Weegee Daily… Balcony Seats At A Murder… November 17, 1939

New York Post, November 17, 1939
“Street Scene in New York
After the guns ceased barking and the gunmen fled, neighbors peered from the fire escape and almost every window last night for a glimpse of the body of Anthony Greco, slain in front of his own cafe at 10 Prince Street.
Associated Press Photo”

Ceegee, November 17, 2014
Balcony Seats At A Brunch… Balcony Seat While Shopping in Noho…

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New York Post, November 17, 1939
“Street Scene in New York
After the guns ceased barking and the gunmen fled, neighbors peered from the fire escape and almost every window last night for a glimpse of the body of Anthony Greco, slain in front of his own cafe at 10 Prince Street.
Associated Press Photo”

LIFE, November 27, 1939
Murder in New York
“After dusk on Nov. 16, Angelo Greco stood smoking outside his cafe in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Emerging from the darkness, a man drew a gun, fired four shots, fled into the night. Greco tumbled dead in his doorway. From windows above, heads popped out. Police cars screamed into the street. Close in their wake arrived Arthur Fellig, famed free-lance photographer (LIFE, April 12, 1937) who sleeps behind police headquarters, has a short-wave radio in his car. He listened briefly while neighborhood folk stolidly disclaimed knowledge of the murderer, then stepped back and photographed this dramatic street scene.”

Weegee, Naked City, pp. 78-79, 1945
“Balcony Seats At A Murder
This happened in Little Italy. Detectives tried to question the people in the neighborhood… but they were all deaf… dumb… and blind… not having seen or heard anything.”
Weegee, Naked City, p. 79

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“Street Scene in New York
After the guns ceased barking and the gunmen fled, neighbors peered from the fire escape and almost every window last night for a glimpse of the body of Anthony Greco, slain in front of his own cafe at 10 Prince Street.
Associated Press Photo”
New York Post, November 17, 1939

Murder in New York
“After dusk on Nov. 16, Angelo Greco stood smoking outside his cafe in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Emerging from the darkness, a man drew a gun, fired four shots, fled into the night. Greco tumbled dead in his doorway. From windows above, heads popped out. Police cars screamed into the street. Close in their wake arrived Arthur Fellig, famed free-lance photographer (LIFE, April 12, 1937) who sleeps behind police headquarters, has a short-wave radio in his car. He listened briefly while neighborhood folk stolidly disclaimed knowledge of the murderer, then stepped back and photographed this dramatic street scene.”
LIFE, November 27, 1939

“Balcony Seats At A Murder
This happened in Little Italy. Detectives tried to question the people in the neighborhood… but they were all deaf… dumb… and blind… not having seen or heard anything.”
Weegee, Naked City, 1945, p. 79

“One of the best pictures I’ve made… I got up nine o’clock one night, and I says to myself, I’m going to take a nice little ride and work up an appetite. I arrive right in the heart of Little Italy, 10 Prince St…. This was a nice balmy hot summer’s night… Some of the kids are even reading the funny papers and the comics… To me this was drama, this was like a backdrop. I stepped all the way back around 100 feet, I used flash powder… Of course the title was “Balcony Seats at a Murder”… That picture won me a gold medal [see below]… I try to humanize the news story. Of course I ran into snags with the dopey editors…”
Famous Photographers Tell How… ca. 1955
(Weegee talking about how he made his amazing photo can be heard on the Weegee’s World website.)

“At 6:45 P.M., on November 16, 1939, A Lone Gunman Shot Angelo Greco in the doorway of his candy store at 10 Prince Street in Little Italy. Greco who had a long history of arrests, fell dead with four bullets to the head. The gunman dropped his weapon beside the victim and disappeared into the panicked sidewalk crowd… police dutifully recorded the interior of Greco’s poorly stocked store and the location of the body…”
Murder Is My Business, p. 72

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Weegee Dans Ls Collection Berinson, pp. 188-189

Murder Is My Business, pp. 72-75

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A few years ago we made this related post, that pointed out the Editor and Publisher News Photo Contest prize award on the wall above his bed, in his home:
Balcony Seats at a Prize… Freelancer Fellig’s a Winner!

Popular Photography, May 1940, pp. 44-45
Freelance cameraman Arthur Fellig’s a Prize Winner! (Perhaps not surprisingly, Fellig’s the only freelancer, and May 1940 is before he was widely known as Weegee…)
“Balcony Seats at a Murder” is included in the 5th Annual Exhibition of the Press Photographers’ Association of New York and Editor and Publisher News Photo Contest…
(You won’t see this one on too many bibliographies…)
Is that the Alan Fisher? A future colleague at PM? And the William Klein? And the Joseph Conrad?
A pre-PM free-lancing Fellig was understandably proud of winning the Editor and Publisher Prize… In February 1941, the beginning of his most productive year as a photographer, the award was still on his wall…

Weegee, [self-portrait], 1941

Several years ago we made this related post:
Balcony Seats at a Blog…

Weegee, Naked City, 1945
Balcony Seats at a Murder…
10 Prince St. New York, N.Y. ca. 1939