NY Times, January 2, 1937
1937
“Held in New Year Husband-Slaying”
Daily Mirror, January 2, 1937 (unidentified photographer)
“The first tragic figure of 1937, Mrs. Anna Sheehan, mother of three children, is charged with stabbing her husband to death because he accused her of ever-friendliness with another at a New Years party…”
78 Years Ago Today… The Gun Girl in Black…
Daily News, February 16, 1937 (NEWS foto)
TOY PISTOL FAILS, COPS GET GUNGIRL
They got the girl in black yesterday, the soft-voiced brunette with the scarred lip who has been holding up restaurants with monotonous ease.
Her shiny toy pistol failed to scare three husky men – although it panicked a courtroom a few hours later when a policeman discharged it during her arraignment.
She said her name was Norma Parker. Police said it was an alias. She had been arrested four times on vice charges and had served two terms in the workhouse. She was at liberty in $1,000 bail on a charge of stabbing a girl friend at 134 W. 65th St. [Lincoln Center], last November, in an argument over a man.
Wore Familar Costume
It was 2 A.M. when she first appeared in a cafe at 75th St. and Columbus Ave. She was wearing the black seal coat and the small black toque…
She ordered two cups of coffee…
‘Give me another cup of coffee’ she ordered.
When it was half empty, she asked for change for a quarter. Hasapas opened the cash register and looked up into the muzzle of a nickel-plated pistol.
Three Men Grab Her
‘All right. Let’s have the rest of it,’ she said coolly. The counterman handed over $14 in bills and a couple of nickels. Just then the door opened. The gungirl turned around and Hasapas grabbed her arm.
Nicholas Billows… the customer, and George Meleos, the dishwasher, rushed to the counterman’s aid. Ignoring scratches, bites and kicks, they backed her into a phone booth and wrested the gun from her.
‘Please let me go! You’re hurting my wrist!’ she pleaded…
Denies Everything.
‘That’s the girl,’ said Albert Swank, the night manager.
In the police line-up, she faced the lights and microphone without the flicker of an eyelash. She denied everything, the holdup, the other jobs, even the stabbing…
Through it all the girl calmly chewed hew gum and drummed nonchalantly on the table top.”
This is a Weegee photo, perhaps the other two are too…
Screenshot from a museum website… Weegee’s photos of Norma Parker…
78 Years Ago Today… Broadway Gun Girl…
Daily Mirror, February 16, 1937, pp. 1, 3, 19 (Mirror Photo)
“Broadway Gun Girl,
Norma Parker, pictured behind bars after her capture while sticking up a West Side cafe with a cap pistol. Insert shows another pose of the coy moll, who is also facing trial for stabbing girl pal…”
“Seize Gungirl in 5th Holdup
Meet the Broadway Gun-girl. Our police met up with her yesterday.
She is very calm and chews gum. Demurely, in Felony Court, she answered to th ename of Norma Parker. In other courts she has answered to the names of Jean Williams, Jean Hopkins, Jean Carroll, and Jean Johnson.
Magistrate Aurelio, gazing down at her from the bench, and observing her still…”
“Gun Girl, Norma Parker leaves station house with policeman.
After several alleged stickups, attractive, coy, Norma Parker, 25, already out on bail in a stabbing, was captured yesterday morning after robbing restaurant at 323…”
“Tight-lipped and sardonic, Norma Parker, the gun-girl who conducted a solo reign of terror in a series of restaurant holdups, stolidly chews gum at her arraignment. She is shown in three studies as ashe answered court’s question. Her ‘revolver’ turned out to be cap pistol.”
Perhaps Weegee made one or more of these photos… (Perhaps he solved this crime…)
Screenshot from a museum’s website… Weegee’s photos of Norma Parker…
Perhaps 78 Years Ago Today… Weegee the detective… “One case that I broke concerned a girl…”
“One case that I broke concerned a girl who was going around holding up only Child’s Restaurants. (She must have like their blue-plate special.) She was making a monkey out of the cops… I remembered having photographed a girl about a year before [1936], who had gotten into a knife fight with another girl over the affections of their mutual ‘Pineapple’ (pimp). Even true love can be overdone, and the unromantic cops pinched her. On the way to the court I photographed her in the patrol wagon, smiling brazenly with a rose between her teeth. ‘Spanish Rose’ was my title for the shot and it made the front pages…”
“On a hunch, I showed the picture of this girl to a detective friend who was working on the case. We went around to the different Child’s Restaurants. One cashier after another identified her as the gun-girl. Soon she was picked up and brought to the West Sixty-fifth Street stationhouse. Her gun turned out to be wooden. While the other photographers were waiting to get her picture, and while she was telling her life story to the cops, I was out selling my picture of her. It made every New York paper but one… The Times ran four lines on the story, but no picture…”
Weegee by Weegee, 1961, pp. 61-62
Elevator to the Gallows, 2009, p. 127
“I once helped the cops capture a gun-girl. A very beautiful brunette was going around upper Broadway holding up Child’s restaurants. The cops were at their wits’ ends as it made them look very foolish. I was getting annoyed because every time a restaurant was held up I had to go and make pictures which distracted me from Murder Inc., which was my true love. On a hunch, I remembered that some months ago, I had taken a picture of a girl, “Spanish Rose,” who had a little knifing match with another girl over a boy friend. I had taken pictures when the girl was arrested. I played detective and took the photos of the pretty knife-wielder around to the restaurant cashiers who had been held up. They all identified her as the one who had been taking their cash. The cops picked her up quickly and it turned out she had been terrorizing the cashiers with a wooden gun. I think I did her a great favor. The sob sisters went to work on her. She sold her confession to the New York Sunday Mirror, made guest appearances on radio and TV, programs and retired to a life of ease.”
