70 Years Ago Today… “Maria Montez Wants to Do a Movie with Clothes On”

March 7, 2013
1943

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PM, March 7, 1943

By Hyman Goldberg, photos by Jack Downey

“Maria Montez Wants to Do a Movie with Clothes.”

“Some day,” said Maria Montez, a far away look in her hazel eyes, “maybe they will let me make a movies with clothes on.”
“Of course,” she said, “it’s nice to be beautiful. But I would much rather be considered intelligent.”
“Miss Montez wanted to know what was so terrible about Brooklyn that everybody made fun of it…”
“Orson, she said, “is wonderful…”

(A Maria Montez website is here…)

69 Years Ago Today… “A Train Goes from Brooklyn…”

March 6, 2013
1944, subway

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PM Daily, March 6, 1944, p. 12
“You could cut the air of nostalgia with a knife yesterday as the BMT train rolled sadly over the Brooklyn Bridge for the last time. These were passengers for the finale… Workmen close the elevated track forever and the line becomes a thing of the past. Passengers are instructed to use surface cars and transfer at Jay St. and Myrtle Ave… … A singularly cheerful crowd for such a melancholy occasion waves bye-bye from the rear of the last car.”
Photos by Wilbert H. Blanche

69 Years Ago Today… “Dear Joe… the only time I go to Brooklyn is when I am forced to go there on business.”

March 5, 2013
1944

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PM Daily, March 5, 1944
“Underneath it Weegee is a sensitive, responsive artist, endlessly curious about the tiny details of life and death and crime and four-alarm fires; the details that make great art and good captions.”
“… My freelance photography business has taken a nose dive… the only time I go to Brooklyn is when I am forced to go there on business.” – Weegee
(Wee could be wrong, but wee think that this letter to Psychic Photographer Weegee c/o The Police Dept. was written in 1943, almost exactly a year before it was printed…)
And a great drawing by A.R.!

69 Years Ago Today… Inside Manhattan… Inside Western Union, on Roller Skates…

March 5, 2013
1944

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PM Daily, March 5, 1944
“Inside Manhattan… by Grant Reynard
In one of the big operating rooms in the Western Union building at 60 Hudson St. I found scores of girls working on roller skates. About 150 girls use skates in this building. They roll noiselessly on waxed linoleum floors through a hubbub of mechanical racket, carrying telegrams… More power to the girls who zip around with pep and smoothness. You know the one about the postman who took a walk in the afternoon for exercise? Well, many of these girls spend their evenings skating at roller rinks. It looks like fun on wheels to me.”