Betty Susha

Betty Boyers, night-club proprietor: born Hammond, Indiana, 4 April 1916; married 1940 Jack Sorian (marriage dissolved 1946), 1949 Alexei Antonoff (died 1982; marriage dissolved 1969), 1970 William Susha; died New York 23 January 2004.

The Cold War, in Winston Churchill's famous words, was marked by the descent of an "iron curtain". But in New York City by the 1950s and 1960s there opened a remarkable chink in that curtain - the Two Guitars, Betty Antonoff's matchless Russian night-club on East 14th Street.

There one could meet and converse freely with nationals from Soviet-bloc countries. Exotic food and sparkling international entertainment was then a burgeoning and colourful aspect of city night life, partly because liberal and fun-loving New York, having become the seat of the United Nations, was beginning to see itself - with some justice - as the capital of the world. Betty Antonoff embodied that exuberance.

Her club was earlier known as the Ketchma, named after a 1920s and 1930s 2nd Avenue and 14th Street haunt of Russian exiles - many claiming and even more developing noble titles. At the Two Guitars, they rubbed shoulders with Soviet diplomats - often Muscovite couples but some alone (considered a sure sign of KGB affiliation, but no matter) - as well as with Jesuits in mufti, ageing "revolutionary" student critics of Haile Selassie's slowly crumbling regime and even bareheaded but uniformed members of the Police Department consuming a quick and quiet beer in an unusual atmosphere. Regular clientele included well-known Russian exiles such as the Obolenskys and the Greek shipping magnates Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos.

Betty Boyers was born in Hammond, Indiana, in 1916. She grew up in Chicago and studied drama at nearby Northwestern University for two years before making her way to New York, intent on an acting career. Her father was of English and Pennsylvania Dutch stock but, as she told everyone, her mother was "lace-curtain Irish". Indeed, Betty always considered herself Irish and was not alone among the Irish-American community in the uninformed naïveté she displayed should any stranger be so unwise as to raise any of the complexities in the long history of the Emerald Isle. Taking full advantage of a fine profile, with a toss of her magnificent red hair and a charming smile she would flatly declaim "Remember the potato famine" or "Brits out of Ireland!" and change the subject.

Unsuccessful in obtaining long-term stage roles, Betty, with her second husband, Alexei Antonoff from the Crimea, formerly headwaiter at the Skazka, determined to create a really authentic Russian nightspot. Fine nostalgic murals of "old Russia" were created as a background to the music of Kostya Poliansky and later Sasha Polinoff, considered one of the greatest balalaika players of his generation.

Alya Uno, a Russian singer of great beauty, performed for a year at the Two Guitars. There Theo Bikel learned to play Russian songs under the guidance of the performer Lubov Hamshay, styled "Manhattan's Gypsy Singer". And always there was Mischa Usandanoff theatrically nailing $10 bills to the floor with deadpan dagger-throwing of pinpoint accuracy. Above all there was the cuisine: the shashlik, stroganoff, blinis and porozhok.

In the 1970s the world scene, 14th Street and indeed much of lower Manhattan all changed. The club had to close. Alexei died and Betty ran a tour company catering for visitors to the city. By then an ardent and devoted New Yorker, she decided against retirement in Florida with Bill Susha, her third husband - "so hot, no big buildings there, no shade". She remained in New York, in touch with many of the club's regulars.

In 2003, at the age of 86, she fulfilled what, especially in her declining years, was the dream of her lifetime - to visit Red Square in Moscow and the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

Richard Greenfield