(The following is a reprint of an article that ran in the Sunday Globe on Nov. 27, 1997, nearly 35 years after the tragic fire.)
In the early Forties the Cocoanut Grove was the brightest star in the firmament of Boston night clubs. It was located in the cinema exchange area of the city, near the Statler Hotel and just off downtown Park Square.
Passing through revolving doors of the main entrance on Piedmont street, one came into a beautiful foyer with deep plush carpeting. Beyond this and to the right was the swank main dining-room with its seven large, realistically exotic, artificial palm trees flanking the dance floor.
The room had a capacity of 400. Facing the dining-room was the spacious Caricature Bar, boasting the longest counter in Boston. The New Lounge, at the Broadway side of the club was a popular retreat for businessmen and the latest structural addition.
The entire establishment was a series of three buildings, joined in staggered array one after the other, with varying levels two and three stories high. In this irregular outlay the interior was a maze of L-shaped corridors and anterooms which could easily confuse any patron not familiar with the premises.
Just below the revolving doors on Piedmont street was a basement bar called the Melody Lounge. From one corner of this room, near the base of an artificial palm tree, a spark from a match ignited a few fibers and fate decreed that 489 people would die.
Charlie and Betty Coombs were in the Melody Lounge celebrating his recent job promotion at the Edison plant in Weymouth that night of Nov. 28, 1942.
Nearly 200 patrons were jammed into this popular room, most of them experiencing an uncomfortable, hemmed-in feeling. They were standing four and five deep at the bar. The semi-dark lounge created an atmosphere of mystery, and the tiny bulbs socketed in cocoanut husks, and indirect lighting above the oval bar, were the room's only source of illumination.
Charlie and Betty were lucky. In arriving earlier they had secured bar seats.
They watched as Bradley, the bartender, ordered Stanley Tomaszewski, a 16- year-old bar-boy, to replace a burned-out bulb in the husk of a palm tree. Stanley had to light a match as the corner of the room was quite dark.
Believing he had carefully extinguished the match and looking around to see that nothing had ignited, the bar-boy then dropped the dead match stub in his vest pocket.
Moments later, flames were creeping up the back side of the palm tree and igniting the deep blue satin folds which formed a ceiling-drop overhead.
This prelude to disaster progressed unnoticed for a moment. A few patrons viewed the curling flames as they danced through satin layers above. The leaping fire was a source of comedy for some, and they laughed.
The bartender squirted seltzer-water at the flames, which provoked them to burn brighter. The room temperature increased considerably. Then the leatherette wall boards and rattan (the artificial reed-like stems) burst into flames, and it was no laughing matter.
With this new combustion an odious smell permeated the lounge in minutes and patrons began surgiing toward the only public exit. The single staircase became jammed as frenzied patrons trying to climb over each other.
Black acrid smoke started to fill the room as the blaze reached full intensity.
Just before the lights failed, Charlie and Betty Coombs edged their way towards the concealed corridor door, motivated by Stanley's nod to "come over." Seven or eight other patrons who had kept their heads, were also looking around for possible escape, and they followed the bar-boy down the escape corridor and into the kitchen. Stanley directed all of them into the larger of two walk-in refrigerators. As the door closed, prayers were said by most in hope that eventually the firemen would rescue them.
Meanwhile the poisonous fumes were taking a toll of human lives and the mass of humanity was slowly succumbing in the darkened tomb once called the Melody Lounge. g off the foyer to his right. Perhaps someone was taking flash pictures, was his first thought. Then a red ball of fire raced across the ceiling and there was a huge puff of black smoke as it burst in a heat explosion over the foyer. The fire had followed the corridor ceiling, coming up the stairwell from the basement lounge. Patrons four deep at the checkroom, clamoring for service, were oblivious to what was happening just over their heads. The noise factor in the area around the checkroom - loud talking, enthusiastic greetings and some impatient shouting - somehow seemed to dull their senses.
Martin pulled a five-dollar bill from his wallet and dropped it on the table. Evelyn looked at him quizzically.
"What's that for dear?" she said.
He clasped his hand firmly on her wrist. "Come on, quick. We're getting out of here."
As Martin briskly excorted his wife by the checkroom and towards the main exit, Evelyn cried. "My Stole."
