PM, October 17, 1940 Vol. 1, No. 90, pp. 16-17
“New York’s Busiest Crossroads Soon Will Be Busier Than Ever”
Pictured here, in photo and diagram, is the busiest traffic intersection in New York – perhaps the busiest anywhere: 33d St., between Broadway and Sixth Ave…”
Diagram by Leo Hershfield (1904 – 1979).
(to be continued…)
PM, October 11, 1940, p20 (unidentified photographers and author)
“Iraq’s Oil Wells Are the Near East’s Most Coveted Prize
Iraq’s rich oil fields are a prize coveted by every European power and would be the most important objective of an Axis offensive into the Near East…”
76 years ago today… some things don’t change…
New York Daily News, February 9, 1942
“Crying Babies Drive Nurse Crazy; She Dopes 2, 1 Dies
Her face pale with grief, nurse Irma Twiss Epstein, whose own baby died a year and a half ago, is booked at Morrisania Police Station in the death of a new-born baby whose crying was ‘driving me crazy'”
[“Aliens Begin Registering. Registration of enemy aliens begins today…”]
PM, February 9, 1942, p. 3
“Here is Nurse Accused of Killing Baby
Distraught and pale with grief, Irma Twiss Epstein, 32 year-old nurse, whose own baby died 18 months ago, is booked on a homicide charge in the death of a baby whose crying, she said, “drove me crazy.” Miss Epstein, Bronx Maternity Hospital nurse, is accused of giving a powerful drug to the 20 hour-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Castro Vallee, whose only other child died after birth 11 years ago. Another infant, 4 days old, was revived by nurses and doctors after Miss Epstein was found in a hallway hysterically sobbing: eyedropper, baby.” Hospital records showed she entered service there in 1940 and after nine months took a leave of absence to have a baby. Police said she had been in Bellevue’s psychopathic ward two years ago for observation after tasking an overdose of sleeping tablets. She told police at Morrisania Station she expected to be married soon. PM Photo by Weegee.”
PM, February 9, 1942, Vol. II, No. 168, p.3
PM, February 3, 1942, pp. 10-11, Vol. II, No. 164
Off Duty Cop Does Duty, Kills Gunman Who Tries Stickup
The boys were playing a little pool and cards in the Spring Arrow Social and Athletic Club, 344 Broome St., near the Bowery last night. Patrolman Eligio Sarro, off duty, went in for a pack of cigarets. Four men entered. “This is a stick-up,” the leader muttered. Sarro was a little slow getting his hands out of his overcoat pockets. “Get ’em up,” ordered the leader, Sarro did. One hand held a gun. When he got through firing, the leader was dead.
The usual curious crowd gathered after the gunman, fatally wounded, staggered from the entrance. He was about 22, dark and chunky. Police said he was Andrew Izzo with a record of six arrests.
Patrolman Sarro smokes a cigaret a few minutes after he dropped the gunman. He’s assigned to the Empire Blvd. precinct in Brooklyn. He lives only a few doors from the club.
PM Photos by Weegee
NY Times, February 3, 1942
PM, January 20, 1941, pp. 18-19
PM, January 20, 1941, pp. 18-19 (Not the same page 18.)
PM, January 20, 1941, pp. 18-19 (Not the photo that was published.)
PM, June 18, 1940, p.1
“I had been doing freelance for Acme ever since I had left my job with them in 1935 [!!!]. I went to work for PM in 1940. When the word had first got around that a newspaper like PM was being formed, every newspaperman and photographer in the country tried to get on the staff. Except me. I figured that, if they wanted me, they could come and get me. Sure enough, about a month before publication, I met the editor. He said, “Weegee, you’re doing wonderful work. Be sure to bring your pictures to me.” I replied, “Give me a guarantee, and the bet’s on.” The upshot was that I had a roving assignment from PM for the next four-a-half years. I picked my own stories. When I found a good one, I brought it in. All they had to do was to mail me a weekly check for seventy-five dollars… which they did.
[According to an online inflation calculator, $75 in 1940 has the same buying power as $1,271.44 in 2015.]
PM, July 28, 1940, p. 17
Sometimes PM didn’t see me for weeks, I was happy; I got my check every week. When finally I would come into their offices in Brooklyn they would greet me with, “Welcome home, Weegee! Where have you been, on vacation?” I’d say, “Look, what do you want me to do, go out and commit a murder?”
One of the reasons PM eventually folded was that it was ahead of the times. There were not quite as many eggheads around then as there are now. All the lost souls used to read PM and swear by it. You could tell PM readers on sight. They looked like people from another planet waiting for somebody to take them to their leader… which of course, was PM.