1953
What in the world is Weegee talking about? Perhaps Weegee is talking about Norma Parker, the Broadway Gungirl, the coy moll who chewed gum and dressed in black… There are a few similar details: stabbing a girl over a guy, a toy gun, 65th St., West 65th or West 68th St police stations, holdups in restaurants or cafes, etc… Perhaps, 24 years later, Weegee gilded the rose (“to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow”) a bit… The tellings in 1953 and 1961 are very similar. In the next few posts we’ll look a Norma Parker’s arrest in a few tabloids of the time…
Daily News, February 16, 1937 (NEWS foto) – Weegee photo
[Norma Parker, the Girl in Black, in a West 68th St. police station.]
Screenshot from a museum’s website… Weegee’s photos of Norma Parker…
That’s Life…
Fellig’s dream girl is just one of his jokes. He faked this picture to burlesque his bachelor existence. Fellig has no home, no wife, no family, doesn’t seem to want any.”
Life, 1937
That’s Life…
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6 Tube 1937 Auto Radio…
(According to the Internet: $18.74 in 1937 had the same buying power as $293.39 in 2011… Or, about a month’s rent, if you’re living at 5 Centre Market Place…)
Recent Auctions: Summer, Upper West Side, 1946… Sold for $20,000
WEEGEE (1899-1968)
Summer, the Lower East Side, c. 1937
or
WEEGEE (1899-1968)
Summer, Upper West Side, 1946
Gelatin silver print
West 47th Street and ‘Weegee the Famous’ credit stamps (on verso)
10 3/8 x 13 1/8in
Sold for: $20,000
(Estimate $5,000 – $7,000)
Sale 2407 Lot 151
Christies
Selections from the Baio Collection of Photography
April 15, 2010
Summer? Yes. Lower East Side? Probably Not. 1937? No…
PM Weekly, November 10, 1946, Vol. 7, No. 123, pp. m10-11
PM Weekly, November 10, 1946, Vol. 7, No. 123, pp. m10-11
“Weegee’s People at Manhattan Avenue and 107th St.”
Weegee’s People, 1946
Weegee The Famous, 1977, “Summer, the Lower East Side, 1937,” pp. 42-43
Weegee’s New York, “Summer on the Lower East Side…, 1937,” p. 178
Weegee’s World, “Summer, the Lower East Side, ca. 1937,” pp. 48-49
Where and when was this photo made?
Wee are still tracing its publication history (it’s funny how some of Weegee’s most famous and iconic photos have ambiguous origins, like Simply Add Boiling Water)…. perhaps the first publication was in PM, November 10, 1946, (in a publication – Weegee’s People – announcement) and perhaps the second publication was as the untitled front endpaper for Weegee’s People, November 1946.
In Louis Stettner’s 1977 Weegee the Famous (pp. 42-43) the title is “Summer, the Lower East Side, 1937. (Of course many of the titles and dates are incorrect in this otherwise great book.)
In the 1982 Weegee’s New York, “Summer on the Lower East Side…” p. 178, is juxtaposed with “… a cop stops the fun, 1937” p. 179.
(The photo on page 179 was made on the Lower East Side, and probably has nothing to do with the photo on page 178, “Summer on the Lower East Side…”) (Of course many of the titles and dates are incorrect in this otherwise great book.)
In Weegee’s World, the photo appears as “Summer, the Lower East Side, ca. 1937” following a few images of people sleeping on fire escapes… and it is the oldest photo in the Lower East Side chapter (or the one with the earliest date), with two photos dated ca. 1939, and one or two from 1940.
Most of the photos in Weegee’s People were made in 1945 and 1946.
Some were published in PM, some might have been published elsewhere, and some were previously unpublished.
Wee don’t think there are any photos in Weegee’s People that were made in the 1930s.
Perhaps the photo was made in the summer of 1946, or the summer of 1945.
And perhaps it was not made in the Lower East Side, (the architecture in the background doesn’t look like the Lower East Side) perhaps it was made around Manhattan Ave. and 107th St.
In a 1946 caption the photo has the title: “Weegee’s People at Manhattan Avenue and 107th St.“
(I don’t think it was made exactly here, Manhattan Ave, and 107th St., but there’s an amusing coincidence, that there’s a guy on a fire hydrant…)
These pictures are from Weegee’s People (Duell, Sloan, Pearce, $4), which will be published on November 11. Weegee says of the new book. “Unlike my previous book, Naked City, this is New York in a happier and gayer mood. I went looking for beauty and found it. My formula – dealing as I do with human beings, and I find them wonderful – leave them alone and let them be themselves – holding hands with love-light in their eyes-sleeping-or merely walking down the street. The trick is to be where people are.” Weegee’s next venture will be movie-making”
PM Weekly, November 10, 1946, Vol. 7, No. 123, pp. m10-11
And so it was…
TO BE CONTINUED!
WEEGEEWEEGEEWEEGEE 