “Thank you for changing my life.”

After her death in 2015, tributes to Wallman’s life and career continued. A special celebration on January 19, 2017, at the Duplex, featured Scott Barbarino, James Gavin, Richard Holbrook, Joan Jaffe, Arlene Love, Sidney Myer, Ricky Ritzel, Lennie Watts and Ronny Whyte. At the end of the performance, a plaque was unveiled at the entrance to the cabaret room. It read, “The Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs Remembers Jan Wallman (1922-2015), Legendary Club Owner, Booking Manager of the Duplex, Beloved Member of the MAC Advisory Board, and Champion of Cabaret.”

In Enter Talking (1986), Rivers said, “I loved Jan. I loved her because she was just like me, trying to live her dreams, working during the day as a bartender so she could be an impresario in front of her audience, making her breathy little speech, ‘Good evening, I’m Jan Wallman…’ She once told me she believed that if she was a good girl she would go to the Blue Angel when she died.” It’s easy to imagine her at the Blue Angel, with mentor Herbert Jacoby, friends, family and performers, their glasses raised to Jan Wallman, the Godmother of Cabaret, and her labor of love. Cheers!