Winchell in his column called it "Harriet" Johnson

In his memoirs, George Birimisa recounts an episode that launched his career as a gay playwright and, coincidentally, also explains Weegee’s cryptic caption for this photograph. Birimisa was working at the Village Howard Johnson as a soda jerk when, one night in 1955, Walter Winchell showed up after the restaurant had closed and demanded that he and his gang of friends be served. Knowing that Winchell was a right-wing homophobe, Birimisa refused. In his Daily Mirror column the next day, Winchell attempted to exact revenge, lambasting “Harriet” Johnson in the Village as a gay watering hole and calling it “vag-lewd.” But what was intended as a smear campaign in fact turned the establishment into a popular gay hangout.