Through the revolving doors they went and in the cold night air outside, Martin told his wife what he had seen. "I'll buy you a much better stole, honey," he said. BOX
Jackie Maver was a captain in the dancing line of eight show girls. The last show was due to go on at 10:15, only minutes away, and the girls, costumed and waiting for their cues, were playing fantan in their dressing- room on the second floor.
When Jackie went downstairs to find out why the show was being delayed, the manager told her that more tables were being moved onto the floor to accomodate the steady inflow of patrons.
She watched the busboys make adjustments that would limit the full extension of the rolling-stage.
The shriek of fire sirens pierced the night air as Jackie climbed the narrow staircase to their dressing-room. She opened a window on the Shawmut street side of the club and was surprised to see smoke rising from the Piedmont street side of the Grove.
"Close the window Jackie. That air is cold," cried a showgirl.
Seconds later Charlie Mikalonis, a waiter, burst into the room.
"Girls, there's a bad fire downstairs," he cried. "You can't go down there now. It's too hot and the smoke is blinding." He ran across the room and said: "I'm going through this window to the adjoining roof. It's our only chance. Follow me girls."
Jackie observed his rapid departure with some doubt. She knew that, once on the roof, the girls would have to jump almost 25 feet to the pavement below.
Jackie insisted it was possible to make it down the stairs. They all grabbed hand towels and moistened them. With each girl putting her right hand on the shoulder of the girl ahead, Jackie opened the door.
Heavy black smoke was creeping up the stairwell and the heat was almost unbearable. They descended the narrow staircase gingerly, each girl holding a moist towel to her nostrils, cupped with the left hand for partial breathing. Hugging the wall to their right, seemed to help as there was an air current following them all the way down.
At the bottom, people were scurrying by in panic, heading for the exit which was dimly visible through the maze of smoke.
Just three steps from the exit, Jackie glanced to the left and stiffened. The dining-room was a holocaust. Patrons struggled in the semi-darkness, staggering into tables and falling over chairs. It was bedlam - frenzied screams, shouts of frustration, crashing trays and shattering glass.
As Jackie and the girls shivered on the sidewalk, heat explosions erupted inside and the screams of victims became louder. The Cocoanut Grove fire had reached full intensity.
Jackie looked at her watch. It read 10:25, cue time for the last show, a show that would never go on. BOX
Engine 16 came in on the third alarm struck. These firefighters had to leave their truck apparatus at Broadway and Tremont streets because of parked cars and the maze of hose lines and apparatus of the two fire companies which had arrived earlier at the scene.
Reggie Wyse and Al Minihan walked the 150 yards to the fire site with their sludge axes at the ready. They smashed the cubicle glass window on the Broadway side of the club. Steam and smoke escaped with a hissing sound.
There was a shrill cry from within and they saw a heavy-set man trying to get out. In struggling to get through the aperture of broken glass only one third his size, he suddenly slipped from within, and, lurching forward, impaled his neck on the jagged edges of the hot, searing glass.
Minutes later his body was removed after the breach in the glass-brick
window had been widened.
As they enlarged the hole and heat pressure receded, both firemen went inside. A large man was propped up against the inside wall. He had been asphyxiated. Al and Reggie carried him out and layed him on the sidewalk.
Both firemen were then ordered to the Piedmont street side where they entered the main dining-room.
The rows of bodies outside, lining the sidewalk, had just been removed
from the vestibule area where so many victims had fought to get through the only revolving door which had jammed.
Flashing his wheat-light (belt-lights carried by firemen), Reggie spotted a solitary figure standing in the middle of the darkened dance floor. It was a woman and she had a dark gray wool coat draped over her head. As the two firemen removed the coat she just stared at them.
There were now many breaches in the walls and smashed windows allowed the gaseous fumes to dissipate.
Reggie and Al approached the Melody Lounge stairwell. A spectral horror confronted them as the two men started to descend the stairs. Bodies were floating in 14 inches of water. Ashen-faced victims, many of them unscathed by fire, hung over bar stools and lay across tables.
Wyse entered the toilet area and smashed thd hoppers at ground level with his sludge axe to syphon off the water.
Going through a corridor, the firemen entered the kitchen, which had been untouched by fire. They opened the large refrigerator door and saw eight bewildered and groggy patrons who had survived the 40 minutes of hell in the 38-degree temperature of their protective enclosure.
