Slitkin & Slotkin: Postwar Dorchester Blvd bar was home to the nuttiest of nuts - Excerpt Montreal 375 Tales

Slitkins grips bubbly, 
Slotkins adds up cash: 1947

 Slitkin & Slotkin 1235 Dorchester W.  Boxing promoters Lou "Slitkin" Wyman and Jack "Slotkin" Rogers punched above their mythological weight, thanks to their Runyonesque patter between 1946 and 1951. 

"Listen to what I have to saying yet and maybe you wouldn't feel so good either, after you return me my change what the waiter left for me, not for you, my fine friend of a partner,” said Slotkin. 

"It's like this, enyhoo. As you know I do not go for 'rassling myself, even though I am about to go into the Forum and get a laugh at the antiques of Quinn's actors,” said Slitkin. 

Former hearse driver Joe "Meat Wagon" Brown slung drinks for boxer-turned-tailor Maxie Berger, who inspired Morley Callaghan's The Many Colored Coat about an editor mocking a tailor for a poorly-sewn jacket, while Al Palmer immortalized it as the Breakers Bar in Sugar Puss on Dorchester Street. 

 Louis Bercowitz came on July 25, 1946 after killing mob boss Harry Davis on Stanley Street. Palmer brought him to The Herald where Ted McCormick typed up a big scoop confession. 

 Scribes Elmer Ferguson, Harold McNamara, Jim Coleman, Dink Carroll were regulars, as was Alfred de Marigny, acquitted in the murder of millionaire Harry Oakes. The duo, whose nicknames came from a Cohan and Watson comedy skit popular at the Gayete in the 1920s, also welcomed boxer Johnny Greco and baseball star Roy Campanella, ads boasted. 

  The All American Bar and Grill lured tourists after 1951 with singing pianists, dancer Marlene Hall and a “certain intimate style of entertainment which has become a Montreal hallmark.” 

  Gangster Frank Pretula hired boxer Charlie Chase and friends to shoot up the joint in July 1955. 

 Former wrestler Denise Cassidy said English and French women didn't mingle much when she ran is as the city's first lesbian bar Baby Face from 1975 to 1983. It was demolished soon after.

This text was taken from Montreal 375 Tales, the most indispensable source for Montreal history. 

Thanks to Annie Richard for finding these photos from the Nouveau Monde magazine, 1947.