“Weegee always wanted everyone to take their cloths off…”

(Perhaps not surprising for the author of Naked City, Naked Hollywood, and “Naked Everything,” etc….)

The above photo and letter is from a presumably great bookstore, Between the Covers, and is available here (for $2,800): http://www.betweenthecovers.com/btc/item/133703/

The Weegee bits:
“Weegee always wanted everyone to take their cloths off, men & women alike… Late one night, after the San Remo Cage [Cage?] closed, Weegee accompanied me home, and asked to take a nude photo. I had no inhibitions, only the demand that we not extend the nudity into sexual play – and he agreed. Weegee was very particular about the placement of the lamp… Weegee wanted the light to shine at just a certain angle behind me. And though I had often known him to be amorous, at this session his interest was patiently and entirely on the quality of the light & the pose – rare for a photographer known for his speed & spontaneity.” By Judith Malina

Related:

Getty Images screenshot: Judith Malina and Paul Goodman at San Remo, 189 Bleecker St., ca. 1954.

Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac’s City, By BillMorgan
(Of course Weegee hadn’t captured “dastardly crimes” in over ten years…)

Birth of the Cool… (Street photographer? The Village was published posthumously, was Weegee working on it in 1954?)

Weegee, The Village, book published in 1989, photo made in 1954…

“…then up to Rienzi’s for a quick look at the bulletin board, where you see that you can get a model to pose in the nude for $2 an hour, in case you want to take up art… People advertise for room-mates, soul-mates, helicopter pilots (probably for the girls who found a cold water flat on the sixth floor). Then you can stop in, say, at the San Remo bar – see what’s going on in there.” Weegee, The Village, 1989.