Weegee by Weegee, 1961, pp. 85-86
PM, June 19, 1940, p. 19
A PM gets attention in Chelsea… (January 14, 2016)
“PM New York Daily: 1940 – 48” – Steven Kasher Gallery (January 14 – February 20, 2016)
Great exhibition… (Our rating: 4 and a half speed graphics:-) Everything is for sale…
PM, January 2, 1945, p.13
Naked City, p. 76
PM, December 26, 1940
Weegee Covers Christmas in New York… In Pictures and Words…
By Weegee
Early Christmas Eve I received a phone call [a funny thing to receive from a person who consistently wrote that he had no phone: “In my room, I would have the mail and telegrams slipped under my door. I had no phone; I’m allergic to them…” Weegee by Weegee, 1961, pp. 64-65] from Wesley Price, one of PM’s picture editors. Price told me he wanted a good holiday picture, something with plenty of OOMPH. Lots of Christmas spirit in it. in other words a masterpiece. Jokingly I replied you just couldn’t order a picture like that, like you would a box of cigars. It had to happen. However, I asked him if he had any suggestions. He suggested that I get the picture in for the first edition. [Slightly different environment than: “The upshot was that I had a roving assignment from PM for the next four-and-a-half years. I picked my own stories. When I found a good one, I brought t in. All they had to do was mail me my weekly check for seventy-five dollars… which they did.” Weegee by Weegee, 1961, p. 86]
I left police headquarters in my car at 2:30 Christmas morning. I turned the two radios on. One the regular broadcast receiver, to get some holiday music to put me in the mood; and the other radio, a police short wave receiver to get the police signals so I would know what was going on.
The first police call I picked up was for West and Bank Sts. When I got there I found a car with a Jersey license, turned on its side, with a cop on top of it. Nobody seemed to be hurt. Soon a towing wagon arrived to take the car away. I made a shot of it and was on my way.
Then I picked up six fire alarm signals. They were alll false. I didn’t think Santa did that.
Then I stopped at the All Night Mission at No. 8 Bowery. [Not the still extant Bowery Mission.] Every night in the year about 100 hopelessly beaten and homeless men sit on benches and sleep as best they can. [see below]
Except for a Christmas tree in front, everything was the same. The same despair and hopelessness. I tiptoed in at 4 in the morning, being careful not to disturb anyone. Everyone was asleep. The place was as usual playing to “Sitting up” only. The same electric sign was lit with the illuminated big letters, JESUS SEES, the only source of light in the place. I wondered if He approved…
On the way out, along a big stove near the door, I noticed a pair of stockings, turned inside out, hung to dry.
Next I picked up a police alarm for 102nd St. and Lexington Ave. When I got there I found a man had been stabbed to death and was lying on the corner. From the St. John’s Episcopal Church, [according to the Internet, there is no St. John’s Episcopal Church at 102nd St. and Lexington Ave. There is one in the Village, 224 Waverly Place…] on the opposite corner, came the sound of organ music and the singing of the Christmas worshipers. I made a shot of the scene and started back to police headquarters.
When I arrived at my home, in back of Police Headquarters, I found a package wrapped in fancy paper outside my door. It was a present from my Chinese laundry man, Willie Chu, of 95 Elizabeth St. It contained a pound of tea and a half pound of lichee nuts. I had been looking for the Christmas spirit all night long. And had found it, on my doorstep. Lichee NUTS to you, Santa Claus…Coincidentally The New Yorker also stopped by the All Night Mission in 1940: ABSTRACT: Talk story about census enumeration of the derelicts in the Bowery. Since none of the homeless men know in the morning whether his address will be a flophouse, an allnight mission, or a doorway, the enumerators waited until evening to cover the Bowery. In each of the hotels – the Sunshine, Uncle Sam House, the Plaza, and the rest – were two enumerators, who got the statistics on each guest before he was allowed to register & go to his bed. At the All-Night Mission, 8 Bowery, we found 80-odd men quietly starting to spend the night sitting up. A single enumerator was taking down the information an old man was giving him. He had been born in N. Y. C. 67 years ago. No wife, no, children? no. He wasn’t looking for work. He was on relief. Home? Well, the mission…
Weegee’s Christmas day journey, on a Google Map, might look like this.
A classic New York City Christmas story… published 28 years to the day, before the end…
PM, September 1, 1940, pp. 48-49
“Why Don’t More Photographers Take Pictures to Make People Laugh?”
Words by Ralph Steiner, photos by Alma Lee Aldrich, Dr. Mehemed F. Agha, Gene Badger, British Combine, Paul Klingenstein, Three Lions, and Rene W. P. Leonhardt.
WEEGEEWEEGEEWEEGEE 