Club Tahiti

Club Tahiti is a struggling nightclub on Fifty-second Street that becomes a small but consequential stage in Willie Keith’s early life. It gives him a paid engagement, brings him into contact with May Wynn, and later gathers the pair and their acquaintances together after Willie has entered the service. Its recurring presence ties his prewar ambitions and romance to the changes the war imposes on both.

Setting and Ownership

The Club Tahiti is introduced as a dingy nightspot whose atmosphere does not match the glamorous promise of its South Seas name. Its cellar interior has papier-mâché palms and dusty coconuts; in the daytime, the room looks especially worn, with faded furnishings, marked carpeting, and grime on the painted walls and mural. The details establish a place that is makeshift rather than luxurious, even as it provides a working venue for performers.

The club enters Willie’s career when its proprietor sees his act and offers him ten dollars a week more than he earns at the Greek. Their transaction takes place in an afternoon interview at the Club Tahiti on December 7, 1941. The raise lifts Willie above the minimum union wage, and he treats the engagement as a major professional advance. The contrast between the modest room and the importance he assigns to the job captures the scale of his ambitions at this point: a small step in the nightclub world feels like a rise toward the celebrated composers he admires.

Auditions and May Wynn’s Arrival

The Club Tahiti is also where Willie’s relationship with May Wynn begins. He comes there on a slushy afternoon to play piano for auditions, a task that places him in the familiar role of judging new acts. At first, the blonde singer seems to him like one of many performers around Fifty-second Street. May, seated beside her in a large black hat, initially appears equally unpromising to Willie. His quick assessment changes as the audition proceeds.

May performs a Mozart novelty, and the proprietor asks whether she can start on Monday. Her surprise at being hired gives the scene its turn: the audition that Willie had approached as routine becomes the beginning of her brief engagement and their acquaintance. At the proprietor’s request, Willie shows her around, and they are left together among the club’s artificial palms and coconuts. Their first exchange is courteous and tentative; the shared workplace soon gives them a reason to spend time together.

A Working Venue and a Courtship

May’s job at the Club Tahiti lasts three weeks. Her Mozart performance is well received, and over successive evenings it becomes simpler and more lucid, with fewer gestures. Her agent and coach, Marty Rubin, visits several times a week to watch and talk with her after the show. The club thus functions not only as a stage but as the site of May’s developing performance and professional support.

Outside Rubin’s visits, May’s time between shows is largely spent with Willie. They sit in her dressing room talking, with Willie taking the part of the educated guide and May responding with a mixture of respect and satire. He persuades her to meet him during the day, and their outings to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum extend a connection first formed at the club. The contrast between those visits and the dressing-room conversations shows how the relationship moves beyond the immediate business of performing, while the club remains its initial meeting ground.

Return and Public Memory

The Club Tahiti reappears after Willie has joined the service. When he and May arrive, staff and musicians gather around him to admire his uniform and tease the couple about their romance. The interruption breaks a quarrel between them, and they sit together as the room fills with officers and their companions. The familiar venue has become a place where their private relationship is visible to a larger crowd, and Willie’s uniform makes his changed circumstances impossible to miss.

Roland Keefer also arrives that evening, offering a glimpse of the social world around the club and Willie’s naval acquaintances. Later, before the floor show, the master of ceremonies introduces May as a singer who has recently completed a successful run at the Krypton Room and Willie as an entertainer now serving his country. The audience urges them to perform together, and the club’s hat-check girl calls for the Mozart number associated with May’s earlier appearance there. Their reluctance gives way to public expectation, and they walk to the piano. The call recalls May’s first audition while placing both performers in altered roles: her career has moved on from the Club Tahiti, and Willie is no longer simply its pianist.

Narrative Significance

The club’s importance lies in this recurrence rather than in any lasting prestige. First it offers Willie a modest wage increase that he experiences as a triumph; then it supplies the setting for May’s discovery and their courtship; later it reunites them amid the visible signs of wartime change. The worn venue remains much the same, while the people who pass through it acquire new work, relationships, and obligations. By returning to the Club Tahiti, the narrative makes a local entertainment space a marker of Willie’s transition from aspiring performer to serviceman and of the connection with May that persists across that transition.