The orchestra at the Tokay, the Hungarian restaurant at Seventh avenue and Fifty-second street, wacked out a chord or two and a plump, gray-haired woman, wearing bright red boots and a Magyar and otherwise keeps things moving costume, bounced out on the floor. There was a flurry of applause.
"I beleef, I beleef", she sang, rolling her eyes and holding up her index finger in true jitterbug fashion. "I beleef Ole Man Mose eez dead!"

There was laughter and more applause for the darling of the Tokay's floor show - Mme Ilona de Thury, 72 years old, a trouper for fifty years, who says, rather proudly, that she is the "oldest swing singer in captivity".

The other performers, waiters, busboys and proprietors at the Tokay all call Mme. de Thury "Mamma darling." They think that she is pretty swell. She has been at the Tokay for six years now. She works seven nights a week. She comes in at 7:30 P.M. and stays until 4 A.M. Then she bundles off home to her husband, to whom she has been married for nearly half a century.

Mme de Thury is a veteran of the operettas. A native of Budapest, she was once a beauty of the stage in her own country. They named hats and parfumes after her then, she said. She used to sing in "The Count of Luxembourg", "Her Soldier Boy", and "The Marriage Market" back home. In New York she once played in "The Merry Widow". Louis Hegedus, one of the owners of the Tokay, was her leading man in a Hungarian troupe which played on Irving Place many years ago.

Mme de Thury is a lovely, friendly women. She says she doesn't like swing, but she tries to sing it, because the customers like her attempt at it. She also sings Hungarian and French songs.

With Mme. de Thury's aid the Tokay offers a rather enjoyable floor show. The food, both Hungarian and American is good. The orchestra is headed by Gorodinsky, a Russian pianist who has been heard on the air, and now leading a night club band for the first time. A gypsy band, under the direction of Maxie Fransko, a gypsy "primas" who visits the diners' tables with his violin, alternates in supplying dance music.

The New York Sun, December 12, 1938. p. 23.