Weegee Daily… July 28, 1940… Weegee, the Wag…

July 28, 2013
1940, Weegee Daily

PM Newspaper, 1940
PM Daily, July 28, 1940
“They’d Sooner Be at the Beach But, Heat or No Heat, Jobs Are Scarce”

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Weegee Daily, July 28, 2013
Where in the world was Weegee’s darkroom in 1940? Don’t think he was still using the NY Post darkroom… I could be wrong, but I think it’s here (5 Centre Market Place).
The above is one of the funniest fotos ever published in PM. An entire page spread, an entire centerfold occupied with ten photos of workers sweating while they work, of hard working WPA construction workers, a coal shoveler, a cook, a baker, PM’s stereotypist, even the Mayor (with “coat off, tie loose, hair scraggly… looks pretty wilted”) concludes with “Weegee, the wag, finished up the day by taking his own picture in the darkroom…”
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72 years ago today… It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity… “Tattooed Woman Makes Big Mistake on Bowery”

July 24, 2013
1941

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New York Herald Tribune, July 24, 1941
“Tattooed Woman Makes Big Mistake on Bowery
Mildred Hull, forty-five years old, a tattooed woman and tattoo artist… with a natural distaste for the commonplace, threw a bottle at a friend who had made a conventional remark about the weather. The bottle struck a police radio patrol car.
The incident occurred in front of Ms. Hull’s tattooing establishment at 2 1/2 Bowery… Miss Hull let the bottle fly with an uninhibited swing…
Both went to jail.”

66 Years Ago Today… June 22, 1947… Palace of Trash…

June 22, 2013
1947

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PM Daily, June 22, 1947 (Photo by Morris Gordon)
“Mrs. Irving Hafftel, 87 Taylor St., Brooklyn, was at the auction Friday at the Collyer Palace of Trash on upper Fifth Ave. and bought this piano – one of eight the Collyers had – for $45. Eleven other prospective buyers were present, but they rejected the other 15 items which were offered at auction. Entire contents of the house then were sold for $100 to Carlos Martin, a Third Ave. second hand dealer.

73 Years Ago Today… Detective Examines Board and Glass…

June 22, 2013
1940


Unidentified Photographers, New York Daily News, June 21, 1940

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New York Daily News, June 22, 1940
Weegee or Unidentified Photographer, Detective examines board and glass shattered in blast at 17 Battery Place, June 22, 1940

From a Midtown Manhattan Museum’s website:
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Weegee, Investigator, (who looks like & is Weegee) at Manhattan Police Hdqs, looks over fragments of broken glass, & metal from scene of bombings, for clues, in 2 bombings at German Consulate Bldg, & Daily Worker, note piece of wood, from German Consulate Bldg bombing, June 1940

Except for the stripes on the tie going in the opposite direction, that’s a pretty close match… Fellig playing and/or posing as investigator/detective…

Happy Summer… “Beneath its comic surface…”

June 21, 2013
Uncategorized

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“Delightful shot of city children keeping cool during sumer heat is used as an end piece for the book. Everybody in the book is having fun in a frenzied, sprawling way. Beneath its comic surface, Weegee’s People is poignantly sad.”

Poignantly sad?!?! We disagree. Weegee’s People is full of incipient early post war optimism… poignantly comic…

(Hey, there’s an AF number on the upper left corner of this photo… it must have been made around 1943, or 1943-1945.)

Today, we call this photo: Summer, Upper West Side, 1943-44