It cost $100,000 to open, with Shor hustling to find $50,000 and getting Leo Justin, a New Jersey theater owner, to invest the other $50,000, with the assistance of four associates.

One day, MGM head Louis B. Mayer complained about waiting twenty minutes for a table and said, “I trust the food will be worth all that waiting.” Shor replied: “It’ll be better’n some of your crummy pictures I stood in line for.” In a famous incident, Shor outdrank Jackie Gleason and left him on the floor to prove the point.

Somewhat notoriously, wives were not welcome in Toots's saloon; it was known, in the argot of the day, as a place of "booze and broads," where ballplayers, actors and politicians mixed.

Shor always ensured that DiMaggio got first-rate service without being hassled or asked for autographs by restaurant staff, other patrons, or fans.

During his time as a private attorney while living in New York City in the mid-1960s, Richard Nixon liked to stop in on Saturday nights, usually to talk sports with the various athletes who were present.

Toots Shor cultivated his celebrity following by giving them unqualified admiration, loyal friendship, and a kind of happy, boozy, old-fashioned male privacy.

In September 1958, Shor sold the lease for his 51st Street restaurant for $1.5 million to William Zeckendorf and Mutual Life and it closed on June 30, 1959.