Weegee, Naked City, 1945, pp. 148-149
Shorty, the Bowery cherub, welcomed the New Year…
“Shorty, the Bowery Cherub, New Years Eve at Sammy’s Bar,” 1943
Barth, Miles, Weegee’s World, New York: Bullfinch Press, 1997, p.139
“Shorty, the Bowery cherub, welcomed the New Year…”
Weegee, Naked City, New York: Essential Books, 1945, p. 148
“Shorty, the Bowery cherub, welcomes the New Year…”
Weegee, Naked City, Cincinnati, Ohio: Zebra Picture Books, 1948
Excerpt from World by Night, Mondo Di Notte, 1960, (Directed by Luigi Vanzi, Produced by Julia Film, in Technirama)
THIS IS IT! The sensation-filled motion picture that has smashed records all over Europe! It’s fantasterrific! Over two hours of entertainment with the most celebrated cabaret and night club acts in the world. World By Night. From burlesque to ballet. (Poster, presented by Warner Bros, 1961.)
Night Club Boom, March of Time, 1946
“Home Sweet Home… Time Marches On… The End…”
Weegee’s People, 1946
PM, April 25, 1948, m4
How to keep young with paints and brushes
After 18 years of painting in obscurity, Beauford Delaney [(1901-1979)], one of the last of Greenwich Village’s Bohemian artists…
PM, April 25, 1948, m4
PHOTOGRAPHER DIES – Arthur Fellig, the famous photographer known as “Weegee,” who turned his experiences covering Manhattan police headquarters into the novel “Naked City”…
The New York Times, December 27, 1968, p.33
PM, December 26, 1940 pp.16-17
Quakers March on New York with placards urging that America feed Hitler’s victims…
Christmas Pudding for these wounded British soldiers was served a few days early – so that this picture, sent from England by ship nail, could get here on Christmas day…
A Hitler Greeting of holiday ill-will toward England is loaded under a German bombing plane…
Loose Locomotive without a crew ran down spur in Chicago…
Nazi Troops are stationed in key spots throughout Rumania…
Union Label is the name of this strip act…
President Roosevelt Takes His Family and Guests to Church on Christmas…
Trans-Atlantic Greetings… are broadcast by Mayor LaGuardia and Lily Pons…
American Refugees arrive on S.S. Washington from the Orient…
First Aid fails to revive Paul Ryan, killed by a gas explosion in his apartment at 865 First Ave. Police said it was apparently suicide. The Christmas night blast shook the 17-story building and injured two house employees. PM photo by Weegee
PM, December 26, 1940 pp.16-17
865 First Ave., December 25 or 26, 2012
865 First Ave., December 26, 2020
PM, December 24, 1940
(Only six hours, and one time zone, seperates Weegee Creek, OH, and Santa Claus, IN…)
Weegee, Naked City, 1945, pp.158-159
Not so long ago I, too, used to walk on the Bowery, broke, “carrying the banner.” The sight of a bed with white sheets in a furniture store window, almost drove me crazy. God… a bed was the most desirable thing in the world.
In the summer I would sleep in Bryant Park… But when it got colder I transferred to the Municipal Lodging House… I saw this sign on the wall there. A Sadist must have put u=it up. I laughed to myself… what Cash and Valuables… I didn’t have a nickel to my name, but I was a Free Soul… with no responsibilities…
Slumber-time in a mission… it’s Christmas.
PM, December 23, 1940, p.1
Boy Meets Girl – and that’s no posed meeting as he came home last night on Christmas furlough with 5000 other soldiers. That’s not anguish you read in the face of the woman at the right. The Christmas package in her hand as she waits for her soldier is the tip-off. She too, is overcome with joy. (See page 15.) Photo by Weegee
PM, December 23, 1940, p.1
PM, December 23, 1940, p15. PM photos by Weegee
Home For Christmas Are the Soldiers From Alabama.
For nearly seven hours wives, girl friends, mothers and fathers swarmed into Pennsylvania Station to greet 5000 men returning from Fort McClellan, Anniston, Ala., on Christmas furlough. The special sections ran far behind schedule but the festive spirit of the crowd overwhelmed any feeling of boredom at the delay. The off schedules were caused by heavy traffic on southern routes of other trains distributing the new trainees throughout the country for the holidays. Then, too, special stops had to be made to take aboard more drinking water and sandwiches. Here, part of the crowd waits.
Marie Buoragura of 69 Marcy Ave., Brooklyn, trusts that there are not too many soldiers named John but the signal, written in lipstick on a newspaper carries her message.
What their names are is not particularly important. The picture of Him meeting Her is eloquent enough in its bliss and perfect obliviousness to thousands of others who gave and received similar greetings at the station. The soldiers will remain here for none days, then entrain back to Alabama.
PM, December 23, 1940, p.15.
Grand Central Station, December 23, 2012
…People swarmed Grand Central Station… the Apple store overwhelmed any feeling of boredom. (Weegee, a wartime photographer…) Here, part of the crowd walks, waits, and photographs…
Grand Central Station, December 24, 2020
PM, December 23, 1940
These Pictures Are PM’s Gift to You…
They are being given to readers who give PM Christmas gift subscriptions. Page 7 gives details.
FIREMEN FOLLOW DIRECTIONS
A sign across the front of this seven-story loft building near the Brooklyn Bridge instructed firemen to “Simply Add Boiling Water.” However, cold water was all they had, and anyway it seemed to them that it win this case it might prove more effective. AP Wirephoto.
San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 1943, p.7
THE FIREMEN FOLLOWED DIRECTIONS
Although the water they used was cold, New York firemen fighting a blaze in a seven-story building did their best to follow directions on a sign on the building: “Simply Add Boiling Water.” (A.P. Wirephoto)
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday Morning, December 21, 1943, p.6
Naked City, 1945, pp.52-53
3. FIRES…
The surprising thing about New York families, living as they do in such crowded conditions, is that they still manage to crowd in pets like dogs, cats, parrots, which they always try to save at fires. At one fire, I saw a woman running out holding a cardboard box with a couple of snakes inside. I questioned her. (It was none of my business, but I’m curious about people)… she told me she was a dancer who used the snakes in her act…
Naked City, 1945, p.52
Minicam, 1947
The Sign across the center of the building refers to the frankfurters, not the firemen! Weegee put his Speed Graphic with 5 1/4″ lens on a tripod and three No. 3 flashbulbs on extensions. Super Panchro Pres – 1/10 at F:8
Minicam, 1947
Third Avenue El, (3 second excerpt), by Davidson (Carson), 1950
The Eye of Fate
Did New Yorkers look completely different 50 years ago than they do today? Where have those kinds of faces gone?
There is cruelty in Weegee’s flash, but there is also harsh beauty. Sometimes it is the almost abstract beauty of light against dark, as in his photograph of a fire at the Hygrade Frankfurters factory — called “Simply Add Boiling Water.” But sometimes it is the raw beauty of emotion that Weegee captures in his subjects.
The faces themselves can hardly be called beautiful. They seem at first to belong not merely to another time but to another world, as remote from the present as the portrait of a Renaissance pope. It is human flesh, but arranged by a rough, unfamiliar hand. It takes awhile, wandering among Weegee’s photographs, listening to a pair of old men remembering Times Square in 1942, to realize that an old-fashioned face still lurks in each of us, if only a Weegee were there to see it when it surfaced.
The New York Times, December 5, 1997, p.30