Al Minihan lead the eight survivors up the stairs, through the foyer and dining-room, and out through the exit onto Shawmut street. BOX
Private firefighter George Graney, then five years on duty with Boston's Engine 35, arrived at the fire site at 10:35 p.m. in response to the fourth alarm. His assigned position was at Broadway and Shawmut streets.
People were scrambling out all the club's available exits. A small service door near the Broadway end of the club was ajar. Thick grayish-black smoke was pouring out.
As Graney opened the metal door, he heard the stifled cry of a young woman. It was the checkroom girl, her head and torso protruding from under two layers of bodies.
"Please get me out of here, my father will be worried" she cried.
At that instant a ball of roaring fire passed over Graney's head, projected from the dining-room by air currents and heat pressure. He retreated but on re-entering minutes later was able to free the girl and carry her to safety.
The blaze had decreased appreciably when Graney and his companion firefighters made their way into the semi-darkness of the main dining-room. Bodies were sprawled under tables and clustered in heaps on the floor.
Most of the victims found near the center of the dining-room and on the dance floor were not victims of fire itself; they had succumbed from asphyxiation.
Other victims, seated on the Terrace and Villa perimeters of the huge enclosure, were burned almost beyond recognition.
There was a massive pile-up of bodies at the revolving door where the blaze was centered in the foyer after having gained in intensity as it rose
from the basement bar. Many were so badly burned that not even their sex could not be determined.
Graney removed many bodies with the aid of policemen on the scene. BOX
Approximately half of the dead were unburned. Some bodies were florid with a cherry-red hue, indicative of carbon-monoxide poisoning.
The bodies of the hundred or more who died in the room of the fire's origin took on a shiny yellow tint. Acrolein fumes, containing a derivative of glycerin, caused the weird appearance in death. When inhaled in abundant doses the resulting lesions which centered in the respiratory tract, caused the face and neck to take on a yellowish glow.
The Melody Lounge, with its leatherette trappings, had caused this poisonous chemical to spread, activated by heat pressure from the intense fire in that basement room.
Most of the victims had died at the scene of the fire, while others succumbed enroute to the hospitals or just after having arrived. Boston's Southern Mortuary was filled with the charred remains of 250 bodies, while another 150 victims were relatively unscathed, having died from poisonous fumes.
The grim task of identification was lengthy. In many cases dental charts had to be consulted and the rings on victims' fingers had to be traced.
An additional 89 patients died later in the three hospitals which had received the fire victims; Massachusetts General, Boston City and the Beth Israel.
Fire officials stated that over 900 people had crammed into the confines of the Cocoanut Grove on that night of tragedy. About 600 had jammed into the main dining-room, which had a legal capacity of 400.
Over 300 patrons had escaped through the revolving doors onto Piedmont street before the doors jammed when a male patron's foot became wedged in a recess at the base of the glass portal. In their rush for freedom, others, in a state of rising hysteria, had piled up on top of him; thus causing the tragic block to the only passable exit.
In the main dining-room, some 20 patrons groping in the dark had the coolness of mind to crawl under the circular tables, thus escaping the hazards of a wildly surging throng. By lying flat on the floor and covering their faces with tablecloths, napkins, jackets or whatever was accessible they had saved themselves from breathing the poisonous fumes that hovered over their heads. As gases rise, a thin current of protective air is usually found at the floor level. This one factor alone, had saved the 20 trapped patrons, who were later rescued when firefighters broke through the locked doors.
The three exits onto Shawmut street, facing the west side of the club, had been locked and rendered impassable on the orders of the owner of the Grove, Barney Welansky. Welansky was later charged in Suffolk Superior Court with wanton and willful multiple manslaughter and convicted on those charges. He served four years of a 12 to 15 year sentence and was released when it was determined that he had terminal cancer.
The Cocoanut Grove had blazed from end to end and only a hulk of charred smoking ruins remained the following morning. The holocaust, in its fullest sweep, had not been much more than a tremendous flash-fire. Starting in a basement lounge that was poorly ventilated, heat pressure was rapidly fed by highly combustible elements igniting the torch that gave Boston its greatest mass-tragedy. The fire had lasted 30 minutes.
